Bourke 2016

An Experiment in “Neurohistory”: Reading Emotions in Aelred's De Institutione
Inclusarum (Rule for a Recluse)

Author(s): Julia Bourke
Source: Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, Vol. 42, No. 1, Special Issue: Anchoritic
Studies and Liminality (2016), pp. 124-142
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jmedirelicult.42.1.0124
Accessed: 23-09-2016 00:48 UTC
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an experiment in “neurohistory”:
reading emotions in aelred’s de
institutione inclusarum
(rule for a recluse)
Julia Bourke
Queen Mary University of London
abstract
This article is a case study in the methodology of “neurohistory,” combining a traditional

cultural historical approach to anchoritic guidance writing with the discipline of
modern neuroscience. It focuses on the guide De Institutione Inclusarum (ca. 1160) by
the Cistercian Aelred of Rievaulx. The essay begins with an explanation of “devotional
reading,” in which texts provide meditative scripts for the reader. Following an overview
of the text, one meditation on caritas prescribed by Aelred is examined in detail and
compared with the meditations used in modern neuroscientific studies of compassion
and empathy. The article then addresses the drawbacks and common criticisms of this
methodology, before indicating possible areas of future research.
keywords: neurohistory, neuroscience, emotion, guidance writing, affective
meditation
What can anchoritic guidance writing tell us about the inner lives of ancho-
rites? Often, it is assumed, very little. The guides are expressions only of
the author’s own ideology, like mirrors, reflecting a construction of their
reader that reveals more about the writer’s image of an ideal anchorite
than about the anchorite’s own emotions or imagination. Perhaps, we may
concede, a reading “against the grain” may yield some modest harvest of
historical information.
Methodological change has seen historians abandon any attempt to
treat sources as transparent windows onto the past—and rightly so. Yet,
nevertheless, the readers of anchoritic guides were not mere fictions of an
authorial imagination but human beings with bodies and brains. This arti-
cle began as an attempt to challenge the consensus that guidance writing
tells us little about its readers by applying a new methodological lens to a
journal of medieval religious cultures, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2016

Copyright © 2016 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
julia bourke 125
familiar source. This methodology is “neurohistory,” an interdisciplinary

approach that combines historical analysis with modern neuroscience and
neuropsychology. It will be applied here to a single case study, a meditation
on caritas from the anchoritic guide De Institutione Inclusarum (Rule for a
Recluse), written by the Cistercian abbot Aelred of Rievaulx (1110 –1167 c.e.).
The limitations as well as the benefits of a neurohistorical approach are
outlined, along with potential areas of further research.
In this case study, the relevance of neuroscientific research depends
largely on questions of reading practice and meditation. Before turning to
neurohistory, therefore, I will first suggest that anchoritic guidance writ-
ing as a genre calls for a particular kind of engaged reading practice, here
referred to as “devotional reading.” Such a practice is signposted within
texts by a number of features, including appeals to the senses (especially
the internal senses), emotional imperatives exhorting the anchoritic reader
to feel or imagine, and emotionally charged language more generally.
Through the practice of devotional reading, these features within guidance
texts are animated and become tools for structuring the reader’s affective
response to textual stimuli. Once this meditative reading practice has been
outlined, its potential effectiveness as a mechanism for shaping emotion
can be assessed using evidence provided by modern neuroscience.
anchoritic reading in practice
Anchoritic guides can be understood as instructional manuals, intended

to help anchorites craft meaningful experiences through meditation and
prayer. They thus form part of a category of activity that Mary Carruthers
describes as “a set of experiences and techniques, conceived as a ‘way’ to be
followed.”1 Using a term developed for the comparative study of Christianity
and Buddhism, Carruthers calls these activities “orthopraxes” and offers a
detailed analysis of the rhetorical techniques used to structure thought and
prayer.2 These forms of orthopraxis have been studied almost exclusively
in connection with monasticism and are especially associated with the
Cistercian order.3 Cistercian practices of forgetting, for example, have been
outlined by Janet Coleman, whose work complements Carruthers’s analysis
of mnemonic techniques.4
Carruthers also outlines the difference between this historiographical
approach and one that sees artifacts as complete, self-contained expres-
sions of a particular ideology: “The distinction between these two cognitive
126 Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures
attitudes resides in whether a book or a church is thought of as an object

to be observed and studied for what it is in itself—for example, assum-
ing that it just is, all by itself, an encyclopedia in symbol-language, which
we thus can describe as it ‘really’ is— or whether one thinks of a book
or a church as a machine, a tool that people use for social purposes such
as symbol-making. It’s the difference between considering the work you
are contemplating as an end or as a means.”5 Thus, taking Carruthers’s
approach, anchoritic guidance writing can be understood as providing tex-
tual tools with which a reader can shape an affective response. Although
often considered as authorial “ends,” the guides can equally be examined as
anchoritic “means,” mechanisms available to the anchorite in her pursuit
of an emotional aim—that of mystical union, in which the anchorite is
subsumed by the divine.6
The effective use of such tools, however, relies on a particular kind of
reading practice. This anchoritic orthopraxis, which I have called “devo-
tional reading,” involves the conscious and deliberate use of a textual stim-
ulus to evoke, alter, or otherwise influence the reader’s own affective state.
It is a style of slow, focused, meditative or contemplative reading in which
images and concepts are vividly imagined (a process often described in
terms of internal sensory perception). Devotional reading is an orthopraxis
that, when repeated over time, shapes and forms the mental landscape of
the reader, provides a stock of images that can be easily called to mind, and
builds associations that link concepts, including material objects and exter-
nal images, as well as ideas. All reading shapes a reader’s interior world to
some extent, whether the reader is aware of this or not. Devotional read-
ing, though, is a conscious effort to use the act of reading written text to
construct a spiritually significant internal space and to fill that space with
useful images and affective states in service of a religious goal.
Devotional reading thus shares some characteristics with the monas-
tic practice of lectio divina, which Jean Leclercq describes as “prayerful
reading” and E. Ann Matter has called the “interior exploration of scrip-
ture.”7 However, such prayerful, focused reading was not restricted only
to scripture. Discussing Anselm (ca. 1033) and the preface to his collec-
tion of prayers, which describes a practice of slow, thoughtful reading that
encouraged affective response, Rachel Fulton suggests that such “prayers
and meditations were to be read not for their own sake, or for any particu-
lar argument that they might impart, but rather for the sake of the emo-
tions that they were intended to stir.”8 This method of reading devotional
material was one of many monastic activities that allowed a conscious
julia bourke 127
restructuring or alteration of patterns of thought, memory, and emotion.

