Note 74 — AUTHORS AS SUPPRESSORS OF THEIR BOOKS.

He was in fact a “recluse” in the ancient and proper sense of the term. For in the Bishop’s time it still remained customary, after an imposing ceremony, literally to seal and shut up by the hands of a bishop those—men or women—who elected to be recluses, in a small chamber built for the purpose close to the wall of some church with an opening inwards that the immured tenant might hear the service and receive necessary subsistence. We are told, for example, by St. Foix that Agnes de Rochier, the beautiful daughter of a rich tradesman, commenced such a life at the church of St. Opportune, in Paris, on the 5th of October, 1403, and though then of only eighteen years, lived in this hermetic state till the ripe enough age of eighty.