Books: The Hermits

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"You wish to write my life?" he said. "Know then that Godric's life
is such as this:--Godric, at first a gross rustic, an unclean liver,
an usurer, a cheat, a perjurer, a flatterer, a wanderer, pilfering
and greedy; now a dead flea, a decayed dog, a vile worm, not a
hermit, but a hypocrite; not a solitary, but a gad-about in mind; a
devourer of alms, dainty over good things, greedy and negligent,
lazy and snoring, ambitious and prodigal, one who is not worthy to
serve others, and yet every day beats and scolds those who serve
him: this, and worse than this, you may write of Godric." "Then he
was silent as one indignant," says Reginald, "and I went off in some
confusion," and the grand old man was left to himself and to his
God.

The ecclesiastical Boswell dared not mention the subject again to
his hero for several years, though he came after from Durham to
visit him, and celebrate mass for him in his little chapel. After
some years, however, he approached the matter again; and whether a
pardonable vanity had crept over Godric, or whether he had begun at
last to believe in his miracles, or whether the old man had that
upon his mind of which he longed to unburthen himself, he began to
answer questions, and Reginald delighted to listen and note down
till he had finished, he says, that book of his life and miracles;
{316} and after a while brought it to the saint, and falling on his
knees, begged him to bless, in the name of God, and for the benefit
of the faithful, the deeds of a certain religious man, who had
suffered much for God in this life which he (Reginald) had composed
accurately. The old man perceived that he himself was the subject,
blessed the book with solemn words (what was written therein he does
not seem to have read), and bade Reginald conceal it till his death,
warning him that a time would come when he should suffer rough and
bitter things on account of that book, from those who envied him.
That prophecy, says Reginald, came to pass; but how, or why, he does
not tell. There may have been, among those shrewd Northumbrian
heads, even then, incredulous men, who used their common sense.

But the story which Godric told was wild and beautiful; and though
we must not depend too much on the accuracy of the old man's
recollections, or on the honesty of Reginald's report, who would
naturally omit all incidents which made against his hero's
perfection, it is worth listening to, as a vivid sketch of the
doings of a real human being, in that misty distance of the Early
Middle Age.

He was born, he said, at Walpole, in Norfolk, on the old Roman sea-
bank, between the Wash and the deep Fens. His father's name was
AEilward; his mother's, AEdwen--"the Keeper of Blessedness," and
"the Friend of Blessedness," as Reginald translates them--poor and
pious folk; and, being a sharp boy, he did not take to field-work,
but preferred wandering the fens as a pedlar, first round the
villages, then, as he grew older, to castles and to towns, buying
and selling--what, Reginald does not tell us: but we should be glad
to know.

One day he had a great deliverance, which Reginald thinks a miracle.
Wandering along the great tide-flats near Spalding and the old Well-
stream, in search of waifs, and strays, of wreck or eatables, he saw
three porpoises stranded far out upon the banks. Two were alive,
and the boy took pity on them (so he said) and let them be: but one
was dead, and off it (in those days poor folks ate anything) he cut
as much flesh and blubber as he could carry, and toiled back towards
the high-tide mark. But whether he lost his way among the banks, or
whether he delayed too long, the tide came in on him up to his
knees, his waist, his chin, and at last, at times, over his head.
The boy made the sign of the cross (as all men in danger did then)
and struggled on valiantly a full mile through the sea, like a brave
lad never loosening his hold of his precious porpoise-meat till he
reached the shore at the very spot from which he had set out.

As he grew, his pedlar journeys became longer. Repeating to
himself, as he walked, the Creeds and the Lord's Prayer--his only
lore--he walked for four years through Lindsey; then went to St.
Andrew's in Scotland; after that, for the first time, to Rome. Then
the love of a wandering sea life came on him, and he sailed with his
wares round the east coasts; not merely as a pedlar, but as a sailor
himself, he went to Denmark and to Flanders, buying and selling,
till he owned (in what port we are not told, but probably in Lynn or
Wisbeach) half one merchant ship and the quarter of another. A
crafty steersman he was, a wise weather-prophet, a shipman stout in
body and in heart, probably such a one as Chaucer tells us of 350
years after:--

"--A dagger hanging by a las hadde hee
About his nekke under his arm adoun.
The hote summer hadde made his hewe al broun.
And certainly he was a good felaw;
Full many a draught of wine he hadde draw,
From Burdeaux ward, while that the chapmen slepe,
Of nice conscience took he no kepe.
If that he fought, and hadde the higher hand,
By water he sent hem home to every land.
But of his craft to recken wel his tides,
His stremes and his strandes him besides,
His herberwe, his mone, and his lode manage,
There was none swiche, from Hull unto Carthage.
Hardy he was, and wise, I undertake:
With many a tempest hadde his berd be shake.
He knew wel alle the havens, as they were,
From Gotland to the Cape de Finisterre,
And every creke in Bretagne and in Spain."

