Surviving Manuscripts
There are seventeen surviving medieval manuscripts containing all or part of Ancrene Wisse. Of these, nine are in the original Middle English, four are translations into Anglo-Norman French, and a further four are translations into Latin. The shortest extract is the Lanhydrock Fragment, which consists of only one sheet of parchment. The extant manuscripts are listed below.
| Version | Approx. date | Location | Manuscript |
|---|---|---|---|
| C - Cleopatra | 1225–1230 | British Library | Cotton MS Cleopatra C.vi |
| B - Nero | 1225–1250 | British Library | Cotton MS Nero A.xiv |
| C - Titus | 1225–1250 | British Library | Cotton MS Tiberius B.i |
| A - Corpus | 1225–1240 | Corpus Christi College, Cambridge | MS 402 |
| Lanhydrock Fragment | 1300-1250 | Bodleian Library, Oxford | MS Eng. th.c.70 |
| P - Pepys | 1375–1400 | Magdalene College, Cambridge | MS Pepys 2498 |
| V - Vernon | 1375–1400 | Bodleian Library, Oxford | MS Eng. Poet.a.1 |
| G - Caius | 1350–1400 | Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge | MS 234/120 |
| R – Royal | 15th C. | British Library | MS Royal 8 C.i |
| V - Vitellius (French) | early 14th C. | British Library | Cotton MS Vitellius F.vii |
| S – Trinity (French) | late 13th-early 14th C. | Trinity College, Cambridge | MS 883 (R.14.7) |
| L- Latin | 1300–1350 | Merton College, Oxford | MS c.i.5 (Coxe 44) |
Although none of the manuscripts is believed to be produced by the original author, several date from the first half of the 13th century. The first complete edition edited by Morton in 1853 was based on the British Library manuscript Cotton Nero A.xiv. Recent editors have favoured Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 402 of which Bella Millett has written: "Its linguistic consistency and general high textual quality have made it increasingly the preferred base manuscript for editions, translations, and studies of Ancrene Wisse." It was used as the base manuscript in the critical edition published as two volumes in 2005-2006. The Corpus manuscript is the only one to include the title Ancrene Wisse.
The Ancrene Wisse was partly retranslated from French back into English and reincorporated in the late fifteenth-century Treatise of Love.
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