SOURCE: Ackerman, Robert W. and Roger Dahood. “General Introduction.” In Ancrene Riwle: Introduction and Part I, edited and translated by Robert W. Ackerman and Roger Dahood, pp. 3-38. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1984.

[In the following essay, Ackerman and Dahood explain the advent of the solitary life and provide an abstract of Ancrene Riwle.]

The aim of the present edition is to make available for students an often neglected portion of Ancrene Riwle in a form demonstrably close to that which was actually known and used in the thirteenth century. These pages set forth, in addition to the short Introduction, the daily round of devotions, the central core of the anchoress's existence. In his edition, restricted to Parts VI and VII, Geoffrey Shepherd was particularly interested in those moving passages designed, in his words, “to stimulate and control acts of penance and love in daily life.”¹ Our chief concern is with the prescribed program of worship, which in our opinion supplies the proper context for understanding the spiritual and domestic advice in the remainder of the treatise.

In view of the intense study of AR over the years, it is surprising that the elaborate prescriptions for the anchoress's liturgical day given in Part I have not long since been better explicated. Modern secularism and a consequent failure to understand a life of prayer and renunciation may explain why commentators and literary historians seem inclined to pass over Part I, as they do the Introduction, with pro forma remarks.² In fact, students of Middle English, whose acquaintance with AR is all too likely to be limited to anthologized extracts, are allowed to gain the impression that this is the composition of a kindly old cleric, mildly concerned lest his anchoresses keep more than one cat or indulge in gossip or painful mortification of the flesh, a man often given to quoting the Bible, St. Augustine, and St. Gregory, spinning out moral allegories about the sow of gluttony, and enlivening his rule by humorous references to Slurry the cook's boy.³ In actuality, as will be made clear, he bound the anchoresses to a relatively severe regimen.

THE MANUSCRIPTS AND EARLY SCHOLARSHIP

AR first came to be known to readers other than a very few students of manuscripts only in 1853, with the publication of the Reverend James Morton's edition and translation,⁴ and only after some decades was it recognized as a work of superior literary merit. It came to be especially esteemed because of its direct and charming rendering of the author's mind and individuality and also as an important monument of early Middle English, or “semi-Saxon,” to use Morton's term.⁵ During the past fifty years, few works in Middle English have been more painstakingly investigated. The imagery and other stylistic aspects of the author's prose have been analyzed,⁶ and the sources—scriptural, patristic, and otherwise—have been searched out. There have also been many attempts to identify the author, his ecclesiastical status or monastic order, the three sister anchoresses for whom he composed his rule, and the location of their anchorhold.⁷ Other studies have dealt with the structure, the later revisions, and the wide circulation of the work in medieval times.⁸

A large segment of AR scholarship has concerned the interrelationship of the eighteen manuscripts and fragments now known and the date and original language of composition. For the rule is extant in Latin, French, and Middle English versions.⁹ Close examination of all forms of the work has resulted in general endorsement of Morton's opinion that AR was composed in English, although arguments have been made for Latin and French as the original languages.¹⁰ Morton's opinion is borne out by Professor E. J. Dobson's work on manuscript affiliations. Dobson also has developed a strong case for dating the composition between 1215 and 1222 and for regarding MS Cotton Cleopatra C.VI as providing possibly our earliest copy, since it appears to have been written between 1225 and 1230.¹¹ The basic language of AR, called the “AB dialect” by J. R. R. Tolkien, is widely agreed to be that of Hereford, that is, the English of the Southwest Midlands.¹²

In an effort to provide a text generally faithful to a form of AR almost certainly used in the thirteenth century for the purpose intended by the author, that is, for the governance of anchoritic life, we have relied on the version in MS Cotton Cleopatra C.VI. This manuscript is notable not only because of its early date, mentioned above, but also because it bears physical evidence, far more than any other copy extant, of use over several decades. The evidence in question is the heavy emendation in four hands of varying dates appearing especially on a very high proportion of the first nineteen folios of the copy.¹³ It is by no means unreasonable to envisage this small, plump volume in the hands of a long succession of English anchorites and their spiritual directors. Only in terms of conscientious study by many such as these can one explain the countless interlinear and marginal revisions: corrections of spelling, punctuation, and syntax, supplying of subheads and other aids to ready reference, extension of quotations, addition of new matter, and rephrasing intended to clarify the sense.

The plethora of revisions, some of them corrections of corrections, makes for hard reading. Indeed, only one who has pored over the cluttered manuscript pages is able to appreciate Dobson's achievement in producing his edition of the Cleopatra version, without which any serious use of this text would be far more difficult.

In his commentary, Dobson provides a sophisticated analysis of the revisions. Thus, he observes that the whole of the Cleopatra version was copied by a single, less than reliable scribe, designated as “A,” and that A occasionally went back to correct a few of his own mistakes. He concludes that the French translation preserved in the fourteenth-century MS Cotton Vitellius F.VII¹⁴ is derived from the exemplar used by copyist A of Cleopatra and at times is a superior rendering of that exemplar. Most of the alterations in Cleopatra, however, are in two other hands, one early and the other distinctly later. Dobson holds that the earlier corrector, called “B,” emended A's text possibly within a year or two of its completion, that is, between 1225 and 1230. B not only corrected errors left by A, but he introduced material that would adapt the rule to the needs of an already enlarged community of anchoresses. Dobson argues further that the character of B's changes and also his dialect, belonging to Hereford, as A's dialect does not, suggest that he was none other than the author of AR, an interesting but scarcely necessary conclusion.¹⁵

Dobson considers MS Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 402,¹⁶ of a date close to that of Cleopatra, to be a fair copy of the rule as revised by B and also the most nearly “correct” version available to us. Nevertheless, the A copy in Cleopatra seems occasionally, if in a minor way, to offer a better reading than Corpus, as in the rehearsal of the contents of AR at the end of the Introduction. The third “distinction,” or part, as A accurately informs us (Cleopatra, fol. 8v), consists of likening the anchoress to five kinds of birds. But Corpus, in agreement with the other manuscripts of AR, speaks of anes cunnes fuheles, “birds of one kind,” to which David, as an anchorite, compared himself. In fact, Part III of the rule goes beyond the biblical basis for this comparison (Psalm 101.6-7), for in the Psalm only three different birds are mentioned. Moreover, the margins of Cleopatra contain emendations by B not carried over into Corpus which nonetheless improve the sense of the basic text. An example occurring on the first folio of AR in Cleopatra (fol. 4r) is furnished by B's altogether appropriate comment about conscience.

The later of the two chief revisers of Cleopatra, “D,” seems to have worked toward the close of the thirteenth century. His revisions, which Dobson characterizes as foolish meddling, consist mainly of adding Latin subheads, altering punctuation marks, inserting Latin glosses above English words, and sometimes falsifying the original by these and other changes.¹⁷

As editors of the Introduction and Part I, we are primarily concerned with only the first nineteen folios of the Cleopatra text, yet these few leaves contain literally hundreds of revisions in the hands of B and D, as may be seen in Dobson's apparatus. The present edition is not simply a transcription of the basic work of copyist A. Because of our interest in offering a consistent text as it would seem to have been read by thirteenth-century anchoresses and others relying on the Cleopatra MS, we have incorporated into our text most of the corrections and additions supplied by B. In thus modifying the rule as first written by A, we have tried to include only those revisions which contribute to intelligibility and grammatical integrity, at all times keeping in mind what is known from other sources about anchoritic life. Although we have consulted both the Corpus version and the French translation, mentioned above, we do not always accede to their authority in adopting or rejecting revisions in Cleopatra. All liberties taken with A's text are acknowledged in the notes. The headnote preceding the text and translation explains our policy in such matters in greater detail.

THE MEDIEVAL ANCHORITE

AR sets out a way of life for which no clear modern parallel exists, although today certain monastic orders, such as the Camaldolese and Carthusians, make provision for members to lead at least a semi-eremitical life. Thus, a brief survey of what is known about medieval anchorites and their background is a desirable prelude to a discussion of AR. Also to be clarified is the relationship which the anchorites bore to other professed religious men and women—that is, the hermit, monk, and nun.

Late Latin anachorita, anchorita, anchoreta (“one who retires from the world”) passed into English as ancra around the year 1000.¹⁸ The common-gender form ancre appears in Middle English, the specifically feminine anchoress not being recorded until the end of the fourteenth century.¹⁹ Modern English anchorite (or anchoret) functions both as a generic term and a masculine.²⁰ But the etymological meaning, “one who retires from the world,” is of virtually no use in setting the anchorite apart from other kinds of religious. For the word hermit (“a desert dweller”) conveys the same general meaning as does monk (“solitary”). All three terms were applied more or less indiscriminately to the Desert Fathers, who in the third century began in some numbers to take up a solitary life of self-denial and meditation in the wilderness of the Thebaïd, or northern Egypt. Apparently the worldliness that overtook many Christians when the persecutions ceased during the reign of Constantine was responsible for the flow of religiously motivated men and women to the desert. These fugitives were primarily laymen, although a few early hermits ultimately entered the priesthood. The reputation for holiness acquired by some as the result of their miracles of faith-healing, exorcism, and prophecy attracted to their remote huts and caves in Egypt and various places in the Near East hordes of the pious in search of edification and help. From such petitioners, communities of people dedicated to the religious life grew up both in wilderness areas, around the now often violated retreats of the masters, and in cities, such as Alexandria. Some of these were loose agglomerations of hermit cells, but others developed into organized communities promiting a common religious life. For the governance of the integrated communities, the early rules ascribed to St. Pachomius (d. ca. 348) and St. Basil the Great (d. 379) were composed. Somewhat illogically, the expression monastery, “a place for dwelling alone,” was applied to such new congregations, and the term monk designated a male member of the group. A more accurate word than monk also emerged—namely, cenobite (“common life”).²¹

Meanwhile, persons known as anchorites or hermits continued to take up a solitary life, although such writers as Cassian (d. ca. 435) quite early perceived dangers associated with passing from the world into absolute isolation. Lone dwellers in the wilderness were not only subject to harassment by outlaws; they were likely to be distracted from prayer and meditation by the constant need for providing food and shelter for themselves. Moreover, pride in the arduous life and also self-indulgence were spiritual or psychological pitfalls for one completely separated from human contacts for long periods. For such reasons, even the early authorities came to favor less than total isolation. Beyond that, later authorities held that ordinary men should not undertake the eremitical life before undergoing the discipline of the cloister.²²

Whether hermits or cenobites, the religious of the first Christian centuries pursued a program of prayer and meditation, of work, manual or literary, and of austere self-denial. Separation from society in the interests of cultivating a higher level of self-knowledge was recommended by ancient philosophers, including Pythagoras and Plato; and among pre-Christian Jews, sects such as the Essenes lived a severely segregated existence. Types of the monastic profession were found in the scriptural accounts of Samuel, Elijah, and St. John the Baptist, although Christ was regarded as the true founder of religious life. Commonly cited in this connection was Christ's forty days' sojourn in the wilderness. Among the most illustrious of the Egyptian Fathers, St. Paul, called the first hermit (d. 342), was said to have received bread from ravens just as had Elijah (1 Kings 17:4). St. Ammon (d. ca. 350), who dwelt for years with his wife in brotherly chastity, was credited with numerous miracles. St. Anthony (d. 356), after many decades as a solitary, founded a monastery reputed to have been the first. He further assisted St. Ammon in organizing a monastery for his disciples, who had been dwelling in scattered hermit cells. Two Desert Fathers of the same name, St. Macarius the Elder (d. 390) and St. Macarius of Alexandria (d. 394), likewise spent most of their lives in isolation, although both served as spiritual parents to many admirers, and accepted priest's orders.²³ The author of AR, it may be noted, names Paul, Anthony, and one of the Macariuses in his Introduction, along with other famed exemplars of religious life.

