Anchorite

Anchorite (pronounced ang-kuh-rahyt)

A person who has retired to a solitary place, traditionally for a life of religious seclusion; a recluse or hermit.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English anchorite & ancorite, (hermit, recluse, one who withdraws from the world for religious reasons (and applied especially in reference to the Christian hermits of the Eastern deserts in the two centuries after circa 300 AD.)), a conflation of the Middle English ancre (from the Old English ancra & ancer) and the Old French anacorite or the Medieval Latin anachōrīta & anchōrīta and the Late Latin anchoreta from the Late Greek anachōrētḗs (literally "one who has retired"), the construct being ana- (back), from anachōrē- (stem of anachōreîn (anakhōrein) (to withdraw)) + khōreîn (to withdraw, to give place), a verbal derivative of chôros (khōra) (place, space, free space, room), from the primitive Indo-European root ghē- (to release, let go; be released) + -tēs (the agent suffix).  The Old English and the Old Irish ancharae were from the Late Latin anachōrēta, from the Late Greek.  The word replaced the Old English ancer, from the Late Latin anchoreta.  Anchoritic is an adjective, anchoritically is an adverb, anchoritism is a noun; anchoress is the feminine noun form.  Synonyms include hermit, recluse, solitary, cenobite, ascetic, monastic, eremite, vestal, postulant & solitaire.

The last papal resignation but one.

Pietro Angellerio (1215-1296) was for five months between July and December 1294 installed as Pope Celestine V.  His resignation from the office was the last until Joseph Ratzinger (b 1927; Pope Benedict XVI 2005-2013; pope emeritus since) in 2013 retired from his eight-year pontificate to become (uniquely) pope emeritus.

Prior to being created pope, Celestine had for decades been a monk and hermit, living a anchorite existence in remote caves and subsisting on little more that wild vegetables, fruits, honey and the occasional locust, his unworldly background meaning he emerged as the ultimate compromise candidate, declared pope after a two-year deadlock in the church’s last non-conclave papal election.  The cardinals had been squabbling for all those two years which so upset the hermit in his cave that he wrote them a letter warning divine retribution would be visited upon them if they didn't soon elect a pope.  Realizing he was entirely un-political, without enemies and likely pliable, the cardinals promptly elected him by acclamation.

Shocked, the hermit declined the appointment, only to have his own arguments turned on him, the cardinals insisting if he refused the office he would be defying God himself; trapped, he was crowned at Santa Maria di Collemaggio in Aquila, taking the name Celestine V.  The anchorite, lost in the world of power politics and low skullduggery was utterly unsuited to the role and within months issued an edict confirming the right of a pope to abdicate.  That done, he resigned, intending to return to his cave but his successor, Boniface VIII (Benedetto Caetani, circa 1231-1303; pope 1294-1303) had no wish to have such a puritanical loose canon at large and imprisoned him in an agreeable castle where, within months, he died.  In 2013, Benedict XVI fared better, retiring to a sort of papal granny flat in the Vatican.

Allegory of the Coronation of Celestine V, Musée di Louvre, Paris.

The painter is unknown but the work has been dated to the sixteenth century.  There was long a story, published in both the 1967 forgery Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau (Secret Files of Henri Lobineau) and the almost equally dubious 1968 book Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Château (The Accursed Treasure of Rennes-le-Château) by Géraud-Marie de Sède (1921–2004), that the painting was one allegedly brought by controversial priest François-Bérenger Saunière (1852–1917) from the Louvre, circa 1891, but this was later disproved.  It wasn’t until 1923 it was recognized and subsequently classified as being of Celestine V.