‘This House, God’s Dear Castle’: Sawles Warde as Spiritual Warfare Allegory
Résumés
Le combat spirituel, mis en récit par un discours masculin et militariste dès les premiers temps du christianisme, a longtemps posé question aux clercs masculins qui écrivaient pour un public féminin, dont le corps était jugé problématique dans la quête spirituelle. Cet article cherche à démontrer que, par un usage récurrent de l’imagerie du château, l’homélie anglaise du début du XIIIe siècle, Sawles Warde, transforme le combat spirituel en un dispositif genré et défensif que ses auteurs considéraient comme plus adapté à un public féminin anachorète. Alors que les allégories antérieures du combat spirituel évoquaient les vertus comme des armes à manier activement par un soldat spirituel, Sawles Warde les imagine comme des gardiennes du château censées protéger l’âme de l’anachorète, gouvernée et dirigée par Wit, une figure masculinisée qui, lui, incarne l’esprit rationnel de l’anachorète. L’article compare la mise en scène des vertus comme gardiennes chez Sawles Warde, avec celle proposée par l’allégorie de l’armement chevaleresque du XIIe siècle, Similitudo militis, un traité associé au cercle d’Anselme de Cantorbéry (mort en 1109), où elles apparaissent comme des armes. En inscrivant Sawles Warde et Ancrene Wisse dans le contexte des allégories contemporaines du château marial, il montre que le recours à la métaphore architecturale a pour effet d’effacer le corps féminin problématique pour proposer un modèle passif d’un combat spirituel fondé sur l’enfermement, l’abstinence et le retrait du monde.
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Introduction
- 1 Sawles Warde: An Early English Homily Edited from the Bodley, Royal and Cotton MSS, ed. R.M. Wilson (...)
- 2 R.W. Southern and F.S. Schmitt (eds.), Memorials of St Anselm, London, Oxford University Press, 196 (...)
- 3 SW, 2: ‘Si sciret paterfamilias qua hora fur uenturus esset, vigilaret utique et non sineret perfod (...)
- 4 István Bejczy, The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages: A Study in Moral Thought from the Fourth to (...)
1Sawles Warde (‘Soul’s Ward’ or ‘Guardianship of the Soul’) is a thirteenth-century (c. 1225–40) English homily warning about the spiritual dangers arising from not controlling the will and senses, through the allegory of internal conflict within a besieged castle household.1 It is adapted from an earlier (c.1100–1130) monastic tract associated with the circle of Anselm of Canterbury (d.1109), De custodia interioris hominis (‘On the Guarding of the Inner Man’, hereafter De Custodia).2 Sawles Warde’s opening theme comes from Matthew 24:43: ‘…if the goodman of the house knew at what hour the thief would come, he would certainly watch, and would not suffer his house to be broken open’.3 Sawles Warde likens the soul to a treasure (tresor) kept safe from the devil within a castle (castel) governed by Wit, a personification of the rational mind who is described as the ‘husband’ (husbonde) and ‘constable’ (cunestable). The bodily senses are the servants (hinen) within the household, who, in their preference for obeying Wit’s ‘unruly wife’ (fulitohe wif), Will, have become lax in their guard duties. To keep the household vigilant against spiritual attack, Wit is lent the aid of God’s four daughters: Vigilance (warschipe), Spiritual Strength (gasteliche strengðe), Moderation (meað) and Righteousness (rihtwisnesse). These are respective approximations of the four cardinal virtues of prudence, fortitude, temperance and justice.4 Vigilance allows the entry of two messengers: Fear (fearlac) from hell, and Love of Eternal Life (liues luue) from Heaven. Their respective descriptions of the soul’s possible fates frighten and encourage Will and the senses into obedience.
- 5 All are available in modern English facing page translation at Katherine Group, 25-279.
- 6 Bella Millett and Richard Dance (eds.), Ancrene Wisse: A Corrected Edition of the Text in Cambridge (...)
- 7 On the popularity of female anchoritism in thirteenth-century England, see: McAvoy, Medieval Anchor (...)
- 8 For a concise summary of questions of authorship, audience and purpose: Ibid., x-xxxvii.
- 9 It has been posited that the Ancrene Wisse and Katherine Group drew on materials available at centr (...)
- 10 AW, 93.
2The earliest extant manuscript containing Sawles Warde, Oxford MS Bodley 34, includes five Middle English texts commonly grouped together in subsequent manuscripts, named the ‘Katherine Group’ after the first of the saints’ lives contained within. Three lives of martyred female saints (Katherine of Alexandria, Margaret of Antioch, and Juliana of Nicomedia), are followed by a tract on virginity entitled Hali Meiðhad (‘Holy Maidenhood’); Sawles Warde comprises the final text.5 Lexically and thematically, the Katherine Group are closely related to Ancrene Wisse, the popular and widely copied thirteenth-century English guide for anchoresses, women who had chosen a life of prayer and meditation in a solitary permanent enclosure in a small cell, usually attached to a parish church.6 The creation of Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group were underpinned by significant growth in female anchoritic vocation by the early thirteenth century, particularly in England.7 Almost certainly of Dominican authorship, Ancrene Wisse was first composed sometime in the 1220s for three aristocratic sisters who had chosen to live as anchoresses.8 All of the texts concerned are written in an English dialect of the West Midlands and the Welsh Marches, and promote virginal chastity and withdrawal from the world.9 In addition to their lexical and thematic similarities, a deliberate intertextual relationship with the Katherine Group is implied in Ancrene Wisse’s reference to ‘your English book of Saint Margaret’ (ower Englische boc of Seinte Margarete).10
- 11 Norman Tanner (ed. and trans.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils Volume 1: Nicaea I to Lateran V, (...)
- 12 Joseph W. Goering, William de Montibus: The Schools and the Literature of Pastoral Care, Toronto, P (...)
- 13 Millett, Guide for Anchoresses, xx; Goering, William de Montibus, 59-67.
- 14 See for example: William H. Campbell, The Landscape of Pastoral Care in Thirteenth-Century England (...)
- 15 McAvoy, Medieval Anchoritisms, 56; See also Part Two of AW, 20-47.
- 16 Christiania Whitehead, Castles of the Mind: A Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory, Cardiff, Un (...)
3Both the mendicant role in creation of these texts, and the popularity of female anchoritic life in England during this period, reflect wider religious reforms of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, as codified by the decrees of the Third (1179) and Fourth (1215) Lateran Councils.11 These arose from the Church’s increasing concern with the practical, day-to-day application of scholastic theology.12 As religious instruction expanded beyond learned clerical circles, lay people dissatisfied with established forms of religious life increasingly sought new and more intense expressions of spirituality, not least anchoritic vocation.13 Alongside their preaching and confessional capacities, the mendicants were instrumental in producing vernacular works that made spiritual guidance for such individuals more readily available.14 In the instances of Sawles Warde and Ancrene Wisse, this involved the adaptation of previously monastic ideas around withdrawal from the world. Though anchoresses’ cells were enclosed, their inhabitants could and did come into contact with the outside world, most commonly through their cells’ windows.15 Restricting such contact was considered essential for maintaining spiritual purity, to which end the language of castles and sieges were employed in Ancrene Wisse and Sawles Warde as metaphors for the anchoress and her cell, both of which the devil besieged through worldly and bodily temptation.16
- 17 On the scriptural and patristic development of such metaphors, see: Grant Jones, ‘Arming for God: T (...)
- 18 Jacqueline Murray, ‘Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess, the Battle for Chastity and Monas (...)
- 19 Katherine Allen Smith, War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture, Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewe (...)
