Devotion to the Name of Jesus in Medieval English Literature, c. 1100 - c. 1530

Devotion to the Name of Jesus in Medieval English Literature, c. 1100 - c. 1530 offers a broad but detailed study of the practice of devotion to the Name of Jesus in late medieval England. It focuses on key texts written in Latin, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English that demonstrate the way in which devotion moved from monastic circles to a lay public in the late medieval period. It argues that devotion to the Name is a core element of Richard Rolle's contemplative practice, although devotion to the Name circulated in trilingual England at an earlier stage. The volume investigates to what extent the 1274 Second Lyon Council had an impact in the spread of the devotion in England, and beyond. It also offers illuminating evidence about how Margery Kempe and her scribes used devotion, how Eleanor Hull made it an essential component of her meditative sequence seven days of the week, and how Lady Margaret Beaufort worked towards its instigation as an official feast.

1 - Jesus and His Name: The Emergence of New Devotional Attitude
2 - The Dulcis Iesu memoria Tradition and the Devotion to the Name of Jesus
3 - The Name and Spiritual Song: Anglo-Norman Lyrics, Richard Rolle, and the Fourteenth-Century Tradition
4 - Rollean Afterlives: Fifteenth-Century Texts, Compilations, and Manuscripts
5 - The Book of Margery Kempe, Eleanor Hull's Meditation, and Fifteenth-Century Devotion to the Name

Denis Renevey is Professor of Medieval English Language and Literature at the University of Lausanne. He has published eleven books as author or editor, and over forty articles or chapters of books, most of them in the field of late medieval religious literature. He has been the principal investigator of several four-year Swiss National Science Foundation research projects, such as 'Late Medieval Religiosity in England: The Evidence of Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century Devotional Compilations' (2013-17), and 'Region and Nation in Late Medieval Devotion to Northern English Saints' (2016-21). He has been granted funding for a third SNSF project, 'Re-Configuring the Apophatic Tradition in Late Medieval England' (2022-26).