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BCD Special Report on
Historic Churches
19
th annual edition
less controversial. They detail pre-enclosure
background investigations and post-enclosure
provisions for support, for example in terms
of licences and mandates which detail the
building of anchorholds, the replacement of
unsuitable cells and the legislation of diet. On
rare occasions they record the rights given to
recluses to leave their cells temporarily, as in the
case of Emma Scherman, who may have been
permitted to make an annual pilgrimage.
21
Some of the documentation which
surrounds anchoritism constructs the vocation
as acceptably sociable. Henry Mayr-Harting
concludes of the socially-active recluse Wulfric
of Haselbury: ‘Anyone living in twelfth-
century England would very probably… have
had contact with a recluse’.
22
This is echoed
by Licence’s assertion that: ‘Set at the heart
of the community… it was an unwise recluse
that entered her cell to achieve peace and
quiet’. Licence argues that recluses potentially
‘
provide a ministry different from the priest’s’,
involving three key elements: inspiring
repentance, interceding on behalf of the faithful
and, lastly, mediating God’s power.
23
Some of
the sources that surround anchoritism imply
then that anchorites were not cut off from
society, but rather attempted, as much as was
possible, to withdraw from it. Ironically, they
could not do this without the compliance of
the very society that they strove to reject.
English anchoritic guidance texts were
also written, revised and translated, chiefly
from Latin into English and vice versa,
The enclosure of an anchorite by a bishop: this early 15th-century illumination appears in the English version of a
Pontifical manuscript (CCC MS 79) which details church services particular to bishops. The section (f 96r–98r) is
entitled
Ordo ad recludendum reclusum
. (
Image: Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge)
throughout the Middle Ages (c1080–1450)
to enable recluses to come to terms with the
enormity of their choice. The guides imply
that the anchoritic life is one of privation and
paradoxical joy because of the God-given
grace required to make it bearable. Frequently
written in the form of a letter from one writer
to one recluse, they range in size from short
epistles to intricately subdivided works. Warren
argues that 13 English guides are extant but it
is difficult to be precise about numbers.
24
It is tempting to read anchoritic guides
as evidence of widespread reclusive practice,
especially given the dramatic, visual nature
of earlier medieval guidance, coupled with
the relative lack of documentary evidence for
that early period. Yet what the guides show us
is not how recluses actually lived, but what a
handful of talented medieval thinkers hoped
a number of recluses could achieve at their
best, or fail to achieve at their worst. They are
rich in the rhetorical theory of anchoritism:
complex normative works of instruction,
shaped by the ideological agendas of their
age. They suggest that the vocation should
be founded upon four key ideals: enclosure,
comparative solitude, chastity and orthodoxy.
The maintenance of each ideal is difficult
and continually threatened by every recluse’s
natural tendency to sin; a problem that the
cell cannot solve, but is meant to intensify.
English anchoritic guides present the
central goal of anchoritism as essentially the
same for men as it should be, or could be,
for women. That aspiration is not, according
to the guides at least, extreme suffering
(
although some are deeply preoccupied with
the punitive). The anchoritic life may involve
suffering, certainly, but that suffering is not
its goal. It is a means to an end, even for the
earlier, more bloodthirsty guides. It is not for
the power to suffer that the guidance writers
argue that the recluse deserves to be admired,
but for what that suffering signifies, for there
is a contemplative covenant sealed therein.
For the guides construct the purpose of
anchoritism as an increased ability to connect
with God through heightened contemplative
experience, which may or may not involve
pain. This much sought-after contemplative
experience does not necessarily preclude
acceptable social contact between the recluse
and the community which surrounds the
anchorhold. The guidance writers imply
that a range of anchoritic social functions
are acceptable, for the vocation is founded
upon comparative, not total, isolation.
Anchoritism therefore involves, as the guides
construct it, the desire for solitude, not
necessarily the perfect achievement of it.
Yet all guidance writers agree that the
female recluse has a bigger problem than her
male counterparts because she must overcome
the legacies of Eve, in order to negotiate her
contemplative potential. Women make both the
best and the worst of recluses: they have further
to fall (potentially at least), but, if they can
overcome their inherent weaknesses, they may
also rise higher. Certainly the dominant number
of women who were attracted to anchoritism
implies that this potential ascent was of
significant interest to them. The guides argue
that the anchorite’s cell potentially provides
the female recluse with the opportunity, not
to escape her Edenic tendencies, but rather to
think through them and move beyond them.
For anchoritic guidance texts for women
would not have been written at all if their
writers did not believe in the very real power
and potential of religious women. Their
existence suggests that the female recluse was
far more than a convenient target for medieval
society’s inevitable anti-feminism. Indeed,
many of the English anchoritic guidance writers
acknowledge that they write for those who
are capable of surpassing them, not only in
transgressive potential (in truth the guidance
writers are comparatively uninterested in
this), but in contemplative capability. They
are most intrigued by the transformative
spiritual potential of anchorites, by their
possible ascetical and contemplative agency.
From the perspective of a guidance writer,
the spiritual agency to which their female
recluses can aspire is two-fold: ascetical and
contemplative. The later-medieval guides
especially argue that the female recluse is, as
a professional contemplative, potentially well
placed to advise the laity on their own spiritual
practices and, more than this, to help ensure
their spiritual orthodoxy. These texts show
us a recluse who can potentially disseminate
anchoritic ideology and contemplative theology
into the surrounding community. They
imply that the medieval anchorhold is just as
likely to house a recluse who suspends her
