"this was here procreation": The storie of Asneth and spiritual marriage in the Middle Ages, including a suggestion of the patroness and poet of the later Middle English verse translation; a discussion of late antique typology
Date
2003
Authors
Reid, Heather A.
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Abstract
The Storie of Asneth survives in Later Middle English Verse in just one manuscript dating from the early fifteenth century. The story was translated from Latin and is originally a Jewish Hellenistic romance dating from around the first century BC. Asneth is sometimes spelled Aseneth or Asenath in English. Chapter One of this thesis discusses the possible identity of the unknown Middle English patroness and poet alluded to in the Prologue and Epilogue. Specifically, I propose that Elizabeth Berkeley commissioned John Walton to translate Asneth in the Middle Ages, a hypothesis supported by John Shirley's ownership of the manuscript. Chapter Two is a literary discussion of the medieval text. The Late Medieval poem may have been translated in the historical context of the practice of Spiritual Marriage, and some discrepancies in the translation may be owing to the promotion of this ideal. Contrasted with an implicit sense that the characters, Joseph and Asneth, are chaste, is an erotic visionary encounter between Asneth and the "Man from Heaven." Asneth seems to have been endowed with many of the same divine characteristics that may have informed the Virgin Mary and Miraculous Conception, though the story is originally pre-Christian. The visionary sequence in Asneth also seems to have much in common with accounts of women visionaries of the Middle Ages, partly because of what appears to be Marian iconography. Chapter Three is a discussion of ancient icons that may have informed the story, but have remained a mystery. There is a discussion of Egyptian myth in the context of the Sacred Marriage associated with harvest rituals, astronomy and temple theology, that unite the Moon Goddess with the Sun God. I propose that the "Field of Our Heritage" spoken of in Asneth, may be a reference to the Egyptian "ancestral field," the Underworld of the Soul. Other associated icons, such as the honey bees, may reflect funerary and fertility expectations from the Ancient Near East, specifically Egypt, that may have informed Judaism and, in turn, Christianity. In any case, paradigms of chastity and fertility, particularly where they inform concepts of conversion and renewal, seem to be supported by the marriage theme in the text, from the Hellenistic Near East, up until the Middle Ages.