[1]  For exact numbers of anchoresses in England at various times, including their names, locations, and tenure of individuals in the anchorholds, see Rotha Mary Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1914), Appendix C, 203-263.

 

[1] Penelope D. Johnson, “Mulier et Monialis: The Medieval Nun’s Self-Image,” Thought 64: 254 (September 1989), 243.

 

[1] Lina Eckenstein, Women Under Monasticism (New York: Russell and Russell, Inc., 1963), 68.  Eckenstein mistakenly identifies recluses as nuns; not all were.  Anchoresses came from all walks of life, and many were laywomen. See Ann Warren, Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 25.

 

[1]  Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson, eds., Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 101.

 

[1] Sharon K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth Century England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 20.

 

[1] Elizabeth Alvida Petroff, Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature (New York: Oxford UP, 1986), 302.  Of Kempe, Petroff writes, “The extent of Margery’s martyrdom can be measured by the number of times she reports being told to shut up.” Ibid.

 

[1] Nicholas Watson, “The Methods and Objectives of Thirteenth-Century Anchoritic Devotion,” in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987), 135-136.

 

[1] Warren, 19-20. Warren includes a table comparing the numbers of male and female anchorites in England over a period of five centuries.  At the close of the twelfth century, there were 48 women and 30 men.  By the end of the thirteenth century, there were 123 women, compared to only 27 men.  See p. 20-21.

 

[1] Christine Fell, Women in Anglo-Saxon England and the Impact of 1066 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984), 57-58, 61, 66, 149-151, 154, 163-164.  See also Marc A. Meyer, “Land Charters and the Legal Position of Anglo-Saxon Women,” in Barbara Kanner, ed., The Women of England (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979), 63-64,  Kathleen Casey, “Women in Norman and Plantagenet England,” in Kanner, 83, 98-99, Ruth Kittel, “Women and the Law in Medieval England, 1066-1485,” in Kanner, 129-131, Elizabeth Robertson, Early English Devotional Prose and the Female Audience (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 13-30, Doris Mary Stenton, The English Woman in History (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1957), 23, 26, 29-30.  Stenton sums up in her “Epilogue”:  “The evidence which has survived from Anglo-Saxon England indicates that women were then more nearly the equal companions of their husbands and brothers than at any other period before the modern age. . .  . this rough and ready partnership was ended by the Norman Conquest,“ 348.   See also Frederick Pollock and Frederick W. Maitland, The History of English Law, vol. 2 (London: Cambridge UP, 1911), 364-369. 

 

[1] Fell,  149-151.

 

[1] Casey, 102-104.

 

[1] Robertson,  18-19.  See also Fell, 149.

 

[1] Elkins, 1.  Elkins explains that the Normans founded a number of monastic communities after their arrival, and by the mid-twelfth century, women had many more options.  She states, “By 1200, the religious houses of England could accommodate more than three thousand women . . . After 1200, the expansion ended as abruptly as it had begun.” Intro., xiv.  Elkins does not comment on the chronological  juxtaposition of the end of female monastic expansion with the signing of  Magna Carta in 1215, which significantly improved the legal rights of married women and widows, but it seems likely that the two events were at least indirectly related.

 

[1] Robertson,  15.

 

[1]  Elkins, Intro., i. After the Conquest, the endowment of a nunnery became a popular way for a landed family to provide security for an unmarried daughter. See Sally Thompson, Women Religious: The Founding of English Nunneries After the Norman Conquest (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 177-181.

 

[1] Elizabeth Alvida Petroff, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (New York: Oxford UP, 1994), 68.  Petroff provides an interesting account of the development of the Poor Clares, the women’s group founded by Clare of Assisi.  Clare was not pleased that women followers of Francis were not permitted to live as mendicants, but she eventually agreed to enclosure.  See Petroff, 66-79.

 

[1] Elkins, Intro., xix-xx.

 

[1] Elkins, Intro., xx.

 

[1] The demanding life of the monastery impacted men as much as women, but men had other options.  Among numerous other choices, men of a contemplative bent  could still be wandering hermits or pursue a mendicant lifestyle.  For women it was marriage or the convent, and either choice entailed sacrifice.

 

[1] Clay, Intro., vi-vii.

 

[1] Feminist theorists and historians have written at length on the male use of violence or the threat of violence as a way of controlling women.  While life in the twelfth century posed dangers for men as well as women, the fear of rape served to sharply curtail women’s freedom, much as it does today, and probably presented an especially horrible possibility for women vowed to chastity.  It would be difficult (although not impossible) to argue that there was some sinister male intent behind that circumstance, but the net effect was the same: control of women’s movement.  See Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), 11-112.  For a thought-provoking  and more recent discussion of male control of women through sexual violence, see Robin Morgan, The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality  of Terrorism (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1989). 

 

[1] Clay,  90-92.

 

[1]  Warren, 73-74, 127-128.

 

[1]  Ibid., 94,96. See Appendix A, which contains the complete text of the Servitium Includendorum  (The Office for the Enclosing of Anchorites) from the York Manual, 193-198. See also Francis D. S. Darwin, The English Mediaeval Recluse (Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions. 1974), 71-78. The giving of Extreme Unction to the anchoress upon her enclosure probably had a practical purpose as well as a symbolic one.  If the isolated recluse, alone in her cell, were to sicken and die, it was possible that no one would be available to give her the Last Rites on her deathbed. 

 

[1]  Ibid., 96.

 

[1]  Savage and Watson, Ancrene Wisse, 66-67.

 

[1]  Elkins, 46-47.   It is interesting that twenty-five new monasteries for women were established during the chaotic reign of Stephen, primarily as a result of financial support from the laity.  Elkins observes, “Since . . . this expansion was during the years of King Stephen’s reign, in what is sometimes called a period of anarchy, the political situation may have had a role in the increased participation of lay people.  Certainly, the lack of strong royal control permitted women and men to experiment and to devise new institutional forms. “ 61.

 

[1] Thompson,  16, 161.

 

[1]  Clay, 79.

 

[1] Warren, 26.

 

[1] Ibid., 47.

 

[1] Ibid., 50.

 

[1] Darwin, 21.

 

[1] See Savage and Watson,  Anchoritic Spirituality, also Aelred of Rievaulx, “A Rule of Life for a Recluse,” in Treatises: The Pastoral Prayer, The Works of Aelred of Rievaulx, vol. I (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1971), Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, John P.H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward, trans. (New York:  Paulist Press, 1991), Richard Rolle, “The Form of Living,” in The English Writings, Rosamund Allen, trans. (New York: Paulist Press, 1988).

 

[1] The  works which make up the Katherine Group are Ancrene Wisse, Vitae of Saints Katherine, Margaret, and Juliana, Hali Meiphad  ( Holy Maidenhood),  Sawles Ward  (The Soul's Keeping), and The Wooing of Our Lord.  All of these texts were apparently written for the edification of anchoresses.  See Savage and Watson, Introduction, 1-15, for a discussion of these manuscripts.

 

[1] E. J. Dobson, The Origins of Ancrene Wisse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), Bella Millett, “The Origins of Ancrene Wisse: New Answers, New Questions,” Medium Aevum 61:2 (Fall 1992), 208. 

 

[1] Aelred of Rievaulx, 43-102.  Aelred got many of his ideas from the Benedictine Rule and from Bernard of Clairvaux.

 

[1] Savage and Watson, Ancrene Wisse, 149.

 

[1] Robertson,  47-50,  Sarah Beckwith, “Passionate Regulation: Enclosure, Ascesis, and the Feminist Imaginary,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 93:4 (Fall 1994), 813-815, Anne Clark Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in Middle English Devotional Literature (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995), 27-30.  The misogyny of medieval clerics is one of the main themes of these works.  Beckwith and Clark both attempt a Foucauldian interpretation of the medieval notion of “self” as represented in Ancrene Wisse  However, it is difficult to reconcile postmodern  notions of the “protean self” with the medieval idea of unification and annihilation of self as presented in Ancrene Wisse and other medieval texts.  See Beckwith, 814, Clark, 32. 

 

[1] Savage and Watson, 199.

