In the “Vision of Piers Ploughman” an interesting description is given of a Dominican convent of the fourteenth century. We will not trouble the reader with the very archaic original, but will give him a paraphrase of it. The writer says that, on approaching, he was so bewildered by their magnitude and beauty, that for a long time he could distinguish nothing certainly but stately buildings of stone, pillars carved and painted, and great windows well wrought. In the quadrangle he notices the cross standing in the centre, surrounded with tabernacle-work: he enters the minster (church), and describes the arches carved and gilded, the wide windows full of shields of arms and merchants’ marks on stained glass, the high tombs under canopies, with armed effigies in alabaster, and lovely ladies lying by their sides in many gay garments. He passes into the cloister and sees it pillared and painted, and covered with lead and paved with tiles, and conduits of white metal pouring their water into latten (bronze) lavatories beautifully wrought. The chapter-house he says was wrought like a great church, carved and painted like a parliament-house. Then he went into the fratry, and found it a hall fit for a knight and his household, with broad boards (tables) and clean benches, and windows wrought as in a church. Then he wandered all about—
“And seigh halles ful heigh, and houses ful noble,Chambres with chymneys, and chapeles gaye,And kychenes for an high kynge in castels to holden,And their dortoure ydight with dores ful stronge,Fermerye, and fraitur, with fele more houses,And all strong stone wall, sterne opon heithe,With gay garites and grete, and ich whole yglazed,And other houses ynowe to herberwe the queene.”
The churches of the friars differed from those of monks. They were frequently composed either of a nave only or a nave and two (often very narrow) aisles, without transepts, or chapels, or towers; they were adapted especially for preaching to large congregations—e.g.the Austin Friars’ Church in the City of London, lately restored; St. Andrew’s Hall, Norwich. In Viollet le Duc’s “Dictionary of Architecture” is given a bird’s-eye view of the monastery of the Augustine Friars of St. Marie des Vaux Verts, near Brussels, which is a complete example of one of these houses.[90]
Every monastery had a number of dependent establishments of greater or less size: cells on its distant estates; granges on its manors; chapels in places where the abbey tenants were at a distance from a church; and often hermitages under its protection. A ground-plan and view of one of these cells, the Priory of St. Jean-les-Bons-hommes, of the end of the twelfth century, still remaining in a tolerably perfect state, is given by Viollet le Duc (Dict Arch., i. 276, 277). It is a miniature monastery, with a little cloistered court, surrounded by the usual buildings: an oratory on the north side; on the east a sacristy, and chapter-house, and long range of buildings, with dormitory over; on the south side the refectory and kitchen; and another exterior court, with stables and offices. The preceptory of Hospitallers at Chibburn, Northumberland, which remains almost as the knights left it, is another example of these small rural houses. It is engraved in Turner’s “Domestic Architecture,” vol. ii. p. 197. It also consists of a small court, with a chapel about forty-five feet long, on the west side; and other buildings, which we cannot appropriate, on the remaining sides. Of the monastic cells we have already spoken in describing the office of prior. The one or two brethren who were placed in a cell to manage the distant estates of the monastery would probably bechosen rather for their qualities as prudent stewards than for their piety. The command of money which their office gave them, and their distance from the supervision of their ecclesiastical superiors, brought them under temptation, and it is probably in these cells, and among the brethren who superintended the granges, and the officials who could leave the monastery at pleasure on the plea of convent business, that we are to look for the irregularities of which the Middle-Age satirists speak. The monk among Chaucer’s “Canterbury Pilgrims” was prior of a cell, for we read that—
“When he rode, men might his bridel hereGingeling in a whistling sound, as clereAnd eke as loudas doth the chapelle belle,Ther as this lord was keeper of the celle.”
The monk on whose intrigue “The Shipman’s Tale” is founded, was probably the cellarer of his convent:—
“This noble monk of which I you devise,Had of his abbot, as him list, licence;Because he was a man of high prudence,And eke an officer, out for to rideTo seen his granges and his bernes wide.”
An Abbot travelling.
The abbot, too, sometimes gave license to the monks to go and see their friends, or to pass two or three days at one or other of the manors of thehouse for recreation; and sometimes he took a monk with him on his own journeys. In a MS. romance, in the British Museum (Add. 10,293, f. 11), is a representation of a monk with his hood on, journeying on horseback. We give here, from the St. Alban’s Book (Nero, D. vii.), a woodcut of an abbot on horseback, with a hat over his hood—“an abbot on an ambling pad;” he is giving his benediction in return to the salute of some passing traveller.
Hermitages or anchorages sometimes depended on a monastery, and were not necessarily occupied by brethren of the monastery, but by any one desirous to embrace this mode of life whom the convent might choose. The hermit, however, probably, usually wore the habit of the order. The monastery often supplied the hermit with his food. In a picture in the MS. romance, before quoted (Add. 10,292, f. 98), is a representation of a knight-errant on horseback, conversing by the way with a clerk, who is carrying bread and wine to a hermitage.
The woodcut with which we conclude, from the Harleian MS., 1,527, represents the characteristic costume of three orders of religious with whom we have been concerned—a bishop, an abbot, and a clerk.
Bishop, Abbot, and Clerk.
THE HERMITS AND RECLUSES OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
THE HERMITS.
We have already related, in a former chapter (p. 3), that the ascetics who abandoned the stirring world of the Ægypto-Greek cities, and resorted to the Theban desert to lead a life of self-mortification and contemplation, frequently associated themselves into communities, and thus gave rise to the cœnobitical orders of Christendom. But there were others who still preferred the solitary life; and they had their imitators in every age and country of the Christian world. We have not the same fulness of information respecting these solitaries that we have respecting the great orders of monks and friars; but the scattered notices which remain of them, when brought together, form a very curious chapter in the history of human nature, well worthy of being written out in full. The business of the present paper, however, is not to write the whole chapter, but only to select that page of it which relates to the English solitaries, and to give as distinct a picture as we can of the part which the Hermits and Recluses played on the picturesque stage of the England of the Middle Ages.
