The Abbey of the Holy Ghost is a late fourteenth-century English prose translation of a late thirteenth-century French religious guide for laywomen, L’Abbaye du Saint Esprit. Targeted mainly at pious lay audiences – both male and female – who aspire to spiritual perfection but cannot participate in a religious order, The Abbey allegorically compares one’s heart/conscience to a spiritual abbey and demonstrates how to inwardly explore monastic spirituality without leaving the world.