Lucy Menzies

Menzies was born in 1882, the daughter of the Scottish minister and scholar Allan Menzies and Mary Elizabeth Honey.^[1] Her father became professor of Biblical criticism at the University of St Andrews, and Menzies formed a lifelong association with St Andrews.^[1] She and her sister May were educated at home by their father, and Menzies later attended finishing school in Heidelberg, where she developed the linguistic knowledge that later supported her work as a translator and scholar.^[1]

During her childhood the family regularly visited Iona, an association that influenced her later writings on Columba and Scottish Christian history.^[1] After the deaths of both parents in 1916, Menzies continued to live in St Andrews and began publishing translations, memoirs, and works of spiritual biography.^[1]

Menzies's first published work was a translation of Charles Le Goffic's General Foch at the Marne, published in London in 1918.^[2] In the same year she wrote a memoir of her father for A Study of Calvin and Other Papers.^[3]

Her first major work in the field of spirituality was Saint Columba of Iona, published in 1920.^[4] It was followed by several works on saints and sanctity, including A Book of Saints for the Young (1923), The Saints in Italy (1924), Saint Margaret Queen of Scotland (1925), and Mirrors of the Holy: Ten Studies in Sanctity (1928).^[1]

Menzies also published translations and anthologies outside the field of Christian spirituality, including Caucasian Folk-Tales, selected and translated from Adolf Dirr, and The First-Friend, an anthology on the friendship of humans and dogs.^[1]

Menzies's work is especially associated with the interpretation of sanctity and hagiography. William P. Hyland describes her as more than a popular writer, arguing that she combined historical scholarship, linguistic ability, spiritual sympathy, and accessibility to bring important areas of Christian spirituality to a wider English-speaking audience.^[1]

In her biographies of Columba and Margaret of Scotland, Menzies sought to present both figures as saints belonging to the whole Christian tradition rather than as symbols in Protestant or Roman Catholic polemic.^[1] Hyland identifies this ecumenical treatment as one of the distinctive features of her work on medieval Scotland.^[1]

In Saint Columba of Iona, Menzies emphasized Columba's gradual transformation from an impetuous figure into a man of prayer, humility, and selflessness.^[1] She interpreted the miracle stories in Adomnán's life of Columba not merely as legendary material but as expressions of Columba's perceived sanctity, spiritual insight, and kinship with creation.^[1]

In Saint Margaret Queen of Scotland, Menzies presented Margaret as a lay figure shaped by Benedictine spirituality. She argued that Margaret combined contemplative prayer with public responsibility, ecclesiastical reform, domestic life, almsgiving, and service to the poor.^[1] Hyland identifies this treatment of Margaret as one of Menzies's most original contributions, especially in its account of a lay and royal form of holiness influenced by monastic ideals.^[1]

Menzies became acquainted with Evelyn Underhill after Underhill anonymously reviewed Saint Columba of Iona in The Westminster Gazette.^[1] Their correspondence developed into a close friendship and literary collaboration. According to Joy Milos, Menzies was the most intimate member of Underhill's circle of spiritual directees, and the two corresponded for years before meeting in person in 1923.^[5] Margaret Cropper later described the friendship as marked by spiritual seriousness, affection, freedom, and humour.^[1]

Although raised in the Church of Scotland, Menzies was confirmed as an Anglican in 1924.^[1] She nevertheless continued to regard herself as both Presbyterian and Episcopalian, while also developing a strong interest in Roman Catholic spirituality and Christian mysticism.^[1]

Underhill's surviving letters portray Menzies as intensely conscientious, ascetically serious, and prone to overwork and scrupulous self-examination.^[5] Milos argues that Underhill encouraged Menzies toward a gentler and more incarnational spirituality rooted in ordinary life, sacramental practice, practical service, and psychological balance rather than excessive introspection or spiritual strain.^[5]

