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Article written by Mary Wellesley. First published 13 March 2018.

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Article written by Mary Wellesley. First published 13 March 2018.

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During the medieval period, hundreds of women chose a life of prayer and contemplation, shut up alone in a cell. Dr Mary Wellesley explains the path to becoming an anchoress, how anchoresses spent their days and what medieval texts such as Ancrene Wisse and Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love can tell us about anchoritic life.

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The Book of Margery Kempe describes an episode in which Margery visits the anchoress, Julian of Norwich, which can be seen in this image. 

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Usage terms: Public Domain in most countries other than the UK.

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What was an anchoress?

An anchoress was a woman who was walled into a cell to live a life of prayer and contemplation. (The male equivalent was an ‘anchorite’.) Anchoresses were enclosed in their cells and had no way to get out. Despite how extreme this may seem to us today, the anchoritic way of life seems to have been remarkably popular in the medieval period. Scholars have found that there were around 100 in England in the 12th century, and the figure swells to 200 from the 13th to 15th centuries. Breaking these numbers down by gender, we see that anchoresses outnumbered anchorites from 12th to 16th centuries: there were around twice as many female recluses in the 14th and 15th centuries and around three times as many in the 13th century.[1]

What was life like for an anchoress?

Several texts were written in the medieval period that functioned as how-to guides for anchoresses. Each one has a slightly different view of what the enclosed way of life was like, so it is clear that there was not one single path for an anchoress, but we can make some generalisations. The average anchorite’s cell, or anchorhold, was probably no more than 12 feet square. In order to become an anchoress, a woman would have to apply to her local bishop and she would have to provide evidence that she had the financial means to support herself while she was enclosed. She would have had one or two servants to look after her. An anchoress’ cell was attached to a church and contained three windows. One of these would open onto a parlour where a servant would be able to bring food and take away waste. Another, known as the ‘squint’, was a small window that opened onto the church, allowing the anchoress to observe the Mass and partake of the Eucharist. A third window would open onto the outside world.

Anchorites and anchoresses were different from hermits, because they were attached to a church and thus were at the centre of community life. As shown in the episode from Margery Kempe’s Book quoted above, anchorites and anchoresses often gave spiritual guidance to visitors.

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The word ‘anchorite’ or ‘anchoress’ comes from the Greek, anachoreo, meaning ‘to withdraw’. But, in many ways, they were not withdrawn because of how they were attached to their churches. The anonymous author of the Ancrene Wisse – a 13th-century guide for anchoresses – plays on the similarity between the word ‘anchor’ and ‘anchoress’:

The anchoress is called an ‘anchor’, and anchored under the church like an anchor under the side of a ship to hold the ship, so that waves and storms do not capsize it. Just so all Holy Church (which is described as a ship) should anchor on the anchoress, for her to hold it so that the devil’s blasts, which are temptations, do not blow it over.[2]

It is in passages like this that we see the skill of the anonymous author of the Ancrene Wisse, who had a gift for powerful imagery and layered metaphor.

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Dead to the world

The account given by Margery Kempe shows that recluses did receive visitors, but this went against the ideals of the enclosed way of life, and it was thought best to ration such visits. The Ancrene Wisse advises that anchoresses should not eat with their visitors:

This is showing too much friendliness, because it goes against the nature of any form of religious life, and most of all that an anchoress who is utterly dead to the world. One has often heard of the dead speaking with the living, but I have never found yet that they ate with the living.[3]

At the moment of an anchoress’ enclosure, a priest would recite the office of the dead, which was the set of prayers said at a person’s funeral.[4] This symbolised that the recluse was dead to the world. In fact, it seems that some recluses did not leave their cells even after they died. Archaeological excavations of some anchorholds have revealed the remains of people who presumably once lived there. In St Anne’s church in Lewes, Sussex, the anchoress’ grave has been positioned in exactly the place where she would have knelt daily to view the Mass through the ‘squint’.[5] The Ancrene Wisse advises that,

Admiring their own white hands is bad for many anchoresses who keep them too beautiful, such as those who have too little to do; they should scrape up the earth every day from the grave in which they will rot.[6]

Asceticism

To choose the life of an anchoress was to choose a life of asceticism – choosing to endure physical hardship in order to better contemplate God. Anchoresses clearly saw the physical body as a sinful vessel that needed to be controlled through self-denial and discipline. The Ancrene Wisse advises that, tempting as it may be,

No one should gird herself with any kind of belt except with her confessor’s permission, or wear any iron or hair, or hedgehog skins, or beat herself with these or with a lead whip, or make herself bloody with holly or brambles.[7]

Elsewhere the text advises that recluses should shave their heads four times a year and wear only simple clothing. By choosing to live in this way, recluses were partially seeking to emulate the so-called ‘Desert Fathers’. These were hermits, monks and ascetics who lived in the desert in Egypt in the 3rd century CE, in the very early days of Christianity.

Daily life

For anchoresses, the majority of the day was taken up with prayer and contemplation. When they were not praying, they might receive visitors at their windows. However, the Ancrene Wisse advises that anchoresses should not spend too long at their windows or receive visitors for too long. Aelred of Rievaulx in his De Institutione Inclusarum (a guide for anchoresses which Aelred wrote for his sister who was a recluse in c. 1161) concurred, fearing that if the opening of a cell was widened to admit visitors, then the cell would become ‘a brothel’.[8]

When not praying or offering guidance, anchoresses might pass the time in other ways. The Ancrene Wisse advises that anchoresses may spend their time making lace, but that it must not be elaborate. In the Life of Saint Dunstan by the 11th century monk, Osbern we hear how when Dunstan was living as an anchorite, he liked to engage in metalwork, especially gold. While he was in his cell, the Devil appeared to him and Dunstan fended him off by tweaking his nose with a pair of hot metal tongs which he had been using to fashion the gold. Aside from the delightful unintended comedy of this story, it reveals that recluses found many different ways to occupy themselves when they were not praying. The Speculum Inclusorum (a 15th-century guide for anchoresses) advises that,

Manual work, for its part, can keep idleness and sloth at bay, and profit your neighbours in charity. And in particular, the writing of material that is holy and edifying to read seems commendable.[9]

This snippet of advice tells us that anchoresses were likely able to read and write, which is interesting in light of Julian of Norwich’s claim that she was a ‘symple creature vnlettyred’ [a simple, uneducated creature].

