Lay Literacy and the Medieval Bible

Among Arne Zettersten's impressive research publications are those on Middle English texts. His brilliant editions of The Anerene Riwle, published over the years in the Early English Text Society, have done so much to further our knowledge of this important religious work. Tracing the sources of the The Anerene Riwle author's quotations is indeed a complex task. Geoffrey Shepherd states that "the Bible provides most of the material of the Rule the medieval Bible, a vast indivisible unity, but perceived only by glimpses. Often it is a gloss which leads him [the author] to the scriptural text, not to an initial memory of Scripture" (1959: xxv-xxvi). 1 Shepherd goes on to show the complexities involved in finding the source of biblical paraphrases in The Anerene Riwle: