Hermits and the New Monasticism A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe 1000–1150 by Henrietta Leyser - introduction

 

the whole world a hermitage Damian, Vita Romualdi

TALKING about hermits provokes mirth; if you do not believe this, try working on hermits and keeping a goat. Like goats, hermits are usually seen as wayward and smelly -just occasionally as romantic but definitely as fringe creatures and in some sense failures, ekeing out their existence on some unpromising patch of scrub. To quote a recent review in the Times Literary Supplement 'the hermit's life, like chicken farming seems to have provided one of the refuges for the human wreckage caused by the first world war'. 1 The perspective of the middle ages was different. Hermits were to be found on the very highest rung of the ladder of perfection. Abbots, kings and emperors would seek their advice. Because it was so exacting a life only those of proven calibre were encouraged to take it up.

The eleventh and twelfth centuries saw a dramatic change: 'it seemed as if the whole world would be turned into a hermitage'. 2 Hermits were everywhere, on every rostrum. They came from all walks of life. Robbers gave up their lives of pillage to become hermits; monks left their communities and masters their schools. Why was this so? First of all, as we shall see, there is a semantic problem. Much confusion could have been avoided if these new hermits of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had presumed to call themselves 'holy men'. Hermits, traditionally, withdraw in ones or twos from the world:

Living a sane and gentle life in a forest nook or a hill pocket Perpetuating their kind and their kindness, keeping Their hands clean and their eyes keen, at one with Themselves, each other and nature.3

They are not expected to try to reform the world, to become wandering preachers, to take upon themselves the care of lepers, prostitutes, the sick and the poor, to proclaim by word and deed that most existing ecclesiastical institutions were at worst rotten, at best inadequate. But this is what the new hermits of the eleventh and twelfth centuries did and throughout Europe they founded communities where they could, in their sense, live perfectly.

Everyone can recognise, in parlour-game terms, 'what the consequence was'. Cluniac monasteries were now challenged by communities proclaiming quite different values and observances.

Monastic historians following Ordericus Vitalis have described how 'monasteries are founded everywhere ... observing new rites ... the swarm of cow led monks spreads all over the world'. 4 In the unforgettable words of David Knowles 'the single traditional version of the monastic life [was split] into twenty different divisions, as it were the colours of the spectrum'. 5 Bitter arguments broke out as to which way of life was best, whose profession the most authentic.

The end of the story, in a sense, came with the pronouncement of the Lateran Council of 1215 forbidding any further new orders, but it is with the beginnings of these developments that we are concerned here. For in most accounts there is a hiatus, a passing over of the crucial years between the first meeting of any hermits (in a forest or a 'desert', clad in scruffy clothes) and the founding of their communities. The improbability that such a meeting of 'marginal' and traditionally solitary figures could lead to such momentous, central monastic changes is felt to be so great, even ludicrous, that barely any attempt has been made to spell out what 'he said to him', or, as was sometimes the case 'to her'. There is, in short, a failure to connect. Hermits and monks are still kept in separate, quite artificial compartments. They are even seen as diametrical figures. Here is a recent example. Brenda Bolton, following Christopher Brooke, writes: 'the hermit life was revived in a world in which its opposite, the communal mode of life, flourished as never before'. 6 For both writers it is the Carthusians who seem to span the poles: but for the eleventh and twelfth centuries this contrast between the eremitical and the communal life is false. Certainly, as we shall see, there were still solitaries - these I have called 'traditional hermits' -but there were also 'new hermits' for whom solitude had an entirely different meaning. These hermits were the parents of the new orders, of the Cistercians just as much as of the Carthusians, of the Vallombrosans and the Premonstratensians, just as much as of the more isolated Camaldolensians. They saw themselves as hermits and the Lives and Rules of their communities describe the ways in which they chose to live 'eremitically'. A hermit was no longer a solitary figure in a hut or cave; he belonged, in every sense of the word, to a group of pioneers, to 'Ie takeoff7 of the twelfth century. Ordericus knew this too. In the course of describing the peace Henry I had brought to England he continues: 'hermits can add their testimony, for they cut down dense woods and now give praise in the high-roofed monasteries and spiritual palaces built there chanting glory to God with peace of mind where formerly robbers and outlaws used to hide to perform their evil deeds'. 8

How the hermits became monks and canons will be considered later; the fundamental question must be 'Why?' According to one school of thought it was because they had no choice: hermits were utopians, utopians never survive, sooner or later they have to face either extermination or assimilation. Another closely related argument is this: the hermits were led at first by men of great charisma, but because of the huge size of their followings charisma was replaced by institutions. The hermits adopted rules and orders because they had to, but this transition was also an act of treason. By becoming monks and canons the hermits were admitting to compromise and failure.

