No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Purgative Way in the Ancren Riwle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
Extract
Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
Since the Ancren Riwle was written for realuses of a solitary and strict type we might suppose it to contain either the bare bones of a very strict rule of life—horary, penances and prayers—or the highest form of spiritual teaching designed for the well-nigh perfect. When we remember that Mother Julian was an anchoress at Norwich we may expect to find a rule, designed for such as her, to contain deep mystical doctrine. It is probably for reasons of this nature that so few people open this straightforward and normal book of sound spiritual advice. In effect the Riwle is an ascetical work designed to instruct beginners in their first retirement from the world. Although he is evidently writing for contemplatives, the author scarcely mentions ‘mental prayer’ or its equivalent and passes in silence all mystical experience. Indeed he expressly states that he is writing for those who belong to the ‘Order of St James’, by which he does not mean, as some have supposed, a special religious order of that name.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 1947 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Introduction page 8. NOTE: All references are here given to the modernised version: The Nun’s Rule, being the Ancren Riwle modernised by James Morton Medieval Library Vol. XVIII; London, Chatto & Windus, 1926.
2 But the author omits Poverty from the vows he discusses in the Introduction, p. 5.
3 The Continuity of English Prose, by Professor Chambers (O.U. Press).
4 Cf. Note at the conclusion of the present article.
5 Miss Hope Emily Allen has refuted the theory of Dominican authorship, cf.: Vincent McNabb, O.P., ‘The Authorship of the Ancren Riwle’ in The Modern Language Review IX, 1; January 1916. Hope Emily Allen, “The Origin of the Ancren Riwle’, The Modern Language Assn. of America, XXXIII, 3, 1918.
6 These three have sometimes been identified with Emma, Gunilda, and Christina, maids-in-waiting to Queen Maud, daughter of St Margaret of Scotland, who had started a hermitage at Kilburn in 1135.
7 Continuity of English Prose, pp. xcvii. sqq.
8 Quoted by Chambers, op. cit. xcvi.
9 cf. Beryl Smalley, Study of the Bible in the, Middle Ages.
You have
Access