 

[1] Ibid, 99-101.  Many of these characterizations appear to have come directly from the pages of medieval bestiaries.  The pelican is representative:  “The pelican is excessively devoted to its children.  But when they have been born and begin to grow up, they flap their parents in the face with their wings, and the parents, striking back, kill them.  Three days after ward the mother pierces her breast, opens her side, and lays herself across her young, pouring out her blood over the dead bodies.  This brings them to life again.” T.H. White, The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1960), 132.  See also the discussion of animal symbolism in other sources, Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins (Detroit: Michigan State College Press, 1952), 124-201.  Bloomfield discusses Ancrene Wisse, and notes that several other texts  “borrowed” from AW in their animal identifications of the seven cardinal sins. 148-151.

 

[1] Lucinda Rumsey, “The Scorpion of Lechery and Ancrene Wisse,” Medium Aevum 60:2 (April 1990), 48-58.

 

[1] Savage and Watson, 123-124.  For the bestiary description of each animal listed, see White, 7, 186-190, 21-21, 45-47, 53-54, 76, and 192, respectively.

 

[1] Ibid., 69.

 

[1] Ibid., 109.

 

[1] Robertson, 9, 74.

 

[1] Clifton Wolters, trans., The Cloud of Unknowing (London: Penguin Books, 1978), 109, 140.

 

[1] Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 189.

 

[1] Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love (London: Penguin Books, 1971), 136. 

 

[1] Savage and Watson, 69.

 

[1] Ibid., 73.

 

[1] Robertson, 73-74.

 

[1] Anne Clark Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in Middle English Devotional Literature (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995), 69.  Bartlett is quoting from MS Corpus Christi College 402, The Ancrene Riwle, trans. M.B. Salu (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1955), 180. 

 

[1] Bartlett, 69.

 

[1] Darwin, 82,  Beckwith,  813.

 

[1]  Turid Karlsen Sein, “Ascetic Autonomy: New Perspectives on Single Women in the Early Church,” Studia Theologica 43 (1989), 125-140, Virginia Burns, “Word and Flesh: The Bodies and Sexuality of Ascetic Women in Christian Antiquity,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10 (1994), 27-51

 

[1] Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 253.

 

[1] Ibid., 246.

 

[1] Ibid., 263.

 

[1] For a more in-depth treatment of gender-specific differences in views of sexual abstinence, see Joyce Salisbury, Church Fathers, Independent Virgins (New York: Verso, 1991) 115-125,  Jo Ann McNamara, A New Song: Celibate Women in the First Three Christian Centuries (New York: The Haworth Press, 1983), 112-119.

 

[1] Robertson, 74.

 

[1] Saint Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict (Cooper Square Publishers, 1966), Cardinal Gasquet, trans., 25-27.

 

[1] Ambrose G. Wathen, Silence: The Meaning of Silence in the Rule of St. Benedict (Washington, DC: Cistercian Publications, 1973), 29.  Wathen provides a fascinating discussion of the significance of silence for Benedictines.

 

[1] Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982), 43-45.

 

[1] Johnson, 245. 

 

[1] Bynum, Holy Feast, 114, 246, 256.

 

[1] C. H. Talbot, trans., The Life of Christina of Markyate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959),                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          103-105.  See also “Christina of Markyate, Of S. Theodora, a Virgin, Who is Also Called Christina,” C.H. Talbot, trans., in Elizabeth Alvida Petroff, ed.,  Medieval Women's Visionary Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.)148-149. 

 

[1] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Clifton Wolters, trans. (London: Penguin Books: 1966), 63-64.

 

[1] Savage and Watson, 115-116.

 

[1] Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 113-124.  Bynum quotes from Anselm, Bernard, Aelred, and several others, including Julian.

 

[1] Ibid., 168. 

 

[1] Ibid., 151.

 

[1] Savage and Watson, 132.

 

[1] Ibid., 86.

 

[1] Linda Georgianna, The Solitary Self: Individuality in the Ancrene Wisse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1981), 65-71.

 

[1] Robertson, 74.

 

[1] Hali Meidenhad, in Savage and Watson, 234-237.