Other isolated houses along the roads, by the fords or the bridges, on sacred spots, on the cliffs by the sea, had also much to do with travellers, those of the hermits. Such holy men would tell the way, help to cross a river, sometimes give shelter, sometimes absolution.156 One shrives passers-by in that gem of mediæval French stories, “Le chevalier au barisel”; another, in the “Roman de Renard,” being favoured with a visit from no less a person than the hero of the romance. Led by a peasant through the pathless wood, Master Reynard reaches the secluded spot; the mallet was hanging before the door, and the peasant having given with it a loud knock the hermit hastened to draw the bolt: {141}
Most holy in early times, living examples of renouncement, teaching virtue and piety by their words and deeds, hermits became, some of them, canonized saints, like St. Robert of Knaresborough,158 or devotional writers of fame like Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole; pilgrims flocked to their cells in order to be sanctified by their advice and presence. An “officium de Sancto Ricardo eremita” was composed after Richard Rolle’s death, in the thought that he would surely be canonized some day:
These men fasted, had ecstasies, were tempted by the devil, who in the case of Richard, instead of clumsily taking some hideous shape (see further, p. 290) took the much more enticing one of “a faire yonge womane, the whilke,” wrote the hermit, “I had sene be-fore and the whilke luffed (loved) me noght a little in gude lufe.”160
The cave or hermitage in which Saint Robert spent {142} most of his life still exists at Knaresborough, entirely hollowed out of the rock, with a later-date perpendicular window.161
Persuaded, rightly or wrongly, that they had much to atone for, the kings included among the redeeming good works to be performed by them aid to holy hermits. One of the pilgrims who visited St. Robert was King John, who came unheralded and who, according to the metrical life of the saint, had some trouble in making him notice his presence:
Edward III gives to “three hermits and eight anchorite recluse persons within the city of London and in the suburbs thereof, to wit to each of them, 13s. 4d. in aid of their support.”163 Welcomed on his landing, in 1399, by a seaside hermit called Matthew Danthorp, “in quodam loco called Ravenserespourne” (Ravenspur), Bolingbroke, {143} soon to be King Henry IV, grants him and all the hermits his successors a variety of favours, including the right to any waif or wreck cast by the sea on the sand for two leagues about his hermitage: “Cum wrecco maris, et wayfs et omnibus aliis proficuis et commoditatibus super sabulum per duas leucas circa eundem locum contingentibus imperpetuum,” in spite of any statute to the contrary.164
Less brilliant fortunes and less holy a fame usually fell to the lot of English hermits of the fourteenth century. Those like Rolle of Hampole, doing ceaseless penance, consumed by divine love, were rare exceptions; they lived by preference in cottages, built at the most frequented parts of the highway, or at the entrance to bridges.165 They throve there, like Godfrey Pratt,166 on the charity of the passers-by; the bridge with its chapel was in itself almost a sacred building; the presence of the hermit sanctified it still further. He attended to the keeping in order of the building, or was supposed to do so, and was willingly given a farthing.167 A strange race of men, which in that century of disorganization and reform, when everything seemed either to die or undergo a new birth, multiplied in spite of rules and regulations. They swelled the number of parasites of the religious edifice, cloaking under a dignified habit a life that was less so. These evil growths {144} clung, like moss in the damp of the cathedral, to the fissures of the stones, and by the slow work of centuries threatened the noble structure with ruin. What remedy was there? To mow down the ever-growing weeds was scarcely possible; a patient hand, guided by a vigilant eye, was needed to pluck them out one by one, and to fill up the interstices: saints can do this, but saints are rare. Episcopal prescriptions might often seem to do great work; a mere seeming. Though the heads were beaten down, the roots remained, and the lively parasite struck yet deeper into the heart of the wall.
Solemn interdictions and rigorous rules were not wanting, bowing down heads which ever rose again. To become a hermit a man must be resolved on an exemplary life of poverty and privations, and, that imposture should be impossible, he must have episcopal sanction, that is, possess “testimonial letters from the ordinary.”168 These {145} rules were broken, however, without scruple. Inside his dwelling the not very devout creature in hermit’s garb could lead a quiet, easy life, and it was so hard elsewhere! The charity of passers-by was enough for him to live upon, especially if he was not harassed by an over-exacting conscience and knew how to beg; no labour, no pressing obligation, the bishop was distant and the alehouse near. All these reasons caused a never-ending growth of the mischievous species of false hermits who only took the habit to live by it, without asking any permit from any one. In the statutes they were bracketed with beggars, wandering labourers, and vagabonds of all kinds, pell mell, to be imprisoned awaiting judgment. There was exception only for “approved” hermits: “Except men of religion and approved hermits having letters testimonial from the ordinary.” A statute like this is enough to show that Langland did not exaggerate; his verse is but a commentary on the law. The author of the “Visions” is impartial and does justice to sincere anchorites: true Christians resemble them.169 But what are these false saints who have pitched their tent by the side of the highroads or even in the towns, at the door of the alehouse, who beg under the church porches, who eat and drink plentifully, and leisurely pass the evenings warming themselves?
What is that man who rests and roasts himself by the hot coals, and when he has drunk his fill has nothing to do but go to bed? {146}
All these are unworthy of pity, and, adds Langland, with that aristocratic touch which now and then recurs in his lines, all these hermits were common artisans, “workmen, webbes and taillours, and carters’ knaves”; formerly they had “long labour and lyte wynnynge,” but they noticed one day that these deceitful friars swarming everywhere, “hadde fatte chekus” (cheeks); they thereupon abandoned their labour and took lying garments, as though they were clerks:
They are seldom seen at church, these false hermits, but they are found seated at great men’s tables because of their cloth. Look at them eating and drinking of the best! they who formerly were of the lowest rank, at the side tables, never tasting wine, never eating white bread, without a blanket for their bed:
These rascals escape the bishops, who ought to have their eyes wider open. “Alas!” said, in charming language, a French poet of the thirteenth century, Rutebeuf, “the coat does not make the hermit; if a man dwell in a hermitage and be clothed in hermit’s dress, I don’t care two straws for his habit nor his vesture if he does not lead a life as pure as his frock betokens. But many folk make a fine show and marvellous seeming of worth; they resemble those over-blossoming trees that fail to bring forth fruit.”174
Under the eyes of the placid hermit, comfortably established by the roadside, calmly preparing himself by a carefree life for a blissful eternity, moved the variegated flow of travellers, vagabonds, wayfarers, and wanderers. His benediction rewarded the generous passer-by; the stern look of the austere man did not disturb his sanctimonious indifference. The life of others might rapidly consume itself, burnt by the sun, gnawed by care; his own endured in the shade of the trees, and continued without hurt, lulled by the murmur of human passions—
Good or bad, the whole race (still surviving in the East) disappeared in England at the Reformation, leaving but a memory, and surviving only in poetry: