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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2022
IN the middle ages any man, or woman, who wished to discipline themselves according to the principles developed in the early days of monasticism in Egypt had to withdraw from the world. This was true whether the experiment of asceticism was to be pursued in community or in isolation, as hermit, anchorite or recluse. Yet however extreme was the degree of withdrawal from contact with society, the world affected, and was affected by, the one who withdrew. This general thesis is amply illustrated by the surviving evidence for the life of Christina of Markyate who first spent some sixteen years as a recluse and then perhaps as many as thirty five as a nun, after her profession at St Albans around 1131. In one way or another she renounced the world for over fifty of her allotted three score years and ten.
1 Early Charters [of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul’s London], ed Gibbs, M., CSer, 3 ser 58 (1939) nos 154, 156, pp 119–22Google Scholar. Both are reproduced in The St. Albans Psalter (see below) plates 169, 172.
2 [The St. Albans] Psalter, ed Otto Pächt, C.R. Dodwell, Francis Wormald (1960). besides being greatly indebted to the work of these editors I owe much to the stimulation and erudition of a paper by Brown, P.R.L., ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, JRS 61 (1971), pp 80–101Google Scholar. I have also been helped by the comments of Professor Brooke.
3 [The] Life [of Christina of Markyate], ed and translated Talbot, C.H. (Oxford 1959);Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed Riley, T.H., RS (1867) pp 98–105Google Scholar; Pipe Roll 2-4 Henry II, ed Joseph Hunter (Record Commission 1884) p 23.
4 There is a brief account in VCH Bedfordshire, 1 pp 358-61; see also MA 3 pp 370-3, and Tanner, , Notitia Monastica(Cambridge 1787)Google Scholar under Bedfordshire cap 14.
5 I have adopted Talbot’s dating of the main events, of which he gives a useful summary) Life, pp 14-15.
6 Life p 126; Nichell, Donald, Thurstan Archbishop of York (York 1964) cap 7, esp pp 195–9Google Scholar.
7 Life p 108.
8 Ibid pp 128, 146.
9 Ibid pp 120, 152, 178.
10 Early Charters.
11 Her vow of virginity seems to have been made in her early teens. Life pp 36, 38.
12 Ibid pp 48 seq.
13 Ibid p 29; MA 5 pp 530-1; Knowles MO p 198.
14 Genicot, Léopold, ‘L’érémitisme du XI siècle dans son contexte économique et social’, L’Eremitismo [in Occidente nei Secoli XI e XII], Miscellanea del Centro di Studi Medioevali 4, Contributi—serie terza, varia 4 (Milan 1965) pp 45–69Google Scholar, esp p 66 ‘L’anachorétisme a ainsi glissé fréquemment vers le cénobitisme …’
15 Reg[ula S.] Ben[edicti], cap 1. L’Eremitismo has examples from all over Europe, and a full chapter by Hubert Dauphin on England.
16 For Godric see principally Reginald of Durham, Libellus [de Vita et Miraculis S. Godrici Heremitae de Finchale], ed Stevenson, J., SS 20 (1847). Talbot discussed him and Christina in The Month, 215 (1963) pp 272–88Google Scholar.
17 Life, pp 172-4; Gesta Abbatum, 1 p 103.
18 This subject would repay some study. Certainly by the thirteenth century the vocation of an anchorite was examined in some way; compare Ancrent Wisse, ed Geoffrey Shepherd (1959), pp xxxiv-v, and the discussion by Bras, G. le of the peculiar status of hermits. Institutions ecclésiastiques de la Chretienté médiévale, 1, FM 12 (1959), pp 196–7Google Scholar.
19 Psalter pp 5-6 for a summary. Compare Life pp 22-7.
20 Psalter plate 10, and pp 193-5 below.
21 Psalter pp 3-5 list the contents.
22 Psalter plates 14-33. One scene from the life of St Martin of Tours is inserted between the incredulity of Thomas and the ascension. The reason for this has not yet been explained. I suspect that if we had a complete text of Christina’s Life the answer would be there. See Psalter pp 94-5.
