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Provides an introduction to "Ancrene Wisse", one of the most important works in English of the thirteenth century. This book offers a fresh contextualisation which engages with the history of lay piety and vernacular spirituality in the Middle Ages. This book is innovative in that it provides an introduction to "Ancrene Wisse", one of the most important works in English of the thirteenth century. It offers a new contextualisation which engages with the history of lay piety and vernacular spirituality in the Middle Ages, thus extending analysis of the book beyond its original purpose as a guide for anchoresses. The placing of "Ancrene Wisse" within this context also allows comparisons to be made with other literature for semi-regular women, such as sermons preached to beguines - semi-religious women who formed communities in the Low Countries and France in the High Middle Ages.

What is the effect of the fear of future sovereign default on the economy of the defaulting country? The typical sovereign default model does not address this question. In this paper we wish to explore the possibility that changing expectations about future default themselves can lead to financial stress (as measured by credit spreads) and recessionary outcomes. We exploit the "news- shock" framework to consider an environment in which sovereign debt-holders receive imperfect signals about the portion of debt that a sovereign may default on in the future. We then investigate how domestic banks can play a role in transmitting the expectation of default into a realized recession through the interaction of the domestic banks' holdings of government debt and their risk- weighted capital requirements. Our results suggest that, consistent with the data, even in the absence of actual realized government default, an increase in pessimism regarding the prospect of future default results in a rise in yields on government debt and an increase in interest rates on private domestic loans, as well as a recession in the economy.