We have to remember, at the outset, that it was not all who borethe name of Eremite who lived a solitary life. We have already had occasion to mention that Innocent IV., in the middle of the thirteenth century, found a number of small religious communities and solitaries, who were not in any of the recognised religious orders, and observed no authorised rule; and that he enrolled them all into a new order, with the rule of St. Augustine, under the name of Eremiti Augustini. The new order took root, and flourished, and gave rise to a considerable number of large communities, very similar in every respect to the communities of friars of the three orders previously existing. The members of these new communities did not affect seclusion, but went about among the people, as the Dominicans, and Franciscans, and Carmelites did. The popular tongue seems to have divided the formal title of the new order, and to have applied the name ofAugustine, or, popularly,Austin Friars, to these new communities of friars; while it reserved the distinctive name ofEremites, or Hermits, for the religious, who, whether they lived absolutely alone, or in little aggregations of solitaries, still professed the old eremitical principle of seclusion from the world. These hermits may again be subdivided into Hermits proper, and Recluses. The difference between them was this: that the hermit, though he professed a general seclusion from the world, yet, in fact, held communication with his fellow-men as freely as he pleased, and might go in and out of his hermitage as inclination prompted, or need required; the recluse was understood to maintain a more strict abstinence from unnecessary intercourse with others, and had entered into a formal obligation not to go outside the doors of his hermitage. In the imperfect notices which we have of them, it is often impossible to determine whether a particular individual was a hermit or a recluse; but we incline to the opinion that of the male solitaries few had taken the vows of reclusion; while the female solitaries appear to have been all recluses. So that, practically, the distinction almost amounts to this—that the male solitaries were hermits, and the females recluses.
Very much of what we have to say of the mediæval solitaries, of their abodes, and of their domestic economy, applies both to those who had, and to those who had not, made the further vow of reclusion. We shall, therefore, treat first of those points which are common to them, andthen devote a further paper to those things which are peculiar to the recluses.
The popular idea of a hermit is that of a man who was either a half-crazed enthusiast, or a misanthrope—a kind of Christian Timon—who abandoned the abodes of men, and scooped out for himself a cave in the rocks, or built himself a rude hut in the forest; and lived there a half-savage life, clad in sackcloth or skins,[91]eating roots and wild fruits, and drinking of the neighbouring spring; visited occasionally by superstitious people, who gazed and listened in fear at the mystic ravings, or wild denunciations, of the gaunt and haggard prophet. This ideal has probably been derived from the traditional histories, once so popular,[92]of the early hermit-saints; and there may have been, perhaps, always an individual or two of whom this traditional picture was a more or less exaggerated representation. But the ordinary English hermit of the Middle Ages was a totally different type of man. He was a sober-minded and civilised person, whodressed in a robe very much like the robes of the other religious orders; lived in a comfortable little house of stone or timber; often had estates, or a pension, for his maintenance, besides what charitable people were pleased to leave him in their wills, or to offer in their lifetime; he lived on bread and meat, and beer and wine, and had a chaplain to say daily prayers for him, and a servant or two to wait upon him; his hermitage was not always up in the lonely hills, or deep-buried in the shady forests—very often it was by the great high roads, and sometimes in the heart of great towns and cities.
This summary description is so utterly opposed to all the popular notions, that we shall take pains to fortify our assertions with sufficient proofs; indeed, the whole subject is so little known that we shall illustrate it freely from all the sources at our command. And first, as it is one of our especial objects to furnish authorities for the pictorial representation of these old hermits, we shall inquire what kind of dress they did actually wear in place of the skins, or the sackcloth, with which the popular imagination has clothed them.
We should be inclined to assumea priorithat the hermits would wear the habit prescribed by Papal authority for the Eremiti Augustini, which, according to Stevens, consisted of “a white garment, and a white scapular over it, when they are in the house; but in the choir, and when they go abroad, they put on, over all, a sort of cowl and a large hood, both black, the hood round before, and hanging down to the waist in a point, being girt with a black leather thong.” And in the rude woodcuts which adorn Caxton’s “Vitas Patrum,” or “Lives of the Hermits,” we do find some of the religious men in a habit which looks like a gown, with the arms coming through slits, which may be intended to represent a scapular, and with hoods and cowls of the fashion described; while others, in the same book, are in a loose gown, in shape more like that of a Benedictine. Again, in Albert Durer’s “St. Christopher,” as engraved by Mrs. Jameson, in her “Sacred and Legendary Art,” p. 445, the hermit is represented in a frock and scapular, with a cowl and hood. But in the majority of the representations of hermits which we meet with in mediæval paintings and illuminated manuscripts, the costume consists of a frock, sometimes girded, sometimes not,and over it an ample gown, like a cloak, with a hood; and in the cases where the colour of the robe is indicated, it is almost always indicated by a light brown tint.[93]It is not unlikely that there were varieties of costume among the hermits. Perhaps those who were attached to the monasteries of monks and friars, and who seem to have been usually admitted to the fraternity of the house,[94]may have worn the costume of the order to which they were attached; while priest-hermits serving chantries may have worn the usual costume of a secular priest. Bishop Poore, who died 1237, in his “Ancren Riewle,” speaks of the fashion of the dress to be worn, at least by female recluses, as indifferent. Bilney, speaking especially of the recluses in his day, just before the Reformation, says, “their apparell is indifferent, so it be dissonant from the laity.” In the woodcuts, from various sources, which illustrate this paper, the reader will see for himself how the hermits are represented by the mediæval artists, who had them constantly under their observation, and who at least tried their best to represent faithfully what they saw. The best and clearest illustration which we have been able to find of the usual costume in which the hermits are represented, we here give to the reader. It is from the figure of St. Damasus, one of the group in the fine picture of “St. Jerome,” byCosimo Roselli (who lived from 1439 to 1506), now in the National Gallery. The hermit-saint wears a light-brown frock, and scapular, with no girdle, and, over all, a cloak and hood of the same colour, and his naked feet are protected by wooden clogs.
St. Damasus, Hermit.
