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Economies Of Salvation In English Anchoritic Texts, 1100-1400, Joshua Edward Britt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the different ways medieval authors conceived of anchoritism and solitary life by focusing on three important phases of the movement which are represented by Wulfric of Haselbury, Christina of Markyate, and fourteenth-century mystics. It is grounded in the medieval English anchoritic literature that was produced by religious scholars between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. Initially, lacking a tradition of their own and a language to articulate the anchoritic experience, medieval hagiographers borrowed the desert imagery from the story of the early fathers who lived in the Syrian and Egyptian deserts, which they viewed as a place of …