While lectio divina refers to a strictly codified practice, ritually confined to
particular spaces and times within monastic communities, “devotional
reading” can be used as a broader category that encompasses the spread
of a particular reading practice into an extramonastic context—a spread
facilitated by the increasing availability of texts written or translated into
the vernacular. Anchoritic guidance writing offers a useful case study for
examining the transmission and transformation of monastic lectio divina
into what became, over the course of the Middle Ages, an increasingly secu-
larized and accessible practice of devotional reading.
Devotional reading is thus both a particular approach brought to the
guides by the anchoritic reader and a property that arises from the guides
themselves, as the textual traces of the purpose for which they were con-
structed. Devotional reading as an approach could, at least in theory, be
applied to texts that offer very little emotional stimulus or stimulus of an
inappropriate kind (a devotional approach to the Song of Songs, for exam-
ple, transforms an erotic text into an emotional goad to mystical union).
Conversely, the triggers for such an approach embedded within a text could
be overlooked or ignored by a reader, regardless of the work’s suitability
for devotional reading. Authorial intervention may shape a text to make it
more suitable as an emotional tool—as in the case of commentaries that
seek to direct readers toward a particular kind of textual engagement or, as
will be demonstrated, Aelred’s anchoritic guide—but can never enforce a
particular response. As an orthopraxis, therefore, devotional reading can be
said to emerge when two elements, reader and text, collaborate to produce
spiritual meaning. Often an author will draw on particular stylistic features
that encourage or aim to provoke a devotional approach from the reader,
but equally, it is the reader’s own practice of devotional reading that in turn
animates the text and foregrounds the emotional and meditative markers
that might otherwise have remained latent.
The first of these features is sensory language, or more specifically,
language that refers to internal senses or inner mental perception.
Ultimately Augustinian, this sensory imagery is usually accompanied by
instructions to retreat from the bodily senses through turning the mind’s
attention inward. The second feature is the use of imperatives encouraging
mental or cognitive effort—think on, contemplate, consider, or imagine. In
Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum, such imperatives are used
in conjunction with the present tense to encourage the direct participa-
tion of the reader, who becomes an active agent in the construction of her
own internal landscape. Finally, these meditations are characterized by a

use of emotion-rich vocabulary that prompts or guides affective response.
This vocabulary takes a number of forms, including imperatives, interjec-
tions, and rhetorical questions. In De Institutione, as in other guides, these
features merge to create a text that invites participation from the reader. If
this encouraged devotional approach was adopted, De Institutione may have
become a powerful tool for practicing and cultivating a range of emotions,
strengthening affective response over time. Repetition, in particular, facili-
tates emotional training by reinforcing connections between stimulus
and response and gradually automatizing emotions or thoughts that were
initially deliberate and effortful.9
devotional reading in de institutione inclusarum
De Institutione was written by Aelred between about 1160 and 1162,

during his tenure as abbot of the Cistercian foundation at Rievaulx. It is
addressed to Aelred’s biological sister—he mentions that he is “et carne
et spiritu frater” [brother in both flesh and spirit]—about whom nothing
is known except the little mentioned in the guide itself.10 Aelred purports
to be responding to his sister’s request for guidance in the anchoritic life,
although the text also offers some internal evidence that it was intended for
wider circulation. It contains, for example, instructions for illiterate ancho-
rites, advice obviously not applicable to Aelred’s sister.11 The Latin guide
survives in six complete manuscript versions, the earliest of which dates to
the thirteenth century, and in a further four partial versions.
De Institutione is divided into instructions regarding external behavior
(such as fasting, silence, how many servants to keep, and whether or not
to receive visitors) and advice on the anchorite’s internal, spiritual life—
a division equivalent to the distinction between the inner and outer rule
found in the thirteenth-century guide Ancrene Wisse (Guide for Anchoresses).
De Institutione’s inner rule is largely composed of a “triple meditation” on
past events (the life of Christ), present advantages (such as spiritual and
physical health), and future outcomes (the Last Judgment). It also includes
a number of shorter meditations on virtues such as caritas. Drawing on
Augustinian ideas of sensory perception, Aelred’s guide provides both
practical instruction for overcoming distracting temporal stimuli perceived
by the external or bodily senses and food for the internal spiritual senses,
which are the anchorite’s sole means of experiencing the divine.
julia bourke 129
The second part of Aelred’s guide, which provides instruction for