23 Plate 35.
24 Plates 37-40.
25 Her father and mother are remembered on January 11 and June 7 respectively, compare plates 2, 7.
26 Leclerq, J., L’érémitisme en Occident jusqu’ à I’an mil’, L’Eremitismo p 39Google Scholar.
27 Libellus pp 40, 45, 59-60.
28 Psalter pp 181-97.
29 Psalter p 255 and plate 82c: Reg Ben cap 16.
30 Psalter p 138.
31 Mayr-Harting, [H.], [‘Functions of a Twelfth-Century Recluse’], History, 60 (1975) p 351CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Psalter frontispiece b, and pp 110-11; [De] Inst[itutione] Incl[usarum, Aelredi Rievallensis Opera Omnia, ed Hoste, A. and Talbot], C. H., CC 1 (1971) pp 671–2Google Scholar. The work appears separately ed by Talbot, in ASOC 7 (1951) pp 167–217Google Scholar.
32 Inst Incl para 24, p 656.
33 Knowles, MO pp 210, 646.
34 Gregory’s letter occurs in bk 11, ep 13 Gregorii I Registrum, ed Hartmann, L. M., MCH (1889) pp 269Google Scholar seq.
35 Psalter pp 137, 135-40.
36 Ibid pp 139-40.
37 Ibid pp 74-9; the words quoted come from p 78.
38 Luke, 24, 18, ‘Tu solus peregrinus es in Jerusalem’ etc.
39 Life pp 182-8.
40 Ibid p 188. I have slightly amended Talbot’s translation here.
41 Ibid p 186.
42 Psalter pp 73, 56, and plates 40, 332.
43 Ibid pp 5-6, summarises the evidence.
44 Ibid pp 6, 275-7.
45 Ibid p 278 and plate 10.
46 Compare his more cautious words on p 280, ‘if the entry of his obit in the calendar…in writing different from that of the main hand, does indicate that the manuscript itself was written before his death, then one can say that it was written before 1123’.
47 Ibid p 277.
48 Ibid p 49.
49 Life p 25. The illustration is in Psalter, plate 96b, discussed p 271 where this deduction is not made.
50 Life p 26.
51 Psalter p 276.
52 Life pp 14-15.
53 Compare p 192 above.
54 Life p 15.
55 Psalter p 271; Life p 118: Margaret occurs a good deal, see particularly pp 140-2, p 182.
56 For the composition of the Cesta see Gransden, Antonia, Historical Writing in England c. 550-c. 1317 (London 1974) p 357Google Scholar.
57 Life pp 38, 126, and Talbot’s discussion of the authorship and dedicatee, pp 5-10. The place which refers to an earlier omitted passage is on p 162. The question of Christina’s own veracity is a difficult one about which different views may be held (see note 68 below). Professor Brooke has said she ‘romanced more than a little’; in his lecture in Cathedral and City, St. Albans, Ancient and Modem, ed R. Runcie (St Albans 1977) pp 60-1. I am convinced by the simple directness of most of her account.
58 Gesta Abbatum 1 pp 95, 103, 105.
59 Compare the typically nuanced discussion by Squire, Aelred, Aelrtd of Rievaulx (London 1969) pp 98–111Google Scholar.
60 Wilson, R. M., ‘The Contents of the Mediaeval Library’, The English Library before 1700, ed Wormald, Francis and Wright, C. E. (London 1958) p 98Google Scholar.
61 Life p 180. The audition and vision continue to p 182.
62 The difference between those on the two sides of Christ at the final judgement is graphically brought out by Ailred, Inst Indus cap 33, pp 678-9.
63 Life pp 172-4. Giles Constable links the relationship with the wider problem of the popularity of syneisactism in twelfth century England (p 220 seq below). Christina’s sojourn with the hermit Roger (compare p 186 above) is a much clearer example of it than her friendship with the abbot.
