While the Holkham Prayers and Meditations refuses to answer many of the questions it raises, despite opening a tantalizing portal into the world of late medieval female spirituality, The Fruyte of Redempcyon presents an entirely different case. Where the Holkham text is stubbornly silent, the Fruyte provides us with an abundance of information: it has a named author, a clear date of composition, and a readily identifiable set of sources. Even the circumstances in which it was written and the audience through which it circulated can be deduced with a fair degree of certainty. But it is not only in terms of such contextual detail that the Fruyte differs from the earlier piece. Despite being rooted in the same set of devotional practices and principles, and retelling the same basic narrative, the Fruyte’s treatment of the gospel material is marked by its own unique set of inflections. When set alongside the Prayers and Meditations, in short, the Fruyte makes clear the mutability and versatility of the meditative tradition to which it belongs, and the range of needs for which that tradition might be adapted.
Date and Authorship
The book also testifies to the enduring value of the devotional framework instituted by Pseudo-Bonaventure, showing that it retained its potency up to the very brink of the Reformation. The Fruyte seems to have been written at some point before 1514, the year in which it made its first appearance in print. It was issued by Wynkyn de Worde, the Netherlandish printer who effectively created the popular book market in England, and is in many respects typical of his output.
Consisting of forty-eight pages printed in octavo, with dimensions of 11 cm x 15 cm, it epitomizes the sort of compact, highly commercial text de Worde helped pioneer. It was also produced in de Worde’s favorite typeface, “the most frequently found of all de Worde’s types in the sixteenth century,” a modified version of the textura type he imported from Paris in ca. 1497. Duff classifies this as type 8, and Issac as type 96, although it is popularly known as English blackletter. The Fruyte obviously met with an enthusiastic audience. Four later editions have survived: it was printed again in 1517 (although its colophon gives the erroneous date “1417”), in 1530 (with the added detail that it was “fynysshed” on the twenty-first “daye of Maye”), in 1531, and finally in 1532, only two years before the Act of Supremacy declared Henry VIII Head of the Church of England. There is also some slim evidence of a sixth imprint. In his extended version of Joseph Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, the antiquarian William Herbert claims to have seen an undated copy, tersely recording that the Fruyte was printed “again without date.” Herbert’s nineteenth-century editor Thomas Dibdin inferred that this version might have been issued in 1533 or later, but confesses that “such an edition has hitherto escaped me.” If this imprint did exist, it would make more sense to place it in the long gap between 1517–1530; nonetheless, since nothing resembling it has come to light, it is best judged a phantom, possibly a confused reference to a damaged copy.
On the question of authorship, however, there is much less ambiguity. All of the surviving copies unanimously assign themselves to the same figure. Each concludes with a brief postscript asking that the reader pray “of your charyté” for the writer that has “compyled this mater in Engliysshe,” and explicitly names him as “the Anker of London wall, wretched Symon.” Unequivocal though this statement might seem, the candidacy of “wretched Symon” has not gone unchallenged. At some point in early scholarship, the Fruyte was linked with the Bridgettine monk Richard Wytforde, presumably because Symon’s signature resembles Wytforde’s own self-description “poore wretche of Syon.” Nonetheless, the work of Rotha Mary Clay and Mary Erler has placed the identity of the writer beyond doubt, and managed to call him forward as an historical figure in some detail. Symon is certainly Simon Appulby or Appleby, the final anchorite at the church of Allhallows London Wall (now All Hallows-on-the-Wall), so named because of its proximity to the old city wall. The current building bears little trace of his hold, having been wholly rebuilt and remodeled by George Dance and Joseph Taylor in the 1760s, but it was almost continuously occupied from at least the turn of the fifteenth century; it may in fact have taken over from a thirteenth-century hold housed in the city wall itself. The first recorded inhabitant is Margaret Burre, who comes to light in her will of 1402; over the next century, she was followed by Emmota Olrun, William Lucas, a fourth figure whose name is unrecorded, Robert Lynton, and Appulby’s immediate predecessor, a male recluse known only as Giles or “Eliseus.”
Appulby himself might have been a Londoner by birth: at least, Gary Gibbs has found a number of possible relatives living near the site he came to occupy. He makes his first entry into the records in April 1483, and from the outset is linked with the asceticism he came to practice in later life. On this date, William de Wallingforde, abbot of St. Albans, pledged use of the “house or residence of the anchoress, built and attached to the church of St. Michael, near to the town of St. Albans” to “Sir Simon Appulby, chaplain” once it was “vacated” by its current occupant, “Lady Margaret Smythe.” As well as indicating Appulby’s early enthusiasm for the anchoritic vocation, a feature he shares with many other medieval recluses, this reference also allows Erler to calculate his probable date of birth. Since the record makes clear that he was already a priest or capellanus, and the youngest possible age for ordination was 25, he was most likely born in the mid 1450s. For whatever reason, he was never installed at St. Albans. The next cluster of references shows him performing a range of clerical duties in the capital instead. In 1505–1507 he is listed as a warden of the almshouses for elderly and impoverished priests at St. Augustine Papey, on St. Mary Axe Street; by 1509 he had become priest of the central London parish of St. Leonard Foster Lane, according to a will he witnessed that year.
On June 26, 1513, a year before the first edition of the Fruyte appeared, Appulby began his life as an anchorite at Allhallows. The date of his entry is preserved in the register of Richard Fitzjames, bishop of London from 1506 to 1522, who authorized and presided over his commitment to the hold. The likely course of his enclosure can be reconstructed from the “form for those advancing to the order of anchorites” quoted in a near-contemporary version of the Use of Sarum. According to this primer, Appulby would have spent the days beforehand making stringent preparations: consuming only bread and water, he would have given a full and detailed confession, his confessor no doubt encouraging him to “probe his conscience, namely to see whether he seeks sanctity out of good or evil intention, and if he wishes to please God, or merely to profit or gain the approval of men.” On the evening before the final ceremony, he would have spent the entire night in prayer by the light of a single candle. Fitzjames’s register shows that the enclosure ritual took place at Holy Trinity Priory, a house of the Austin canons near Aldgate, and one of the oldest foundations in medieval London. After the required psalms, prayers, and mass had been read, Appulby made his formal profession before the bishop, delivering formulaic pledges to commit the remainder of his life to God; he then ratified its written copy with the sign of a cross, as custom dictated. Finally, a procession would have led Appulby away from the priory to the site of his hold. After Fitzjames had consecrated the space with holy water, and taken Appulby’s ceremonial taper from him, he and the rest of the assembled would have departed, leaving “he that is to be enclosed alone, entirely, finally, and continually, watching in silence as he is firmly sealed into the cell.”
