14 Somerville Magazine
The Consolations of
Isolation
Somerville medievalist and Rosemary Woolf Fellow, Dr Annie Sutherland takes a moment to meditate upon the ‘vita contemplativa’ of medieval anchorites and what lessons their radically inclusive isolation hold for us today.
D
uring this unexpected chapter in our global history, we have all had to adapt to living in radically altered circumstances. One of the most radical alterations has been that of learning to live in enforced isolation in our own homes. At very short notice, we have had to become content with seclusion in a socially orientated world. Of course, we are not the first to face isolation. Whether voluntary or enforced, solitude is – and always has been – a way of life for many. In fact, reflection on practices of solitude across history can provide us with fruitful ways of conceptualising responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a medievalist in the current context, I have found myself thinking about the lives of religious recluses in the Christian West. Considering the ways in which they negotiated their isolation has the potential to inform our own responses to seclusion. Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, the English landscape was peopled with an abundance of women and men known as ‘anchorites’. Such individuals (more commonly women than men) lived lives of voluntary reclusion, enclosed within small structures (‘cells’) often built to adjoin the walls of their local church. Thus isolated, they were required to spend their time in prayer, contemplation, and the judicious dispensing of spiritual guidance to passers-by through a small curtained window in the outer wall of their cell. At no point, however, were they to welcome visitors into their private space. Once enclosed, an anchorite Left: A stained glass window from Norwich cathedral depicting medieval anchoress Julian Of Norwich.
