Catherine Innes-Parker's PhD thesis was ‘A Study of the Relationship between Sexuality and Spirituality in Anchoritic Literature’, acknowl-edging both her own feminism and her more private, but very real, spiritual side. Using ‘spiritual’ in a broad sense, I am exploring here the spirituality of anchoritic literature and questioning whether that has some personal relevance in the modern world, in particular thinking of ‘silence’ as a spiritual practice. Catherine was very supportive when I gave a version of this essay at the International Anchoritic Society (IAS) conference in Norwich in 2018; I regret that I can no longer discuss with Catherine the value of the silence of the anchorite to the present world, a world that is increasingly noisy, busy and frantic and which is beset with existential problems from pandemic to the climate crisis, but I appreciate the opportunity to give a voice to ideas about silence, medieval anchoritism and the modern world as a tribute to her. There may be a limit to how far academic analysis can explore these ideas; as the thirteenth-century Persian mystic and poet Rumi said: ‘Some commentary clarifies, but with love silence is clearer.’

SILENCE IN THE MODERN WORLD

I remember being taken for a hike up Kinder Scout in the early 1960s when I was about five years old. Kinder Scout is the highest point in the Peak District: it is not a ‘peak’ but a desolate waste of high moorland. I had never before heard the howling silence of that empty landscape and clung on to my father's hand. That moment of silence had an intensity that has stayed with me for over fifty-five years, and after my father's death I found myself studying anchoritism. Now as I write this while many people are still struggling with feelings of isolation in the aftermath of a global pandemic, it seems pertinent to look at what silence meant for those living in isolation and seclusion by choice, how valuable it was in their spiritual lives and whether their practices can offer any lessons for the modern world. A present-day Benedictine monk has written about the experience of lockdown in 2020:

During the last years of her life, Catherine Innes-Parker's intellectual passions revolved around the popular Bonaventuran text, the Lignum vitae, in all its many manifestations. In particular, her work focused on the Middle English adaptation of the Latin text, þe Passioun of Oure Lord, found in Cambridge, St John's College, MS G.20 and New York, Columbia University, MS Plimpton 256. In her work on this much understudied translation of the highly popular original, Innes-Parker left an enduring legacy in terms of how we understand the ways in which such writing and its translation were adapted to fit a new lay audience in England in the later Middle Ages.

In this essay, I wish to take up a strand of analysis left relatively unexplored: that is, how þe Passioun's central metaphorical system of the Tree of Life slots into an important and often ambiguously gendered image-set within medieval writings, the less orthodox aspects of which have largely remained silent, both within contemporary scholarship and in their own day – but which, I propose, ultimately informed the text's enthusiastic reception in England. As I shall suggest, within the inherently unstable imagistic schema to which it adheres, the original concept of the lignum vitae [Tree of Life] developed exegetically out of its Edenic roots in the Book of Genesis and the Book of Revelation, not only into a dominant – and dominating – patriarchal figura of genealogical ‘arborescent logic’ (to use a term coined by contemporary theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), but, in the works of some women writers and a number of other strongly female-coded texts, also found its voice as a different type of symbol, one more in tune with the culturally feminine concepts of nurture and flourishing. Thus, while þe Passioun appears to be utterly dependent upon the ‘logic’ of the male-identified Tree for its structuration (and thus, its directed meanings), I shall suggest that, as part of the ‘evolution’ (or mouvance) from Lignum vitae to versions of þe Passioun that so preoc-cupied the work of Innes-Parker, it was able to hollow out and ultimately give voice to a new position for itself, one, moreover, that was deeply embroiled within the poetics and dynamics of late medieval English affective spirituality.

General Introduction

The Memoir is essentially John Butter's life story, from his birth in Woodbury, Devon, in 1791, to the middle of 1853, shortly before he went blind. He died in Plymouth in 1877. Why he wrote, and for whom, is not clear, although, in describing a device for removing fishhooks from the throats of careless anglers [1820], he does write that ‘this notice may be useful to others’, and there are several other apparent indicators of an intention to publish. Apart from fishhook removal, he gives many valuable insights into

• • the history of medicine and of medical education, in pursuit of which he spent time in London, on the continent, and in Edinburgh, where he was responsible for the introduction of the stethoscope to Scotland;

• • the history of medicine and of medical education, in pursuit of which he spent time in London, on the continent, and in Edinburgh, where he was responsible for the introduction of the stethoscope to Scotland;

• • the foundation and growth of the Plymouth Royal Eye Infirmary;

• • his experiences with the South Devon Militia, particularly during its acquaintance with the Luddites;

• • his life as a physician and a surgeon;

• • his travelling, both at home and on the continent;

• • his love of hunting and game-shooting;

• • his social life in and beyond Plymouth; and

• • his ventures into the property market.