Appulby remained in the Allhallows cell for the next twenty-four years. He apparently died shortly after June 6, 1537, the date on which he prepared his will. If Erler is correct in her estimates, he would have been at least eighty by this time. He certainly seems to have reached advanced age: he was already an old man in February 1532, when the alderman John Champneys raised concerns about his ability to continue as anchorite, and sought mayoral permission to name a successor. Appulby’s will itself is a final and emphatic statement of his commitment to his vocation; it also contains a few scattered hints of his feelings towards the religious and political turbulence of the 1530s. Much of it concerns arrangements for his funeral. Among its provisions are payments of 8 shillings 4 pence for “bunes, chese and ale,” 2s 4d for fourteen children to serve as candle-bearers, and 20d for the poor priests of the Papey almshouses to “comme and be at my buriall.” But aside from these financial matters, it also contains a note of poignant, albeit misplaced, optimism. Although the Dissolution was well underway by this stage, with Holy Trinity itself having been relinquished to the crown five years earlier, Appulby clearly entertained a hope that his vocation would continue. He asked that his “bookes and vestimentes” be deposited in the chapel of the Allhallows hold for use by its next resident. His request was destined to go unfulfilled: instead his chamber, having fallen immediately into disuse, was granted in July 1538 to Robert Smart, sword-bearer of London, for use as a storeroom. Nevertheless, despite this final indignity, Appulby was able to retain some presence in his former home. The will also stipulates that his remains should be interred “within the tombe alredy set and made within the ankerage.” As E. A. Jones notes, it was not unusual for anchorites to make such preparations far in advance of their deaths, even at times incorporating their future graves into their devotions; at an earlier hold in Lewes, for instance, the anchoress probably knelt to hear mass in the same pit in which she was ultimately buried. At any rate, the evidence is clear that Appulby fully dedicated the final two decades of his life to the strict regimen he had chosen to pursue. His burial represents the culmination of this devotion, a final gesture that submerged him and his identity into the physical structures of the hold.
Appulby’s Audience and Community
In many respects, it is perhaps surprising to see a figure such as Appulby involving himself in the popular book trade. Of course, that an anchorite should engage in writing is not unusual in itself. The figures were responsible for an impressive quantity and variety of texts in the two centuries before Appulby published the Fruyte. The visionary works of Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle are deservedly well known, but they are only a small part of a larger corpus: further examples include the esoteric Compound of Alchymie written by the Bridlington anchor George Ripley, the histories, sermons, hagiographies, and legal compilations produced by the prolific Thomas Scrope, and the colorful English-Latin wordlists composed by Galfridus Grammaticus of Lynn. The Holkham Prayers and Meditations might also be added to the list, if Josephine Koster is correct in her hypotheses. Likewise, there seems to be a general expectation that anchorites serve as advisors in some capacity. Galfridus’s dictionary evidently evolved out of his own teaching activities, and even the Ancrene Wisse places this function among an anchoress’s peripheral duties, despite the fact that its readers would be excluded from instruction under the terms of 1 Timothy 2:12: although the author’s “sustren” cannot allow teaching to distract them from their daily round of devotions and might not “senden leattres, ne undervon [receive] leattres,” they are permitted to act as informal mentors, “sum rihten ant helpen to learen,” and obliged to instruct their servants “to halden hare riwle” [to stick to their rule]. Nevertheless, Appulby’s appeal to a mass audience sits uneasily with the withdrawal and seclusion of the anchorhold. After all, a central tenet of his profession is that it should render him “al dead to the world,” as the Ancrene succinctly states.
However, to make sense of this aspect of Appulby’s career, it is worth recalling that he was an urban recluse above all, and that this situation powerfully shaped and conditioned his conduct. As Claire Dowding in particular has stressed, Appulby did not cut himself off from the public world, despite the rigors of his profession: on the contrary, he involved himself closely with it, “showing an awareness of and concern for issues relevant beyond the walls of his cell” in ways that “blur the boundary between the enclosed and those who enclose.” The churchwardens’ accounts give a detailed portrait of Appulby’s wider activity, making clear that he maintained close contact with the community he inhabited. At points, they show his participation taking a very direct form. It is clear, for instance, that he employed at least one servant to act as his agent and mediator. This figure’s portfolio of duties can be inferred from an irregular payment for architectural repairs, which saw him collecting fourpence for “playstrynge of the cherche wall.” But the records have more to say about the larger benefits Appulby conferred on his parish. Alongside the prayers and alms he would have routinely performed and received, they depict him as a reliable stream of revenue for Allhallows. The accounts and inventories show him making a number of monetary and material contributions to the church, both to its ritual life and to the fabric of the building itself: in 1522 he gave a “chalys” weighing 8 ounces, in 1525 “a grett paxe [decorated plaque] wyth iij Images of sylver” (although this may have originated with his predecessor), and in 1528–1529 he contributed a total of 40s for scaffolding and other miscellaneous payments when the aisle was renovated. In 1513 he also gave “a stande of ale . . . to the cherche,” presumably for a parish ale or other festive occasion, and donated the resulting 4s 6d of “gaynes.” Appulby therefore had a direct hand in the everyday life of the church and the community that centered on it, supporting its worship, its upkeep, and even the seasonal revelry it hosted.
Yet Appulby’s circle of activity extended beyond these practical concerns, as he also benefited his congregation in other, more significant respects. In abstract terms, he would have lent Allhallows considerable prestige. His presence alone would have elevated it beyond being a simple local parish, both in the eyes of the wider world and in the minds of parishioners themselves, who would doubtless have drawn considerable pride from hosting “their anchorite.” But these links also manifested themselves in more tangible ways too. As Gibbs stresses, in many respects Appulby “served as a conduit to worlds beyond the parish,” helping to forge links between his community and figures outside it. It was fairly usual, for instance, for city recluses to attract patronage and bequests from prominent citizens. Hence Appulby’s forerunner Giles, described as “Sir Elisee the anchorite in London wall,” is mentioned in the 1491 will of Richard Bodley of Billingsgate, warden of the Grocer’s company, where he received “my two best rings of gold or their value in coins” along with £6 13s 4d “specifically for celebrating and praying for my soul.” Taking a wider view, Michelle Sauer reminds us that holds were a popular stop-over for pilgrims making penitential journeys to shrines or other religious sites: since these pilgrims would pay for food, lodgings, and souvenirs, the location of the hold might become a “medieval tourist trap of sorts.” If the experiences of Margery Kempe are any indication, then the promise of spiritual counsel might have drawn still further traffic, much like Margery’s extended “dalyawns” with Julian of Norwich in ca. 1413, or the “gostly communicacyon” she sought from a nameless “ancres” at York. Indeed, Appulby’s wide range of visitors and benefactors leaves its own mark on the records. A note in 1528 characterizes a donation of 9s 3d as “the gyft of dyversse men and women of ther dewocion at dyversse tymys,” assigning the sum to several contributors rather than a particular patron or occasion. In short, Appulby’s enclosure in no sense cut him off from the dense network of transactions that ran through the medieval city. Not only did he participate in the religious and social life of Allhallows, but he also brought his parish into proximity with a wider world, giving it cachet and magnetism as a devotional site. It might be said that he exemplifies the paradoxes and “liminalities” of urban anchorism: his withdrawal was staged on one of the most public platforms imaginable, one at the heart of his community and on the fringes of a major commercial center.