Other illustrations of hermits may be found in the early fourteenth century MS. Romances Additional 10,293 f. 335, and 10,294 f. 95. In the latter case there are two hermits in one hermitage; also in Royal 16 G. vi. Illustrations of St. Anthony, which give authorities for hermit costume, and indications of what hermitages were, abound in the later MSS.; for example, in King René’s “Book of Hours” (Egerton 1,070), at f. 108, the hermit-saint is habited in a grey frock and black cloak with a T-cross on the breast; he holds bell and book and staff in his hands. In Egerton 1,149, of the middle of the fifteenth century. In Add. 15,677, of the latter part of the fifteenth century, at f. 150, is St. Anthony in brown frock and narrow scapulary, with a grey cloak and hood and a red skull cap; he holds a staff and book; his hermitage, in the background, is a building like a little chapel with a bell-cot on the gable, within a grassy enclosure fenced with a low wattled fence. Add. 18,854, of date 1525A.D., f. 146, represents St. Anthony in a blue-grey gown and hood, holding bell, rosary, and staff, entering his hermitage, a little building with a bell-cot on the gable.
A man could not take upon himself the character of a hermit at his own pleasure. It was a regular order of religion, into which a man could not enter without the consent of the bishop of the diocese, and into which he was admitted by a formal religious service. And just as bishops do not ordain men to holy orders until they have obtained a “title,” a place in which to exercise their ministry, so bishops did not admit men to the order of Hermits until they had obtained a hermitage in which to exercise their vocation.
The form of the vow made by a hermit is here given, from the Institution Books of Norwich, lib. xiv. fo. 27a (“East Anglian,” No. 9, p. 107). “I, John Fferys, nott maridd, promyt and avowe to God, orLady Sent Mary, and to all the seynts in heven, in the p’sence of you reverend fadre in God, Richard bishop of Norwich, the wowe of chastite, after the rule of sentpaule the heremite. In the name of the fadre, sone, and holy gost.John Fferere. xiij. meii, anno dni.MLVCIIIJ.in capella de Thorpe.”
We summarize the service for habiting and blessing a hermit[95]from the pontifical of Bishop Lacy of Exeter, of the fourteenth century.[96]It begins with several psalms; then several short prayers for the incepting hermit, mentioning him by name.[97]Then follow two prayers for the benediction of his vestments, apparently for different parts of his habit; the first mentioning “hec indumenta humilitatem cordis et mundi contemptum significancia,”—these garments signifying humility of heart, and contempt of the world; the second blesses “hanc vestem pro conservande castitatis signo,”—this vestment the sign of chastity. The priest then delivers the vestments to the hermit kneeling before him, with these words, “Brother, behold we give to thee the eremitical habit (habitum heremiticum), with which we admonish thee to live henceforth chastely, soberly, and holily; in holy watchings, in fastings, in labours, in prayers, in works of mercy, that thou mayest have eternal life, and live for ever and ever.” And he receives them saying, “Behold, I receive them in the name of the Lord; and promise myself so to do according to my power, the grace of God, and of the saints, helping me.” Then he puts off his secular habit, the priest saying to him, “The Lord put off from thee the old man with his deeds;” and while he puts on his hermit’s habit, the priest says, “The Lord put on thee the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Then follow a collect and certain psalms, and finally the priest sprinkles him with holy water, and blesses him.
Men of all ranks took upon them the hermit life, and we find the popular writers of the time sometimes distinguishing among them; one is a “hermit-priest,”[98]another is a “gentle hermit,” not in the sense of the“gentle hermit of the dale,” but meaning that he was a man of gentle birth. The hermit in whose hermitage Sir Launcelot passed long time is described as a “gentle hermit, which sometime was a noble knight and a great lord of possessions, and for great goodness he hath taken him unto wilful poverty, and hath forsaken his possessions, and his name is Sir Baldwin of Britain, and he is a full noble surgeon, and a right good leech.” This was the type of hermit who was venerated by the popular superstition of the day: a great and rich man who had taken to wilful poverty, or a man who lived wild in the woods—a St. Julian, or a St. Anthony. A poor man who turned hermit, and lived a prosaic, pious, useful life, showing travellers the way through a forest, or over a bog, or across a ferry, and humbly taking their alms in return, presented nothing dramatic and striking to the popular mind; very likely, too, many men adopted the hermit life for the sake of the idleness and the alms,[99]and deserved the small repute they had.
It isàproposof Sir Launcelot’s hermit above-mentioned that the romancer complains “for in those days it was not with the guise of hermits as it now is in these days. For there were no hermits in those days, but that they have been men of worship and prowess, and those hermits held great households, and refreshed people that were in distress.” We find the author of “Piers Ploughman” making the same complaint. We have, as in other cases, a little modernised his language:—
“But eremites that inhabit them by the highways,And in boroughs among brewers, and beg in churches,All that holy eremites hated and despised,(As riches, and reverences, and rich men’s alms),These lollers,[100]latche drawers,[101]lewd eremites,Covet on the contrary. Nor live holy as eremites,That lived wild in woods, with bears and lions.Some had livelihood from their lineage[102]and of no life else;And some lived by their learning, and the labour of their hands.Some had foreigners for friends, that their food sent;And birds brought to some bread, whereby they lived.All these holy eremites were of high kin,Forsook land and lordship, and likings of the body.But these eremites that edify by the highwaysWhilome were workmen—webbers, and tailors,And carter’s knaves, and clerks without grace.They held a hungry house. And had much want,Long labour, and light winnings. And at last espiedThat lazy fellows in friar’s clothing had fat cheeks.Forthwith left they their labour, these lewd knaves,And clothed them in copes as they were clerks,Or one of some order [of monks or friars], or else prophets [eremites].”
This curious extract from “Piers Ploughman” leads us to notice the localities in which hermitages were situated. Sometimes, no doubt, they were in lonely and retired places among the hills, or hidden in the depths of the forests which then covered so large a portion of the land. On the next page is a very interesting little picture of hermit life, from a MS. Book of Hours, executed for Richard II. (British Museum, Domitian, A. xvii., folio 4 v.) The artist probably intended to represent the old hermits of the Egyptian desert, Piers Ploughman’s—
“Holy eremites,That lived wild in woodsWith bears and lions;”
but, after the custom of mediæval art, he has introduced the scenery, costume, and architecture of his own time. Erase the bears, which stand for the whole tribe of outlandish beasts, and we have a very pretty bit of English mountain scenery. The stags are characteristic enough of the scenery of mediæval England. The hermitage on the right seems to be of the ruder sort, made in part of wattled work. On the left we have the more usual hermitage of stone, with its little chapel bell in a bell-cot on the gable. The venerable old hermit, coming out of the doorway, is a charmingillustration of the typical hermit, with his venerable beard, and his form bowed by age, leaning with one hand on his cross-staff, and carrying his rosary in the other. The hermit in the illustration hereafter given from the “History of Launcelot,” on page 114, leans on a similar staff; it would seem as if such a staff was a usual part of the hermit’s equipment.[103]The hermit in Albert Dürer’s “St. Christopher.” already mentioned, also leans on a staff, but of rather different shape. Here is a companion-picture, in pen and ink, from the “Morte d’Arthur:”—“Then he departed from the cross [a stone cross which parted two ways in waste land, under which he had been sleeping], on foot, into a wild forest. And so by prime he came unto an high mountain, and there he found an hermitage,and an hermit therein, which was going to mass. And then Sir Launcelot kneeled down upon both his knees, and cried out, ‘Lord, mercy!’ for his wicked works that he had done. So when mass was done, Sir Launcelot called the hermit to him, and prayed him for charity to hear his confession. ‘With a good will,’ said the good man.”