But gradually there grew on the stout merchantman the thought that
there was something more to be done in the world than making money.
He became a pious man after the fashion of those days. He
worshipped at the famous shrine of St. Andrew. He worshipped, too,
at St. Cuthbert's hermitage at Farne, and there, he said afterwards,
he longed for the first time for the rest and solitude of the
hermitage. He had been sixteen years a seaman now, with a seaman's
temptations--it may be (as he told Reginald plainly) with some of a
seaman's vices. He may have done things which lay heavy on his
conscience. But it was getting time to think about his soul. He
took the cross, and went off to Jerusalem, as many a man did then,
under difficulties incredible, dying, too often, on the way. But
Godric not only got safe thither, but went out of his way home by
Spain to visit the sanctuary of St. James of Compostella, a see
which Pope Calixtus II. had just raised to metropolitan dignity.

Then he appears as steward to a rich man in the Fens, whose sons and
young retainers, after the lawless fashion of those Anglo-Norman
times, rode out into the country round to steal the peasants' sheep
and cattle, skin them on the spot, and pass them off to the master
of the house as venison taken in hunting. They ate and drank,
roystered and rioted, like most other young Normans; and vexed the
staid soul of Godric, whose nose told him plainly enough, whenever
he entered the kitchen, that what was roasting had never come off a
deer. In vain he protested and warned them, getting only insults
for his pains. At last he told his lord. The lord, as was to be
expected, cared nought about the matter. Let the lads rob the
English villains: for what other end had their grandfathers
conquered the land? Godric punished himself, as he could not punish
them, for the unwilling share which he had had in the wrong. It may
be that he, too, had eaten of that stolen food. So away he went
into France, and down the Rhone, on pilgrimage to the hermitage of
St. Giles, the patron saint of the wild deer; and then on to Rome a
second time, and back to his poor parents in the Fens.

And now follows a strange and beautiful story. All love of
seafaring and merchandise had left the deep-hearted sailor. The
heavenly and the eternal, the salvation of his sinful soul, had
become all in all to him; and yet he could not rest in the little
dreary village on the Roman bank. He would go on pilgrimage again.
Then his mother would go likewise, and see St. Peter's church, and
the Pope, and all the wonders of Rome, and have her share in all the
spiritual blessings which were to be obtained (so men thought then)
at Rome alone. So off they set on foot; and when they came to ford
or ditch, Godric carried his mother on his back, until they came to
London town. And there AEdwen took off her shoes, and vowed out of
devotion to the holy apostles Peter and Paul (who, so she thought,
would be well pleased at such an act) to walk barefoot to Rome and
barefoot back again.

Now just as they went out of London, on the Dover Road, there met
them in the way the loveliest maiden they had ever seen, and asked
to bear them company in their pilgrimage. And when they agreed, she
walked with them, sat with them, and talked with them with
superhuman courtesy and grace; and when they turned into an inn, she
ministered to them herself, and washed and kissed their feet, and
then lay down with them to sleep, after the simple fashion of those
days. But a holy awe of her, as of some saint and goddess, fell on
the wild seafarer; and he never, so he used to aver, treated her for
a moment save as a sister. Never did either ask the other who they
were, and whence they came; and Godric reported (but this was long
after the event) that no one of the company of pilgrims could see
that fair maid, save he and his mother alone. So they came safe to
Rome, and back to London town; and when they were at the place
outside Southwark, where the fair maid had met them first, she asked
permission to leave them, for she "must go to her own land, where
she had a tabernacle of rest, and dwelt in the house of her God."
And then, bidding them bless God, who had brought them safe over the
Alps, and across the sea, and all along that weary road, she went on
her way, and they saw her no more.

