Anchorites were men and women who enclosed themselves for life to contemplate their religious inculcated-superstitious beliefs. Julian of Norwich was perhaps the most famous anchorite of the Middle Ages.
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Medieval mystics starved the body to feed the soul:
Medieval mystics starved the body to feed the soul:
"Self-starvation, sometimes to the point of death, was quite common among female mystics across Europe from the 13th century on. The phenomenon came to be known as anorexia mirabilis. Considering holy women on the Italian peninsula alone, Rudolph Bell, author of Holy Anorexia (1985), notes that, between 1200 and the late-20th century, some 261 women were formally recognised in the Bibliotheca Sanctorum as, ‘saints, blesseds, venerables, or servants of God’. For around a third of that number, the historical record is too meagre to draw conclusions about eating behaviour but, according to Bell, more than half of the remaining 170 or so showed clear signs of anorexia. The lives of dozens of these women – Angela of Foligno, Colomba of Rieti, and Clare of Assisi among them – are documented in substantial detail, and they emerge as controversial and significant figures whose influence would reverberate down the years. Their tombs became sites of pilgrimage, their relics were prized and venerated, and they entered the Catholic narrative as heroic role models. Believers listened awestruck as preachers recited stories of their extraordinary, apparently superhuman, devotion to God ]an imaginary being] through denial of the flesh.
The most famous of the holy anorexics was Catherine of Siena (1347-80), whose life and thoughts we know in great detail both through her own copious writings and through the biographical accounts of contemporaries who knew her well, most notably Raymond of Capua, her last confessor and spiritual mentor. On Raymond’s account, Catherine – the daughter of a prosperous Sienese wool dyer – was unlikeordinary emotionally-healthy children. At the age of six, while out walking with her brother, she had a vision of Christ seated on an imperial throne, clothed in pontifical vestments, with John the Evangelist and the Apostles Peter and Paul at his side. She replaced childish games with prayer and meditation and would ‘seek out hidden places and scourge her young body in secret with a special rope’, encouraging other six-year-olds to join her in the practice. She retreated more and more into silence.
By the age of 15, her already frugal diet was reduced to small quantities of bread and raw vegetables. Five years or so later, following the death of her father and more visions of Christ, Catherine cut out the bread, and, from her mid-20s, apparently ate ‘nothing’ other than sacramental wafers at Holy Communion. She was dead from self-starvation by the age of 33. According to Raymond, during those last years of severe starvation, not only did she have no need of food but the very act of eating was physically unbearable. ‘If she forced herself to eat, her body suffered extremely, her digestion would not function, and the food had to come out with an effort by the way it had gone in.’ In other words, she was forcing herself to vomit, which she did by swallowing branches of fennel or other bitter herbs. Despite her frailty, she remained physically energetic to the last and, indeed, seems to have been prone to bursts of hyperactivity. In Raymond’s words: ‘She did not know the meaning of fatigue.’"
The most famous of the holy anorexics was Catherine of Siena (1347-80), whose life and thoughts we know in great detail both through her own copious writings and through the biographical accounts of contemporaries who knew her well, most notably Raymond of Capua, her last confessor and spiritual mentor. On Raymond’s account, Catherine – the daughter of a prosperous Sienese wool dyer – was unlike
By the age of 15, her already frugal diet was reduced to small quantities of bread and raw vegetables. Five years or so later, following the death of her father and more visions of Christ, Catherine cut out the bread, and, from her mid-20s, apparently ate ‘nothing’ other than sacramental wafers at Holy Communion. She was dead from self-starvation by the age of 33. According to Raymond, during those last years of severe starvation, not only did she have no need of food but the very act of eating was physically unbearable. ‘If she forced herself to eat, her body suffered extremely, her digestion would not function, and the food had to come out with an effort by the way it had gone in.’ In other words, she was forcing herself to vomit, which she did by swallowing branches of fennel or other bitter herbs. Despite her frailty, she remained physically energetic to the last and, indeed, seems to have been prone to bursts of hyperactivity. In Raymond’s words: ‘She did not know the meaning of fatigue.’"
"In late-medieval Europe, individuals self-isolated professionally. Some people – women particularly – permanently withdrew from society to live walled in, alone in a room attached to a church."
[Considering the almost-certain high-incidence of sexual/physical abuse of children, particularly females, in the Middle Ages, the desire for physical isolation is quite understandable.]
[Then, as now, ostentatious religious devotion probably provided a socially-lauded excuse for secondary gain—that is, satisfaction of an unrevealed primary emotional need.]
"Anchorites were even presented as possessing “super powers” of interceding for the deceased in purgatory."
[N.B. Purgatory was a lucrative stratagem invented by religious leaders in the 12th century.]
"Life as an anchorite offered laywomen an option to express this piety, but offered more freedom for individual contemplation (and solitude) than a nun’s life.
Warnings in guides for anchorites also hint at less spiritual motives. Life as a [church-resident] recluse, paradoxically, situated anchorites at the heart of their communities and could transform them into religious celebrities. Their cells often faced busy roads in bustling cities and doubled as a bank, teacher’s cubicle, and storehouse of local gossip."
"Life as an anchorite offered laywomen an option to express this piety, but offered more freedom for individual contemplation (and solitude) than a nun’s life.
Warnings in guides for anchorites also hint at less spiritual motives. Life as a [church-resident] recluse, paradoxically, situated anchorites at the heart of their communities and could transform them into religious celebrities. Their cells often faced busy roads in bustling cities and doubled as a bank, teacher’s cubicle, and storehouse of local gossip."
