Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe/Chapter VIII
ROCK HERMITAGES
There is an account in the Times' Correspondent's record of Colonel Younghusband's expedition to Lhasa that when read haunts the imagination. It is the description made by Mr. Landon of a Buddhist monastery, Nyen-de-kyl-Buk, where the inmates enter as little children and grow up with the prospect of being literally immured in a cave from which the light of day is excluded as well as the society of their fellow-men, there to spend the rest of their life till they rot. Horace may say:
- Jubeas miserum esse, libenter
- Quatenus id facit;
but few Christians can feel this towards another human being, though of another race, religion, and under another clime.
"These men," said the abbot to Mr. Landon, "live here in the mountain of their own free will; a few of them are allowed a little light whereby reading is possible, but these are the weaker brethren; the others live in darkness in a square cell partly hewn out of the sharp slope of the rock, partly built up, with the window just within reach of the upraised hand. There are three periods of immurement. The first is endured for six months, the second, upon which a monk may enter at any time he pleases, or not at all, is for three years and ninety-three days; the third and last period is for life. Only this morning," said the abbot, "a hermit died after having lived in darkness for twenty- five years." Mr. Landon goes on to say: "Voluntary this self-immolation is said to be, and perhaps technically speaking it is possible for the pluckier souls to refuse to go on with this hideous and useless form of self-sacrifice, but the grip of the Lamas is omnipotent, and practically none refuse."
He describes a visit to the cell of one of those thus immured: "The abbot led us into a small courtyard which had blank walls all round it, over which a peach-tree reared its transparent pink and white against the sky. Almost on a level with the ground there was an opening closed with a flat stone from behind. In front of this window was a ledge eighteen inches in width with two basins beside it, and one at each end. The abbot was attended by an acolyte, who, by his master's orders, tapped three times sharply on the stone slab. We stood in the little courtyard in the sun and watched that wicket with cold apprehension. I think, on the whole, it was the most uncanny thing I saw in all Tibet. What on earth was going to appear when that stone slab, which even then was beginning weakly to quiver, was pushed aside, the wildest conjecture could not suggest. After half-a-minute's pause the stone moved, or tried to move, but it came to rest again. Then, very slowly and uncertainly it was pushed back, and a black chasm was revealed. There was a pause of thirty seconds, during which imagination ran riot, but I do not think that any other thing could have been so intensely pathetic as that which we actually saw. A hand, muffled in a tightly wound piece of dirty cloth, for all the world like the stump of an arm, was painfully thrust up, and very weakly it felt along the slab. After a fruitless fumbling the hand slowly quivered back again into the darkness. A few moments later there was again one ineffectual effort, and then the stone slab moved noiselessly again across the opening. Once a day water and an unleavened cake of flour is placed for the prisoner upon that slab, the signal is given, and he may take it in. His diversion is over for the day, and in the darkness of his cell, where night and day, noon, sunset, and the dawn are all alike, the poor soul has thought that another day of his long penance was over."
Here is another account from the pen of Sven Hedin.
He visited the monastery of Sumde-pu-pe, where was a hermitage consisting of a single room five paces each way, built over a spring that bubbles up in the centre. Inside the hermit had been walled up with only a tiny tunnel communicating with the outside world. Once inside, he was never again to see the light of day nor hear a human voice. The man Sven Hedin saw had been immured for sixty-nine years, and wished to see the sun again.
"He was all bent up as small as a child, and his body was nothing but a light-grey parchment-like skin and bones. His eyes had lost their colour, and were quite bright and blind. Of the monks who sixty-nine years before had conducted him to the cell not one survived.... And he had scarcely been carried out into the sunlight when he too, gave up the ghost."[1]
S. Theresa once said that she had a vision of Hell. The torture did not consist of flames, but in being planted opposite a blank wall, on which to gaze through all eternity. The hermit in a Buddhist cell must have undergone this torture till all intelligence, all consciousness, save desire for food, was dead within him.
There have been horrible instances of voluntary immurement in Christian Europe, and above all in the Christian East; but not quite—though very nearly—as bad as this. Moreover, not one line, not a single word in the Scriptures inculcates such self-annihilation. Christ set the example of retirement from the world into the wilderness for forty days, to a mountain apart for one night, to teach men occasionally and for a limited period, to withdraw from the swirl of business and the clatter of tongues. And S. Paul retired from the society of men after his conversion to gather his thoughts together, and prepare for his great missionary work. But that was something altogether different from ascetic abnegation of life and flight from its responsibilities.
The peopling of the solitudes of Syria and Egypt by solitaries was due, not to flight from persecution, but to revulsion from the luxury of the great cities, and very largely as an escape from compulsory military service. It was not a new thing. Judaism had been impregnated with Buddhism, or at all events with Brahminism, and with ideas of asceticism. The Essenes and Therapeutæ lived, the first in the time of the Maccabees upon the shores of the Dead Sea, and the last two centuries later, in Egypt. Both inhabited cells in the desert, preserving celibacy, renouncing property, pleasure, and delicate food, and consecrating their time to the study of the Scriptures, and to prayer. And yet celibacy was in violation of the principles of Judaism, which required every man to marry, in the hopes of becoming a progenitor of the Messiah. Further, they rejected the bloody sacrifices of the law, and would have nothing to do with the temple at Jerusalem. We can see by Philo's "On the Contemplative Life" how completely Alexandrian Judaism had sucked in Buddhist doctrine, and how Therapeutic asceticism formed the bridge from Buddhism to Christian monachism. In the same places where Essenes and Therapeutæ had been, there later we find Christian solitaries. "We can have no doubt," says Ferdinand Delaunay, "that the Therapeutic Convents which perhaps gave the first signal for conversion to the new faith, served also as the cradle for Christian monachism. History shows us, hardly a century later, this flourishing in the same localities on the borders of the lake Mareotis, and on the heights of Nitréa. And we cannot doubt but that Christian solitaries continued at Alexandria the work of their Jewish predecessors, and endeavoured to make their oracles serve for the propagation of the Gospel."[2]
The language in which Philo describes the Therapeutæ might be applied to the Christian monks of Egypt. I must condense his rambling account. The Therapeutæ abandon their property, their children, their wives, parents, and friends and homes, to seek out fresh habitations outside the city walls, in solitary places and in deserts. They pray twice in the day, at morning and evening, and the interval is wholly devoted to meditation on the Scriptures and elucidating the allegories therein. They likewise compose psalms and hymns to God, "and during six days each, retiring into solitude, philosophises, never going outside the threshold of the outer court, and indeed never looking out. But on the seventh day they all assemble, and sit down in order, and the eldest, who has the most profound learning, speaks with steadfast voice explaining the meaning of the laws."
They wore but one garment, a shaggy hide for winter, and a thin mantle for summer. Their food was herbs and bread, and their drink water. Philo concludes his account thus: "This then is what I have to say of those who are called Therapeutæ who have devoted themselves to the contemplation of nature, and who have lived in it, and in the soul alone, being citizens of heaven and of the world, and very acceptable to the Father and Creator of the universe because of their virtue; it has procured them His love as their most appropriate reward, which far surpasses all the gifts of fortune, and conducts them to the very summit and perfection of happiness."
It was not among the Jews alone that the solitary life was cultivated. In the Serapium of Thebes were also heathen monks leading a very similar life. That Persian Manichæism had infected Jews and heathen as well there can exist little doubt.[3]
In 177, in Lyons, when S. Pothinus and others were arrested, thrown into prison, tortured and killed for the Faith, there was one of the martyrs who caused offence to the rest because "he had long been used to a very austere life, and to live entirely on bread and water. He seemed resolved to continue this practice during his confinement, but Attalus (another martyr), after his first combat in the theatre, understood by revelation that Alcibiades gave occasion of offence to others by seeming to favour the new sect of the Montanists (a Christian phase of Manichæism), who endeavoured to recommend themselves by their extraordinary austerities. Alcibiades listened to the admonition, and from that time ate of everything with thanksgiving to God."[4]
But, although Buddhism affected the lives of certain Christians, it in no way touched their faith—that life was the result of contact with Manichæism, which taught that all matter was evil, and that the flesh must be subdued, as essentially ungodly. The Buddhist religion in its ethics is the absolute reverse of the Christian. The Buddhist prays and tortures, and stupefies himself for purely selfish reasons, so as to escape reincarnation in the form of a bug, a louse, or a worm, by the destruction within himself of all human passions and inclinations. His self-torture is undertaken for the object of absorption into Nirvana, only to be reached by reducing the mind and heart to absolute indifference to every animal desire, and thus to escape the eternal revolution of metempsychosis. "No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself," is a maxim incomprehensible to a Buddhist. As Mr. Landon says: "The spiritual brigandage of the Lamas finds its counterpart in many other creeds, but it would be unjust not to record in the strongest terms the great radical difference that exists between Lamaism at its best and Christianity at its worst. There has never been absent from the lowest profession of our faith a full recognition of the half-divine character of self-sacrifice for another. Of this the Tibetians know nothing. The exact performance of their duties, the daily practice of conventional offices, and continual obedience to their Lamaic superiors is for them a means of escape from personal damnation in a form which is more terrible perhaps than any monk- conjured Inferno. For others they do not profess to have even a passing thought. Now this is a distinction which goes to the very root of the matter. The fact is rarely stated in so many words, but it is the truth that Christianity is daily judged by one standard, and by one standard only—its altruism, and this complete absence of carefulness for others, this insistent and fierce desire to save one's own soul, regardless of a brother's, is in itself something that makes foreign to one the best that Lamaism can offer."
One day a gnat stung S. Macarius, and he killed it. To punish himself for this, he went to the marshes of Scete, and stayed there six months. When he returned to his brethren he was so disfigured by the bites of the insects that they recognised him only by the tone of his voice. A Brahmin would have been filled with remorse lest he had killed a reincarnation of his grandmother, but the Egyptian ascetic only because he had given way to momentary irritation.
One has but to read the sayings of the Fathers of the Desert to see that no vein of Brahminism or Buddhism had tinctured their faith, however deeply it may have coloured their practice. When plague raged in Alexandria, they were ready to quit their cells and hasten into the cities to minister to the sick and dying; when the faith, as they understood it, was menaced, to champion the truth.
That the Egyptian hermits, flying from association with the world, should betake themselves to caves, is hardly to be wondered at. In that land the rocks are pitted with artificial grottoes, which were the tombs of the ancient Egyptians, and were commodious and to be had without asking leave of any one.
Twice was Athanasius obliged to fly from the fury of the Arians, and to take refuge among the solitaries in their caves. Once he was constrained to remain in concealment in his father's tomb, also a cavern. When he was banished to Trèves, tradition says that he would not occupy a house, but sought out a grotto in a hill beyond the Moselle, and made his abode therein.
The filiation between the Syrian and Egyptian solitaries with the hermits of Buddhism may be made out with some plausibility. In the East sanctity and asceticism are inseperable. The smug missionary who cannot preach the Gospel apart from a wife, mosquito curtains and a cottage piano, and who travels from one station to another in a palanquin borne by sweating natives, does not impress the imagination of an Oriental, and has small chance of making converts. It was possibly much the same with the barbarians who overwhelmed the Roman Empire. To strike their imagination and win them to the Cross, it may be that asceticism was a necessary phase of mission work. "The Spirit breatheth where He wills, and thou canst not tell whence He cometh or whither He goeth," is the Vulgate rendering of S. John iii. 8. But if it was at one time a necessary phase, it ceased to be so when the effect required was produced; and from the close of mediaeval times the hermit was an anachronism. The life of S. Antony by Athanasius, and the Historia Lausiaca or "Lives of the Fathers of the Desert," by Palladius (died c. 430), were published in the West, and inflamed minds with the desire to emulate the ascetics of Syria and Egypt; and speedily there were zealots who sought out retreats in the dens of the earth, in which to serve God in simplicity.
Some anchorites[5] are commemorated in both the Greek Menæa and the Roman Martyrology more worthy to be esteemed Buddhists than Christian saints. Theodoret, who wrote A.D. 440, describes the lives of two women of Bera, whom he had himself seen. They lived in a roofless hovel with the door walled up and plastered over with clay, and with a narrow slit left for a window, through which they received food. They spoke to those who visited them but once in the year, at Pentecost; not content with the squalor and solitude of their hut, they loaded themselves with masses of iron which bent them double. Theodoret was wont to peer in through the chink at the revolting sight of the ghastly women, a mass of filth, crushed double with great rings and chains of iron. Thus they spent forty-two years, and then a yearning came on them to go forth and visit Jerusalem. The little door was accordingly broken open, and they crawled out, visited the Holy City, and crawled back again.