4The portrayal of temptation as demonic attacks against the self—spiritual warfare—was also an idea with deep scriptural and patristic roots, best encapsulated by Ephesians 6:12: ‘For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in high places’.17 The employment of military metaphors to describe spiritual struggle in the Middle Ages has been regarded, most notably by Ruth Mazo Karras and Jacqueline Murray, as a way to compensate for perceived clerical failures with regards to traditional aristocratic masculinity.18 The employment of such a metaphor in the context of monastic retreat from the world has been the subject of significant study by Katherine Allen Smith.19 Humans were participants in this cosmic conflict between God and the devil, their souls were the prize, and their bodies were not only the battlefield but a weapon which the devil could use against them. This latter understanding also had scriptural precedent in Galatians 5:17: ‘For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you would’. Sawles Warde concerns bringing the will and the senses under the control to protect the soul, and it is argued in what follows that it should therefore be considered primarily a metaphor for spiritual warfare. The same need to guard the senses against the physical and spiritual encroachment of sin is also evident in Ancrene Wisse:
- 20 AW, 20.
The guardians of the heart are the five senses… anyone who guards these well follows Solomon’s instruction: he takes good care of his heart and the health of his soul.
(Þe heorte wardeins beoð þe fif wittes… hwa-se wit þeose wel, he deð Salomones bode: he wit wel his heorte ant his sawle heale).20
- 21 Whitehead, Castles of the Mind, 119-22.
- 22 Robert Liddiard, Castles in Context: Power, Symbolism and Landscape, 1066-1500, Macclesfield, Windg (...)
5Christiania Whitehead’s extensive study of medieval allegorical architecture categorised Sawles Warde among domestic or household allegories.21 Certainly, the text’s focus on the internal antagonism between Wit and Will supports the assertion that Sawles Warde sought to promote the enclosed celibate life over earthly marriage. However, this view overlooks another key element of the text, namely the defensive and military setting implied through its evoking of a besieging force just outside the castle walls. Sawles Warde’s focus on household management does on one level provide a domestic allegorisation; the fusion of castle and domestic household draws on the dual functions of medieval castles as both military and domestic spaces.22 However, this household very explicitly occupies a fortification facing diabolic assault. Its portrayal of the vulnerable soul within this threatened structure aligns the text with Ancrene Wisse’s employment of the same castle and siege metaphors, which themselves represent the spiritual protection offered by withdrawal from the world.
- 23 Memorials, 97-102.
6This article thus first explores how Sawles Warde genders and militarises its source text, De custodia. Second, it examines how allegorical architecture in Sawles Warde and Ancrene Wisse relates to broader uses of castle allegories in other twelfth- and thirteenth-century religious literature. It focuses especially on the erasure of the problematic female body when cast as a castle in the masculine-gendered endeavour of spiritual warfare. Finally, the personified virtues in Sawles Warde are compared with the moralised arms of contemporary knightly arming metaphors, most notably the treatise Similitudo militis which frequently circulated alongside De custodia.23 It is suggested that while these different allegorisations of the virtues conveyed similar spiritual functions, the metaphors employed in Ancrene Wisse and Sawles Warde present more passive, defensive models of spiritual warfare. In these models, the female reader’s spiritual defence is mediated through masculinised figures such as Wit and the character of Christ as knight in Ancrene Wisse, rather than the active and vigorous depictions of spiritual agency found in knightly arming allegories like Similitudo militis.
Sawles Warde and De custodia interioris hominis
- 24 De custodia has been edited under the heading ‘Miscellanea Anselmiana’, a grouping described as ‘fr (...)
- 25 Ibid., 4-15.
- 26 On Anselm of Canterbury’s influence and importance see: Eileen C. Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury and (...)
- 27 On the increasing translation of the Latin castellum and castra as ‘castle’ in later medieval verna (...)
- 28 Memorials, 356.
- 29 Ibid., 355.
7As noted, Sawles Warde is an adaptation of De custodia, an early twelfth-century Latin monastic treatise associated with Anselm of Canterbury. Though probably not authored by Anselm himself, it nevertheless circulated widely under his name after his death.24 The earliest extant versions of De custodia appear in Anselmian compilations dated to the mid-twelfth century entitled De humanis moribus per similitudines (‘On Human Morals through Similitudes’, hereafter De moribus).25 Anselm’s sainthood and scholarly reputation granted the De moribus texts significant theological authority across Latin Christendom for centuries after his death.26 Though its plot remains essentially the same, De custodia lacks the militaristic framework evident in Sawles Warde; the dwelling under threat is only ever referred to simply as house (domus), rather than any Latin term such as castellum which could be vernacularised as ‘castle’.27 Several of the key differences between the texts concern gender and militarisation. Sawles Warde depicts the anchoress’s body as a castle threatened by the entry of sin, where in De custodia, there is no suggestion of defensive architecture aside from brief mention of a need to strongly fortify (forti custodia muniens) the house through placement of the virtues.28 De custodia’s Reason (ratio) is only described as ‘head of the household’ (paterfamilias) with no militarised, administrative role equivalent to Sawles Warde’s ‘cunestable’, nor a gendered equivalent to ‘husbonde’. De custodia also does not personify the virtues as God’s daughters, and there is no mention of Will, the wife, only a household that threatens to become ‘excessively wanton and unruly’ (lasciva nimis et petulans).29
- 30 Julie Hassel, Choosing Not to Marry: Women and Autonomy in the Katherine Group, New York, Routledge (...)
8Sawles Warde’s gendered personification of the virtues and will has been suggested as providing a female readership with examples of positive and negative female behaviours, associating earthly marriage with the more sinful Will and virtuous service to God with the upright virtues.30 The placement and roles of the virtues further cast Sawles Warde in a more militaristic and gendered light than De custodia. Sawles Warde’s description of the vices lurking outside is illustrative of both elements, highlighting the importance of its walls and the explicitly female soul protected within them:
- 31 SW, 4-6.
And against every good virtue who guards this house, God’s dear castle, under the guidance of Wit who is the household lord, there is always its vice seeking entrance around the walls in order to murder her inside.
(⁊ aȝein euch god þeaw þe biwiteð i þis hus godes deore castel, vnder wittes wissunge þet is huse lauerd, is eauer hire unþeaw fortre sechen inȝong abute þe wahes to amurðrin hire þrinne).31
9Where De custodia simply describes Prudence (prudentia) as being at the first entrance or approach (in primo aditu), Sawles Warde gives its parallel character, Vigilance, a defined role and an implied placement in the castle:
- 32 Memorials, 356; SW, 6.
Wit the husband, God’s constable, calls Vigilance forth and makes her doorkeeper, who carefully watches whom she lets in and out, and from afar beholds all who are coming.
(Wit þe husbonde godes cunestable cleopeð warschipe forð, ⁊ makið hire durewart, þe warliche loki hwam ha leote in ⁊ ut, ⁊ of feor bihalde alle þe cuminde).32
- 33 SW, 6-8.
10Wit’s delegation of guard duty to Vigilance emphasises the militaristic organisation of a castle household under a constable. Indeed, the concept of being able to watch who is coming from afar and control access to the castle implies that Vigilance is stationed in some form of gatehouse, an architectural feature strongly associated with defence. Where Justice (iustitia) in De custodia is simply ‘seated in the middle, that she may give to each their due’ (sedeat in medio, ut sua cuique tribuat), Sawles Warde’s equivalent character, Righteousness, has a delineated duty and authority to pass judgement on the servants dependent on their fulfilment of guard duties: ‘For dread of her this household undertakes—according to what he is—to keep his guard’ (for dret of hire nimeð his hirð euch efter þet he is warde to witene).33
- 34 Memorials, 356; SW, 24.