Not content with the discomforts and dangers of a harsh, largely unpopulated region, of crude dwelling places, and of the minimum of food, clothing, and shelter, the early religious, strongly influenced by the cult of martyrs that grew up in the deserts of Egypt, commonly inflicted corporal punishment on themselves. They devised ingenious tortures, including not only prodigal fasting but remaining in a standing or kneeling posture for incredible periods, wearing hair shirts or coats of mail, and scourging with thorns. The Syrian monk, St. Simeon the Stylite (d. 459), early in his career wore a tight rope around his waist, causing the flesh to fester. It was later said that this most famous of the “stationaries” mounted a succession of pillars, standing thereon for the last thirty-seven years of his life and preaching to the crowds of the pious and curious below him. Thus, mortification of the flesh, and especially flagellation and the hair shirt, became a part of religious life. St. Peter Damian, the eleventh-century Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia and a Benedictine monk, strongly endorsed discipline, administered publicly or privately, either by the individual himself or by a benevolent hand. He believed that the blows of the whip made a sound as agreeable to God as the tympanum of the psalmist. St. Francis of Assisi likewise recommended this form of mortification to his friars. To medieval Christians in general, self-torture seemed altogether fitting and meritorious, not merely for the sake of taming the bodily appetites, but more importantly because only through actual pain would one become sufficiently mindful of the agonies of Christ's passion.²⁴

Religious life in all its forms was soon transmitted from the East to Rome and the West. The saints and doctors of the Church figured importantly in spreading abroad a knowledge and appreciation of the hermits and cenobites of the East. Included are St. Athanasius, Archbishop of Constantinople (d. 373), who brought two Egyptian monks with him to Rome during one of his periods of exile; St. Jerome (d. 420), who wrote much of his Vulgate Bible in a monastery in Bethlehem; and St. Augustine (d. 430), who is credited with having organized a small community of religious in Hippo. By the time that St. Benedict (480-547) as a very young man encountered at Subiaco the humble monk who assisted him in taking up the eremitical life, many religious houses and many solitaries were to be found in Italy and some to the north in Gaul. During the last calamitous days of the Western Empire, these institutions and individuals did something to mitigate the savagery of the barbarian invaders.²⁵

The great rule which St. Benedict wrote after he had left his hermitage to establish several cenobitical communities, most notably Monte Cassino, not only superseded the rule of St. Basil, heretofore used in the West, but became the model for many other rules. The Benedictine Rule, it should be noted here, opens with a classification of the types of “monks” known to the saint: (1) cenobites, or monks proper, who lived in a community under a rule; (2) anchorites, that is to say, hermits (“deinde secundum genus est anchoritarum, id est hermitarum”), who after long probation in a monastery were deemed fit to venture into the world to fight the devil; (3) sarabites, who lived in small groups subject to no rule; and (4) gyrovagi, or wanderers, who fell readily into sin, being without stability. For St. Benedict, the anchorite was still identical to the hermit, but he believed that the cloister was the proper novitiate of the anchorite. That he should align monks with hermits or anchorites in this fashion is scarcely surprising in view of the fact that, like the Desert Fathers, he was himself a hermit before becoming a monk and abbot. Moreover, he seems always to have cherished a hope of someday returning to the solitary life. Mature observation of many religious charlatans obviously underlies his contempt for sarabites and gyrovagi.²⁶

The solitary ideal, the nearly total renunciation of the world of men as well as of property, continued to exert a powerful appeal. But the term hermit came in time to be restricted, more or less consistently, to solitaries who, shunning a fixed abode, were free to wander about or to dwell in remote regions. Some, to be sure, inhabited cells near religious houses, and other fugitives from society dwelt near forest roads or isolated bridges which they maintained as a work of charity.²⁷ A liturgical office for the institution of hermits came into being, and rules governing their conduct of life were composed, even though no regula eremitarum regarded as standard seems ever to have emerged during the Middle Ages.²⁸ As readers of the Arthurian legend know, hermit-priests figure in medieval literature; nevertheless, such historical records as we possess suggest that relatively few hermits were ordained priests. Moreover, the number of men who became hermits only after the period of monastic discipline recommended by St. Benedict and St. Peter Damian was probably small. In fact, many must have assumed the status of hermit altogether without ecclesiastical sanction. The great English mystic Richard Rolle of Hampole (ca. 1300-1340) bowed to no such conventions when he took up the eremitical life clad in garments borrowed from his father and sisters. For every Richard Rolle, there must always have been numerous vagabonds, as mentioned by St. Benedict, who affected bare feet and unkempt appearance in order to further their true vocation as beggars—“in habite of an hermite unholy of werkes,” to quote Langland.²⁹

A parallel specialization of meaning ultimately overtook anchorite, which came to be reserved for those solitaries, the recluses, committed by their vows to constancy of abode, normally a cramped cell. Some forms of reclusion were adopted by early Desert Fathers, such as St. Anthony, who immured himself for a term of twenty years. Such an inmate, of course, was obliged to depend on those outside for the necessities of life, and it was therefore natural that the place of enclosure should be within or near a religious community and that many recluses should themselves be monks and nuns. As early as 692 the Council of Trullo passed legislation specifically dealing with monks who would be anchorites. Further, formal licensing by the abbot and an episcopal benediction were required. Conventual recluses, both men and women, were known in the West at an early date, as Gregory of Tours (ca. 538-593) testifies.³⁰ Reclusion was certainly practiced in England, and there by the thirteenth century the person called an anchorite was more likely to be an enclosed solitary than a hermit, as is strongly suggested in a doctrinal treatise, Vices and Virtues (ca. 1200).³¹ …

It is, of course, with non-conventual anchorites, or more specifically anchoresses, that AR is concerned. The anchoritic life, in contrast to the exposed existence of the usual hermit, was well-suited to women, a fact that explains the large number, if not the preponderance, of female solitaries, at least in England. Furthermore, the anchorite's stability of abode assured that he lived under closer ecclesiastical control than did the hermit. Perhaps for this reason, the anchorite was generally regarded as having chosen an especially arduous form of religious dedication.³²

Although the earliest anchorites were not provided with a manual for their guidance, rules for recluses eventually came into being, some intended for conventual recluses and later ones for those not living under monastic supervision. Of these, Grimlaic's Rule of Solitaries (Regula Solitariorum), composed in a Bavarian monastery in about 900 for the governance of male recluses, is particularly instructive. The monk who felt a vocation for a more completely meditative life than was possible in the choir, refectory, and dormitory with his brethren was advised by Grimlaic first to petition his abbot and apparently also the bishop for enclosure. If adjudged sufficiently sincere and stable by his superiors, he would be allowed to live apart from his community in solitude for a probationary year. The permission of abbot or bishop and even the blessing of his fellow monks had to be secured if he wished to persevere. Only after successfully completing these steps would he be ceremoniously conducted to a cell where his enclosure was symbolized by the bishop's seal. Grimlaic indicates that proximity to the chapel would permit the inmate to hear the choir services. Recluses in priest's orders were to have their own altars for the celebration of Mass, and all were to recite the Divine Office in their cells. A fenced garden was to be available, and since the dangers of absolute and long-continued solitude were recognized, limited speech with recluses in nearby cells was permitted. Provision was also made for those who attracted disciples to offer spiritual counsel through a window. Nevertheless, the business proper to the anchorite consisted of solitary worship, meditation, and reading, relieved only by occasional work with the hands.³³

Two centuries later, Goscelin of Wilton (d. ca. 1100), a French Benedictine who lived most of his life in English abbeys, wrote his Liber Confortorius (ca. 1080) for Ève, a young woman whom he regarded as his spiritual daughter. After a long period in the royal monastery of Wilton, Ève went to Angers and entered an establishment housing several recluses. Rather than a rule, Goscelin's Liber is an epistle dealing in broad terms with the secluded life. Ève's cell may be narrow, he writes, but is not the whole world a prison? Again, since the cell serves at once as oratory, refectory, and dormitory, is it not equal to a palace? Moreover, even though she dwells in a sepulchre, as it were, Ève must remember that the resurrection took place in a grave. Goscelin's remarks on the daily regime are sparse. Ève should divide her time between prayer and reading. Her prayer is to be centered on the monastic hours, during which she should bear in mind the suffering of Christ and the conception of the Virgin. Goscelin further recommends his own practice of reciting five psalms (Pss. 21-25) in memory of the five wounds of Christ.³⁴

The work of Goscelin stands somewhat to one side of the main tradition, but another epistle addressed to a female recluse—namely, St. Ailred of Rievaulx's On Regulations for Recluses (De Institutis Inclusarum)—exerted considerable influence and was quoted by the author of AR. The distinguished St. Ailred (1100-1167) was abbot of the Cistercian house at Rievaulx in Yorkshire for the last twenty years of his life, and he was also the author of spiritual works and valued counselor of King David of Scotland. Among his other responsibilities, he found time to write a lengthy rule for recluses at the behest of an older sister, evidently a religious who had embraced the solitary life. Ailred took much of his material for this rule from Benedict, Jerome, Cassian, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory, although in his two final chapters he dwells on his own youthful concupiscence as contrasted with the steady virtue of his sister. He exhorts her to practice the contemplative life typified by Mary, to shun the company of others, to avoid teaching the young, and to maintain silence so that her meditations might be the more intense and fruitful. That she was to recite the Divine Office and devotions to the Virgin Mary is made clear in three chapters in particular, and she was further to have prayers always in her mind while working with her hands and throughout the rest of each day.³⁵

Yet another Latin rule, The Rule of the Recluses of Dublin (Regula Reclusorum Dublinensis), may appropriately be mentioned here despite the fact that it was composed at a time somewhat later than AR, to which it may well be directly indebted. Moreover, the Dublin treatise, although intended for both men and women, also shows affinities to St. Ailred's rule.³⁶ The Dublin rule counsels moderation in such austerities as fasting and tends to discuss the anchorite's inner life more fully than does St. Ailred. Moreover, its author is fond of extended metaphor and word play, even though in such respects he is no match for the author of AR. For example, the recluse is advised to eat his daily bread with the teeth of the mind, for in this way he will grow in wisdom and spiritual beauty. The precepts of God, sweet to the soul but bitter to the body, teach us to be oblivious to the temptations of gluttony and all worldly solaces. Further, the word anchorite, because of its alleged etymological identification with the anchor of a ship, is made to yield edifying significance. Daily Mass at the third hour is recommended, and the anchorite is to take communion each Sunday, much more frequently than stipulated in AR. He should further, like the monk, recite matins and all the hours, not all of them together in the manner of secular priests, but at their established times. Also, he should praise the Blessed Mary and include in his devotions the Seven Penitential Psalms and, on the anniversaries of benefactors, prayers. Beyond this, prayer should always be in his mouth and heart, and all work should be accomplished in humility. Like the hermit of the desert, the anchorite should live in silence; upon his enclosure he should regard himself as dead to the world.³⁷

Further attention to the rules just mentioned is reserved for the discussion that follows. The present historical overview, however, would be incomplete without some remarks about English anchorites and an attempt to visualize the sister anchoresses of AR in context.

