news, sites, and pages of interest about hermits and solitude
The Collector, website for history and humanities, offers an essay by Thomas Amey titled “The Beguines: The Hermits Who Became Medieval Celebrities.” The essay focuses on three prominent women: Marie D’Oignies, Yvette de Huy, and Christina Mirabilis, with a summary of the Church’s response and the Beguine legacy.
URL: https://cdn.thecollector.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/benguines-hermits-medieval-celebrity
An article for JSTOR Daily by Amanda Soth is titled “Wild Saints and Holy Fools,” on the extraordinary and eccentric lives and sayings of the Christian desert hermits.
A short piece in the Spanish magazine Sur (in English) titled “The story of a hermit community that lived in the monastery of Villanueva de Algaidas,” in the Spanish province of Malaga.
In an essay in The Conversation titled “Being alone has its benefits,” psychologist Virginia Thomas offers the consideration that loneliness can evolve into “positive solitude,” addressing the “stigma of solitude” and the need to reframe solitude at the cultural as well as individual level.
For more articles on solitude by VirginiaThomas in Psychology Today, visit her web site:
URL: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/solitude-in-social-world
Originally published in Aeon, a short essay by Jennifer Stitt on solitude, with a forcus on the thought of Hannah Arendt.
From the essay:
“Arendt reminds us, if we lose our capacity for solitude, our ability to be alone with ourselves, then we lose our very ability to think. We risk getting caught up in the crowd. We risk being “swept away,” as she put it, “by what everybody else does and believes in” — no longer able, in the cage of thoughtless conformity, to distinguish “right from wrong, beautiful from ugly.” Solitude is not only a state of mind essential to the development of an individual’s consciousness — and conscience — but also a practice that prepares one for participation in social and political life. Before we can keep company with others, we must learn to keep company with ourselves.”
URL: https://aeon.co/ideas/before-you-can-be-with-others-first-learn-to-be-alone