The Book of Hermits: A History of Hermits from Antiquity to the Present

THE

BOOK OF

HERMITS

A History of Hermits

from Antiquity to the Present

Robert Rodriguez

© Robert Rodriguez, 2021. All rights reserved.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Robert Rodriguez, author.

Title: The Book of hermits: the history of hermits from antiquity to the present / Robert Rodriguez.

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-7368665-1-1 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Hermits—History. | Recluses—History | Solitude—History |

Subjects: BISAC: HISTORY / World | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical | PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / General |

Classification: LCC BJ1499.S6 | DDC 204.247–dc23

Published by Hermitary Press (hermitarypress.com).

Cover design by riverdesignbooks.com.

For Noelia, Thomas and Michael

Living in retirement beyond the World,

Silently enjoying isolation,

I pull the rope of my door tighter

And stuff my window with roots and ferns.

My spirit is tuned to the Spring–season:

At the fall of the year there is autumn in my heart.

Thus imitating cosmic changes

My cottage becomes a Universe.

— The Valley Wind, by Lu Yün (third century, CE)

Contents

Preface

Introduction

PART I – The Western World: Antiquity and Middle Ages

Chapter 1 – Eremitism in Western Antiquity.

1. Diogenes of Sinope.

2. Stoics & Epicureans.

3. Early Judaism.

4. Early Christianity.

5. Paul of Thebes, the first Christian hermit.

6. Anthony (the Great).

7. Christian Desert Hermits.

8. Sayings of the Christian Desert Hermits.

9. Simon Stylites: Pillar Hermit.

Chapter 2 – Eremitism in Medieval Western Europe.

10. Eremitism Comes to the West.

11. Early Medieval Hermits of Britain.

12. Hermit Revival in the Central Middle Ages.

13. Women Hermits in the Central Middle Ages.

14. Hermit Mystics of England.

15. Beguines and Brethren: Hermits of Continental Europe.

16. Hermits in Medieval Arthurian Lore.

17. The Hermit in Langland’s Piers Plowman.

18. The Last Hermits of Medieval Europe.

Chapter 3 – Eremitism in Medieval Eastern Europe, West Asia, & Ethiopia.

19. Orthodox Christian Hermits: Greece.

20. Orthodox Christian Hermits: Russia.

21. Hermits in Russia: Pilgrim & Old Believer.

22. Orthodox Christian Hermits: Ethiopia.

23. Eremitism in Medieval & Later Judaism.

24. Eremitism in Medieval and Later Islam.

PART II – The Eastern World: Antiquity to the Present.

Chapter 4 – Eremitism in India, Tibet, & South Asia.

25. Hermits in Hindu India.

26. Hermits in Jain India.

27. Buddhist Hermits of Tibet.

28. Shabkar: Tibetan Buddhism’s Perfect Hermit.

29. Buddhist Hermits of Sri Lanka.

30. Buddhist Hermits of Thailand.

Chapter 5 – Eremitism in Ancient China.

31. Eremitism in Ancient China: Confucianism to Taoism.

32. Eremitism in Ancient China: Han Dynasty.

33. Eremitism in Medieval China: The Poets.

34. Eremitism in Medieval China: The Painters.

Chapter 6 – Eremitism in Japan.

35. Eremitism in Shinto Japan.

36. Eremitism in Buddhist Japan: The Poets.

37. The Aesthetics of Eremitism: wabi, sabi, aware, yugen.

38. Aesthetics of Eremitism: Japanese Painting.

PART III – The Modern Western World: Renaissance to Romanticism.

Chapter 7 – Eremitism in the Renaissance.

39. From Hermits to Solitude in Early Modern Europe.

40. Roger Crab: Early Modern Hermit.

41. In Defense of Solitude: Petrarch to Rousseau.

42. Hermits in Renaissance Art.

43. Eremitism in Eighteenth Century Britain.

Chapter 8 – Eremitism in the Romantic era.

44. Eremitism and Romanticism: England.

45. Eremitism and Romanticism: France.

46. Eremitism and Romanticism: Germany.

47. Eremitism and Romanticism: United States.

48. Johnny Appleseed: Americana Hermit.

PART IV – The Modern Western World: The Nineteenth Century.

Chapter 9 – From Eremitism to Solitude: Early Nineteenth Century.