Diocesan and other records yield allusions to individuals who took up the solitary life both within and without monastic houses as early as the seventh century. Historians have tabulated a large number of such references in twelfth- and thirteenth-century records. The number is much greater in the fourteenth century, but it then dwindles to nearly nothing by the first part of the sixteenth. Conventual recluses, both men and women, dwelt in such Benedictine abbeys and priories as Crowland, Durham, and Westminster, and also in Augustinian, Franciscan, Carmelite, and Dominican friaries. Further, cells for solitaries were to be found in St. Giles in Hereford and other hospitals, and in castles, including Dover, as adjuncts to chapels. Many English anchorites were enclosed in cells adjoining parish churches, and we have notices of anchorages on main thoroughfares and by well-traveled bridges. Within the church at Chester-le-Street, Durham, are the most complete known architectural remains of a medieval anchorage, a two-storied apartment with a “squint” in the upper chamber permitting a direct view of the high altar. Perhaps more typical were huts built “under the eaves” on the north side of the church, as at Hartlip, Kent. Vestiges of suspected anchorages have been found at various other parish churches, such as All Saints, York, and at Leatherhead and Compton in Surrey.³⁸

Several anchorites of record were celebrated for saintliness. St. Guthlac (d. 714), whose vita was turned into Old English, was the first Englishman to achieve fame by retiring from the world in the manner of the Desert Fathers. For many years, he lived as a penitent on an uninhabited island in Lincolnshire under the most primitive conditions, combating the temptations and monsters sent by the devil. The popularly canonized St. Wulfric of Haselbury, Somerset (d. 1159), had been a priest with an unseemly passion for hunting and hawking. Converted by a chance conversation with a beggar, he had himself immured in a cell attached to the church at Haselbury, and there he subjected himself to harsh discipline, wearing a chain cuirass next to his skin and reciting the entire Psalter every night while immersed in a tub of cold water. The early twelfth-century recluses of Kilburn, who were once proposed as the original sisters for whom AR was written, should also be remembered in this connection. Two noblewomen of the thirteenth century, Lauretta, Countess of Leicester, and Katherine of Ledbury, Lady Audley, became anchoresses after they were widowed. Wordsworth made the pious legend concerning the latter of these ladies the subject of his sonnet, “St. Catherine of Ledbury.”³⁹ In the late fourteenth century, Walter Hilton (d. 1396) wrote his Scale of Perfection for nuns who had entered seclusion. Much moral counsel is included in this book, but it differs from the earlier rules because Hilton's ultimate purpose was to foster the state of mystic ecstasy. A younger contemporary, Juliana of Norwich, was a recluse whose Revelations describe a series of heaven-sent visions.⁴⁰

In the first decades of the thirteenth century when an anonymous ecclesiastic composed AR for the guidance of three ladies in religious seclusion somewhere in Hereford, the anchoritic life was clearly an established tradition. Yet neither at this time nor later were anchorites sufficiently numerous to become as familiar a part of the religious landscape of medieval England as were members of the regular orders of monks and, later, friars. To be sure, the layfolk in a number of parishes supported and very possibly took considerable pride in having an anchorite in their churchyard, and still other solitaries dwelt in cells equally visible to all. The remainder, the conventual recluses, were sequestered from the public. Anchorites, then, must have represented a very small proportion of the totality of men and women in the service of religion at any one time.⁴¹ The records suggest that at least a slight majority of anchorites were women, and further that in England a significant number were priests, monks, friars, or nuns at the time of their enclosure. By no means did those who entered an anchorage as members of religious orders necessarily become recluses in monastic precincts, for we find more than a few inmates of churchyard cells designated in historical documents as monks and nuns. On the other hand, it is reasonable to suppose that monastic reclusaria housed only professed members of the order. That many anchorites entered their cells as laymen rather than as religious, and were thus devoid of monastic experience, is certain. Unlike Ailred's sister, the ladies for whom AR was written were in this category. But whatever their previous status, those who aspired to the anchoritic life seem, more consistently than hermits, to have placed themselves under the guidance of a qualified spiritual director and to have submitted to a solemn rite of enclosure. If the office signalizing the enclosure of the three sisters of AR resembled that preserved in Bishop Lacy's Pontifical, it involved Extreme Unction, the sprinkling of dust, and the sealing of the doorway to the living tomb.⁴²

The physical surroundings of the three sister anchoresses for whom AR was originally written emerge rather distinctly in the rule. One gathers that each woman was committed to one of several rooms built onto a church, presumably along one side of the nave. The individual quarters were large enough to accommodate the anchoress and her indoor maidservant; other servants, it is suggested, went about the neighborhood begging food for the inmates. The anchoresses were permitted to communicate with the others' maidservants at interior windows in the partition walls. Each cell was also equipped with a window or “squint” opening into the church and permitting a view of the high altar. Still another window, the smallest of all, opened into the churchyard or street, but this one was to be kept heavily curtained. The furniture must have been of the meagerest, but the religious objects were rather numerous, consisting of a holy water stoup, a crucifix, possibly in addition a larger cross with or without the corpus, and as many as two or three altars before images of the Virgin and of other saints. The altars, one or more of which might be consecrated to permit a private celebration of Mass, were also used to hold saints' relics for veneration.⁴³ Personal belongings were confined to a few articles of coarse clothing, table ware, sewing equipment, liturgical texts, and a few other edifying books, probably in English and French.

ABSTRACT OF ANCRENE RIWLE

A sound understanding of the Introduction and Part I, on which the present study is focused, requires some attention to the relationship or contribution of these opening pages to the whole of AR. An abstract of the rule, necessarily selective, will be useful in this connection. For ease of reference, the inclusive folio numbers of the Cleopatra manuscript are given at the head of each separate part, together with the corresponding page numbers in Dobson's edition. It should be admitted at the outset that no abstract or abridgment of a work so rich in imagery, allusion, and allegory can convey an adequate notion of the original.

INTRODUCTION [FOLS. 4-9; DOBSON, PP. 1-15]

Two rules govern religious life. The inner or “lady” rule concerns the heart, which must be kept “right” in its quest for God. As the commandment of God, this rule in invariable. The outer rule, the “handmaid,” pertains to the body and exterior life. Its primary function is to serve the inner rule. Because it is man-made, it is less rigid and fixed than the inner rule and should vary according to the individual's age, strength, degree of learning, and the like.

The anchoress should make no more than three solemn vows, which may be violated only on pain of mortal sin: obedience to a bishop or other superior, chastity, and stability of abode. Charity, observance of the Ten Commandments, confession, penitence, and the like are decreed by God.

She should say that she belongs to the order of St. James if any inquire as to her religious profession. In his epistle (1:27), James bids us succor widows and children and keep ourselves uncontaminated by the world. The first part applies to the good religious who live in the world; the second particularly to the anchoress. For a solitary, true religion does not inhere in the color of the habit, whether black or white. In religious communities, however, the wearing of the same habit symbolizes inward unity. Micah (6:8) tells us to walk with God.

The parts or “distinctions” of AR are enumerated as follows: I. Devotions; II. The Five Senses; III. David's Comparison of Himself to Birds of the Psalter; IV. Fleshly and Spiritual Temptations; V. Confession; VI. Penance; VII. Cleanness of Heart and the Love of Christ; and VIII. The Outer Rule.

I. DEVOTIONS⁴⁴ [FOLS. 9-19V; DOBSON, PP. 15-38]

Upon awakening, the anchoress should cross herself, say in nomine Patris, Veni, Creator spiritus and other devotions, and then while dressing recite the Pater Noster and the Creed. She should thereafter continue with meditation on the crucified Christ, recite prayers in memory of the five wounds, and venerate the relics on each of her altars.

She then may begin the Matins of Our Lady, prefacing it with a Pater Noster and the Nicene Creed. In reciting the Matins and other hours of Our Lady, the differences between week-days and feasts must be observed and also the differences between the summer and winter calendar. Attention is also called to periods of silence and to the fact that, whereas two meals a day are allowed in summer, only one is allowed in winter except on Sunday.

In addition to the Hours of Our Lady, the following supplementary devotions must be said: Preciosa, which follows the hour of prime; Placebo, or Vespers of the Office of the Dead; Dirige, or Matins and Lauds of the Office of the Dead; Suffrages, or prayers to the Trinity, the cross, and the saints, or for the souls of the departed; Commendations, or the commending of the souls of the dead to God; the Litany of the Saints; the Seven Penitential Psalms; the Fifteen Gradual Psalms; and additional prayers and supplications.

The anchoress may recite English prayers for her private devotions, such as an English paraphrase of the Pater Noster and prayers to the five wounds, to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, to the Ten Commandments, and to the Twelve Apostles. Other devotions will serve, apparently as suffrages and for private use: prayers, to the saints the anchoress most loves, for those who have performed the six works of mercy, for the souls of those who believed in the Gospels, and for the sick and sorrowful.

At the elevation of the Host in Mass, the anchoress should say a series of prayers, and at the kiss of peace, she should forget all the world and extend her love to the Savior.

At midday, she should meditate on the cross, uttering specified prayers. Thereafter, she should pray to Our Lady, using five English prayers and devotions.

