Ancrene Wisse

The early thirteenth-century devotional guide Ancrene Wisse, or “Anchoresses’ Guide,” is a revision of an earlier work written to instruct three noblewomen enclosed as anchoresses in the West Midlands in their religious devotion; its readership had expanded to more than twenty anchoresses by the time of its revision. Its use of Middle English, uncommon as a medium for serious religious instruction in the thirteenth century, both attests to the state of language training among the laywomen who comprised the text’s intended audience, and reflects its composition within the West Midlands, a region with a strong tradition of English literary culture stretching back to the late Anglo-Saxon period. Ancrene Wisse gives modern readers a window into not only thirteenth-century English literary production, but also an unusual and striking form of medieval Christian devotion that held appeal for noblewomen seeking a pious life in the tradition of desert spirituality and asceticism.