The Memoir is written in nineteen notebooks, 3¾ x 6¼ inches in size. They are virtually identical, except that volumes one to three have pale orange covers (and, on the front, somebody else's illegible name crossed-through), volume five is blue and the rest green. All except volume five, which is blank, have a calendar for 1854 inside the back cover, and an almanack for the same year inside the front. So far, so good, but the very first entry is an apparently arbitrary and isolated date, ‘12 December 1865’. The situation is further confused by the fact that volumes one and two have the date 1864 inscribed on their front covers as, presumably, the time at which they were written. Volume three is dated 1864/5, volumes five to seven 1866, and all the others are undated. What happened? Did Butter suddenly come across a cache of ten-year-old books? Had he bought them in order to write his life story, and then not got around to it before he went blind? Why does the first of the 1864 books start with a date right at the end of 1865? When were the undated volumes written?

Gregory the bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his beloved sons the [abbot-]elect and convent of St Edmund, of the Order of St Benedict, in the diocese of Norwich, greeting and the apostolic blessing. Your devotion to us has humbly besought us, since it was briefly forbidden by the Apostolic See that anyone (apart from the Roman pontiff or his legate) should claim any power or right to [celebrate] masses, or [establish] a convent, or [hold] a synod, or exercise any episcopal functions whatsoever within the limits of your monastery, within one Roman mile from its altar. We deign to strictly forbid anyone from doing the same, since the place is in this way acknowledged to pertain to us in full jurisdiction, and the aforesaid monastery is immediately subject to the Roman church. Since, therefore, it would redound to the derogation of the privileges of the same monastery, which ought to be kept whole by us, if it should happen that a chapel were [built] within the aforesaid limits, and others should be admitted to the same; we, providing for the indemnity of the same monastery with paternal concern, by the authority of these presents forbid that anyone should dare to build an oratory or chapel (with you being unwilling) within the aforesaid limits. Let no man whatsoever infringe this rescript of prohibition of ours, or dare to have the temerity to contradict it. But if anyone should presume to attempt this, let him know he will incur the indignation of Almighty God and of the good apostles Peter and Paul. Given at the Lateran, on 21 December, in the seventh year of our pontificate.

The expulsion of the Friars Minor from the town of St Edmund.

Urban the bishop, servant of the servants of God, to the venerable bishop of Carlisle and to his beloved son the abbot of St Augustine's of Canterbury, greeting and the apostolic blessing. Our beloved sons the abbot and convent of the monastery of St Edmund of the Order of St Benedict, of the diocese of Norwich, pertaining to the Apostolic See with no intermediary, having considered these things regarding the salvation of souls, at the signification of the minister of the Friars Minor in England, have shown to us that a house in the town of St Edmund, king and martyr (which is called Bury), in which certain of the order of Friars Minor might live will be most opportune, in which the same abbot and convent obtained complete spiritual and temporal jurisdiction from the said diocese by Pope Alexander our predecessor of happy memory.

Likewise, our predecessor granted the said minister by his letters, that if a place were granted him in the said town for this use by the devotion of the faithful (or in any other just way), he should be able to build a house in the same place, and have there an oratory or cemetery, according to the indult to the same order conceded by the Apostolic See, notwithstanding that the said abbot and convent have spiritual and temporal jurisdiction. And because an indult was previously spoken to them by the Apostolic See, that no religious whatsoever was allowed to build a church or chapel or have a cemetery within the bounds of their liberty without their consent and mandate, or whatever other indulgences granted by whosoever by whose grace of this kind they were impeded or able to be distracted; and which fully and expressly, or word for word, ought to make mention in the said letters.

For the warden and friars of the Order of Minors at Babwell.

The king to all his bailiffs and loyal men to whom [these presents may come], greeting. Know that we indemnify our beloved in Christ the warden and friars of the Order of Minors residing perpetually at Babwell next to the town of St Edmund. And so that in their benefit … they might flourish more quietly, strengthened by our protection … desiring to maintain and be consonant with our … the same warden and friars, their servants and favourers, and all their ecclesiastical goods are justly in our our special protection and defence. And therefore we command you that you are to maintain, protect and defend the same warden and friars, their servants and favourers, and their ecclesiastical goods, not interfering with them or allowing them to be interfered with in any impiety, annoyance, injury, impediment or trouble. And if anything should be forfeited in these things, you are to have it restored to them without delay.