Finally, the anchoress should heed a number of miscellaneous instructions and recommendations. She should include in her daily devotions the Office of the Holy Ghost, if she wishes. Moreover, she should kneel before and after meals, read from the Psalter in French or English, avoid idleness, listen to the priest's hours when possible, say graces at meals, and the like. Whoever does not know the hours may say instead a stipulated number of Pater Nosters and Aves, and concessions are granted to those who are ill.

II. THE FIVE SENSES [FOLS. 19V-48; DOBSON, PP. 39-94]

The heart is the life of the soul, but it is also a wild creature which must be guarded. Its guardians are the five senses. The eyes are windows which should be curtained in black with crosses on both sides. Lucifer, when he looked upon himself, leapt into pride. The story of David and Bathsheba provides an example of the sins of the eyes. The anchoress should keep her parlor window closed, refusing to open it for any man and rarely for a woman. Speech, the second sense, belongs to the mouth. The anchoress should not set herself up as learned when replying to her priest, nor should she give counsel to a man unless she is of advanced age. Remembering that Eve talked too much to the adder, the anchoress must not emulate the cackling hen. She should not converse at her church window through which she sees the Blessed Sacrament. Silence is to be maintained at meals, and guests must be entertained by servants. Our Lady, who spoke seldom, ought to be the ideal for all women. The ears, the organs of the third sense, should be stopped against all idle and evil talk. The anchoress should be wary of backbiters and the three kinds of flatterers. The sins of the eyes, mouth, and ears are all treated in Scripture and by the Fathers, such as St. Gregory.

Smell, the fourth sense, may be deceitful, for the devil can make something good smell bad and can conceal evil under a ravishing fragrance. A genuinely holy smell appeals to the heart more than to the nose. Holy water and the sign of the cross will help one avoid deceptions. Christ, hanging on Mount Calvary, was surrounded by the stench of decaying bodies. He suffered particularly in the senses of touch and feeling and also in taste when offered the drink of gall. Moreover, he felt inward anguish as if of wounds made by three spears. One was the weeping of his mother and the other Marys, the second was the desertion of the Disciples, and the third was the grief that he had in his heart for the sinfulness of those who put him to death. Christ was wounded in five places because his blood is to be understood as healing mankind of the sins of the five senses. His perfect steadfastness is a reminder, especially to anchoresses, that the life of the soul may be preserved only by proper custody of the senses.

III. DAVID'S COMPARISON OF HIMSELF TO BIRDS IN THE PSALTER [FOLS. 48-74; DOBSON, PP. 94-135]

Not only must the heart be protected by control of the five senses, but it must grow in humility. The anchoress should remember the pelican of David's psalm (101:7), for this bird, said to slay her own young out of anger, is an image of wrath. The anchoress should guard herself against becoming provoked by another's hateful speech, for words are no more than air. The remedy for wrath arising from such speech is a sense of joy in the opportunity for forgiving a transgressor. Because of its thinness and supposed preference for solitude, the pelican also offers a good example to the anchoress, as does Judith shut up in her chamber. Because of its austerity, the pelican is light of weight and can soar into the air, and so should the anchoress be capable of spiritual flight. Such heavy birds as the ostrich, on the other hand, are earthbound. The anchoress must be content with a hard, thorny nest or anchorage, and in her abode she should place the love of Christ just as the eagle carries the agate into her nest in order to ward off poison.

The anchoress's attention should further be called to the nightraven in the same psalm. Just as this bird gathers food by night, so should the anchoress spend her nights gathering the fruits of holy contemplation. She should be watchful like the sparrow. The author gives eight reasons for remaining ever vigilant, including the brevity of man's life on earth and the sternness of the Judgment. Further, he gives eight reasons for fleeing into solitude, including fear of the devil, who like a mad lion ranges through the world. He holds up Queen Esther, the Hidden One, as a model for the life of seclusion.

The anchoress should not only lead a solitary life, as does the pelican, she should sing her prayers alone in emulation of the lone sparrow. And she should be mindful that, just as the sparrow is subject to falling sickness, so she is always subject to temptation.

IV. TEMPTATIONS [FOLS. 74-135V; DOBSON, PP. 135-219]

However holy her life, the anchoress must not think herself immune to temptation, for the higher the hill of holy living, the stronger is the fiend's puff of wind. The anchoress should be wary if she feels no temptation, for, as St. Gregory says, one is then in the greatest peril.

We are prey to two kinds of temptations, the outer and the inner. The former arise from external and internal discomfort and comfort. External discomfort includes illness, shame, misfortune, and every bodily harm. Internal discomfort includes pain of the heart and anger. External comfort includes bodily health, sufficient food, drink, and clothing. Internal comfort includes false happiness of men's praise or of being loved more than another. Patience is the greatest weapon for combating outer temptations, especially those arising from illness. Physical affliction should be looked on as the goldsmith of heaven, gilding one's crown. All the physical pain of this world in comparison with eternal torment is but a game of ball, a drop of dew in comparison to the wide sea. One must remember that those who speak evil of one or do one harm are a file that makes the soul smooth and bright. Every sorrow of this world is of God's sending, a proof of his love for us.

Inner temptations are also twofold, having bodily and spiritual aspects. Here belong the seven capital sins and their vile progeny, for lechery, gluttony, and sloth are bodily in their effects, and pride, envy, wrath, and avarice are spiritual. The flesh incites us to bodily sin, the world urges us to seek prosperity and honor, and the devil leads us into pride, disdain, and the like. In the wilderness through which we must pass, like the children of Israel, we must beware of the many lions of pride, the adder of poisonous envy, the unicorn of wrath, the bear of sloth, the fox of avarice, the sow of gluttony, and the scorpion with tail of stinking lechery. Each one of these has many cubs. Thus the offspring of the lion of pride are named vainglory, scorn, hypocrisy, presumption, disobedience, loquacity, blasphemy, impatience, and willfulness. The progeny of the scorpion of lechery include fornication, adultery, loss of maidenhood, incest, and others too foul to name.

All vices are connected with the seven deadly sins or their offspring. The lion of pride kills all the proud, the adder all the envious, and so with the others. The proud are the trumpeters of the devil, the wrathful man is the devil's knife-thrower, the slothful man sleeps in his bosom, the avaricious man is his fire-tender, and the glutton is his manciple. The lecher by his stink pleases the devil. The anchoress who believes that she will be strongly tempted during only the first year or so of her religious life is in error. In the early years resisting temptation is child's play. A wise husband tolerates unpleasing behavior in a new bride, but once sure of her love chastens her. So Jesus will deal with the anchoress. But at last he will give her joy, just as he gave rest to the children of Israel after long suffering in the wilderness.

Four degrees of temptation may be distinguished, according to whether they are strong or weak, open or concealed. Concealed temptations are especially insidious. Thus the devil can urge a woman on to such extremes of abstinence that her soul will die as the result of bodily suffering. Never trust the noonday devil, as David calls him.

Comforts or remedies are available in the struggle against temptation. For example, an anchoress should remember that she is a tower and that the higher the tower, the stronger the wind. She should bear in mind that the attack on a castle wall will cease only after the castle surrenders. Again, in allowing her to be tempted, God is playing with her just as a mother does with a child. Also, through her resistance the anchoress injures the devil a hundred times more than he can injure her. No one will be saved, says St. Paul, except by struggling against temptation.

Additional medicines include meditation, anguished prayer, reading, fasting, humility, and magnanimity. The anchoress should consider what she would do if suddenly confronted by the devil or if in a crowded church someone were to call fire! fire! Such thoughts combat temptation. Moreover, the devil is impaled by prayers flying heavenward just as he is scalded by the hot tears of contrition. An anchoress is a castle and should defend her walls with the moat of humility. With faith, she should laugh the old ape, the devil, to scorn.

The anchoress should consider how the seven deadly sins can be routed by faith. For example, it is not possible to think oneself great if one recalls how small God made Himself in a poor virgin's womb. It is not possible to be wrathful in the face of the threefold peace of God: peace between man and man, God and man, and man and angel. Unlike the foxes in Judges tied tail to tail, the faces of anchoresses should always be lovingly turned towards each other, for the devil is less able to harm those who are thus united. It is not possible to be slothful when one thinks how busy Christ was on earth.

The remedy for pride is humility; for envy, love of fellow-men; for wrath, patience; for sloth, reading, work, and spiritual comfort; for avarice, contempt for worldly things. The body is a foul vessel, food for worms. In the soul are sin and ignorance.

When an anchoress sees the dog of hell slinking toward her with his fleas of stinking thoughts, with crucifix in hand she should order him away and beat him on the back. Whenever she feels the growth of excessive love for worldly things, she should tread on the serpent's head, for much may come from little, from one spark may come a fire.

V. CONFESSION [FOLS. 135V-159V; DOBSON, PP. 219-57]

The anchoress should take heed of six powers and sixteen qualities of confession. Among its powers, confession destroys the devil's power by hacking off his head and dispersing his army, as is illustrated in the deed of Judith, meaning “confession,” who beheaded Holofernes, a fiend of hell. Again, after the death of Joshua, or “health,” in Judges, the Lord appointed Judah, or “confession,” as the new leader. Confession restores to us our loss by washing out our sins and making us again children of God.

As for its qualities, confession must be accusatory, bitter with sorrow, whole, naked, frequent, speedy, humble, shamefaced, fearful, and more. With respect to the first quality, the anchoress should not emulate Adam and Eve, who blamed the serpent for their transgression rather than themselves. St. Augustine says that man should ascend the tribunal of his own soul when he considers the Day of Judgment. Reason should be his judge, memory his accuser, and conscience a witness against him. Fear should come forth to bind him so that he might not repeat his sins. Reason should also order sorrow to afflict the heart with sore repentance. Further, bitter confession is a remedy for the seeming sweetness of sin. Confession must be whole, embracing all sins from early childhood. When a poor widow wants to clean her house, she sweeps all the dust into a heap and pushes it out of the house. She repeats the procedure to get all that is left. If her house is very dusty, she next sprinkles water on the smaller particles and sweeps them out. In this way a person should make confession, first pushing out the great sins, then the smaller. If light thoughts blow up like small dust one should sprinkle them with tears, lest they blind the eyes of the heart. A woman will say, “I have been foolish” or “I had a lover,” whereas she should confess, “I am a stud mare, a stinking whore.”

Six circumstances of a sin must be revealed: any other person involved, place, time, manner, frequency, and cause. Confession should be made often and should follow the act very promptly, for one should not sleep while deadly sin holds a sword over his head. A woman who has lost her needle or a cobbler his awl seeks the lost object at once, turning over every straw. The author lists nine considerations that should hasten confession, including the possibility of sudden death or debilitating illness. Delay is a bad habit. Lazarus stank after only four days in the tomb; how much more the sinful stink after four or five years without confession. Confession must also be humble, like the publican's rather than the Pharisee's. It should also be made in red-faced shame and in fear, yet with hope. Of two millstones, the lower, which bears the heavy load, signifies fear, but the upper stone signifies hope, for it turns and grinds out good works. Likewise, confession should be prudent, truthful, and voluntary; it should deal with one's own sins, be made with the intention of turning from sin, and be well considered.

