The Anchoritic Life
The Anchoritic Life
and among Cistercian writers.32 The originality of Julian's approach to the image will be outlined in Chapter 4.
Third, there was a preference for the solitary life. A separate section on this follows. In general terms, the solitary life was ascetic and penitential in that it explicitly confronted worldly dangers and temptations, not least the solitary's own frailties. The link between holiness and heroism led to a strong emphasis on spiritual warfare and the quest for singleness and purity of heart. Finally, within the solitary life the practice of virginity especially among women became linked particularly to the notion of being brides of Christ. Various forms of the solitary life seem to have been more popular and idiosyncratic in Celtic Christianity and later in Anglo‐Saxon and Medieval England than in the rest of Europe. Aelred of Rievaulx's Rule of Life for a Recluse, already mentioned, has relatively little on external rules of life and mostly concerns interior dispositions. The aim was to inspire single‐hearted devotion.
Fourth, medieval English spirituality developed an emphasis on the "mixed life," vita mixta, which not only sought to combine contemplation and action but was also increasingly aimed at both secular clergy and laypeople outside the monastic cloister. A notable example is Walter
Hilton's The Scale [or Ladder] of Perfection which appeared during Julian's lifetime. Book 2 of The Scale suggests that spiritual transformation is inherent to the life of all the baptised as opposed merely to the monastic or the solitary life. This echoes Julian's emphasis on her message being addressed to all her "fellow Christians."
Finally, the English spiritual tradition placed a strong emphasis on the importance of "balance" – between affectivity and the speculative, between divinely given insights and loyalty to the Church, in terms of ascetical moderation, a preference for the grounded as opposed to the abstract and with a pastoral emphasis.33
The Anchoritic Life The strong presence of the solitary life within English spirituality, and Julian's own existence as an anchoress, needs some further explanation.
The solitary life in various forms seems to have characterized four of the five major English fourteenth‐century mystical writers, leaving aside
Margery Kempe. Richard Rolle (c.1300–1349) pursued the solitary life after studying at Oxford. He was never ordained and ended up at Hampole in Yorkshire next to a monastery of Cistercian nuns. Rolle is the most prolific of the English mystics, writing in both Latin and English, and producing treatises, spiritual meditations and poetry.34 Walter
Hilton (died 1395/1396) ended as an Augustinian Canon of Thurgaton
Julian in Context
Priory in Nottinghamshire. However, apart from his studies at Cambridge, he lived for some time as a solitary before entering the Augustinians. In a sense, therefore, his spiritual life was a mixed one and this is perhaps reflected in his most famous work, The Scale of Perfection mentioned above.35 Finally, the anonymous author of the famous and still influential book, The Cloud of Unknowing (1380s), and related works, was probably a Carthusian monk who therefore led a partly solitary life.36
Originally the terms "anchorite" and "hermit" were synonymous and referred to the quest to be solitary or to withdraw to the eremos, the desert. This could imply total seclusion and stability or allow freedom of movement and social interaction. Early desert solitaries, for example in Egypt, while geographically distant from towns and while emphasizing withdrawal, had a degree of interchange with visitors. They saw charity and hospitality as virtues – even providing food and clothes to villagers in times of famine. They also visited towns to sell their work in the markets.
Only in the Western European Middle Ages did the terms "hermit" and "anchorite" or "anchoress" become more distinct. The "hermit" was more general, indicating "the one alone." Hermits were not necessarily secluded.
Many lived in towns or villages. Thus, for example, Richard Rolle called at local houses to eat and drink. The point was that the true hermit lived alone and vowed obedience to God alone, not to a monastic rule or to an abbot or abbess. Some solitaries engaged in external works. They might be guides to travellers or offer their cells as overnight hostels. Others acted as bridge or toll keepers. In England, some looked after coastal beacons, as evidenced by the remains of a medieval hermitage and chapel linked to the beacon on St Aldhelm's Head in Dorset.
The title of "anchorite" or "anchoress" was restricted to those who were recluses, enclosed and stable. Some of those who felt called to this life were already members of religious communities. Thus, quite a number of monasteries in England, whether of men or women, had responsibility for one or more recluses. Some of these lived close to the main community but others such as the Benedictines of Durham Cathedral Priory maintained a hermitage on the islands of Farne off the Northumberland coast. Also, on the edge of the moors above the Carthusian monastery of Mount Grace in Yorkshire are the remains of an isolated hermitage where it is thought that a monk from the Priory below could retire.
However, and importantly in the context of Julian of Norwich, in England there were many recluses with no previous connections to a monastery. Thus, famous figures such as Godric of Finchdale, Wulfric of Haselbury, and Christina of Markyate had not previously been monastics. The best‐known English rule for the anchoritic life, the early thirteenth‐century Ancrene Wisse (A Guide for Anchoresses), was written
The Anchoritic Life
explicitly for three women living outside traditional monastic structures.37
This text tells us something about the way of life of an anchoress. The solitary life was considered the highest form of the Christian life because it combined asceticism and contemplation. The way of life was particularly popular with women and gave them a status and role aside from clerical life.
Anchorholds were familiar features of late medieval life, often attached to parish churches, as at St Julian's in Norwich. They could be single rooms or larger complexes with courtyard and garden. In the case of the latter, a secluded area was set aside for the anchoress and a reception area housed a maid who organized the food and protected the privacy of the solitary. Here guests might also sit and speak to the anchoress. The maid also has certain rules because she too was to lead a life of dedicated devotion with some austerity. The anchoress probably had access to three windows: one onto the church, one into the reception area and one directly onto the street. In the case of the latter, there should be a curtain so that the anchoress could neither see, nor be seen by, any visitor. It is not certain what style of anchorhold Julian occupied. It is noted in the book by Fr John‐Julian that during the post‐war reconstruction of St Julian's Church in 1953 the foundations of an anchorhold destroyed by the bombing were discovered and the space was tiny: some nine and a half feet by eleven and a half feet. This does not seem consistent with the multiple occupancy of the anchorhold in Julian's time implied in a surviving will of 1404, noted above. However, in the Introduction to their translation of Julian's texts, Edmund Colledge and James Walsh indicate that the "cell" destroyed during the Second World War was actually a reconstruction. Further, in the Introduction to their scholarly edition of Julian's texts, they cite a comment by the eighteenth‐century Norfolk antiquarian, Francis Blomefield, in the second volume of his 1745 text, Norfolk, that the original anchorhold had been demolished at the dissolution of the monasteries.38
Leaving aside questions of lifestyle, it is instructive to compare the radically different spiritual ethos of the Ancrene Wisse with Julian's writings and their essentially positive vision and also concern for all her fellow Christians. The two visions of life are not very compatible. Thus the Ancrene Wisse does not portray a romantic vision of the solitary life although it does see the anchoress as a kind of spiritual "aristocrat." It emphasizes the anger of God set against the spiritual dangers of the world. It portrays solitude as the medium for saving one's soul. Indeed, the initial ceremony of enclosure strongly symbolized death to the world.
The anchorhold was a kind of tomb and anchoresses were to meditate frequently upon death. There is to be a round of prayer from waking to sleeping in order to ward off evil. Plus, a devotional routine keeps the