"Sawles Warde": Introduction

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"Sawles Warde" or "On the Custody of the Soul" focuses on the protection of the soul from inward and outward influences, using the allegory of the body as house protecting the soul within. The source of this work is a Latin treaties, De custodia interioris hominis, but the author of "Sawles Warde" reworks this material into a narrative homily, leaving out much of the philosophical emphasis of the original and trading it for greater allegorical detail.

"Sawles Warde" is found among the "Katherine Group," a group of religious texts all written in the West Midlands sometime early in the thirteenth century. All these texts focus on appropriate behavior for Christians, specifically recluses, and more specifically women. [1]

Notes

1. All information is taken from Medieval English Prose for Women: From the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse, edited by Bella Millett & Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Oxford: Clarendon,1990); see pages xxv-xxix.

Bibliography

Editions

Facsimile of Ms. Bodley 34. New York: Oxford UP, 1960.

Millett, Bella & Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, eds and trans. Medieval English Prose for Women: From the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.

Morris, Richard, ed. Old English Homilies and Homiletic Treatises. London: N. Trübner & Co., 1868.

Translations

Savage, Anne & Nicholas Watson, eds. Anchoritic Spirituality : Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works. New York: Paulist Press, 1991.

Millett, Bella & Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, eds and trans. Medieval English Prose for Women: From the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.

The contents of ORB are copyright 1995-1999 Laura V. Blanchard and Carolyn Schriber except as otherwise indicated herein.