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Augustine Baker (1575–1641) and the English Mystical Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

David Lunn
David Lunn
Affiliation:
Clifton, Bristol
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Extract

The importance of Augustine Baker in the history of English devotional literature has long been recognised, but there has always been a major handicap to any proper understanding of him—the fact that most of his works have not been published, except in a onevolume digest, entitled Sancta Sophia, which one of his disciples, Serenus Cressy, produced in 1657. Thus Baker has recently been the subject of a full-scale monograph, which, though otherwise scholarly and accurate enough, suffers from the fact that the author has not consulted the Baker MSS., and has, therefore, together with almost every other expert in this field of study, begun and ended his work without knowing whether Cressy's digest truly reproduces his master's voice. What follows is an attempt to answer this hitherto unanswered question by reconstructing the circumstances of the book's publication and by comparing it with some of the MSS. But first, some definitions.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , July 1975 , pp. 267 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

page 267 note 1 The other main eds. are 1857, 1876, 1911 and 1964. Baker was responsible for much of Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia, ed. C. Reyner, Douai 1626; his Ideots Devotions and Life of Gertrude More were published posthumously at Paris 1657, 1658; and McCann, Justin edited his Confessions, London 1922Google Scholar, part of his commentary on The Cloud of Unknowing, London 1924Google Scholar and fragments of history and autobiography in vol. 33 of the Catholic Record Society publications (1933).

page 267 note 2 Low, Anthony, Augustine Baker, New York 1970Google Scholar. See the catalogue of MSS. in Catholic Record Society 33, no. vi; and McCann, P. J., ‘Ten more Baker MSS.’, The Ampleforth Journal, 53 (1958), 77–83.Google Scholar

page 267 note 3 See his Religio Religiosi, Stanbrook 1916.Google Scholar

page 268 note 1 Knowles, M. D., ‘Father Augustine Baker’, in English Spiritual Writers, ed. Davis, Charles, London 1961, 99.Google Scholar

page 268 note 2 Knowles, M. D., The English Mystical Tradition, London 1961.Google Scholar

page 268 note 3 Except perhaps William Peryn, whose Spiritual Exercises (London 1557) contains mystical elements.

page 268 note 4 Durrant, C. S., A Link between Flemish Mystics and English Martyrs, London 1925.Google Scholar

page 268 note 5 Rouen, 1609. See Veghel, O. de, Benoît de Canfield (1562–1610): sa vie, sa doctrine et son influence, Rome 1949, 22.Google Scholar

page 268 note 6 See Allison, A. F., ‘New light on the early history of the Breve Compendio. The background to the English translation of 1612’, Recusant History, IV (1957–1958), 4–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and on the authorship, Derville, A., ‘Gagliardi’, in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, VI (1967), coll. 53–64.Google Scholar

page 269 note 1 On the convent at Cambrai: Benedictines of Stanbrook, In a Great Tradition, London 1956.Google Scholar

page 269 note 2 Baker's autobiography and Leander Prichard's Life, ed. McCann, Catholic Record Society 33, 1933; the biographies by Peter Salvin and Serenus Cressy, ed. McCann, , The Life of Father Augustine Baker, London 1933; and Baker's Confessions.Google Scholar

page 270 note 1 Low, op. cit., 131–4. See also Denis Granville, dean of Durham, in Surtees Society 47, 67.

page 270 note 2 Birrell, T. A., review of Low, Augustine Baker, in Yearbook of English Studies, February 1972, 259–60; and Bodleian, Rawlinson MS. D. 142, fols. 111–268.Google Scholar

page 270 note 3 Low, op. cit., 53.

page 270 note 4 Sancta Sophia, frontispiece. (Cited hereafter as SS.) All references are to the 1657 edition.

page 270 note 5 Downside Abbey MS. 6, ‘A Treatise of Confession’, esp. 69–70.

page 270 note 6 Low, op. cit., 26.

page 271 note 1 Prichard's Life, 107.

page 272 note 1 Low, op. cit., 53.

page 272 note 2 Downside Abbey MS., Acts of General Chapter, 1, 238 (1653).

page 272 note 3 Lunn, D. M., ‘William Rudesind Barlow, O.S.B., 1585–1656’, The Downside Review, 86 (1968), 234–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 272 note 4 McCann, , ‘Some Benedictine Letters in the Bodleian’, The Downside Review, 49 (1931), 465 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 273 note 1 The Life of Father Augustine Baker, ed. McCann, 182.

page 274 note 1 Compare Downside MS. 3 and SS. 3. 3. 6. 1–23.

page 274 note 2 Cf. MS. 3, 2, and SS. 3. 3. 6. 1.

page 274 note 3 Cf. Downside MS. 1, ‘A. B. C.’, 128–79, and SS. 3. 3. 4. 1–24; also MS. 23, ‘Mirror’, and SS. 2. 2. 4. 12–14.

page 274 note 4 Knowles, in Davis, op. cit., 103.

page 274 note 5 Downside MS. 23, ‘All Virtues’, 18, 31.

page 274 note 6 MS. 3, ‘Discretion’, 34, 42, 88, 91, 116, 129. Low (op. cit., 65) is thus wrong to attribute to Baker the absence of imagery in SS.

page 275 note 1 MS. 3, 8 ff; SS. 3. 3. 6. 17.

page 275 note 2 MS. 6, ‘Confession’, 3.

page 275 note 3 MS. 3, 160; SS.3. 3. 6. 9.

page 275 note 4 MS. 3, 114; MS. 6, 7.

page 275 note 5 E. Maihew, Congregationis Anglicanae Ordinis Sanctissimi Patriarchae Benedicti Trophaea, Rheims 1619–25; Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia, Douai 1626. To these ought to be added the works of Leander Jones and John Barnes. Gregory Sayer and Thomas Preston, though considerable authors, were not members of the congregation.

page 276 note 1 MS. 3, preface.

page 276 note 2 Cf. MS. 23, ‘All Virtues’, and SS. 2. 2. 15. 6.

page 276 note 3 Cf. Downside MS. 22, ‘Remains’, and SS. 3. 4. 1. 12.

page 277 note 1 Salvin, ed. McCann, 16.

page 277 note 2 See for example MS. 6, 73.