- 35 SW, 40.
11After Fear and Love complete their messages to the castle household in Sawles Warde, short sections with no parallel in De custodia further emphasise the language of warfare and guarding. Following Fear’s departure, Wit thanks God for: ‘His four daughters that [God] has loaned him to help guard and defend his castle well’ (his fowr dehtren þet he haueð ileanet him on helpe forte wite wel ⁊ werien his castel).34 Again, after Love leaves the castle, the text reiterates a defensive stationing of the servants, each of whom will now ‘keep his watch and defend truly against every vice’s entrance’ (unþeawes inȝong his warde te witene ant te warden treowliche).35 The cumulative effect of these changes to De custodia shifts the original allegory to a more clearly gendered and militarised setting, within which the specifically female soul of Sawles Warde requires protecting.
Portraying Spiritual Warfare in Sawles Warde and Ancrene Wisse
- 36 D. Hurst (ed.), Bedae venerabilis opera: pars II opera exegetica 2A De tabernaculo, De templo, In E (...)
- 37 Abigail Wheatley, The Idea of the Castle in Medieval England, York, York University Press, 2004, 82 (...)
- 38 Excellent summaries of the variety of spiritual castles can be found in: Wheatley, Idea of the Cast (...)
- 39 M. Adriaen (ed.), Sancti Gregorii magni Moralia in Iob, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevali (...)
- 40 Memorials, 66-7.
- 41 Ælred of Rievaulx, Sermo XVII: In assumptione beatae Mariae in Patrologia Latina 195, cols. 303A-30 (...)
- 42 J. Murray (ed.), Le château d’amour de Robert Grosseteste, Évêque de Lincoln, Paris, Librairie Cham (...)
12The implications of the changes highlighted above require Sawles Warde and Ancrene Wisse be situated within the wider flourishing of novel architectural allegories during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Patristic exegesis of scriptural architecture, most notably the Temple and Tabernacle in Bede’s (d.735) De templo and De tabernaculo have been suggested by Whitehead as ‘the principal exemplar’ behind the significant expansion of edifice allegories in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to include medieval buildings such as churches, cloisters, and castles.36 The appearance of these reflected a growing contemporary tendency to employ novel mnemonic systems summarising knowledge; Abigail Wheatley has suggested that mentally constructing and moving through these imaginative architectures aided with memorisation and recall of important theological concepts.37 Castles were employed as metaphors for a wide range of subjects, including the human body and soul, aspects of the monastic life, virtue, virginity, and the Virgin Mary.38 Gregory the Great’s (d.604) portrayal of Job as a city besieged by the devil in Moralia in Iob, his influential commentary on the Book of Job, set precedent for casting virtuous individuals as structures withstanding demonic spiritual attack.39 Besieged fortifications then became a common allegory beginning in the twelfth century, framing varying subjects as protections against external spiritual attack. For example, the castle represents the spiritual safety of the monastic life in the treatise De regno et villa et castello et dungione (‘Of the Kingdom, Town, Castle, and Donjon [Keep]’), which appears in the same De moribus collection as De custodia.40 The Cistercian Ælred of Rievaulx (1110–1167), composed a sermon encouraging monks to emulate the Virgin Mary by constructing within themselves a castle (castellum) of the virtues, including a ditch of humility (fossa humilitatis), wall of chastity (murum castitatis), and tower of charity (turrim charitatis).41 The Anglo-Norman verse treatise known as Château d’amour, authored by the theologian and later Bishop of Lincoln Robert Grosseteste (d.1253), also portrays the Virgin Mary as a castle, a perfect fortification within which the soul takes refuge from the devil.42 While much of Sawles Warde constitutes an internal domestic struggle, the setting in which this takes place is inherently militarised through its description as a ‘castel’. Its emphasis on internal harmony is intended to similarly stress guarding against an external, spiritual enemy. This places Sawles Warde adjacent to other spiritual warfare castle allegories, though perhaps uniquely it is the defenders rather than the architecture which are moralised. The allegory meshes well with the similar depictions of the anchoress as both castle and besieged inhabitant of the same in Ancrene Wisse.
- 43 Anke Bernau, ‘Gender and Sexuality’, in Sarah Salih (ed.), A Companion to Middle English Hagiograph (...)
- 44 Smith, Medieval Monastic Culture, 72-9.
- 45 For summaries of the influence of these authors see: M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons: Litu (...)
- 46 Aaron Pelttari (ed.), The Psychomachia of Prudentius: Text, Commentary, and Glossary, Norman, Unive (...)
- 47 Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Mediaeval Art, trans. J.P. Crick, Lo (...)
- 48 Bernau, ‘Gender and Sexuality’, 105-6; Newman, ‘Golden Bowl’, 115-20.
- 49 McAvoy, Medieval Anchoritisms, 80-91. Quotation at 83.
13Successful spiritual warfare had often been couched in language of athletic, performative masculinity since the earliest Christian times, while giving in to bodily weakness was concordantly associated with femininity.43 Masculine terminology, most notably ‘soldier of Christ’ (miles Christi) from 2 Timothy 2:3 was frequently employed in male monastic traditions to denote those struggling with spiritual matters.44 Scriptural spiritual warfare imagery was further developed by influential patristic authors, particularly Saints Jerome (d.420), Augustine of Hippo (d.430), and John Cassian (d.435). These authors’ militarised language lent spiritual warfare imagery an overtly performative, hyper-masculine tone.45 At the same time, there were exceptions to this rule, perhaps most notably the Psychomachia of Prudentius (d.405x413) a description of battling vices and virtues commonly portrayed in art as warrior women.46 However, while this artistic tradition continued into the twelfth century, some Psychomachia depictions contemporaneous with Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group exhibit a tendency towards a more ambiguous and even clearly masculine gendering.47 More generally, male clerical authors could and did struggle with writing spiritual warfare for a female readership whose bodies were readily associated with spiritual weakness and sin.48 Liz Herbert McAvoy highlights how some male-authored medieval religious texts for women attempted to separate the problematic female body from spiritual progress through ‘overdetermined identification of the reader with the [male] miles Christi’.49
- 50 Wheatley, Idea of the Castle, 81; Whitehead, ‘Fortress and Shield’, 110.
- 51 CdA, 701-746.
- 52 Whitehead, ‘Fortress and Shield’, 121-5. Quotation at 123.
14In their promotion of spiritual warfare, the authors of Sawles Warde and Ancrene Wisse consciously choose not to identify the anchoress as the overtly masculine miles, but as both defender of a besieged castle and as the castle itself. In the latter case, a similar process is evident in architectonic depictions of the Virgin Mary beginning in at least the eighth century, where the passage from Luke 10:38 ‘[Jesus] entered into a certain town’ (ipse intravit in quoddam castellum) became integrated into sermons for the feast of the Assumption of Mary.50 A similar theme is evident in Grosseteste’s Château d’amour, which like Sawles Warde stresses the spiritually defensive importance of the cardinal virtues, casting them as four turrets protecting the castle of the Virgin Mary.51 Defining Mary as a fortress in such texts reframed her ‘breachable’ femininity as an impregnable sanctity, erasing her problematic female body to render it an appropriate receptacle for God by casting it within contemporary masculine-coded militarism that reflected the masculinised conception of spiritual perfection.52 In Ancrene Wisse, the anchoress’s bodily femininity is similarly erased and neutralised through allegorisation as a castle. The employment of such castle metaphors is most notable in Parts Two and Four of the work. In Part Two, significant measures for restricting the anchoress’s view from her window are put in place concerning the peril of sin arising from even seeing others, especially men. The concern expressed is that looking is often followed by conversation and touching, a sure path to committing sin. To prevent this, the cell is cast as a castle under attack, and by extension, the anchoress within it is similarly besieged:
- 53 AW, 24.