Menzies's translations formed part of a wider twentieth-century Anglican renewal of interest in continental traditions of contemplative prayer, mystical theology, and devotional writing. Her translation of Malaval's A Simple Method of Raising the Soul to Contemplation, published in London and Toronto in 1931 with an introduction by Underhill, made available in English a rare seventeenth-century French treatise on contemplative prayer that had long been overshadowed by the controversies surrounding Quietism.^[6]

In her translator's note, Menzies emphasized both the rarity of the original text and the significance of Malaval's blindness for understanding his imagery of light and darkness.^[7]

Menzies also translated Henri de Tourville's Letters of Direction, published in Westminster in 1939 with an introduction by Underhill.^[8] Her last completed book was a translation of Mechthild of Magdeburg's The Flowing Light of the Godhead, published in 1953.^[1] Hyland describes this work as a substantial scholarly effort undertaken despite her declining health and eyesight.^[1]

At the urging of Underhill and others, Menzies became warden of the retreat house at Pleshey in Essex.^[1] She held the wardenship for ten years, retiring to St Andrews in 1938 because of ill health.^[1] Underhill's correspondence during this period frequently expressed concern that Menzies was exhausting herself through overwork and excessive spiritual intensity.^[5]

Lumsden Barkway later wrote that she left a lasting spiritual influence at Pleshey, especially through the atmosphere of the house and the chapel associated with her wardenship.^[1] Her work there placed her within the Anglican retreat movement and the Anglo-Catholic wing of twentieth-century Anglican spirituality.^[1]

After Underhill's death in 1941, Menzies acted as her literary executor.^[1] She oversaw the publication of several posthumous works by Underhill, including Light of Christ, Collected Papers of Evelyn Underhill, Shrines and Cities of France and Italy, and An Anthology of the Love of God.^{[9][10][11][12]}

According to Barkway, Menzies also did much of the editorial work for The Letters of Evelyn Underhill, although Charles Williams was credited as editor.^[1]

Menzies began a biography of Underhill, but the work remained unfinished at her death. Her notes and draft were later used by Margaret Cropper in her biography of Underhill.^[1]

Menzies's later biography Father Wainright: A Record (1947) extended her interest in sanctity beyond medieval saints and mystics to modern Anglican pastoral life. The book was a study of the Anglo-Catholic priest of St Peter's, London Docks, and portrayed holiness as embodied in sacramental parish life, urban ministry, service to the poor, schools, hospitals, preaching, and pastoral friendship.^[13]

The book was introduced by Arthur Winnington-Ingram, former Bishop of London, and its royalties were directed to St Peter's, London Docks, which had been damaged during the Second World War.^[13] Menzies stated that the work drew on Wainright's own writings, parish-magazine material, and reminiscences from those who knew him.^[14] She presented him as a modern Anglican counterpart to the Curé d'Ars.^[15]

After leaving Pleshey, Menzies returned to St Andrews. Despite declining health and eyesight, she continued to write, translate, and edit.^[1] Her later works included Father Wainright: A Record, an edition of Edward Keble Talbot's retreat addresses, and her translation of Mechthild of Magdeburg.^[1]

Menzies died in 1954 and was buried in the graveyard adjoining St Andrews Cathedral.^[1] A plaque in the Sacrament Chapel of All Saints' Church, St Andrews, marks the place where she often prayed.^[1]

In 1954, the University of St Andrews awarded Menzies an honorary doctorate in divinity.^[1] She is commemorated on 24 November in the calendar of the Scottish Episcopal Church.^[1]

Hyland argues that Menzies's books on Columba and Margaret were important landmarks in historical and ecumenical study because they avoided the polemical treatment of the so-called Celtic Church common in some earlier Protestant writing.^[1] He also places her among Anglican women writers who made historical and spiritual scholarship accessible to lay readers.^[1]

Her legacy is also connected with the preservation and transmission of Underhill's work. As Underhill's literary executor and editor, Menzies helped preserve and circulate Underhill's retreat addresses, papers, diaries, and devotional writings after Underhill's death.^[1] Her own translations of Malaval, Tourville, and Mechthild contributed to the English-language recovery of contemplative and mystical texts in the twentieth century.^[1]