Social distancing lessons from the anchoresses

I once spent a night enclosed in a cell attached to a medieval church while I was researching a book on medieval holy places. The church’s newsletter enthusiastically announced, “The anchoress has returned!” Parishioners pitched in, passing meals to me through the anchorhold’s window, just as would have been done in the late Middle Ages when other women were enclosed in this place. Like me, these women entered voluntarily. Unlike me, they entered for life.

The anchoretic life may not be a sought-after vocation today, but by the end of the Middle Ages, hundreds of laypeople chose to live in permanent, solitary enclosure in the middle of England’s bustling towns. These would-be contemplatives were given the last rites by the bishop before being enclosed in tomb-like dwellings attached to parish churches.

If the anchorhold’s stone walls emphasized the anchorite’s renunciation of the world, its three windows—one into the church, one facing the street, another facing a parlor—were reminders of her continued connection to and reliance on it. Anchorites were to be the living dead, inhabiting the liminal space between heaven and earth. Distanced from the world and freed from the distractions of the active life, they could devote themselves completely to contemplation and intercession.