BCD Special Report on
Historic Churches
19
th annual edition
43
A manuscript illumination of Percival and the Recluse from a 15th-century manuscript of the Romance of Saint
Graal, illustrating the esteem in which recluses were held in the late medieval period for their spiritual and
material guidance. (Image: Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS)
contemplation to impart spiritual and material
guidance to those that seek her wisdom, as
it is to hide, in grave-like seclusion, one who
functions as the living dead. The anchorhold
portrayed in anchoritic guidance writing is
thereby concurrently revealed, in ideological
terms, as a potential site of intellectual exchange,
spiritual progression and growth, and we see
that despite its idealised, relative isolation, it
is far from cut off from the outside world.
Recommended Reading
RM Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of
England, Methuen, London, 1914
R Gilchrist, Contemplation and Action:
The Other Monasticism, Leicester
University Press, London, 1995
R Hasenfratz (ed), Ancrene Wisse, Medieval
Institute Publications, Kalamazoo
,
Michigan, 2000
M Hughes-Edwards, Reading Medieval
Anchoritism, University of Wales Press,
Cardiff, 2012
EA Jones, ‘Christina of Markyate and the
Hermits and Anchorites of England’, in
Samuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser (eds),
Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-century
Holy Woman, Routledge, London, 2005
T Licence, ‘Evidence of recluses in eleventh-
century England’, in M Godden and S Keynes
(
eds), Anglo-Saxon England, 36, 2007
T Licence, Hermits and Recluses in English
Society: 950–1200, OUP, Oxford, 2011
AK Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in
Medieval England, University of California
Press, London, 1985
Mari Hughes-Edwards
PhD is Senior
Lecturer in English literature at Edge Hill University
and the author of
Reading Medieval Anchoritism
,
a study of medieval anchoritic ideology from
c1080 to c1500 (2012). A medievalist by doctoral
training, her published work now focuses equally
on contemporary British literature and she has
particular interests in contemporary poetry,
especially in the work of Carol Ann Duffy on
whom she is currently writing a British Academy-
funded book for Manchester University Press.
8
T Licence, 2011, p87
9
Gilchrist, pp189–90
10
Warren, p32
11
See Warren, p29. HT Turner, ‘Notes on
Compton Church, Surrey’, The Proceedings of the
Society of Antiquaries, 12 March 1908, 4–7 (5),
suggests the Norman origin of the two-storied
cell on the south side and argues that its doorway
is a 14th-century insertion.
12
Gilchrist, p187
13
See Clay, pp83, 214 (Clay records Chester-
le-Street’s named recluses from 1383
onwards). Warren notes that references to an
anchorite’s ‘houses’ are found in later medieval
documentation but multi-roomed structures
were exceptional, p32. See also Hasenfratz,
Ancrene Wisse, p9.
14
Warren, pp50, 78 and Clay, p144
15
Warren, p190
16
Warren, pp163, 204
17
William, Earl of Carysfort (ed), The Pageants of
Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, Roxburghe
Club, Oxford, 1908; J Rous, Rows Rol, Pickering,
London, 1845
18
EA Jones, ‘Anchoritic aspects of Julian
of Norwich’, in L Herbert McAvoy (ed),
A Companion to Julian of Norwich, DS Brewer,
Cambridge, 2008, pp80–1, 82
19
We know that Christine fled her cell, but do
not know for certain that she was re-enclosed,
although the last letter that documents her
case (dated November 1332) gives this or
excommunication as her only options. See the
episcopal register of John Stratford, Hampshire,
Record Office, MS 21M65/A1/5, f46v and f76r.
20
Warren, pp182–3
21
Warren, pp77–8
22
See H Mayr-Harting, ‘Functions of a twelfth-
century recluse’, History: The Journal of the
Historical Association, 60 (1975), p337, which
reveals Wulfric as potential conciliator, healer
and scribe.
23
Licence, 2011,
pp171, 163
24
Warren, appendix 2, pp294–8
Notes
1
An extended discussion of some of the material
cited in this article can be found in Mari
Hughes-Edwards, Reading Medieval Anchoritism
(
see Recommended Reading).
2
HG Liddell and R Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon,
C
larendon Press, Oxford, 1843, vol 1, p257
3
See Warren p19 and Clay’s tabulated lists of
cells p203–63. Jones problematises Clay’s
classification of solitaries by site and county,
proposing instead classification by individual
(
pp232, 235).
4
Gilchrist, p183
5
For Jones’ findings to date, see his website
Hermits and Anchorites of England,
hermits.ex.ac.uk; his ‘Christina of Markyate’,
p240–50; his ‘The hermits and anchorites of
Oxfordshire’, Oxoniensia, 63 (1998), 51–77 and his
‘
Rotha Clay’s Hermits and Anchorites of England’,
Monastic Research Bulletin, 3 (1997), 46–8.
6
Warren, p18
7
See T Licence, ‘Evidence of recluses in eleventh-
century England’, 2007
