ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses primarily on works or manuscripts produced in the West Midlands, but to do so is not to suggest that the West Midlands was the only site of textual production during the period. It considers a piece of original composition with the Ancrene Wisse, an early thirteenth-century text outlining the prayers and strictures of an anchoritic life for lay women. The chapter addresses both the evidence internal to the manuscripts and the implications of known human activity. It also provides further evidence that anchorites, though they may or may not have taken on active roles, were nevertheless implicated in larger textual communities. The Ancrene Wisse, likely composed in the early thirteenth century, betrays an extensive community of readers and also of writers, who adapted, translated, and copied the text repeatedly for new readers. Worcester was one of the dioceses precocious in adopting the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council.
