God in the Margins: Devotion Between and Around the Texts of Lincoln, Cathedral Library MS 91

Abstract This article analyzes the marginalia of Lincoln, Cathedral Library MS 91, especially the marginalia-esque Lamentacio Peccatoris between the famous prose Life of Alexander and the alliterative Morte Arthure , as well as the understudied notes and commentary surrounding the Erthe lyric contained in the compilation. I propose that these texts and micro-texts, as well as their mise en page , reflect a spirituality that is consistent with meditative principles outlined in the more specifically ‘sacred’ works of the manuscript, especially Walter Hilton’s Epistle on the Mixed Life . This text, which was a central and important text to Thornton when he compiled his manuscript, argues that for people living in the world, sacred things are best contemplated after considering the limitations of ‘secular’, worldly things. Only once the sinfulness of humanity, vanity of the world, and neediness of one’s fellow-Christians are addressed can one begin to contemplate divine, sacred things directly. Thus, it should come as no surprise to us that some of Thornton’s texts deliberately eschew contemplating the sacred, although their margins and the liminal spaces between them are populated with meditations on the sacred. This is programmatic for Thornton and reflective of Hilton’s spirituality in the Epistle ; it can also be seen as one guiding principle for Thornton as he compiled and designed his manuscript.