#When he sheds his rank and pomp and is suddenly able to exist as just himself

[saints-who-never-existed]

On Anchorites

Just been snooping through scripts again (I saw a hot take that instinct told me was based on a misunderstanding/mishearing of a particular line. Not worth any great pedantry of course - I'm a live-and-let-live kind of gal after all - but I did feel compelled to check just for my own edification).

Anyway, I found that Gibson's line in Episode Three jumped out at me all of a sudden:

"We were within an ace of getting called out in front of all the men and whipped for it, or worse. You were right. If he weren't such an ANCHORITE, we would have been."

That's a term I've only just now clocked and understood some of the significance of.

An Anchorite is akin to a hermit - a religious recluse.

But, crucially, they're not quite the same thing!

Where a hermit typically secludes themselves in the wilderness, an Anchorite is limited to a more specific location, usually a cell attached to a church.

Which is so interesting!

It's interesting that Irving espouses to Hickey all the spiritual benefits of being out in the wilderness, at the edge of civilisation ("We are...separated here. From the temptations of the world.") Benefits that a hermit might enjoy but that Irving himself doesn't appear to be capable of fully appreciating, at least at that point.

It's also interesting not only that an Anchorite is a person who confines themselves to a specific and restrictive space within a religious institution, but also that when they enter that space there's usually a consecration, a ceremony similar to a funeral rite, where the person is thereafter thought of as dead to the world, as a sort of living saint.

It's so interesting that by acting in such a way that other men view him as akin to an Anchorite, Irving quite literally marks himself out for death, hastens his own funeral rites in just the same way that a real Anchorite does.