Hermits and Hermitages.
But many of the hermitages were erected along the great highways of the country, and especially at bridges and fords,[104]apparently with the express view of their being serviceable to travellers. One of the hermit-saints set up as a pattern for their imitation was St. Julian, who, with his wife, devoted his property and life to showing hospitality to travellers; and the hermit who is always associated in the legends and pictures with St. Christopher, is represented as holding out his torch or lantern to light the giant ferryman, as he transports his passengers across the dangerous ford by which the hermitage was built. When hostelries, where the traveller could command entertainment for hire, were to be found only in the great towns, the religious houses were the chief resting-places of the traveller; not only the conventual establishments, but the country clergy also were expected to be given to hospitality.[105]But both monasteries and country parsonages often lay at a distance of miles of miry and intricate by-road off the highway. We must picture this state of the country and of society to ourselves, before we can appreciate the intentions of those who founded these hospitable establishments; we must try to imagine ourselves travellers, getting belated in a dreary part of the road, where it ran over a bleak wold, or dived through a dark forest, or approached an unknown ford, before we can appreciate the gratitude of those who suddenly caughtthe light from the hermit’s window, or heard the faint tinkle of his chapel bell ringing for vespers.
Such incidents occur frequently in the romances. Here is an example:—“Sir Launcelot rode all that day and all that night in a forest; and at the last, he was ware of an hermitage and a chapel that stood between two cliffs; and then he heard a little bell ring to mass, and thither he rode, and alighted, and tied his horse to the gate, and heard mass.” Again: “Sir Gawayne rode till he came to an hermitage, and there he found the good man saying his even-song of our Lady. And there Sir Gawayne asked harbour for charity, and the good man granted it him gladly.”
We shall, perhaps, most outrage the popular idea of a hermit, when we assert that hermits sometimes lived in towns. The extract from “Piers Ploughman’s Vision,” already quoted, tells us of—
“Eremites that inhabit themIn boroughs among brewers.”
The difficulty of distinguishing between hermits proper and recluses becomes very perplexing in this part of our subject. There is abundant proof, which we shall have occasion to give later, that recluses, both male and female, usually lived in towns and villages, and these recluses are sometimes called hermits, as well as by their more usual and peculiar name of anchorites and anchoresses. But we are inclined to the opinion, that not all the male solitaries who lived in towns were recluses. The author of “Piers Ploughman’s Vision” speaks of the eremites who inhabited in boroughs as if they were of the same class as those who lived by the highways, and who ought to have lived in the wildernesses, like St. Anthony. The theory under which it was made possible for a solitary, an eremite, a man of the desert, to live in a town, was, that a churchyard formed a solitary place—a desert—within the town. The curious history which we are going to relate, seems to refer to hermits, not to recluses. The Mayor of Sudbury, under date January 28, 1433, petitioned the Bishop of Norwich, setting forth that the bishop had refused to admit “Richard Appleby, of Sudbury, conversant with John Levynton, of the same town, heremyte, to the order of Hermits, unless he was sure to be inhabited in a solitary place wherevirtues might be increased, and vice exiled;” and that therefore “we have granted hym, be the assent of all the sayd parish and cherch reves, to be inhabited with the sayd John Levynton in his solitary place and hermytage, whych ytis made at the cost of the parysh, in the cherchyard of St. Gregory Cherche, to dwellen togedyr as (long as) yey liven, or whiche of them longest liveth;” and thereupon the mayor prays the bishop to admit Richard Appleby to the order.
This curious incident of two solitaries living together has a parallel in the romance of “King Arthur.” When the bold Sir Bedivere had lost his lord King Arthur, he rode away, and, after some adventures, came to a chapel and an hermitage between two hills, “and he prayed the hermit that he might abide there still with him, to live with fasting and prayers. So Sir Bedivere abode there still with the hermit; and there Sir Bedivere put upon him poor clothes, and served the hermit full lowly in fasting and in prayers.” And afterwards (as we have already related) Sir Launcelot “rode all that day and all that night in a forest. And at the last he was ware of an hermitage and a chapel that stood between two cliffs, and then he heard a little bell ring to mass; and thither he rode, and alighted, and tied his horse to the gate and heard mass.” He had stumbled upon the hermitage in which Sir Bedivere was living. And when Sir Bedivere had made himself known, and had “told him his tale all whole,” “Sir Launcelot’s heart almost burst for sorrow, and Sir Launcelot threw abroad his armour, and said,—‘Alas! who may trust this world?’ And then he kneeled down on his knees, and prayed the hermit for to shrive him and assoil him. And then he besought the hermit that he might be his brother. And he put an habit upon Sir Launcelot, and there he served God day and night with prayers and fastings.” And afterwards Sir Bors came in the same way. And within half a year there was come Sir Galahad, Sir Galiodin, Sir Bleoberis, Sir Villiers, Sir Clarus, and Sir Gahalatine. “So these seven noble knights abode there still: and when they saw that Sir Launcelot had taken him unto such perfection, they had no list to depart, but took such an habit as he had. Thus they endured in great penance six years, and then Sir Launcelot took the habit of priesthood, and twelve months he sung the mass; and there was none of these otherknights but that they read in books, and helped for to sing mass, and ring bells, and did lowly all manner of service. And so their horses went where they would, for they took no regard in worldly riches.” And after a little time Sir Launcelot died at the hermitage: “then was there weeping and wringing of hands, and the greatest dole they made that ever made man. And on the morrow the bishop-hermit sung his mass of requiem.” The accompanying wood-cut, from one of the small compartments at the bottom of Cosimo Roselli’s picture of St. Jerome, from which we have already taken the figure of St. Damasus, may serve to illustrate this incident. It represents a number of hermits mourning over one of their brethren, while a priest in the robes proper to his office, stands at the head of the bier and says prayers, and his deacon stands at the foot, holding a processional cross. The contrast between the robes of the priest and those of the hermits is lost in the woodcut; in the original the priest’s cope and amys are coloured red, while those of the hermits are tinted with light brown.
