It became the site of one of the great medieval pilgrimages because of the textile relics obtained by Charlemagne and Ortho III. These four relics were shown only once every seven years.
It was a time for penance and reflection. Advent actually opens the liturgical year, appropriately as a time of waiting for the coming of the savior. The prayers during this time reference the waiting of the Israelites with citations from the prophets such as Isaiah Is "People of Sion, behold the Lord shall come to save the nations.
Anchorites were similar to hermits, but their location was invariably within populated communities, not the desert or forest location of the traditional hermit. They could be members of religious orders but they also could be solitary individuals who chose to live an ascetic life marked by permanent enclosure in a building or part of a building an anchorage or anchorhold attached to a religious foundation. The highly popular guide for the female anchorite, the 13th-century Ancrene Wisse , outlined a liturgical day with a series of prayers, some in the vernacular, more simple than that of the Benedictine rule, and gave many rules for conduct.
Chief among them was scrupulous observation of chastity and limited contact with the outside world. Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson. Routledge: London, , see "Anchorages," Robertson, Elizabeth. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, Warren, Ann. Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England. Berkeley: University of California Press, In Christian tradition, angels were created by God to have an immortal nature.
Unrelated to matter, they possess intelligence and free will. Angels occasionally take human form and are often depicted this way in Christian art. According to The Celestial Hierarchies by the 6th-century Pseudo-Dionysius, angels are divided into nine orders and three hierarchies, comprising the nine orders of angels.
