The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ is an adaptation/translation of the Meditationes Vitae Christi into English by Nicholas Love, Prior of the Carthusian priory of Mount Grace, written ca. 1400. Not merely a translation of one of the most popular Latin works of Franciscan devotion on the life and passion of Christ, but an expanded version with polemical additions against the Wycliffite (Lollard) positions on the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the sacraments of penance and the eucharist, Love's "Mirror" was submitted to Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, around the year 1410 for approval in accordance with the strictures of the Lambeth Constitutions forbidding any new translations of biblical written since the time of John Wycliffe in any form whatsoever, unless the translation was submitted to the local bishop for approval. Arundel not merely approved the "Mirror", but commanded its propagation; it became one of the most widely circulated works in English, in manuscript and print, in the century and a half before the Reformation.