49. Romanticism and Solitude: United States.

50. Romantic Art and Solitude: Early Nineteenth Century.

51. Eremitism and Literature: Britain and Europe.

52. The Temptation of St. Anthony in Art.

53. Philosophers of Solitude: Kierkegaard to Nietzsche.

Chapter 10 – Eremitism and Solitude: Early Twentieth Century.

54. Eremitism in British Literature.

55. Eremitism in European Literature.

56. Philosophers of Solitude: Wittgenstein to Berdyaev.

57. Simone Weil, Philosopher of Solitude.

58. Romantic Eremitism in American Literature.

59. Realist Eremitism in American Literature.

Chapter 11 – Eremitism in Eastern Thought and Influence.

60. West Meets East: Eremitic Journeys.

61. Charles de Foucauld: Hermit of Contradiction.

62. The Renaissance of Eremitism in Hindu India.

63. The Hermit in the Tarot.

Chapter 12 – Hermits and Solitaries: Later Twentieth Century to the Present.

64. The Rehabilitation of Hermits in the West.

65. Rehabilitation of Hermits in the United States.

66. Contemporary Men Hermits Around The World.

67. Contemporary Women Solitaries Around The World.

Appendix – Hermit Dwelling–places: Cell, Hut, and Cabin.

Afterword.

Bibliographical References.

About the Author.

PREFACE.

I started the Hermitary website twenty–some years ago because so little information about hermits was available on the web at the time. A web search would typically pull up Herman’s Hermits, hermit crabs, or hermit thrush. (Actually, results have not changed much!) Something about Catholic and Orthodox hermits was always to be found, mostly hagiography, hardly challenging the definitive status of older books such as those compiled by Helen Waddell and Benedicta Ward. Not surprisingly, information relating eremitism to larger issues of solitude, psychology, society, and world culture, was quite absent on the web.

My curiosity about hermits piqued in the nineties with books such as Bill Porter’s wonderful Road to Heaven: In Search of Chinese Hermits, and the sympathetic Hermits: The Insights of Solitude by Peter France. Invaluable studies on the psychology and philosophy of solitude from Anthony Storr and Philip Koch, while not directly addressing historical hermits, rounded out context. I launched Hermitary to tie together hermit and solitude threads. Many threads got tied but many did not (and have not) because of the wealth of information about historical hermits available today.

Why hermits anyway? I might find them historically intriguing, a confirmation of my personality and interests, perhaps, but not everyone will. What is persuasive about hermits is that they have grasped something important to convey to us all.

While each hermit is different, coming from different eras and mind-sets, cultures and geographies, this book hopes to impress upon you the universal wisdom of the historical hermits, their discernment of life, nature, and society. In a world in crisis, among societies beset by alienation, anxiety, and insecurity, a consistent message of self-awareness, mingled with the appropriate degree of self-effacement, is the delicate and soulful fruit of the lives of the hermits, their aesthetics, and their philosophy of life.

I will contend that the hermit ethos is the grand intersection of many sages, writers, thinkers, and poets reflecting on solitude and its valuable role in the lives of all of us. That is why a significant portion of the book is given over to the creative voices in history, philosophy, and literature who were solitaries at heart but not formal hermits.

This books is a popularization—not in the sense of trying to make hermits popular, but in bridging the gap between scholarly research and what the intelligent reader really whats to know. A mix of history, biography, psychology, art, and philosophizing.

Meanwhile, the Hermitary website complements this book. The web site offers information about current hermit topics, key articles and reviews, plus galleries of hermits and eremitic themes in art, photos, film, music—among other resources and media that couldn’t fit into this book. I hope you will happily avail yourself of the world of hermits.

INTRODUCTION

This book describes historical and modern hermits: hermits East and West, hermits in lore and literature, and the many motives behind their eremitism—that is, their practice of being a hermit. The motivations range from religious and spiritual to philosophical and aesthetic, from psychological disposition to a love of wilderness to the anonymity of the hermit in the city.

What is a hermit?

Hermits have thrived in every era, geography, climate, culture, and society. Hermits have been eccentric, pious, irreverent, sociable, reclusive, and wise. Within these pages you will find like–minded souls—men and women—who reflect a profound part of each of us longing for wholeness, understanding, simplicity, and harmony. The pursuit of hermits is a search for an integral part of humanity.