The Fruyte is best seen as part of these commitments. In fact, Appulby’s duties and contacts impressed themselves on his work in some immediate and conspicuous ways. The very existence of the book reflects his function as promoter of Allhallows and its reputation. Its circulation would no doubt have enhanced the standing of the church as well as affirming his own spiritual authority. Given how prominently the work identifies its author as “Anker of London wall,” its connection to the parish would be unmistakable to any prospective reader. Yet more importantly, the Fruyte is obviously intended to educate urban readers in their faith. Appulby makes clear that this is the primary audience for his book. His postscript commends the “devoute lytell treatyse” to any “servantes of God” unschooled in Latin, a description that, while not ruling out untrained clergy, more closely applies to curious-minded laypeople. The 1531 edition stretches this point further, adding a subtitle that declares it “very profitable and moche necessary for every Christen man.” Although this addition was probably made by an enterprising printer rather than Appulby himself, it again points to the Fruyte catering for a wide, predominantly secular audience. The tone of Appulby’s writing reinforces this point. In comparison to the Holkham Prayers, his prose is much less personalized, intimate, and emotive, even though it often shares the same vividness and intensity; it also places much greater emphasis on leading the reader through the gospel narrative, and assumes much less familiarity with the core events of Christ’s life. It is obviously intended to address a broad readership, rather than being the work of a seasoned mentor leading a “religious sustir” through her contemplations (HPM Prologue.1).
Similarly, despite being rooted in mystical tradition, the Fruyte is a squarely practical work that makes it as easy as possible “for the reader to see how they could use Appulby’s text in their daily devotions.” It takes particular pains to highlight passages of most immediate use to the reader: marginal notes of “Oratio” [prayer] pick out the brief supplications scattered through the chapters, presumably so that they can be quickly located for recitation and memorization. The fundamental practicality of the book might also account for the comparative scarcity of surviving copies, despite the large number of editions produced. Only eight texts of the Fruyte are now extant, implying that it was repeatedly consulted and handled rather than carefully conserved. In fact, there are other signals in the surviving copies that it was received in a primarily utilitarian spirit. Many of them were bound with other short treatises into miniature libraries of advisory literature. The 1531 edition held at John Rylands Library, Manchester, and the 1517 edition at Cambridge University Library are both preserved in such makeshift collections, and there is evidence that at least one of the British Library copies was similarly bound at an early stage in its history. The Fruyte is therefore above all a functional text, rather than an abstract record of individual meditation. Like Appulby himself, it is obviously intended to serve its parish and extended community, instructing laypeople in the basics of their faith, and furnishing them with materials for their own contemplations and prayers.
Appulby’s writing also shows him to be outward-facing in other respects. The Fruyte reveals an association with Bishop Fitzjames and, through him, with the upper ranks of the early Tudor clergy. Although the full extent of this relationship is difficult to ascertain, the two men evidently knew each other from at least 1513, when Fitzjames presided over Appulby’s formal profession at Holy Trinity. His presence at the ceremony is not itself remarkable: the Use of Sarum makes clear that all prospective anchorites should obtain episcopal authority before entering their cells, and expressly warns that “it is not proper to become enclosed without the decree of the bishop.” However, it is also clear that the ceremony was but one moment of contact in a longer association, and that the Fruyte was shaped by the ongoing relationship between the two men. The book itself carries an explicit statement of its author’s ties to the bishop. All editions conclude with a curious commendatory note by Fitzjames, writing in first person as “I Rycharde, unworthy bysshop of London.” The note goes on to claim that Fitzjames had “studyously radde and overseen” the treatise before granting approval that “the same . . . be radde of the true servauntes of swete Jhesu, to theyr grete consolacyon and ghostly conforte.” The bishop’s signature was sufficiently important to appear in all editions of the text: it even remains in those printed after Fitzjames’s death in February 1522 when he had been succeeded as bishop by John Stokesley.
At its simplest level, this statement shows Appulby enriching and enhancing the status of his parish in yet another way: here he becomes a thread connecting Allhallows with one of the highest authorities in the contemporary church. But its presence also raises more questions, hinting further at the potential aims and uses of his book. Fitzjames’s note is by no means straightforward. Despite appearances, it is evidently not a formal license. It is true that a text like the Fruyte might require some sort of authorization, since it strays perilously close to vernacular biblical translation. An obvious point of comparison is the Mirrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ, the best-known English adaption of Pseudo-Bonaventure, written by the Carthusian prior Nicholas Love shortly before 1409, and surviving today in nearly 60 manuscripts. According to a Latin memorandum in several copies, Love was obliged to present “the original copy of this book . . . to the most reverend father in Christ and sacred lord Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, for inspection and due examination” before it could be “freely communicated.” However, as Susan Powell observes, Fitzjames’s note appears to have a different intent in mind. Not only is its tone oddly informal for a supposedly official document, but its “unmistakable modesty topos” and “fulsome commendation” seem “more what one would expect in dust-jacket or title-page promotions of a book.” The fact that it is written in English rather than Latin is similarly telling, suggesting that it was attached for the benefit of future readers rather than to record an ecclesiastic decree. Overall, therefore, it indicates a greater investment in the book on the part of the bishop than merely rubberstamping it; it seems to encourage the transmission of the Fruyte rather than simply permit it. In fact, Fitzjames’s involvement in the book may go deeper still. There is some slight evidence that he may have had a hand in its publication. He certainly had an existing relationship with Appulby’s eventual printer Wynkyn de Worde: at some point before 1500, de Worde printed an Easter Monday sermon on Luke 24:13 for the “reverendum doctorem Ricardus fitz James” [reverend doctor Richard Fitzjames], presumably while he was still bishop of Rochester or Chichester. There is even a chance that Fitzjames might have prompted the composition of the book in the first place. At least, the Fruyte seems to give this impression: not only does it claim that the bishop had “oversene” as well as read the work, but it also gives him rather than the anchorite the final word, as though he is the ultimate “author.” Beyond these hints, however, his involvement in Appulby’s text can only rest on supposition.