developing the interior homo, is itself a meditation designed to direct the
anchorite’s thoughts and attention toward God, drawing the reader through
a contemplation of past, present, and future events. The way in which
the guide relies on devotional reading to shape the anchorite’s response
becomes clear when passages from the inner rule are examined in detail.
The meditation on the present, for example, can be broadly characterized
as an incitement to gratitude for one’s own well-being—spiritual as well as
physical—and the extension of caritas toward those less fortunate, includ-
ing the destitute and those undergoing temptation. This is the shortest of
the three meditations and has been approached by scholars in the past as
confessional rather than meditative, despite having the same features of
emotional exhortation and direct address to the reader that are found in the
past and future sections that bracket it. Aelred’s guide is, here, a devotional
tool with which the anchorite is invited to construct a program of mental
images, leading her step-by-step through a series of affective states to come
at last to a profound experience of the divine. It is neither a descriptive
account of the spiritual state of union with God nor (as parts of the outer
rule are) a prescriptive guide to behavior.
Discussing this threefold meditative model, Marsha Dutton-Stuckey
argues that Aelred’s sister “is not an actor in this meditation, and her role is
intellectual rather than affective or imaginative”; the text is “overwhelmingly
confessional in content” and “would probably satisfy the sister-anchoress
as little as it does the modern reader.”12 Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq takes
a similar approach, remarking that “the author is hard-put to escape
narcissism.”13 The guide has thus been interpreted as a literary text reflec-
tive only of the author’s personal ideology and experience, not as a practical
guide to prayer incorporating a series of spiritual exercises. Alternatively,
Laura Diener has argued for the affective participation of the recluse in
Aelred’s meditations. As the anchorite read, becoming progressively more
engaged with Aelred’s narratives, Diener proposes, “they would become
her reality, and she would experience their emotions as her own. If done
correctly, her affective involvement would produce physical reactions, such
as physical shaking and actual tears.”14 Aelred’s meditations are scripts not
just for the physical performance of emotions but also for the internal,
subjective experience of them. If, through the practice of devotional read-
ing, the anchoritic reader takes an active role in the creation of meaning,
the threefold meditation becomes a useful tool for manipulating her own
affective state.
a neurohistorical approach
While the textual indicators of devotional reading may be relatively

straightforward to recover, it is much harder to assess whether a text that
invites meditation was actually read this way in practice. Indeed, within
existing methodological frameworks, questions of reading practice have
often proved unanswerable. Neurohistory offers one potential means
of exploring questions of practice, based on an argument of efficacy and
probability. If the meditations and advice contained in anchoritic guides can
be shown to produce the emotional results for which they aim—if, in other
words, they are demonstrated to be useful tools—then it is reasonable to
assume that they were, in fact, put to use.
Some of the most useful research for assessing the efficacy of meditation
and other emotion-regulation strategies comes from the unlikely field of
modern neuroscience. Many recent experiments have sought to understand
the way in which emotions or affective states can be induced and trained in
modern people, using methods such as guided meditation and structured
exposure to emotional stimuli. Taking a methodological approach that his-
torian Daniel Smail has christened “the new neurohistory,” the remainder
of this article will examine how such neuroscientific research may be useful
to a historical understanding of anchoritic guidance writing, focusing on a
single meditation found in De Institutione’s inner rule.
The meditation comes from a discussion of caritas, charity or compas-
sion, which occurs immediately before the meditation on past events that
begins the triple meditation. In this passage, Aelred describes the emotional
state of caritas and its expression as a crucial element of anchoritic life.15 For
the purposes of this study, caritas can be quite narrowly defined as both
the recognition of suffering in other human beings and a corresponding
reaction of sorrow, grief, or shared participation in that suffering. Aelred
discusses other aspects of caritas, including a caritas directed toward God,
at other points in the text, but here the guide refers exclusively to caritas
toward one’s neighbor. For convenience, caritas, compassion, and empathy
will be used interchangeably, although in its broader sense caritas can be
seen as distinct from these other feelings.
After describing the division of caritas into these two components—
directed either toward God or toward other people—the text moves on to
the practical implications for the anchorite. “Quid igitur beneficii impendes
proximo?” Aelred asks, before responding that the best way to do good for
julia bourke 131
one’s neighbor is by offering prayers and a bona uoluntate. This is followed

by a meditation to help the anchorite produce this necessary feeling of
goodwill or desire to help. Aelred instructs the reader:
Itaque totum mundum uno dilectionis sinu complectere, ibi simul

omnes qui boni sunt considera et gratulare, ibi malos intuere et luge.
Ibi afflictos conspice et oppressos, et compatere. Ibi occurant animo
miseria pauperum, orphanorum gemitus, uiduarum desolatio, tris-
tium maestitudo, necessitates peregrinantium, pericula nauigantium,
uota uirginum, tentationes monachorum, praelatorum sollicitudo,
labor militantium. Omnibus pectus tuae dilectiones aperias, his tuas
impende lacrymas, pro his tuas preces effundas.16
[And so embrace the whole world in one lap of love. There simultane-
ously consider and congratulate all who are good, and look upon and
mourn the bad. There observe both the afflicted and the oppressed,
and suffer with them. There let the misery of the poor, the orphans’
sighs, the widows’ desolation, the sorrows of the downcast, the
wants of travelers, the dangers of those at sea, the vows of virgins,
the temptations of monks, the prelates’ anxiety, the labors of those
who fight, suggest themselves to your mind. Let the heart of your
love open to all these, expend your tears for these, for these let your
prayers pour forth.]
This passage, when approached as a devotional tool, could function as

what Smail has called a “psychotropic mechanism.” He defines these as
“the mood-altering practices, behaviours, and institutions generated by
human culture”; in other words, a psychotropic mechanism is anything
consumed or practiced that alters one emotional state into something
else.17 The meditation above, then, could potentially function as a psycho-
tropic mechanism to induce caritas or compassion. In order for this to be
effective, however, the reader must participate emotionally in the images
of suffering described through the practice of devotional reading. Thus,
the first question to arise from this interpretation of Aelred’s guide is: Is
there any point in consciously trying to induce a compassionate response
within our own brains in response to images of suffering? Is compassion
or caritas not an automatic response, which an individual will either feel or
not feel, independent of conscious effort? Can emotions be cultivated at all?
This question is one to which modern neuroscience can contribute.

