Anchorites: Dead to the World, at the Center of It
What if the purest solitude in the medieval world wasn't a desert cave but a room attached to a church, with three windows — one facing the altar, one for servants, one onto the street? And what if the person inside was, by the letter of the rite, dead? This episode unpacks the anchorite: the vow of stability of place, the funeral liturgy borrowed for a living person, the bishop's seal pressed into the wall, and the three-window design that made the cell a switchboard rather than a tomb. Along the way: the two-meter-by-one-point-three-meter cell at Compton occupied for over a century, the…
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