The rhetoric of spirituality in Ancrene Wisse

Abstract

This thesis looks at Ancrene Wisse, a guide written for anchoresses in the first half of the thirteenth century, not as a work exclusively for anchoresses but within the context of lay piety and vernacular spirituality.  It explores the spirituality of Ancrene Wisse placing it within a movement of democratisation of a previously monastic spirituality and seeing this work as a forerunner of the fourteenth century English works characterised by Watson as ‘vernacular theology’.  More specifically, this thesis explores the rhetoric of Ancrene Wisse - that is, how the spirituality is expressed, examining the influences of contemporary pastoral rhetoric and the use of rhetorical techniques.  Ancrene Wisse was written shortly after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, at a time of concern about pastoral care which is evident in the proliferation of pastoral literature.  Much of this pastoralia - artes praedicandi, summae on confession, treatises on the Vices and Virtues - was written in Latin but we find some of the earliest vernacular adaptions of this material in Ancrene Wisse.  Comparisons are made with sermons and, in particular, sermons preached to beguines.  The anchoritism described in Ancrene Wisse has been compared with the institutions of beguines, but no comparison has previously been made between the literature written for these two groups of quasi-regular religious women.  While acknowledging the influence of monastic and patristic literature on the composition of Ancrene Wisse, this thesis is original in its systematic exploration of the influence of the rhetoric found in the literature of pastoral care on Ancrene Wisse.

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