Then with this fair mysterious face clinging to his memory, and it
may be never leaving it, Godric took his mother safe home, and
delivered her to his father, and bade them both after awhile
farewell, and wandered across England to Penrith, and hung about the
churches there, till some kinsmen of his recognised him, and gave
him a psalter (he must have taught himself to read upon his
travels), which he learnt by heart. Then, wandering ever in search
of solitude, he went into the woods and found a cave, and passed his
time therein in prayer, living on green herbs and wild honey, acorns
and crabs; and when he went about to gather food, he fell down on
his knees every few yards and said a prayer, and rose and went on.

After awhile he wandered on again, until at Wolsingham, in Durham,
he met with another holy hermit, who had been a monk at Durham,
living in a cave in forests in which no man dare dwell, so did they
swarm with packs of wolves; and there the two good men dwelt
together till the old hermit fell sick, and was like to die. Godric
nursed him, and sat by him, to watch for his last breath. For the
same longing had come over him which came over Marguerite
d'Angouleme when she sat by the dying bed of her favourite maid of
honour--to see if the spirit, when it left the body, were visible,
and what kind of thing it was: whether, for instance, it was really
like the little naked babe which is seen in mediaeval illuminations
flying out of the mouths of dying men. But, worn out with watching,
Godric could not keep from sleep. All but despairing of his desire,
he turned to the dying man, and spoke, says Reginald, some such
words as these:--"O spirit! who art diffused in that body in the
likeness of God, and art still inside that breast, I adjure thee by
the Highest, that thou leave not the prison of this thine habitation
while I am overcome by sleep, and know not of it." And so he fell
asleep: but when he woke, the old hermit lay motionless and
breathless. Poor Godric wept, called on the dead man, called on
God; his simple heart was set on seeing this one thing. And,
behold, he was consoled in a wondrous fashion. For about the third
hour of the day the breath returned. Godric hung over him, watching
his lips. Three heavy sighs he drew, then a shudder, another sigh:
{323} and then (so Godric was believed to have said in after years)
he saw the spirit flit.

What it was like, he did not like to say, for the most obvious
reason--that he saw nothing, and was an honest man. A monk teased
him much to impart to him this great discovery, which seemed to the
simple untaught sailor a great spiritual mystery, and which was,
like some other mediaeval mysteries which were miscalled spiritual
(transubstantiation above all), altogether material and gross
imaginations. Godric answered wisely enough, that "no man could
perceive the substance of the spiritual soul."

But the monk insisting, and giving him no rest, he answered,--
whether he wished to answer a fool according to his folly, or
whether he tried to fancy (as men will who are somewhat vain--and if
a saint was not vain, it was no fault of the monks who beset him)
that he had really seen something. He told how it was like a dry,
hot wind rolled into a sphere, and shining like the clearest glass,
but that what it was really like no one could express. Thus much,
at least, may be gathered from the involved bombast of Reginald.

Another pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre did Godric make before he
went to the hermitage in Eskdale, and settled finally at Finchale.
And there about the hills of Judaea he found, says Reginald, hermits
dwelling in rock-caves, as they had dwelt since the time of St.
Jerome. He washed himself, and his hair shirt and little cross, in
the sacred waters of the Jordan, and returned, after incredible
suffering, to become the saint of Finchale.

His hermitage became, in due time, a stately priory, with its
community of monks, who looked up to the memory of their holy father
Godric as to that of a demigod. The place is all ruinate now; the
memory of St. Godric gone; and not one in ten thousand, perhaps, who
visit those crumbling walls beside the rushing Wear, has heard of
the sailor-saint, and his mother, and that fair maid who tended them
on their pilgrimage.

Meanwhile there were hermits for many years in that same hermitage
in Eskdale, from which a Percy expelled St. Godric, possibly because
he interfered with the prior claim of some protege of their own; for
they had, a few years before Godric's time, granted that hermitage
to the monks of Whitby, who were not likely to allow a stranger to
establish himself on their ground.

About that hermitage hung one of those stories so common in the
Middle Ages, in which the hermit appears as the protector of the
hunted wild beast; a story, too, which was probably authentic, as
the curious custom which was said to perpetuate its memory lasted at
least till the year 1753. I quote it at length from Burton's
"Monasticon Eboracense," p. 78, knowing no other authority.

