Counterpoints of Penitence: Reading Anne Lock's “A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner” through a Late-Medieval Middle English Psalm Paraphrase

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Notes

¹ Psalm 51 for Lock corresponds to Vulgate Psalm 50. I will refer to the psalm by its Latin incipit (Miserere mei Deus) throughout this article.

² For editions of the Middle English paraphrase and discussions of its wider literary context, see Fein and Thomson. Robert Thornton (1397 to c. 1465) compiled the manuscript, the only extant witness of the paraphrase, albeit an incomplete one. Thornton also compiled the manuscript's sister-volume, the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91), known for its collection of Middle English romances, including the alliterative Morte Arthure. See Easting for details about Thornton's life and the two manuscripts.

³ The three poems are found in the same manuscript as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The manuscript (London, British Library, Cotton Nero A. X) is known as the Pearl Manuscript and is the only extant witness of all four works. See Andrew and Waldron eds., 15–43, for a discussion of these poems and the alliterative revival.

⁴ My overview of the poem's metrical structure draws from Fein 234–35. Fein also makes comparisons between the Middle English Miserere mei Deus and the three alliterative poems mentioned above.

⁵ Fein 236–37, lines 1–24. All translations of the Middle English are my own. I quote from Fein's edition for the sake of clarity. She completes the Latin excerpts (which are often truncated in the manuscript) and indents the quatrain to make the poem's structure more visible. “God, may you have mercy on me, / According to your mercy, which is of great strength; / God, may you have mercy on me / And purge my plight with plain penance; / God, may you have mercy on me, / You, blameless, who was slain for my sin; / God may you have mercy on me, / You again take up the wrong that is gone [from us]. / Again you receive me in your grace, / And you always rule in good measure, / So that I may truly follow your path: / God, may you have mercy on me. / And through your mercy, great it is to speak of, / Whose might no man on earth may muster, / And as you are the source of my wealth, / You do away with my wicked works. / Since you suffered to give yourself away / In order to save us, the truth to say, / May you keep your handiwork out of hell, / And help [us] to heaven where salvation always is. / Always there is the bliss that shall never end, / For those who shall be there and be protected. / In order that I may obtain such bounty, / Jesus, may you have mercy on me!”

⁶ See the final quatrain in each of the stanzas cited above.

⁷ The “God” in the final line of the first stanza becomes “Ihesu” in all other occasions of the refrain.

⁸ This idea finds a precedent in Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos, where he “explains that the Psalmist takes on himself the collective sin of the faithful, thus implicating all Christians in the sentiments expressed in the psalm” and implies that the psalm's “language not only has social implications, but is always profoundly both individual and communal.” See Kuczynski 194–95.

⁹ The sonnet sequence comes at the end of the translation. For the text, see The Collected Works of Anne Lock, ed. Felch, 62–71. There has been some doubt about Lock's authorship of the sequence, since she states in a brief preface that the poems were “delivered me by my frend with whom I knew I might be so bolde to use and publishe it as pleased me.” Despite the disclaimer, scholars have generally considered Lock as the author.

¹⁰ For an overview of biblical translations in Geneva during Lock's time there, see the introduction to the The Geneva Bible a Facsimile of the 1560 edition, ed. Berry, 9.

¹¹ Lock 64. All citations of Lock's sonnet sequence are taken from Felch's edition, which retains the period spelling. For a version with modernized spelling, see Travitsky and Prescott eds., 114–24.

¹² See also Kuczynski 195 on Augustine's belief that, as the Psalmist, David “articulates the disparate elements of the Church's sinful members in his poetry.”

¹³ Here I am referring to “My whelmed soul” in the eleventh sonnet and “My feble faith with heavy lode opprest” in the twelfth sonnet.