40 Ancrenne Riwle
temptations of demons were deemed too formidable
when on one’s own.
See alsoBENEDICTINE ORDER;HERMITS AND EREMITISM;
JULIAN OFNORWICH.
Further reading:Rotha Mary Clay, The Hermits and
Anchorites of England(London: Methuen, 1914); Sharon
K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988);
Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval
England(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
Ancrenne Riwle (Ancrenne Wisse, “Guide for
anchoresses”)This is an anonymous religious guide
written for anchoresses or female hermits between 1215
and 1222. First composed at the request of three female
recluses, the work was later revised for larger audiences
of both men and women. English seems to have been its
original language, although versions also exist in Latin
and French. Ancrenne Riwleproliferated in the 13th, 14th,
and 15th centuries.
The author of the Ancrenne Riwleis not known; he
was most likely an Augustinian canon. The three recluses
for whom the Ancrenne Riwlewas written are not named
but are addressed as well-born sisters within the work
itself. As were other anchoresses, they were “dead to the
world,” taking vows of obedience, chastity, and stability.
We know that these three were devout and lived comfort-
ably with servants and a garden. The work is considered
one of the most sophisticated examples of early Middle
English devotional prose, combining lyric intensity, piety,
and spiritual direction.
See alsoANCHORITES AND ANCHORESSES.
Further reading:Ancrenne Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses,
trans. Hugh White (New York: Penguin Books, 1993);
Linda Georgianna, The Solitary Self: Individuality in the
Ancrenne Wisse(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1981); Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson, eds. and
trans., Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrenne Wisse and Associ-
ated Works(New York: Paulist Press, 1991).
al-Andalus (Djazirat, Andalusia)At one time three-
quarters of the Iberian Peninsula, it was controlled pri-
marily by Muslims until the capture of GRANADAin 1492.
From its high tide in the eighth century, it gradually
shrank down to the city of Granada by the late 15th cen-
tury. In 710 an Arab-BERBERarmy set out for the Iberian
Peninsula under the leadership of Tariq ibn Ziyad. They
totally defeated the Visigothic king Roderick in 711 and
then raided into and through the Iberian Peninsula,
which they called al-Andalus. They claimed to rule in the
name of the UMAYYADcaliph. The Andalusian Muslims
seem never to have had serious goals of expansion across
the Pyrenees. In 732 CHARLESMARTELencountered not a
Muslim army but a summer raiding party at the Battle of
POITIERS. Despite his “victory” over that party, Muslims
continued their seasonal raiding along the southern
French coast for many years.
Unlike in other Arab conquests, in Muslim al-
Andalus there was little consistent pressure for large-scale
conversion. Muslims probably never became the majority
throughout their 700-year presence. Non-Muslims
entered into the Muslim realm as MOZARABS, Christians
who had adopted the language and manners, rather than
the faith, of the Arabs.
By 1147, the ALMOHADShad replaced ALMORAVIDS,
fellow Berbers from MOROCCOwho had seized control of
al-Andalus and nearly all their territories in the AL-
MAGHRIB. In al-Andalus the arrival of the fierce and reli-
gious Almohads slowed the progress of the Christian
RECONQUEST. They encouraged a revival of arts and let-
ters, for example, the work of IBNRUSHDor Averroës, the
Andalusian judge and physician whose interpretations of
ARISTOTLE became so important and disputed for
medieval European Christianity. During the late Almohad
period in al-Andalus, the intercommunal nature and peri-
odic tolerance or convivenciaof this civilization became
especially noticeable in the work of non-Muslim
thinkers, such as MOSESMAIMONIDES, who participated in
trends outside their own communities even at the
expense of criticism from within them.
By the early 13th century, Almohad power began to
decline. They were defeated in 1212 at Las Navas de Tolosa
by the Christian kings of the north and forced mostly to
retreat back into the al-Maghrib. The importance of Almo-
had cultural patronage to al-Andalus, however, long out-
lasted Almohad political power. The successor small
dynasties in the surviving Muslim states were responsible
for some of the highest achievements of Andalusian Mus-
lims, among them the ALHAMBRApalace in Granada. The
400-year southward movement of the Christian-Muslim
frontier—the Reconquest resulted, ironically, in some of
the most intense and productive Christian-Muslim cultural
interaction in Andalusian history. Muslims, as Mudéjars,
lived under Christian rule in their conquered territories
and contributed to their culture. JEWStranslated Arabic
and Hebrew texts into Castilian, their translations led
eventually to the Latin translations so important for the
development of Scholastic thought.
Further reading: Marianne Barrucand, Moorish
Architecture in Andalusia(Cologne: B. Taschen, 1992);
Jerrilynn D. Dodds, ed., Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic
Spain(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992);
Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political
History of al-Andalus(New York: Longman, 1996); Hugh
Kennedy, “Sicily and al-Andalus under Muslim Rule,” in
The New Cambridge Medieval History,Vol. 7, c. 1415–c.
1500,ed. Christopher Allmand (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 646–669; Katherine Watson,
French Romanesque and Islam: Andalusian Elements in
French Architectural Decoration c. 1030–1180, 2 vols.
(Oxford: B.A.R., 1989).