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.
You can read the show notes at https://www.medievalists.net/2020/03/...
"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 unlike ordinary 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.’"
"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.]
"These anchorites chose to be confined in these cramped cells for many reasons. According to medieval religious culture, a life of prayer on behalf of others vitally supported society. Isolation empowered women to express their love for Christ, and minister to their fellow believers through their prayers and counsel."
[Then, as now, ostentatious religious devotion probably provided a socially-lauded excuse for secondary gain—that is, satisfaction of an unrevealed primary emotional need.]
[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."
On 21 March 1556 Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was executed for heresy.
Cranmer’s early career had seen him present the case for Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Although his argument did not result in the Pope agreeing to annul the marriage, Cranmer was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by the King in March 1533 after which he quickly moved to declare Henry’s marriage to Catherine void. Within a few years he also annulled Henry’s marriages to Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard and had begun to work with Thomas Cromwell on the production of an English Bible.
Cranmer’s actions led to him developing a large and powerful opposition which grew under the reign of Edward VI. His support for the Protestant Lady Jane Grey as Edward’s successor, rather than his Catholic older sister Mary, ultimately led to him being put on trial for treason in 1553. As a leader of the English Reformation he had not only promoted Protestantism but had also established the first structures of the Church of England. Despite having signed a number of recantations or retractions of his Protestant faith, on the day of his execution he in turn recanted these recantations before being burned at the stake.
He reportedly placed his right hand into the fire first. This was the hand with which he had signed his recantation and he burnt it as punishment for being ‘unworthy’.
Cranmer’s execution in 1556 for heresy was intended to act as way to discredit Protestantism. However, his eleventh-hour rejection of his earlier recantations against the Reformist movement meant that his death ultimately undermined the Marian Counter-Reformation.
During Cranmer's tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury, he was responsible for establishing the first doctrinal and liturgical structures of the reformed Church of England. Under Henry's rule, Cranmer did not make many radical changes in the Church, due to power struggles between religious conservatives and reformers. He published the first officially authorised vernacular service, the Exhortation and Litany.
When Edward came to the throne, Cranmer was able to promote major reforms. He wrote and compiled the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, a complete liturgy for the English Church. With the assistance of several Continental reformers to whom he gave refuge, he changed doctrine or discipline in areas such as the Eucharist, clerical celibacy, the role of images in places of worship, and the veneration of saints. Cranmer promulgated the new doctrines through the Prayer Book, the Homilies and other publications.
After the accession of the Catholic Mary I, Cranmer was put on trial for treason and heresy. Imprisoned for over two years and under pressure from Church authorities, he made several recantations and apparently reconciled himself with the Catholic Church. While this would have normally absolved him, Mary wanted him executed, and, on the day of his execution, he withdrew his recantations, to die a heretic to Catholics and a martyr for the principles of the English Reformation. Cranmer's death was immortalised in Foxe's Book of Martyrs and his legacy lives on within the Church of England through the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles, an Anglican statement of faith derived from his work.
Often, people think of the women of medieval Europe as either wives or nuns: women whose lives and property were under the control of someone else. But what tends to be forgotten is that for some women there was a third option: to become a beguine. This week, Danièle speaks with Dr. Tanya Stabler Miller about who the beguines were, and what medieval society thought of them.
