Anchoritism in the Middle Ages

Texts and Traditions

Catherine Innes-Parker, Naoë Yoshikawa, Catherine Innes-Parker, Naoë Yoshikawa

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781783160396
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This volume explores medieval anchoritism (the life of a solitary religious recluse) from a variety of perspectives. The individual essays conceive anchoritism in broadly interpretive categories: challenging perceived notions of the very concept of anchoritic 'rule' and guidance; studying the interaction between language and linguistic forms; addressing the connection between anchoritism and other forms of solitude (particularly in European tales of sanctity); and exploring the influence of anchoritic literature on lay devotion. As a whole, the volume illuminates the richness and fluidity of anchoritic texts and contexts and shows how anchoritism pervaded the spirituality of the Middle Ages, for lay and religious alike. It moves through both space and time, ranging from the third century to the sixteenth, from England to the Continent and back.

III

Anchoritic Texts and Traditions in the Lay World

7

Secularization in Ancrene Wisse, Part 1: The ‘Pater noster’, ‘Credo’ and ‘Ave’

CHIYOKO INOSAKI

Among the seventeen extant manuscripts and extracts or fragments of Ancrene Wisse, thirteen include Part 1 (though three of these include only sections) while the remaining four exclude Part 1 completely.1 Parts 1 and 8 form what the author calls the ‘outer rule’, although Millett has argued that they are not in any way legislative, like a monastic rule.2 Part 1, the key chapter to understanding the whole work, demonstrates to anchorites the manner in which they should pray through the Hours and the Mass.3

The Latin quotations symbolize the authority of the instructor, or lector; they are supposed to be recited (segge) by an audience, or rather by a ‘user’, and they are usually indicated by the textual incipits for users to begin.4 When the three main prayers, ‘Pater noster’, ‘Credo’ and ‘Ave’ in Part 1 of the manuscripts are compared, it can be seen that the textual incipits of these three Latin prayers are not always exactly the same, even if they appear in similar contexts and retain the same functions as the others in their respective manuscripts. This paper will investigate the significance of these distinctions in the textual incipits of these three main Latin prayers in Part 1 of Ancrene Wisse, comparing the six manuscripts which include the complete texts of Part 1.5 Even such minor textual differences may provide clues for the analysis of the shifting nature of the audience and the manner of prayer at a very early stage in the history of prayer books.

The six manuscripts to be compared are:6

1. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402 (hereafter A)
2. London, British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra C.vi (hereafter C)
3. London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius F.vii (hereafter F)
4. London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.xiv (hereafter N)
5. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Poet. A. I (hereafter V)
6. Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2498 (hereafter P)7

These six manuscripts are located in Millett’s Stemma Codicum as follows: 8

Among these six manuscripts, A, C and F are closely related, occupying the earliest stage of textual development, between the 1230s and the later thirteenth century.9 N and V belong to a single derivative, genetically that next to the earliest, ranging from the 1240s to the end of the fourteenth century,10 while P shoots out a new branch, presumably to be dated to the later fourteenth century.11 There is a gap of at least one hundred years between the earliest group and the supposedly latest manuscript of these six, P or V, which provides for the possibility of significant change in any aspect of the manuscripts and, of course, even in the usage of Latin, the official ecclesiastical language.

Apart from the evidence of the immediate audience, the ‘three sisters’ in N, we find no clear identification of either audience or user in this manuscript. The other manuscripts modified the relevant part in N according to their respective readers.12 Manuscripts A and C provide evidence of a larger, scattered group of anchoresses.13 Each of the six manuscripts reveals varied kinds of anchoresses as seen in the preface of A as follows:14

For sum is strong, sum unstrong ant mei ful wel beo cwite ant paie Godd mid leasse. Sum is clergesse, sum nawt ant mot[t]e mare wurchen ant on oðer wise seggen hire bonen. Sum is ald ant eðelich ant is þe leasse dred of, sum is ȝung ant luuelich ant is neod betere warde.

(For one person is strong, another is not and can reasonably be excused and please God with less. One is well-educated, one is not and must do more manual labour and say her prayers differently. One is old and unprepossessing and gives less cause for anxiety, another is young and beautiful and needs to be guarded more carefully.)15

Finally, some parts imply another type of audience: Parts 4 and 5 address a general audience concerning sins and confession, particularly in APV.16 These indications of immediate readers, however, are gradually surpassed by connotations of ‘potential’ general users and wider pastoral use as time passes.17

The Latin variants in the manuscripts fall into four main categories: variants with feminine forms; modification from ‘textual incipit’ to ‘title’; the Nicene vs the Apostles’ Creed; and variations in the wording of the Pater noster. Focusing on these changes, we encounter reflections of different kinds of audience and of gaps in time through the varied usages of prayers or textual incipits.

Variants with feminine forms

Several scholars, such as Ackerman and Dahood, Dobson and Millett, have noted that the Latin quotations in the Ancrene Wisse may have been modified by scribes or other authorities according to the audience or a particular agenda. In the following analysis, the text of A will provide the point of comparison with the Ancrene Wisse author’s original text, presenting as it does the authorial revisions of the original text. In the following examples the author has altered the Latin of the Vulgate to the feminine, or has used a liturgical version which had already been altered from the Vulgate, based on the gender of his audience. In some cases, the other manuscripts follow A; in others, the scribes have modified the phrasing in A, suggesting a shift in audience and gender.

A good example of the former case is the following Latin quotation from A: Saluos fac seruos tuos et ancillas tuas, Deus meus, sperantes in te (f. 6v.123).18 Millett notes that this quotation is ‘identified by Ackerman and Dahood 1984 … as a “versicle and response used with the Litany” (Salvos fac servos tuos et ancillas tuas: Deus meus sperantes in te [My God, save your servants and your handmaids, who put their hope in you])’.19 Dobson shows that it is based on Psalm 85: 2, salvum fac servum tuum, Deus meus, sperantem in te (My God, save your servant, who puts his hope in you), ‘used inter alia in the introduction to the Mass for Ash Wednesday (Sarum Missal, pp. 48–51), in which it is preceded by the Seven Penitential Psalms, Kyrie etc., Pater noster, and Et ne nos’.20 The example cited above comes just at the beginning of the litany in the anchoress’s devotions. Though the quotations are based on the Vulgate, it seems to have come directly from the liturgical text which had altered servum tuum to servos tuos et ancillas tuas, applying to both genders and plurality. The same variant is followed by all six manuscripts.

In the following two cases, however, not all the manuscripts show the same variation. The first case shows that only ‘ancillas’ is employed for the variants with feminine forms in the manuscripts A, [F]21, N, V:

A. Verset: Saluas fac ancillas tuas, Deus meus, sperantes in te. (f. 11v.416–17)

C. saluos fac seruos tuos z ancillas tuas. (f. 18v.14)

F. [Saluas fac ancillas tuas Deus meus][spera]ntes in te. (f. 8v. col.ii.4–5)

N. Saluas fac ancillas tuas. deus meus sperantes in (f. 10v.31)

V. Saluas fac Ancillas tuas. Deus meus sperants in te. (f. 373v.col.b.1)

P. Saluos fac seruos tuos z Ancillas tuas. (p. 376.20–1)

Here, in the prayer said when going to bed, C and P include male servants (seruos tuos), as well as female. As mentioned above, this Latin quotation in Sarum Breviary (hereafter S.B.) II, 254 is a modification from Psalm 85: 2. In the prayer at the beginning of the litany, all the manuscripts repeat the phrase from S.B. II, 254, citing seruos tuos and ancillas tuas, but in the bedtime prayer, only the C and P manuscripts retain the same citation, and the other manuscripts s...