by Liz Herbert McAvoy
Lincoln, Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 91 (the ‘Thornton Manuscript’), fol. 251v. (c) Liz Herbert McAvoy
On Saturday, August 10th, 1422, the feast of St Lawrence, an unnamed anchoress enclosed somewhere in the city of Winchester received a vision while asleep in her small cell. This vision, which recurred for three consecutive nights, presented her with fearsomely graphic depictions of agonised souls in purgatory, at the centre of which was the suffering soul of her former friend, Margaret. Margaret had been a nun, most likely from the local nunnery of Nunnaminster, which may also have been the anchoress’s former home before her religious enclosure. During the three visions, Margaret repeatedly begged her friend to arrange for some named and influential churchmen to pray for her soul’s release from purgatory into paradise. In response to Margaret’s pleas, the anchoress immediately set about writing down her experiences and Margaret’s pleas for prayers in a text which has become known as A Revelation of Purgatory.
We do not know for certain who this anchoress-author was but she was likely the same anchoress who appears twice in the records of 1421 as having been sought out for advice by England’s most powerful nobleman, Richard Beauchamp, 13th earl of Warwick, who seemed to know her well. Not only did Richard send two of his men to visit the anchoress in her cell, but also summoned her to Westminster for a direct meeting, when he would have no doubt have consulted her about some personal or political matter.
St Lawrence’s Church, Winchester. Credit: Hassocks5489, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The location of her cell is unknown. However, on a narrow lane leading from the holy cross on the high street to the cathedral green lies a small church, known as the ‘Mother Church of Winchester’, dedicated, perhaps significantly, to the second-century Saint Lawrence. Still in use, this church once contained an upper-level anchorhold on the north wall, the original chamber of which is now incorporated into the upstairs back wall of an adjacent bakery. Newly incumbent bishops would traditionally visit this church on their approach to the cathedral and it seems a likely location for the cell of such an important anchoress.
A Revelation of Purgatory takes the form of a letter directed at the anchoress’s primary confessor, John London, who had helped to establish the important Syon Abbey Brigittine foundation some years earlier, and other ecclesiastics, all of whom are named and traceable in the records. Over the course of the text, the author documents Margaret’s journey through the agonising stages of purgatory, even detailing how her former pets, a dog and a cat, enhance her pains by biting and scratching her incessantly. The text concludes with the salvation of Margaret’s soul via the intercessions of the churchmen and her anchoress-friend, her mystical marriage to Christ and arrival at the gates of heaven.
Recent findings have discovered that this text was distributed far and wide as a type of loose template for other writers wishing to encourage similar prayers for the dead from their own religious circles. Another text by the same author entitled Instruction for Masses, has also recently come to light. The often-overlooked writings of this anonymous anchoress are thus far more important than originally thought, demonstrating the centrality and wider influence of women’s literary culture in the fifteenth century.
Further Reading
- Edition and Translation
McAvoy, Liz Herbert, ed. and trans., A Revelation of Purgatory (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017)
2. Secondary Sources
Drieshen, Clarck, ‘Revelation of Purgatory’, in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women’s Writing in the Global Middle Ages, ed. Liz Herbert McAvoy, Michelle M. Sauer and Diane Watt (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_89-1 .
Drieshen, Clarck, ‘English Nuns as “Anchoritic Intercessors” for Souls in Purgatory: The Employment of A Revelation of Purgatory by Late Medieval English Nunneries for their Lay Communities,’ in Medieval Anchorites and their Communities, ed. Cate Gunn and Liz Herbert McAvoy (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017), 85-100.
Erler, Mary C., ‘A Revelation of Purgatory’ in The History of British Women’s Writing, Volume One: 700–1500, ed. Liz Herbert McAvoy and Diane Watt (London: Palgrave Macmillan: 2012), 241-249.