Less mysterious is why Fitzjames should have wanted to put his name to the Fruyte and to promote it in his diocese. To his mind, it would no doubt have offered a potent remedy against the spread of Lollardy. The stubborn presence of this heresy in the capital was Fitzjames’s single most pressing concern during his tenure as bishop. Looking back a few decades later, the Reformer John Foxe branded him a “most cruell persecutor” of the movement, and attributed almost eighty accusations to his efforts, four of which ended in execution by burning. While Foxe is hardly an unbiased witness, the available evidence does confirm his verdict. By the time of Appulby’s enclosure in 1513, Fitzjames had already led his first grand abjuration to root out heterodoxy from the capital, and his later conduct shows a hostility to irregularity that borders on ruthlessness. In 1514 he plowed on with the condemnation of Richard Hunne of the Merchant Taylors for heresy, despite Hunne’s controversial death in custody, and a little later even sought to indict his high-ranking colleague John Colet, the progressive Dean of St. Pauls, for his supposed Wycliffite leanings. Given these priorities, a text such as the Fruyte would have made an attractive prospect in his campaign against Lollardy. After all, Love’s Mirrour had already shown how reliable a weapon vernacular contemplative literature might prove against heresy. With its sixty surviving manuscripts, it attained a resonance “few English texts of the late medieval period seem to have achieved,” obviously delivering on its stated desire to provide “edification for the faithful and confutation of heretics or Lollards.” It is also likely that the reappearance of the Fruyte after 1530 shows it being remobilized against the new challenges of early Protestant biblical translation.
For his part, Appulby would have naturally shared these concerns as a dedicated servant of the church. Having been priest of a London parish for at least four years before his confinement, he would have been acutely aware of the dangerous opinions into which urban congregations might drift. He may also have encountered the heresy at close quarters. Part of Fitzjames’s register preserved by Foxe includes one “Rich. Appulby” among the “names of divers persons abjured” in 1517, conceivably a relative of the anchorite. Lollardy also forms an important current in Appulby’s text. It is true that Appulby is not as explicit as Love, who takes every opportunity to round against “lewede lollardes,” “fals lollardes and heritykes,” and even “the disciples of Anticrist that bene clepede Lollardes.” However, parts of the Fruyte seem to draw on the same strategies used by Love. As Anne Hudson observes, the Mirrour takes care to entangle orthodox doctrine within the New Testament narrative, often to an extent that renders the two indistinguishable. Hence Love’s retelling of biblical history includes passages in defense of sacerdotal power, transubstantiation, and the necessity of oral confession or “shrift of mouthe,” all of which had emerged as central points of critique for Wyclif and his followers. While Appulby is subtler in his approach, he also takes advantage of the revisionary potential of meditation to weave the official teachings of the church into the gospel accounts. Probably the most conspicuous example is his lengthy commendation of the mass at the end of chapter 13. Here Appulby not only stresses that Christ “dyd consecrate thy precyous body and blode in fourme of brede and wyne” but makes him expressly sanction “all preestes to the worldes ende to do the same.” Other passages work in a comparable way: chapters 8 and 10 also champion devotional practices Lollards tended to dismiss, the former depicting the flight of the Holy Family as a prototypical pilgrimage, the latter asking the reader to give thanksgiving for being “instructe in the true fayth of thy chirche.” In chapter 19 Appulby even turns to the most characteristic target of Lollard critique. Here his account of Veronica’s “fayre sudary” becomes a muted defence of the use of images in worship, calling it “a pyteous pycture and a dolorous memoryall” which ought to be “depely prynted in the hertes” of all Christians.
These moments in the text show, in short, an obvious alignment between the Fruyte and Fitzjames’s policies. Appulby evidently shared the bishop’s anxieties over the persistence of Lollardy in the capital, and set out to redress it in his work, if only tacitly. Once again we can see Appulby’s book taking shape in the larger environment of late medieval London. Rather than being the work of a writer cut off from external influences, it was highly responsive to the currents and conflicts around it. On the one hand, it was formed by its author’s knowledge of the likely pitfalls into which inquisitive urban laymen might stumble; on the other, it was driven by the concerns of the church hierarchy, helping in its own small way to advance Fitzjames’s agenda by literary rather than legislative means.
Appulby’s Sources and Methods
However, interest in heresy is only one way in which the general climate of early Tudor London impressed itself on the Fruyte. Appulby’s selection and handling of his material also show him to be closely attuned to the needs of urban parishes. As J. T. Rhodes was the first to recognize, most of the book is derived from a single source, albeit one with a complicated history. Broadly speaking, it is based on the Latin text Meditationes de vita et beneficiis Jesu Christi, sive, Gratiarum actiones [Meditations on the life and blessings of Jesus Christ, or, Acts of grace]. The author and exact date of the work are both unknown, but its first copy was printed in Cologne by Ulrich Zell at some point in the 1480s. It was a modest success. Further editions appeared in German- and French-speaking states throughout the remainder of the fifteenth century: it was reprinted at Augsburg in ca. 1489, at Basel in 1489, at Heidelberg in 1495, at Strasbourg in ca. 1495, at Cologne in ca. 1498 and in ca. 1500, and at Paris in 1498 and in ca. 1500. It continued to be published intermittently until the early eighteenth century, gaining a second wind in 1607 when the Jesuit scholar Heinrich Sommalius attributed it to Thomas à Kempis. However, despite its longevity, this was not the version of the text that Appulby knew or used. Shortly after the Zell edition appeared, a condensed version was published by Nicholas Weydenbosch, or Nicolaus de Saliceto, abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Baumgarten in Alsace. Weydenbosch embedded his version in the compilation Antidotarius Animae [Remedy of the Soul], a wide-ranging collection of devotional and penitential material taken from numerous authorities, including Jerome, Gregory, and Augustine. As befits its incorporation into a larger volume, Weydenbosch radically compressed the text, stripping out about two-thirds of its content. He also retitled it to draw out its practical applications, renaming it “most devout prayers or contemplations, with pleas of thankfulness for all the benefits given to humankind by God” [orationes seu contemplationes multum devote cum gratiarum actionibus de omnibus beneficiis a deo humano generi impensis]. Most medieval readers would have encountered the Meditationes de vita in this reduced form. Weydenbosch’s work quickly eclipsed the original in popularity and availability: the Antidotarius was printed at least twenty-eight times between 1489 and 1500, at cultural centers as far afield as Antwerp, Delft, Lyons, Paris, Rome, Cracow, and Nuremberg.
