Illustration of Juliana Berners
Juliana Berners [Bernes, Barnes, Barne] (d. c. 1460) cannot be authoritatively identified.[1] She may have been the prioress of Sopwell nunnery near St Albans in Hertfordshire, England, and the daughter of Sir James Berners of Essex .[2] The Book of St Albans, an early example of vernacular English provincial writing on practical and rural matters, is attributed by some scholars to Berners.[3] Initially printed at St Albans in 1486 as a folio titled Bokys of havking, hunting, and blasing of Arms, a second edition, issued by Wynkyn de Worde as a quarto in 1496 as This Present boke sheweth the manere of hawkynge & huntynge, expanded the earlier text on hunting, hawking, and heraldry to include The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle.[4] The Book of St Albans demonstrates wide knowledge of contemporary veterinary practices, and practical knowledge relating to hunting and fishing; there is also evidence that it may have been intended for children to read as a primer.[5] The section on heraldry is largely copied from Nicholas Upton’s treatise De studio militari of the late 1430s.[6] Evidence of Berners’s life is fragmentary and inconclusive.[7] The records of the Sopwell nunnery are incomplete, and do not list Berners amongst the prioresses, and her earliest biographers, writing several decades after the latest possible dates for her death, do not offer any sources for their claims.[8] Each version of the text as it exists in print and manuscript does, however, contain a variation on “Explicit dame Julyans Bernes” following the section on hunting, which supports attribution to Berners, whoever she may have been.[9]
[1] Lorna Barrow, “Juliana Berners, or Barnes,” Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803). Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, ed. Gina Luria Walker, Memoirs of Women Writers Part II (Pickering & Chatto: London, 2013), vol. 5, 393-6, editorial notes, 475-6, on 475.
[2] Barry Collet, introduction to The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works, Series I: Printed Writings, 1500-1640, Part 4, Volume 3: Late Medieval Englishwomen: Julian of Norwich, Marjorie Kemp and Juliana Berners, eds. Betty S Travitsky and Anne L Prescott (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), xiv, xv.
[3] Collet, The Early Modern Englishwoman, xiv.
[4] Collet, The Early Modern Englishwoman, xiv.
[5] Annotated Index of Medieval Women, eds. Anne Echols and Marty Williams (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1992), 277. The Early Modern Englishwoman…, xiv.
[6] Collet, The Early Modern Englishwoman, xiv.
[7] Collet, The Early Modern Englishwoman, xiv.
[8] Collet, The Early Modern Englishwoman, xiv.
[9] Collet, The Early Modern Englishwoman, xiv, xv. The 1486 edition of the book reads (in verse) “Explicit Dam Julyans / Barnes in her boke of huntyng;” the 1496 edition reads “Explicit dame Julyan Bernes doc- / tryne in her book of huntynge;” one manuscript variation contains “Explicit Julyan Barne,” while the second offers “Explicit JB.” This is related in The Early Modern Englishwoman…, xiv.
Bibliography:
Barrow, Lorna. “Juliana Berners, or Barnes.” Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803). Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, ed. Gina Luria Walker, Memoirs of Women Writers Part II. Pickering & Chatto: London, 2013, vol. 5, 393-96, editorial notes, 475-6.
Berners, Dame Juliana. Introduction by William Blades. The Boke of Saint Albans (1486). London: Elliot Stock, 1881.
Brown, Meg L. and Kari B McBride eds. Women’s Roles in the Renaissance. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.
Echols, Anne and Marty Williams, eds. Annotated Index of Medieval Women. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1992.
Hays, Mary. “Juliana Berners, or Barnes.” Female Biography; or, Memoirs of illustrious and celebrated women of all ages and countries (6 volumes). London: R. Phillips, 1803, vol. 1, 297-300.
Power, Eileen. Medieval English Nunneries, c. 1275-1535. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1922.
Travitsky, Betty S. and Anne L Prescott eds. The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works, Series I: Printed Writings, 1500-1640, Part 4, Volume 3: Late Medieval Englishwomen: Julian of Norwich, Marjorie Kemp and Juliana Berners. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007.
Page citation:
Sam Greenberg. “Juliana Berners.” Project Continua (October 29, 2013): Ver. 1, (date accessed), http://www.projectcontinua.org/juliana-berners/
Tags: Abbesses, Europe, Nuns, Renaissance, Writers