And surely that woman is too much of a fool, or too rash, who pokes her head out boldly from an opening in the battlements while the castle is being attacked from outside with crossbow bolts… The embrasures of the castle are her house windows. She should not look out of them in case she gets the devil’s bolts right in the eyes when she least expects it, because he is constantly attacking.
(Ant nis ha to muche chang, oðer to folhardi, þe half hire heued baltliche forð vt i þe opene carnel hwil me wið quarreus vtewið assailleð þe castel? Þe carneus of þe castel beoð hire hus-þurles. Ne tote ha nawt ut at ham, leste ho þe deoueles quarreus habbe amid te ehe ear ho least wene; for he asailȝes ai).53
15Notably, the anchoress is advised to remain within the castle of her cell to prevent injury to her soul. The only action ascribed to her in defending this castle is given in Part Four, where the castle appears more as an allegory for the anchoress herself under siege from temptations. Here the anchoress is encouraged to tearfully pray to drive the devil away:
- 54 AW, 93.
When strongholds or a castle are being attacked, the people inside pour out scalding water, and in that way defend the walls. You should do just the same whenever the devil attacks your castle and the stronghold of the soul; with fervent prayers pour out scalding tears over him.
(Hwen me asaileð burhes oðer castel, þeo wiðinnen healdeð scaldinde weater ut, ant werieð swa þe walles. Ant ȝe don alswa as ofte as þe feond asaileð ower castel ant te sawle burh: wið inward bonen warpeð ut upon him scaldinde teares).54
- 55 Ibid.
- 56 Ælred, Sermo XVII, col. 304A: ‘fodiamus cor nostrum, ubi sit infima terra. Auferramus terram, quae (...)
- 57 Ibid: ‘fratres, praeparemus spirituale quoddam castellum’.
- 58 Whitehead, ‘Fortress and Shield’, 122.
- 59 AW, 146-8. On the ‘Christ-knight’, see: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary Cu (...)
- 60 SW, 6-8.
16In addition to pouring out tears in prayer, the other specified defence against the devil is a ‘deep ditch of profound humility’ (deop dich of deop eadmodnesse), a notable parallel with the ditch of humility from Ælred of Rievaulx’s sermon on the Feast of the Assumption mentioned above.55 The anchoress does not, however, construct this ditch, or indeed any component of her spiritual castle. By contrast, Ælred’s sermon emphasises the active creation of the ditch of humility within the self: ‘…let us dig out our hearts, where the deepest earth is. Let us take away the earth which is within; let us pile it up high, for so a ditch is made’.56 Indeed, the sermon’s exhortation to constructing the entire castle is directed towards a male audience: ‘Therefore, brothers, let us make ready a certain castle spiritually’.57 As Whitehead has noted, the construction of castle architecture was strongly male gendered in this period, closely associated with the militaristic culture of aristocratic masculinity.58 In Ancrene Wisse, the anchoress already occupies the constructed castle, whether it stands as allegory for her cell or her body; mere occupation of the spiritual castle appears to be sufficient, with little in the way of active construction or defence of the structure. This is reinforced by Christ’s appearance in Part Seven of Ancrene Wisse in the figure of a knight, who out of love for the anchoress, actively battles her spiritual attackers: ‘He entered the tournament and, like a bold knight, had his shield pierced through and through in battle for love of his lady’ (Dude him i turneiment, ant hefde for his leoues luue his scheld i feht, as kene cniht, on euche half iþurlet).59 Similarly in Sawles Warde, the besieged or threatened castle of the body, within which is protected the soul, is already constructed and garrisoned. The anchoress’s role is reduced to relying on her spiritual defenders, the cardinal virtues, to ensure her unruly will and bodily senses are acting in accordance with the wishes of her rational mind, characterised as Wit. Like the Christ-knight, Wit is a masculine and military figure—‘husbonde’ and ‘cunestable’—and is responsible for defending the soul by deciding where the virtues will be stationed.60
Virtue and Spiritual Defence in Sawles Warde: Similarities with Spiritual Arms
17The virtues are key to successful spiritual defence in Sawles Warde; it is under their guidance that the senses are brought into line to guard against the devil. In its emphasis on the importance of virtues and rational control of the body and will, Sawles Warde in many ways reflects another allegory for spiritual warfare, that of spiritual ‘arming’. Though less widespread than allegorical edifices, arming metaphors were far less varied in their subject matter. Generally, they allegorised spiritually protective virtues and behaviours as the putting on of arms and armour. Especially influential was Ephesians 6:13-17:
Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the armour of justice, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace: in all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you will be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take unto you the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God).
- 61 Whitehead, ‘Making a Cloister’, 2.
- 62 J. F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the Middle Ages, 2nd edn., trans. Sum (...)
18The appearance of novel arming allegories during the twelfth century coincides with the appearance of medieval building allegories during the same period, described by Whitehead as a ‘freeing from the boundaries of the scriptures’.61 Where the arms described in Ephesians reflected those of a first-century infantryman, the twelfth-century battlefield was increasingly dominated by the mounted, mailed knight with lance and sword.62 Accordingly, discussions of spiritual arming began to reflect contemporary knightly equipment, much as cloisters, churches, and castles appeared in edifice allegories.
- 63 For a summary of the main appearances of this allegory, see: Jones, ‘Arming for God’, 19-22.
- 64 Smith, Medieval Monastic Culture, 119-21.
- 65 On the recruitment of monks from knightly households see: Janet Burton and Julie Kerr, The Cisterci (...)
- 66 Smith, ‘Saints in Shining Armor’, 591-2.
19The earliest such text is the short but detailed Similitudo militis (c.1100–1130), like De custodia appearing in the same collection of works associated with Anselm of Canterbury. Knightly arming allegories continued to appear in monastic, scholastic, and pastoral care texts throughout the period c.1100–1250.63 Smith has suggested that monastic texts like Similitudo militis taught monks to practice a ‘meditative arming’.64 Arms were both memorable and easily understood by novices, the majority of whom in the first half of the twelfth century came from aristocratic households.65 Smith has also argued that the use of such metaphor provided recruits with a familiar construction of masculinity from which their monastic vocation otherwise restricted them, a practice associated with the self-application of the miles Christi label from the earliest Christian monastic communities onwards.66 In Similitudo militis, the miles Christi represents the soul, the ‘inner man’ (interior homo) who is protected by virtues and behaviours allegorised as arms. In addition, the knight is mounted on a horse representing the body, the ‘outer man’ (exterior homo), whose wilful impulses must be controlled to succeed in spiritual battle. This militarised emphasis on bodily control to resist the devil is echoed in the control of the will and the senses in Sawles Warde. Similarly, the knight of Similitudo militis is armed with virtues and other qualities, the protective abilities of which have analogues in the protective, defensive roles of Sawles Warde’s virtues, and even in the messengers of Fear and Love themselves, as will be outlined below. Almost every character within Sawles Warde’s besieged household has its complement in the moralised knightly equipment of Similitudo militis and certain other spiritual arming allegories of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
- 67 SW, 6.
- 68 Memorials, 102.
- 69 Ibid.: ‘Sicut enim temporalis adversarius adhuc longe semotus transfigitur lancea, ita hostis antiq (...)
- 70 SW, 6, 18.
- 71 AW, 69.