Funeral Service of a Hermit.
If the reader has wondered how the one hermitage could accommodate these seven additional habitants, the romancer does not forget to satisfyhis curiosity: a few pages farther we read—“So at the season of the night they went all to their beds, for they all lay in one chamber.” It was not very unusual for hermitages to be built for more than one occupant; but probably, in all such cases, each hermit had his own cell, adjoining their common chapel. This was the original arrangement of the hermits of the Thebais in their laura. The great difference between a hermitage with more than one hermit, and a small cell of one of the other religious orders, was that in such a cell one monk or friar would have been the prior, and the others subject to him; but each hermit was independent of any authority on the part of the other; he was subject only to the obligation of his rule, and the visitation of his bishop.
The life[106]of the famous hermit, Richard of Hampole, which has lately been published for the first time by the Early English Text Society, will enable us to realise in some detail the character and life of a mediæval hermit of the highest type. Saint Richard was born[107]in the village of Thornton, in Yorkshire. At a suitable age he was sent to school by the care of his parents, and afterwards was sent by Richard Neville, Archdeacon of Durham, to Oxford, where he gave himself specially to theological study. At the age of nineteen, considering the uncertainty of life and the awfulness of judgment, especially to those who waste life in pleasure or spend it in acquiring wealth, and fearing lest he should fall into such courses, he left Oxford and returned to his father’s house. One day he asked of his sister two of her gowns (tunicas), one white, the other grey, and a cloak and hood of his father’s. He cut up the two gowns, and fashioned out of them and of the hooded cloak an imitation of a hermit’s habit, and next day he went off into a neighbouring wood bent upon living a hermit life. Soon after, on the vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, he went to a certain church, and knelt down to pray in the place which the wife of a certain worthy knight, John de Dalton, was accustomed to occupy. When the lady came to church, her servants would have turned out the intruder, but she would not permit it. When vespers were over and he rose from hisknees, the sons of Sir John, who were students at Oxford, recognised him as the son of William Rolle, whom they had known at Oxford. Next day Richard again went to the same church, and without any bidding put on a surplice and sang mattins and the office of the mass with the rest. And when the gospel was to be read at mass, he sought the blessing of the priest, and then entered the pulpit and preached a sermon to the people of such wonderful edification that many were touched with compunction even to tears, and all said they had never heard before a sermon of such power and efficacy. After mass Sir John Dalton invited him to dinner. When he entered into the manor he took his place in a ruined building, and would not enter the hall, according to the evangelical precept, “When thou art bidden to a wedding sit down in the lowest room, and when he that hath bidden thee shall see it he will say to thee, Friend, go up higher;” which was fulfilled in him, for the knight made him sit at table with his own sons. But he kept such silence at dinner that he did not speak one word; and when he had eaten sufficiently he rose before they took away the table and would have departed, but the knight told him this was contrary to custom, and made him sit down again. After dinner the knight had some private conversation with him, and being satisfied that he was not a madman, but really seemed to have the vocation to a hermit’s life, he clothed him at his own cost in a hermit’s habit, and retained him a long time in his own house, giving him a solitary chamber (locum mansionis solitariæ)[108]and providing him with all necessaries. Our hermit then gave himself up to ascetic discipline and a contemplative life. He wrote books; he counselled those who came to him. He did both at the same time; for one afternoon the lady of the housecame to him with many other persons and found him writing very rapidly, and begged him to stop writing and speak some words of edification to them; and he began at once and continued to address them for two hours with admirable exhortations to cultivate virtue and to put away worldly vanities, and to increase the love of their hearts for God; but at the same time he went on writing as fast as before. He used to be so absorbed in prayer that his friends took off his torn cloak, and when it had been mended put it on him again, without his knowing it. Soon we hear of his having temptations like those which assailed St. Anthony, the devil tempting him in the form of a beautiful woman. He was specially desirous to help recluses and those who required spiritual consolation, and who were vexed by evil spirits.
At length Lady Dalton died, and (whether as a result of this is not stated) the hermit left his cell and began to move from place to place. One time he came near the cell of Dame Margaret, the recluse of Anderby in Richmondshire, and was told that she was dumb and suffering from some strange disease, and went to her. And he sat down at the window of the house of the recluse,[109]and when they had eaten, the recluse felt a desire to sleep; and being oppressed with sleep her head fell towards the window at which St. Richard was reclined. And when she had slept a little, leaning somewhat on Richard, suddenly she was seized with a convulsion, and awoke with her power of speech restored.
He wrote many works of ascetic and mystical divinity which were greatly esteemed. The Early English Text Society has published some specimens in the work from which these notices are gathered, which show that his reputation as a devotional writer was not undeserved. At length he settled at Hampole, where was a Cistercian nunnery. Here he died, and in the church of the nunnery he was buried. We are indebted for the Officium and Legenda from which we have gathered this outline of his life to the pious care of the nuns of Hampole, to whom the fame of Richard’s sanctity was a source of great profit and honour. That he had a line ofsuccessors in his anchorage is indicated by the fact hereafter stated (p. 128), that in 1415A.D., Lord Scrope left by will a bequest to Elizabeth, late servant to the anchoret of Hampole.
Sir Launcelot and a Hermit.
There are indications that these hermitages were sometimes mere bothies of branches; there is a representation of one, from which we here give a woodcut, in an illuminated MS. romance of Sir Launcelot, of early fourteenth-century date (British Museum, Add. 10,293, folio 118 v., date 1316): we have already noticed another of wattled work.[110]There are also caves[111]here and there in the country which are said by tradition to have been hermitages: one is described in theArchæological Journal, vol. iv., p. 150. It is a small cave, not easy of access, in the side of a hill called Carcliff Tor, near Rowsley, a little miserable village not far from Haddon Hall. In a recess, on the right side as you enter the cave, is a crucifix about four feet high, sculptured in bold relief in the red grit rock out ofwhich the cave is hollowed; and close to it, on the right, is a rude niche, perhaps to hold a lamp.