Another visited by Theodoret was Baradatus, who built himself a cabin on the top of a rock, so small that he was unable to stand upright in it, and was obliged to move therein bent nearly double. The joints of the stones were, moreover, so open that it resembled a cage and exposed him to the sun and rain. Theodosius, patriarch of Antioch, as a sensible man, ordered him to leave it. Then Baradatus encased himself in leather so that only his nose and mouth were visible. Nowhere was the imitation carried to such wild extravagance as in Ireland. S. Findchua is described as living like an Indian fakir. In his cell he suspended himself for seven years on iron sickles under his arm-pits, and only descended from them to go forth and howl curses on the enemies of the King of Leinster.
In England also there was extravagance. S. Wulfric, who died in 1154, encased himself in a coat of chain-mail worn next his skin even in winter, and occupied a cell at Hazelbury in Somerset. S. Edmund of Canterbury (died 1242) wore a shirt of twisted horsehair with knots in it, and bound a cart rope round his waist so that he could scarce bend his body. In Advent and Lent he wore a shirt of sheet-lead. Thomas à Becket, when slain, was found by the monks of Canterbury to be wearing a hair shirt and hair-cloth drawers, and their admiration became enthusiastic when they further discovered that this hair-cloth was "boiling over" with lice. That this species of sanctity is still highly approved and commended to the imitation of the faithful we may suppose from the fact that Pius IX. in 1850 beatified the Blessed Marianna, because she was wont to sleep in a coffin or on a cross, and on Fridays hung herself for two hours on a cross attached to it by her hair and by ropes. On broiling hot days she denied herself a drop of water to quench an almost intolerable thirst. Verily Manichæism has eaten like a canker into the heart of the Latin Church.
But the early anchorites of Europe were not usually guilty of such extravagance. They were earnest men who sought by self-conquest to place themselves in a position in which they could act as missionaries. It was their means of preparing for the work of an evangelist. In most cases the apostle of a district sunk in paganism had no choice, he must take up his abode in a cave or in a hovel made of branches. In the Gallo-Roman cities the Christian bishops had gradually taken into their hands the functions of the civil governors. They were men of family and opulence, and lived in palaces crowded with slaves. They did nothing whatever towards the conversion of the country folk, the pagani. This was the achievement of the hermits. Till the peasants had been Christianised they would not invite the preacher of strange doctrines under their roofs, they looked on him with dislike or mistrust as interfering with their cherished superstitions and ancestral customs. He could not force his society on reluctant hosts.
S. Beatus, a British or Irish missionary, settled into a cave above the lake of Thun, dreaded by the natives as the abode of a dragon. He succeeded in his work, and died there at the advanced age of ninety. In 1556 the Protestant Government of Berne built up the mouth of the grotto and set soldiers to repel the pilgrims who came there. Now a monster hotel occupies the site, and those who go there for winter sport or as summer tourists know nothing or care less about the abode of the Apostle whence streamed the light of the Gospel throughout the land.
Below the terrace that surrounds the height on which Angoulême is built is the cave of S. Cybard (Eparchius died 581). An iron gate prevents access to it, and the path down to it is strewn with broken bottles and sardine tins. No one now visits it. But within, where are an altar and the mutilated statue of the saint, lived the hermit who in the sixth century did more than any other man to bring the people of the Angoumois out of darkness into light. But, as already said, when the work of evangelisation was done, then the profession of the hermit was no longer required, and such anchorites as lingered on in Europe through the Middle Ages to our own day were but degenerate representatives of the ancient evangelical solitaries.
A few years ago hermits abounded in Languedoc. They took charge of remote chapels on mountain tops, or in caves and ravines. They were always habited as Franciscan friars, but they were by no means a reputable order of men, and the French prefêts in conjunction with the bishops have suppressed them.
They were always to be seen on a market day in the nearest town, not infrequently in the taverns, and in the evening festooning along the roads on their way back to their hermitages, trolling out convivial songs spiced with snatches of ecclesiastical chants. "Mon Dieu," says Ferdinand Fabre,[6] "I know well enough that the Free Brothers of S. Francis, as they loved to entitle themselves, had allowed themselves a good deal of freedom, more than was decorous. But as these monastically-habited gentry in no way scandalised the population of the South, who never confounded the occupants of the hermitages with the curés of the parishes, why sweep away these fantastic figures who, without any religious character, recruited from the farms, never educated in seminaries, peasants at bottom, in no way priests, capable, when required, to give a helping hand with the pruning knife in the vineyard, or with the pole among the olives, or the sickle among the corn. Alas! they had their weaknesses, and these weaknesses worked their ruin." The salt had lost its savour, wherewith could it be seasoned?
It was not in Southern France alone that the part of the hermit was played out. An amusing incident in the confession of Fetzer, head of a gang of robbers who infested the Rhine at the end of the eighteenth century, will go some way to show this. The gang had resolved on "burgling" a hermit near Lobberich. Had he been an eremite of the old sort, the last place in which robbers would have expected to find plunder would be his cell. But in the eighteenth century it was otherwise, and this particular hermit kept a grocer's shop, and sold coffee, sugar, and nutmegs. The rogues approached the cell at night, and as a precaution one of them climbed and cut the rope of the bell wherewith the hermit announced to the neighbourhood that he was about to say his prayers. Then they broke open his door. In Fetzer's own words, "The hermit was not at home, but as we learned, had gone a journey in connection with his grocery business. In the hermitage, however, we found several men placed there to keep guard over his goods. We soon settled them, beat them with our cudgels and cast them prostrate on the floor. Then we burst open all the chests and cupboards, but found little money. There was, however, plenty of tea and sugar. As we were about to leave, a fearful storm came on, and without more ado we returned into the hermitage to remain there till it was overpast. In order to dissipate the tedium, we ransacked the place for food, and found an excellent ham and wine in abundance. I assumed the place of host. Serve the meal! Bring more! I ordered, and we revelled and shouted and made as great a din as we liked. In the second room the hermit had a small organ. I seated myself at it; and to make the row more riotous I played as well as I was able. The laughter and the racket did not cease till morning broke. Then I dressed myself up in the hermit's cowl and habit, and so went off with my comrades."[7]
I remember visiting a hermit in 1868 who lived on a ledge in the cliff above S. Maurice in the Vallais, where was a cave that had been occupied by the repentant Burgundian King Sigismund. He cultivated there a little garden, and I have still by me a dried bouquet of larkspur that he presented to my wife on our leaving after a pleasant chat. A pilgrimage to the cave was due on the morrow, and he had just returned from the town whither he had descended to borrow mugs out of which the devotees might drink of the holy spring that issued from the cave.
