“Ancren Riwle”

  Richard Poor, also Poore, Poure, and de Poor, bishop of Chichester, 1214, bishop of Salisbury, 1217, and bishop of Dunham, 1228, was born in twelfth century, and died 1237. He was a rich and influential churchman. Removed the See of Salisbury to New Sarum, and erected the present cathedral. Bishop Poor’s position in English literature is given to him through his supposed authorship of the “Ancren Riwle.” The work was printed for the Camden Society, in 1853.

  The title, “Ancren Riwle,” means “Anchoresses’ Rule,”—Ancren being the abbreviated form of the old genitive “Ancrena,” and Riwle being the old spelling for “Rule.” The “Ancren Riwle” is a treatise on the duties of the monastic life, written by an ecclesiastic, apparently one in high authority, for the direction of three ladies, to whom it is addressed, and who, with their domestic servants, or lay sisters, formed the entire community of a religious house.

  Wanley, who, in describing the four different copies of the work, attributes it to Simon of Ghent, had evidently some doubt upon the subject, for upon one occasion he speaks of it as merely supposed (“ut putatur”). No other person is anywhere mentioned as having written it; but there are circumstances which render it not improbable that Bishop Poor was the author, and wrote it for the use of the nuns at the time when he re-established or enlarged the monastery. He was born at Tarente, and evidently took great interest in the place. It was the scene of his exemplary death, and he chose to be buried there. His great learning, his active benevolence, the sanctity of his life, and his tender concern for the spiritual welfare of his friends and dependents, shewn in the pious exhortations which he repeatedly addressed to them immediately before his death, agree well with the lessons of piety and morality so earnestly and affectionately addressed, in this book, to the anchoresses of Tarente.

  In a literary point of view, it has no such value as to entitle it to critical notice, and, bearing no stamp of English birth-right but its dialect, it is only for the value of its vocabulary and its syntax that I embrace it in my view of English philological history.

  Is one of the most perfect models of simple, natural, eloquent prose in our language; without it indeed, the history of English prose from the close of the Old English period down to the beginning of the seventeenth century would be little more than a dreary blank. As a picture of contemporary life, manners, and feeling it cannot be over-estimated. The passage in which Christ is described as a Norman Knight in homeliest English phrase is alone enough to give a vivid idea of that fusion of English and French traditions and sentiments which—in spite of “Ivanhoe”—was almost completely carried out by the beginning of the thirteenth century. The conclusion of the allegory of Christ’s wooing of the soul is, on the other hand, thoroughly Old English in its combined picturesqueness and grandeur. Thoroughly English, too, though in a totally different way, is the humorous description of the troubles of the nun with her cow: how she curses when the cow is impounded, and yet has to pay the damages. Equally good is the description of the chattering nun, and the comparison of her to a cackling hen.

  After a long period barren of prose, we come to the “Ancren Riwle,” 1220. Here we have an alert and cultivated style. The MSS. are divided systematically into books, and these into simple capital-paragraphs. The main fault of this style is the abrupt transition between these paragraphs.

  The strictly devotional parts are animated by a mysticism which is of the kindly order likewise, and the illustrations, parables, and the like are frequently of considerable literary interest, while the style shows at least possibilities of splendour as well as an actual command of ease.

  The keynote of the work is the renunciation of self. Few productions of modern literature contain finer pictures of the Divine love and sympathy. Across the fierce storm clouds of theology, which continued to sweep the heavens for hundreds of years, the pages of the “Ancren Riwle” reflect the rainbow hues of the Galilean’s compassion for laboring and heavy-laden humanity.