It is this reduced version of the Meditationes that provides the Fruyte with the bulk of its material. However, Appulby’s treatment of his source is not a simple one. The level of fidelity he shows to the text fluctuates throughout, sometimes in the course of a single chapter. At points, he follows the Antidotarius remarkably closely. There are several passages in which he seeks to reproduce its language almost verbatim: chapters 12, 17, and 18 are three such examples, carefully adhering to contemplations 17, 25, and 26 in the original. Indeed, such is his desire to mirror his source as fully as possible that he does not hesitate to reach for obscure Latinate vocabulary when required. At least one of the terms he uses, “noblisshed” [ennobled] (FR 2.1), is sufficiently obscure to have no entry in MED. This faithfulness is not the rule, however. At other times, Appulby takes some striking liberties with his text. Although he usually retains the titles Weydenbosch gives to the individual contemplations, he freely omits passages, conflates sections, and shifts boundaries around; sometimes he compresses distinct parts into a single chapter, and at others splits individual chapters into several prayers. The extent of his modifications can be seen by comparing his text to Weydenbosch’s headings, which are included in this edition as an appendix.
What makes Appulby’s adjustments all the more important is that they are not arbitrary, but fall into a discernible pattern. While a number of changes are difficult to account for, others show him customizing his material for a lay readership, often a specifically urban one. The very fact of his taking the text out of Latin into the vernacular already pushes it in this direction. Despite the practical drift of the Antidotarius, it is neither suitable nor intended for lay usage: its heavily abbreviated Latin, which makes extensive use of specialized scribal shorthand, would render its contents all but impenetrable to a reader with no formal training. But these concerns surface all the more strongly in the additions and excisions Appulby makes. When altering his text, he tends to emphasize elements in the gospel with application to all believers. This can be seen in his appeal to Christ’s “humanyté” in chapter 14 and his discussion of baptism in chapter 10, both of which are original additions. While the latter passage might be intended to rebut Lollard criticism of the sacraments, it also serves as a reminder of the duties of all “Cristen man” towards the “true . . . chirche” and the place of all Christians within it.
More telling still are his deletions. Two of the most glaring omissions are the attack on the money-lenders in the temple, and the Jewish conspiracy against Jesus. These episodes receive sustained treatment in the Antidotarius, where they form the cores of contemplations 18 and 19. Appulby largely brushes over them, however, removing the cleansing of the temple entirely and reducing the conspiracy to a passing comment in chapter 15. While there might be many reasons for these choices, it is notable that the two missing episodes place Jesus in conflict with trade or money. In the first instance, Christ directly opposes what Weyndenbosch calls “the commotion of traders buying and selling” [tumultus negociatores emencium et vendencium]; in the second, money again acts as antagonist, both through the silver for which Jesus is sold and through the orchestrators of the plot, who were popularly stereotyped as agents of finance and commerce. By sidestepping these details, Appulby is most likely tailoring his material for his primary audience, who would themselves have been engaged in craft and trade; he is perhaps trying to avoid the impression that involvement with the money-based urban economy is inimical to leading a full Christian life. His text, it might be said, is an example of burgermoraal [citizen-morality], Herman Pleij’s useful but contentious term for describing the peculiar forms of devotion that emerged in the cities of the Low Countries. The Fruyte again shows itself a product of the space in which Appulby worked and lived. Despite its roots in mysticism, it is sensitive to the commercial, mercantile environment in which it was designed to circulate, and on which Appulby and Allhallows were reliant.
The Early Editions of the Fruyte
A backdrop of money and trade colors the Fruyte in other, more direct ways as well. The text did not merely reflect the financial networks around it, but also participated in them. Despite its high-minded subject matter, the work was a commodity from the first. All but one of its five editions was published by Wynkyn de Worde. As has long been recognized, de Worde departed from Caxton before him by approaching print as a commercial venture, producing small, cheap volumes for sale at profit rather than relying on patronage. The Fruyte was evidently a solid investment for de Worde: the fact that he came back to it again and again over the course of two decades attests to its continued marketability. Its viability can be further witnessed by its full publication history, which also gives some interesting insight into the competitiveness of the early book trade. The only edition not to be published by de Worde was issued by Robert Redman in 1531. Redman is a rather shady figure, standing out among the first generations of English printers for his brazen opportunism. He began printing in 1525, and from the outset positioned himself as rival to and imitator of the king’s printer Richard Pynson. After Pynson was forced from his first shop near the church of St. Clement Danes by threats of violence, Redman promptly took it over; from there, he vigorously challenged Pynson’s monopoly on legal texts for the nearby Inns of Court, producing over 120 volumes on law in the space of fifteen years. Even his printer’s mark seems designed to capitalize on the resemblance between the two men’s initials. As might be imagined, such aggressive policies did little to endear him to his contemporaries. In an appendix to his edition of Lyttleton’s Tenures, Pynson lambasts him as “Rob. Redman, but more correctly Rude-man, for a coarser man among a thousand you may not easily find.” Pynson’s successor Thomas Berthelet took more material steps, hauling Redman before the Privy Council in May 1533 to prevent him from infringing on his privileges. Redman’s attraction to the Fruyte might be seen as further evidence of its popularity. Although religious instruction formed a sizeable chunk of his output, the fact that he effectively poached the Fruyte from de Worde, and the obvious commercial-mindedness that informed much of his activity, suggest that he saw the treatise as a lucrative prospect above all. It is no coincidence that his edition gained a subtitle that deliberately plays up its appeal to the broadest possible public: the 1531 version is the only one to describe itself as “moche necessary for every Christen man.”
If there was a turf war over the text, Appulby was probably oblivious to it. Despite its impressive longevity in the early book market, his involvement with the Fruyte seems to have ended with the first edition. At any rate, he did not take the opportunity to modify his book after the first imprint, even though he lived long enough to have done so. This is not to say that the surviving copies are wholly uniform. There are minor variations in spelling and orthography among them. The 1530 edition in particular shows some attempt to modernize the spelling, albeit in a scattershot and piecemeal way, removing some of the terminal -es and altering words such as “fader,” “moder,” and “cryste” to “father,” “mother,” and “christ”; it also corrects some of the misprints that occurred in previous texts, although nearly all of its amendments disappear from later versions. Nonetheless, these changes are obviously editorial rather than authorial, and more reflective of shifting preferences in written English than systematic revision. The same is true of changes to the structure of the text. The 1532 edition shows some attempt to recast the meditations as a weeklong program of devotional exercises, not dissimilar to Pseudo-Bonaventure’s own regimen. Here the text is divided into seven uneven sections, marked “Die dominica” [Lord’s day] for Sunday (chapters 1–4), “feria secunda” [second weekday] for Monday (chapters 5–12), “feria tertia” for Tuesday (chapters 13–15), “feria quarta” for Wednesday (chapters 16–19), “feria quinta” for Thursday (chapters 20–25), “feria sexta” for Friday (chapters 26–28), and “Sabbato” for Saturday (chapters 29–31). This innovation is confined to the marginalia, however, and involves no alteration to the written text.
