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36 - Hermitism in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

from Part III - The Long Twelfth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2020

By
Kathryn Jasper  and
John Howe
Edited by
Alison I. Beach  and
Isabelle Cochelin
Alison I. Beach
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Isabelle Cochelin
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

Medieval Western Christians could recognize hermits. A reader admiring the image of the heavenly ladder in the encyclopedic Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg (d. 1195) could easily identify the bearded, barefoot, bare-shinned, rough-clad figure reaching for the “crown of life” ahead of the recluse, the monk, and the clerk, but who, alas, is losing his footing as he glances back at his garden. His high place is no accident. Peter Damian (d. 1072/3) describes the eremitical life as the “golden road … the high road, preeminent among others leading to higher things.” Yet scholars today do not find hermit-spotting similarly easy, and they debate what solitude is, how hermits relate to monastic rules, and where to classify temporary hermits and members of semi-eremitical religious orders. In the present study, hermits are defined as people who, for the sake of prayer, live an isolated existence in “wilderness” outside the outer court of a monastery or the bounds of a churchyard.

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The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West , pp. 684 - 696
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

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