John Audelay (or Awdelay; died c. 1426) was an English priest and poet from

Haughmond Abbey Haughmond Abbey ( ) is a ruined, medieval, Augustinian monastery a few miles from Shrewsbury, England. It was probably founded in the early 12th century and was closely associated with the FitzAlan family, who became Earls of Arundel, and som ...

, in

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

; one of the few English poets of the period whose name is known to us. Some of the first

Christmas carol A Christmas carol is a carol (a song or hymn) on the theme of Christmas, traditionally sung at Christmas itself or during the surrounding Christmas holiday season. The term noel has sometimes been used, especially for carols of French or ...

s recorded in English appear among his works.Miles, Clement, ''Christmas customs and traditions'', Courier Dover Publications (1976); , pp. 47–48

Biography

The little that is known to us about Audelay's life comes mainly from Oxford,

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the sec ...

MS Douce 302. The manuscript contains the text of all sixty-two of his surviving poems. The dialect of

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old Englis ...

used in MS Douce 302 is local to

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands C ...

, and it has been suggested that Audelay may therefore have come from the Staffordshire village of Audley. However, the earliest biographical record of Audelay places him in London in 1417, when he was part of the household of Richard, 7th Baron Strange of

Knockin Knockin ( cy, Cnwcin) is a village and civil parish in north-west Shropshire, England. It is located on the B4396 road, around south-east of the town of Oswestry, and from the county town of Shrewsbury. History The former name of Knockin ...

. Strange was made to do public penance for his involvement in a brawl at St Dunstan-in-the-East church on

Easter Sunday Easter,Traditional names for the feast in English are "Easter Day", as in the ''Book of Common Prayer''; "Easter Sunday", used by James Ussher''The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, Volume 4'') and Samuel Pepys''The Diary of Samuel P ...

in which a parishioner was killed, and was accompanied on his penance by Audelay, his chaplain. Audelay had not only taken part in the penance, but had been present at the incident itself. It has been suggested that the penitential character of Audelay's poetry may have been influenced by his desire to atone for his involvement in Strange's public shame: as the family's chaplain he would have felt particular responsibility. Haughmond Abbey ruins

According to a date noted in MS. Douce 302, by 1426 Audelay was in effective retirement as a chantry priest at Haughmond Abbey. In lines repeated several times throughout the manuscript, Audelay states that he was by that time very old, infirm,

deaf Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...

, and blind. The manuscript concludes with the following lines of rather rough verse, perhaps composed by the

scribe A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing. The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its promi ...

after Audelay's death: :No mon this book he take away, :Ne kutt owt no leef, y say for why; :For hyt is sacrilege, sirus, y ȝow say, :He beth accursed in the dede truly; :Ȝef ȝe wil have any copi, :Askus leeve and ȝe shul have, :To pray for hym specialy, :That hyt made ȝour soules to save, :Jon the blynde Awdelay :The furst prest to the Lord Strange he was, :Of thys chauntré here in this place :That make thys bok by Goddus grace, :Deef, syk, blynd, as he lay, :''Cujus anime propicietur Deus''Halliwell, J. O. ''The poems of John Audelay: A Specimen of the Shropshire Dialect in the Fifteenth Century'', The Percy Society, 1844, pp. x–xi (Translation: None must take this book away / Or cut out any page, I'll tell you why; / For it is sacrilege, sirs, I tell you / He will be accursed in the deed; / If you would have a copy / Ask leave, and you will have, / To pray especially for him / That made it he bookto save your souls / John the blind Audelay; / He was the first priest haplainto the Lord Strange / Of this

chantry A chantry is an ecclesiastical term that may have either of two related meanings: # a chantry service, a Christian liturgy of prayers for the dead, which historically was an obiit, or # a chantry chapel, a building on private land, or an area i ...

/ That made this book by the grace of God / As he lay deaf, sick, and blind / On whose soul God have mercy) It is therefore possible that the manuscript either represents a collection of Audelay's poems assembled on his orders at the end of his life or that it was dictated by him.Stanley, E. The Verse Forms of Jon the Blynde Awdelay in Cooper & Mapstone (eds.) ''The Long Fifteenth Century'', Oxford: OUP, 1997, p.105

Works

Much of Audelay's work as contained in MS. Douce 302 consists of devotional

carols A carol is a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with Christian church worship, and sometimes accompanied by a dance. A caroller (or caroler) is someone who sings carols, and is said to be carolling (or caroling). T ...

(one of which, ''There is a flower'', has been set to music by both

John Rutter John Milford Rutter (born 24 September 1945) is an English composer, conductor, editor, arranger, and record producer, mainly of choral music. Biography Born on 24 September 1945 in London, the son of an industrial chemist and his wife, Rutte ...

and Stanley Vann): Audelay is recognised as a significant figure in the history of the English carol.Stanley, p.108 He occasionally takes on more secular themes, such as in a spirited poem in praise of Henry VI, and in a piece titled ''Cantalena de puericia'', writes of the innocence of childhood, wishing he were a child again: :And God wold graunt me my prayer, :A child ayene I wold I were. :Fore pride in herte he hatis all one; :Worchip ne reuerens kepis he non; :Ne he is wroþ with no mon; :In charete is alle his chere. (1–6)The first two lines are the carol's ''burden''; these are lines repeated as a refrain. Much of Audelay's poetry is concerned with the theme of repentance; he seems to have had a particular fondness for

Saint Winifred Saint Winifred (or Winefride; cy, Gwenffrewi; la, Wenefreda, Winifreda) was a Welsh virgin martyr of the 7th century. Her story was celebrated as early as the 8th century, but became popular in England in the 12th, when her hagiography was f ...

, a saint enshrined at

Shrewsbury Abbey The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Shrewsbury (commonly known as Shrewsbury Abbey) is an ancient foundation in Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire, England. The Abbey was founded in 1083 as a Benedictine monastery by the Norm ...

, who was credited with both the power to free criminals from their shackles (perhaps significant in view of Audelay's possible feelings of guilt over Lestrange's transgression) and the power to cure blindness.Jones, W.
Swete May, Soulis Leche: The Winifred Carol of John Audelay
', ''Essays in Medieval Studies'', v.14, 65 – 72 Audelay also appears to have been strongly concerned with the exposure of priests to accusations of heresy, and particularly of

Lollardy Lollardy, also known as Lollardism or the Lollard movement, was a proto-Protestant Christian religious movement that existed from the mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. It was initially led by John Wycliffe, a Catholi ...

, in the wake of Archbishop Thomas Arundel's ''Constitutions'': he directs an untitled

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or ...

dialogue (usually known as ''Marcol and Salamon'') against certain aspects of the church hierarchy, incorporating references to the great satirical poem ''

Piers Plowman ''Piers Plowman'' (written 1370–86; possibly ) or ''Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman'' (''William's Vision of Piers Plowman'') is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in un- rhymed, alliterati ...

''.Bose, M. 'Religious Authority and Dissent', in Brown, P (ed.) ''A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c. 1350–c. 1500'', Blackwell, 2007, pp. 50–51 The two most remarkable and accomplished poems in the manuscript are both long exercises in a late form of

alliterative verse In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of ...

with a superimposed rhyme-scheme: ''Pater Noster'' and '' The Three Dead Kings''. Some modern commentators have suggested that these poems cannot be by Audelay, as they show a very high level of technical skill not immediately apparent in other poems in the manuscript, but others have maintained that they were most probably Audelay's own work.Stanley, p.114

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Audelay, John 15th-century English poets Middle English poets 1420s deaths Blind people from England Writers from Shropshire Year of birth unknown English male poets Clergy from Shropshire

Biography

Works

Further reading

References