The Redman edition presents a similar case. As might be expected, this is something of an outlier. At first glance it appears to vary quite considerably from the other surviving copies, especially since it is longer than the de Worde editions by some twenty pages. Nevertheless, this extension is merely an effect of Redman’s formatting. His volume is not printed in octavo like the other versions but in duodecimo, i.e., in batches of twelve pages on a single sheet of paper rather than eight. This format produces smaller dimensions than the other editions (7 cm x 10 cm rather than 11 cm x 15 cm), meaning that the book needed to be several pages longer to accommodate the full text. Redman’s other modifications are similarly cosmetic in nature. Appulby’s brief introduction has been excised, and the section outlining “the contentes of this presente boke” has been moved to the final pages; similarly, manicules have been added to mark the prayers and crosses to signal quotations from scripture and other authorities, no doubt to enable the reader to identify these segments more readily. There is also a rough attempt to modernize the spelling, much like the 1530 edition, although Redman seems to have carried out this program independently: he tends to replicate the errors amended in the 1530 text, and many of his adjustments are unique or eccentric (e.g., altering “crownacyon” in the heading of chapter 17 to “coronacion,” or sporadically changing “not” to “nat”). Indeed, on a few occasions he manages to introduce some new misprints, such as “dololoure” for “doloure” in chapter 22, and “Joseth” for “Joseph” in chapter 28; in chapter 15 he appears to misread the noun “unhonesté” as an adjective and inserts a nonsensical ampersand after it. In short, even these changes tell us more about Redman’s slapdash working practices than they do about the work itself. Again, the impression is that Appulby, having written and issued his book, took no further interest in it; any changes between editions are largely superficial.
Nevertheless, there is one area in which the printed texts differ quite considerably. Their accompanying woodcuts vary to an impressive degree. No edition has exactly the same sequence of illustrations as any of the others. This variation is already evident in the two earliest versions. The 1514 edition contains some nineteen images: as well as a frontispiece showing the Crucifixion, and a half-page image of a man in clerical vestments kneeling before Christ (probably intended to represent Appulby himself), it places smaller, incidental images in seventeen of its chapters. There is little obvious pattern to these smaller woodcuts: while they accompany the first few sections fairly systematically, they start to peter out by chapter 11, and the entire middle stretch of chapters 20–27 features none at all. In the 1517 edition they seem to have been rethought. Although de Worde retains the frontispiece and depiction of Appulby, he reduces the other illustrations to fifteen, dropping images of the Presentation (chapter 7) and Baptism (chapter 10); he also gives seven of the chapters brand-new woodcuts, replacing the Deposition (chapter 28) and Resurrection (chapter 29) among others. Practical considerations may have driven these changes, since some of the reused images show signs of wear and tear to their fragile woodblocks. However, others suggest a desire to step up the pictorial dimension of the text. Many of the new pictures, such as those showing the Temptation (chapter 11) and Entry into Jerusalem (chapter 12), are much enlarged, now occupying a quarter of the page in each case. This restlessness continues into later editions. Although the authorial portrait remains, and the frontispiece is updated with a near-identical picture, the 1530 text increases the number of incidental images to eighteen, and revises eleven of them; the 1532 version falls back to seventeen and changes six. For its part, the Redman edition tries to emulate de Worde’s iconography. As well as displaying a similar Crucifixion scene on its frontispiece, it contains twelve small woodcuts: although they virtually disappear after chapter 8, most pick out the same episodes de Worde had chosen to illustrate, and employ similar imagery along the way.
While these shifts are puzzling and might appear entirely arbitrary, one thing they make clear is the importance of the visual aspects of the Fruyte. De Worde’s indecision implies a continued and careful rethinking of the images, even an effort to find an optimal pairing of text and woodcut. Some of the pictures he includes, such as the Temptation, Deposition, and Ascension (chapter 30) go through no fewer than three revisions across his editions, indicating that the sequence was not merely thrown together in a casual or ad hoc way. Indeed, de Worde seems to have dug deep into the stock of devotional images he had accrued from printing similar works over the previous decades. All but fourteen of the Fruyte’s woodcuts appear in other products from his press: the Crucifixion scene on the title-page of the 1514 and 1517 editions had previously appeared in his Seven Shedynges of Blode of Jhesu Cryste (1509); the images of the Deposition, Circumcision (chapter 5), and Flight to Egypt (chapter 8) are taken from his editions of Love’s Mirrour, the Vita Christi [Life of Christ] (1517, 1525, 1530); the additions to the 1517 Fruyte use woodcuts inherited from Caxton’s ca. 1486 edition of the Mirrour. No fewer than five are taken from the series of metal engravings de Worde had acquired when preparing the Horae ad Usum Sarum [Hours from the Use of Sarum] (1502). Even the image that purports to show Appulby’s likeness appears elsewhere, occurring in both the Remors of Conscyence (1500) and Boke of a Ghoostly Fader (1520). Again, it is obvious that de Worde made full use of the library of meditative and penitential images he had at his disposal when preparing the Fruyte. A further measure of the woodcuts’ significance is de Worde’s occasional willingness to sacrifice legibility to make room for striking or pertinent images. These priorities stand out clearly in chapter 7 of the 1514 edition, where the depiction of the Presentation in the Temple is slightly outsized, to the extent that it cuts into and obscures part of the text. The images are, in short, a vital part of de Worde’s overall conception of the text, one he wished to foreground and which he obviously felt repaid his sustained attention.
The presence of the woodcuts, and the care with which de Worde put them together, are in many ways only to be expected. After all, they are obviously intended to help with the visualization that lies at the heart of meditation, working with the intense, descriptive language of Appulby’s prose to conjure the Incarnation and Passion in the imagination of the contemplator. Indeed, using images in this way was already an accepted part of private devotion before Pseudo-Bonaventure elaborated the practice: in a famous passage “touchyngge holy ymages,” the twelfth-century abbot Aelred of Rievaulx recommends that the recluse “have in thyn awter the ymage of the crucifix hangynge on the cros, which represente to thee the passioun of Crist” in order to “styre thee to fervour.” De Worde is doing little more than exploiting the potential of print to provide such supplements for reflection, much as his contemporaries across the continent promoted “private image ownership” in order to tap into “the increasing individualization of religious practice.” But the woodcuts also lead us back to the central audience for whom Appulby is writing; the Fruyte’s reliance on images might be seen as a further signal of its intended market. While mystic tradition promotes images as aids for meditation, it also suggests that their usefulness might be limited to inexperienced or amateur practitioners. A writer such as Walter Hilton, for instance, draws a clear line between contemplation that relies on the senses and that which requires “a litil maistrie for to doo,” asking advanced meditators to remove “thi thought from thi bodili wittes, that thou take noo kepe what thou heerest or seest or felist” and to free themselves “from al ymaginynge, yif thou mai.” The prominence of the images in the Fruyte points to an intended reader still active in the world and dependent on the senses, unable or unwilling to dedicate the necessary time to “entre into thisilf” in the way Hilton advises. It shows Appulby and de Worde tailoring imaginative recreation for an unpracticed lay audience, who might need these props to undertake their mental exercises.