The anchoresses are instructed to confess sins of pride, haughty heart, envy, wrath, sloth, idle words, gluttony, and excessive abstinence. Also they are to confess if they have said their hours badly. They are to atone at once for minor faults by falling before the altar in the form of a cross and saying mea culpa.

VI. PENANCE [FOLS. 159V-178V; DOBSON, PP. 257-81]

Three kinds of God's chosen are on earth: the first may be likened to good pilgrims, the second to the dead, and the third to those hanged voluntarily on the cross of Jesus. The first are good, the second better, and the third the best.

As St. Peter says, good pilgrims travel their course curbing their worldly appetites. The lives of the dead are hidden with Christ. The pilgrims experience troubles but the dead do not since they await resurrection with no concern. He who is on the cross, however, reaps joy and honor as the reward for his shame and torment. The true anchoress is not only a pilgrim and not only dead to the world; she is able to rejoice in having accepted a kind of martyrdom. Shame and torment, as St. Bernard says, are the two uprights of the ladder that reaches to heaven, and the rungs are the virtues by which men climb upwards. Likewise, shame and torment together form the wheels of Elijah's heaven-bound chariot of fire. Life on earth is warfare, as Job says, and we must suffer gladly, for through suffering we come to reign with Christ.

One asks, “What good do I do for God by my torments?” But, as St. Ailred wrote to his sister, one may attain purity only in two ways. One is through mortification of the body by fasting, vigils, discipline, and great labor. The other is through the virtues: devotion, compassion, love, humility, and such. No one can be chaste when pampered with wordly comforts. One should not be too ready to assuage bodily discomforts and illnesses with medicines. It is better to be a free child of God than a healthy thrall to sin. The three Marys brought ointments to Christ, signifying the bitterness of sin, of resisting temptation, and of longing for heaven while still in the world; Mary means “bitterness.” But the spices they applied to Christ's body illustrate how sweetness follows bitterness.

The author compares Christ to a recluse. Mary's womb and the stone sepulchre were his anchorholds. And just as Christ went out of his mother's womb and out of the sepulchre, leaving both intact, so the anchoress shall in death emerge from her two anchorholds, her body and her cell, leaving both intact.

The author explains that all he has said about mortification of the body is not intended for the anchoresses since they sometimes afflict themselves more than they should. Yet, just as young trees are encircled with thorns to protect them from beasts, so the anchoresses should guard their purity by undergoing voluntary hardships. They should endure cheerfully the scorn of Slurry the cook's boy.

VII. LOVE [FOLS. 178V-190V; DOBSON, PP. 281-300]

St. Paul bears witness that all physical hardships are as nothing compared with love, which cleanses and brightens the heart. All the bodily agony one can inflict on himself and all the alms he can give are of no avail without love of God and man. Above all things, the author urges the anchoresses to strive for a pure heart, that is, to love or desire nothing but God, and to love others and to esteem things such as food only for the sake of God. God deserves our love, for he gave us the world, and Christ loved the Church and sacrificed his life for it.

The author relates a story of a lady surrounded by foes in her earthen castle. Courted by a king who sent her precious gifts, she remained indifferent to him. At last he went forth to meet her enemies and was tormented and slain by them. The author asks whether the lady would not be evil if she failed to love him after this sacrifice. The king is Jesus and the lady is the human soul whose love was sought by Christ. He chose not to deliver the lady from her enemies by any means other than his own death in order to reveal the strength of his love.

There are four earthly loves: between friends, between man and woman, between mother and child, and between body and soul. But Christ's love for his spouse, the Church, surpasses all four. As urine, sand, and vinegar quench Greek fire, so sin, idleness, and a sour heart quench the love of the Lord. Whoever has a sour heart is a companion of the Jews and is offering vinegar to Christ. The anchoresses should stretch forth their love to Jesus.

VIII. THE OUTER LIFE⁴⁵ [FOLS. 191-198V; DOBSON, PP. 301-317]

The anchoresses should receive communion fifteen times a year on stipulated feast days. In preparation, they should be shriven and take discipline (but self-administered discipline only). They should go without their pittance.⁴⁶ If they cannot take communion on a stipulated day, they should take it on the following Sunday.

From Easter until the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September) they are to eat two meals daily except on Fridays, the Ember Days, and a few others. On those days and during Advent they should eat no white food, except when unavoidable. During the other half of the year, they should fast, Sundays excepted. Flesh and fat are only for the very weak and ill. The anchoresses should drink little but are allowed to eat as many vegetables as they wish. The author remarks that the anchoresses' abstinence from food and drink has sometimes seemed to him greater than desirable, and he tells them to fast on bread and water only when they have leave to do so.

They are forbidden to eat with guests in their anchorage, for an anchoress ought to be dead to the world. The author observes that he has often heard that the dead speak with the living but never that they eat with the living. He instructs the anchoresses to refrain from entertaining others, from encouraging strangers to visit, and from distributing others' alms too lavishly. They should play the quiet part of Mary rather than the part of Martha the housewife. Even rich anchoresses and those who till a garden should not become known as openhanded. They may, however, give meals to women and children who come to work for them, but must not, except in real necessity, permit any man to eat in their presence. They should accept what they need from good friends but shun the reputation of “gathering” anchoresses.

They may keep no animal save a cat, for an anchoress who keeps other animals, such as a cow, resembles Martha rather than Mary. They must avoid any business transaction, for the anchoress who engages in trade sells her soul to the merchant of hell. They should not keep other people's possessions in their anchorhold. They should allow no man to sleep there. They should wear plain, warm, well-made garments; whether of white or black is of no consequence. They must wear no linen, save of the coarsest kind, next to their flesh. They must sleep in belted gowns and refrain from donning anything made of iron, hair, or hedgehog skin. They should not beat themselves with a leaded whip or briars or draw blood in taking discipline, except with their confessor's special permission. They need not wear wimples, but in the presence of others should at least wear cap and veil. They are forbidden to wear rings, brooches, or gloves. They are permitted to sew church vestments and clothing for the destitute but not fancy purses to distribute as gifts. They must give nothing away and accept nothing without leave from their confessor. They must avoid idleness, for in idleness temptations are strong.

The anchoresses' maidens may offer instruction to small girls, but the anchoresses should devote themselves to God. They must have their hair cut to lighten their heads, and they may be bled from time to time. They are advised not to overtax their strength for three days after a bloodletting. If an anchoress does not have food ready at hand, she may have two women servants, one to stay always at home, one to go out as needed to purvey food. The servant who goes out should be plainly dressed and say prayers as she goes about. She should avoid gossip.

The anchoresses are to read this last section to their women each week until the women know it. The anchoresses themselves are to read in AR much or little every day. The author hopes that it will prove helpful through God's grace, and says that he would rather set out for Rome than undertake to write it again. He counsels the anchoresses to thank God, if they practice what they read; if not, to pray for God's help to follow it better. He prays that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost will guard the anchoresses, and concludes with a request that as often as they read from AR, they greet Our Lady with an Ave for the sake of him who labored over it.

The overall organization or mode of articulation of AR is apparent even in the above summary. The distinction between the inner and outer rules announced in the Introduction, for example, is respected with a fair degree of consistency throughout. The author tells us that the first and last parts are devoted to matters of the outer rule, the governance of the body and external life, whereas the six parts separating these two deal with the state of the soul.⁴⁷ Allowance must be made, of course, for an occasional overlapping of the two rules, as in the instructions for confession. The opening topic of the inner rule is fittingly enough the control of the five senses, or gateways to the soul, and it is followed in Part III by an exhortation to the anchoresses to mediate on the virtues of the solitary life. The two succeeding parts on temptation and confession seem to return to what may be called the parochial or popular level of discourse marking the discussion of the senses. This is especially true of the disproportionately lengthy, albeit fascinating, allegories of the sins in Part IV. In fact, Parts II, IV, and V may be read as forerunners of the great mass of doctrinal treatises of the later thirteenth and of the fourteenth century.⁴⁸ The suggestion has even been advanced that at least Parts IV and V originated as an earlier separate work on confession by the author of AR.⁴⁹ Part VI appears to be meant more directly for the anchoress, for the penance treated here is the mortification of the flesh as practiced by an ascetic rather than the normal satisfaction required of a penitent by his confessor. The final topic of the central section is an allegorized meditation on divine love, the keynote of which is St. Paul's doctrine of charity.⁵⁰

AR departs broadly from earlier rules, including St. Ailred's, which the author knew and quoted. One innovation is the inclusion of more or less popular discourses on the sins and confession mentioned above. A second major departure, the complex devotional instructions making up the whole of Part I, is discussed separately in the following pages. Beyond this, the author was a gifted writer whose work is a joy to read today, not simply because of the often elaborate allegorical embellishment, but also on account of the note of personal warmth he was able to inject. This tone is in strong contrast to St. Benedict's preoccupation throughout much of his rule with administrative matters, and to St. Ailred's aloofness in his epistle to his sister. Only Goscelin's letter to Ève conveys a somewhat comparable suggestion of a warm human relationship.

Such original features of AR may suggest a higher degree of independence of earlier rules and the traditions of religious life than in fact exists. Personal solicitude is certainly given a new prominence, yet one should not take the warnings against wearing a shirt of hair or hedgehog skin or lashing the back with a leaded whip too uncritically as a sentiment that bespeaks an especially enlightened, humane cleric. Set against these statements is the casual assumption at the beginning of Part VIII that the anchoress will as a matter of course take discipline at least on the fifteen occasions during the year when she prepares for communion. The anchoress, in fact, is merely advised against over-severe practices. It should be noted, moreover, that admonitions of this sort, although less warmly expressed, appear in earlier rules at least from the time of St. Benedict. Boasts of moderation and disclaimers of undue asceticism tend to occur, in fact, in the very midst of prescriptions for the most uncompromisingly rigorous aspects of religious life.⁵¹

THE ANCHORESS'S DEVOTIONS

A brief survey of earlier liturgical practices⁵² will indicate the extent to which the regimen of prayer prescribed in Part I of AR may be considered traditional.