Before pursuing the hermits, a few related ideas should be identified, solitude, aloneness, and loneliness, among others. We all have ideas or stereotypes of hermits. Real people often intersect with our stereotypes, but in unique ways. For example, most of the people we encounter are not hermits but some may exhibit one or several characteristics of a hermit. Similarly, many historical personalities were not, technically speaking, her-mits, but contributed to a universal understanding of solitude. Among poets, artists, and thinkers, we may call them philosophers of solitude. They serve to contribute ideas that clarify the eremitic project, the purpose of the hermit’s life and lifestyle.

We find such personalities throughout history. Think of a homeless urban man loudly proclaiming his public search for any intelligent person (Diogenes of Sinope, the Greek philosopher). Consider a public official quitting service to a corrupt government on ethical grounds to instead live in a forest or on a farm (Tao–Chien or Tu Fu, China’s greatest poets). What about a worldly urbane writer longing for the solitude of a country home (Petrarch and Montaigne)? Finally, what about a woman poet living in uneventful reclusiveness in her family’s large, busy house (Emily Dickinson), or a twentieth–century woman philosopher, teacher, laborer, activist, mystic, and prolific writer (Simone Weil)?

These historical figures, thoughtful, observant, reflective, are all philosophers of solitude and help define eremitism. They do not fit the stereotype of a hermit, but calling them hermits would not be wrong. The historical hermits are often not as deep or creative, but many, surprisingly, are. Together with the perceptions of the philosophers of solitude, the lives and thoughts of the hermits will overthrow our stereotypes.

All hermits are solitaries, but not all solitaries are hermits. Hermits consciously pursue the complete benefits of solitude. As Kahlil Gibran put it, A hermit renounces the world of fragments to enjoy the world wholly, without interruption. Hermits want, as Thoreau proposed of himself, to live deliberately. Their solitude is not alienation from others but a pursuit of engaged disengagement, as philosophy scholar Philip Koch puts it.

Historically, hermits are motivated by psychology, religion, spirituality, philosophy, or aesthetics. They perceive a life task, a mission, a project, a conscious purpose. Most solitaries lack this single-minded intentionality. Solitaries bridge the gulf between solitude and self, but not to the point of crafting an alternative life. Their aloneness is the result of personality and circumstance, often the product of fate. For typical solitaries, aloneness is no benefit, merely loneliness. Sometimes even the hermit is lonely, but the hermit extends such feelings beyond self to a universal poignancy.

The word hermit is based on the Greek word eremos, meaning desert or wilderness. Ancient Athenians prized citizenship and social participation, but these civic benefits could be forfeited by the formal process of ostracism, a punishment that decreed exile or banishment from the city to a perceived desert or wilderness. Athenians dreaded such a punishment.

In contrast, the first hermits in the West, Christian monks of third and fourth–century Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, actively sought out desert and wilderness. They deliberately ventured from cities and monasteries on the edge of the desert to live alone in the heart of wilderness. Their motive was spiritual excellence, the pursuit and perfection of a form of life without distraction by people, comforts, and the familiar.

A few hermits lived in complete isolation from others, such as the legendary Saint Paul of Thebes, the supposed first Christian hermit of this era. Most hermits of the era followed the example of the famous Saint Anthony the Great, successor to Paul of Thebes and the first historical Christian hermit. Anthony lived alone but he recommends to aspiring hermits that they live as solitary individuals in huts proximate to one another for mutual well–being and spiritual communion.

From Anthony’s example emerge the hundreds of desert hermit cells of both men and women, well–documented by testimonies of eye–witnesses including Evagrius, Rufinus, and John Cassian, and by anonymous collections of sayings of the Desert Fathers (abbas) and Mothers (ammas).

The desert model of eremitism spread to Europe and existed through-out the Middle Ages, especially in Greece, Russia, Italy, France, the Low Countries, and the British isles. In Italy, however, the abbot St. Benedict of Nursia (d. 547) limited the eremitic status among his monks to only the most adept, reflecting the practice of Eastern Christian monasteries on Mount Athos in Greece. Centuries later, St. Romuald (951–1027) consciously revives the desert tradition, creating the Camaldolese order, modeled on a community of individual cells.

In England, Ireland, and Scotland, hermits are celebrated for feats of survival, prayer, and solitude, popularized in the religious and literary imagination. In the later Middle Ages, anchorites emerge in Britain and in continental Europe.

Anchorites reside their entire lives in walled-off cells, called anchor-holds, usually attached to churches. Anchorites were attended by helpers. Anchorites renounce all visitors and outside comforts, leading lives of solitude and renunciation. Many anchorites, predominantly women, are known for their spiritual and mystical writings.