Iain Quinn: What are your earliest memories of music?

Ian McEwan: I don't come from a cultured background. Both of my parents left school at fourteen. My father was a military man who joined the ranks of the army in the early 1930s. Like a lot of British soldiers, he had a mouth organ and played old favourites in the vamping style. He was a sociable man and liked to get together with mates in the sergeants’ mess. Whenever he was encouraging me to take up an instrument he would tell me that I would always have friends if I could play the piano. What he had in mind was being surrounded by twenty mates singing ‘It's a long way to Tipperary’. So at the age of thirteen I began teaching myself the mouth organ – I had one of those chromatic Larry Adler instruments. It was extremely frustrating. I was starting to listen to the blues and couldn't understand how harp players made the wonderful sounds they did. Later, I realized you could buy blues harmonicas in different keys with scales of flattened thirds and sevenths.

My mother liked what she called ‘nice music’ and although she didn't know the names of composers in general she did have a record of Grieg's piano concerto that I remember playing from when I was ten.

I also recall listening to Family Favourites on the radio in North Africa. People would write in and say something like ‘Please play whatever for Henry and Doris stationed in Singapore’. I think my sister, who is ten years older than me and was living in England, asked me to choose a song. I thought hard about it. I had a secret pre-sexual crush on Doris Day. It seemed natural to ask for her ‘Secret Love’. It was a thrill to hear it, and to hear my name on the radio.

The 1944 Education Act spawned a number of important song books for children and even in a primary school in far away Tripoli we had an hour or two a week singing English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh folk songs.

The narrative of the suffering of the justices.

In that tempest a certain noble king went into a far-off region to receive tribute for himself; and having returned, he called his servants and handed over his goods to them and gave them power to pass judgement and execute justice. Each one prepared his seat of judgement according to his proper virtue. And he was forgetful of the clamour of the poor and received disapproval against his next of kin. They sat secretly with their riches so that they might kill the innocent, and their right hand was filled with gifts. They said among themselves, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us, since among the proverbs it is written, “An unwise king shall be the ruin of his people: and cities shall be inhabited through the sense of the prudent”’. And because there is nothing secret that is not revealed, the king, when he had heard these speeches, got into a little ship, crossed the sea and came into his land. But the sons of Israel walked on dry land beside the sea.

But they worshipped a certain man with their gifts; they were doubting this man. But one of them, a certain man who was called Didymus, was not with them when the lord returned, but saw the sea and fled, and decided that he would go further; and he left house and wife, his sons, brothers, fields, sheep, cattle and all the beasts of the field. And he fled to the well of Babylon, and was there in the clothing of the sheep, on account of fear of the justices. And all his wisdom was consumed, and there was fear over all his neighbours, and over the mountain of England all of these words were divulged. Then the king said to his ministers, ‘Have custody of him; go, take care as you know, lest perchance the Romans should come and take our place and our people’. And the latter error was worse than the former. But they went away, sealing Babylon with their watchmen.

Catherine Innes-Parker's 2015 edition of The Wooing of Our Lord and the Wooing Group Prayers fills an important gap in the Wooing Group scholarship, as mentioned by other contributors to this present volume. If the collection of essays, The Milieu and Context of the Wooing Group (edited by Susannah Mary Chewning), to which Catherine contributed a chapter, offers an assessment of the previous scholarship, as well as offering innovative perspectives on these meditations, her edition invites us to think even further and more creatively about this wonderful collection of meditative pieces. My chapter argues that the layout chosen by Catherine for her edition of the meditations invites new ways of exploring The Wooing of Our Lord and its companion pieces. Indeed, by choosing a layout that leaves plenty of blank space on the page, she invites the readership of this lyrical prose text to pause and give silence a significant place as part of the meditative process.

