The Secret Within

Hermits, Recluses, and Spiritual Outsiders in Medieval England

Wolfgang Riehle, Charity Scott-Stokes

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780801451096
• eBook ISBN: 9780801470929
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

Spiritual seekers throughout history have sought illumination through solitary contemplation. In the Christian tradition, medieval England stands out for its remarkable array of hermits, recluses, and spiritual outsiders—from Cuthbert, Godric of Fichale, and Christina of Markyate to Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe. In The Secret Within, Wolfgang Riehle offers the first comprehensive history of English medieval mysticism in decades—one that will appeal to anyone fascinated by mysticism as a phenomenon of religious life.

In considering the origins and evolution of the English mystical tradition, Riehle begins in the twelfth century with the revival of eremitical mysticism and the early growth of the Cistercian Order in the British Isles. He then focuses in depth on the great mystics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—Richard Rolle (the first great English mystic), the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton, Margery Kempe, and Julian of Norwich. Riehle carefully grounds his narrative in the broader spiritual landscape of the Middle Ages, pointing out both prior influences dating back to Late Antiquity and corresponding developments in mysticism and theology on the Continent. He discusses the problem of possible differences between male and female spirituality and the movement of popularizing mysticism in the late Middle Ages. Filled with fresh insights, The Secret Within will be welcomed especially by teachers and students of medieval literature as well as by those engaged in historical, theological, philosophical, cultural, even anthropological and comparative studies of mysticism.

CHAPTER 1

The Development of Eremitical
Mysticism in the British Isles

The beginnings of vernacular mysticism in England, as on the Continent, can be traced back to the decisive transformations in theology, intellectual history, and the history of mentalities that have long been associated with the “twelfth-century Renaissance.”1 During this period, which can actually be said to begin around 1050, historians have noted an emerging interest in the question of what constitutes human individuality.2 Yet how can a new understanding of human identity be grasped and described centuries after the fact? Can one speak of isolated individuals “emerging” from community bonds, insisting on self-determination and on being their own person independent of external support?

Rather than dwelling in extenso on this much discussed problem, we need only mention the name of Abelard to illustrate the point. The case of Peter Abelard (1079–1142), the brilliant scholastic philosopher and theologian whose affair with his student Heloise ended tragically, shows how the theme of love as the great existential human experience gained unprecedented explosive force in the twelfth century. Of course, we shouldn’t forget that writers and artists in Greco-Roman antiquity had already explored the ennobling power of love, even if only from man to man, with or without the inclusion of Eros. Yet in the twelfth century we see something genuinely new: women being idealized as the goal of erotic passion, a development that soon would have the effect of depriving ennobling love of innocence.3 Indeed, it is impossible to speak of the obsession with love during the twelfth century without noting that, for the first time, women dared to articulate and satisfy their emotional and spiritual needs, as the example of Heloise most aptly demonstrates. In the unconditional yet passionate love between Abelard and Heloise we see a new expression of human experience: passionate love in feminine form.4 Texts of literary fiction, especially courtly lyric and romance, turned to this theme on a grand scale, even if giving shape to this new experience of fin’amor (fine love) frequently led to sublimation and renunciation of ultimate fulfillment of desire; the beloved was close in thought, but unattainably distant nonetheless. Even if there is still scholarly disagreement as to the exact origins of courtly lyric, the parallels between the cult of the lady and the cult of Mary are fascinating indeed, and out of Marian devotion came a whole retinue of female saints as Christianity began to “veer toward an appreciation of feminine values.”5

