Remedies for despair: considering mental health in late medieval England

The fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in England saw an outpouring of vernacular religious texts that instructed an increasingly lay audience on methods of contemplation. Providing instruction on how to achieve a ‘mixed life’—a spiritually advanced life from without the confines of monastic orders—such texts demanded of their readers an intensity in meditation and self-examination that was potentially difficult to control or manage without a dedicated spiritual advisor. The challenges of such exposure to complex questions of belief, coupled with the intense self-interrogation that many advanced contemplative texts demanded, often resulted in extreme spiritual despair or ‘wanhope’, an ailment that traditionally is suffered by monastic readers but, through the vernacular book trade in late medieval England, found articulations in increasingly lay audiences. Such despair was entangled with the conviction that salvation was unachievable, and denied the grace and benevolence of God.