December 2001 article from the Christian Science Monitor about a variety of Christian hermits in the USA. One point made is that several living in urban areas are diligently saving money for rural isolation some day. Web page: http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1206/p15s1-lire.html
Hermits in Art: Getty Museum
Two paintings of interest on the Getty Museum Web site include Hubert Robert’s lush romantic Hermit Praying in the Ruins of a Roman Temple and Lorenzo Costa’s pen and ink depiction of the Thebaid in A Thebaid: Monks and Hermits in a Landscape.
For the Robert: http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o918.html.
For the Costa: http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o204.html.
Sweets of Solitude
The Sweets of Solitude by Amos Wilson, called the “Pennsylvania hermit,” was printed in Boston in 1822. The only copy of the book is in the Free Library of Philadelphia, and has been scanned and placed on the Web at http://www.seclusion.com. It can be downloaded in .doc format, the whole book being 21 pages. Yahoo! calls it a work of fiction, and surely the melodramatic account reads that way, but the Webmaster assures me that he toured the cave in Indian Echo Cavern, Pennsylvania, where Amos Wilson, a hermit calling himself a Christian, lived for 19 years.
Hermits in Art: Paul and Antony
Here are two wonderful collections of iconography at the Web site of a professor at Augusta State University, Georgia (USA) highlighting St. Paul the hermit and St. Antony the hermit. Both Web pages collect classic paintings featuring these two eremitic figures. For the St. Paul page, go to: http://www.aug.edu/augusta/iconography/paulHermit.html. For the St. Antony page, go to http://www.aug.edu/augusta/iconography/anthonyAbbot.html.
Medieval Mystic Women
The Web site for a Canadian television series entitled Mystic Women of the Middle Ages, produced at McMaster University, features a “typical” young woman named Chrstine and her life and days in fifteenth century France. The live video, animation, and audio, are objectively done and informative. A segment entitled “The Anchorite” or “Anchoress” is included. The Web site for the series is http://mw.mcmaster.ca. The section called Christine’s Home Page is located at http://mw.mcmaster.ca/chrstine.html. To go directly to the Anchoress page, the Web address is: http://mw.mcmaster.ca/nunnery/anchorites.html