With the modern era of Renaissance and Reformation, eremitism throughout Europe recedes. Hermits virtually disappear in the West, though occasionally outstanding secular examples reappear both in England and later in the United States. The Romantic era rehabilitates hermits and the values of solitude through literature, philosophy, and art.

Eremitism is common in the ancient and medieval Asian world because spiritual and religious traditions encourage the eremitic state. Hinduism in India, Confucianism and Taoism in China, Buddhism in Thailand, Sri Lanka, China, Tibet, and Japan—all nourish strong eremitic traditions.

A philosophical eremitism emerges in China as reclusion, where officials in imperial government service leave the imperial court due to its moral corruption, the officials quietly reclusing alone or with their families to distant villages, farms, and mountains. Reclusion becomes a solution to the moral dictum of the Confucian tradition: When the emperor is good, serve; when the emperor is evil, recluse. China continues to be the home of the most active aspirants of eremitism in the world, with a number of genuine hermits, plus today’s young urbanites heading to the mountains as weekend hermits.

With the modern era, East and West, eremitism mingles with solitude. Great modern philosophers, poets, and fiction writers have taken up the dilemma of society, alienation, and the values of hermits and solitaries. The roster of hermits, too, has, perhaps, increased.

But is there a place for hermits in today’s world? Psychologists often condemn eremitism as anti–social behavior, unless, perhaps, it is practiced within a religious context. On the one hand, solitude is often thrown into the basket of philosophical individualism and egoism.

On the other hand, today’s popular psychology writers are distressed by the inability of moderns, especially younger people, to genuinely socialize, risking a society of atoms and automatons, all within the context of urban stress, suburban alienation, technological communications, and the breakdown of civility.

To these extremes, the historical hermits have evolved careful and wise responses that we do well to take into account concerning self, others, and the environments of our daily worlds.

This book may reintroduce you to recognizable names—or introduce you to many new names, faces, and inspired writings and sayings. The ancient quests of the hermits resonate with our modern searches for meaning, understanding, and a fruitful, reflective life.

What the hermit is not

This book includes many non-hermits with important roles in the expression of solitude and self. But some exclusion of supposed hermits can be made, too, based on specific criteria. For example, a famous historical personality, the medieval priest Peter of Amiens (1050–1115), was a war leader during the First Crusade between 1095 and 1099. He is called Peter the Hermit— except that there is no evidence that he was a hermit, or used to be, or even became one. This is one instance of a hermit who was not a hermit.

A more subtle and important definition of hermit exists. Modern dictionaries make the words hermit and recluse mean the same, but in this book exception is made because reclusion has a historical definition, first, in the Eastern world (the Chinese examples mentioned) and, second, with regards to medieval women in the West, namely anchoresses, also calledrecluses by contemporaries. Indeed, women with eremitic aspirations have often been channeled toward reclusive lives.

By our stricter definition, too, a recluse shuns people due to psychological reasons, and lacks the sense of purpose and intent of the historical hermits. Thus, two misnamed hermits are examples of who are not hermits. The fearful and timid Jimmy Mason described in Raleigh Trevelyan’s book A Hermit Disclosed (1960) was severely abused as a youth and shunned people in later life. Christopher Knight, the so–called North Pond hermit of Maine, described in Michael Finkel’s A Stranger in the Woods (2017) as the last, true hermit, hid from people precisely because he stole from them. He was a thief, not a hermit.

On the other hand, American poet Emily Dickinson has often been called a recluse because she was not strictly a hermit. Her creative drive and guarded intent as a poet and personality, as well as her occasional public mingling, grant her near status of a hermit.

A widespread phenomenon of extreme social reclusion among Japanese adolescents and young adults today is called hikikomori, but these disaffected youths are not, strictly speaking, hermits.

One misnomer often wrongly identified with hermits and eremitism is hermeticism or hermetism, which is an esoteric tradition based on teachings of the ancient Greek–Egyptian mystic Hermes Trismegistus. Hermes was sometimes identified with the Greek god Hermes, equivalent to Roman Mercury. The twentieth–century occultist P. D. Ouspensky makes this mistake, as will be seen (section 62). Hermes Trismegistus had nothing to do with hermits.

Terms

The Greek word eremos (ἐρῆμος) is the root of hermit in English and eremite in Latin, Old French, and Old English; the word eremite (pronounced air–eh–mite) was common in medieval Britain. As mentioned, the practice of being a hermit is called eremitism. The adjective form eremitic means having to do with hermits.