A recent neuroscientific experiment at the University of California at Los
Angeles was designed to test whether empathy and associated prosocial or
“helping” behavior occurs automatically, without conscious involvement.18
To do this, scientists measured participants’ responses to naturalistic stimuli,
which depicted a variety of “sad” events from everyday life. The participants
were divided into three groups: One group observed the stimulus naturally,
with no instruction; one group was instructed to intentionally empathize;
and the third group was given no instruction but was under “cognitive
load”—they had to perform a memory task at the same time as being
exposed to the stimulus. If empathy is automatic, meaning it occurs without
the involvement of the conscious brain, it should not be affected by cogni-
tive load. But in fact, the study found that “cognitive load reduced empathic
experience and empathy-related neural responses. . . . Furthermore, stronger
neural responses were observed when participants were instructed to empa-
thize, which suggests top-down effortful cognition may amplify empathic
responses.”19 Thus, not only is empathy not automatic, but deliberate efforts
to feel compassion actually resulted in increased emotional response.
Furthermore, a new study published in early 2015 has demonstrated that
similar emotional processes, despite beginning as deliberate conscious
efforts, might become easier and more automatic if practiced over time.20
Such “effortful cognition” finds a parallel in the emotional imperatives
that are a feature of texts designed for devotional reading, signaling to the
attentive reader that a devotional response is required. Aelred, in both the
passage under consideration here and throughout De Institutione, relies on
imperatives to clarify the role of the reader as a participant in the text. These
imperatives function as instructions to the anchorite, communicating the
proper emotional response to the stimulus the guide is providing. They
exhort the anchoritic reader to conscious effort, encouraging, in effect, top-
down cognition. In this instruction to caritas, among other imperatives,
we see “embrace the world in love” (complectere), “congratulate the good”
(congratulare), “mourn the bad” (luge), and “suffer with the oppressed”
(compatere), as well as the jussive subjunctive forms “let (the heart) open”
(aperias) and “let (prayers) pour forth” (effundas). These instructions to
emote are not mere stylistic flourishes. They constantly prompt the ancho-
rite to effortful cognition and also clarify exactly which aspect of caritas is
called for in response to each stimulus. Neuroscientific research reveals that
this conscious effort could, in fact, have a positive impact on the anchorite’s
compassionate response.
julia bourke 133
The second area of inquiry arising from this meditation on caritas is

the process by which words on the page become an experience of compas-
sion in the body and brain. Is this process possible, and if so, how is it
achieved? An experiment conducted by Antonio Damasio and others in
2009 was designed to induce strong states of compassion in participants,
in order to find the neural correlates of both compassion and admiration.21
Experimenters used different emotionally laden narratives as stimuli to
measure different emotional states and distinguished between compas-
sion for physical pain (such as a sports injury) and compassion for what
they called social or psychological pain (such as the death of a loved one).
The study also drew a distinction “between recognizing another’s social
or physical situation and emotionally reacting to it.”22 Emotions were thus
broken down into two stages: the cognitive appraisal of another’s situation,
followed by the experience of a social emotion.
The significance of this experiment for De Institutione’s meditation on
caritas lies in the method used to induce compassion in participants, which
is curiously similar to that used by Aelred. The designers of the experi-
ment created narratives based on events from the lives of real people, with
a scripted verbal account supplemented by combinations of audio, video,
and still images. The experimenter script used as part of the stimulus for
compassion for social pain, for example, was as follows:
This is the story of a 9-year-old South African girl whose mother is

dying of AIDS from a blood transfusion. She is an only child and has
no father. Her mother was worried she’d be mistreated if people knew
that she was dying of AIDS, so she swore the little girl to secrecy. The
girl tells how she is afraid to go to school, in case her mother dies
while she is away. She also tells about how she writes a letter each day
to her mother, who is in the clinic, telling her how much she loves
her and how she wants her to return home. She sleeps on a tiny cot to
leave her mother’s bed fresh for her.23
This script was initially read to participants during a group session with
an experimenter and was followed by a short video clip including an inter-
view with the child. In the scanner, participants were shown a five-second
“reminder” clip and asked to induce in themselves the emotion they felt
during the interview, as strongly as possible.
Like Aelred’s examples for his contemporaries—the wants of travelers,
widows’ desolation—the story of poverty and illness in Africa is a familiar
one for modern readers. It is at once a singular narrative of individual