Appulby and Female Spirituality
In all that we have seen so far, Appulby’s work seems to take a very distinct approach to the Pseudo-Bonaventurean tradition, one that appears a world away from the Holkham Prayers and Meditations. Where the earlier sequence is intimate and personalized, the Fruyte addresses a much broader and less specialized public; it is clearly a product of the distinctive cultural currents of the early sixteenth century, especially print and the new markets it generated. However, it would be a mistake see the Fruyte as completely separate from the earlier cycle. As Beth Williamson reminds us, audiences for medieval devotional works are rarely mutually exclusive, and tend not to fall into the “unhelpful binary oppositions” scholarship can often impose on them. Although the contrasts between the Fruyte and the Holkham cycle are immediate and insistent, a great deal of common ground remains between them. At least part of Appulby’s public seems to have overlapped with that of the earlier sequence, since women in regular orders were evidently making use of the Fruyte. Its attractiveness for this group is made plain by two contemporary references. The briefest and most straightforward occurs in a copy of the Nichodemus Gospell (1518) now held at the British Library. This volume is signed by one “Dame Margaret Nicollson,” apparently a nun at Elstow Abbey in Bedfordshire. What makes the volume significant is the inclusion of a handwritten booklist on its flyleaf, where the Fruyte features among a list of fifteen tracts printed between ca. 1494 and ca. 1525. It is likely that the texts named here were once bound together into a single anthology, which was dismantled some time after it was deposited at the British Museum, and rebound into the various individual volumes still among the library’s holdings today. As a consequence, it makes clear that the Fruyte formed part of Margaret’s personal library; the rest of her catalogue consists of other work that might have helped her in her devotions, such as vernacular lives of Joseph of Arimathea and the Virgin Mary, and an English translation of St. Pierre de Luxembourg’s Voyage spirituel du pelerin catholique [Spiritual journey of a catholic pilgrim] (ca. 1386).
A second, more revealing record occurs in another work of late medieval spirituality, the Pylgrimage of Perfection (1526). In its third book the Pylgrimage makes explicit mention of Appulby’s work, referring to a “treatise lately imprinted of the lyfe and passion of our lorde, called the Frute of Redempcion.” The context of this allusion provides a further link to female monasticism. Although the Pylgrimage was published anonymously, a contemporary note makes clear that it was the work of the writer and priest William Bonde. Almost all the contextual information we have about Bonde places him at the Bridgettine foundation of Syon in Middlesex, a few miles up the Thames from Appulby’s hold at Allhallows, where he formed part of the abbey’s “dynamic group of highly educated priest brethren dedicated to serving the sacramental needs of a larger body of sisters.” Bonde’s earlier work, the Directory of Conscience, otherwise known as the Devote Treatyse or Devoute Epystle, expressly identifies him with the community: the first edition terms him “a devout fader of Syon,” and this is later expanded into “a Brother of Syon called Wyllyam Bonde, a Bachelar of Divinité.” The Directory also shows that his writing was primarily intended to cater to women in regular orders: it was composed for an unnamed “devote Religyouse woman” at Denny Abbey in Cambridgeshire and put into print “at the Instance of one of her spirituall frendes.” Bonde’s link to Syon is further reinforced by an inscription in a copy of Pylgrimage now in the British Library. Evidently a presentation copy for one of the abbey’s patrons, it has been signed by one of the Bridgettine sisters, who asks “of youre charyté, I pray you to pray for Dame Johan Spycer in Syon.” Indeed, even the note that identifies Bonde as author of the Pylgrimage reflects these same ties. It occurs in a text by Richard Wytforde, a fellow priest in the Syon community, who calls his colleague “a lerned man, a bacheler of divinyté, one of our devout bretherne, lately departed, whom Jesu pardon, mayster Wyllyam Bonde.”
Much like Margaret Nicollson’s note, Bonde’s reference provides a tangible if ill-defined link between the Fruyte and female devotion. Yet it also carries implications which embed Appulby’s work still deeper into a monastic setting. Bonde’s allusion to the Fruyte is not a casual or offhand one, since he uses the book to promote one of his central arguments. He sets up the Fruyte as a model of what he considers “true contemplacion” or “very contemplacion,” which is fixed on particular objects or images rather than allowing thought to wander freely: he claims that Appulby’s vivid, focused language shows “a free openyng of the eye of the soule, for to loke on suche thynges that be necessary for our salvacion” and avoids the pitfall of “distraction, or withdrawyng of the mynde” from “service of god.” This advice is in turn directed at the Bridgettine sisters he served. Although the Pilgrymage is written for a mixed audience, with Bonde claiming that he intended to write in Latin for “every religiouse persone” before “charité” moved him “to drawe it in the Englysshe tonge,” many later passages address clerical meditators exclusively. As Alexandra de Costa notes, Bonde maintains “a wide divide between the layperson living the active life and the religious person living the contemplative life.” This division is reinforced by the structure of his third book: splitting it into seven “days,” Bonde states that the first five sections “perteyneth to the active lyfe of religion” while “the two last dayes” relate to “the contemplative lyfe . . . shewyng thee perfeccion and peas of the spirit and the condicions and operacions requyred therto.” It is in the sixth of these days, in the more exclusive section of his text, that the Fruyte is cited. While Bonde does not rule out its utility for all educated laypeople, therefore, he does mark it as being most appropriate for full-time, enclosed contemplators such as the sisters of Syon. In short, his reference is more than a simple commendation. It shows the Fruyte being actively utilized in a convent setting; not only does Bonde have knowledge of it, but he assumes that his own readers will have ready access to it, and promotes it as a guide for their peculiar devotions.