At the same time, the Greek word monos is the root for monk, and means one. Originally, hermits were monks, designated as a particular type of monk not dwelling in a communal or cenobitic setting nor following a communal practice. But historical hermits include both solitaries and those living in small dwellings or proximate to communities.

The word anchorite (and the feminine anchoress) is sometimes used synonymously with hermit. The Greek word anachōréō means to withdraw or retire (from the world). Anchorite had a specific meaning in the Western Middle Ages because such religious hermits did not leave their immediate dwelling or anchorhold, often an enclosed room next to a church.

One last note on terminology: verbs such as hermitize, nouns like hermitry, hermitism, hermitship, or eremiteship, and adjectives such as hermitic and hermitical, may sound authentic but are all derivatives. The Oxford English Dictionary dates their usage to the seventeenth century, in some cases to the nineteenth, but their usage today is outdated, if not quaint and archaic.

Origins

The origins of eremitism may lie in deep psychology, yet eremitism can be discerned (and speculated about) in the very beginnings of human social groups. Here are some examples:

Anthropology of paleolithic hunter–gatherer culture suggests that male hunting groups were characterized by strong social and authority bonds. As clan populations grew, exceeding the typical two dozen persons, so did competition for resources and a group power dynamic among males. Some individuals likely left the clan intentionally. Others were defeated in challenges or ostracized by the group leader. These individuals became wanderers and solitaries, at least for a time. The familiar biblical stories of Cain and Esau suggest the original group’s opposition to nomadism and eremites. Good illustrations of this dynamic are found in several short stories of Hermann Hesse (see section 54).

Medieval European ecclesiastical and civil authorities distrusted forest hermits as criminals preying on travelers. Forest–dwelling women may have been suspected of being witches. The status of hermits in Christianity varies by epoch and sect but usually looks upon hermits with suspicion. In the other scriptural religions of the West, Judaism and Islam, only mystics defend eremitic traditions and solitary practice. The shaman tradition of East Asia offers a clear continuation of legendary solitaries gaining wisdom from their solitude. In China and Japan, this example closes the eremitic circle through the sage reflections of numerous hermit-poets.

In his classic 1921 Psychological Types and related essays, psychologist Carl Jung (1875–1961) identified a psychological criteria that is useful to a consideration of hermit personalities. Jung defines attitudes of expression as extraversion and introversion, further refining expressions as functions of consciousness in thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition, types Jung demonstrates specifically in historical expressions of philosophy and religion. Jung refines the categories of extroversion and introversion with specific historical examples that overlap the historical contexts of hermits and solitaries.

In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1947), mythographer Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) identifies the stages of the mythical and psychological journey to self–realization. The hero strengthens his resolve, embarks toward a remote goal, undergoes many trials and dangers, and returns with a boon for self and community. Along the way, the hero receives advice and assistance from archetypal figures, namely, wise old crones (also described by Jung) or wizened old men living alone in a forest (typical of fairy tales). Such archetypal figures are hermits, and represent a profound aspect of the subconscious. This notion of the hermit is reproduced in the modern Tarot.

Anthropologist Ernst Becker (1924-1974), author of The Birth and Death of Meaning (1971), elaborates on Campbell’s observations aboutarchetypal figures in myth. In psychological development, the emergent personality, challenged by the necessity of self–development, can either resolve to pursue the hero’s journey—or turn away. Becker (and Campbell) identify weakness of will at the moment of challenge as the source of infantilism, a paralysis of will that makes for anti–social neurosis, withdrawal, and isolation. But, notes Campbell, embracing the hermit option is positive, the source of artistic creativity, the elevation of the creative self transcending the temptation of fear and withdrawal. Jung distinguished between active introversion (creativity) and passive introversion (neurosis), as did the psychoanalyst Otto Rank (1884-1939) interpreting the creative impulse in the artist.

As originally described by the mythologist Mircea Eliade (1907–1986), the religion of shamanism in northern and eastern Asia involved solitary introspection and wandering as the shaman sought ideal conditions for developing spiritual insight. In Bill Porter’s book Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits (1993), the author considers the rich tradition of shamanism in ancient China, originating in neolithic times, as a transition to eremitism. The proliferation and persistence of hermits in ancient China resists increasing bureaucratization of central authority and control of religious practice.