suffering and yet also representative of the larger sufferings and evils con-
stantly threatening the less fortunate members of our global community.
Whereas in the experiment the narrative was pre-prepared and read to the
participants, Aelred calls on the anchorite to vividly imagine the sufferings
of the less fortunate, but in both cases this process involves the activation of
different senses. Aelred explicitly urges sight (conspice) but also invokes the
sense of hearing with the sighs or groans (gemitus) of orphans. The process
of vivid imagining also takes time. In the second half of the meditation,
Aelred provides the reader with a catalog of suffering groups, making it
easy to break down the passage into a series of emotionally charged images.
This structure encourages slow, contemplative reading, with each item
carefully considered or imagined and an appropriate emotional response
achieved before moving on.
Appeals to the senses are characteristic of texts intended for devotional
reading, which often draw on an Augustinian model, contrasting external
with internal perception.24 External sensory perception is useful insofar as
it reveals the works of the Maker, but Augustine insists that it is only by
rejecting the bodily senses and turning inward that we can come to know
and recognize God. Although Augustine’s works in general place a par-
ticular emphasis on vision, an encounter with the numinous can involve
all the internal senses. The external, bodily senses, on the other hand, are
primarily a source of distraction. Aelred’s concept of the senses, as expressed
in De Institutione, is clearly Augustinian. He insists that for the anchorite,
information apprehended through the external senses is distracting, intoxi-
cating, or poisonous and, in consequence, provides guidance on ways to
limit external stimuli. Most of this is contained in the first half of the text,
concerned with the “exterior homo.”25 The inner rule, by contrast, appeals
to the internal faculties, which give privileged access to truth and are the
sole means of knowledge of the divine.
Although the outer rule is preoccupied with speech and silence, Aelred’s
inner rule reflects its Augustinian influence in a focus on sight. Having
exercised the external rule to prevent distraction and clear her mind of
worldly concerns, the anchorite is invited at the commencement of the
triple meditation to turn her oculos defaecatos (clean eyes) to historical
events.26 Aelred makes frequent reference to the eyes, throughout the past,
present, and future meditations, repeatedly directing them to objects and
events within the text. Thus, the act of reading becomes itself a process of
julia bourke 135
redirecting the gaze inward. Through devotional reading, the eyes of the
mind are focused steadily on the divine.
The same 2009 study on compassion and admiration found a difference
in the way that the brain processes emotions associated with physical expe-
riences, such as compassion for physical pain, as opposed to psychological
or social emotions, such as compassion for social pain. All emotional states
tested involved strong activation in areas of the brain known as the postero-
medial cortices. Compassion for social pain activated the inferior/posterior
sector of the posteromedial cortices, an area associated with interoception,
the brain’s perception of the body’s internal state. In contrast, compassion
for physical pain activated the superior/anterior sector, an area associated
with exteroception and musculoskeletal information. The study also found
that compassionate responses to “psychological” pain took longer to pro-
cess, and were less direct, than responses to physical pain.
Altogether, the study’s findings suggest that when humans experience
compassion for someone else, we use the areas of our brain that would be
activated were we experiencing that pain ourselves. Furthermore, compas-
sion for psychological pain is processed slightly differently, and less directly,
than compassion for physical pain. This difference may suggest the role of
culture in compassion. Breaking a leg, for example, is likely to be univer-
sally recognized as a physically painful experience, and a compassionate
response is, in neurological terms, relatively straightforward. In contrast,
the kinds of experiences that constitute emotional pain, and the decision as
to whether that pain deserves our compassion, vary widely across cultures
and require additional brain processing to identify.
The stimulus to compassion provided by Aelred for the anchorite is
not divided into physical and psychological categories, although, arguably,
states of psychological pain predominate. However, for us as modern read-
ers, the more physical aspects of the stimulus are likely to be more effective
in evoking compassion than the psychological aspects because the cultural
context of psychological pain has shifted. The misery of the poor, for exam-
ple, implies physical suffering such as hunger, to which we are likely to be
sympathetic, but we might not have quite so much tolerance for the anxiety
of prelates. We can assume, however, that the psychological stimuli were
intended by Aelred to be effective for his contemporaneous readers.
Thus, by drawing on neuroscientific research, it is possible to suggest
that in terms of achieving caritas, Aelred’s instructions can be understood
as psychotropic mechanisms, authorially designed as tools for the anchorite
to alter her emotional state. It is useful for the anchorite to consciously try to
evoke caritas, as this conscious effort has been shown to result in increased
neural response. Aelred’s narratives of the familiar or easily imaginable
sufferings of everyday life are an “emotionally competent stimulus”; that is,
they are an effective stimulus to the emotional experience of caritas, just as
comparable everyday narratives are for modern people. In a kind of vicari-
ous imagining, the experience of compassion or caritas involves activation
of the areas of the brain that are involved in the personal experience of pain,
echoing Aelred’s call to “suffer with the oppressed.” And finally, compas-
sion for physical pain is, in neurological terms, processed differently than
compassion for psychological pain, and this offers a potential explanation
for why some of Aelred’s examples might no longer function as emotion-
ally competent stimuli for modern readers.
The resemblance between certain features of devotional reading, such as
emotional imperatives—found not just in De Institutione but throughout
guidance writing as a genre—and the meditation strategies found to be
effective in modern studies, such as effortful cognition, is not mere coin-
cidence. Rather, it demonstrates that devotional reading could be a fruitful
means of shaping one’s own affective state, particularly if practiced repeat-
edly over a long period of time. In turn, this demonstrable utility supports
the argument that devotional reading was not only invited and encouraged
by particular texts but also actively practiced by readers.
limitations and liminality
Like any methodology, neurohistory has limitations as well as advantages.

Most significant for this case study are the slight differences in focus
between modern studies and medieval meditations. Modern research
on compassion and empathy has often been designed to examine links
between meditation and any associated “prosocial” or “helping” behavior,
which occurs outside the lab. The meditation on caritas, by contrast, aims to
transport the anchorite into a liminal emotional state, suspended between
the experience of compassion for others and the relief of that compassion
through its expression in action.
There is a tension in Aelred’s guide between the distracting quality of
external sensory information and the emphasis placed on its counterpart,
internal reflection. At certain points in the text, images for contemplation
are juxtaposed with real (that is, external and physical) stimuli. In the
julia bourke 137
meditation involving the extension of caritas to the suffering, Aelred