It is not surprising that the Fruyte had special resonance for figures like Dame Margaret and Bonde. Although Appulby’s work was explicitly composed for all “servantes of God,” his desire to assist readers “that understande no Latyn” (Epilogue.1) makes the book particularly suitable for women in religious orders. But his choice of sources, and above all the way in which he uses them, would have boosted the attractiveness of the book for a female audience still further. While Weydenbosch’s Antidotarius gives him his general foundation, an important supplementary source is the work of the great fourteenth-century visionary St. Bridget of Sweden. As Erler notes, about a quarter of Appulby’s material is derived from Bridget’s extraordinary record of her lifelong spiritual experiences, the Revelationes coelestes [Heavenly visions]. Indeed, Appulby’s use of Bridget serves to shine the strongest possible light on the feminine themes in her work. His borrowing from her is highly selective. Although Bridget’s work is monumental in scope and ambition, consisting of hundreds of visions, prophecies, and prayers composed over the course of nearly six decades, Appulby is only interested in a small fraction of her total output. With the exception of a few brief allusions, he hones in on one of her most influential revelations, a sequence in which Mary reveals to Bridget her early life, her experiences with her son, and her grief at his death; or, as Bridget’s header states, “the words of the Virgin Mary to her daughter, giving useful doctrine by which to live, setting forth and declaring many marvelous things of the Passion of Christ.” In other words, the Fruyte does not only draw from one of the key figures in female monasticism, in whose name Syon and the Bridgettine order were founded, but uses her work to underscore the role of women in Christ’s ministry and Passion.
However, what makes this debt all the more remarkable is the distinct way in which Appulby handles Bridget, especially when compared to his treatment of Weydenbosch. There is an obvious and radical difference in the level of respect, even legitimacy, that his two main authorities are accorded. Although the Antidotarius furnishes him with the bulk of his material, Appulby does not cite it explicitly at any point. In fact, he does not acknowledge at any stage that his work is based on an earlier volume. Even when describing his position as author, his vocabulary is ambiguous: in his closing remarks, he describes how he has “compyled this mater in Englysshe,” using a fuzzy term that might mean composition, recital, translation, or compilation in the modern sense. The overall impression he gives is one of originality; as Clay puts it, he maintains the posture of being “a simple student of the Scriptures.” Bonde for his part seems to have thought the work Appulby’s own. Although he does not give Appulby’s name, he regards the Fruyte as the product of its author’s personal meditations, springing from his own mind and imagination rather than being adapted from a pre-existing source: for him it epitomizes the state “whan contemplative persons hath gathered those artycles and poyntes and hath them so perfetly in their myndes, that they can reherse them and revolve them in their myndes at their pleasure.”
The Bridgettine material, on the other hand, receives noticeably different treatment. While his debt to Weydenbosch is largely concealed, Appulby takes every opportunity to flag his borrowings from Bridget. Marginal notes mark out the exact points at which the text incorporates details from the Revelationes, and signal where the relevant passages are found in the original work, much like modern-day footnotes. In chapter 4, for instance, when Appulby describes Mary’s youth and her growing awareness of God, the marginalia highlight his allusions methodically and insistently, if not always accurately. Since these notes are present in all five extant editions, even in Redman’s 1531 version, there is every likelihood that they are authorial. Sometimes they can be misleading: a few suggest greater level of engagement with Bridget than is actually the case, citing “liber x” [book 10] even when Appulby restricts himself to the first book, and despite the fact that her revelations were generally organized into seven or eight books in the Middle Ages. But the mere fact of their presence shows Bridget being treated with greater deference than Weydenbosch. She functions as an authority, to be evoked expressly by name, whose words carry weight by virtue of her having written them. In fact, Appulby’s approach as translator further underscores this reverence. As even a cursory comparison of the Fruyte and Antidotarius makes plain, Appulby’s approach to Weydenbosch is highly variable: at points he faithfully reproduces his text, and at others is remarkably loose with it. The Antidotarius is clearly little more than raw material for Appulby, with which he can freely do as he pleases. Bridget, on the other hand, proves much less malleable. Whenever he draws on Mary’s “words” to her, Appulby takes care to preserve their content as fully as he is able. Often his lexis and syntax reprise her constructions exactingly, even at the risk of over-complexity or obscurity. The extent of his faithfulness can be seen by comparing Bridget’s Latin with a typical passage from chapter 4:
Instante vero tempore, quo secundum constitucionem virgines presentabantur in templo Domini, affui et ego inter eas propter obedienciam parentum meorum, cogitans mecum Deo nichil esse impossibile.
Whan the tyme came in whiche after the consuetude [custom] virgyns were presented in to the temple, thou were there amonge them for the obedyens [deference] of thy parentes, thynkynge in thy selfe that no thynge was impossyble to God.
Although Appulby shifts the revelation from first- to second-person, and rephrases the passage as a prayer to Mary rather than Bridget’s direct speech, his painstaking effort to recreate its language is unmistakable. While this approach is most visible in his word choice — which reaches for Latinate terms such as “consuetude,” “obedyens,” and “impossyble” to mirror Bridget’s vocabulary — his adherence to her text is equally obvious in his syntax and sentence structure. What we see, in effect, is a further degree of respect being accorded to Bridget’s words, even a sense of their value; not only is their source advertised throughout the Fruyte, but their content also clearly required careful preservation in Appulby’s eyes. In these moments, it becomes clear why there is such an overlap between the readership of the Fruyte and the Holkham Prayers, and why enclosed women proved an important secondary audience for Appulby.
For all their differences in construction, circulation, and intent, therefore, the Fruyte shares a number of similarities and family resemblances with the Prayers and Meditations. In fact, these parallels extend into the afterlife of the text as well. There are indications that the Fruyte struck a similar nerve for readers after the Reformation. The copy of de Worde’s 1517 edition now held at Cambridge University Library apparently underwent the same treatment as the more contentious passages of the Holkham Prayers; the responsible party may be the “Willm Pyslye” whose signature appears in its bindings. In this copy, a woodcut accompanying Appulby’s second prayer “to the holy Trynyté” has been partly obscured by a blob of faded ink, in an obvious attempt to black it over. Since this image depicts God the Father enthroned behind the crucified Son, with the Holy Spirit on his right hand in the guise of a dove, the modification is unlikely to be happenstance. It calls on iconography that was specifically proscribed by the Convocation of 1563, which moved to “disalowe . . . all kindes of expressinge God invisible in the forme of an olde man, or the holy ghoste in the form of a dove.” Much like the Prayers’ missing account of the Last Supper, in other words, the imagery employed here was more or less tailor-made to inflame Protestant sensitivities, and duly drew hostility. For all its success in customizing Pseudo-Bonaventurean contemplation for an urban, commercial readership, the Fruyte was no less a victim of the sweeping cultural changes of the early Tudor period than the earlier text. Its audience, while hungry for the information it contained, ultimately proved short-lived.