20For example, in Sawles Warde, Vigilance is the first virtue that any visitor to the house or castle must encounter. She discerns which visitors ‘are worthy to have entrance or to be shut outside’ (beo wurðe inȝong to habben oðer beon bisteken þrute).67 While not moralised as prudence specifically, Similitudo militis’s ‘lance of foresight’ (lancea providentia) carries very similar implications of caution and consideration.68 Like the lance of foresight, Vigilance’s stationing as doorkeeper militarises the acts of discerning whether something is dangerous to the soul, and the ability to fend it off at a distance. Similarly, with the lance of foresight the knight can attack the devil before he draws too close: ‘For just as a worldly adversary is pierced by the lance while still at a distance, so the ancient enemy is in a certain way pierced through foresight’.69 The way in which foresight aids in the spiritual battle is described as essentially a ‘first attack’ weapon, intended to ward off the devil at the earliest opportunity. In much the same way, Vigilance discerns visitors at the first point of entrance, and can call on her sister Spiritual Strength, stationed alongside her, to force them away if they are deemed malevolent.70 Notably, ‘spiritual strength’ (gasteliche strengðe) is also emphasised as a defence against vice in Part Four of Ancrene Wisse, where the castle metaphor is repeatedly employed, possibly intended as a deliberate connection between both texts’ allegorical imagery.71
- 72 Bernard Dombat and Alphonsus Kalb (eds.), Sancti aurelii Augustini de civitate Dei, Corpus Christia (...)
- 73 Odon Lottin (ed.), ‘Le traité d’Alain de Lille sur les vertus, les vices, et les Dons du Saint-Espr (...)
21While detailed under different names, the relationship between foresight (providentia) and the virtue of prudence (prudentia) was clear to medieval writers, working from the precedent of Augustine’s De civitate Dei (‘The City of God’): ‘Does it not take all the vigilance that prudence can muster to distinguish good from evil?’72. In the later twelfth century, Alan of Lille’s (d.c.1202) treatise on virtue, vice, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit placed foresight among the subspecies of the virtue of prudence, defining it as: ‘the skill of the soul by which we measure the future according to the past’.73 Foresight was therefore considered to be the ability to learn from both experience and good and evil examples. In repackaging this concept as a lance, Similitudo militis centred its reader as a heroic knight, using foresight from learning and experience to ‘pierce’ (transfigitur) the devil coming to tempt him. Sawles Warde militarises the related virtue of prudence, in the shape of Vigilance as ‘gatekeeper’ (durewart), who can similarly see enemies coming from afar and shut off their access to the soul.
22As noted earlier, in Ancrene Wisse the anchoress is cautioned not to look out of her windows, lest she be struck by the devil’s missiles. The importance of guarding the senses to protect the spirit in this way aligns clearly with the overall message of Sawles Warde, where the character of Spiritual Strength evokes similar imagery to warn of the dangers of worldly temptation:
- 74 SW, 20.
If [the devil] shoots towards me with wealth and the pleasure of the world, with the luxury of the flesh’s lust, I might somehow be afraid of such soft weapons, but nothing hard may frighten me, and neither suffering nor want may falsify my heart nor weaken my belief towards Him who gives me all my strength.
(ȝef he schute towart me wið weole ⁊ wunne of þe world, wið este of flesches lustes, of þulliche nesche wepnen ich mahte carien summes weis, ah ne mei me na þing heardes offearen, ne nowcin, ne na wone falsi min heorte ne wursi mi bileaue towart him þet ȝeueð me alle mine strengðen).74
- 75 Memorials, 101: ‘Fides namque tamquam scutum inexpugnabile ardentissima vitiorum tela solet exciper (...)
23Both passages reference the shield of faith from Ephesians 6:16: ‘In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one’. Notably, in Similitudo militis the knight is also equipped with a shield of faith, noted in a passage which also references the roles of Fear and Hope in keeping the devil at bay: ‘For faith is just as an invincible shield, which wards off the most burning weapons of vice, destructively extinguishing them by means of a fear of hell and [by] belief in the heavenly kingdom’.75
- 76 SW, 6.
- 77 Memorials, 99: ‘Restat igitur, ut neutram indiscrete corpori iniungat, sed discretionis manu medioc (...)
- 78 Jean Leclerq, H.M. Rochais and C.H. Talbot (eds.), Sancti Bernardi Opera, 8 vols., Rome, Editiones (...)
- 79 SW, 20.
24The third daughter in Sawles Warde, the character of Moderation, is concerned with bodily behaviours, seeking to guide the household between the dangers of excess laxity or abstinence.76 Like the other virtues, Moderation plays a specific role in bringing the servants into line to defend the castle. Moderation finds parallels in the moralised bridle of Similitudo militis, where the horse of the body is controlled with the bridle of abstinence. Too much or too little abstinence pulls the horse to one side or another: ‘To progress, [the knight] must impose neither on the body with indiscretion, but with discretion moderate each hand’.77 Similarly, in two of Bernard of Clairvaux’s (d.1153) Parabolae (‘Parables’) a personified Temperance and Prudence work together to fit the bridle of discretion onto a horse representing the soul’s desire for Heaven.78 There, Temperance is charged with holding the horse’s reins to prevent it from being driven along too quickly. This control over emotional and bodily extremes is echoed in Moderation’s message to the household, similarly advising neither too much nor too little abstinence, and warning of the spiritual perils of both extremes.79
- 80 On the history of this concept of justice from Cicero to the end of the twelfth century, see: Phili (...)
- 81 Ibid., 19.
- 82 De civitate, 19.27: ‘in unoquoque iustitia est, ut oboedienti Deus homini, animus corpori, ratio au (...)
25The fourth of the cardinal virtues, justice, is personified in Sawles Warde as Righteousness, the judge who rewards or punishes the household servants depending on their performance in guarding the house. This concept of ‘justice-as-due’ (sua cuique tribuens) was a popular one in the Middle Ages.80 Such an interpretation of justice encompassed both worldly and spiritual matters; to be just was to give God the worship he was due, to act within societal laws, and particularly important for spiritual warfare, to render due contempt to the devil.81 This view of justice also pertained to reason being in control of the body, a form of justice within the self. Again, it must be stressed that this is the core message of Sawles Warde. In De civitate Dei, Augustine wrote that ‘justice is only present in a person when the person is obedient to God’s rule, when the mind rules the body, and when reason rules the vices’.82 The Augustinian influence on Righteousness’s role in Sawles Warde is evident; bodily control is not only necessary to succeed at defending the soul, it was also essential to live justly and in accordance with God.
26Justice appears in Similitudo militis as a mail shirt (lorica), constructed from the rings of continuous good works. Perseverance in these good works allows the knight to remain protected:
- 83 Memorials, 101: ‘Illa siquidem iustitia interrupta dicitur, quae quandoque intermittitur. Qui ergo (...)
Indeed, it is evident of the armour that it is said to be broken up whenever [the links of mail are] interrupted. Therefore, he who interrupts justice puts on armour that is broken up. But such a knight will by no means be able to fight strongly against the enemy. And so, in order that the knight of Christ may manfully withstand the ancient enemy, he need keep the armour of justice inviolate; that is, let him strive unceasingly to press on in works of justice.83
27The importance of perseverance similarly applies to the servants in Sawles Warde. If they cease in their watchful guarding against vice, then the person is no longer just; the castle goes undefended. Righteousness’s role as judge is therefore to ensure that the good works done by the body are continuous. The servants are just when they perform well, and unjust when they do not guard the castle, just as the spiritual knight of Similitudo militis is no longer protected by his armour if he ceases persevering in good works.
- 84 Memorials, 100: ‘duo sunt exhortationum genera … De timore gehennae et de amore vitae aeternae’.
- 85 Memorials, 100; SW, 40.
- 86 SBO, 6.2, 261-3.
- 87 Roberti Grosseteste episcopi quondam Lincolniensis epistolae, ed. H.R. Luard, London, Rolls Series, (...)
