Much of the research into medieval anchoritism to date has focused primarily on its liminal and elite status within the socio-religious cultures of its day. The anchorite has long been depicted as both solitary and alone, almost entirely removed from community and living a life of permanent withdrawal and isolation: in effect dead to the world. The essays in this volume, stemming from a variety of cross-disciplinary approaches and methodologies, laydown a challenge to this position, breaking new ground in their presentation of the medieval anchorite and other types of enclosed solitary as playing a central role within the devotional life of a whole range of complex and multifaceted communities: ones that were simultaneously synchronic and diachronic, physical and metaphysical, religious, secular, textual - and gendered. It therefore offers its readers a new way of understanding the operations of thesolitary life in the Middle Ages and its interdependence with a whole array of communities, ultimately adding to our knowledge of how spiritual "aloneness" could be pursued ardently, even in the midst of communal interaction. Contributors: Diana Denissen, Clare Dowding, Clarck Dreishen, Cate Gunn, Catherine Innes-Parker, E.A. Jones, Dorothy Kim, Godelinde Perk, James Plumtree, Michelle Sauer, Sophie Sawicka-Sykes, Andrew Thornton OSB,

Cate Gunn, Liz Herbert McAvoy

Introduction - Liz Herbert McAvoy and Cate Gunn
'O Sely Ankir!' - E.A. Jones
The Anchoress of Colne Priory: A Solitary in Community - Cate Gunn
Anchorites in their Heavenly Communities - Sophie Sawicka-Sykes
Rule Within Rule, Cell Within Cloister: Grimlaicus's Regula Solitariorum - Andrew Thornton
English Nuns as 'Anchoritic Intercessors' for Souls in Purgatory: The Employment of A Revelation of Purgatory by Late Medieval English Nunneries for Their Lay Communities - Clarck Drieshen
'In anniversaries of ower leoveste freond seggeth alle nihene': Anchorites, Chantries and Purgatorial Patronage in Medieval England - Michelle M. Sauer
'Item receyvyd of ye Anker': The Relationships between a Parish and its Anchorites as seen through the Churchwardens' Accounts - Clare Dowding
The Curious Incident of the Hermit in Fisherton - James Plumtree
Was Julian's nightmare a Mare? Julian of Norwich and the Vernacular Community of Storytellers - Godelinde Gertrude Perk
Anchoritic Textual Communities and the Wooing Group Prayers - Catherine Innes-Parker
The Anchoress Transformed: On wel swuðe god ureisun of God almihti and þe wohunge of ure lauerd in the Fourteenth-Century A Talkyng of the Love of God - Diana Denissen
Ancrene Wisse and the Egerton Hours - Dorothy Kim
Bibliography
Index