On being a hermit

Now that there is a plan to move from lockdown to re-engage with the world, I have to confess that I have really embraced my ‘inner hermit’. As I have very mixed feelings about ‘coming back out’, I am trying to understand the what, why and how of being a ‘hermit’.

Throughout history it is common to find individuals who deliberately separated themselves from the world to accrue wisdom, if not enlightenment. This was often based on the belief that a simple and reflective existence would yield profound insights on how to live a good life. The key word is ‘deliberate’ as imposed isolation was more often a form of punishment or other-directed control. Hermits who undertook this self-imposed lifestyle were seen as having a special and important status and were often sought out for advice on a myriad of issues and problems.

The earliest Christian hermits, the Desert Fathers of Egypt (c. 3CE), were considered so wise that a collection of their thoughts, the ‘Apophthegmata’, was written down in the late fourth century. Examples of their teachings include: ‘whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make of it, a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labour in vain’ and ‘the crown of the monk is humility’.

Usually, life as a hermit began for religious reasons. In the Christian context this was to approximate the life of Christ and, through prayer and contemplation, fend off desire and pray for the sins of humanity.  Off the Irish coast, on the island ‘Skellig Michael’, archaeologists have discovered numerous caves and man-made huts which provide evidence of a Christian hermitage life in the 5^th to 8^th century. This is corroborated by medieval texts which discuss the island as a place for those looking for religious seclusion.

Being a hermit meant isolation from regular everyday life and while this was possible in ‘hermitages’ and ‘recluse societies’, the reclusive individuals who adopted this lifestyle were known as anchorites or anchoresses (if female). These recluses withdrew from secular society to lead intensely prayer-oriented, ascetic or Eucharist-focussed lives. Unlike other hermits, these individuals were required to take a ‘vow of stability of place’ which meant that they often lived in small cells, known as anchorholds, attached to churches. They were also subject to a religious rite that closely resembled the funeral rite, following which they would be considered effectively both dead to the world but also a ‘living saint’. This status encouraged people to visit for spiritual advice which was dispensed through a small window known as a hagioscope or ‘squint’.

The ‘anchoritic life’ is one of the earliest forms of Christian monasticism and was embraced in the medieval period with females outnumbering males by as many as four to one. One of the most famous English anchoresses was Julian of Norwich (1343-1416) who wrote the earliest surviving book in the English language by a woman – ‘Revelations of Divine Love’.

However, it was also possible to live in a ‘form of social isolation’ in public – engaging in an existence of seclusion that was visible to the community. Curiously, some anchorites found their simple cells too luxurious and instead opted to live on the top of a pillar. These hermits were called ‘stylites’. The first known stylite was Saint Simeon who ascended a pillar in Syria in 423CE and remained there until his death thirty-seven years later. He spent his time fasting, in prayer, and preaching to those who visited.  Simeon was the son of a shepherd and was devout from a young age. He joined a monastery by the age of 16 but soon found this too constricting and sought a more isolated and austere life. His first pillar was about three metres tall with a railing to prevent falling. Over time he extended his pillar to fifteen metres in height with a one square metre platform and a baluster, and he dwelt there exposing himself to the elements. Simeon’s extraordinary life has been the subject of considerable interest from writers like Alfred Tennyson, Herman Melville and Mark Twain and also the filmmaker Luis Buñuel.

Stylites were most commonly found in the Byzantine Empire. Saint Daniel the Stylite was one of the first to imitate Simeon in Constantinople, where he lived on top of a pillar for thirty-three years. Others followed including Saint Luke the Younger and Saint Alypius who stayed on his pillar for 67 years. While stylites were popular in the middle ages, they had largely disappeared by the early 16^th century. However, in 2013, a 59-year old monk, Maxime Qavtaradze, was discovered to be living on the 40 metre Katshki Pillar in an isolated part of the Caucasus near Georgia. This pillar was part of the stylite tradition but had been abandoned following invasion by the Ottoman Empire. Qavtaradze described his early life as wayward with drinking to excess, using drugs, and ending up in prison. At the age of 39 he took monastic vows and climbed the pillar to spend his days praying, reading and ‘preparing to meet God’. With only an old refrigerator to sleep in initially, he has since re-built the old chapel and mentored a religious community which has formed at the base of the pillar.

Disturbingly, in the medieval period, some individuals were forced to become hermits as children. These hermits were known as ‘oblates’. It was a tradition, among noble families, to “give” a child to the church. This involved building a room along the wall of a local church, putting the child inside, and bricking it up. The room did have an opening onto the main church, so the child could receive food, send out waste, and hear the priests and the choir. Sometimes, an older hermit was walled up with the child to take care of them. After the Council of Toledo, children were not accepted before the age of ten and could leave voluntarily before they reached puberty – however, it seems most children remained.

