Ancrene Wisse | Nicholas Watson (essay date 1987)
Nicholas Watson (essay date 1987)
SOURCE: Watson, Nicholas. “The Methods and Objectives of Thirteenth-Century Anchoritic Devotion.” In The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Exeter Symposium IV, pp. 132-53. Cambridge, England: D. S. Brewer, 1987.
[In the following essay, Watson contrasts Ancrene Wisse to works of devotional writing from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.]
I cannot pretend to detail for you the sundry stages of the Christian mystical life. Our time would not suffice, for one thing; and moreover, I confess that the subdivisions and names which we find in the Catholic books seem to me to represent nothing objective or distinct. So many men, so many minds: I imagine that these experiences can be as infinitely varied as are the idiosyncracies of individuals.1
1
A number of works intended for anchoresses survive in six important early thirteenth-century...
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