Rites of Enclosure: The EnglishOrdinesfor the Enclosing of Anchorites, S. XII–S. XVI

Abstract

The enclosed solitary life, like other forms of (broadly speaking) monastic vocation, can trace its origins to the eastern deserts of the third and fourth centuries. But its development as a distinct and separately regulated form of living belongs to the central Middle Ages. By the twelfth century, the anchoritic vocation was an established part of a spiritual landscape that also included regular cenobites (monks, canons, nuns) and the still comparatively unregulated, freely wandering hermits. Anchorites usually lived alone (or at least without any spiritual companion: the life was impossible without servants or some other way of attending to the practitioner's domestic needs), in a cell attached (in most cases) to a parish church, often in an urban location; if men, they were usually priests, though more often seculars than regulars; in England, female anchorites, of whom very few appear to have been nuns prior to their enclosure, outnumbered males throughout the period.