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Julian of Norwich described herself as a ‘symple creature vnlettyred’ [a simple, uneducated creature], but her text is a work of great sophistication. 

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Usage terms: Public Domain in most countries other than the UK.

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A page from Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love.

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Page from Julian of Norwich’s Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love, England, 1625, Stowe MS 42,  f. 5r. Julian of Norwich described herself as a ‘symple creature vnlettyred’ [a simple, uneducated creature], but the long version of her text represented 20 years of thought and meditation on the visions she received in 1373. 

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Usage terms: Public Domain in most countries other than the UK.

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Page from chapter five of Julian of Norwich’s Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love.

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What did anchoresses feel about their way of life?

The only text written by an anchoress to survive from the period is Julian of Norwich’s Revelations. All of the other texts about anchoritism were written by people advising those who had chosen, or wished to choose, the anchoritic way of life. In Julian’s text, she gives away very little about her experience of being enclosed. At one point she writes ‘this place is prison, this life is penance’, but we cannot be sure whether Julian was referring to her earthly life more broadly or the specific circumstances of her cell.[10] Julian appears to have spent a considerable amount of time in her cell, however. When she was 30 years old, in 1373 she experienced a series of deathbed visions, which she interpreted as a revelation from God. From her description, it appears that she was not enclosed as this point, but in 1394 a bequest was made to ‘Julian ankorite’ [Julian the anchoress.] This indicates that she was enclosed by this time and perhaps had been for a while. In 1416 another bequest was made to a ‘Julian, recluse at Norwich’. She would have been 73. From these pieces of evidence, we can be sure that Julian was an anchoress for at least 22 years, but probably for longer. If Julian experienced her anchorhold as a ‘prison’, it was one which she willingly chose and managed to remain within for decades.

Conclusion

The life of the anchoress has long held a fascination for me, and I am not alone. In the last few decades there has been a considerable amount written by scholars on the subject and in 2015, Robyn Cadwallader published a historical novel, The Anchoress, which tells the story of a young female recluse enclosed in the 13th century. To choose a life of such restriction and such privation is grimly fascinating to us today, but what is particularly intriguing is why so many recluses were female in the period. Anchoresses would probably be of noble birth, and they were probably educated, so given the apparent opportunities which such women had, why were so many drawn to the enclosed life? Was a life in the wider world, a life of forced marriage, and the dangers of childbirth, too frightening for some? Did they see the enclosed life as a route to some kind of spiritual authority, as we see from Margery’s account? Whatever the reasons, their stories haunt us today, as do the texts written about the enclosed way of life, like the Ancrene Wisse, which are works of moving prose in their own right.

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[1] Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 20.

[2] Ancrene Wisse: A Guide for Anchoresses Based on Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 402, ed. and trans. Bella Millett (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000), p. 56. All further references to the text are to this edition.

[3] Ancrene Wisse, p. 156.

[4] An example of this ‘rite of enclosure’ can be found in Cotton MS Vespasian D XV, f. 61r

[5] E A Jones, ‘Anchorites and Hermits in Historical Context’, in Approaching Medieval English Anchoritic and Mystical Texts, ed. by Dee Dyas, Valerie Edden and Roger Ellis (Cambridge: D S Brewer, 2005), pp. 3–18 (p. 12).

[6] Ancrene Wisse, p. 46.

[7] Ancrene Wisse, p. 158.

[8] Aelred of Rievaulx, De Institutione Inclusarum [The Rule of Life for a Recluse], in Aelred of Rievaulx, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis I, ed. by A Hoste and C H Talbot (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), pp. 635–82 (p. 639).

[9] The Speculum author goes on: ‘because after the person that wrote it has died – and even perhaps up until the Day of Judgement – it can make him live and gain merit in some way, by the edification and profit of each of those who read or hear what he has written’. Speculum Inclusorum: A Mirror for Recluses: A Late-Medieval Guide for Anchorites and its Middle English Translation, ed. and trans. E A Jones (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), p. 93.

[10] Alexandra Barratt, ‘Context: Some Reflections on Wombs and Tombs and Inclusive Language’, in Anchorites, Wombs and Tombs: Intersections of Gender and Enclosure in the Middle Ages, ed. by Liz Herbert McAvoy and Mari Hughes-Edwards, pp. 27–40 (p. 35).

Written by Mary Wellesley

Dr Mary Wellesley is a British Library Research Affiliate. She did her undergraduate degree in English Literature at Lincoln College, Oxford before moving to University College London to pursue post-graduate research. Her doctoral thesis examined the manuscripts of the Life of Our Lady by the Benedictine monk and poet, John Lydgate (c. 1370–1450).

She has published book chapters and articles on aspects of medieval literature and manuscript study, and co-edited Stasis in the Medieval West: Questioning Change and Continuity for Palgrave in 2017. Alongside her academic work, Mary also writes and reviews for non-academic publications. Her work has appeared in The Times and The Telegraph amongst others, and she is a regular contributor to The London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement. She is writing a book about iconic manuscripts from medieval Britain, which is under contract with Quercus. In 2017 she worked as the writer and researcher for Discovering Literature: Medieval.

The text in this article is available under the Creative Commons License.

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