The Rule of Saint Paul, the First Hermit, in late medieval England

Abstract

Throughout Europe in the late middle ages there was a perceptible interest in the way of life and ideals believed to have been followed in the early centuries of Christianity. There was little that was new in this interest; reform movements within the Church from the eleventh century onwards had frequently followed such a path. Accompanying this interest however was a desire by laymen to live in a pious and holy fashion; not to enter the coenobitic life rejecting the world as they might have done in earlier centuries but to live a religious life while remaining attached to the outside world. Perhaps the best known manifestation of this spirit was in the emergence of the Brethren of the Common Life in Northern Europe in the fifteenth century; another manifestation of the same kind can be found in the lower echelons of English society in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries with the widespread appearance of men who vowed to adopt the lifestyle of the desert fathers while performing labouring functions useful to society – as hermits, following the rule of Saint Paul the first hermit.