"For your ghostly conforte that vnderstande no latyn" : a study of 'The Fruyte of Redempcyon' by Symon Appulby

• Main Author: Dowding, Clare Madeleine
• Other Authors: Salih, Maha Sarah Abdulelah Lloyd ; Quash, Jonathan Ben ; Lees, Clare Adele
• Published: King's College London (University of London) 2015
• Subjects: 234
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.677149

The Fruyte of Redempcyon is an early sixteenth-century English vernacular devotional text which presents loosely-structured prayers and meditations on the events of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension, focussing mainly on the events of the Passion. In its time it was extremely popular (being printed five times between 1514 and 1532), but since then there has been relatively little attention paid to it or to its compiler/author, the anchorite Symon Appulby (died c.1537). There initially appears to be no particular reason for The Fruyte’s contemporary popularity, but in some respects its very ordinariness was the key to its success. This text was aimed at English-literate lay people to help with their personal devotions, offering unquestionably orthodox and ‘safe’ content, yet it also offered its readers something less well-known in the way in which it presented that content. Through examination of the selection and use of the Latin source materials, analysis of sections of the original English writing which has not been undertaken before, and consideration of the placement and purpose of the woodcuts within the printed editions, The Fruyte is revealed as providing a unique glimpse into the reading preferences of the devout laity in the decades immediately before the English Reformation. Symon Appulby’s position and location as an anchorite attached to a parish on the edge of the City of London is also an important consideration in determining the significance of The Fruyte of Redempcyon to a greater understanding of this period.