%0 Journal Article
%A Evan F. Kuehn
%D 2026
%C Berlin, Germany
%I Peter Lang Verlag
%J Mediaevistik
%@ 2199-806X
%N 1
%V 39
%T The Pore Caitif: A Modern English Translation. With Introductory Essays and Notes. Trans. and ed. Luke Penkett. Textes Vernaculaires du Moyen Âge, 34. Turnhout: Brepols, 2024, 173 pp.
%R 10.3726/med.2026.01.141
%U https://www.peterlang.com/document/1748885
%X The Pore Caitif was a very late fourteenth-century lay spiritual text from Southern England. It was written during a time of general catechetical reform following the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the Lambeth Constitutions of John Peckham (1281), when religious instruction was encouraged for both clergy and laity. Situated between the tensions of ecclesiastical orthodoxy and Lollard anticlericalism, the text saw numerous interpolations through its transmission over the years, sometimes introducing heterodox readings or removing references to the saints for instance. The Pore Caitif compiles several treatises that can be divided into two main groups: an opening catechetical section including treatises on the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Paternoster, and a second section of eleven treatises of “some short sentences exciting people to heavenly desire” (67). Luke Penkett uses the 2019 critical edition of the Pore Caitif edited by Karine Moreau-Guibert, published posthumously in the same series (Pore Caitif: A Middle English Manual of Religion and Devotion, ed. Karine Moreau-Guibert, Textes Vernaculaires du Moyen Âge, 24. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019).