Richard Whitfords Dyuers Holy Instrucyons and Teachynges Very Necessary for the Helth of Mannes Soule is the last printed work written by a brother of the Brigittine community at Syon Abbey. A vocal opponent of Lutheran reforms and Henry VIIIs agenda to install himself as the head of the Church of England, Richard Whitford was also Syons most prolific author. His writing provides pastoral guidance on a range of issues as well as powerful articulations of the value of religious life during the turbulent years preceding the kings break from the Catholic Church. Published in 1541, Dyuers Holy Instrucyons is also the only Syon text printed after the dissolution of the monasteries. This text thus offers a rare perspective on the concerns of those faithful to the old religion from a religious brother who actively participated in the abbeys campaign against Lutheran reformers. As with his previous work, Whitfords Dyuers Holy Instrucyons maintains an openly confrontational stance toward radical reformers while offering instruction to readers on issues that would certainly have been topical for faithful who lived after the 1534 Act of Supremacyissues focussed on patience, avoiding vice, impediments to spiritual perfection, and detraction.
This edition makes this significant work available for the first time to modern readers with crucial discussions of the history and themes of the texts, including the indivisibility of politics and religion in the early years of the Reformation and the crucial role that Syon Abbey played in the textual representation of this period in English history.
INTRODUCTIONGeneral Introduction
The Life of Richard Whitford
Syon Community, Lay Piety, and Vernacular Devotional Literature
Monasticism and the Reformation
Dyuers Holy Instrucyons and Teachynges Very Necessary for the Helth of Mannes
Soule
The Boke of Pacience
A Worke of Dyuers Impediments and Lettes of Perfection
An Instruction to auoyde and eschewe vyces and folowe good maners or the
Consilia of Isidore
Of Detraction. Chrisostomus homelia tercia
Extant Copies of the Text
William Middleton
The Language of the Text
Editorial Procedures
THE TEXTNotes to the Text
Apparatus
Glossary
Bibliography
Brandon Alakas is a Professor at the University of Alberta and Director of the Syon Abbey Society. His previous publications include Richard Whitford's Dyuers Holy Instrucyons and Teachynges Very Necessary for the Helth of Mannes Soule (Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies, Liverpool University Press 2020). Stephanie Morley is Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Saint Marys University, Halifax.