St. Robert’s Chapel, at Knaresborough, Yorkshire, is a very excellent example of a hermitage.[112]It is hewn out of the rock, at the bottom of a cliff, in the corner of a sequestered dell. The exterior, a view of which is given below, presents us with a simply arched doorway at the bottom of the rough cliff, with an arched window on the left, and a little square opening between, which looks like the little square window of a recluse. Internally we find the cell sculptured into the fashion of a little chapel, with a groined ceiling, the groining shafts and ribs well enough designed, but rather rudely executed. There is a semi-octagonal apsidal recess at the east end, in which the altar stands; a piscina and a credence and stone seat in the north wall; a row of sculptured heads in the south wall, and a grave-stone in the middle of the floor. This chapel appears to have beenalso the hermit’s living room. The view of the exterior, and of the interior and ground-plan, are from Carter’s “Ancient Architecture,” pl. lxvii. Another hermitage, whose chapel is very similar to this, is at Warkworth. It is half-way up the cliff, on one side of a deep, romantic valley, through which runs the river Coquet, overhung with woods. The chapel is hewn out of the rock, 18 feet long by 7½ wide, with a little entrance-porch on the south, also hewn in the rock; and, on the farther side, a long, narrow apartment, with a small altar at the east end, and a window looking upon the chapel altar. This long apartment was probably the hermit’s living room; but when the Earls of Northumberland endowed the hermitage for a chantry priest, the priest seems to have lived in a small house, with a garden attached, at the foot of the cliff. The chapel is groined, and has Gothic windows, very like that of Knaresborough. A minute description of this hermitage, and of the legend connected with it, is given in a poem called “The History of Warkworth” (4to, 1775), and in a letter in Grose’s “Antiquities,” vol. iii., is a ground-plan of the chapel and its appurtenances.A view of the exterior, showing its picturesque situation, will be found in Herne’s “Antiquities of Great Britain,” pl. 9.
Exterior View of St. Robert’s Chapel, Knaresborough.
Interior View of St. Robert’s Chapel.
There is a little cell, or oratory, called the hermitage, cut out of the face of a rock near Dale Abbey, Derbyshire. On the south side are the door and three windows; at the east end, an altar standing upon a raised platform, both cut out of the rock; there are little niches in the walls, and a stone seat all round.[113]
There is another hermitage of three cells at Wetheral, near Carlisle, called Wetheral Safeguard, or St. Constantine’s Cells—Wetheral Priory was dedicated to St. Constantine, and this hermitage seems to have belonged to the priory. It is not far from Wetheral Priory, in the face of a rock standing 100 feet perpendicularly out of the river Eden, which washes its base; the hill rising several hundred feet higher still above this rocky escarpment. The hermitage is at a height of 40 feet from the river, and can only be approached from above by a narrow and difficult path down the face of the precipice. It consists of three square cells, close together, about 10 feet square and 8 feet high; each with a short passage leading to it, which increases its total length to about 20 feet. These passages communicate with a little platform of rock in front of the cells. At a lower level than this platform, by about 7 feet, there is a narrow gallery built up of masonry; the door to the hermitage is at one end of it, so that access to the cells can only be obtained by means of a ladder from this gallery to the platform of rock 7 feet above it. In the front of the gallery are three windows, opposite to the three cells, to give them light, and one chimney. An engraving will be found in Hutchinson’s “History of Cumberland,” vol. i. p. 160, whichshows the picturesque scene—the rocky hill-side, with the river washing round its base, and the three windows of the hermitage, half-way up, peeping through the foliage; there is also a careful plan of the cells in the letterpress.
Ground-Plan of St. Robert’s Chapel.
A chapel, and a range of rooms—which communicate with one another, and form a tolerably commodious house of two floors, are excavated out of a rocky hill-side, called Blackstone Rock, which forms the bank of the Severn, near Bewdley, Worcestershire. A view of the exterior of the rock, and a plan and section of the chambers, are given both in Stukeley’s “Itinerarium Curiosum,” pls. 13 and 14, and in Nash’s “History of Worcestershire,” vol. ii. p. 48.
At Lenton, near Nottingham, there is a chapel and a range of cells excavated out of the face of a semicircular sweep of rock, which crops out on the bank of the river Leen. The river winds round the other semicircle, leaving a space of greensward between the rock and the river, upon which the cells open. Now, the whole place is enclosed, and used as a public garden and bowling-green, its original features being, however, preserved with a praiseworthy appreciation of their interest. In former days this hermitage was just within the verge of the park of the royal castle of Nottingham; itwas doubtless screened by the trees of the park; and its inmates might pace to and fro on their secluded grass-plot, fenced in by the rock and the river from every intruding foot, and yet in full view of the walls and towers of the castle, with the royal banner waving from its keep, and catch a glimpse of the populous borough, and see the parties of knights and ladies prance over the level meadows which stretched out to the neighbouring Trent like a green carpet, embroidered in spring and autumn by the purple crocus, which grows wild there in myriads. Stukeley, in his “Itinerarium Curiosum,” pl. 39, gives a view and ground-plan of these curious cells. Carter also figures them in his “Ancient Architecture,” pl. 12, and gives details of a Norman shaft and arch in the chapel.
But nearly all the hermitages which we read of in the romances, or see depicted in the illuminations and paintings, or find noticed in ancient historical documents, are substantial buildings of stone or timber. Here is one from folio 56 of the “History of Launcelot” (Add. 10,293): the hermit stands at the door of his house, giving his parting benediction to Sir Launcelot, who, with his attendant physician, is taking his leave after a night’s sojourn at the hermitage. In the paintings of the Campo Santo, at Pisa (engraved in Mrs. Jameson’s “Sacred and Legendary Art”), which represent the hermits of the Egyptian desert, some of the hermitages are caves, some are little houses of stone. In Caxton’s “Vitas Patrum” the hermitages are little houses; one has a stepped gable; another is like a gateway, with a room over it.[114]They were founded and built, and often endowed, by the same men who founded chantries, and built churches, and endowed monasteries; and from the same motives of piety, charity, or superstition. And the founders seem often to have retained the patronage of the hermitages, as of valuable benefices, in their own hands.[115]A hermitagewas, in fact, a miniature monastery, inhabited by one religious, who was abbot, and prior, and convent, all in one: sometimes also by a chaplain,[116]where the hermit was not a priest, and by several lay brethren,i.e.servants. It had a chapel of its own, in which divine service was performed daily. It had also the apartments necessary for the accommodation of the hermit, and his chaplain—when one lived in the hermitage—and his servants, and the necessary accommodation for travellers besides; and it had often, perhaps generally, its court-yard and garden.