The dominant Enlightenment concept of a state of nature was built around two sources: 1) the religious definition of original sin and loss of paradise, and 2) the parallel notion of primitive (paleolithic) society being what British philosopher Thomas Hobbes calls nasty, brutish, and short. But in his second Discourse, French philosopher Jean–Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) identifies a different state of nature, one based, rather, on free and mutual association, a state of peace and accommodation. In his later Social Contract, Rousseau sees modern society as a necessary renunciation of individual autonomy for a general will. In Rousseau can be found a reservoir of solitary–minded thinking pertinent to an anthropology of eremitism. Based on his personal experience, Rousseau wrote a final (and incomplete) set of short essays he titled Reflections [or Reveries] of a Solitary Walker.

In modern Western European history, centralization and social alienation profoundly affect positive perceptions of solitude, especially in nineteenth and twentieth–century philosophy, society, and literature.

Sociologists like Hannah Arendt, Richard Sennett, and Robert Sayre, among others, touch upon solitude as a context of modernity. Historically, solitude was a punitive tool of authority through banishment and exile. In modern times, negative isolation and alienation continues to negatively affect society and individuals.

At the same time, solitude as positive and creative withdrawal from society has always attracted philosophers and thinkers, even if as a social and economic privilege. A chief characteristic of solitude understood thusly is its positive and voluntary nature. The historical hermits pursued solitude consciously, even as a life project, whether based on temperament, personality, psychology, aesthetics, or a spiritual ideal. For them, solitude became a life project. The solitude pursued by modern creative artists, writers, and thinkers, reveals the place of solitude in the human condition in identifying the positive psychological and social responses of solitaries to modern cultural and social breakdown.

The psychiatrist John M. Oldham developed a profile of personality types while participating in the compilation of the third edition (1980) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association. Oldham identified fourteen personality types for average people, among them solitary, but indicates that most people include a range of characteristics across personality types. Subsequent editions of the Manual, DSM-IV (2000) and DSM-V (2013) elaborate spectrums of social personality disorders evidencing significant disfunction and representing mental illnesses.

The DSM does not make broad cultural statements or use psychohistory but remains critical of solitude behaviors while refraining from causation or explication.

Such are a few of many available tools for the exploration of eremitism, and some surmises about its origins. In the following pages, we explore the historical hermits themselves.

PART I. THE WESTERN WORLD:ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES

CHAPTER 1.

EREMITISM IN WESTERN ANTIQUITY

1. Diogenes of Sinope.

Greek philosophy diverges between Plato (428-348 BCE) and Aristotle (384-322 BCE). This divergence, inherited by Western thought, contrasts metaphysics and abstraction (Plato) with logic and science (Aristotle). Yet both philosophers ground their thinking in authority, conformity, and an implied social order. Their ideas become fundamental to later Rome and the entire West.

In contrast to ancient Greek values promoting communal conformity and social civility, the philosopher Socrates (d. 399 BCE), who flourished in the brief era between Plato and Aristotle, is a severe social critic. He dresses shabbily, eats little, and publicly scorns the unreflective lifestyles coveted by his contemporaries. By Plato’s account, Socrates is a gadfly who actively engages people. He is no solitary—the first individual, perhaps, but not the first hermit.

Inheriting and extending the style of Socrates is Antisthenes (446-366 BCE), a philosopher opposed to Plato’s abstract theory of ideals. Antisthenes pursued Socrates in personal ethics and asceticism, garnering the attention of a disciple, Diogenes of Sinope (412–323 BCE). Antisthenes was nominally the founder of the school of Cynics, in part for the simplicity of his life but also because the Stoics wanted a chain of successive founders among the schools of philosophy culminating in their own.

To the staid Greek authorities, simplicity suggested scorn of established convention, hence the modern notion of cynicism, of skeptical mockery and sardonicism. The true origins of the term is only clarified in the eccentric Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (412–323 BCE).

In the biography of Diogenes written by Diogenes Laertius, we find the classical world’s prototype of the urban hermit. Diogenes describes himself as a homeless exile, to his country dead; a wanderer who begs his daily bread.

Diogenes flagrantly violates social propriety by begging for food, publicly sleeping in a barrel, eating in the marketplace, performing bodily functions in public, and openly defying figures of authority and repute. Plato called him Socrates gone mad. Diogenes was also called a dog, in Greek kuvikoi, from which is derived the word cynic, the name given to the school of philosophy he helped engender: Cynicism.

In a famous anecdote about Diogenes, he is lounging on the roadside when King Alexander the Great and his retinue pass. Eager to confront Diogenes, Alexander dismounts and walks over to him. After a few coaxing words fail to get Diogenes to speak, Alexander asks him, What do you want, Diogenes? Diogenes replies at once, For you to go away. You are blocking the sunlight.