The Wild Kirchlein, in Appenzell, is now visited rather by tourists than by pilgrims. A huge limestone precipice rises above the Bodmenalp, that is a paradise of wild flowers. A hundred and seventy feet up the cliff gapes a cavern, and at its mouth is a tiny chapel. It is reached by what is now a safe pathway and over a bridge cast across a chasm. But formerly the ascent could not be made without danger. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, some Alpine shepherds, who had reached the cave, reported that they had seen in it the remains of an altar. This aroused interest, and in the summer of 1621 a Capuchin named Tanner ascended to the cave, blessed, and consecrated it as a place of pilgrimage. He said mass there and preached. He was shortly afterwards called away to Freiburg, and for thirty years the cave was disregarded and neglected. But at the end of that time Tanner returned to Appenzell, and interested the parish priest Ulmann in it. When war broke out between Schwyz and Zurich in 1656, Ulmann concealed the treasures of the church in the cave. This drew attention to it, and shortly after an altar was furnished with what was needful, and on the Feast of S. Michael in 1657 mass was again said there. Various matters —loss of friends, and contests with the secular authorities—wearied Ulmann, and he resolved on retiring as a hermit to the cave in the cliff, taking with him, however, an attendant. The swallows left, the winter storms came on, yet he braved the wind and cold, and remained a tenant of the cave for two winters and as many summers; but then, by order of the Bishop, he left to act as chaplain to a convent in Lindau. There he spent nine years, till falling ill, he felt a craving for the purer air of his Appenzell home, and obtained leave to return and again re-tenant the beloved cave. In his last will he bequeathed the Upper Bodmen Alp that was his ancestral inheritance for the maintenance of the Holy Grotto. After his death the little chapel with its tower was built, and a Capuchin friar occupied the hermitage. In 1853, the last hermit there, Brother Antony Fassler, fell down the precipice whilst gathering herbs. Since then there has been no such picturesque object to lead the visitor through the recesses of the cavern and show the stalactites; that office is now performed by the innkeeper of the hotel on the Alp.
The cave of S. Verena is one of the favourite pilgrim resorts in Switzerland. It is near Soleure, and lies in a valley of a spur of the Jura. According to the received tradition she ran after the Theban legion—in modern parlance was a camp-follower, but deserted the soldiers here, and took up her abode in this grotto. There is no mention of this hermitage earlier than 1426, and the legend has grown up since. That the cave was much more ancient, and was invested with holy awe, is no doubt true. In fact, there is reason to believe that Verena was a German goddess.[8] Her symbol is a comb, and in the wall are cut these words:
Pectore dum Christo, dum pectine servit egenis,
Non latuit quondam sancta Verena cavo;
that is to say, serving Christ and combing the heads of the poor, the holy Verena lived unconcealed in this grotto.
The way to the chapel is through woods, the valley closing in till bold rocks are reached. In a niche is a statue of the Magdalen, with the inscription, "I sleep, but my heart waketh." A few steps further is a representation of the Garden of Gethsemane. From this a long and steep stair leads up to the chapel, cut deep in the rock, with an altar in it. Behind this is the Holy Sepulchre carved in the stone, in the seventeenth century by the hermit Arsenius. On the other side of the chapel a long stone stair leads again into the open air. Under this stair is a hole in the rock into which the hand can be thrust. According to a "pious belief" the Saint one day was much tormented with the remembrance of the military, and longed to resume her pursuit of them, and she gripped the rock, which yielded like wax to her fingers.
Another Swiss rock hermitage is that of the Magdalen near Freiburg, in the cliff on the right bank of the Saane. At the close of the seventeenth century it was enlarged by a hermit, John Baptist Duprés, and his comrade John Licht. They worked at it for twenty years. Duprés dug a number of cells out of the sandstone, a kitchen with a chimney, a dining-room, a church, and a stable. The church measures 63 feet long, 30 feet wide, and is 22 feet high. He built a tower to his church, and gave his chimney the height of 90 feet so as to ensure that his fire should not smoke. The hermit Duprés was drowned in 1708 as he was rowing over the river a party of scholars who had come to visit him. No hermit lives there now. His residence is occupied by a peasant with his family.
On the Nahe, that flows into the Rhine, is the little town of Oberstein, whose inhabitants are nearly all employed in cutting and polishing agates, sardonyxes, and various other stones prized by ladies. Precipitous cliffs arise above the town, and contract the space on which houses could be raised, and these rocks are crowned by two ruined castles, the Older and the Newer Oberstein. About half-way up the face of the cliff, 260 feet above the river, can be seen a tiny church, to which ascent is made by flights of steps. The old castle rises above this, and stands 360 feet above the river, but its remains are reduced to a fragment of a tower. Separated from it by a notch in the rocks is the new castle that was destroyed by fire about thirty- five years ago.
In the old castle lived in the eleventh century two brothers, Wyrich and Emich von Oberstein. Both fell in love with the daughter of the knight of Lichtenberg, but neither confessed his passion to the other. At last, one day Emich returned to the castle to announce to his brother that he had been accepted by the fair maid; Wyrich, in an impulse of jealousy, caught his brother by the throat and hurled him down the precipice. His conscience at once spoke out, and in the agony of his remorse he had resort to a hermit who bade him renounce the world, grave for himself a cell in the face of the melaphyre clay—the hermit did not give to the rock its mineralogical name—and await a token from heaven that he was forgiven. Accordingly Wyrich von Oberstein scrambled up the face of the cliff as high as he could possibly go, and there laboured day after day till he had excavated for himself a grotto in which to live and expiate his crime. And a spring oozed out of the rock in his cave, and was accepted by him as the promised token of pardon. After a while he obtained that a little church should be consecrated which he had constructed at the mouth of his cave. On the day that the bishop came to dedicate the structure he was found dead.
