Female hermits might have to adopt a rule to secure its protection
e.g. against families trying to forcibly remove their daughters, or
to enable themselves to secure proper funding. I haven't got the
references with me but there is something in Studies in Church
History - either the Medieval Women volume or the Women in the Church
volume - about a major Florentine convent which began as a small and
informal grouping of hermits but was forced to accept a rule in order
to prevent nuns being removed by thei families.
A surprising (to me) number of medieval religious communities for
women originated in informal groupings but eventually accepted a
rule, often under pressure from (male) spiritual advisers. Roberta
Gilchrist (I think) suggests that they tended to accept the rule of
their advisers, which explains the uncertainty about the identity of
some of these communities. I have a feeling that some at least of our
Welsh Cistercian houses for women may have originated in this way.
Their names all begin with Llan, suggesting that they are on the site
of pre-existing churches.
About Derfel Gadarn (feast on 5 April): the church at Llandderfel in
Merionethshire, North Wales, has still got a wooden carving of a
large seated animal which is traditionally said to be the horse from
the medieval statue of Derfel. There is another chapel dedicated to
Derfel near Cwmbran in south Wales: it belonged to the monks of
nearby Llantarnam who maintained a priest and a hostel there. It was
probably a stopping-off point on the pilgrimage route from Llantarnam
to the shrine of the BVM at Penrhys, so we walk past it on our
annual reconstruction of the pilgrimage.
Maddy Gray
Cardiff
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