All rules treat in some fashion the religious worship binding on those to whom they were addressed, in this respect harking back to the great charter of religious life in the West, the Rule of St. Benedict. Here, after comments about various types of “monks,” observations on the qualifications and paternal authority of the abbot, a list of the seventy-one instrumenta bonorum, and homilies on obedience, taciturnity, periods of complete silence, and humility, St. Benedict presents a detailed account of daily prayer. The dozen chapters devoted to this subject constitute the classical formulation of the hours, also referred to as the Divine Office or the monastic hours.⁵³ Along with attendance at mass⁵⁴ and private prayer, the keeping of the hours made up the monk's daily devotions, his opus Dei. St. Benedict regarded the opus Dei or opus divinum as the primary obligation of the monastic day, just as he thought of the monastery as a school of salvation.⁵⁵ Yet, as is well known, the monk's daily obligations were tripartite, since in addition he was required to participate in spiritual or theological reading—lectio divina—and manual work—opus manuum—whether in the fields or elsewhere.

With respect to the hours, St. Benedict systematized and otherwise improved upon the earlier diversity of usages. For he decreed that, during each twenty-four hours, his monks should assemble in choir seven times in the day and once at night, as suggested by the Psalter, “Seven times in the day I gave praise to you,” and, “In the middle of the night I rose to praise you” (Ps. 118:164, 62), for performing services consisting basically of psalms, lessons, prayers, hymns, and antiphons. The names given most of the individual hours were derived from the Roman division of the day, and thus they indicate roughly the time of their celebration.⁵⁶ The late afternoon office called vespers was commonly considered the beginning of the liturgical day, but here it is less confusing to list the services in the framework of the modern time scheme: (1) matins, also called vigils or nocturns, was said very early in the morning; (2) lauds, in conjunction with or soon after matins; (3) prime, near the first hour of daylight; (4) terce, two hours or so after prime; (5) sext, at about noon; (6) none, early afternoon; (7) vespers, late afternoon; and (8) compline, in the evening immediately before retiring.⁵⁷ It is also true that compline differed from the other hours, for in monastic communities the opening parts consisted of readings held normally in the chapter house, after which the monks entered the church for the completion of the office.⁵⁸

Even in the so-called primitive office of the Benedictine rule, the organization of the hours was complicated by several factors. For example, the differences in the periods of daylight and darkness between summer and winter required the devising of an abbreviated night office for summer. Thus, matins for weekdays in summer included only one lesson (selected passages from scripture, the acts of the saints, or the Fathers), whereas in winter three lessons were recited or chanted. Another problem was the distribution throughout the hours of the 150 psalms, to the end that the entire Psalter might be recited each week. Furthermore, the content and in some degree the form of the hours depended on the calendar, whether they were said on weekdays (feriae) or on Sundays or feast days.⁵⁹ The texts making up the office were for long distributed among several books, including the Psalter, antiphonary, hymnal, lectionary, responsorial, Gospels, and the book of homilies. In the eleventh century, however, we begin to find these elements collected in a single volume, the breviary. Because it was portable, the breviary could be used for private recitation by monks whose duties required their temporary absence from the cloister.⁶⁰

The formalization of daily prayer by the clergy in secular churches was a later development. A full office in emulation of monastic practice seems not to have become general much before the eleventh century, although precursors in the form of a requirement for the celebration of a partial cursus may be found in the proceedings of eighth-century councils. But with the appearance of canons regular in cathedral and collegiate churches,⁶¹ a “canonical” office came into use and was celebrated with chant and ceremony much like the monastic office. In content, canonical practice differed somewhat from St. Benedict's prescriptions, principally in the lectionary, or readings. Moreover, customs varied from one diocese to another. The Use of Sarum (Salisbury was one of the “secular” cathedrals) was very widespread in medieval England, but the Uses of York and Hereford were also well known.⁶²

Breviaries embodying the canonical offices came to be compiled at an early date, and it is clear that secular clergy, like the monks, were allowed to read their office in private and, when necessary, at times suited to their convenience, even though private recitation was generally regarded as an evil. All secular priests, and not merely those living in community as canons, came under the requirement, and they were to join in the celebration in a church whenever possible. With respect to the extension of the breviary obligation to clerics in minor orders, practice varied during the Middle Ages.⁶³ In modern times, the requirement came to be more precisely defined.⁶⁴

The addition of votive offices as a result of the growing popularity of the cult of saints enlarged the breviaries. Beginning in the ninth century, in fact, daily prayer, as performed in a number of influential monasteries, acquired accretions, and these tended to multiply and to be adopted more or less universally despite efforts of prelates and councils, especially in the thirteenth century, to limit them.⁶⁵ A plausible explanation for this trend is that the segregated monastic life fostered the concept of monks and nuns as a class apart, the raison d'être of which was constant intercessory prayer for patrons and, indeed, for all mankind. That is, monasteries were often esteemed not because they offered a means of achieving sanctification but rather because of their presumed value to society. As if in response to such a view, the monastic liturgy became increasingly elaborate and splendid. Following the lead of St. Benedict of Aniane (ca. 745-821), monasteries of the Cluniac congregation, especially in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, adopted extensive additions to the Mass and choir office. The additions to the Divine Office consisted of new observances including the reciting of the Seven Penitential and the Fifteen Gradual Psalms, and also the daily, or at least frequent, performance of new votive offices in honor of the Dead, of All Saints, of Our Lady, and the like. Because they arose as special devotions for morning and evening, the votive offices tended to include no more than matins, lauds, and vespers. The Lady Office is an exception in this respect. Choir duty, particularly in Cluniac houses, preempted a great part of the monk's time and energy, at the expense, of course, of his attention to reading, private prayer, meditation, and manual work. Inevitably, a reaction against the inflated liturgy and also the wealth and magnificence flaunted by many abbeys made itself felt in the formation of new orders dedicated to poverty and austerity. The Cistercians, for example, sought a return to the letter of the Benedictine rule and to this end simplified the liturgy, reinstated manual work, and renounced superfluous ornamentation in their churches. On their part, the austere Carthusians sharply curtailed the monk's choir service in order to free him for prayer and meditation in his cell.⁶⁶

That the elaboration of the monastic liturgy originating on the Continent soon affected English practice may be seen in the famous Regularis Concordia, considered on the authority of Aelfric to be the work (ca. 970) of Ethelwold, pupil of St. Dunstan. This treatise, evidently designed to normalize the observances of such abbeys as Glastonbury, Abingdon, and Ramsey, delineates in detail the conduct of the monastic day. The hours as set forth by St. Benedict are taken for granted, but great emphasis is placed on supplementary devotions, including the Penitential Psalms, the Litany, prayers for the king, queen, and benefactors, and the offices of the Dead and of All Saints. The accompanying ceremonial is spelled out, as is the procedure to be followed in chapter, and due attention is paid the summer and winter scheduling of the hours and the masses. Obedience to this elaborate horarium must have required the monk to spend at least five hours of each day in choir,⁶⁷ although the exigencies of conducting community affairs demanded that excuses be granted rather freely. The parish priest, as already indicated, could fulfill such sacerdotal obligations in a far shorter time, being permitted to read his office silently and at times convenient to him. If the vicar or rector of a parish, however, he might well have been expected to give a public performance of vespers on Saturday, matins on Sunday morning, and possibly vespers again Sunday evening.

That recluses were considered bound to their hours is made clear by the rules reviewed above. Grimlaic required the solitary to proceed to his oratory at the established times for this purpose.⁶⁸ Goscelin, according to Dom André Wilmart's summary, assumed that Ève said the office, for he advises her to dedicate all the hours, and especially sext and none, to the suffering of Christ.⁶⁹ St. Ailred's sister was to observe the hours secundum formam regule beati Benedicti;⁷⁰ and the much later Dublin rule specifies the celebration of the hours at their appointed time and further counsels the use of the Penitential Psalms, the Litany of the Saints, and the like.⁷¹ These rules were intended primarily for persons with monastic experience who could therefore be counted on for a full knowledge of the opus Dei. With audiences of this sort, the writers of rules were able to dispose rather briefly of the devotional aspect of the solitary life, central though it was.

In decided contrast, the author of AR, addressing himself to three young women who had never, so far as we can tell, lived as professed members of a nunnery or passed through a novitiate, felt obliged to devote the whole of one of his “distinctions”—and that the first in his rule—to rather close, elementary directions. Even prior to drawing up his rule, he had evidently been assured that each of his charges had at hand a copy of her own making of the Office of Our Lady, which he specified as the basic element of daily prayer. Beyond this, he felt the need to spell out in Part I the appropriate gestures and postures of worship as well as the many supplementary services to be performed daily. Scattered throughout his discourse are allusions in the form of one-line or even one-word incipits of many prayers, hymns, antiphons, and other formulas. These allusions and also the bare references by title to supplementary observances, such as the offices of the Dead and of the Holy Ghost, could have been intelligible to the anchoress only if, in addition to her copy of the Office of Our Lady, and, of course, of AR itself, she had access to other texts, which a book of hours could have provided.⁷² Is it possible that she was expected to have copied the whole of such a work rather than the text of the Lady Office alone?

To attempt the identification of a particular medieval “hours” as one close to the anchoress's exemplar, or to elaborate in technical detail on the liturgical tradition drawn upon by the devotions in AR, must be considered to lie beyond the scope of the present essay.⁷³ Nevertheless, one may say that the meager evidence provided by the liturgical cues in Part I suggests that the anchoress's Office of Our Lady did not differ radically from that preserved in two eleventh-century manuscripts edited by E. S. Dewick. Dewick believes that both his texts, which show general agreement with each other, were written for Benedictine nunneries, even though certain of the prescribed psalms reflect an influence other than Benedictine.⁷⁴

The stipulation that the anchoress was to recite not the monastic office, the normal obligation of the earlier recluses, but the Office of Our Lady calls for brief comment. First known in the tenth century, this office, or “little office,” as it was often called, was modeled on the Divine Office. That is, a service was provided for all the traditional hours, although matins contained no more than a single nocturn of three psalms and three lessons in place of the three nocturns of the Benedictine practice in winter. Also, the psalms of the other hours were invariable instead of changing with the day of the week. Some or all of the Hours of Our Lady are known to have been recited after the corresponding monastic hours in many religious houses, and its continuing popularity is attested by the fact that it became the nucleus of the books of hours.⁷⁵ Even before the thirteenth century, it was authorized for use by some communities of women.⁷⁶

Part I of AR provides first of all a lengthy set of devotional preparations that was to occupy the anchoress from the moment of awakening until she began her matins. The sign of the cross, the invocation to the Trinity, a hymn with its versicle and response, the meditation on the crucifix with prayers to the five wounds, and the veneration of relics either corresponded exactly to or were compatible with monastic practice at the beginning of the day, as indicated in notes to the text. The Pater Noster and Creed which the anchoress was to say as the immediate preface to matins were also recited by monks before each of the altars in their church before they entered their stalls in the early morning. Again, in emulation of monastic use, followed as well by seculars, these devotions were to be made in a kneeling position on weekdays and standing with bowed head on Sundays and festivals. In accordance with the pattern established by the Divine Office, the versicle “O Lord, open my lips” began the anchoress's matins, and the succeeding versicle “O Lord, come to my aid” began the other hours except for compline.

