Preaching by Thirteenth-Century Italian Hermits

PREACHING BY THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN HERMITS

George Ferzoco

(University of Leicester)

It is impossible to say what a hermit is with great precision.1 In the realm of the medieval church, any consultation of that great body of definitions to be found in canonical or legislative texts shows us very little indeed. For example, we know that hermits could own property, and, according to Hostiensis, that they could make wills. Bernard of Parma's gloss briefly addresses the question of whether a hermit can be elected abbot of a monastery. The gloss of Gratian by Johannes Teutonicus says that "solitanus" means "heremiticus", and one would assume that the inverse would hold true.2 Aban• doning the realm of canon law, one does find something more helpful in the greatest legislative book for Western monks, the Regula Benedicti. Here, the Rule begins with a definition of four types of monks: two are good, and two are bad. The bad ones are the sarabaites—those who live in community but follow no rule— and the gyrovagues, who travel around continually and are, in Benedict's words, "slaves to their own wills and gross appetites".3

1 Giles Constable's study on hermits in the twelfth century shows the great ambiguity in defining the eremitical life. See Giles Constable, "Eremitical Forms of Monastic Life," in Monks, Hermits and Crusaders in Medieval Europe, Collected Studies Series 273 (London, 1988) 239-64, at 240-1. See also Jean Leclercq, "'Eremus' et 'eremita'. Pour l'histoire du vocabulaire de la vie solitaire," Colùctanea Ordinis Cisteräensium Reformatorum 25 (1963) 8-30. 2 See: Hostiensis, Summa aurea, lib. 3 tit "De testamentis et ultimis voluntatibus," =A7 8 (Lyon: Iacobus Giunta, 1537, fol. 162vb); Bernard of Parma's Glossa ordinaria to Gratian, χ 1.4.13; and Johannes Teutonicus in his Glossa ordinaria to Gratian, C. 16 q. 1 c. 12 v. usolitanamn. He also says in the Glossa ordinaria to C. 19 q. 3 d.p.c. 8 v. "eremita" that hermits can own property. (Both glosses appear in most editions of the Corpus iuns canonia published up to the early years of the seventeenth century.) James Brundage has kindly pointed out these canonical sources in a message to the medieval-religion electronic discussion list; I am grateful to him and to other list members, including Jessalynn Bird, Tom Izbicki, Maiju Lehmijoki, Eric Saak, and John Wick- strom, who contributed to this discussion (see, on the World Wide Web, http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion/1997-02/index.html). 8 Tertium veto monachorum taeterrimum genus est sarabaitarum, qui nulla régula approbati, experientia magistra, sicut aurum fornacis, sed in plumbi natura molliti, 146 GEORGE FERZOCO

The good ones are the cénobites—those who belong to a monastery and live under a rule and an abbot—and the anchorites or hermits. The Rule describes this last group in the following manner: [The hermits] have come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time, and have passed beyond the first fervor of monastic life. Thanks to the help and guidance of many, they are now trained to fight against the devil. They have built up their strength and go from the battle line in the ranks of their brothers to the single combat of the desert. Self-reliant now, without the support of another, they are ready with God's help to grapple single-handed with the vices of body and mind.4

So, in the eyes of Benedict, at least, the hermit was the practitioner par excellence of the religious vocation, and he lived his vocation in solitude; indeed, it has been argued in the Downside Review that Benedict saw the monk as one who would live eremitically from time to time.5 It would seem that other people, in other times, held similar views. This is particularly the case with Benedict's countrymen, the people of the Italian peninsula, who apparently, in the later middle ages, had a particularly notable devotion to hermit saints.6 I have been undertaking a census of Italian saints' cults up to the time of the Counter-Reformation, and I estimate that well over 2000 such cults existed at various places and times throughout the Italian peninsula. Of this number, several dozen are thirteenth- and fourteenth-century hermits.7 Some of these hermits

adhuc operibus servantes saeculo fidem, mentin Deo per tonsuram noscuntur ... (juartum vero genus est monachorum quod nominatur gyrovagum, qui tota vita sua per diversas provindas ternis aut quatemis diebus per diversorum cellos hospitantur, semper vagi et numquam stabiles, et propriis voluntatibus et gulae illecebris servientes, et per omnia détériores sarabaitis (RB, chap. 1, 168-71). 4 Deinde secundum genus est anachoritarum, id est eremitarum, horum qui non conversationis fervore novicio, sed monasteni probatione diuturna, qui didicerunt contra diabolum multorum solado iam docti pugnare, et bene exstructi fraterna ex ade ad singularem pugnam eremi, secun iam sine consolatione alterius, sola manu vel brachio contra vitia carnis vel cogitationum, Deo auxiliante, pugnare suffidunt (ibidem, 168-9). 5 Adrian Hastings, "St Benedict and the Eremitical Life," Downside Review 68 (1950) 191-211. Arguments raised by Hastings at times contrast with views expressed by a renowned product of the Downside community, David Knowles, in The Benedictines, Many Mansions (London, 1929) (see, e.g., p.97). 6 André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge d'après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques, second edition, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome 241 (Rome, 1988) 217; David Weinstein and R.M. Bell, "Saints and Society: Italian Saints of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance," Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 4 (1973) 180-94. 7 For the purposes of this article, there will be no consideration of the