Dominic Alexander, "The hermit and the crowd: or the social use and lordship’s abuse of holiness."
Paper presented at the New Socialist Approaches to History seminar, Institute of Historical Research, April 24th 2004
Medieval hermits were not merely refugees from a harsh society, seeking to live a pure religious life in solitude. Their ascetic values have been interpreted as an epiphenomenon of the re-appearance of a money economy in twelfth century Europe. They have been interpreted also as liminal outsiders capable of acting as negotiators; sacred men who could resolve disputes. However they could also be the instigators of and leaders in social conflict. The hagiographers of the twelfth century were profoundly aware of, and uncomfortable with, the social meanings in the lives and cults of holy men. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were a period of profound transformation in which structures of effective lordship were finally established over almost the whole population of western Europe. Holy men and their cults played a range of roles in this process, as points of resistance or foci for the consolidation of new structures of power. In the lives of hermits, some of the dynamics of feudalisation can be seen between the lines of hagiographic piety.