SOURCE: Shepherd, Geoffrey. Introduction to Ancrene Wisse: Parts Six and Seven, edited by Geoffrey Shepherd, pp. ix-lxxiii. Exeter, England: University of Exeter, 1985.

In the following excerpt, Shepherd analyzes the solitary life of the hermit and the recluse, considers the need for theological rules, and examines the themes and methods of arguments used in Ancrene Wisse.

The Eremitical Life

Among Christians the first large-scale movement away from society took the form of an individual flight by men and women of the fourth century into the deserts of Asia Minor and North Africa. There, in the following centuries, the so-called Desert Fathers led their solitary lives, though these were often passed physically within the confines of a loosely organised communal settlement. A monasticism of this type became familiar in Celtic lands later, and also in England. Solitaries are common enough figures in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English and in...