Not surprisingly, the twelfth century also saw a revival of interest in the erotic poetry of Roman antiquity, including that of Ovid, whose sophisticated portrayals of pagan sensuality, libidinous and gratified, were enormously popular—especially his playful instructional guide, Ars amatoria (The Art of Love). Countering this fascination with poetry’s power to evoke passionate love between the sexes, some writers began focusing on a different love—love between the individual soul and God, or Christ. It was above all the Cistercians who, through their attention to love, granted the individual an interior space in which to experience subjectively the self and God. They responded especially to women’s need for a spiritual life of their own. With their predilection for allegorizing the Song of Songs, the Old Testament book with its rich imagery of love, they, and Bernard of Clairvaux in particular, were influenced by the great church father Origen, who had already interpreted it as an allegory of the unio of God and the bridal soul, and whose commentary on the Song of Songs had made him the “creator of Christian bridal mysticism.”6 As Bernard McGinn has aptly observed, Origen viewed the Song of Songs as the place where “scripture reveals the heart of its message about the love of the descending Christ for the fallen soul,” and from there it was not far to go to find in the erotic language of the Song of Songs the “deepest inscription of the mystical message.”7

This link between the erotic and the mystical can be seen, for example, in the great Cistercian theologian William of St. Thierry, who opens his famous work De natura et dignitate amoris (On the Nature and Dignity of Love) with the sentence, “The art of arts is the art of love,” and initiates the projection of this existential human experience onto the passionate spiritual union of the human being with God.8 Here again there is good reason to speak of a kind of sublimation. But in mystical love, unlike courtly love, the ultimate union is not denied; rather, it is experienced as a specifically mystical paradox, “sensually spiritualised.” For William this means a transformation from amor to caritas.9 At the same time, one often finds in mystical texts a conscious relinquishing of terminological differentiation, and amor is spoken of in the secular as well as in the spiritual contexts, precisely to arouse awareness that in mystical as in human love a passionate fire burns.

The Cistercians will play a key role in this book. Indeed, one of my central claims is that the Cistercians of the twelfth century provided a necessary backdrop for the specific affectivity of mystical experience in England. This fact, which has yet to receive the scholarly attention it deserves, will be demonstrated in several ways.10 Because the Cistercian order believed that it was returning to a true observance of monastic life as the desert fathers had practiced it, and because English mysticism of the late Middle Ages also followed clear eremitical tendencies, our story begins with a brief survey of the development of anchoritic spirituality up to the time of the Cistercians.

Eremitical Beginnings

The earliest anchorites dwelling in Britain wanted to renew the vita apostolica (apostolic life) by means of an ascetic lifestyle of the utmost simplicity and poverty, appealing to the authority of the New Testament and the early church fathers. Many of them chose the harshest form of life conceivable, far from the noise and external constraints of society, because they did not believe they could put into practice the ideal of radical devotion to God in any other way. Rather than being regarded as pitiful outsiders, they often were held in high esteem; even abbots and kings sought them out in order to obtain their advice.11 The term “anchorite,” which comes from the ancient Greek verb meaning “to withdraw,” originally was used to refer to a range of individuals who withdrew from secular society, including hermits and recluses, but a distinction must be made between hermits, who were not necessarily confined to a single dwelling place, and recluses, who took radical rejection of the world to the extreme by spending their days in complete isolation, walled up in a cell and given over entirely to silence.12

We find the first Christian “dropouts” from society as early as the third century in the desert landscape of Egypt, not far from Alexandria, as well as in Asia Minor.13 Dissatisfied with the social and religious life of the city, individual inhabitants launched into a solitary existence in the desert. Since ancient times, the desert had been regarded as the archetypal site for liminal experience and the attempt to find oneself; with its hot days and cold nights it presupposed the highest degree of readiness to undergo ascetic hardship. In this process, the desert corresponds on a spatio-sensual level to an inner “evacuation,” vacatio or kenosis, the experience of total freedom as the indispensable prerequisite for a direct encounter with the divine. In their wish to expose themselves to this liminal experience the desert fathers appealed to the authority of the Bible above all, where the desert is a frequently recurring motif.14 One need only think of the forty years’ exile of Israel or of Jesus’s “analogous” forty days in the desert.

