An edition of the Latin and four Middle English versions of William Flete’s De remediis contra temptaciones (Remedies against Temptations)

This thesis provides a critical edition of four Middle English versions of De remediis contra temptaciones by William Flete, along with an edition and modern English translation of the Latin De remediis. De remediis is a treatise of religious direction concerned with the spiritual temptations of doubt and despair. Despite its wide circulation and influence in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, it has received little scholarly attention. The Latin source text and the Middle English versions ME1a, ME1b, and ME2, each an independent translation of the Latin, are edited here for the first time. The version ME3, an expanded adaptation of ME2, is presented for the first time in a critical edition with variants from all of the witnesses. Two translations that have previously been classified together as ‘ME1’ are here identified as distinct. The texts are edited from the following base manuscripts: ME1a from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 131; ME1b from olim Foyle MS, Beeleigh Abbey, Essex (sold at Christie’s 11 July 2000); and both ME2 and ME3 from Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Hh.1.11. Comprehensive variants from all of the manuscripts and printed witnesses are recorded in the apparatus to each edition. The Latin De remediis is edited from Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.6.44, with selected variants. The introduction discusses De remediis and the four Middle English versions, the treatise’s treatment of religious doubt and despair, the fourteen manuscripts and two early printed editions of the Middle English versions, and the textual relationships between the witnesses.