Elkins, Sharon K. “Advice to Recluses in the Early Thirteenth Century.” In Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England, pp. 156-60. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

In the following excerpt, Elkins explores the distrust of friendships as expressed in Ancrene Wisse.

Early in the thirteenth century, a small group of young women recluses received the Ancrene Riwle. A friend of theirs, a well-educated cleric, had composed this tract for them on their request. Partly because some versions of this text were written in Middle English and French, scholars have analyzed in detail the text of the Ancrene Riwle, prepared careful editions of the surviving manuscripts, published translations, and considered its content and context in numerous scholarly articles. After much speculation on the identity of the author and the female recipients, historians now agree that neither can be identified with certainty. The earliest manuscript, however, can be reliably...