The most famous of the desert monks was St. Antony, “the Great” (251–356).15 His biographer Athanasius emphasizes particularly his ascetic severity and the fight against demons and grave temptations during his twenty years of solitary life in Egypt. Athanasius recounts the interesting detail that toward the end of Antony’s long life a group of like-minded monks gathered around him and chose him as their spiritual leader, thus giving rise to the early form of a monastic community, a coenobium.16 A survival strategy led the early desert hermits to live at such a distance from one another as permitted them to be within reach and, if necessary, help one another in times of bodily or spiritual need. They also lived sufficiently close to urban centers to be able to influence by example the adherents to the Christian faith, providing a model of a life pleasing to God.

Another important figure in this early period was Pachomius (292–348), generally considered the founder of Christian cenobitic (communal) monasticism. While Pachomius had lived as a hermit for a time, he is best remembered for establishing multiple communities in upper Egypt filled with like-minded persons, who followed a rule of life that imposed poverty, humility, and obedience. These communities were similar in some respects to later monasteries, but the eremitical influence was still quite evident: monks and nuns lived in individual cells. By the year 350 the anchoritic and the cenobitic ways of life were both being practiced. It is also worth noting that from the very beginning there were female as well as male anchorites, including the by-now well-known example of Thais, who acquired latter-day fame as an operatic heroine; she was first a prostitute, but was then converted to become an anchorite. Ancrene Wisse, the guide for recluses, mentions two of the desert mothers by name.

Even if the anchoritic idea gave rise to later forms of communal monasticism (as is indicated by the word formation “mon-achos”), it would be overly simplistic to say that one gave way to the other. Both Jerome and Cassian remained convinced that the hermit represented the highest rung on the ladder of perfection, for which reason life as a monk could only be seen as preparation for the eremitical life. Their view—that every monk should eventually become a hermit, because only the hermit can attain the highest form of contemplation—was taken up and put into practice at various times by isolated individuals throughout monastic history, but it never gained wide acceptance.17

Soon, news of the ascetic way of life, in both solitary and communal forms, spread beyond the eastern Mediterranean. Indeed, monks and nuns would play a critical role in the diffusion of Christianity into Europe. Nowhere was this more evident than in Ireland. While it is still not clear exactly how Christian teaching reached the Emerald Isle, we know that Irish society converted to Christianity sometime between the fifth century and the time when the Vikings arrived, around the year 800. During this period, anchorholds (the dwelling place of anchorites) were founded on the islands off the west coast of Ireland. Not surprisingly, in such a setting the sea took over the role of the desert. Celtic monks, notably the famous Columba, or Columcille (521–597), traveled by sea as missionaries to the Hebridean island of Iona, to Scotland, and to England.18

These Irish monks and anchorites would exert a powerful influence on Anglo-Saxon England. This is perhaps most evident in Bede’s admiration for them in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, where otherwise he is mostly interested in the cenobitic life. Another impressive example is St. Cuthbert, the patron saint of northern England.19 Born in Northumbria circa 634, Cuthbert is best remembered for his life as a monk and hermit, having been inspired by the Irishman St. Aidan, founder of the monastery on the island of Lind...

Table of contents

• List of Illustrations
• 1. The Development of Eremitical Mysticism in the British Isles
• 2. Early Cistercian Theology in England
• 3. Ancrene Wisse: A Magnificent Exemplar of Early English Mysticism
• 4. “Female” versus “Male” Spirituality? A Talking of the Love of God and the Meditations of the Monk of Farne
• 5. Richard Rolle of Hampole: England’s First Great Mystic
• 6. Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls and Its Reception in England
• 7. The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Tracts
• 8. Walter Hilton: England’s Mystic Theologian
• 9. The Singular Vision of Julian of Norwich
• 10. Margery Kempe: The Shocking “Fool in Christ”
• 11. Some Aspects of Popularizing Mysticism in Late Medieval England
• Conclusion
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography