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- active 14th century Dan Michel
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active 14th century Dan Michel
Known almost entirely through a single surviving work, this 14th-century English writer left behind one of the best-known examples of prose in the Kentish dialect. His Ayenbite of Inwyt opens a rare window onto medieval religious writing and the history of English itself.
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The Ayenbite of Inwyt (Remorse of Conscience)
by active 14th century Dan Michel, active 1279 d'Orléans Laurent
About the author
Dan Michel of Northgate was an English writer active around 1340, and he is chiefly remembered as the author of Ayenbite of Inwyt. Very little is known about him beyond what can be gathered from the work itself, but sources agree that he was connected with Northgate in Canterbury, Kent.
Ayenbite of Inwyt is a Kentish translation of a French moral and devotional treatise, and its title is often rendered as "Remorse of Conscience." The work matters not only as religious writing but also as an unusually clear, dated example of southern Middle English prose.
Some accounts describe him as a brother of St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury, based on information preserved with the manuscript tradition. Because so little is certain about his life, his reputation today rests largely on the survival of this one remarkable text and what it reveals about language, translation, and devotion in medieval England.