What is supposed to be his figure, that of a knight in armour, is in the chapel. This latter was rebuilt in 1482, and the monument came from the older structure. The chapel has been handed over to the Calvinists for their religious services, which is the humour of it, as Nym would have said.
Beside the highroad (route nationale) from Brive to Cahors, but a very little way out of the town, is a mass of red Permian sandstone perforated with caves. In 1226 S. Anthony of Padua was at Brive, and resided for a while in one of them. Since then it has been held sacred and occupied by Franciscans, who erected a convent above it; in so doing they cut into and mutilated some very ancient artificial workings in the sandstone for the contrivance of rock habitations. The cave, however, was neglected when the Franciscans were expelled at the Revolution, but they returned in 1875 and rebuilt or greatly enlarged their convent, only to be expelled again in 1906. The grottoes, now converted into chapels to the number of four, are in a line under the superstructures, that in the middle the actual hermitage. This, moreover, has been cut out of the rock artificially, at a higher level than the others, that are natural and are untenable, owing to the incessant drip of water from the roofs. The first cave is dedicated to S. Francis of Assisi, but it is a rock shelter rather than a cave. It is natural, but in one corner a small water-basin has been scooped. The second cave is mainly natural, but partly artificial; it is dedicated to Notre Dame Auxiliatrice. The third, reached by steps, is wholly artificial, and before the stairs were built to lead to it, was inaccessible save by a short ladder. It placed the occupant in safety from invasion by wolves or other objectionable visitors. It measures 21 feet by 15 feet. This, which was the habitation of S. Anthony, communicated with the two lower caves, one on each side, by lateral openings.
The fourth cave is that of Des Fontaines, in which are basins of water cut in the rock, receiving the everlasting drip from above.
It is impossible to give one tithe of the hermitages in caves that are to be seen in Europe; but a few words may be devoted to La Sainte Beaume in Var, where, according to tradition, Mary Magdalen spent the end of her days. The tradition is entirely destitute of historical basis, and rests on a misconception. Scott has described the cave with tolerable accuracy in "Anne of Geierstein," though he had not seen it himself.
The cave is in the range of cretaceous limestone that runs east and west to the north-east of Marseilles, and at La Beaume Sainte reaches the height of 3450 feet. The wild flowers, the fine forest, and the white rocks impart great interest to the visit without consideration of historical and legendary association. The botanist will find the globe flower, the anemone, the citisus, the man, the bee, the fly orchids, and the Orchis militaris in considerable abundance; also banks of scented violets.
The grotto is at a considerable height above the valley. According to the legend, as already said, Mary Magdalen spent the close of her life here, and numerous anchorites settled in the caves around. In the fifth century Cassian placed monks in the grotto, but they were driven away by the barbarians, and La Sainte Beaume fell into complete oblivion till the thirteenth century.
The cave is lofty and spacious, not a little damp, and water drips from the roof. To protect the altar a baldachin has been erected over it. At the extreme end is a raised dais of natural rock, on which the saint is supposed to have made her bed. Another cave is that of the Holy Sepulchre, which was formerly occupied by the monks of S. Cassian. From the Sainte Beaume a path leads upwards to the Saint Pilon, the highest pinnacle of the rock which here rises to a point, out of which grow wild pinks and aromatic shrubs, and where falcons make their nest. According to the legend, Mary Magdalen was elevated by the hands of angels to this point seven times a day, there to say her prayers, which proceeding surely entitles her to a place as the patroness of aviation.
At Sougé, on the Loir, a little below the troglodyte town of Trôo already described, half-way up the cliff is the cave-chapel of S. Amadou. It is 45 feet deep and 15 feet wide. The altar is at the end surmounted by a niche containing a statue of the saint, and to this formerly pilgrimages were made from all the valleys round. But this is a thing of the past, for it is now private property and converted into a cellar. What is peculiar about this chapel is that it is surrounded by a gallery also rock-hewn, and it was customary for the pilgrims to pass round the chapel through this gallery before entering it.
At Villiers, near Vendôme, is the chapel of S. Andrew, that was formerly inhabited by a hermit. It is divided into two chambers. That on the left is the chapel proper, with its altar. Above the other opening is a bas-relief of the Crucifixion. When levelling the floor of this hermitage a few years ago, so as to convert it into a commodious private dwelling, a number of skeletons were found in graves sunk in the rock.
Montserrat is famous throughout Spain on account of its statue of the Virgin, which is supposed to have been made by S. Luke, and brought to Barcelona in the year 50 by S. Peter, which, of course, is nonsense. S. Luke never painted, and S. Peter never visited Spain. This extraordinary mountain derives its name from its saw-like appearance, Mons serratus. It consists of pudding-stone, "a strange solitary exiled peak, drifted away in the beginning of things from its brethren of the Pyrenees, and stranded in a different geological period." Mr. Bayard Taylor thus describes the summit after a two hours' climb. "Emerging from the thickets we burst suddenly upon one of the wildest and most wonderful pictures I ever beheld. A tremendous wall of rock arose in front, crowned by colossal turrets, pyramids, clubs, pillars, and ten-pin shaped masses, which were drawn singly, or in groups of incredible distinction, against the deep blue of the sky. At the foot of the rock the buildings of the monastery and the narrow gardens completely filled and almost overhung a horizontal shelf of the mountain, under which it again fell sheer away down, down into misty depths, the bottom of which was hidden from sight. In all the galleries of memory I could find nothing resembling it."[9]
The spires of rock range about 3300 feet high, jumbled together by nature in a sportive mood. Here and there, perched like nests of the solitary eagle, are the ruins of former hermitages, burnt by the French under Suchet in July 1811, when they amused themselves with hunting the hermits like chamois in the cliffs, hung the monks of the monastery, plundered it of all its contents, stripped the Virgin of her jewellery, and burnt the fine library. Hitherto the monks, when periodically dressing the image, had done so with modestly averted eyes, but Suchet's soldiers had no such scruples. This image had been entrusted in the ninth century to a hermit, Jean Garin. Now Riguilda, daughter of the Count of Barcelona, was possessed by a devil, in another word, crazy, and was sent to be cured by the image or the hermit. A temptation similar to that of S. Anthony followed, but with exactly the opposite result. To conceal his crime, Jean Garin cut off Riguilda's head, buried her, and fled. Overtaken by remorse he went to Rome, and confessed his sin to the Pope, who bade him become a beast, never lifting his face towards heaven until the hour when God himself would signify his pardon.