28Finally, Fear and Love, the two messengers of Sawles Warde, also have their analogue in knightly arming allegories. In much the same way as temperance and abstinence were allegorised as bridles, fear and love appear in arming allegories as spurs. In Similitudo militis, they are ‘two kinds of exhortation… fear of hell and love of eternal life’.84 The spiritual knight can steer the horse of the body with one and the other as needed, echoing Moderation’s reminder in Sawles Warde that Fear and Love should take turn to remind the household why they need guard against sin.85 As personified figures, Fear (Timor) appears alongside Hope (Spes) as messengers or soldiers in God’s service, in two of Bernard of Clairvaux’s Parabolae. Their role is to free the imprisoned soul from the dungeons of sin.86 Fear comes first and Hope second in both texts, the same order in which they arrive in Sawles Warde, and the order in which the spurs are allegorised in Similitudo militis. In the Parabolae they are also associated with a horse; the soul wishing to flee sin is aided by Fear and Hope to mount the horse of good desires (equum boni desiderii), beginning a journey towards Heaven. Spurs of hope and fear in the context of driving one’s desire for Heaven also appear in a letter of Robert Grosseteste dated 1231/2 to Richard Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (d.1234), concerning how a knight might achieve the joys of Heaven.87
Differences to Spiritual Arms
29Despite the similarities outlined above between the spiritual lessons conveyed by the different portrayals of virtues, there are also a number of noteworthy differences between their depictions of spiritual warfare. Though weapons, even moralised, are mentioned in both Sawles Warde and Ancrene Wisse, aside from the shield these are rarely prescribed for specific use by the reader. In Sawles Warde, arms given by God are mentioned by Strength, and the concept of arming the self for spiritual combat appears, yet the only weapon specified is the shield:
- 88 SW, 18.
… is God not our shield? And all of our weapons are from His dear grace, and God is on our side and stands by us in the fight.
(nis god ure scheld ⁊ alle beoð ure wepnen of his deore grace, and god is on ure half ⁊ stont bi us ifehte).88
30Strength’s message is to prepare the self to be assailed spiritually, though this is framed as general defensive advice for the household rather than explicitly as individual arms to be used in personal combat with the devil, as is the case with Similitudo militis. The ‘weapons from His dear grace’ may be a reference to the description of virtuous behaviours rendered as arms in Ancrene Wisse:
- 89 AW, 91.
Pious meditations, fervent and incessant and ardent prayers, firm faith, reading, fasting, keeping vigil, and physical labour, the comfort of someone else to talk to just when the pressure is greatest, humility, patience, a generous heart, and all the virtues are arms in this battle, and unity of love above everything else.
(Halie meditatiuns, inwarde ant meadlese ant angoisuse bonen, hardi bileaue, redunge, veasten, wecchen, and licomliche swinkes, oþres froure forte speoke toward i þe ilke stunde þet hire stronge, eadmodnesse, þolemodnesse, freolec of heorte, ant alle gode þeawes beoð armes i þis feht, ant anrednesse of luue ouer alle þe oþre).89
- 90 AW, 24.
31Again however, apart from a shield, arms are not described as being actively wielded by the anchoress in Ancrene Wisse; weapons otherwise almost entirely occur as the attacks of vice against her. For example, the attack of a personified ‘Lechery’ (Lecherie) is made with ‘arrows of the roving eyes’ (schute of eche), a ‘spear of wounding words’ (spere of wundinde word) and a ‘sword of fatal touching’ (sweord of deadlich hondlunge).90 Again, the only piece of military equipment that the anchoress is encouraged to make use of is the shield, to protect the self from such attacks:
- 91 AW, 111-2.
…if you want the shield of the cross and God’s cruel Passion to foil the devil’s weapons, do not drag it behind you, but raise it high up… force your heart underneath it away from the devil’s arrows.
(ȝef þu wult þet te rode schelde and Godes stronge Passiun falsi þe deofles wepnen, ne dragse þu hit nawt efter þe, ah hef hit on heh… wrenchen hire þer-under frommard te deofles earowen).91
32This defensive portrayal of spiritual warfare in Ancrene Wisse and Sawles Warde is further evidenced by the lack of any equivalent to the main offensive weapon present in Ephesians and Similitudo militis; the sword of the word of God. The language associated with the sword in Similitudo militis, of attacking and even killing the devil has no parallel in Sawles Warde:
- 92 Memorials, 102: ‘Cum ergo miles Christi hanc verbi dei sectionem et in se et in quoscumque valet sa (...)
Therefore, when the knight of Christ endeavours to exercise part of the word of God, both in himself and in whoever else he may, in a certain way he is seen to slay the ancient enemy with a sword. For as if by slaying him, beating him down into annihilation, he violently banishes [the devil] by way of the sword of the word of God from the hearts of those in which he formerly dwelled.92
- 93 Memorials, 100-1.
- 94 Ibid., 101: ‘Hunc quippe debet praetendere, ut a virulentis diaboli iaculis tam se quam … valeat de (...)
33The lance of foresight, too, though noted as providing similar spiritual lessons on foresight and prudence as Sawles Warde, portrays those lessons in a much more active language of attack; the devil is ‘pierced’ (transfigitur) with the lance. By contrast, Sawles Warde delegates the use of a similar, related virtue to her rational mind in the person of Wit, an authorially masculinised element of her own psyche. Indeed, one of the key differences between the portrayals of the virtues as arms and as persons defending the castle comes in the way in which they are utilised. Rather than being cast as separate persons, Similitudo portrays virtues as requiring taking up and wielding, often with urgency, by the individual that they are recommended for. For example, the miles Christi ‘must put on his armour without delay’ (sine mora loricam suam induat).93 Regarding the shield: ‘He must hold this out in front, that he is able to defend himself… from the devil’s poisonous darts’.94
Conclusion
34Sawles Warde distinctly gendered and militarised its source text, De custodia, into a framework that repurposed spiritual vigilance to fit within the language of anchoritic enclosure. The soul, figured as a specifically female presence within a besieged castle, is defended not through direct action on the anchoress’s part but by the personified virtues stationed and commanded by the authorially masculinised ‘husbonde’: Wit, her rational mind. In this, as with the figure of the Christ-knight in the closely associated Ancrene Wisse, the reader’s role as spiritual combatant is downplayed; she is to be protected from the devil rather than actively fight against him. Unlike spiritual arming allegories like Similitudo militis, which framed spiritual warfare in more active terms where virtues were arms to be taken up and used, Sawles Warde and Ancrene Wisse offer a more passive, enclosed model of spiritual defence. The anchoress (or other female reader) is encouraged to imagine the self as both being, and being within, a spiritual fortification whose safety depends on the internal ordering of her virtues to combat her own will and bodily senses. In comparison with spiritual arming allegories, Sawles Warde and Ancrene Wisse trade a significant degree of active spiritual agency for a prescribed ideal of bodily containment. Nevertheless, several of the protective qualities of the virtues are still successfully conveyed through their imagining as God’s daughters helping order the castle defence, rather than their moralisation as arms.
35The gendered militarising of enclosure also reflects a broader tendency within the writing of Marian castle allegories during the twelfth and thirteenth century, specifically the erasure of the problematic female body in the masculinised pursuit of spiritual progress. In this context, Sawles Warde perhaps speaks to an attempt to ‘recalibrate’ spiritual warfare for a female audience, bypassing their femininity with a focus on retreat, enclosure, fortification, and defence. The castle metaphor employed indicates a symbolic compromise on the part of clerical male authors who had historically struggled with portraying spiritual warfare to women. It did this through presenting a different model for the militarised language of spiritual warfare, one that simultaneously effaced female bodies and identities which were perceived as problematic. In addition to offering notable parallels with Ancrene Wisse, the castle allegory in Sawles Warde offers an insight into how allegory more generally reinforced clerical expectations and ideals around gender.
