Category: United Kingdom

An essay titled The Eccentric Hermit-Bishop: Bede, Cuthbert, and Farne Island, published in the 1999 proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association, can be found at http://www.luc.edu/publications/medieval/vol16/aggeler.html

The April 2003 issue of Harper’s magazine includes a short item by an applicant (real?) to the Shugborough, the English manor which advertised for an ornamental hermit, as described in a previous entry here. Unfortunately, the article is not available online, but here is a brief excerpt:

I would honestly try to share my love of silence, encouraging people to seek quiet in their lives. I would share stories from the Desert Fathers and other Western traditions of seeking God in solitude. Yet I would also guard the idea of solitude and avoid frivolous speech. At times I’d run away from people or hide in the bushes, maybe pretend not to be the hermit. Given the opportunity, I’d scoff at would-be disciples and give them nearly impossible tasks to test their commitment.

No author is ascribed to this little item, but appropriately so.

Shugborough, an 18th-century estate of 900 acres in Staffordshire, England, advertised for an ornamental hermit in the summer of 2002 and received over 200 applications from around the world. The winner, Ansuman Biswas of London, spent a weekend in the cave of the premises, and was on display as an ornamental hermit at select times for visitors. The press release contains details. The custom of maintaining a hermit to amuse or frighten guests of estates was not uncommon in the eighteenth century England, and presumably it garnered a little tourist traffic for the shire and the Museum which sponsored the Hermit Project as part of its Heritage Week events. Press release at: http://www.staffordshire.gov.uk/live/welcome.asp?id=1673. Enter “hermit” in the search box to get to the specific page.

A scholarly conference entitled Anchorites, Wombs and Tombs, on medieval anchorites and the social and gender context of enclosure in medieval Britain was held July 5-7, 2002 at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Topics included Ancrene Wisse, linguistics, mysticism, hagiography, and gender issues. Web site for proceedings is: http://www.aber.ac.uk/english/conferences/wtprog.htm.

Little is known about St. Guthlac except a standard hagiography. He lived in late seventh-early eighth century England, and is held as a model of saintly eremitism in later English resources. A compact narrative and bibliography on Guthlac and his sister Pega is assembled at Umilta, an Italian Web site in (occasionally broken) English devoted to a handful of English and Italian saints. The design is lacking but the information is unique on the Web. The Guthlac page is: http://www.umilta.net/guthlac.html.