Jean Garin went forth from the Papal presence on his hands and knees, crawled back to Montserrat, and there lived seven years as a wild beast, eating grass and bark, and never looking up to heaven. At the end of this time his body was entirely covered with hair, and it so fell out that the hunters of the Count snared him as a wild animal, put a chain round his neck, and brought him to Barcelona. Here an infant of five months old, on beholding the strange beast, uttered a cry and exclaimed, "Rise up, Jean Garin, God has pardoned thee." Then, to the amazement of all, the beast arose and spoke in a human tongue. Happily the story is no more true than that the image was made by S. Luke. It is an old Greek story of S. James the Penitent, with the penance of Nebuchadnezzar tacked on to it.
Forbes says: "The traveller should visit the ruined hermitages of Sta. Anna, San Benito, not forgetting La Roca Estrecha, a singular natural fissure; the highest and most interesting of all is the S. Jeronimo. These retreats satisfied the Oriental and Spanish tendency to close a life of action by repose, and atone for past sensualism by mortification. The hermitages were once thirteen in number; each was separate, and with difficulty accessible. The anchorite who once entered one, never left it again. There he lived, like things bound within a cold rock alive, while all was stone around, and there he died, after a living death to the world, in solitude without love. Yet they were never vacant, being sought for as eagerly as apartments in Hampton Court are by retired dowagers. Risco says that there were always a dozen expectants waiting in the convent the happy release of an occupant. To be a hermit, and left to live after his own fashion, exactly suited the reserved, isolated Spaniard, who hates discipline and subjection to a superior."[10]
Above Cordova, also in the Sierra, are rock hermitages serving in Andalusia the same purpose that did those of Montserrat in Catalonia. These also never wanted a tenant, for in the Iberian temperament, inedia et labor, violent action alternating with repose is inherent.
In Italy, Subiaco must not be left without a notice. It was hither that S. Benedict fled when aged fourteen. He chose a cave as his abode, and none knew what was his hiding-place save a monk, Romanus, who let down to him from the top of the rock the half of the daily loaf allotted to himself, giving him notice of its being ready for him by ringing a little bell. Here, once, troubled by the passions of the flesh, Benedict cast himself into a thicket of thorns, and afterwards planted there two rose-trees which still flourish. This is now converted into a garden, and near by all the monks of Subiaco are buried.
Near La Vernia, a favourite retreat of S. Francis, is a deep cleft in the rocks, and a cave to which he was wont to retire at times. One friar only, Brother Leo, was permitted to visit him, and that once in the day with a little bread and water, and once at night; and when he reached the narrow path at the entrance, he was required to say Domine labia mea aperies; when, if an answer came, he might enter and say matins with his master. In a second cave the saint slept. Outside this is the point of rock from which according to the Fiorette: "Through all that Lent, a falcon, whose nest was hard by his cell, awakened S. Francis every night a little before the hour of matins by her cry and the flapping of her wings, and would not leave off till he had risen to say the office; and if at any time S. Francis was more sick than ordinary, or weak, or weary, that falcon, like a discreet and charitable Christian, would call him somewhat later than was her wont. And S. Francis took great delight in this clock of his, because the great carefulness of the falcon drove away all slothfulness, and summoned him to prayers; and moreover, during the daytime, she would often abide familiarly with him."
The Warkworth hermitage in Northumberland was made famous by Bishop Percy's ballad.
In "Rambles in Northumberland and on the Scottish Border," 1835, it is thus described. "The hermitage of Warkworth is situated on the north bank of the Coquet, and about a mile from the castle. Leaving the castle yard and passing round the exterior of the keep, a footpath leads down the declivity on the north side of the river. Entering a boat and rowing a short distance along the river, the visitor is landed at the foot of a pleasant walk which leads directly to the Hermitage. This secluded retreat consists of three small apartments, hollowed out of the freestone cliff which overlooks the river. An ascent of seventeen steps leads to the entrance of the outer and principal apartment, which is about eighteen feet long, its width being seven feet and a half, and its height nearly the same. Above the doorway are the remains of some letters now illegible, but which are supposed when perfect to have expressed, from the Latin version of the Psalms, the words: Fuerint mihi lacrymæ meæ panes die ac nocte. The roof is chiselled in imitation of a groin, formed by two intersecting arches; and at the east end, where the floor is raised two steps, is an altar occupying the whole width of the apartment. In the centre, immediately above the altar, is a niche in which there has probably stood a figure either of Christ or of the Virgin.
"Near the altar, on the south side, there is carved in the wall a monumental figure of a recumbent female. In a niche near the foot of the monument is the figure of a man, conjectured to be that of the first hermit, on his knees, with his head resting on his right hand, and his left placed upon his breast. On the wall, on the same side, is cut a basin for the reception of holy water; and between the principal figure and the door are two small windows. At the west end is a third small window, in the form of a quatrefoil.
"From this apartment, which appears to have been the hermit's chapel, a doorway opens into the corner one, about five feet wide, and having also an altar at the east end, with a basin for holy water cut in the wall. In the north wall of this inner chamber an arched recess is cut, the base of which is of sufficient length and breadth to admit a middle-sized man reclining. An opening, cut slantwise through the wall dividing the chamber, allows a person lying in this recess to see the monument in the chapel. In the same wall there is rather an elegantly- formed window, which admits the light from the outer apartment. To the north of the inner chamber is a third excavation, much smaller than the other two, which led to an outer gallery to the west, commanding a view of the river. This gallery, which has been much injured by the fall of a part of the cliff, is said to have been arched like a cloister. After returning from these dimly-lighted cells to open day, and passing through a stone archway, a flight of steps cut in the side of the rock leads to the hermit's garden at the top."