64 Inst Indus cap 7, pp 642-3.
65 Life pp 114-18.
66 Ibid pp 126-8.
67 Brooke, [C. N. L.], The Twelfth Century Renaissance (London 1969) pp 83–9, 182–3Google Scholar, and Brooke, , Europe in the Central Middle Ages (London 1964), pp 345–7Google Scholar; Bolton, Brenda M., ‘Mulieres Sanctae’, Sanctity and Secularly, SCH 10 (1973) esp pp 77–80Google Scholar.
68 Life pp 40-2. Offler, H. S. has doubted the veracity of the story: Durham Episcopal Charters 1071-1152, SS 179 (1968) p 105Google Scholar.
69 Sermones [super Cantica Canticorum], 65, para 4, [S. Bernardi] Opera, [ed Leclercq, J., Talbot, C. H., Rochais, H. M.] (Rome 1958) 2, p 175Google Scholar.
70 Life p 126.
71 Compare Peter Abelard’s Ethics, ed Luscombe, D. E. (Oxford 1971) pp xv–xxxviiGoogle Scholar, esp xxxii seq.
72 Life p 170.
73 Compare Leclercq’s remark about St Hildegarde ‘elle dit sous formes de “visions” ce que d’autres disent autrement’. Leclercq, J, Vandenbroucke, F., Bouyer, Louis, La Spiritualité du Moyen Age (Paris 1961) p 222Google Scholar.
74 The phrase is Knock’s, A. D.: Conversion (Oxford ed 1961) p 107Google Scholar.
75 Life pp 134-8.
76 Jerome, Epistola 22, ad Eustochium, para 30: PL 22 (1857) cols 416-17; The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury, ed Darlington, Reginald R., CSer, 3 ser 40 (1928) pp 13–15Google Scholar.
77 Life pp 74-6.
78 Life pp 152, 170.
79 The distinction comes in bk 1, cap 3 (trans Stahl, W. A., New York, 1952, pp 87–92)Google Scholar. There was a copy of the work at St Albans, now Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 71.
80 Life p 130.
81 Ibid p 186: the allusion is to 2 Cor. 12.3.
82 Ibid pp 74-6; 106, 118, 168, 180-2, 182, 186-8.
83 Southern, R. W., The Making of the Middle Ages (London 1953) pp 219–57Google Scholar.
84 Life p 184. I have in mind Bernard, , Sermones 74 II 5, Opera 2 pp 242–3Google Scholar.
85 The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse, ed Raby, F. J. E. (Oxford 1959) pp 348, 350Google Scholar.
86 Pipe Roll 2-4 Henry II, p 22, and Mayr-Harting p 337.
87 Life p 192.
88 Ibid, see three stories pp 190-2.
89 Ibid, pp 118-20; 172.
90 Compare Mayr-Harting p 338; Life pp 12, 17.
91 References to all the lives not already mentioned are given by Dauphin in L’Eremitismo, pp 274-5.
92 The point comes across strongly in a story of Wulfric of Haselbury, whose life by John of Ford is edited by Bell, Maurice, Somerset Record Society, 47 (1932) p 29Google Scholar.
93 Life p 106.
94 I hope to return to these sides of hermit life, elsewhere.
95 For example, The Pontifical of Magdalen College, ed Wilson, H. A., HBS 39 (1910) pp 243–4Google Scholar and a Soissons Rite (C1176) ed Martène, E., De Antiquis Ecclcsiae Ritibus (Antwerp 1763) 2 p 178Google Scholar. Ailred, , Inst Inclus 14, p 649Google Scholar.
96 Turner, Victor W., The Ritual Process (ed London 1974) p 103Google Scholar.
97 Lennard, Reginald, Rural England 1086-1135 (Oxford 1959) p 390Google Scholar; compare p 33.
98 BEC 3 ser 5 (1854) p 228. Dissatisfaction and new practises are discussed by Chenu, M. D. ‘Moines, clercs, laics au carrefour de la vie évangelique’, La Théologie au Douzième Siècle (Paris 1957) pp 225–51Google Scholar.