The chapel of the hermitage seems not to have been appropriated solely to the performance of divine offices, but to have been made useful for other more secular purposes also. Indeed, the churches and chapels in the Middle Ages seem often to have been used for great occasions of a semi-religious character, when a large apartment was requisite,e.g.for holding councils, for judicial proceedings, and the like. Godric of Finchale, a hermit who lived about the time of Henry II.,[117]had two chapels adjoining his cell; one he called by the name of St. John Baptist, the other after the Blessed Virgin. He had a kind of common room, “communis domus,” in which he cooked his food and saw visitors; but he lived chiefly, day and night, in the chapel of St. John, removing his bed to the chapel of St. Mary at times of more solemn devotion.
In an illumination on folio 153 of the “History of Launcelot,” already quoted (British Mus., Add. 10,293), is a picture of King Arthur takingcounsel with a hermit in his hermitage. The building in which they are seated has a nave and aisles, a rose-window in its gable, and a bell-turret, and seems intended to represent the chapel of the hermitage. Again, at folio 107 of the same MS. is a picture of a hermit talking to a man, with the title,—“Ensi y come une hermites prole en une chapele de son hermitage,”—“How a hermit conversed in the chapel of his hermitage.” It may, perhaps, have been in the chapel that the hermit received those who sought his counsel on spiritual or on secular affairs.
In addition to the references which have already been given to illustrations of the subject in the illuminations of MSS., we call the special attention of the student to a series of pictures illustrating a mediæval story of which a hermit is the hero, in the late thirteenth century MS. Royal 10 E IV.; it begins at folio 113 v., and runs on for many pages, and is full of interesting passages.
We also add a few lines from Lydgate’s unpublished “Life of St Edmund,” as a typical picture of a hermit, drawn in the second quarter of the fifteenth century:—
“—holy Ffremund though he were yonge of age,And ther he bilte a litel hermitageBe side a ryver with al his besy peyne,He and his fellawis that were in nombre tweyne.“A litel chapel he dide ther edifie,Day be day to make in his praiere,In the reverence only off MarieAnd in the worshipe of her Sone deere,And the space fully off sevene yeereHooly Ffremund, lik as it is founde,Leved be frut and rootes off the grounde.“Off frutes wilde, his story doth us telle,Was his repast penance for t’ endure,To stanch his thurst drank water off the welleAnd eet acorns to sustene his nature,Kernelles off notis [nuts] when he myhte hem recure.To God alway doying reverence,What ever he sent took it in patience.”
And in concluding this chapter let us call to mind Spenser’s descriptionof a typical hermit and hermitage, while the originals still lingered in the living memory of the people:—
“At length they chaunst to meet upon the wayAn aged sire, in long blacke weedes yclad,His feet all bare, his head all hoarie gray,And by his belt his booke he hanging had;Sober he seemde, and very sagely sad,And to the ground his eyes were lowly bent,Simple in shew, and voide of malice bad;And all the way he prayed as he went,And often knockt his brest as one that did repent.“He faire the knight saluted, louting low,Who faire him quited, as that courteous was;And after asked him if he did knowOf strange adventures which abroad did pas.‘Ah! my dear sonne,’ quoth he, ‘how should, alas!Silly[118]old man, that lives in hidden cell,Bidding his beades all day for his trespas,Tidings of war and worldly trouble tell?With holy father sits not with such things to mell.’[119]******Quoth then that aged man, ‘The way to winIs wisely to advise. Now day is spent,Therefore with me ye may take up your inFor this same night.’ The knight was well content;So with that godly father to his home he went.“A little lowly hermitage it was,Down in a dale, hard by a forest’s side,Far from resort of people that did passIn traveill to and froe; a little wydeThere was an holy chappell edifyde,Wherein the hermite dewly wont to sayHis holy things, each morne and eventyde;Hereby a chrystall streame did gently play,Which from a sacred fountaine welled forth alway.“Arrived there, the little house they fill;Ne look for entertainment where none was;Rest is their feast, and all things at their will:The noblest mind the best contentment has.With fair discourse the evening so they pas;For that old man of pleasing words had store,And well could file his tongue as smooth as glas;He told of saintes and popes, and evermoreHe strowd an Ave-Mary after and before.”[120]Faery Queen, i. 1, 29, 33, 34, 35.
ANCHORESSES, OR FEMALE RECLUSES.
And now we proceed to speak more particularly of the recluses. The old legend tells us that John the Hermit, the contemporary of St. Anthony, would hold communication with no man except through the window of his cell.[121]But the recluses of more modern days were not content to quote John the Egyptian as their founder. As the Carmelite friars claimed Elijah, so the recluses, at least the female recluses, looked up to Judith as the foundress of their mode of life, and patroness of their order.
Mabillon tells us that the first who made any formal rule for recluses was one Grimlac, who lived about 900A.D.The principal regulations of his rule are, that the candidate for reclusion, if a monk, should signify his intention a year beforehand, and during the interval should continue to live among his brethren. If not already a monk, the period of probation was doubled. The leave of the bishop of the diocese was to be first obtained, and if the candidate were a monk, the leave of his abbot and convent also. When he had entered his cell, the bishop was to put his seal upon the door, which was never again to be opened,[122]unless for thehelp of the recluse in time of sickness or on the approach of death. Successive councils published canons to regulate this kind of life. That of Millo, in 692, repeats in substance the rule of Grimlac. That of Frankfort, in 787, refers to the recluses. The synod of Richard de la Wich, Bishop of Chichester,A.D.1246, makes some canons concerning them: “Also we ordain to recluses that they shall not receive or keep any person in their houses concerning whom any sinister suspicion might arise. Also that they have narrow and proper windows; and we permit them to have secret communication with those persons only whose gravity and honesty do not admit of suspicion.”[123]
Towards the end of the twelfth century a rule for anchorites was written by Bishop Richard Poore[124]of Chichester, and afterwards of Salisbury, who diedA.D.1237, which throws abundant light upon their mode of life; for it is not merely a brief code of the regulations obligatory upon them, but it is a book of paternal counsels, which enters at great length, and in minute detail, into the circumstances of the recluse life, and will be of great use to us in the subsequent part of this chapter.
