HISTORY

FEATURES: Only medieval cathedral with three spires, remains of fortifications and once having a wet moat. Significant pilgrimage centre from early times. Owns the best kept sculpted Anglo-Saxon stonework in Europe. Has early 8th century Gospels. Extraordinary foundation remains to the second cathedral were probably built by King Offa. Once had the most sumptuous shrine in medieval England. Suffered three Civil War sieges resulting in considerable destruction.

Dates.

DATES. 656, first Bishop of Mercia. 669, first Bishop of Lichfield. 8th century shrine tower. Second cathedral could be 8th century, but needs determining. Third Gothic Cathedral, early 13th to 14th century. 1643 to 46, Civil War destruction. Extensive rebuild and refashioned, 1854-1908. Worship on this site started in 669, 1355 years ago.

Sunday, 1 September 2024

Anchorites at Lichfield

Abstract

Three chambers on the south side of the Lady Chapel are enigmatic. They were built by Bishop Walter de Langton who, with the following two bishops, had an interest in anchoritism. Their layout with an external door fits this hypothesis. Location within the Close fortified walls suggest the occupancy of an anchorite priest and managed communion. It is most likely an anchorite was connected to the cathedral in the 13th and early 14th century.

An anchorite or anchoress was someone who withdrew from the community to lead a solitary, prayerful and ascetic (anachoretic) life. Earliest anchoritism was a form of monasticism and included men like John-the-Baptist and Anthony living in the Egyptian desert in the 3rd century. In Benedict of Nursia’s Rule of Saint Benedict, 516, anchoritic life stood for the highest form of monasticism. There are features of the life of Chad which suggest he practiced solitude and gave spiritual advice to those who visited him. In England, the first recorded religious recluses were in the 10th century.[1] Between the 13th to 16th centuries anchorites and various kinds of solitaries, hermits and recluses were very common in England and throughout medieval Europe. Reformation ended this vision of how life has to be lived.

Century

Female

Male

Gender unknown

Total

Total known sites

12th

48

30

18

96

77

13th

123

37

38

198

175

14th

96

41

77

214

171

15th

110

66

28

204

139

16th

37

27

4

68

49

Number of documented anchorites, A. K. Warren, 1985,.[2] There have been 780 recorded English recluses from 601 sites between 1100 and the end of the Middle Ages. They were 414 female solitaries, 201 males and 165 of unknown gender. It appears there were more anchoresses than anchorites (4:1 in the 13th-century). A dearth of records however, suggests there could have been substantially more.[3]

An anchorite usually lived permanently[4] enclosed in a cell known as an anchorhold; that is, they were anchored to one cell. Some anchorites moved freely between several cells and some were in houses. An anchorhold was usually attached to a church or cathedral and often located on the north side. Some were connected to houses and castles or castle walls and some were near monasteries. The anchorite house at Chester-le-Street had four cells and was exceptional. Generally, the cell was small (an average of 4 metres square), contained a bed, a chamber pot and a small altar, but rarely had a window. Commonly, those against a church had a squint or opening to view the altar thus enabling the anchorite to view the raising of the host in the Eucharist. Often the cell was adjoined to another room in which a servant could assist the anchorite especially in providing a frugal meal. Sometimes local people would converse with the anchorite through a small opening in the wall. The anchorite was seen as a wise person able to offer spiritual guidance. Indeed, many who chose to be immured were of high status and were respected. Many had financial security; it was common for wills to contain donations for the local anchorite. The anchorite was independent of the church, but answerable to the bishop. Early anchorholds were predominantly in rural areas and in makeshift timber buildings, but by the 14th century they were in stone houses. By the 16th century anchorholds had become ‘an integral element of the ecclesiastical topography of medieval towns.’[5]

 

View of anchorite's cell at Holy Trinity Church, Skipton, Yorkshire, Wikipedia Public Domain.  


      

The enclosure of an anchoress by a bishop. 15th-century illumination from a Pontifical manuscript, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 79. Fol. 72r. 

The anchorite often held their isolation to be a way to avoid hell and by intense prayer to join Christ.[6] It was like being perpetually in Lent, that is, avoiding temptation and preparing for death. Unlike hermits, anchorites received a rite of consecration that resembled a funeral before entering their anchorhold. They would be held as gone from the world, a living saint. During the late medieval period it was often a pious, lay woman. Some had terminal diseases and this was a positive way to see their end-life and enact a form of martyrdom. There is some evidence of when they died, they were buried within the apse of the church near to the altar. 13 English guides giving instruction are known which explain how anchorites were to be made, supported and behave. There were four key ideals: enclosure, comparative solitude, chastity and orthodoxy[7] Therefore their common portrayal as a solitary, unstable, unkept and heretical individual is wrong. Some anchorites suffered, but this most likely applied only to a minority. Some anchorite-priests pursued scholarly or copyist work in their cells. Ælfheah, c.953‑1012, was an anchorite at Bath who became an abbot, then a bishop and finally Archbishop of Canterbury. He became a saint in 1078.

