In CA 398 we explored the exceptional early medieval remains of Skellig Michael, with its terracing, beehive huts, and chapels. Located off the coast of County Kerry, it is a place battered by cold Atlantic rain and winds, and thus a fitting environment in which religious people could test their spiritual resilience through penitential isolation and deprivation. For those who hankered after even more harsh and ascetic conditions than the communal life of the islet’s small monastic settlement, though, there was another option: the difficult and hazardous climb to the Hermitage, an isolated retreat located just below the crest of the South Peak.
Simon Roffey compares the Hermitage with the locations sought out by the early Christian hermits in the eastern Mediterranean: the open sea surrounding Skellig Michael, with its elemental power and unknown vastness, was analogous to the Egyptian deserts, while the tiny mountain-top oratory compares to the stylite pillars of ancient Syria. It was at the latter that the hermitic ideal first made its appearance among a group of solitary men who spent their lives sitting on top of the region’s many Roman columns. Simeon the Stylite is the best-known example. His story came down to us through the Vita Symeonis (‘Life of Simeon’), composed by Theodoret, the 5th-century Bishop of Cyrrhus, who records that Simeon spent 28 years on his pillar, after first gaining his balance by being tied to a beam so that he would not topple over.
The Church has never been comfortable with people who go their own way in matters of religion, and those at the top end of the emerging hierarchy regarded the extreme practices of the stylites with suspicion. Church Fathers such as St Basil of Caesarea – who toured Egypt and Syria in AD 356 to study eastern models of monasticism before founding a community of his own at Cappadocia, in Turkey – came down in favour for what St Benedict called the ‘coenobitic’ lifestyle. Named from the Greek words koinos and bios, meaning ‘common’ and ‘life’ respectively, this promoted the ideals of collective spirituality, group support, the discipline of a daily routine, and, importantly, the leadership and authority of a spiritual superior.
