Stimulus Amoris Explained

The Stimulus Amoris is a mystical treatise on love written by the Franciscan James of Milan in the late thirteenth century. The text was expanded after James's death, growing from twenty-three to fifty-three chapters by the early fourteenth century, and growing yet again in its 1476 and 1596 printings. There are at least six forms of the Latin text in existence.^[1] In its original version, it survives in ninety manuscripts. The early fourteenth century version, however, often called the Stimulus maior or Forma longa, exists in complete form in 221 manuscripts and partially in another 147.^[2]

It is the long text that provides the basis for the Middle English translation of Stimulus Amoris, entitled The Prickynge of Love, which was made around 1380, perhaps by Walter Hilton.^{[3] [4]} The Prickynge of Love survives in sixteen manuscripts, eleven from the fifteenth century.^[5]

A version of the Stimulus Amoris also served as the source for the Middle French translation, L'Aguillon d'amour divine, by Simon de Courcy, a Franciscan friar and confessor of Marie de Berry, c. 1406.^[6]

The Stimulus Amoris was later translated again into English in Douai in 1642 by English recusants.^[7]

Modern editions

• Stimulus Amoris [long text] [Attributed to Bonaventure], in Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, ed A. C. Peltier, 15 vols, (Paris: L Vivès, 1864–71), 12:288-291 and 631-703.
• James of Milan, Stimulus Amoris, Bibliotheca Franciscana Ascetica Medii Aevi IV, Quaracchi (Florence): Colegii S. Bonaventurae, 1949.
• The Goad of Love [attributed to Walter Hilton], translated by Clare Kirchberger, (London: Faber & Faber, 1952) [edited in a lightly modified English version from the Vernon manuscript]
• Prickynge of Love, ed. Harold Kane, 2 vols., (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik der Universität Salzburg, 1983)
• JPH Clark, 'Walter Hilton and the Stimulus Amoris ', Downside Review 102, (1984), pp79–118.

Notes and References

1. See Clare Kirchberger, The Goad of Love, (London: Faber and Faber, 1952), pp13-44.
2. Michelle Karnes, Imagination, meditation, and cognition in the Middle Ages, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p146.
3. From the evidence of the theological modification as well as the style, JPH Clark believes the attribution to Hilton is correct. JPH Clark, ‘Walter Hilton and the Stimulus Amoris’, Downside Review 102, (1984), pp79-118.
4. For a table comparing the long and short texts, see Michelle Karnes, Imagination, meditation, and cognition in the Middle Ages, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp147-9.
5. Michelle Karnes, Imagination, meditation, and cognition in the Middle Ages, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p212.
6. Lori J. Walters, 'Le thème du livre comme don de sagesse dans le ms. Paris, BnF fr. 926,' in Le Recueil au Moyen Age, ed. Tania Van Hemelryck et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 315-31 at 315.
7. Stimulus Divini Amoris, that is The Goad of Divine Love, Verie proper and profitable for all deuout persons to read. Written in Latin by the Seraphicall Doctour S. Bonaventure, Of the Seraphicall Order of S. Francis. trans. by B. Lewis Augustine (Douai: by the Widow of Mark Wyon, 1642). Reprinted as rev. and ed. by W. A. Phillipson (Glasgow: R. & T. Washbourne, 1907). See http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/discuss/2011/01/11/some-notes-on-the-recusant-stimulus-amoris-the-goad-of-love-douai-1642-2/ .