Feminist historiographers have long argued that the recovery of past female experience, often neglected or overlooked, can help deepen and enrich our understanding of the present. The respected American academic Judith M Bennett has made a particularly forceful case for infusing contemporary gender theory with “temporal depth”. In her own work, Prof Bennett has written extensively on the lives of medieval women in Britain. She will surely be delighted, then, that the arts minister, Helen Whateley, has placed a temporary export bar on a remarkable and precious Middle English text, which appears to have been principally directed at some of the most extraordinary women of the late middle ages.
A translation from the original Latin, The Mirror of Recluses is believed to date to 1414, and an edition may well have been read by the celebrated Christian mystic Julian of Norwich – herself the author of the earliest surviving work by a woman to be written in English. Auctioned off to an overseas buyer in the summer, The Mirror of Recluses is the only complete version of a kind of spiritual guidebook addressed specifically to female readers pursuing the exacting life of a hermit, or anchoress. In imposing the export bar, ministers cited its significance for the study of the history of collecting, the medieval book trade and the anchoritic life itself.
A British purchaser will need to find the £169,000 necessary to save the manuscript for the nation and, ideally, make it freely available to scholars. It must be hoped that the money can be found. Anchorites and anchoresses lived a long-forgotten way of life, but the social status and influence of female exemplars such as Julian represent one of the most fascinating, enigmatic dimensions of the medieval world.
It was an austere existence. A funeral service, symbolising death to the world, was conducted before anchorites entered into a life of solitary prayer, writing and contemplation, usually occupying a small enclosed cell attached to a church. But visitors were permitted from the surrounding secular community, and some anchorites appear to have developed a role as medieval therapists, occupying a space between priesthood and secular life. For the women who found such a niche, there was an autonomy and respect that it was hard to find elsewhere. What we know of the conversations in Norwich between Julian and her fellow mystic Margery Kempe, who visited in around 1413, suggest a spiritual depth but also a warm female friendship which was given space to flourish beyond patriarchal jurisdiction and control.
In recent years, the use of export bars has allowed some notable works to remain in Britain and open to public view, including, for example, two of the most important examples of British surrealist furniture. The Victoria and Albert Museum eventually purchased Salvador Dali and Edward James’s Mae West lips sofa, while the National Galleries of Scotland acquired their lobster telephone. The Mirror of Recluses may not quite carry the same box-office appeal. But it would be a great shame if a text that sheds light on a unique fragment of female experience in 15th-century Britain disappears abroad.
