Beholding the Handmaids of the Lord: The Virgin Mary as Model in Thirteenth-Century Anchoritic Texts

This article describes the Marian imagery found in two thirteenth-century anchoritic texts: the Ancrene Wisse, and the Vita of Yvette of Huy. The authors of both texts invoked Mary in order to define the virtues of the anchoress and to reconcile her dual roles as a humble solitary and a powerful intercessor on behalf of others. Solitude characterized the anchoritic life. However, townspeople, both clerical and lay, routinely compromised the anchoress’s solitude, hoping that she could use her closeness with God to intercede on their behalf. In both texts, the male authors use Marian imagery to characterize Mary as the ideal anchoress because of, not in spite of, her embodiment of these contrasting images. Mary provides an ideal for the anchorite to emulate, but because she is an unattainable ideal, Marian imagery is as much a mechanism of control as it is of inspiration.