"In the fifth year of the reign of King Henry II. after the conquest
of England by William, duke of Normandy, the Lord of Uglebardby,
then called William de Bruce, and the Lord of Sneton, called Ralph
de Perci, with a gentleman and a freeholder called Allatson, did on
the 16th day of October appoint to meet and hunt the wild boar, in a
certain wood or desert place belonging to the abbot of the monastery
of Whitby; the place's name is Eskdale-side; the abbot's name was
Sedman. Then these gentlemen being met, with their hounds and boar-
staves, in the place before-named, and there having found a great
wild boar, the hounds ran him well near about the chapel and
hermitage of Eskdale-side, where was a monk of Whitby, who was a
hermit. The boar being very sore, and very hotly pursued, and dead
run, took in at the chapel door, and there died: whereupon the
hermit shut the hounds out of the chapel, and kept himself within at
his meditations and prayers, the hounds standing at bay without.
The gentlemen in the thick of the wood, being put behind their game,
followed the cry of their hounds, and so came to the hermitage,
calling on the hermit, who opened the door and came forth, and
within they found the boar lying dead, for which the gentlemen in
very great fury (because their hounds were put from their game) did
most violently and cruelly run at the hermit with their boar-staves,
whereby he died soon after: thereupon the gentlemen, perceiving and
knowing that they were in peril of death, took sanctuary at
Scarborough. But at that time the abbot, being in very great favour
with King Henry, removed them out of the sanctuary, whereby they
came in danger of the law, and not to be privileged, but likely to
have the severity of the law, which was death. But the hermit,
being a holy and devout man, at the point of death sent for the
abbot, and desired him to send for the gentlemen who had wounded
him: the abbot so doing, the gentlemen came, and the hermit, being
very sick and weak, said unto them, 'I am sure to die of those
wounds you have given me.' The abbot answered, 'They shall as
surely die for the same;' but the hermit answered, 'Not so, for I
will freely forgive them my death, if they will be contented to be
enjoined this penance for the safeguard of their souls.' The
gentlemen being present, and terrified with the fear of death, bade
him enjoin what penance he would, so that he would but save their
lives. Then said the hermit, 'You and yours shall hold your lands
of the Abbot of Whitby and his successors in this manner: That upon
Ascension Eve, you or some of you shall come to the woods of the
Strag Heads, which is in Eskdale-side, the same day at sun-rising,
and there shall the abbot's officer blow his horn, to the intent
that you may know how to find him; and he shall deliver unto you,
William de Bruce, ten stakes, eleven strut-towers, and eleven
yethers, to be cut by you or some for you, with a knife of one penny
price; and you, Ralph de Perci, shall take twenty and one of each
sort, to be cut in the same manner; and you, Allatson, shall take
nine of each sort, to be cut as aforesaid, and to be taken on your
backs, and carried to the town of Whitby, and to be there before
nine of the clock the same day before-mentioned; at the same hour of
nine of the clock (if it be full sea) your labour or service shall
cease; but if it be not full sea, each of you shall set your stakes
at the brim, each stake one yard from the other, and so yether them
on each side of your yethers, and so stake on each side with your
strut-towers, that they may stand three tides without removing by
the force thereof: each of you shall do, make, and execute the said
service at that very hour every year, except it shall be full sea at
that hour: but when it shall so fall out, this service shall cease.
You shall faithfully do this in remembrance that you did most
cruelly slay me; and that you may the better call to God for mercy,
repent unfeignedly for your sins, and do good works, the officers of
Eskdale-side shall blow, Out on you, out on you, out on you, for
this heinous crime. If you or your successors shall refuse this
service, so long as it shall not be full sea at the aforesaid hour,
you or yours shall forfeit your lands to the Abbot of Whitby, or his
successors. This I intreat, and earnestly beg that you may have
lives and goods preserved for this service; and I request of you to
promise by your parts in heaven that it shall be done by you and
your successors, as it is aforesaid requested, and I will confirm it
by the faith of an honest man.' Then the hermit said: 'My soul
longeth for the Lord, and I do as freely forgive these men my death
as Christ forgave the thieves upon the cross;' and in the presence
of the abbot and the rest he said, moreover, these words: 'Into thy
hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit, for from the bonds of death Thou
hast redeemed me, O Lord of truth. Amen.' So he yielded up the
ghost the eighth day of December, A.D. 1160, upon whose soul God
have mercy. Amen."