 A well-known anchorite was Cuthbert isolated on Farne island and described by Bede. Another was Billfrith at Lindisfarne who adorned the Lindisfarne Gospels with gold and gems. In the late 7th century, Guthlac left the monastery in Repton and for 15 to 20 years lived on an island in the Lincolnshire Fens. A folklore story has Chad living as a hermit and living on the milk of a doe. This myth has been modified to locate the hermitage at Stowe. Wigbald might have been an anchorite who attested a charter, 786/96, at Medeshamstead. Wulfric of Haselbury, c.1080‑1154. Wulfric was an anchorite priest in Wiltshire and Somerset and frequently advised King Stephen. He lived in a cell adjacent to the church at Haselbury Plucknett, Somerset for 29 years reading the Bible and healing those who visited him. Despite these often-quoted narratives, recent research has emphasised not much is known how the anchorite lived and practised their vocation. Instead, the evidence points to anchoritism as being highly esteemed by the surrounding community, a community which, after all, enabled the vocation to exist and persist in both economic and practical terms.[8]

 

Anchorholds have been identified in churches in Staffordshire and Shropshire. There is a mention of Simon, a longstanding hermit, being translated in 1222 from Lichfield to Dunstable, but he could have been isolating in a cave, house or cell and not attached to a church.[9] Two hermits were allowed by Matilda to settle a mile to the south of Beaudesert (at Radmoor?) and were given land for pasture on Cannock Chase early in the 12th century. In the register of Bishop Walter Langton, in 1311, Emma Sprenghose was found suitable to be an anchoress in a house close to St George’s chapel, Shrewsbury. In 1315, Iseult de Hungerford was admitted into the same house. The house was said to have other anchorites.[10] The register of Bishop Roger de Northburgh, 1322–1358, included appointments of anchorite-priests being made 1357–1374,[11] though it is not clear where the anchorite-priests were sent. In 1360, the prior of Maxstoke was commissioned by Bishop Stretton to enclose Brother Roger de Henorebarwe as an anchorite in the chapel of Maryhall. In 1363, Bishop Stretton inducted a friar at St. John's, Chester, into an anchorite's cell in the churchyard.[12] In 1423, John Grace an anchorite friar from Coventry, preached on three days to the canons in the Cathedral Close.[13] John Woodcoat, a chaplain, in 1457, was asked to hear the confessions of an anchorite at Polesworth.[14] The River Anker runs through Polesworth and its name is said to derive from two anchorholds close-by. In 1509, the bishop suffragan shut up Joan Hythe, a nun from Derby, in a cell at the church in Macclesfield.[15]


View of Savage Chapel attached to St Michael and All Angels’ Church, Macclesfied. Joan Hythe was enclosed in the upstairs room and communicated via the small window to the outside. Internally she could look down though slits in a wall to the ground floor Savage Chapel. She was known as ‘the holy woman’.        

                                                                Squint in the Savage Chapel, now blocked, to see the main altar. . 

An anchorhold with an aumbry in the wall, seems to have existed on the northern side of St. Chad's chancel at Stafford.[16] The inference is medieval Lichfield bishops were supportive of anchoritism.

          Almost certainly in the 13th or 14th-century there must have been anchorites in cells adjoining the cathedral or in the Close, but there is no documentary evidence. The involvement of bishops of Lichfield in the 14th and 15th centuries in anchoritism, especially Bishop Walter Langton, supports this. It raises the question, where were the cells? One good possibility are the three small chambers on the south side of the Lady Chapel built by Bishop Langton. The cells are small and in line sight with the altar in the Lady Chapel. All three chambers are 1.7 m (5 feet 9 inches) wide internally. The eastern and western chambers are shorter (2. 6 m or 8 feet 8 inches long) and the middle chamber is longer (3.9 m or 13 feet long). The roofs are groined with stone ribs and bosses. The middle chamber has a small door to the eastern chamber; it passes –through a buttress and is 1 m (3 feet 3 inches) thick. This chamber was once accessible to the outside by a door.



John Snape’s map 1781 has an engraving of the cathedral and appears to show a path leading from the eastern chamber door. The path appears to extend to outside the south door where a ferry could take visitors across Minster Pool. This avoids entrance through the southeast door, which would have been guarded and used by the bishop.


Lady Chapel From south showing unrestored window tracery, tomb recesses and exterior door. Note the  door and pathway. 1850-1880



 

It has been thought the chambers were built for the tomb of Walter de Langton the originator and funder of the chapel, but he was buried on the south side near the high altar. Madisson conjectured whether the chambers were originally sacristies or had a tomb intention, but then admitted their purpose was open to question.[17] He also pointed out the usual practice of a Lady Chapel being seen as a separate building sometimes entered through a low arch and cited 7 other cathedrals. Cox[18] suggested various priests who might have been buried within the chambers. He also surmised whether they were chantry chapels but comes to no conclusion. After Reformation the ‘little cells in the wall of the Lady Chapel may have been occupied by the ecclesiastics who watched the shrine.’[19] The chambers have clearly teased historians; the chambers being tombs has to account for the undercroft and its use and why Langton was not buried in one.


