A Mirror to Devout People (Speculum Devotorum) Speculum devotorum

This is the first full critical edition of a fifteenth-century devotional work written for a Bridgettine nun at Syon Abbey by a Carthusian monk at the Sheen Charterhouse. This version of the life of Christ was owned by both monastic and lay readers and testifies to the popularity of devotional reading among a mixed audience.



This edition of A Mirror to Devout People presents for the first time a Middle English Life of Christ, with additional religious advice, written in the early fifteenth century by a Carthusian monk at the Sheen Charterhouse for a sister at the nearby Bridgettine Syon Abbey. Both the Sheen Charterhouse and Syon were recent royal foundations, established by Henry V. The Mirror is an important example of the devotional works produced to satisfy demand among laity as well as professed religious, wanting to read lives of Christ in the years following the repressive legislation of Archbishop Arundel (1409), which placed severe restrictions on biblical translation into English, intended to limit the spread of heresy. The Mirror, written in the tradition of the highly successful translation by another Carthusian, Nicholas Love, of Pseudo-Bonaventure's life of Christ, testifies to the demand for such material in pious households.