ANCHORITES, STRICTLY SO CALLED

The fertile and peaceable lowlands of England, as I have just said,
offered few spots sufficiently wild and lonely for the habitation of
a hermit; those, therefore, who wished to retire from the world into
a more strict and solitary life than that which the monastery
afforded were in the habit of immuring themselves, as anchorites, or
in old English "Ankers," in little cells of stone, built usually
against the wall of a church. There is nothing new under the sun;
and similar anchorites might have been seen in Egypt, 500 years
before the time of St. Antony, immured in cells in the temples of
Isis or Serapis. It is only recently that antiquaries have
discovered how common this practice was in England, and how
frequently the traces of these cells are to be found about our
parish churches. They were so common in the Diocese of Lincoln in
the thirteenth century, that in 1233 the archdeacon is ordered to
inquire whether any Anchorites' cells had been built without the
Bishop's leave; and in many of our parish churches may be seen,
either on the north or the south side of the chancel, a narrow slit
in the wall, or one of the lights of a window prolonged downwards,
the prolongation, if not now walled up, being closed with a shutter.
Through these apertures the "incluse," or anker, watched the
celebration of mass, and partook of the Holy Communion. Similar
cells were to be found in Ireland, at least in the diocese of
Ossory; and doubtless in Scotland also. Ducange, in his Glossary,
on the word "inclusi," lays down rules for the size of the anker's
cell, which must be twelve feet square, with three windows, one
opening into the church, one for taking in his food, and one for
light; and the "Salisbury Manual" as well as the "Pontifical" of
Lacy, bishop of Exeter, in the first half of the fifteenth century,
contains a regular "service" for the walling in of an anchorite.
{330} There exists too a most singular and painful book, well known
to antiquaries, but to them alone, "The Ancren Riwle," addressed to
three young ladies who had immured themselves (seemingly about the
beginning of the thirteenth century) at Kingston Tarrant, in
Dorsetshire.

For women as well as men entered these living tombs; and there spent
their days in dirt and starvation, and such prayer and meditation
doubtless as the stupified and worn-out intellect could compass;
their only recreation being the gossip of the neighbouring women,
who came to peep in through the little window--a recreation in which
(if we are to believe the author of "The Ancren Riwle") they were
tempted to indulge only too freely; till the window of the recluse's
cell, he says, became what the smith's forge or the alehouse has
become since--the place where all the gossip and scandal of the
village passed from one ear to another. But we must not believe
such scandals of all. Only too much in earnest must those seven
young maidens have been, whom St. Gilbert of Sempringham persuaded
to immure themselves, as a sacrifice acceptable to God, in a den
along the north wall of his church; or that St. Hutta, or Huetta, in
the beginning of the thirteenth century, who after ministering to
lepers, and longing and even trying to become a leper herself,
immured herself for life in a cell against the church of Huy near
Liege.

Fearful must have been the fate of these incluses if any evil had
befallen the building of which (one may say) they had become a part.
More than one in the stormy Middle Age may have suffered the fate of
the poor women immured beside St. Mary's church at Mantes, who, when
town and church were burnt by William the Conqueror, unable to
escape (or, according to William of Malmesbury, thinking it unlawful
to quit their cells even in that extremity), perished in the flames;
and so consummated once and for all their long martyrdom.

How long the practice of the hermit life was common in these islands
is more than my learning enables me to say. Hermits seem, from the
old Chartularies, {331} to have been not unfrequent in Scotland and
the North of England during the whole Middle Age. We have seen that
they were frequent in the times of Malcolm Canmore and the old
Celtic Church; and the Latin Church, which was introduced by St.
Margaret, seems to have kept up the fashion. In the middle of the
thirteenth century, David de Haigh conveyed to the monks of Cupar
the hermitage which Gilmichael the Hermit once held, with three
acres of land. In 1329 the Convent of Durham made a grant of a
hermitage to Roger Eller at Norham on the Tweed, in order that he
might have a "fit place to fight with the old enemy and bewail his
sins, apart from the turmoil of men." In 1445 James the Second,
king of Scots, granted to John Smith the hermitage in the forest of
Kilgur, "which formerly belonged in heritage to Hugh Cominch the
Hermit, and was resigned by him, with the croft and the green
belonging to it, and three acres of arable land."

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