exhorts the anchorite to imagine vividly the misery of the poor, the sighs of
orphans, and the desolation of widows. Through contemplating these and
other images of suffering, the anchorite is invited to “open the heart of her
love” to all and trained to offer a generous emotional response of caritas or
compassion when confronted with others’ pain. The first, less meditative
half of Aelred’s rule, however—the section devoted to the exterior homo—
contains a description of the “real” (as opposed to contemplative) stimu-
lus, in the form of actual poor, widowed, or orphaned sufferers to whom
the anchorite might be tempted to distribute alms. Unlike the imagined
destitute, encountered through the internal senses during private prayer,
these flesh-and-blood orphans and widows are noisy, distracting remind-
ers of the temporal world: “Non circa cellulam eius pauperes clament,
non orphani plorent, non uidua lamentetur” [The poor should not call out
around her cell, nor orphans cry, nor widows lament]; and if any should
happen to linger, Aelred advises, “tu sede, tu tace, tu sustine” [you sit, you
say nothing, you bear it], until they give up and leave—“mox ut scierint te
nihil habere, recepturos se nihil, uel fatigati discedent” [presently they will
go away because they know you have nothing, and they will receive nothing,
or they will get tired].27
The distinction made here between external stimulus and internal
stimulus, and the relative value placed on each, accommodates a number
of explanations. First, the apparent contradiction in the anchorite’s instruc-
tions can be explained, at least in part, by an active/contemplative divide.
Almsgiving and other direct forms of help for the suffering belong, accord-
ing to Aelred, to the active life, not the anchorite’s contemplative one. This
simple ideological dichotomy, however, does not seem sufficient justifica-
tion for its practical consequences. Aelred is not unaware that his advice
to ignore the destitute may seem cruel—“Inhumanum hoc clamas”
[Inhuman! you cry]28 —but nevertheless maintains that it is the anchorite’s
personal affective experience of caritas, not her charitable action, that
makes the greatest contribution to the social good. Neither can the active/
contemplative dichotomy be reduced to a question of gender. Undeniably,
Aelred’s examples of active religious life are masculine ones, includ-
ing priests, bishops, and clerics.29 More often, however, he places male
cloistered monks alongside female anchorites as representatives of the
contemplative life.30 Moreover, De Institutione does not seem to have been
limited to a female readership, being recommended to male Cistercian
novices in the thirteenth-century Speculum Novitii attributed to Stephen
of Sawley.31 Thus, although there might be a gendered aspect to the active/

contemplative divide, this alone is not sufficient to explain Aelred’s advice.
Additional explanation of the relative value placed by Aelred on inter-
nal and external sensory experience could be found in an inherent value
judgment that separates these two types of information acquisition. The
contrasting approach to internal and external manifestations of apparently
identical stimuli points to a perceived superiority of the internal senses that
is ultimately Augustinian. Only through turning inward can the true nature
of reality be perceived because it is only through the internal senses that
one can come to knowledge of God. The superiority of the internal senses
may be reflected in Aelred’s word choice when describing the stimulus.
The description of the external poor places more emphasis on sound,
particularly unstructured sound or noise, which carried negative connota-
tions:32 clament (they cry out), plorent (they wail), lamentetur (they weep). The
internal stimulus, on the other hand, places slightly more emphasis on the
emotional state of suffering, with miseria (misery), desolatio (desolation),
and the audible but low-volume gemitus (sighs/groans).
A third alternative (though compatible) explanation for the differing
value of internal stimulus and external stimulus could be a separation of
individual suffering from the universal. Aelred seems concerned that inter-
action with individuals will distract the anchorite from her ultimate goal. If,
for example, the anchorite distributes alms directly, she is at risk of being
seduced by flattery and poisoned by worldly influence: “Nolo ut insidiatrix
pudicitiae uetula mixta pauperibus accedat propius . . . non blanda uerba
in aure susurret, ne pro accepta eleemosyna osculans manum, uenenum
insibilet” [I do not want an elderly woman plotting for your modesty to
approach close to you mixed in with the poor . . . and whisper flattering
words in your ear, nor that in return for accepting alms she should kiss
your hand and inject venom].33 Suffering encountered through the internal
senses can remain undefined, unlimited, and unalleviated.
Aelred’s meditation on caritas includes a wide range of suffering groups,
but all are considered as abstract groups rather than as individuals—the
poor, orphans, widows, the sad, and so on. There is no instruction to think
of a friend or neighbor in need and pray for him or her or any attempt to
construct individual narratives, either anecdotal or imaginary. Rather, the
anchorite’s emotional responses should encompass all people, both good
and bad. This vision of abstract and overwhelming suffering potentially
allows the anchorite the experience of a similarly unlimited, universal
caritas. Arguably, there is a danger for the anchorite who cultivates caritas
julia bourke 139
toward a real individual, in that the alleviation of that individual’s pain will
come at the price of a corresponding diminution of compassion. Vague
and constant suffering, in contrast, invites complete and constant caritas.
This is supported by an instruction in the first half of the guide that the
anchorite with anything to spare should distribute it to the poor through
an intermediary.34 Such an instruction suggests that it is not necessarily
the act of almsgiving in itself that Aelred believes should be avoided by the
contemplative but, rather, the direct involvement in the individual lives and
sufferings of the needy that such almsgiving might entail. It is the specific-
ity of individual contact that distracts the anchorite from the cultivation of
a universal, unlimited love. The caritas experienced by the anchorite—felt
but not expressed, extended to the world but withheld from individuals—is
therefore a liminal state, situated somewhere between passivity and action.
The anchorite must actively engage with the textual meditation in order
to induce a sensation of overwhelming caritas, but nevertheless, while the
heart of her love opens, the windows of the anchorhold must remain firmly
closed, impassive even when confronted by real human suffering.
The 2012 neuroscientific study considered here, on the other hand, focuses
on the relationship between the experience of compassion and its expression
in prosocial or “helping” behavior. The fact that the meditations used in this
experiment could produce feelings of compassion in participants was in some
ways incidental to the aim of the research. Moreover, in the 2009 experi-
ment, the stimulus acquired its force from its status as a “true story” and
its relationship to real events. This is in direct contrast with De Institutione’s
emphasis on contemplated stimuli. Where Aelred’s guide values the liminal
state of emotion without action, modern neuroscientists seek to study the
expression of compassion through activity; and while De Institutione insists
on the superiority of stimuli approached through the internal senses, the
modern study considered here presented participants with video and audio
stimuli requiring relatively little imaginative involvement. The form in which
stimuli are delivered also deserves further interrogation. Although narratives
read aloud formed a significant part of the emotional stimulus in the 2009
experiment, it is unclear whether private reading of a text, with images vividly
imagined rather than externally displayed, would have an identical effect. It is
worth noting, however, that the study found no statistically significant differ-
ence in responses to still images rather than video.35
In addition, the stimulus offered in the compassion/admiration experi-
ment was constructed around individual narratives—not just in the case of
compassion for social pain but also in the other forms of compassion and
admiration observed. It is possible that this focus on individuals encour-

