Annie Sutherland: The Consolations of Isolation

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.

During 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

was expected to remain so until her death. In common with many individuals within many religious traditions, they practised extreme social distancing as a way of life centuries before the COVID-19 pandemic enshrined it as a medical imperative.

In today’s situation, we have all had to work hard to adapt to a solitary way of life for which, unlike anchorites, we have had little training. One of our principal endeavours has been to find ways of remaining connected with each other despite our physical distance, an endeavour which has been considerably eased by the existence of the internet as a means of facilitating virtual interactions unhampered by the obstacles of space and time. In this context, one of the most high-profile initiatives has been ‘Together At Home’, a series of free online concerts performed by some of the world’s leading contemporary musicians, live-streamed by the artists from their own homes directly into ours. As the name suggests, the initiative celebrates the ways in which we can maintain our sense of community even when our doors remain closed to each other (and I know Somerville has been doing something similar with its ‘Somerville at Home’ series.)

This recognition of the fact that we can be meaningfully ‘together’ even when geographically apart is not, however, new to the Twenty-First Century. The enclosed anchorites of the Middle Ages were experienced practitioners of what we might call inclusive solitude; they knew very well what it was to be ‘Together At Home’. For despite their obvious isolation, they were deeply embedded in the communities of which they were a part. As their cells were often adjacent to their local church, they found themselves at the centre of their village, town or city, situated at the heart of networks of exchange and communication (in fact, some anchorites gained a reputation as incurable gossips, such was their social positioning).

Living in such exposed solitude, the anchorite who did not want to succumb to gossip had to work hard to maintain the spiritual and mental discipline necessary to the effective practice of reclusion. As one twelfth-century text for anchorites puts it, it is insufficient ‘to confine the body behind walls while the mind roams at random’. But, assuming that she was able

(and many, it seems, were) to exercise the required restraint and necessary self-control, the anchorite was encouraged to cultivate a radical openness to the world around her. Quite literally ‘locked-down’, she was to embrace enclosure and isolation as an opportunity to forge new communities grounded in care and mutual support. While this might be achieved through the offering of advice or the provision of a listening ear from behind a curtained window, the most important way in which she was to cultivate community was through the practice of intercession. Where we have the internet to mitigate the impact of social distancing, the anchorite connected with her community via a network of prayer. In fact, she was encouraged to conceptualise her cell – and her own body – as a holding bay for the needy, the abject and the disadvantaged. As one thirteenth-century book of advice suggests, when engaged in solitary prayer, whether at day or night, she was to:

‘Gather into her heart all those who are ill and wretched, the misery that the poor suffer, the torments that prisoners endure where they lie

Above: A bishop blesses an anchorite as she enters her cell. Pontifical, England, 1st quarter of the 15th century BL Lansdowne MS 451, f. 76v