There were doubtless different degrees of austerity among the recluses; but, on the whole, we must banish from our minds the popular[125]idea that they inhabited a living grave, and lived a life of the extremest mortification. Doubtless there were instances in which religious enthusiasm led therecluse into frightful and inhuman self-torture, like that of Thaysis, in the “Golden Legend:” “She went to the place whiche th’ abbot had assygned to her, and there was a monasterye of vyrgyns; and there he closed her in a celle, and sealed the door with led. And the celle was lytyll and strayte, and but one lytell wyndowe open, by whyche was mynistred to her poor lyvinge; for the abbot commanded that they shold gyve to her a lytell brede and water.”[126]Thaysis submitted to it at the command of Abbot Pafnucius, as penance for a sinful life, in the early days of Egyptian austerity; and now and then throughout the subsequent ages the self-hatred of an earnest, impassioned nature, suddenly roused to a feeling of exceeding sinfulness; the remorse of a wild, strong spirit, conscious of great crimes; or the enthusiasm of a weak mind and morbid conscience, might urge men and women to such self-revenges, to such penances, as these. Bishop Poore gives us episodically a pathetic example, which our readers will thank us for repeating here. “Nothing is ever so hard that love doth not make tender, and soft, and sweet. Love maketh all things easy. What do men and women endure for false love, and would endure more! And what is more to be wondered at is, that love which is faithful and true, and sweeter than any other love, doth not overmaster us as doth sinful love! Yet I know a man who weareth at the same time both a heavy cuirass[127]and haircloth, bound with iron round the middle too, and his arms with broad and thick bands, so that to bear the sweat of it is severe suffering. He fasteth, he watcheth, he laboureth, and, Christ knoweth, he complaineth, and saith that it doth not oppress him; and often asks me to teach him something wherewith he might give his body pain. God knoweth that he, the most sorrowful of men, weepeth to me, and saith that God hath quite forgotten him, because He sendeth him no great sickness; whatever is bitter seems sweet to him for our Lord’s sake. God knoweth love doth this, because, as he often saith to me, he could never love God the less for any evil thing that He might do to him, evenwere He to cast him into hell with those that perish. And if any believe any such thing of him, he is more confounded than a thief taken with his theft. I know also a woman of like mind that suffereth little less. And what remaineth but to thank God for the strength that He giveth them; and let us humbly acknowledge our own weakness, and love their merit, and thus it becomes our own. For as St. Gregory says, love is of so great power that it maketh the merit of others our own, without labour.” But though powerful motives and great force of character might enable an individual here and there to persevere with such austerities, when the severities of the recluse life had to be reduced to rule and system, and when a succession of occupants had to be found for the vacant anchorholds, ordinary human nature revolted from these unnatural austerities, and the common sense of mankind easily granted a tacit dispensation from them; and the recluse life was speedily toned down in practice to a life which a religiously-minded person, especially one who had been wounded and worsted in the battle of life, might gladly embrace and easily endure.
Usually, even where the cell consisted of a single room, it was large enough for the comfortable abode of a single inmate, and it was not destitute of such furnishing as comfort required. But it was not unusual for the cell to be in fact a house of several apartments, with a garden attached: and it would seem that the technical “cell” within which the recluse was immured, included house and garden, and everything within the boundary wall.[128]It is true that many of the recluses lived entirely, and perhaps all partly, upon the alms of pious and charitable people. An alms-box was hung up to receive contributions, as appears from “Piers Ploughman,”—
“In ancres there a box hangeth.”
And in the extracts hereafter given from the “Ancren Riewle,” we shall find several allusions to the giving of alms to recluses as a usual custom. But it was the bishop’s duty, before giving license for the building of a reclusorium, to satisfy himself that there would be, either from alms or from an endowment, a sufficient maintenance for the recluse. Practically, theydo not seem often to have been in want; they were restricted as to the times when they might eat flesh-meat, but otherwise their abstemiousness depended upon their own religious feeling on the subject; and the only check upon excess was in their own moderation. They occupied themselves, besides their frequent devotions, in reading, writing, illuminating, and needlework; and though the recluses attached to some monasteries seem to have been under an obligation of silence, yet in the usual case the recluse held a perpetual levee at the open window, and gossiping and scandal appear to have been among her besetting sins. It will be our business to verify and further to illustrate this general sketch of the recluse life.
Sir Percival at the Reclusorium.
And, first, let us speak more in detail of their habitations. The reclusorium, or anchorhold, seems sometimes to have been, like the hermitage, a house of timber or stone, or a grotto in a solitary place. In Sir T. Mallory’s “Prince Arthur” we are introduced to one of these, which afforded all the appliances for lodging and entertaining even male guests. We read:—“Sir Percival returned again unto the recluse, where he deemed to have tidings of that knight which Sir Launcelot followed. And so he kneeled at her window, and anon the recluse opened it, and asked Sir Percival what he would. ‘Madam,’ said he, ‘I am a knight of KingArthur’s court, and my name is Sir Percival de Galis.’ So when the recluse heard his name, she made passing great joy of him, for greatly she loved him before all other knights of the world; and so of right she ought to do, for she was his aunt. And then she commanded that the gates should be opened to him, and then Sir Percival had all the cheer that she might make him, and all that was in her power was at his commandment.” But it does not seem that she entertained him in person; for the story continues that “on the morrow Sir Percival went unto the recluse,”i.e., to her little audience-window, to propound his question, “if she knew that knight with the white shield.” Opposite is a woodcut of a picture in the MS. “History of Sir Launcelot” (Royal 14, E. III. folio 101 v.), entitled, “Ensi q Percheva retourna à la rencluse qui estait en son hermitage.”[129]