There can be no doubt that there are details in these arguments which must be accepted. At first, the hermits did obey leaders, not rules. Then, 'small is beautiful' -for any community success creates problems. Here, as an example, is the weary lament of a twelfth-century prior whose house had once contained only seven brethren: 'the number of the religious grows, and at the same time trouble increases; being a large number they need many goods, and many goods not only cause discord between religious and seculars, but also among religious themselves .... what was before given freely, must now be bought, and the property that was peacefully owned can now scarcely be kept without a lawsuit'. 9 It is clear that the hermits themselves were often far from pleased with the outcome of their ventures; they might even leave their first foundations and try again. But the point that must be made is this: the unwieldly size of many hermitages caused problems, but not rules. Rules to the hermits were not a sign of failure, but 'structures for .... piety',10 the embodiment of their ideals.

The renaissance of the twelfth century was (among other things) a search for new forms. Giles Constable has shown how its vocabulary reflects this preoccupation: recreate, remake, restore, repair, regenerate, reflower, rekindle, revive, resuscitate, these are only some of the words that continually occur. 'Behold matter', wrote Bernard Silvester, 'the oldest thing [in creation], wishes to be born again and in this new beginning to be encompassed in forms.'11 By the end of the century, according to Constable, there had been a shift from 'what may be called a backward-looking to a forward-looking ideology of reform'12 The 'forward-looking' ideology will lead to apocalyptic schools of thought, the 'backward-looking' school takes us straight to the hermits. It was their yearning for models from Scripture and the early Fathers which shaped and moulded their lives, which gave urgency to their search for rules. 

The cry for a return to the perfection of earlier norms can be heard persistently from the time of Romuald's wanderings in Spain and Italy through to the heyday of Cistercianism: 'to put all in brief no perfection expressed in the words of the Gospel, or of the apostles, or in the writings of the Fathers, or in the saying of the monks of old is wanting to our order and our way of life'. 13 The Cistercians' rule must be the most thumbed of all the statutes to which the hermit-movement gave birth. The organisation it set up has been described by Richard Southern as 'a masterpiece of medieval planning', successful, partly, because of its attention to detail; 'pigs', for example, 'though they wander by day must return to the styes at night'. 14 One is reminded of the similar efficiency shown by William I in the compiling of Domesday: 'there was not. ... -it is shameful to record it, but it did not seem shameful for him to do it -not even one ox, nor one cow, nor one pig which escaped notice in his survey'. 15 This is not fortuitous. One of the characteristics of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was this new respect for the written word, for the value of legal precision and codification; the great achievement of the hermits and their followers was the ability to combine this legalism, this concern with outward forms, with an equally intense scrutiny of inner feeling.

The search for new forms of monasticism is always, as M. Seguy has said, the search for a new society. This is no place -to examine the fundamental changes, social and economic, of twelfth-century Europe. On the other hand it was precisely these developments which dictated the pace and direction of the spiritual 'renewing of structures'.16 It was economic expansion and social change which made the hermit movement both possible and necessary.

