This article explores the place of the Holy Land in the devotions of medieval English hermits and recluses between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. It first outlines the important place of physical travel to Palestine in the career of anchorites, with pilgrimage to Jerusalem followed by seclusion held up as a powerful ideal in literary sources. It then suggests that some of the dwellings of English solitaries formed deliberate monumental recreations of the holy places of Palestine. I consider the extent to which the cells of recluses were understood as recreations of the tomb of Christ, functioning as living Easter Sepulchre structures, and the dedication of churches used or built by hermit and recluses. Finally, I note possible links between the hermitage of St Robert of Knaresborough and Jabal Quruntul (Mount Quarentayne), the site of Christ's temptations in the wilderness.
The manuscript London, British Library MS Yates Thompson 13 is one of several devotional manuscripts associated with the artistic patronage of Queen Isabella of France, but the only one to date from the period of her effective regency government of England, ca. 1326-1330. Examining a selection of its image cycles, and principally the sequence concerned with the romance hero Beves of Hampton, the article argues for their potential to be read as pictorial allegories for and commentaries on political events in England during the years 1325-1330. Selected pictorial cycles in the Taymouth Hours form a coherent set of visual warnings on the dangers of masculine power and female attempts at its exercise. Sustained visual reference and commentary on the regency government inflected by existing, textual political discourses helps demonstrate the spiritual dangers of Isabella's current or former political position ca. 1326-1330.
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