One of the ‘forced hermit’ children who did not leave was Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). As the youngest and tenth child of a family of the lower nobility in West Germany, Hildegard experienced ‘visions’ from a young age. Accordingly, her parents offered her as an oblate at eight years of age. She was enclosed with an older woman who was also a visionary and, upon her mentor’s death 30 years later, Hildegard became abbess of the community of nuns. Over the following years she developed and reformed several convents. Hildegard (also known as the Sibyl of the Rhine) was an extraordinary individual. Apart from being a Christian mystic, she was a polymath who wrote poems, hymns, a morality play with songs, and letters to several European rulers. She also studied natural history and medicine, painted, and is the best-known medieval composer of sacred monophony with sixty-nine extant musical compositions. Not surprisingly, in recent years Hildegard has been of particular interest to feminist scholars.

With the decline of monastic life in Europe and England, it became fashionable for landowners to hire ‘ornamental hermits’. Rich English, French and German nobles with extensive estates would build a little false hermitage, cave or grotto and hire someone to live there. Such hermits, who would often wear a druid costume and be forbidden to attend to daily ablutions, were cared for by the estate and had the function of giving advice or providing entertainment. Francis of Paola was among the first of these hermits, living in a cave on his father’s estate in the early 15^th century. Also known as ‘garden hermits’, they were particularly popular in the 18^th and early 19^th century with the rise of natural garden landscaping and neoclassical architecture. In his book ‘The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome’, Gordon Campbell (Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester) suggests that: ‘the garden hermit evolved from the antiquarian druid and eventually declined into the garden gnome’.

However, the tradition of living as a hermit pre-dates Christianity. In Asia, the term ‘hermit’ did not necessarily have religious connotations. In ancient China, becoming a hermit didn’t mean a person was seeking spiritual enlightenment. It meant they were turning away from a corrupt world. People became hermits as a way of declaring their distaste for the state of human society. The more they gave up, the more that declaration meant, so the most famous and revered hermits often came from the upper classes. Nicknames for hermits included ‘hidden princely ones’ and ‘scholars who fly to withdrawal’. The more a hermit gave up, the more impressed people were, so most hermits did withdraw to mountains and cliffs, but it was the withdrawal, not the location, that was the point.

The Zhongnan Mountains located in Shaanxi Province have been a popular dwelling place for Taoist hermits since the Qin Dynasty. The Taoist sage, Laozi, is said to have lived in these mountains as a hermit.  Buddhist monks also started living there after Buddhism came to China from India in the first millennium CE.  Due to the mountains’ close proximity to the ancient capital Chang’an, officials who incurred the wrath of the imperial court often fled there for sanctuary and to escape punishment and became hermits in exile.

A contemporary desire to consider life as a hermit – with the escape back to nature from a modern consumerist world – could be alluded to in the video work by contemporary Chinese artist, Yang Yongliang.

In Japan, hermits would wander on their own, but they could also band together in pairs, or even live as part of communities. Unlike China, these hermits did have strong religious traditions. They went to the mountains to spiritually contemplate nature, but they also often studied religious texts and practiced self-defence. These hermits were educated, practical, and frequently independent, so people sought them out for advice. Over time, certain reclusive communities grew in prestige and power. However, as these communities became increasingly tied to landed nobles, corruption set in, and eventually Japanese hermits picked up the Chinese tradition of abandoning their communities on principle, and wandering the wilderness of the mountains becoming spiritual reformers.

In recent years, a number of Japanese youngsters and young adults have taken on a form of self-imposed extreme social withdrawal known as ’hikikomori’. Starting gradually, over time the individuals, who are effectively ‘contemporary hermits living at home’, become housebound for months to years. Many factors have been suggested for the emergence of this ‘condition’ including psychiatric disorders, societal pressures, cultural expectations, and the role of technology. Once considered to be unique and ‘culture-bound’ to Japan – a 2019 Japanese government study estimated more than half a million people with it – the condition is now being seen in South Korea, Spain, Italy, France and America.

Hermits have also featured extensively as characters in literature and film. In children’s stories we find them as the Beast in ‘Beauty and the Beast’, Shrek, and Willy Wonka in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. In literature, there is Erik in Gaston Leroux’s novel ‘Phantom of the Opera’, Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’ and Zarathustra in Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’. And in film several characters from the ‘Star Wars’ series come to mind – Luke Skywalker, Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

All this has been helpful in understanding the ‘length and breadth’ of eremitism but not why I have enjoyed the lockdown. Perhaps I was a hermit in a past life? Maybe the name ‘Michael’ has a connection with the Irish island? Or perhaps as the Indian guru Sri Ramakrishna put it: “The last part of life’s road has to be walked in single file.”

I don’t believe that I have found enlightenment in the past ten weeks but separation from the constant ‘busyness of business’ has been calming and restorative. As I consider my return to the everyday world, I will read Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Walden’, reflect on the joys of solitude and watch more episodes of my favourite ‘art hermit’ (and great art guide) Sister Wendy Beckett.