Singulare Propositum: Hermits, Anchorites and Regulatory Writing in Late-Medieval England DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Joshua Simon Easterling Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2011 Dissertation Committee: Ethan Knapp, Advisor Karen A. Winstead Christopher A. Jones Richard F. Green Copyright by Joshua Simon Easterling 2011 Abstract My study explores the monastic and ecclesiastical traditions that inform late- medieval writings for or about ascetic solitude. In assessing the lives of hermits and anchorites, these traditions tended towards misrepresentation, construing asceticism in terms that were alien to solitaries. For example, the Church- and monastery-focused analyses of asceticism promoted strict rivalries: the behavior of solitaries is represented as necessarily either traditional or aberrant, and their theological notions are either ―orthodox‖ or ―heretical.‖ My study argues that this reductive opposition—a tendency seen on several levels, not simply on a theological one—is highly misleading and misrepresents the solitaries themselves. I therefore suggest a theoretical model, one that had already been developed by the late-antique author John Cassian, as a way of dismantling medieval misreadings of ascetic solitude. This model is replete with a lexicon centered on the term ―singularity,‖ by which medieval texts acknowledge hermits‘ and anchorites‘ estrangement from Church and monastic traditions. I also highlight, in a way not yet attempted, the tensions and intersections between Anglo-Latin texts and clerical authority, on the one hand, and the lay asceticism of hermits and anchorites, on the other. I focus chiefly on the categories of correction, control and reform as they were applied, and especially misapplied, to solitaries‘ lives. While late-medieval solitaries were highly visible and well known participants within England‘s religious and social landscape, their ―singular‖ lives also remained ii irreconcilable with orthodox and traditionally monastic notions of moral and theological reform, much to the frustration of hagiographers and the authors of ascetic ―rules.‖ Beyond the habits of regulated and unregulated solitaries, this study examines how the very category of regulation should be understood if the texts that describe, praise or condemn solitaries are to be adequately appreciated and discussed. My deeper interest lies with the relationship of ethical solitary living to the ethics of interpreting those lives. In my analysis, local movements and personalities repeatedly assumed the priority of individual ascetic desires that were even then impossible to articulate in what we think of as traditionally monastic, ―lay‖ or ecclesiastical terms. Still more, the eremitic and anchoritic movements in the north were profoundly indifferent and irreconcilable to the tendency, particularly in the south of England, to draw sharper distinctions between heretical and orthodox traditions. Despite their indeterminate nature within the theological, ascetic and social order, hermits and anchorites were no less interested in asserting what they considered their own intellectual authority. Neither heretical nor orthodox, the lives of solitary ascetics asked contemporaries to revise their notions of ascetic and theological traditions. As I argue, for solitaries even the category of authority, to say nothing of orthodoxy, was temporary and replaceable. iii Dedication R. R. gewidmet iv Acknowledgments I am profoundly grateful to the members of the dissertation committee, Richard Green, Drew Jones, Karen Winstead, and in particular to my Doktorvater Ethan Knapp. Drew has been an especially interested reader whose input, generosity and resourcefulness have been wonderful and priceless. It is difficult to imagine a finer and more patient reader than Ethan, to say nothing of his many other brilliant qualities. A veritable Solomon in pedagogical wisdom! Thank you all. v Vita May 1998 .......................................................Bellevue West High School; Bellevue, NE 2003................................................................B.A. German, University of Maryland 2003................................................................B.A. English, University of Maryland 2005................................................................M.A. English, The Ohio State University 2006 to present ..............................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University; Lecturer, Department of English, Emporia State University Field of Study Major Field: English vi Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………....i-iii Dedication……………………………………………………………………………...…iv Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………….……..….v Vita………………………………………………………………………………………..vi Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………………viii Introduction....................................................................................................................1-14 Chapter 1: Hermits, Anchorites and the Subject of Tradition……...………………..15-64 Chapter 2: The Anglo-Latin Rule and Ascetic Reality in the Twelfth Century…....65-117 Chapter 3: Authority, the Desert and the Monastic Lives of St. Robert of Knaresborough……………………………………………………………………..118-186 Chapter 4: The Abolition of the Rule: The Eremitic Imagination of Richard Rolle..........................................................................................................................187-259 Chapter 5: Involuntary Confinement as Anachoresis: A Latin Letter by Walter Hilton……………………………………………………………………...…….…260-310 Chapter 6: Volition, Coercion and Anachoresis in Langland‘s Piers Plowman…..311-350 Bibliography.............................................................................................................351-366 vii Abbreviations AASS Acta Sanctorum BHL Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina CCCM Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Ep. Epistola HTR The Harvard Theological Review JMEMS Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies NPNF Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church PG Patrologia Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne. 161 vols. (Paris, 1856- 1866) PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne. 221 vols. (Paris, 1841- 1864) RES The Review of English Studies SC Sources Chrétiennes YLS The Yearbook of Langland Studies viii Introduction Officially, the medieval hermit lived in relative isolation (often in a cell), devoting himself to ascetic virtues like poverty, regular prayer and fasting. Recent literary analyses show that the life of solitaries like hermits and anchorites—the latter lived exclusively in a cell attached to a church or monastery—was a major theme in the textual tradition of medieval Europe1 and post-Conquest England.2 In general, two sorts of texts relate to ascetic solitude: hagiographical narratives that record hermits‘ and anchorites‘ lives, and ―rules‖ that prescribed for them a particular ascetic thought and behavior. The Middle English and Anglo-Latin texts examined in this study richly explore the prayer, renunciations (poverty, chastity, etc.) and theological beliefs of solitaries. For example, the twelfth-century hagiographer Reginald, monk of the Cistercian house in Durham, collected materials towards a saint‘s life for a certain Godric of Finchale, a venerated contemporary and a hermit.3 Several of the brothers at Durham, 1 See A. Vauchez, ed., Ermites de France et d’Italie, Collection de l‘Ecole française de Rome 313 (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2003); A. B. Mulder-Bakker‘s Lives of the Anchoresses: the Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe, trans. M. H. Scholz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Paul Bretel‘s Les Ermites et les Moines Dans la Littérature Française du Moyen Âge (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1995); and Liz Herbert McAvoy, ed., Anchoritic Traditions in Medieval Europe (Rochester: Boydell, 2010). 2 Particularly helpful for the earlier period have been the essays and recent book by Tom Licence, and for the later those by Edward Jones (see bibliography), who is also revising R. M. Clay‘s Hermits and Anchorites of England (London: Methuen, 1914); and finally Mari Hughes-Edwards‘ The Ideology of English Anchoritism (forthcoming). In addition to the studies just mentioned several anthologies have recently emerged—Liz Herbert McAvoy, ed., Rhetoric of the Anchorhold (Cardiff: Wales University Press, 2008); Dee Dyas et al., ed., Approaching Medieval English Anchoritic and Mystical Texts (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005); and Liz Herbert McAvoy, ed., Anchorites, Wombs and Tombs (Cardiff: Wales University Press, 2005). 3 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de Vita et Miraculis S.Godrici, Heremitae de Finchale, ed. Joseph Stevenson (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1847), vii-xvi. 1 like Reginald, had apparently been quite fond of Godric. Of course, what a medieval solitary‘s popularity among his neighbors shows is just how limited his isolation was. Hermits and anchorites were quite well known to those around them. Although their lives expressed some aversion to human society, most hermits like Godric still maintained social ties with their community.4 In part, a hermit‘s fame among local monks was the result of the broadly common interests shared by different kinds of ascetics. The material, psychological and social circumstances that led individuals