From the mid-eleventh century Europe was free from external attack. The pagan invaders of the tenth century had in turn been repelled and converted. But the relative peace that was to follow brought its own turmoil, more devastating, more irreparable, than the sporadic acts of pillage. The tenth century had known a certain grim security. Communities were small, self-contained, purposeful. What mattered was survival, either in this world or the next, but this was a struggle that was shared and reliably supported on many levels, by the company of saints and kinsmen and of monks at prayer. The eleventh century brought changes which shattered this pattern of existence. They have been much discussed: the great increase in population, improved agricultural techniques, rural dislocation, the growth of towns and the schools and, above all, the spread of a money economy:

Money! He's the whole world's master
His the voice that makes men run:
Speak! Be quiet! Slower! Faster!
Money orders -and it's done. 17

The hermit movement has sometimes been seen as a simple turning away from these new developments, as a 'rejection of both the new cities and the old monasteries'. 18 Certainly it is true that the hermits hated both cities and money, conversely that they wanted to live as poor men in the 'desert'. But the movement should not be seen in this purely negative fashion. The 'desert' was not a sandy place where the hermits could bury their heads; they went there, as had their Lord, to 'find themselves', to consider how to meet the new challenge, how to find a form of living that would be appropriate, as Cluniac monasticism no longer was, to their circumstances and their aspirations.

The desert, as Isaiah had seen it, was 'the place of future renewal': 'the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing' (Isaiah xxxv, 1-2). Gregorian reform, according to Janet Nelson: '[by] involving a new degree of religious differentiation within the wider social system, and a revaluation of religious commitments for all adherents was the answer to newly-felt demands' .19 In support, she cites Anselm and Damian. Anselm, as we know from his Life, seriously considered becoming a hermit, Peter Damian was the great propagator of the movement. This is no coincidence. There can be no doubt that it was above all the hermits in the eleventh and twelfth centuries who were asking not just for themselves but for all Western Christendom, 'what good must I do to win eternal life?' For too long the answers of key figures have dominated historical thinking: the answers, however controversial, of Gregory VII himself, of St Bernard, of Abelard. It is time to see what answers the hermits gave and how deeply their response permeates all the new religious structures of the eleventh and twelfth century. But first we must look at the traditional background from which the hermits stepped.

l. Richard Cobb, Times Literary Supplement, 25 December 1981, p. 1483.
2. Peter Damian, Vita Romualdi, G. Tabacco (ed.), Fonti per la stona d'Itaiza, XCIV (Rome, 1957), Ch. 37, p. 78.
3. Louis MacNeice, The Dark Tower (London, 1964), p. 35.
4. Ordericus Vitalis, Histona Eccleslastica, M. Chibnall (ed.), Nelson's Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1973), Bk. VIII, Ch. 26, p. 310.
5. D. Knowles, From Pachomius to Ignatius, A Study in the Constitutional History of the Religious Orders (Oxford, 1966), p. 16.
6. Brenda Bolton, The Medieval Reformation, Foundations in Medieval History (London, 1983), p. 36. Cf. C. Brooke, The Monastic World (London, 1974), p. 80.
7. The phrase is Le Goff's, cited in P. Brown, 'Society and the Supernatural: A Medieval Change', Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity, (London, 1982), p. 302, n. 1.
8. Ordericus Vitalis, Bk. X, pp. 295-6.
9. H. Peltier, 'Hugues de Fouilloy chanoine regulier, prieur de Saint-Laurent-au-Bois', Revue du moyen age latin, II (1946), 32.
10. Caroline Walker Bynum, 'Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?', Journal of EccleSiastical History, XXXI (1980), 16.
11. Cited by Gerhart B. Ladner, 'Terms and Ideas of Renewal', Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, R. Benson and Giles Constable (eds) (Oxford, 1982), p.6.
12. Giles Constable, 'Renewal and Reform in Religious Life', Renaissance and Renewal, pp. 38-9.
13. Ailred of Rievaulx, cited in D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England, 943-1216 (Cambridge, 1949), p. 221.
14. R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, Pelican History of the Church, 2 (Harmondsworth, 1970), pp. 255-6.
15. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1085, G. N. Garmonsway (ed.), Everyman edn (London, 1953), p. 216.
16. G. Duby, La Vita commune del clero nei secoli XI e XII, Miscellanea del Centro di studi medioevali III (1962), p. 73.
17. Cited in A. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), p. 73.
18. Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (London, 1978), p. 70.
19. Janet Nelson, 'Society, Theodicy and the origins of Heresy', SCH, IX (1972),73.

from the book Hermits and the New Monasticism A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe 1000–1150 by Henrietta Leyser