The prayer that we know as On Lofsong of ure Louerde [LUL] survives in a single copy in the thirteenth-century London, British Library MS Cotton Nero A. XIV (ff. 128r–131r). The last in a series of four lyrical interces-sions (one verse and three prose) which follow Nero's copy of Ancrene Wisse, it is one of the so-called Wooing Group texts, a grouping which includes Nero's four intercessions as well as Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde, extant in the thirteenth-century British Library MS Cotton Titus D.xviii, also following a copy of Ancrene Wisse. All five of these lyrical texts were, of course, edited together by Catherine Innes-Parker in 2015, under the title The Wooing of Our Lord and the Wooing Group Prayers.

LUL is, as Innes-Parker pointed out in her edition, the only one of the Wooing Group prayers which has no manuscript rubric or title; the title by which it is known was provided by Morris and Thompson, two of its early editors. By contrast, Þe Wohunge is named in Titus, and both On God Ureisun of ure Lefdi [UUL] (ff. 120v–123v) and On Wel Swuðe God Ureisun of God Almihti [UGA] (ff. 123v–126v) are identified in Nero. And although Nero does not name Þe Oreisun of Seinte Marie [OSM] (ff. 126v–128r), it is given this title in London, British Library MS Royal 17 A.xxvii, where it also appears. Despite the absence of rubric or title, LUL is, however, a recognizably distinct unit in Nero, beginning with an eleven-line capital ‘I’ in red, and ending with ‘amen’.

In her edition of the Wooing Group prayers, Innes-Parker characterized LUL as ‘a direct address from the soul to Christ’ which ‘opens with a brief history of salvation’ before taking the reader ‘through an examination of her own sin rooted in an agonized meditation on Christ's sufferings in the Passion’. She pointed out that it ‘takes the reader far beyond the simple rehearsal of sin found in OSM’, describing it as ‘steeped with the affective imagery of the Song of Songs, made popular by Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons on the Song of Songs’. The agonized intensity which Innes-Parker located in LUL is indeed striking; of all the Nero prayers, it is the one most preoccupied with the earthly isolation of the speaker and with the cultivation of an intimate relationship with Christ as spouse.

When Dorothea of Montau, a fourteenth-century married woman from Gdańsk, experiences visions in which she sees Christ as her divine bridegroom, she is faced with a dilemma: she is being called to action by her human husband, yet would much rather follow the calling of her divine bridegroom:

Dorothea's conflict illustrates how acutely aware she is of the fact that she is experiencing different temporalities simultaneously: her rapture has taken her out of human time, yet the call back to mundane tasks highlights that she remains aware of the ordinary time in which her husband makes demands on her and has expectations about the tasks to be fulfilled. She is clear about the difference in value attached to external human things when measured against the experience of direct interchange with the divine bridegroom, and yet remains aware of the calls of earthly tasks. Unlike her human husband, who punishes her failure to fulfil her external tasks on time with brutal blows, her divine bridegroom is both loving and understanding of the dilemma. He therefore advocates:

As is well known, Margery Kempe, whose life shares many similarities with that of the less familiar Dorothea, also struggles in her attempts to bridge the gap between earthly and heavenly temporalities. And, as with Dorothea, these struggles often manifest themselves in the context of the apparently conflicting demands made on her by human and divine spouses. At one notable moment, late in her Book, Margery finds herself required to assist with the care of her husband, ‘a man in gret age, passyng thre scor yer’ [a man of great age, over sixty years].

In þe Wohunge of Ure Lauerd [The Wooing of Our Lord], a thirteenth-century English meditation on the perfection of Christ, apparently intended for the use of female solitaries, the speaker recounts a chronology of events leading to Christ's crucifixion:

Using preterite verb forms, she situates the action in the past, while the adverbs ‘siðen’ (thrice repeated) and ‘ear’ suggest a linear sequence of unfolding events. Following immediately on this recollection, she registers astonishment at the affective impact that it has on her:

The shift to the present tense, its impact strengthened by the repeated ‘nu’, is no surprise; having reflected on a past event, she proceeds to detail her current response. What happens next, however, is unexpected; the intense immediacy of the speaker's emotion irrupts into her account of Christ's death, and what had been narrated as past becomes suddenly present:

I begin my paper with a quotation from R. S. Thomas, whom Vincent Gillespie once described to me as ‘the sublime poet of divine apophasis’. Of course, this is a description which applies as well to Vincent as it does to the irascible Welsh poet; his academic reflections on ‘[t]he play of absence and presence’ which characterize ‘the human experience of engagement with the ineffable’ have always teetered on the brink of the poetic. Yet, as is the case with R. S. Thomas, the apparently effortless lyricism of Vincent's writing has been hardwon, born of rigorous engagement with difficult questions.

My choice of quotation is based on Thomas's location of the object of his enquiry ‘everywhere / And nowhere’. In situating that which he seeks in a realm of impossible paradox, the poet positions himself in a theological tradition which recognizes the incapacity of language fully to capture the essential alterity of the divine. He echoes Anselm of Canterbury (who echoes Augustine of Hippo) in finding God ‘ubique et semper et nusquam et numquam’ (‘everywhere and always and never and nowhere’). In taking us back to the theological landscape of early medieval England, this recollection of Anselm is pertinent; the influence of his prayers and meditations on the anchoritic literature which is the focus of this chapter has been long recognized. Indeed, the rhetorical and theological delight that Anselm takes in the exploration of divine paradox (God as compassionate yet beyond passion; Christ as strong in his weakness, lofty in his lowliness, and powerful in his impotence) informs the English material under consideration here. A discursive mode founded on paradox and apparent antithesis is fundamental to its effective operation. The focus of this chapter is on anchoritic literature's preoccupation with the paradox of the enclosed life as fundamentally exposed, and exposing.

Anyone familiar with Ancrene Wisse and its associated literature (the texts of the so-called Katherine and Wooing Groups) will know that these writings share a preoccupation with walls, both literal and metaphorical. Most notably, the rhetoric of Ancrene Wisse emphasizes that its anchoritic readers are bound by the walls of both anchorhold and body, and it repeatedly reiterates the dangers of violating these boundaries.