Women Translators

Abstract

Dame Eleanor Hull (c.1394-1460) and Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509) are the two women translators working between 1350 and 1500 known to us by name and whose existence is well documented. A third, Dame Juliana Berners (fl.1460), is a more shadowy figure. Dame Eleanor produced at least two surviving English translations from French or Anglo-Norman originals: The Seven Psalms, a commentary on the penitential psalms,¹ and Orisons and Meditations, a collection of prayers and meditations.² The first was ‘a daring book for girls and its choice is almost as surprising as the translator s existence: medieval scriptural exegesis is not a genre one immediately associates with women. Christopher de Hamel, however, notes the existence of a Peter Comestor (now British Library, MS Royal MSS, Royal 7 F III), copied in 1191–2 for the Benedictine nunnery of Elstow, Bedfordshire, at the command of its abbess; he goes on to comment that ‘in the fifteenth century, it seems to have been quite common for nuns to be given books by their chaplains ‘.³ The anonymous nun, a contemporary of Dame Eleanor’s, who wrote The Faits and the Passion of Our Lord Jesu Christ, might well have benefited from this practice: she shows a surprising familiarity with the Glossa Ordinaria in one passage.⁴