medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The difficulty in pinning down and categoring these tiny communities emphasises the importance of George's questions and the pertinence of John's point about transferred popular traditions.
Very close to Charley and Ulverscroft was a small priory subject to the Cluniacs of Bermondsey. Again it was home to only three religious and the differences between this priory, called Alderman's Haw, and the hermits of Charley must in practice have been minimal. It had vanished by the fifteenth century, when its site was described as the remains of 'some hermitage, cowhouse or sheepcot'.
Another house of comparable size in the immediate district happens to be that of the Augustinian hermits outside the west gate of Leicester, also known as friars.
The cluster of small communities in Charnwood - which also provided places for solitary hermits - clearly sought seclusion in the forest. However, medieval forests were busy places, their resources exploited, like Charnwood, by surrounding communities over a wide area. As George points out, hermits and semi-eremitical communities often lived not far off, in not actually on, the beaten track.
Graham
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From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Briggs [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 22 December 2011 23:48
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [M-R] communal 'hermits'
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 22/12/2011 23:33, Graham Jones wrote:
>
> In the Forest of Charnwood in Leicestershire, near to your old stamping ground, George, there was the Augustinian priory of Charley, described at an early stage as a hermitage with three brothers. See the VCH Vol. 2 (online) for this, and similarly the A. priory of Ulverscroft, similarly described as a hermitage in the thirteenth century. I suspect one or two other A. priories in Leicestershire fall into the same category.
Charley is particularly confused, as it seems to have started off as a
Benedictine alien priory (with the difficulties of categorisation which
I mention in a previous exchange), later there is this report of it
being a hermitage - at least one source calls it an Augustinian Friary
which later became a priory of Augustinian canons. It was later united
with Ulverscroft, and I do wonder if there has been some transference of
the legend about the hermitage - as the same story is told about both.
John Briggs
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