SOURCE: Millett, Bella. “The Origins of Ancrene Wisse: New Answers, New Questions.” Medium Aevum 61, no. 2 (1992): 206-28.

In the following essay, Millett presents evidence that the author of Ancrene Wisse was more likely a Dominican than a Victorine.

Although it is a book-length work, the early Middle English guide for recluses known as Ancrene Wisse gives us very few clues to its origin. Its author is anonymous. So is its audience: all that we know for certain is that the work was originally addressed to three well-bred (gentile) sisters, who ‘in the flower of your youth renounced all the joys of the world and became recluses’,¹ and that it was later revised (in the version surviving in the Corpus MS) for a group of recluses which had grown to twenty or more.² The only definite indication of its date is the author's assumption in the revised version that the...