Materiality, Embodiment, and Enclosure in Medieval Religious Culture

Examines the various ways in which anchoritic, monastic and enclosed culture ("reclusive culture") experienced and interacted with the material. While devotion across the medieval west often emphasized the ineffable, religious enclosure and reclusion were deeply material. These vocations were a synthesis of faith, body, and spirit represented by and within the physical boundaries of the local environment. Such a co-mingling of the material with the spiritual is exemplified in texts, like Ancrene Wisse with its "Inner Rule" and "Outer Rule," as well as in the actual enclosures (monasteries, hermitages, churches, beguinages, and anchorholds) themselves, expressed through the cognitive, spiritual, and physical experiences of their inhabitants. Employing several theoretical and methodological approaches, including New Materialism, critical race theory, gender inquiry, and cultural criticism, this collection provides new readings that expand upon this convergence of the spiritual with the material via the writings of spiritual notables, such as Hildegard of Bingen, Birgitta of Sweden, and Julian of Norwich, alongside other lesser-studied but significant religious figures. Contributors examine how enclosure was understood conceptually and manifested physically in a range of historical witnesses, from testamentary bequests and material artifacts to guidance literature, visionary writings, and Books of Hours.