Ancrene Wisse

Ancrene Wisse ( Guide hermitesses, also Ancrene Riwle, usually for hermitesses ) is a Middle English text ( with various interspersed Latin phrases and phrases) from the English Midlands, addressed to religious hermitesses called Anchoritinnen ( " anchored " ), which according damaligem custom were walled up in a cell in the wall of a village church and came to the end of their life only through a small window and a maid with the outside world in contact; after her death, they were usually buried in the cell. This way of life represents an extreme form of the already highly praised by the pioneers of Christian monasticism principle of the fixed place attachment

The text was written in the early 13th century. Narrated he is in some Middle English manuscripts and in several translations into the French language medium of the former Norman upper classes in England, and in the Latin language of religion and science. Overall, in all three languages ​​together, seventeen manuscripts obtained which contain the text or a portion thereof. Although it is true according to current knowledge, none of the manuscripts to the original, however, several have already been written down in the middle of the 13th century.

In addition to its importance for the study of medieval spirituality of the text is also of great importance for the study of the Middle English language in an early form of language and its development from Old English, as few Middle English texts from the period have been preserved before the late 14th century.

The most important due to their genuine language handwriting is Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 402 An edition of this manuscript published JRR Tolkien in 1962 as Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle.

1929 showed Tolkien in his influential essay Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad that the language in the Corpus Christi manuscript is identical to that in the main manuscript of the Katherine Group, MS Bodley 34

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