The Wilderness and the World: Encounters between the Carthusians of Late Medieval England and the Secular World

This study examines the role that encounters with the secular world played in shaping how the Carthusians of late medieval England conceived their own purpose and identity. Chapter 1 outlines how the physical setting of charterhouses and the monks’ liturgical practices were affected by requests for prayers, masses, and burials as well as the provision of hospitality for their founders, patrons, and benefactors. The impact that these various forms of interaction had on how the Carthusians perceived their own eremitic vocation is then explored using the late fifteenth-century cartulary from the charterhouse of London (now Kew, The National Archives, LR 2/61). Chapter 2 discusses how the monks of London commemorated the deeds of their lay founder, Sir Walter Manny, and some of the most distinguished members of their community in the chronicle inserted at the beginning of their cartulary.
Chapter 3 then analyses the role that depictions of the secular world played in the spiritual instruction and identity formation of the Carthusians using the early sixteenth-century devotional miscellany now known as Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS e Museo 160. This chapter examines how the universal verse chronicle in this manuscript may have shaped the ways in which Carthusian readers understood the significance of their order’s eremitic mission and their relationship with the world beyond the walls of their charterhouses.
By focusing on the perspective of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Carthusian monks, this study challenges the prevailing assumption that any form of engagement with the outside world ought to have been regarded as fundamentally incompatible with the eremitic principles of the order’s founders. Instead, it highlights how the Carthusians actively embraced their growing commemorative and intercessory responsibilities and remained highly attuned to the affairs of the secular world whilst practising their eremitic vocation in the wilderness spaces of their charterhouses.