The anchoress was next directed to recite the full round of the Lady Office, each hour by itself and at its proper time. That is, the Office of Our Lady seems to have been the main staple of her daily prayer rather than an addendum to the monastic or canonical hours. She was to observe the standard monastic division of the liturgical year—that is, summer was defined for her as the period from Easter to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, 14 September, and winter from 14 September to Easter. Whereas two meals daily were authorized in summer and on Sundays throughout the year, only one was to be eaten in winter, again monastic custom.⁷⁷

The performance of each of the Hours of Our Lady was to be supplemented by the recitation of a number of other devotions, all of them taken from the expanded monastic choir service. These supplements range from short series of prayers or psalms, with associated formulas, to a “little office.” Parenthetically, it should be noted that the author expected the anchoress to listen to the canonical hours, some of which he evidently assumed would be recited by a priest in the church to which her anchorage was attached. She was not to recite or sing along with the priest loudly enough to be heard by him. Likewise, she was to observe the daily celebration of Mass at the high altar standing or kneeling by the “squint” in her cell and reciting quietly certain devotions during the elevation of the Host.⁷⁸ At the kiss of peace, she is told in a striking passage to allow her soul to pass out of her body in meditation on God's love. At midday, presumably after Mass, she was to venerate the cross, uttering a number of prayers, including five eloquent prayers to the Virgin in English.⁷⁹

For the rest, Part I provides prayers for special intentions, a few of them in English. For example, an extended English form of the Pater Noster is given for optional use. Part I closes with miscellaneous instructions and observations, some of them amounting to concessions to an anchoress who might be ill or who might lack the education necessary to read her office. This last provision is surprising in view of the impression we gain of the three original anchoresses, who were not only able to copy out the Office of Our Lady but were also, it seems, capable of reading English, French, and probably some Latin.

Even after making allowance for optional acts of worship, one must conclude that the anchoress's liturgical day was a crowded one. She could scarcely have begun her matins much later than 4:00 in the morning if she heeded her rule, which implies that her daily routine did not differ greatly from that followed by monks and colleges of secular clergy, such as the canons. An attempt to map out the anchoress's horarium as prescribed in AR is given below. On the basis of such texts of the medieval Office of Our Lady and of other devotions as are available, we can estimate that the anchoress spent not fewer than four hours daily in set prayers and acts of worship. In addition, she attended Mass, taking communion fifteen times annually, listened to the priest's recitation of one or more of the canonical hours, engaged in much private prayer and meditation, and read her rule, the Psalter, and other improving works. Little enough time was left over for instruction of her maidservant, needlework on church vestments, conferences with her spiritual director, and occasional confession.

The primacy of the opus Dei in religious life provides a basis for regarding every rule governing that life as first and foremost a prayerbook. This would be true even of rules offering relatively few devotional directives, whose authors could assume that their readers had had prior instruction in such matters. The author of AR, as has been suggested, could not make that assumption. Having written his rather full treatise on worship, he may have decided to give it first place in his book principally in order to impress on his anchoresses the fundamental obligation of the life they had chosen. This view prompts some reflections on the author's statement in his Introduction that both the first and last parts of AR belong to the outer rule. In the sense that Part I concerns overt acts of worship the statement is true. Yet the anchoress's devotions and her participation in the sacraments were surely understood to possess a transcendent value, a value sometimes expressed in the phrase ex opere operato.⁸⁰ In short, it was through her immersion in the liturgy, best sustained, to be sure, by governing her inner and outer life in obedience to her rule, that the anchoress might hope for the grace necessary for sanctification. The rule itself, then, both in its inner and outer aspects, could well be considered ancillary to the anchoress's primary obligation of worship and her ultimate spiritual goal.

THE ANCHORESS'S HORARIUM⁸¹

• 3-5 a.m.: Preliminary devotions and prayers
  • Matins and Lauds of Our Lady (recited seriatim)
  • Dirige (Matins and Lauds of the Office of the Dead)
  • Suffrages and Commendations
  • Litany of the Saints (daily except Sundays)
  • Lauds of the Holy Ghost (optional)
• 5-6: Listen to the priest's celebration of the canonical hours when possible
• 6-7: Prime of the Holy Ghost (optional)
  • Prime of Our Lady
• 7-8: Preciosa
• 8-9: Terce of the Holy Ghost (optional)
  • Terce of Our Lady
• 9-10: Prayers and supplications
  • Devotions before the cross
• 10-11: Devotions to Our Lady
  • The Seven Penitential Psalms
  • The Fifteen Gradual Psalms
• 11-12: Mass (communion fifteen times annually)
• 12-1 p.m.: Sext of the Holy Ghost (optional)
  • Sext of Our Lady
  • Meal (first meal in summer; only meal on weekdays in winter)
• 1-2: None of the Holy Ghost (optional)
  • None of Our Lady
• 2-3: Rest period
• 3-5: Private prayers and meditation
  • Reading in the Psalter, AR, and other edifying books in English and French
  • Instruction of maidservants
  • Work: plain needlework on church vestments or clothing for the poor
  • Vespers of the Holy Ghost (optional)
  • Vespers of Our Lady
  • Placebo (Vespers of the Office of the Dead, omitted before a feast of nine lessons)
  • Meal (second meal on Sundays; on weekdays in summer only)
• 5-7: Compline of the Holy Ghost (optional)
  • Compline of Our Lady
  • Bedtime prayers and devotions

Notes

1. Shepherd, ed., Ancrene Wisse, Parts Six and Seven, p. lx. In the present edition, the style Ancrene Riwle (AR) is chosen over Ancrene Wisse despite the claim of the latter to greater authenticity, deriving from its appearance as the title in one manuscript (C. C. C. C. 402). See Magoun; also E. J. Dobson, “The Date and Composition of Ancrene Wisse,” p. 181; Origins of AW, pp. 51-3. On the other hand, Ancrene Riwle is used as the title of each of the editions of the various texts issued by the Early English Text Society. Moreover, the word riwle, of much more frequent occurrence than wisse in the English forms of the work, is immediately recognizable to the modern reader. Ancrene is preferred to ancren because, as noted by Magoun, the inflectional -e, representing the genitive plural, is a feature of early Middle English.

2. There are exceptions. Barbara Raw identifies and provides excellent comments on a number of the incipits, in particular private prayers and devotions to the cross. Our indebtedness to her work is acknowledged in the appropriate notes to Part I. In her unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Sister Ethelred Cooper treats very competently the Latin material used throughout AR, including the liturgical incipits in Part I. She does not as a rule specify the common settings of the liturgical forms, as is done here, but we are indebted to her work for several suggestions, as our notes to Part I indicate, and we are grateful to her for permission to include these citations. Also unpublished, Glenys Magee's M.A. thesis concentrates on Part I of AR, but in liturgical matters it is largely derivative of Sister Ethelred's dissertation. In an appendix to the Salu translation of AR, Dom Gerard Sitwell provides a general discussion of the private devotions (Salu, pp. 193-96). In his inquiry into the date of composition of AR, Talbot provides valuable background on certain liturgical forms. See also Ackerman, “The Liturgical Day in Ancrene Riwle.”

3. Schofield (p. 403) calls the author “a truly lovable old man.”

4. Humphrey Wanley, in his portion of Hickes's Thesaurus, describes several of the AR manuscripts. He regarded the Middle English work, to which he refers as Ancrene Wisse, as a translation from the Latin of Simon of Ghent, bishop of Salisbury (1298-1315). See Hickes, 2: 149, 228, and 247. Sir Frederic Madden, Keeper of Manuscripts in the British Museum (1827-1866), states in his unpublished diary under the date 25 November 1835 that he was again reading “the rule for recluses or nuns” of the reign of Henry III in three manuscripts of the Cottonian Collection. He had earlier inspected the Latin version in Magdalen College, Oxford. Among the first scholars to comment on Morton's edition of 1853, Madden supported Morton's view that the language of the original rule was English and that the age of the manuscripts precluded authorship by Simon of Ghent. He further considered MS Cotton Cleopatra C. VI to provide the earliest copy. See his “‘The Ancren Riwle.’”

5. In his preface (p. xvii), Morton speaks of the English author's style as “plain, unambitious.” Some half century later, Schofield (p. 97), under the impression that the author was Richard Poore, compared the perfection of his prose style to the architectural perfection of Bishop Poore's Salisbury Cathedral. In The Cambridge History of English Literature (1: 255), AR is called “the greatest prose work of the time” and “one of the most interesting of the whole Middle English period.” R. W. Chambers, in “Recent Research,” p. 4, justified his interest in the work on the grounds that “the Rule is the greatest book of its class in either Anglo-Norman or English.”

6. Chambers, On the Continuity of English Prose, pp. xcvi-c. Grayson, Structure and Imagery. See further a number of unpublished dissertations, such as those of Hastings and Felperin.

7. Rejecting Wanley's belief in Simon of Ghent's authorship, Morton argued for an earlier bishop of Salisbury, Richard Poore. In 1916, Fr. Vincent McNabb, O.P., repeated a predecessor's contention that the Rule was the work of a Dominican friar. At about the same time, Hope Emily Allen sought to associate AR with three women to whom the hermitage of Kilburn was granted between 1127 and 1135. Though impressively set forth, this argument fails because it is founded on too early a date of composition. These and similar conjectures are reviewed in Chambers' “Recent Research” and the Introduction to Shepherd's edition of Parts VI and VII, pp. xxi-xxv. In a more recent study, The Origins of Ancrene Wisse, E. J. Dobson argues that the work was composed in Herefordshire at Wigmore, an Augustinian abbey of the Victorine congregation. He places the anchorhold of the original three sisters at Limebrook Priory, near Wigmore, and speculates that the author was their brother, Brian of Lingen, who reveals his name in a cryptogram.

8. See, for example, Grayson; Allen.

9. Charlotte D'Evelyn in Severs, p. 650.

10. In 1893, Bramlette sought to revive Wanley's notion of a Latin original, and two decades later Macaulay presented his evidence for positing a French original. In 1924, Dorothy Dymes published an argument for English as the first language, a position more recently refined and buttressed by Samuels and by Käsmann.

11. Dobson, “The Date and Composition,” pp. 181-93, and also Dobs., pp. ix-xi.

12. See Shepherd's Introduction, Ancrene Wisse, pp. xiv-xxi. The “AB dialect” is so called because it is the dialect of MS C. C. C. C. 402 (MS “A”) and MS Bodley 34 (MS “B”). Dobs., p. xviii.