One consideration I wish to explore, as a tribute to Catherine's scholarship and person, is the reading of The Wooing as a performance piece that involves the whole person, physiologically, sensually, affectively and intellectually, where breathing becomes one of the means by which the meditative material from each of these texts properly nourishes and transforms their performers. If what is left to us are primarily words neatly arranged on vellum and carefully thought out, probably by a male spiritual guide whose composition was at least initially directed towards an audience of anchoresses, these words were uttered in a specific space, in a specific way, and with a specific aim in mind. The words are therefore the only remnants of a performance that required physical and physiological activity within a performance space: breathing the words in and out also involves giving space to the quality of silence. The choice by Innes-Parker to spread out the text generously on the page suggests to me that she was acutely aware of the importance of silence as part of this meditative process. The aim of this essay is therefore to follow Catherine's cue by investigating the way in which breathing, whispering words within the space of the anchoritic cell or a private chamber, listening to the ensuing silence, led to profound transformative experiences.

The Legacy of Perception

McEwan's knowledge of the profession of music and musicians is born from a familiarity with the inner workings of the field over several decades. This has arisen through friendships with many professional and amateur musicians, regular attendance at concerts, and his general interest in the field of performance since he was a child. The non-musician who reads his novels is presented with a narrative that relates the world of classical music in an accessible manner while in turn observing and commentating on its familiar scenarios, both positive and negative, to professional musicians who work in the field on a daily basis. Across several texts including novels and libretti his narratives dissect the presence of the classical musician in British society. In so doing he manages to reinforce certain aspects of perception that are generally known to the public while illuminating others. In discussing the libretto for the opera For You, that he conceived with the composer Michael Berkeley, and which is centred on a composer who is also a conductor, he commented on the nature of genius, egotism, and self-centredness in a musician as it can appear to others:

This quote exemplifies the approach of McEwan towards assessing the reason why musicians might be seen differently to others. Chapters 2 and 3 examine the aspects of sublimity and the powerful nature of music on the individual. This chapter evaluates the public perception and expectation of British society towards the professional musical world by examining the portrayals in Amsterdam and For You most specifically. As McEwan has commented, the composer can be seen as a ‘metaphor for creativity’ and the ‘irresistible’ quality of this view is founded upon his knowledge and perception of the subject matter. McEwan's approach in For You is to portray a larger-than-life composer whose character has few morals and a considerable ego, and to veil these observations with a measure of humour.

Henry by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and of Aquitaine, and count of Anjou, to his holy beloved in Christ the abbot of St Edmund, greeting. We do not believe that it has been excised from your memory how Lewis de Gerardville and Petronilla his wife gave to the Friars Minor on account of the honour of God and reverence for the Apostolic See (and also for our salvation) our own farm in your town of St Edmund by Gilbert de Preston our justiciar. We have established this to remain with our letters sent in the forty-second year of our reign, for which we all knew that your convent would receive them kindly in the same town by the previous apostolic mandate, and by the instruction you have received in strict obedience. But now we make you to be certain that by the accustomed deliberation of our council and by the common consent of our sworn councillors, we have ratified our recorded approbation; and we do not want anything to be impaired or changed, but for it to be promoted from day to day to the fortunate end of its consummation; and we wish that this would be maintained and favoured by our heirs and successors the kings of England. If we should hear of anyone bringing an impediment or inconvenience to the said friars or the aforesaid place, we shall cause them to be punished and compelled in a fitting and just way, impartially and without difficulty. Wherefore we ask and require your devotion, out of love, forasmuch as you should take care to thus love, favour, promote and protect the said friars and the aforesaid place, and to show yourselves friendly and peaceable towards their friends and benefactors; and that by your merit you may be able to obtain an abundance of divine blessing and the full grace of the king's favour. Witness the king at Westminster, on the twenty-third day of February in the forty-third year of our reign.

The confrontation between Franciscan friars and the monks of St Edmunds Abbey that began in 1233 lasted for thirty years, and was one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of religious life in thirteenth-century England. The confrontation is all the more interesting because there was no clear winner: in 1263, the friars finally agreed to leave the town of Bury St Edmunds, but the monks were forced to grant them land in a key location to build a friary, and to accept the existence of an important Franciscan house at Babwell, on the doorstep of their jurisdiction. It was an uneasy compromise that did not put an end to further conflict, and the presence of the friars at Babwell continued to serve as a foil to the monks’ ambitions into the late Middle Ages. The friars sheltered fugitives from the abbot, backed the townsfolk against the monks and challenged the monks’ religious authority over the town. Yet there is also evidence of more positive co-operation and co-existence between the two orders. As the only other religious house with whom the monks of St Edmunds Abbey had to co-exist, the friary at Babwell and its predecessors must be understood in order to make sense of one of England's greatest abbeys – but the Franciscan adventure in Bury St Edmunds is also a fascinating story in its own right, illustrative of the potent appeal and radical disruptiveness of the Franciscan order.

