Introduction

Summary

This volume has two aims: to explore the origins, context and content of the anchoritic and mystical texts produced in England during the Middle Ages, and to examine the ways in which these texts may be studied and taught today. It is a volume that foregrounds issues of context and interaction, seeking both to position medieval spiritual writings against a surprisingly wide range of contemporary contexts and also to face the challenge of making these texts accessible to a wider readership. The volume provides new scholarly and critical essays, incorporating historical, literary and theological perspectives, which are designed to inform both research and teaching.

The first four essays, comprising Part I of the book, offer background information necessary for contextualising anchoritic and mystic texts. Jones and Dyas set anchoritic writings in the context of the historical and theological development of the eremitic tradition. Jones outlines the history and practice of medieval English hermits and anchorites, and examines the way in which the anchoritic tradition intersects strikingly with the Middle English mystics; literature produced for an anchoritic milieu in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, including Aelred's De Institutione Inclusarum and Ancrene Wisse, was readily adapted for new religious purposes in the fourteenth and fifteenth. Dyas examines the biblical and historical origins of the wilderness motif, which crucially, and occasionally paradoxically, interacted with shifting contemporary preoccupations and thus informed and shaped the theory and practice of the anchoritic life in England.

Edden charts the spread of monastic devotional practices to the laity, which nurtured a thirst for private prayer and meditation, and surveys individual and corporate manifestations of this lay spirituality, which fuelled the demand for devotional and mystic texts and created a milieu in which some felt themselves compelled to embark on the contemplative life. Bhattacharji traces the origins, development, practice and meaning of ‘contemplation’, a concept frequently taken for granted, yet, as she demonstrates, rewarding closer examination.

The second part of the book comprises essays that offer new scholarly and critical approaches to five central figures of the medieval English mystical tradition: Rolle, Hilton, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe.