Why Would Anyone Live Alone in a Cave on Purpose? Withdrawal as a Vocation

The reasoning given across traditions is broadly consistent. Ordinary life fills attention with obligations, distractions and the opinions of others, and removing those makes a different kind of attention possible. Solitude also removes the social rewards for religious behaviour, so a practice performed with nobody watching is understood to be performed for its own sake. Several traditions add the idea of confrontation, with the withdrawn person facing their own impulses without the structures that ordinarily restrain them, which is the source of the temptation narratives attached to famous examples. And in some periods withdrawal was explicitly a protest against a religion that had become comfortable and official.

The practice recurs across unrelated traditions:

• •Christian desert dwellers in Egypt and Syria from the third century
• •Anchorites walled into cells attached to medieval churches
• •Hindu forest dwelling, treated as a stage of life in classical texts
• •Buddhist solitary retreat, in some schools lasting years
• •Daoist mountain hermits, a continuous tradition in China
• •Sufi practitioners undertaking extended periods of seclusion

The word suggests complete isolation and the historical reality was usually otherwise. Egyptian desert dwellers formed loose settlements where solitary cells were within walking distance of each other and where people gathered weekly, which is where organised monasticism came from directly. Medieval anchorites lived enclosed in a cell attached to a church, with a window onto the street through which they gave advice to anybody who came, and several became significant local figures consulted on all manner of problems. Food had to be brought, which required a supporter or an endowment. Famous examples attracted visitors in such numbers that the solitude was destroyed, which is a recurring complaint in the sources.

An eighteenth century fashion turned the whole idea into landscape ornament, and it is strange enough to be worth recording. Wealthy English landowners building picturesque gardens added a rustic hut or grotto and in a number of documented cases advertised for a person to live in it, with contracts specifying that the occupant grow their hair and nails, wear a robe, refrain from speaking to visitors and remain on the estate for a term of years in exchange for payment at the end. Several such advertisements survive. The arrangements frequently failed, with occupants leaving early or being dismissed for being seen in the village pub, and many estates settled for an empty hut or a dressed figure instead.

Authorities were wary of unsupervised religious enthusiasm and imposed controls. Medieval enclosure required the permission of a bishop, an examination of the candidate's motives and suitability, and evidence of financial support, followed by a formal ceremony that read the burial service over the person being enclosed. Rules were written specifying what an enclosed person might own, wear, eat and say. The concern was partly practical, since an unsupported person becomes a burden on the parish, and partly doctrinal, since somebody living outside any structure and dispensing advice through a window can spread anything at all. Eastern traditions imposed comparable requirements, generally that a person undertake extended solitude only after long training under supervision.

Withdrawal removes distraction, removes the social reward for religious behaviour and forces a confrontation with impulses that ordinary structures restrain, which is the reasoning given across traditions. The isolation was rarely complete, with desert settlements gathering weekly and anchorites advising anybody who came to the window. Enclosure required episcopal permission, an examination and evidence of support, and was regulated because unsupervised enthusiasm worried authorities.