Another familiar anecdote about Diogenes describes him carrying a lantern in the night streets to shine into the faces of others, claiming that he is looking for an honest or intelligent person. This anecdote is the basis of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s story of the madman in the marketplace (section 52), as well as the famous image of the hermit in the Tarot deck of cards (section 62).

While Socrates and Antisthenes can be cited as predecessors of Diogenes, a remote precursor is the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Heraclitus, who lived in the 500s BCE, is known for his philosophy of flux; his famous saying is You cannot enter the same river twice.

Heraclitus stood in sharp contrast to his contemporary, Parmenides, who maintained a philosophy of monads and absolutes anticipating Plato. Biographer Diogenes Laertius (who also described the life of Diogenes of Sinope) intensely disliked Heraclitus, portraying him as dismissive of others, garrulous, melancholic, and misanthropic, the dark philosopher. Eventually Heraclitus ended his days a vegetarian in self–exile on a deserted island, an example of Greek banishment to eremos but confounded by the voluntary character of eremitism.

2. Stoics & Epicureans

From the example of Diogenes rose a Greek school of Cynicism, fore-shadowed by the ascetic Antisthenes, student of Socrates, but furthered by Crates of Thebes (365–285 BCE). Given its foundation on one individual’s personality, Cynicism was inevitably short-lived. Crates taught Zeno of Citium (fl. 300 BCE), the founder of Stoicism. Among later Roman thinkers, Seneca the Younger (4 BCE–65 CE) and Lucian (125–180) praise the ethical tenacity of Cynic thinkers, but the school waned in the rise of Stoicism.

Stoicism advocates no eccentric behavior. It maintains that virtue is sufficient for eudaimonia, or happiness and contentment of mind. This happiness is comprised of ataraxia (imperturbability) and apatheia (equanimity or freedom from passion). These virtues promote a state of tranquility, immunity to the vicissitudes of fortune, and steadfastness before either pleasure or pain. The virtues point to the ideal state of mind of the rational individual. Roman Stoicism demonstrates the universality of its principles in its two most famous and very different advocates: the Greek Epictetus (50–135), a tutor and former slave, and Marcus Aurelius (121–180), Rome’s greatest emperor.

A contemporary alternative to Stoicism is the thought of Epicurus (341–270 BCE). While embracing the basic concepts of Stoicism in terms of tranquility of mind, Epicurus expected from society and individuals no more than a minimum of virtue. He advocates aponia (absence of pain) as the most logical goal or state of mind. The individual should pursue plea-sure, not as hedonism but in order to identify those activities and personal relations that particularly foster tranquility and quietude. This tenet implies withdrawal from worldly activity.

Because of its emphasis on pleasure versus virtue, Epicureanism has often been distorted as egoism. Understood philosophically, Epicureanism converges with Stoicism, only differing in emphasis and personality.

Stoicism establishes the philosophical foundations of early Christianity in the realm of ethics. In its emphasis on tranquility of mind and attainment of virtue, Stoicism furthers the psychology of the individual disengaged from the world, a necessary trajectory to justify eremitism.

3. Early Judaism

Historical Judaism does not encourage or foster eremites. Social and religious activities are communal. Jewish youth were expected to marry and raise families. Tradition and Talmudic scripture and authority craftedreligious expression of prayer and ritual to require group settings that could not be performed alone or in solitude.

In anthropology, strict adherence to socially–sanctioned expression is a representative remnant of historical clan and tribal societies in geographical isolation. The ethnic Hebrews of history and scripture cultivated not only a people exclusively chosen by God but an indivisible cultural identity. Folkloric clues to tribal separatism include stories like the those of Cain and Esau, failed brothers exiled into nomadism and solitude. Another clue is the set of formulaic commandments safeguarding tribal identity and tribal members, each imprecation beginning with the familiar phrase Thou shalt not …. The object of each commandment is not universal ethics but social order within the clan or tribe.

Solitude is the privilege of prophets such as Moses and Elijah. According to the Book of Exodus, Moses entered a cloud for forty days, a mystical and solitary state. Elijah, or Elias, described in the Book of Kings, devotes his life to a fierce opposition to the Canaanite king Ahab, a life–long dedication on behalf of but physically separate from the Jewish community.

