In Memoriam: Catherine Innes-Parker

Abstract

We would like to dedicate this issue to Professor Catherine Innes-Parker, who passed away in 2019. Catherine was a dedicated member of the journal's editorial board and offered unfailing support, even offering to read manuscripts while recovering from eye surgery. What follows are two personal statements about Catherine, the first from Bob Hasenfratz, former editor of MQ and JMRC, and the second from Nicholas Watson, editorial board member. When I first became intrigued by everything anchoritic, I believe I met Catherine Innes-Parker for the first time at a Kalamazoo session on the Catherine Group (that may be too much of a coincidence), I'm guessing in the 1990s. Her quiet erudition and enthusiasm for the strange (to me) world of professional recluses struck me immediately, and in the subsequent years, Catherine and I periodically came out of our various academic anchorholds and continued our conversations about our work and various conferences. She was a brilliant and generous scholar, kind to a fault, and encouraged me when I perhaps foolishly had the idea of editing Ancrene Wisse for TEAMS. Her work on medieval anchoritism is foundational, and her passing represents a great loss not only to those of us who had the privilege of knowing her but to the field of anchoritic medieval studies.—Bob HasenfratzI knew Catherine Innes-Parker way back in the 1980s, when we were both living in Newfoundland, and she had just switched from New Testament studies (I think) to medieval studies and was beginning the work on medieval religious writings for women for which she has continued to be known. All of her published work, which I've followed carefully, is excellent: deeply researched, carefully thought out, and written with ethical, as well as scholarly passion, both as a series of feminist interventions in medieval religious studies and as the interventions of a religious medievalist in feminist studies. The toggle between the two seemed so important to the way she thought and wrote, as comes through so strongly in her fine edition and translation of the Wooing Group. Her work on the Ancrene Wisse Group in general is particularly distinguished, of course, but her newer work on fifteenth-century writing for nuns is also excellent, and has brought neglected texts to new notice. And she was a wonderful mentor to younger scholars, and friend to her contemporaries, including me.—Nicholas Watson