S. Robert of Knaresborough, who died 1218, was the son of one John Thorne of York, of which city his brother was mayor. Leland informs us that he forsook "the lands and goodes of his father to whom he was heire as eldest sonne." Leaving his home he came to Knaresborough, where he found a certain knight ensconced in a cave scooped out of the rock by the side of the Nidd, and dignified by the name of S. Giles's Chapel. But the knight had had enough of it, and instante diabolo quitted his cave and made it over to Robert Thorne, and "returned like a dog to his vomit," which is a monastic way of putting the fact that he returned to his wife and family.
Robert, however, did not spend an entire year in the cave, for certain latrunculi having stolen hys bred, hys chese, hys sustenance, he quitted the grotto—doubtless at the approach of winter—and estab- lished himself in much more comfortable quarters at Bramham. He was certainly a hermit who boiled his peas, for we are told that he maintained four men-servants; two were occupied in tilling his farm, one attended to his personal wants—was, in fact, his valet—and one went about with him on his begging expeditions.
The cave is 10 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 7 feet high. There is an image of a knight at the entrance, by some supposed to be more modern; it is, however, said that S. Robert did much himself to adorn and enlarge his chapel.
It was in this cave that Eugene Aram and Richard Housman murdered Daniel Clarke on 8th February 1745, for the sake of some jewellery and plate they had induced him to bring to S. Robert's Chapel with him.
It was not till fourteen years after that the body of Clarke was found, and Mrs. Aram declared that her husband and Housman had murdered him; Housman turned King's evidence, and Aram was hung on 16th August 1759.
Roche hermitage in Cornwall occupies a spire of rocks of schorl that shoots 100 feet above the surrounding moor. Built into the rocks is a little chapel, and beneath it is the hermit's cell. This seems to have been occupied continuously down to the Reformation, and various stories are told of the tenants.
There was once a steward under the Duchy named Tregeagle. He was a peculiarly nefarious agent, and very hard upon the tenants. His spirit is still supposed to roam over the moors, and not to be able to find peace till he has dipped the water out of Dozmare Pool with a nutshell.
Once, pursued by devils, he fled for sanctuary to Roche, and thrust his head through the east window of the chapel, but, being a broad- shouldered spirit, could force his way in no further. The devils were baffled and withdrew. But Tregeagle's position was not desirable. The wind, the rain, and the hail lashed that portion of his person that remained exposed, and he dared not withdraw his head from sanctuary lest the devils should be on him again. At every cutting blast he howled, and his howls so disturbed the hermit of Roche, that he found it impossible to sleep or to attend to his prayers on windy nights. Unable to liberate Tregeagle himself, he sent for the monks of Bodmin, and they imposed on the wretched steward the task aforementioned, and assured him immunity from pursuit whilst engaged upon it.
"Robin Hood's Stable," in Nottinghamshire, at Pappewick, of which Throsby gives an illustration in his "History of the County," 1797, was in all probability a hermitage. Mr. W. Stevenson writes: "I am convinced, from its nearness to the great old road, its position due south, and its evidences of columns and arches, that it is an old cell or anchorite's cave of equal, if not superior age, to the neighbouring abbey. The interior would make a good picture, as the dampness of the rock is favourable to green vegetation in sportive lines and patches on the warm colours and the shadows of the rock. It is an artist's dream. Time, during the lapse of centuries, has made sad havoc with the entrance. Originally it had a level cutting running into the hill until a face of rock was won in which to make a door and hew an underground apartment.
"The hollow of this cutting has been raised, the banks rounded down, the roof over the door has fallen; the hand of destruction has worked back into the cave, and all evidence of the door and its whereabouts has vanished. The floor is loaded with sand and blocks fallen from the roof. The floor being so buried renders it difficult perfectly to judge of the depth of the apartment." What a habitation for a rheumatic hermit! The "sportive lines and patches" of vegetation suggest sportive tweaks and twinges of the loins.
Two miles from Repton is Anchor Church, where are the remains of a hermitage in a singular rocky bank, rising abruptly above the pastures on the verge of the Trent. "The summit is clothed with overhanging woods, forming only a portion of the high grounds, but the suddenness of the change which the scenery derives from the appearance of precipitous and broken rocks, occurring in the midst of a soft and beautiful region of pastoral luxuriance, is very striking. A curious series of chambers, communicating with each other, has been at some distant period beyond tradition excavated in that portion of the rock which is most naked and precipitous; and from this circumstance the site has been designated Anchor Church, signifying the residence of a hermit. At a distance it bears a very close resemblance to a Gothic ruin; the rude openings formed to admit light into the several cells, and the ruggedly fashioned doorway aiding, at first sight, the appearance of an artificial pile of grey antiquity. The rock is found principally to consist of rough grit-stone, and of a congeries of sand and pebbles. The Trent, which now flows at a short distance, formerly ran close under the rock, as is indicated by a dead pool of water situate near its foot, and communicating with the channel of the river.
"A tall flight of steep steps rudely fashioned of large unshapen blocks of stone, conducted to the entrance of the hermitage, and the dim light within its hoary, moss-grown, sloping walls is admitted through irregularly formed apertures, pierced through the dense body of the rock, and command magnificent views of the subjacent scenery."[11]
In the month of August 1742, when occasion arose for setting a post in a "Mercat House" at Royston in Hertfordshire in order to place a bench on it for the convenience of the market women, the men in digging struck through the eye or central hole of a millstone, laid underground, and on raising this found that it occupied the crown of a cave sixteen feet deep, as appeared by letting down a plumb line. There was a descent into it of about two feet wide, with holes cut in the chalk at equal distances, and succeeding each other like the steps of a ladder. It was accurately circular. They let a boy down, and from his report of its passing into another cavity, a slender man with a lighted candle descended, and he confirmed the report, and added that the second cave was filled with loose earth, which, however, did not quite touch the wall, which he could see to right and left.
The people now conceived the notion that a great treasure was concealed here, and some workmen were employed to enlarge the passage of descent. Then with buckets and a well-kerb, they set to work to clear it, and drew up the earth and rubbish that filled the cave. When they came to the floor of the descending passage they ran a long spit downwards and found that the earth was still loose. The vast concourse of people now became troublesome, and the workmen were obliged to postpone further operations till night.
