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I haue ordeynd J>e to be a merowr amongys hem for to han gyet sorwe J>at £>ei xulde takyn exampil by J>e for to haue sum litil sorwe in her hertys for her synnys J>at J>ei myth J>erthorw be sauyd.1
The persistence of medieval religious writing in early modern print culture can be used to demonstrate the trajectory of early modern spirituality.2 In constructing a relationship with the literary past, sixteenth-century readers were able to view themselves in relation to a constant religious tradition, one that emphasizes the development of a private, more interior spirituality. If a medieval text did not promote the inward, meditative devotion favored by later audiences, however, early modern redactors adapted them to emphasize the features of private devotion that were practiced in everyday worship. These textual reconstructions range from the minimal to the extreme, reflecting a cautious awareness of religious and sociopolitical values, especially since early modern editions catered to widely diverse audiences. In her seminal book, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern England, Elizabeth Eisenstein claims:
Every manuscript that came into the printer s hands... had to be reviewed in a new way-one which encouraged more editing, correcting, and collating than had the hand-copied text. Within a generation the results of this review were being aimed in a new direction-away from fidelity to scribal conventions and toward serving the convenience of a reader.3
Consequently, the differences between manuscripts and their later printed variations must be seen as signifying changing spiritual trends and not deliberate censorship. This article shows how the process of revision allowed early modern editors to emphasize the continuities between medieval and contemporary religiosity and concurrently to soften any tensions between the two eras. To demonstrate this, I examine two early modern incarnations of The Book of Margery Kempe: A Shorte Treaty se of Contemplacyon, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1501, and Henry Pepwell's 1521 reprint in a spiritual anthology. Even if The Book of Margery Kempe is not the text people immediately think of when they consider the nascent years of print history, its unusual metamorphosis reveals that the portability of medieval texts entailed a complex editorial process before they were disseminated to the masses.
Certainly, texts are adapted for different purposes across changing religious...