Since the publication of the first volume in 1979, the Suffolk Records Society's Charters Series has been a crucial resource for the study of Suffolk's medieval religious houses. The series has so far included volumes on Leiston Abbey and Butley Priory, Blythburgh Priory, Stoke-by-Clare Priory, Sibton Abbey, Clare Priory, Eye Priory, St Bartholomew's Priory in Sudbury, Dodnash Priory and the Priory of St Peter and St Paul, Ipswich. Future volumes are projected on Rumburgh Priory and Great Bricett Priory. None of the county's Franciscan friaries has hitherto received the same attention, however. The nature of mendicant houses, whose personnel was shifting and which did not, for the most part, subsist on grants of land, gives them a more ephemeral presence in the historical record.

Among her many contributions to scholarship on medieval women, Catherine Innes-Parker has permanently enriched our understanding of a series of thirteenth-century English soliloquies from the West Midlands, known as the Wooing Group after its longest member, The Wohunge of Ure Lauerd (Wohunge), the earliest long passion meditation in English and harbinger of many others. Her 2015 edition of The Wooing of Our Lord and the Wooing Group Prayers in particular is a model of feminist historical scholarship and pedagogy: learned, generous to fellow scholars and readers and respectful both of the soliloquies themselves and their early audiences. Innes-Parker offers lucidly annotated editions and translations of all five texts she sees as part of the group (Wohunge, An Ureisun of God Almighti (Ureisun), The Lofsong of Ure Lauerd (Lofsong), The Oreisun of Seinte Marie, and On God Ureisun of Ure Lefdi), followed by appendices of translated excerpts from later texts. All too few Middle English editions are this well-presented.

Innes-Parker's introduction also re-addresses basic questions about the Group's membership and composition, arriving at answers some of which have implications for our study of the larger body of texts of which the Wooing Group is a subset. This is the Ancrene Wisse Group, traditionally divided into Ancrene Wisse in its several recensions, the Wooing Group, and the Katherine Group (the passions of Saints Katherine, Margaret and Juliana, Sawles Warde and Holy Maidenhood), although we will see reason to question whether this last grouping is as coherent as is usually supposed. This essay, written in her memory, explores some of these implications in ways I wish I could have pursued with her directly.

For thirty years, Innes-Parker worked to reconstruct what can be discovered of the readership and setting of Middle English writings for devout Christian women, never forgetting that ‘while the audience for these texts may well have been, in the first instance, women religious, in very short order these texts were owned and read by both women and men, lay and religious’, as she wrote as early as 2002.

This indenture made by Brother Thomas of Cambridge of the Order of Minors and Sir Thomas de Abington, perpetual vicar of the church of St Botolph of Cambridge, so that having been accepted by pure … in all things, this indenture might make open and testify in the future that when the aforesaid Brother Thomas was a secular he gave to his nephew John Breton many lands and tenements from the prior inheritance of the same Thomas, on condition that the same John should find a chapel in the said church of St Botolph, continually celebrating [mass] for the souls of the ancestors of the said Brother Thomas and for the souls of others who were held [dear] by the said Brother Thomas. And that the same John should pay annually those sums of money to the assigns of the said Brother Thomas, to be held of the same Brother Thomas on the anniversary of our most illustrious King Edward, the son of King Henry his father, and for performing other charitable works annually for all the other men and deceased persons held dear by the said Brother Thomas, and for performing the releases and finding the said chapel in the manner aforesaid. The said John by these present concerns obliges himself to be trustworthy by a bond, as if swearing upon most holy documents, indentured concerning the said … and to be held by the aforesaid Brother Thomas for the said John, as fully contained in the foregoing. And the same John, by the entry of the said Thomas in orders, not abhorring the vice of ingratitude and disloyalty, seems not to want to find the aforesaid chapel and the aforesaid sums, as is firmly held to be his business, and to see the same Brother Thomas. Continuing in this error for many years as if struck, he is adding to his perpetual disloyalty and ingratitude, as appears in his person and in all his business and dealings, where he is unlucky and as if forsaken by the Lord. At length, the aforesaid Brother Thomas, despairing of the correction of the said John, and otherwise moved by piety, at the instance of the lady Joan de Crek, sister of the said Brother Thomas … of the said John.