ages prosocial behavior, as individual suffering can be alleviated with
comparatively little effort. It does not usually require, for example, large-
scale structural change across social groups and may possibly be remedied
through simple almsgiving or other short-term action. The stimulus in
De Institutione, on the other hand, seems calculated to encourage feeling
without action, suspending the meditator in a state of caritas possible only
through a contemplation of mass suffering without change or end. Such a
stimulus may indeed produce compassion, tears, and prayers but, unlike
the individual narratives of modern experiments, may discourage prosocial
behavior rather than promote it.
conclusions and possibilities of future research
The textual features that suggest devotional reading, here examined only
in connection with a short passage from De Institutione, are in fact pres-
ent throughout the surviving anchoritic guides (although the significance
of devotional reading as an orthopraxis appears to diminish as increas-
ing emphasis is placed on grace in initiating divine experience). These
features, including sensory appeals and emotional imperatives, are com-
parable to the methods used to induce emotions in modern experiment
participants—methods that are demonstrably effective. When encountered
through devotional reading, the textual incitement to caritas becomes a
guided meditation and can thus be understood as a valuable tool for shap-
ing affective response. This value, in turn, suggests use.
This case study has relied on the fortunate coincidence of growing inter-
est in the neuroscience of emotion, and particularly the areas of emotional
training and “emotion regulation,” which build on the understanding of
neuroplasticity acquired by a previous generation of researchers. Ideally,
however, a neurohistorical approach would not rely on serendipity, or the
chance that neuroscientists may have performed an experiment that hap-
pens to have historical relevance. A great deal of collaborative research has
been undertaken by neuroscientists in consultation with Buddhist monks,
exploring the impact of Buddhist meditations (especially mindfulness
meditation and the metta bhavana) on practitioners.36 Similarly, the Exeter-
based “Stoicism Today” project has for a number of years been conducting
detailed psychological surveys on the effects of ancient Stoic practices and
meditations, modernized and adapted for the general public.37 There is no
julia bourke 141
reason why historians, too, should not benefit from such interdisciplinary
dialogue. An ideal collaborative, neurohistorical project would be to adapt
the meditations found in anchoritic guides for use by experiment partici-
pants and thus explore their effects in practice. In this way, questions of
historical interest could be directly, rather than obliquely, pursued using
neuroscientific techniques.
notes
1. Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images,
400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1.
2. Ibid. See also Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval
Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
3. Carruthers, Craft of Thought, especially 84– 85. Recently, Rachel Fulton, “Mimetic
Devotion, Marian Exegesis, and the Historical Sense of the Song of Songs,” Viator 27 (1996):
85–116, at 88. For specifically Cistercian practices, see Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval
Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), 169 –91; Jan M. Ziolkowski, “Do Actions Speak Louder than Words? The Scope
and Role of Pronuntiatio in the Latin Rhetorical Tradition, with Special Reference to the
Cistercians,” in Rhetoric Beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages, ed.
Mary Carruthers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 124–50. Sarah McNamer
offers an alternative to the usual monastic narrative, suggesting that the development of
affective meditation was driven by female readership; see her Affective Meditation and the
Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 7.
4. Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories, 169 –91.
5. Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 18.
6. On mysticism and mystical union in anchoritic guides, see Mari Hughes-Edwards,
Reading Medieval Anchoritism: Ideology and Spiritual Practices (Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 2012), 82 – 83. John R. Sommerfeldt, “The Vocabulary of Contemplation in Aelred of
Rievaulx’ On Jesus at the Age of Twelve, A Rule of Life for a Recluse, and On Spiritual Friendship,”
in Heaven on Earth: Studies in Medieval Cistercian History IX, ed. E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo:
Cistercian Publications, 1983), 72 – 89, argues that De Institutione does not encourage
contemplative union with God.
7. Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture,
trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 73; E. Ann Matter,
“Lectio Divina,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. Amy Hollywood and
Patricia Z. Beckman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 147–56, at 156.
8. Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary,
800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 173. Fulton makes similar arguments
in “Mimetic Devotion, Marian Exegesis, and the Historical Sense of the Song of Songs”;
and in Rachel Fulton Brown, “Oratio/Prayer,” in Hollywood and Beckman, eds., Cambridge
Companion to Christian Mysticism, 167–77. Anselm, “Prologus,” in S. Anselmi Archiepiscopi
Opera Omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt (Stuttgart: F. Frommann, 1968), 3.
9. Spyros Christou-Champi, Tom F. D. Farrow, and Thomas L. Webb, “Automatic Control
of Negative Emotions: Evidence that Structured Practice Increases the Efficiency of Emotion
Regulation,” Cognition and Emotion 29, no. 2 (2015): 319 –31.
10. Aelred of Rievaulx, De Institutione Inclusarum, in Aelredi Rievallensis Opera Omnia: I Opera
Ascetica, ed. Anselm Hoste and Charles Hugh Talbot (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1971), 637.
All English translations of Aelred’s Latin text are my own. It is possible, though unlikely, that
the “sister” is a rhetorical construct. In the absence of any other prompt it seems doubtful that
Aelred would be moved to compose an anchoritic guide (rather than, for example, a guide for
novice monks) without some recipient in mind.
11. “Illa sane quae litteras non intellegit, operi manuum diligentius insistat.” Ibid., 645.
12. Marsha Dutton-Stuckey, “‘A Prodigal Writes Home’: Aelred of Rievaulx’ De institutione
inclusarum,” in Heaven on Earth: Studies in Medieval Cistercian History IX, ed. E. Rozanne Elder
(Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1983), 35– 42, at 36 –38.
13. Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq, “Ælred of Rievaulx: The Recluse and Death According to
the Vita Inclusarum,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 34, no. 2 (1999): 183–201, at 196.
14. Laura Michele Diener, “The Anonymous Heroine: Aelred of Rievaulx’s Rule for
His Sister,” in The Ties that Bind: Essays in Medieval British History in Honor of Barbara
Hanawalt, ed. Linda E. Mitchell, Katherine L. French, and Douglas L. Biggs (Farnham, U.K.:
Ashgate, 2011), 105–20, at 112 –13. See also Sommerfeldt, “Vocabulary of Contemplation in
Aelred of Rievaulx’ On Jesus at the Age of Twelve, A Rule of Life for a Recluse, and On Spiritual
Friendship,” 74.
15. Aelred of Rievaulx, De Institutione, 659.
16. Ibid., 661– 62.
17. Daniel Lord Smail, On Deep History and the Brain (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2008), 161.
18. Lian T. Rameson, Sylvia A. Morelli, and Matthew D. Lieberman, “The Neural Correlates of
Empathy: Experience, Automaticity, and Prosocial Behavior,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
24, no. 1 (2012): 235– 45.
19. Ibid., 242.
20. Christou-Champi, Farrow, and Webb, “Automatic Control of Negative Emotions.”
21. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Andrea McColl, Hanna Damasio, and Antonio Damasio,
“Neural Correlates of Admiration and Compassion,” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America 106, no. 19 (2009): 8021–26.
22. Ibid., 8021.
23. Ibid., “Supporting Information,” doi:10.1073/pnas.0810363106, 4.
24. Matthew R. Lootens, “Augustine,” in The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western
Christianity, ed. Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2012), 56 –70; Eugene Vance, “Seeing God: Augustine, Sensation, and the Mind’s
Eye,” in Rethinking the Medieval Senses: Heritage, Fascinations, Frames, ed. Stephen G. Nichols,
Andreas Kablitz, and Alison Calhoun (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008),
13–29.
26. “Cum igitur mens tua ab omni fuerit cogitationum sorde uirtutum exercitatione purgata,
iam oculos defaecatos ad posteriora retorque.” Ibid., 662.
27. Ibid., 639.
28. Ibid.
29. “Quae enim sacrosanctis ecclesiis a fidelibus collata sunt, episcopi, sacerdotes et clerici
dispensanda suscipiunt.” Ibid., 660.
30. Ibid., 647 (use of first-person plural), 661 (anchorites as “claustralibus”), for example.
31. Stephen of Sawley (attrib.), Speculum Novitii, in “Un ‘Speculum Novitii’ Inédit d’Etienne
de Sallai,” ed. M. Edmond Mikkers, Collectanea Ordinis Cisterciensium Reformatorum 8 (1946):
17– 68, at 52.
32. Christopher M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2006), 77, 83.
34. Ibid.
35. Immordino-Yang et al., “Neural Correlates of Admiration and Compassion,” “Supporting
Information,” 1.
36. A useful review of the current state of mindfulness research, and the deficiencies of
existing studies, is Yi-Yuan Tang, Britta K. Hölzel, and Michael I. Posner, “The Neuroscience
of Mindfulness Meditation,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 16 (2015): 213–25. A recent example
of compassion research using Buddhist meditators is Haakon G. Engen and Tania Singer,
“Compassion-Based Emotion Regulation Up-Regulates Experienced Positive Affect and
Associated Neural Networks,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 10 (2015), doi:10.1093/
scan/nsv008.
37. Patrick Ussher, ed., Stoicism Today: Selected Writings (n.p.: CreateSpace/Stoicism Today,
2014). More information about the project and its annual “Stoic Week” event can be found on
its blog, http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/.

