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1st of 2 files:
Sections 1 to 9

Sections 10 to 20
are in an additional file
 Learn to Live and Learn to Die: Suso's Scire Mori in Fifteenth Century
England

Synopsis

This thesis is centred on the second chapter of the second book of

Heinrich Suso's Horologium Sapientiae, the chapter entitled De Scient ie
Utilissima Hom1ni Mortali quae est Scire Mori, in its three Middle
English translations. Two of these are here edited for the first time:
the first, here entitled The Lichfield Translation, from Lichfield
Cathedral MS 16, and the second, To Kunne Deie; from Oxford, Bodleian
Library, Bodleian 789 and Glasgow University Library, Hunter 496.
Suso's life and works are briefly described together with the date of
the entry of the Horologiun Sapientiae into England and the production
of the three Middle English translations drawing on this work, one of
which is a re-working of the Horologium incorporating the Scire Mori.
chapter, the other two (those here edited) translations of this chapter
alone. The circulation and ownership in England of the Horologium
Sapientiae and of the three translations are also outlined. There
follows a detailed examination of the Scire Mori chapter in its three
Middle English forms, which endeavours to demonstrate how the text
recommends meditation upon death as an efficacious method by which to
promote repentance. This argument is further extended by a
consideration of the manuscript context in which the three translations
appear. The liturgical rites surrounding death as they appear in the
Sarum Manuale are also examined in order to shed further light on the
way in which the experience and spectacle of death were conceptualised
in medieval spirituality. Finally, the conclusions reached in the
course of these considerations are examined in the light of recent
critical works on medieval attitudes towards death. Detailed
descriptions of the eighteen manuscripts containing Middle English
translations of Suso's Horologium Sepdent ie« form one Appendix to the
thesis; a second comprises brief. descriptions of manuscripts written in
England containing the work in Latin.