Studies on English anchoritism

Medieval English anchoritism is currently paradigmatic in the field of Anglophone anchoritic scholarship. Whilst this volume seeks to qualify its critical supremacy through direct comparison of the anchoritism of England with that of wider medieval Europe, it does not seek to do so at the expense of English expressions of the vocation. Knowing more about wider European anchoritism can only serve to strengthen current understandings of English anchoritic culture. Accordingly, this chapter reinforces the very real importance of English anchoritic spirituality and acknowledges its continued significance in the context of the study of medieval spirituality as a whole. It offers an overview of the history, expression and popularity of anchoritism in England, detailing the local, social and ecclesiastical attitudes which helped sustain it. It defines English anchoritism in the context of eremitism and problematizes the terminology of solitude. It concludes with a case-study of the fourteenth-century female contemplative anchorite Julian of Norwich, a recluse intimately connected with the literary and spiritual worlds of her day, whose contemplative treatise,A Revelation of Love, has had an important impact on our perceptions of anchoritic spirituality.

Any contemporary exploration of English anchoritism owes a considerable debt to the century of English anchoritic scholarship that has preceded it. As McAvoy points out in her introduction to this volume, three survey works on English anchoritism have been produced since 1900: Rotha Mary Clay's The Hermits and Anchorites of England (1914), Francis Darwin's The English Mediaeval Recluse (1944) and Ann K. Warren's Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval England (1985). Clay's comprehensive and exhaustive work in particular has paved the way for every subsequent study of English anchoritism, especially for Warren's, which relies, in part, on Clay's data. Since every post-Warren study of anchoritism has, to a greater or lesser extent, relied on her work, and through that work on Clay, it is to Clay ultimately that the scholarship of English anchoritism continues to return. In this context, it is impossible to overstate her importance in the field. Her exploration of the vocation is founded on readings of wills, ecclesiastical and court documents, ceremonies of enclosure and the Victoria County Histories, although these were only in their early stages of production at the time.