Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works (Classics of Western Spirituality)

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Resource for Lay Readership
Review: This version of an often translated and annotated text contains a great deal of material for those to whom medieval spiritual literature is either a leisure pastime or a new intellectual indulgence. The prose -- even in modern translation -- is lovely and meticulous. The construction of this spiritual ediface is often breathtaking, even for those who don't share in the author's transcendent vision of temptation and redemption. Written around 1230 in the West Midlands of England for a group of three anchoritic sisters -- women who were walled up along the outside of a church for the sake of contemplation and a closer spiritual life with Christ -- this text contains not only the Ancrene Wisse, but those shorter and often overlooked documents that accompanied the Wisse in several of its incarnations. The editors of this version were meticulous in summarizing the most recent scholarship on the origins of this text -- they agree with Dobson that the anonymous author was likely not a Dominican but an Augustinian Canon -- and concisely summarize each piece for readers who might otherwise have difficulty reading the prose.

Not for those more advanced researchers in Middle English scholarship, but otherwise a wonderfully readable and comprehensible text for those seeking material on medieval women's spirituality.