South side of Lady Chapel in Dugdale Monasticum Anglicanum Vol 6 part 3, pages 1238–9. Note the access door for the eastern most chamber. Note changes of access within chambers; the 1989 version appears to be different regarding internal doorways whereas the 1891 is more accurate. Under the three chambers is an undercroft roofed by a pointed tunnel vault.


Exterior of third chamber showing the new stone where there was a door. Note the slit window to the undercroft. Was there a stoup on the ledge inside the archway?

 

A plausible purpose for the exceptional chambers would be for an anchorite, especially an anchorite-priest. Such a solitary could have occupied the middle chamber with welfare provided from the western chamber. Visitors wanting spiritual guidance could not enter the cathedral by the main doors, but would access an anchorite-priest by the small door into the eastern chamber. Perhaps, the anchorite-priest was one of a team of acolytes on a rota. The undercroft could have been for sleeping and sanitation. This means any citizen could access a priest through a wall opening without entering the main body of the cathedral.


Doorway from middle chamber to eastern chamber (now a storeroom).

 

            There was an anchorage adjoining Chichester Cathedral in which William Bolle, rector of Aldrington, obtained permission to construct a cell and retire thither.  It was agreed that after his death it should pass into the bishop’s hands.  The chamber, 29 x 24 feet, communicated with the Lady chapel. Worcester cathedral had a cell on the north side, between the porch and the west end. At Sherborne Abbey the anchorite was in the chapel of St Mary le Bow on the south side of the Lady chapel. At Durham the chamber was within the cathedral. It was a loft, evidently a wooden structure, close to the high altar and behind St Cuthbert’s shrine. The Westminster anchorage was on the south side of the chancel of St Margaret’s.[20]

 

          It would be unlikely for the name of any anchorite-priest to appear in any Dean and Chapter document since the appointment was entirely the work of the bishop. Furthermore, the anchorite would be considered separate from any cathedral or diocesan arrangement. This helps to explain the obscurity of these individuals and why more is known from the architecture of their cell. The existence of three chambers, an undercroft and external door built by Bishop Langton, the lack of information as to their purpose and their location near the town gate or southern ferry points to their possible use for anchoritism. Also, the known enthusiasm for anchoritism by the following two bishops, Northburgh and Stretton, points to this explanation. The cathedral having an anchorite priest would compete with the Friary and its monks tending to the residents of Lichfield. An anchorite-priest would be able to say Mass, and pray for the souls of brethren and benefactors. They would be akin to a chaplain.



[1] T. Licence, Hermits and Recluses in English Society, 950–1200, (Oxford: 2011). Also, T Licence, ‘Evidence of recluses in eleventh-century England’, in M Godden and S Keynes (eds), Anglo-Saxon England, (2007),36.

[2] A. K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England. (Oakland: 1985).

[3] E. A. Jones, Hermits and anchorites in England, 1200–1550. (Manchester: 2019), 7.

[4] There are known examples where the anchorite left or was removed.

[5] R Gilchrist, Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism, (Leicester: 1995), 183.

[6] Ibid, A cell of enclosure was equated with prison into which the anchorite propelled himself for fear of hell and for love of Christ.

[7] M. Hughes-Edwards, Reading Medieval Anchoritism, (Cardiff:2012).

[8] Ibid.

[9] R. M. Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England. (London: 1914). 142.

[10] J. B. Huges, The episcopate of Walter Langton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, 1296-1321, with a calendar of his register. Ph.D. Thesis for the University of Nottingham, 1992, 684, 697.

[11] Ibid, 24. Also E. Hobhouse ed. Registers of Roger de Norbury, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, from 1322 to 1358, William Salt Archaeological Society, (1880), 286.

[12] Ibid, 156.

[13] W. Beresford, Diocesan histories. Lichfield. (London: 1883), 154. Also T. Harwood, The history and antiquities of the church and city of Lichfield. (London: 1806), 285.

[14] Ibid W. Beresford (1883),168

[15] Ibid 162

[16] Ibid 162

[17] J. Maddison, ‘Building at Lichfield Cathedral during the episcopate of Walter Langton, 1296–1321.’ In Medieval archaeology and architecture at Lichfield, XIII, The British Archaeological Association, (1993), 71.

[18] J. C. Cox, ‘The mortuary chapels of Lichfield Cathedral,’ Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, (1879), 1, 116–126.

[19] Ibid 190

[20] R.M. Clay (1914), 80‑1. See note 9.


No comments:

Post a Comment