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saint that brings about the healing effect. Where God’s sensory contact with humanity is mediated by Jesus in the New Testament, it is mediated by Cuthbert in Northumbria, who takes on the healing role of Christ within his own specific milieu. In her discussion 145 Assembling and reshaping Christianity 145 of body and voice in the Judaeo- Christian scriptures, Elaine Scarry points out that in the Hebrew scriptures the powerful God does not have the power of self-substantiation and therefore the wounded human body becomes the confirmation of God’s ‘realness’. Man
this scripture suying’, or 112 Participatory reading in late-medieval England ‘with this resoun’, and ‘with this reason folowyng’. This emphasizes the provision of verses in writing, as scripture, and through reasons, as mottoes, sentences, or verses.15 These descriptions attest to how the ‘Soteltes’ almost certainly offered their verses in a textual format.16 The textuality of subtleties accompanied by words is made even more explicit in records of the coronation feast of Henry VI’s mother, Catherine of Valois. Her coronation in the same place as Henry VI
, disgust is transformed into sorrow and pity. Yet there are two subtexts here which resonate beyond the local moment. When Josephus introduces this scene in his Jewish War with the claim that he will describe an act unparalleled in history, he is being more than a little disingenuously dramatic. This cannibalistic act, particularly when enacted by parent upon child, is part of the literature of prophetic warnings found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Kings, Jeremiah, Baruch, and Lamentations all contain versions of cannibalism either prophesied
by plaintyng in uncerteyne stories, Legendes, Responds, Verses, vaine repetitions, Commemorations and Sinodalles’, and asserts that such additions ‘breake the continual course of the reading of the scripture’ (Aiir–iiir). The book of common prayer thus targets practices of textual organization that can be considered collative, relying on the collation of multiple external texts or excerpts drawn together into a single work.1 Perhaps the most commonplace example of such a work is one that dominated literary and devotional culture in the later Middle Ages, the book
danse: 148 Participatory reading in late-medieval England Ye folk that loken / vpon this scripture Conceyveth heer / that al estatis daunce Seth what ye be / & what is your nature Mete vnto wormys / nat ellis in substaunce And have this myrrour / ay in remembraunce Before your mynde / aboven al thyng To all estatis / a trew resemblaunce That wormes foode / is ende of your lyvyng. (Lansdowne MS 561–8) Accordingly, Poulys Daunce invites readers to engage with the text in ways that cast light upon late-medieval views regarding how readers should participate with and