Notes
1 Sawles Warde: An Early English Homily Edited from the Bodley, Royal and Cotton MSS, ed. R.M. Wilson, Titus Wilson, Leeds, 1938 (hereafter SW). On the dating of the Katherine Group texts and Ancrene Wisse, see: The Katherine Group (MS Bodley 34), ed. Emily Rebekah Huber and Elizabeth Robertson, Kalamazoo, Medieval Institute Publications, 2016, 17-21; E.J. Dobson, The Origins of Ancrene Wisse, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976, 163-6.
2 R.W. Southern and F.S. Schmitt (eds.), Memorials of St Anselm, London, Oxford University Press, 1969, 355-60. Compilations of the groups of texts in which De custodia occurs has been dated to c.1100–1130: Ibid., 13. Sawles Warde’s relationship with De custodia is well documented, see: Margaret Healy-Varley, ‘Anselm’s Fictions and the Literary Afterlife of the Proslogion’, PhD Thesis, Harvard University, 2011, 73-110, available at: https://www.proquest.com/docview/879421028/; Wolfgang Becker, ‘The Literary Treatment of the Pseudo-Anselmian Dialogue De custodia interioris hominis in England and France’, Classica et Mediaevalia, 35 (1984), 215-34; Idem, ‘The Source Text of Sawles Warde’, Manuscripta, 24 (1980), 44-8; Katherine Group, 9-11. See below.
3 SW, 2: ‘Si sciret paterfamilias qua hora fur uenturus esset, vigilaret utique et non sineret perfodi domum suam’.
4 István Bejczy, The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages: A Study in Moral Thought from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Centuries, Brill, Leiden, 2011, esp. 9-142.
5 All are available in modern English facing page translation at Katherine Group, 25-279.
6 Bella Millett and Richard Dance (eds.), Ancrene Wisse: A Corrected Edition of the Text in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402 with Variants from Other Manuscripts, 2 vols., Early English Text Society 325-6, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005-6 (hereafter AW, volume 1 unless otherwise specified). For a modern English translation, see: Bella Millett (trans.), Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses, Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 2009. On anchoresses see: Liz Herbert McAvoy, Medieval Anchoritisms: Gender, Space and the Solitary Life, Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer, 2011, 1-3. See also the collection in: Idem (ed.), Anchoritic Traditions of Medieval Europe, Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer, 2010.
7 On the popularity of female anchoritism in thirteenth-century England, see: McAvoy, Medieval Anchoritisms, 10.
8 For a concise summary of questions of authorship, audience and purpose: Ibid., x-xxxvii.
9 It has been posited that the Ancrene Wisse and Katherine Group drew on materials available at centres of learning in this region, most notably Hereford Cathedral and Wigmore Abbey: Millett, Guide for Anchoresses, xi; Dobson, Origins of Ancrene Wisse, 115-7.
10 AW, 93.
11 Norman Tanner (ed. and trans.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils Volume 1: Nicaea I to Lateran V, Washington DC, Georgetown University Press, 1990, see especially 212, 220, 245. On the Third Lateran Council especially: Danica Summerlin, The Canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179: Their Origins and Reception, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019.
12 Joseph W. Goering, William de Montibus: The Schools and the Literature of Pastoral Care, Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1992; Leonard E. Boyle, ‘The Inter-Conciliar Period 1179–1215 and the Beginnings of Pastoral Manuals’, in Filippo Liotta (ed.), Miscellanea Rolando Bandinelli Papa Alessandro III (Siena, Accademia senese degli intronati, 1986), 45-56; Idem, ‘The Fourth Lateran Council and Manuals of Popular Theology’, in Thomas J. Heffernan (ed.), The Popular Literature of Medieval England (Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 30-43. John W. Baldwin, ‘Masters at Paris from 1179 to 1215: A Social Perspective’, in Robert L. Benson, Giles Constable and Carol D. Lanham (eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1982, 138-72.
13 Millett, Guide for Anchoresses, xx; Goering, William de Montibus, 59-67.
14 See for example: William H. Campbell, The Landscape of Pastoral Care in Thirteenth-Century England Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017; Michèle M. Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study”: Dominican Education Before 1350, Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998); C.H. Lawrence, The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Medieval Society, London, Longman, 1994.
15 McAvoy, Medieval Anchoritisms, 56; See also Part Two of AW, 20-47.
16 Christiania Whitehead, Castles of the Mind: A Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2003, 91. For examples from the primary sources concerned: AW, 24, 86-7, 93, 101-1, 137, 146; SW, 4-6, 24.
17 On the scriptural and patristic development of such metaphors, see: Grant Jones, ‘Arming for God: The Imagery of Spiritual Warfare from the Monastery to the Pulpit, c.1100-1250’, PhD Thesis, Durham University, 2025, 32-5, available at: https://etheses.dur.ac.uk/15936/ David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2006, 182.
18 Jacqueline Murray, ‘Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess, the Battle for Chastity and Monastic Identity’, in P.H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (eds.), Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2004, 24-42; Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003, 67-108.
19 Katherine Allen Smith, War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture, Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer, 2011; eadem, ‘Spiritual Warriors in Citadels of Faith’, in Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (ed.), Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 86-110; eadem, ‘Saints in Shining Armor: Martial Asceticism and Masculine Models of Sanctity, ca. 1050-1250’, Speculum, 83 (2008), 572-602.
20 AW, 20.
21 Whitehead, Castles of the Mind, 119-22.
22 Robert Liddiard, Castles in Context: Power, Symbolism and Landscape, 1066-1500, Macclesfield, Windgather Press, 2005.
23 Memorials, 97-102.
24 De custodia has been edited under the heading ‘Miscellanea Anselmiana’, a grouping described as ‘fragments of many different kinds’ either written by, attributed to, or clearly influenced by Anselm: Memorials, 35.
25 Ibid., 4-15.
26 On Anselm of Canterbury’s influence and importance see: Eileen C. Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word, Washington DC, Catholic University of America Press, 2012; R.W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
27 On the increasing translation of the Latin castellum and castra as ‘castle’ in later medieval vernacular texts, see: Abigail Wheatley, The Idea of the Castle in Medieval England, York, York Medieval Press, 2004, 27-33.
28 Memorials, 356.
29 Ibid., 355.
30 Julie Hassel, Choosing Not to Marry: Women and Autonomy in the Katherine Group, New York, Routledge, 2002, 87; Elizabeth Robertson, Early English Devotional Prose and the Female Audience, Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1990, 126-43.
31 SW, 4-6.
32 Memorials, 356; SW, 6.
33 SW, 6-8.
34 Memorials, 356; SW, 24.
35 SW, 40.
36 D. Hurst (ed.), Bedae venerabilis opera: pars II opera exegetica 2A De tabernaculo, De templo, In Ezram et Neemiam, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CXIX A, Turnhout, Brepols, 1969, 3-139, 143-234; Whitehead, ‘Making a Cloister’, 2.
37 Abigail Wheatley, The Idea of the Castle in Medieval England, York, York University Press, 2004, 82; Roberta D. Cornelius, The Figurative Castle: A Study in the Medieval Allegory of the Edifice with Especial Reference to Religious Writings, Bryn Mawr College PhD Thesis, 1930, reprinted Lavis, La Finestra Editrice, 2010, 22-3; Whitehead, Castles of the Mind, 28-38, 49-86.