After much time and labour had been expended, the cave was cleared, but no really scientific examination of it was made till 1852, when Mr. Beldam drew up a report concerning it, which he presented to the Royal Society of Antiquaries. The cave is bell-shaped, and from the floor to the top of the dome measures 25-1/2 feet. The bottom is not quite circular, but nearly so, and in diameter is from 17 feet to 17 feet 6 inches. A broad step surrounds it, 8 inches wide and 3 feet from the floor. About 8 feet above the floor a cornice runs round the walls cut in a reticulated or diamond pattern two feet wide. Almost all the space between the step and this cornice is occupied with sculpture, crucifixes, saints, martyrs, and subjects not easy to explain. Vestiges of red, blue, and yellow are visible in various places, and the relief of the figures has been assisted by a dark pigment. In various parts of the cave, above and below the cornice, are deep cavities or recesses of various forms and sizes, some of them oblong, and others oven-shaped, of much the same character as those found in the French caves. High up are two dates cut in the chalk, in Arabic numerals, that have been erroneously read 1347 and "Martin 1350 February 18," but these should be respectively 1547 and 1550, as Arabic numerals were not in use in England in the fourteenth century, and the name of Martin and the February are distinctly sixteenth century in character. The figure carving was not done by the same hand throughout.
Apparently the cave was originally a shaft for burial or for rubbish, and a hole in the side and floor that Dr. Stukeley took for a grave was nothing but a continuation downwards of the ancient shaft, as is proved by what has been found in it. But in mediaeval times the puticolus was enlarged and converted into a hermitage, and a hermit is known to have occupied it till the eve of the Reformation, for in the Churchwarden's book of the parish of Bassingborne, under the date 1506, is the entry, "Gyft of 20d. recd, off a Hermytt depting at Roiston in ys pysh" It is true that this entry does not absolutely fix the residence of the hermit at the cave, but it is hardly probable that there were two hermitages in so small a town.
The cave was probably filled in with earth in 1547 and 1550, when the inscribed dates were affixed. After which its existence was forgotten, and the Mercat House was erected over it before 1610. The carvings have been supposed to belong to the period of Henry II. and Richard Cur-de- Lion, but it is not possible to put them earlier than the beginning of the sixteenth century, at all events such as represent the Crucifixion. It is possible, however, that some of the kingly or knightly figures may be somewhat earlier.
Stukeley was quite convinced that the Royston cave was the oratory of the Lady Rohesia, daughter of Aubrey de Vere, who succeeded his father in 1088, but there exists no evidence that she ever lived at Royston. The place takes its name from Rohesia, daughter of Eudo Dapifer.
In 1537, says Froude, while the harbours, piers, and fortresses were rising in Dover, "an ancient hermit tottered night after night from his cell to a chapel on the cliff, and the tapers on the altars before which he knelt in his lonely orisons made a familiar beacon far over the rolling waters. The men of the rising world cared little for the sentiment of the past. The anchorite was told sternly by the workmen that his light was a signal to the King's enemies" (a Spanish invasion from Flanders was expected), "and must burn no more; and when it was next seen, three of them waylaid the old man on his way home, threw him down, and beat him cruelly."[12]
The following notice appeared in the Daily Express of 9th June 1910. "A subterranean chamber with a spiral staircase at one end and a Gothic roof has been discovered at Greenhithe. It is believed to have been a hermit's cell."
The hermit left a pleasant memory behind him when he disappeared from England, perhaps just in time before complete degeneration set in as in France and Germany, Italy and Spain. Shakespeare, whenever he introduces him, does so in a kindly spirit, and represents him as a consoler of the afflicted and a refuge to the troubled spirit. By Spenser also he is treated with affection.
"Towards night they came unto a plaine
By which a little hermitage there lay,
Far from all neighbourhood, the which annoy it may.
And nigh thereto a little chappel stoode,
Which being all with ivy overspred
Deckt all the roofe, and, shadowing the roode,
Seem'd like a grove faire braunched over hed:
Therein the hermit, which his life here led
In streight observance of religious vow,
Was wont his hours and holy things to bed;
And therein he likewise was praying now,
Whenas these knights arrived, they wist not where nor how."
I do not recall any harsh words spoken of the departed hermit. After the Reformation it was felt that a factor in life was gone that could be ill spared.
In these days when we live in a hurricane of new ideas, in the stress of business, we cannot understand the attractiveness of the peace of a cell away from the swirl of the storm, or the value of the hermits as guides of life. When the hermit was swept away, into his place as counsellor of the troubled stepped the witch, and to her those had recourse who had previously sought the eremite. The influence of the witch was always for evil, that of the hermit was usually good. The troubled soul desires a confidant and an adviser. The parish priest is not always spiritually minded, and is not always disinterested. What is hid from the wise and prudent is revealed to babes, and for the guidance of distracted consciences, the healing of wounded spirits, the words of the childlike hermit were a boon. However, he is gone past recall, and into his room have stepped the lawyer who demands six-and- eightpence for a word of advice, and the doctor whose charges are proportionate to the rental of our houses.
Footnotes edit
- ↑ "Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet," Lond. 1910.
- ↑ Delaunay (F.), Moines et Sibylles, Paris, 1874, p. 316.
- ↑ Philo gives an account of the sacred banquets of the Therapeutæ that strongly reminds us of the Agapæ of the Early Christians.
- ↑ Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., v. i.
- ↑ Properly an anchorite is a recluse, walled into his cell; a monk is a solitary; and an eremite or hermit is a dweller in the desert.
- ↑ Barnabé, Paris, 1899
- ↑ Der neue Pitaval, Leipzig, xviii. p. 182
- ↑ Rocholz, Dei Gaugöttinnen, Leipzig, 1870.
- ↑ Taylor (B.), "Byways of Europe," Lond. 1869, i. p. 23.
- ↑ "Handbook of Spain," Lond. 1845, p.496. A visit to the image is heavily indulgenced. Pope Paul V. granted remission of all his sins to any one who entered the confraternity of our Lady of Montserrat. Mr. B. Taylor says of the image: "I took no pains to get sight of the miraculous statue. I have already seen both the painting and the sculpture of S. Luke, and think him one of the worst artists that ever existed."
- ↑ Bigsby (R.), "Historical and Topographical Description of Repton in the County of Derby," Lond. 1854.
- ↑ "History of England," vol. iii. p. 256.