A Method to Converse with God : Translation October 1683.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Adam Matthew Digital (Firm), digitiser.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bruges (Belgium).

Holland, Catherine.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Marlborough, Wiltshire : Adam Matthew Digital, 2008.

Notes:

AMDigital Reference:Harley MS 3184

British Library Harley MS 3184, a small quarto manuscript of 65 leaves, begins with a separate title-page: "A Method to Converse with God Written in French and Translated into English Catherine Holland October 20 1683". The original from which Holland has drawn her translation - nowhere named in the manuscript - is Un Methode pour converser avec Dieu, by Michel Boutauld of the Society of Jesus. Boutauld's text recommends the devout reader - whom he frequently compares to the Sunamite of the Song of Songs - to adopt an easy, intimate style of conversing with God, and to speak to him even more freely than one would even with a member of one's own family. Boutauld argues that God, though immensely great, welcomes friendly communication with his earthly spouse, and regards it as ungrateful if one does not take advantage of the familiarity and tenderness he offers. Much of the treatise is concerned with spelling out the implications of these insights for the reader's devotional life. Holland provides a faithful translation of Boutauld's French, but does not attempt to translate the Latin quotations (e.g. from the Bible) included in his text. Her rendering of this accessible, up-to-date devotional text into English was presumably produced for the benefit of her fellow-nuns in the English convent in Bruges, many of whom would have known no languages other than English, and would thus have lacked for suitably Catholic reading matter.

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