38 Excellent summaries of the variety of spiritual castles can be found in: Wheatley, Idea of the Castle, 78-111; Whitehead, Castles of the Mind, 87-116.
39 M. Adriaen (ed.), Sancti Gregorii magni Moralia in Iob, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 143, 3 vols., Turnhout, Brepols, 1979, Preface IV.9-11.
40 Memorials, 66-7.
41 Ælred of Rievaulx, Sermo XVII: In assumptione beatae Mariae in Patrologia Latina 195, cols. 303A-309A.
42 J. Murray (ed.), Le château d’amour de Robert Grosseteste, Évêque de Lincoln, Paris, Librairie Champion, 1918 (hereafter CdA and line numbers). On the dating, purpose, and intended audience of the text see: Evelyn Mackie, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s Chasteu d’Amur: A Text in Context’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 2002), pp. 47-57; Christiania Whitehead, ‘A Fortress and a Shield: The Representation of the Virgin in the Château d’amour of Robert Grosseteste’, in Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (eds.), Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England (Cardiff, 2000), pp. 112-3.
43 Anke Bernau, ‘Gender and Sexuality’, in Sarah Salih (ed.), A Companion to Middle English Hagiography, Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge, 2006, 105-6; Barbara Newman, ‘Flaws in the Golden Bowl: Gender and Spiritual Formation in the Twelfth Century’, Traditio, 45, 1989-90, 115-6.
44 Smith, Medieval Monastic Culture, 72-9.
45 For summaries of the influence of these authors see: M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons: Liturgy and the Making of Crusade Ideology, London, Cornell University Press, 2017, 42-3; Smith, Medieval Monastic Culture, 11-38.
46 Aaron Pelttari (ed.), The Psychomachia of Prudentius: Text, Commentary, and Glossary, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.
47 Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Mediaeval Art, trans. J.P. Crick, London, Warburg Institute, 1939, 10-11 and Plates 8a and 8b, iv-v; Jones, ‘Arming for God’, 61-3.
48 Bernau, ‘Gender and Sexuality’, 105-6; Newman, ‘Golden Bowl’, 115-20.
49 McAvoy, Medieval Anchoritisms, 80-91. Quotation at 83.
50 Wheatley, Idea of the Castle, 81; Whitehead, ‘Fortress and Shield’, 110.
51 CdA, 701-746.
52 Whitehead, ‘Fortress and Shield’, 121-5. Quotation at 123.
53 AW, 24.
54 AW, 93.
55 Ibid.
56 Ælred, Sermo XVII, col. 304A: ‘fodiamus cor nostrum, ubi sit infima terra. Auferramus terram, quae intus est; et projiciamus sursum, sic enim fit fossatum’.
57 Ibid: ‘fratres, praeparemus spirituale quoddam castellum’.
58 Whitehead, ‘Fortress and Shield’, 122.
59 AW, 146-8. On the ‘Christ-knight’, see: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary Culture c.1150–1300, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001, 96-8; Catherine Innes-Parker, ‘Ancrene Wisse and Þe Wohunge of Ure Lauerd: The Thirteenth-Century Female Reader and the Lover-Knight’, in Lesley Smith and Jane H.M. Taylor (eds.), Women, the Book and the Godly, Cambridge, Cambridge, University Press, 1995, 137-48; Idem, ‘The Lady and the King: Ancrene Wisse’s Parable of the Royal Wooing Re-Examined’, English Studies, 75 (6), 1994, 509-22.
60 SW, 6-8.
61 Whitehead, ‘Making a Cloister’, 2.
62 J. F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the Middle Ages, 2nd edn., trans. Summer Willard and S.C.M. Southern, Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer, 1997, 19.
63 For a summary of the main appearances of this allegory, see: Jones, ‘Arming for God’, 19-22.
64 Smith, Medieval Monastic Culture, 119-21.
65 On the recruitment of monks from knightly households see: Janet Burton and Julie Kerr, The Cistercians in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer, 2011, 34; Marcus Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony, c.970-c.1130, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993, 125-42.
66 Smith, ‘Saints in Shining Armor’, 591-2.
67 SW, 6.
68 Memorials, 102.
69 Ibid.: ‘Sicut enim temporalis adversarius adhuc longe semotus transfigitur lancea, ita hostis antiquus quasi adhuc longe divisus quodammodo transfigitur providentia’.
70 SW, 6, 18.
71 AW, 69.
72 Bernard Dombat and Alphonsus Kalb (eds.), Sancti aurelii Augustini de civitate Dei, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis Series Latina 47, 2 vols., Turnhout, Brepols, 1956, 19.4: ‘nonne tota vigilantia sua bona discernit a malis’.
73 Odon Lottin (ed.), ‘Le traité d’Alain de Lille sur les vertus, les vices, et les Dons du Saint-Esprit’ Mediaeval Studies, 12 (1950), 29: ‘peritia animi qua metimur futura secundum praeterita’.
74 SW, 20.
75 Memorials, 101: ‘Fides namque tamquam scutum inexpugnabile ardentissima vitiorum tela solet excipere, ac metu gehennae et caelestis regni credulitate mortificando extinguere’.
76 SW, 6.
77 Memorials, 99: ‘Restat igitur, ut neutram indiscrete corpori iniungat, sed discretionis manu mediocritatem teneat’.
78 Jean Leclerq, H.M. Rochais and C.H. Talbot (eds.), Sancti Bernardi Opera, 8 vols., Rome, Editiones Cistercienses (hereafter SBO), 6.2, 263, 269; A shorter version of this also occurs in Bernard’s Sententiae, see Ibid. 13.
79 SW, 20.
80 On the history of this concept of justice from Cicero to the end of the twelfth century, see: Philippa Byrne, Justice and Mercy: Moral Theology and the Exercise of Law in Twelfth-Century England, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 18-32.
81 Ibid., 19.
82 De civitate, 19.27: ‘in unoquoque iustitia est, ut oboedienti Deus homini, animus corpori, ratio autem vitiis’.
83 Memorials, 101: ‘Illa siquidem iustitia interrupta dicitur, quae quandoque intermittitur. Qui ergo intermittit iustitiam, quasi interruptam induit loricam. Sed miles iste nequaquam poterit contra adversarium suum fortiter pugnare. Igitur ut miles Christi antiquo hosti viriliter resistat, loricam iustitiae inviolatam custodiat; id est sine intermissione operibus iustitiae studeat insistere’.
84 Memorials, 100: ‘duo sunt exhortationum genera … De timore gehennae et de amore vitae aeternae’.
85 Memorials, 100; SW, 40.
86 SBO, 6.2, 261-3.
87 Roberti Grosseteste episcopi quondam Lincolniensis epistolae, ed. H.R. Luard, London, Rolls Series, 1861, 40.
88 SW, 18.
89 AW, 91.
90 AW, 24.
91 AW, 111-2.
92 Memorials, 102: ‘Cum ergo miles Christi hanc verbi dei sectionem et in se et in quoscumque valet satagit exercere, ipsum antiquum hostem gladio quodammodo videtur iugulare. Quasi enim iugulando eum usque ad interniciem prosternit, dum longe a finibus suis, a cordibus videlicet, in quibus ante inhabitaverat, gladio verbi dei illum violenter expellit’.
93 Memorials, 100-1.
94 Ibid., 101: ‘Hunc quippe debet praetendere, ut a virulentis diaboli iaculis tam se quam … valeat defendere’.
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Grant Jones, « ‘This House, God’s Dear Castle’: Sawles Warde as Spiritual Warfare Allegory », Genre & Histoire [En ligne], 35 | 2025, mis en ligne le 01 juillet 2025, consulté le 10 juillet 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/genrehistoire/10667 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/149um
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