The Secret Within: Hermits, Recluses and Spiritual Outsiders in Medieval England by Wolfgang Riehle (review)

More than thirty years after publishing a translation of The Middle English Mystics (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), Wolfgang Riehle returns to offer “a new history of English mysticism” (135). Unlike his previous volume, this large and impressive monograph steps away from a tight focus on metaphorical mystical language to include a much broader cultural and historical approach to understanding important mystical, devotional, and visionary texts that circulated in medieval England. The title captures one of several concerns driving the book—the development and broader cultural influence of anchoritic spirituality. It soon becomes clear that there are several other prominent concerns: most importantly, the strong connections that existed between English audiences and continental authors and texts, and the specific influence of the Cistercian tradition on English mysticism.

This Cistercian agenda drives the first two chapters of the book. Starting with the earliest desert monks of late Antiquity, and following the growth of the eremetical life in the early medieval British Isles, Riehle builds up to what seem like the central claims of the entire book: first, “that the Cistercians of the twelfth century provide a necessary backdrop for the specific affectivity of mystical experience in England” (3), and second, that “the anchoritic idea exerted an exceptionally intense influence on England” (14). Englishman Stephen Harding’s role in the foundation of the Cistercian order on the Continent is fascinating. Bernard of Clairvaux and Aelred of Rievaulx receive due attention here; Riehle cites the impact of Aelred’s Rule for a Recluse frequently throughout the rest of the book, starting with the Wooing group, which he argues “bears the stamp of Cistercian spirituality” (38). In the third chapter we read that the Ancrene Wisse, too, bears this stamp, and Riehle strongly argues that this text needs to be situated within twelfthcentury monastic theology, specifically the new affective Cistercian spirituality based on exegesis of the Song of Songs.

In turn, we learn that Ancrene Wisse and the Wooing group directly impacted another anonymous prose work, A Talking of the Love of God, the focus of the fourth chapter. Here Riehle goes so far as to support the possibility of a female author of Talking. He compares the Talking to the Monk of Farne’s meditations, in order to try to figure out how spirituality may or may not be gendered. The answer to this question seems to fall flat: “we do not find an answer to what constitutes specific feminine spirituality” (68). Fortunately, other scholars such as Carolyn Walker Bynum, Karma Lochrie, Lynn Staley, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Diane Watt, and Jeffrey Hamburger (to name but a few) have pursued this question fruitfully, if with other texts.

The “leading mystics” Richard Rolle, the Cloud-author, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe are joined by Marguerite Porete in chapters 5 through 10. The Cistercian thread continues with Rolle, whose “language bears the stamp of the Cistercians down to the smallest detail, even if insufficient attention has been paid to this hitherto” (95). Riehle leads us through an astonishingly detailed examination of all Rolle’s texts in order to recuperate him as a legitimate mystic, albeit one who is “constantly surprising—and therefore engaging” (86). Both The Cloud of Unknowing and Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls receive extensive theological analysis, as well as discussion of the milieu of the authors/translators and their reading publics. While I am not convinced by the argument that Porete’s presence in England is due to the Mirror translator’s desire to introduce her text into the English court (like the Cloud, the Mirror would be inappropriate for such a lay audience), others may find the connections to secular poetry and flower imagery intriguing.

Hilton’s Scale of Perfection receives especially close attention, where again Riehle argues that the Cistercians (particularly Bernard) generally inspire its spirituality. Riehle delves into the Scale’s original interpretation of the imago...