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An Experiment in “Neurohistory”: Reading Emotions in Aelred's De Institutione

Inclusarum (Rule for a Recluse)

This article is a case study in the methodology of “neurohistory,” combining a ­traditional

journal of medieval religious cultures, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2016

familiar source. This methodology is “neurohistory,” an interdisciplinary

anchoritic reading in practice

Anchoritic guides can be understood as instructional manuals, intended

attitudes resides in whether a book or a church is thought of as an object

restructuring or alteration of patterns of thought, memory, and emotion.

own internal landscape. Finally, these meditations are characterized by a

devotional reading in de institutione inclusarum

De Institutione was written by Aelred between about 1160 and 1162,

The second part of Aelred’s guide, which provides instruction for

While the textual indicators of devotional reading may be relatively

one’s neighbor is by offering prayers and a bona uoluntate. This is followed

Itaque totum mundum uno dilectionis sinu complectere, ibi simul

This passage, when approached as a devotional tool, could function as

This question is one to which modern neuroscience can contribute.

The second area of inquiry arising from this meditation on caritas is

This is the story of a 9-year-old South African girl whose mother is

one for modern readers. It is at once a singular narrative of individual

limitations and liminality

Like any methodology, neurohistory has limitations as well as advantages.

meditation involving the extension of caritas to the suffering, Aelred

of Sawley.31 Thus, although there might be a gendered aspect to the active/­

admiration observed. It is possible that this focus on individuals encour-

conclusions and possibilities of future research

You might also like

This article is a case study in the methodology of “neurohistory,” combining a traditional

of Sawley.31 Thus, although there might be a gendered aspect to the active/