Wildernesse is anlich lif of ancre wununge … Bi þis wildernesse wende ure lauerdes folc, as Exode teleð, toward te eadi lond of Ierusalem … Ant Ʒe, mine leoue sustren, wendeð bi þe ilke wei toward te hehe Ierusalem … Gað þah ful warliche, for i þis wildernesse beoð uuele beastes moni: liun of prude, neddre of attri onde, vnicorne of wreaððe, beore of dead slawðe, vox of Ʒisceunge, suhe of Ʒiuernesse, scorpiun wið þe teil of stinginde leccherie. (Ancrene Wisse Part 4)

(The wilderness is the solitary life of the anchoress’ dwelling … Through this wilderness our Lord's people went, as the book of Exodus tells, toward the blessed land of Jerusalem … And you, my dear sisters, go by the same way toward the high Jerusalem … But go very warily, for in this wilderness are many harmful beasts: the lion of pride; the serpent of poisonous envy; the unicorn of anger; the bear of deadly sloth; the fox of covetousness; the sow of gluttony; the scorpion with the tail of stinging lechery.)

Introduction

In her survey of anchorites and their patrons in medieval England, Ann Warren asserts that medieval anchorites, even when enclosed alongside parish churches, were regarded as having ‘escaped into the wilderness, [their] life a symbol of the desert ideal’. And, as the epigraph to this essay demonstrates, the author of the Ancrene Wisse does indeed equate the wilderness with the solitary life of the anchoress’ dwelling: ‘Wildernesse is anlich lif of ancre wununge.’ This seems to offer a straightforward enough formula: wilderness equals anchoritic life. There is, however, nothing simple or fixed about either element in this equation. The wilderness in Judaeo-Christian thought is an immensely rich, complex, and constantly shifting image. It is interpreted and reinterpreted within the Bible and subsequently by the Christian Church, interacting with the spirituality of successive generations to produce subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, nuanced differences in the focus of the anchoritic calling. Medieval anchoritic spirituality in its turn looks back not only to the Bible but to those earlier interpretations, its emphases and variations the product of a three-way interaction between the biblical motif of the wilderness, the models provided by the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and the contemporary spiritual context from which medieval anchorites and their instructors came.