13. Dobs., pp. xviii and xlvi-clxxiii.

14. Ed. Herbert. See Dobs., pp. x-xi, lvii-lxi.

15. “There can be little doubt that in the thirteenth century the Cleopatra MS was especially valued, and as its text is not especially good, owing to the deficiencies of the original scribe, it seems probable that it was esteemed because it was known to have been corrected by the author himself.” Dobs., p. xi.

16. Ed. Tolkien. See Dobson, “Date and Composition,” pp. 192 ff., esp. 206, and Dobs., pp. ix, cxvi ff., esp. cxxv.

17. Dobs., pp. xii, cxl-clxxii.

18. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. ancra, etc.

19. Middle English Dictionary, s.v. ancre, etc.

20. The Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. anchor, anchoret, anchorite, etc.

21. MacKean, pp. 76 ff.; O'Leary, pp. 22-31; Montalembert, 1:213ff.; and Waddell, pp. 4, passim. The biblically based symbolism of the wilderness is discussed by Williams, pp. 10-64. On the “hairy anchorite” and his relationship to the medieval “wild man” tradition, see Doob, pp. 160 ff. For a study of the early applications of the terms anchorite, monk, hermit, and the like, see Leclercq, pp. 1-28, 30, 98-100, etc.

22. Steele, p. 7; Darwin, pp. 15-16; Clay, pp. 128-45; MacKean, pp. 76-7.

23. Butler's Lives of the Saints, 1:19, 93, 140; 4:32; also O'Leary, pp. 22-31, and alphabetically, pp. 60-286.

24. Gougaud, Dévotions, pp. 175-94. See also Butler's Lives of the Saints, passim; New Catholic Encyclopedia, 4:895, s.v. Discipline, The.

25. Montalembert, 1:285 ff.

26. Benedicti Regula, pp. 17-19; Delatte, pp. 25-34.

27. Darwin, pp. 1-5; Clay, p. xvii.

28. Darwin, p. 5. Of relatively late date is the “Rule of Hermits of Cambridge,” ed. Oliger, pp. 299 ff. Gougaud in Ermites, p. 6, quotes an “officium induendi et benedicendi heremitam” from the pontifical of Edmond Lacy (d. 1455).

29. Gougaud, Ermites, esp. Chap. 2, “Ermites clercs, ermites laïques,” pp. 8 ff., and Chap. 6, “Vrais et faux ermites,” pp. 42 ff.

30. Steele, p. 7; Gougaud, Ermites, pp. 66, 70.

31. Ed. Holthausen, p. 73. Cited in the Middle English Dictionary, s.v. ancre. In the same passage of Vices and Virtues, we are told that the hermit should not undertake life in the wilderness until tested by the rule—that is, by life in the cloister.

32. Clay, pp. xix, 73 ff., and Darwin, p. 8.

33. Grimlaic, esp. Chaps. 9-17, 25, 34-9, 42.

34. Wilmart, “Ève et Goscelin,” pp. 42-83, esp. 69-75.

35. Ailred, De Institutis Inclusarum. See also Powicke, pp. xxxiii-lxviii, xcix-c.

36. Oliger, pp. 156-57.

37. Oliger, pp. 170-90. See esp. pp. 173, 175-80.

38. Clay, pp. 73-84, together with illustrations. Steele, pp. 217-51, is less satisfactory. See also Cook, pp. 205-06.

39. Clay, pp. 74-75. Clay provides further a tabulation of cells and of names of anchorites taken from historical records running from the seventh through the sixteenth century (Appendix C, pp. 203-63).

40. See, for example, Baugh, pp. 229-30. The standard survey of English writers of religious guides is Charlotte D'Evelyn's “Instructions for Religious,” Pt. VI of Severs, pp. 458-81.

41. Russell, p. 212, Table 9, note a.

42. An office Ad includendam anchoritam from Bishop Lacy's pontifical is given in Steele, pp. 252-55, and a similar office from the Use of Sarum appears in translation in Clay, pp. 193-98. An historiated capital depicting the enclosure of an anchorite is reproduced from a fourteenth-century manuscript in Wordsworth and Littlehales, opp. p. 223. Gougaud (Ermites, pp. 66-75) surveys various rites of enclosure.

43. Most of the indications as to the anchoress's cell are gleaned from Pt. I of AR, but a few additional details may be inferred from remarks in the later “distinctions,” especially Pt. VIII.

44. Liturgical references and ecclesiastical terms occurring in Pt. I are explained in notes to that portion of the text.

45. One folio containing the ending of Pt. VII and the opening of Pt. VIII is missing from the Cleopatra manuscript. The first sentence of this summary is taken from other texts.

46. On the custom of the pittance and the monastic diet, see Knowles, pp. 463-64.

47. Grayson treats the structural implications of this passage, pp. 8 ff.

48. For a brief survey of such doctrinal treatises, see Ackerman, “The Debate of the Body and the Soul,” esp. pp. 545-49.

49. See Gray, pp. 93 ff.

50. A statement in the Introduction seems to indicate that the author planned from the outset to include treatments of confession, penance, and charity as part of the inner rule (Fol. 6r).

51. Darwin, pp. 35-36.

52. The expressions “liturgical practices” and “liturgy” denote the worship officially organized by the Church, consisting primarily of the Mass and the Divine Office. Dix, pp. 1, 326-8.

53. “The monastic office was the first to have been organized on a complete and daily basis, with each member of the community personally obliged to take part. The basic texts are those of the Rule of St. Benedict.” Salmon, p. 5.

54. St. Benedict provided no specific directions concerning the Mass when writing his rule, even though it was always the chief element of the liturgy. In English abbeys, two masses intended for the whole communitty were celebrated daily, the chapter or “morrow” mass and the later conventual high mass. In addition, monks in priest's orders celebrated privately. Knowles, pp. 468-69.

55. Benedicti Regula, Prologue, pp. 8-9; Chaps. 16, 17, 18. Knowles, p. 5.

56. Benedicti Regula, Chap. 16. In The Leofric Missal, p. 58, appears an interesting horologium, schematically presented. By means of six circles, each consisting of four rings, the diagram indicates how the proper time of day for celebrating the hours terce, none, and sext throughout the year may be calculated by measuring the length of a man's shadow. The editor calls attention to a similar horologium in MS Cotton Titus D. XXVII, fol. 12v.

57. St. Benedict used the older names “vigils” for the office before dawn, and “matins” for modern “lauds” (Benedicti Regula, Chaps. 12, 13). Even by Benedict's time the final psalms of the latter office (Pss. 148, 149, and 150) had come to be known as “lauds” because of the occurrence in each of laudate or laudent, and the term was eventually extended to include the entire office. Ultimately the term “matins” displaced “vigils” for the early devotions. New Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. Matins, Lauds. (R. D.)

58. Tol., p. 173. Also, Knowles, pp. 448 ff. and New Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. Compline, for further discussion of monastic practice.

59. See Knowles, pp. 448 ff., and Tol., pp. 152 ff.

60. A history of English monastic breviaries is outlined in Tol. pp. 1-7; Salmon, p. 12. Also, Batiffol.

61. Beginning as early as the tenth century, the clergy staffing many of the cathedral churches, all of which clergy were at that time seculars, came to adopt a monastic rule until the cathedrals in ten of the seventeen dioceses of thirteenth-century England were served by monastic chapters. Knowles, p. 133. Similarly, large collegiate churches, such as Ripon and St. George's, Windsor, were staffed by a “college” of clergy. Moorman, p. 19.

62. On canonical practice, Salmon, pp.12-13. On the several Uses, Wordsworth and Littlehales, pp. 5-8 and passim; The Sarum Missal, p. v. The text of the Sarum canonical hours is given in Sar. B.

63. Salmon, pp. 1-27; on the imposition of the requirements on all secular priests, p. 9.

64. The Breviary obligation was made incumbent on all clerics in major orders, whether regulars or seculars, and also on simple monks, nuns, and “beneficiaries,” or those who, even if only in minor orders, derived their living from the Church. Codex Iuris Canonici, can. 135, 610. It must be remembered that in the earlier medieval monasteries relatively few monks were in priest's orders. The proportion of priests increased gradually. Probably by the tenth century in England most monks proceeded to orders. Delatte, p. 413. See also Knowles, pp. 19, 468 ff.

65. Knowles, pp. 29-30, 148, 539 ff.

66. Knowles, p. 378.

67. Reg. Con. See especially Dom Thomas Symons' Introduction, pp. xxxi-xliv, and Knowles, pp. 42-5.

68. Grimlaic, Chaps. 24, 35.

69. Wilmart, “Ève et Goscelin,” p. 72.

70. Ailred, Chap. 9.

71. Oliger, Chap. 18.

72. Horae or books of hours, which began to appear in the eleventh century, served a purpose somewhat analogous to that of the breviary for devout lay people. The core of the “hours” was the little Office of Our Lady, but in addition it commonly included a liturgical calendar, Gospel passages, the Seven Penitential Psalms, the Fifteen Gradual Psalms, the Litany of the Saints, the Office of the Dead, memoriae of the cross, and other special prayers. The Office of the Holy Ghost was of less frequent occurrence. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries magnificently illuminated “hours” were executed for royalty and great noblemen, but less elaborate books were produced in large numbers. The term “prymer” was applied especially to English translations, which were in use early in the fourteenth century. See Prymer, esp. the Introduction by Bishop, 109:lv ff.

73. Our purpose here is to outline the format of the devotions in AR and, in the notes to our edition of Pt. I, to direct the reader to medieval texts of the prayers, antiphons, hymns, and other forms indicated by the author of AR only by Latin incipits.

74. Facs., pp. ix-xix, esp. xvi-xvii.

75. See note 72 above.

76. Facs., pp. xi ff.

77. Knowles, pp. 448 ff. See also the summer and winter horaria in Reg. Con., pp. xliii-xliv. The fact that the anchoresses of AR are advised to listen whenever possible to the “priest's hours” suggests that they were not bound to the recitation of the Divine Office but only to the Office of Our Lady.

78. See Dom Gerard Sitwell in Salu, pp. xxi-xxii, 193-196.

79. Fols. 14v-16v. On the history of the veneration of the cross, see Wilmart, “L'Office du crucifix.”

80. The doctrine indicated by this expression, a variant of which is opus operatum, is that sacramental grace is conferred in the act of partaking of the sacraments. Jungmann, 1: 193, and New Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. Sacraments.

81. This hypothetical horarium should be compared with the monastic day as outlined by Knowles, “The Monastic Horarium.” The liturgical terms used here are explained in the notes to AR, Pt. I. Admittedly, even a thoughtful and devout recitation of the hours would occupy less time than the monastic office chanted in choir with accompanying ceremonial. Yet a reading of the full text of the anchoress's devotions will justify the estimate of the number of prayer hours given here.

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