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.
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.
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.