Two Jewish religious communities of the first century CE represent nascent cenobitic (that is, communal) monasticism: the Essenes and the Therapeutae. The Essenes were small monastic groups of men living under common rule governing prayer, ritual, meals, and daily life. The male monks emphasized asceticism, including prayer, fasting, and celibacy.

The Greek–speaking Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE–50 CE) describes the Therapeutae as Egyptian monastic adherents emphasizing ascetic practices, including contemplation. The Therapeutae are distinctive for their inclusion of women, who lived in separate quarters but who participated with male adherents in a weekly communal meal.

But little else is known of these Jewish monastic movements. They appear to have been limited to one–time short–lived efforts. Did Jesus or John the Baptizer visit the Essenes? Were the Therapeutae a disguised Christian or Gnostic group? These are speculations, for nothing else is known of them, except that they were distinctly transient

A Jewish pursuit of eremitic life and an intrinsic view of solitude as integral to religious insight first arises among Jewish mystics of the Middle Ages. These Jewish mystics will be visited in section 33.

4. Early Christianity

Inheriting the anti–eremitic tradition of Judaism, the earliest generation of Christians maintained the idea of tight–knit identity, highlighted by the communal sharing of goods, as described in the Acts of the Apostles. But Christianity had broken from the exclusivity of Judaism, universalizing its faith to include Jewish and pagan converts.

Succeeding generations of Christians abandon the millennial expectation of Christ’s second coming. The need to establish a firm foundation for the future arises. Household and communal ritual and prayer was eventually ceded from community to a priesthood and an ecclesiastical structure that forcefully identifies the priorities of religion as dogma and ritual.

The process of consolidating a church structure further distinguishes the historical Jesus from the ecclesiastical Jesus. Some recent scholars identify the historical Jesus as a Cynic in style, espousing poverty, simplicity, and the primacy of individual virtue, opposing the corruption of authority and wealth, and eschewing complex theology and ritual for personal behavior and discipline.

As already noted, the Greek word eremos means desert. The famous temptations of Jesus at the end of his solitary period of prayer in the desert suggests that Jesus pursued a period of solitude exceptional to Judaism. John the Baptizer clearly dwells in a desert setting from whence he emerges from its obscurity to promote Jesus. Desert becomes synonymous with a place of desolation. Thus the setting of the temptations of Jesus is extrapolated to all deserts, all places of desolation, full of countless demons tormenting hermits.

An enormous increase in the number of hermits in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria marks the third century. Monasteries barely exist at this time, bypassed by hermits and the small networks of hermit communities. The growth of eremitism within such short centuries comes at a specific time within the Roman Empire, with its unrelieved persecutions of Christians.

Ultimately, the Christian heroes of faith become not the perseverant and the martyrs but those who renounce an unredeemable world. This renunciation is subtle, spiritual, and a dramatic reshaping of the Christian narrative, a renunciation not only of the world but of the church in the world.

5. Paul of Thebes, the first Christian hermit

In the later fourth century, the Roman scholar Saint Jerome (347–420) was to spend five restless years as a desert solitary. For him everything goes wrong. Jerome complains that the desert heat is oppressive, his skin is dry, his thirst perpetual, his hunger unabated. He is surrounded by scorpions and haunted by dreams of Rome and dancing girls.

Jerome finally quits the hermit experiment and returns to urban life, to his precious books and the company of intellectual friends, thereafter busily writing eloquent prose: from biography and invective to the influential Latin translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek. And he becomes a cardinal.

But Jerome’s masterpiece is his short life or vita of the first Christian hermit Paul of Thebes, a hagiographical sketch of perfect eremitism. The medieval Golden Legend includes Paul of Thebes, but in a spiritless crib of Jerome’s animated account.

Though some contemporaries called Anthony the first desert hermit, Jerome maintained otherwise. In Jerome’s account, Anthony leaves Egypt for the desert, interpreting a sign of God, and searches for Paul. He finds Paul’s cave. Paul welcomes the visitor, greeting Anthony’s timely arrival to bury one who will soon be dust. They sit and converse. Paul asks, in a memorable passage:

Tell me, how fares the human race?

Do new roofs rise in ancient cities?

Whose empire now sways the world?

Do any yet survive, snared in the errors of demons?

As they speak, a crow flies near, depositing before them a loaf of bread. Paul explains that every day for sixty years his portion has been half a loaf, but now God had sent enough for both of them. They eat, and drink water. Paul resumes speaking of his imminent death, and a weeping Anthony begs him to