With this book, an updated version of a Cambridge PhD thesis, Tom Licence seeks to challenge the current view that hermits in twelfth-century England were a religious reaction on the part of the indigenous population to the effects of the Norman Conquest. Instead, he wants to place them in a wider context both chronologically and geographically: chronologically, by viewing them as a continuation of a well-established Anglo-Saxon eremitical tradition, and geographically, by setting them in a wider European context, in which an increase in the number of hermits in the eleventh century has often been held to be a sign of tensions within the monastic life. This line is not fully accepted by the author, who notes that recruitment into Benedictine houses remained buoyant in the eleventh century; evidence accumulated here shows a usually harmonious and often close relationship between hermits and monastic foundations, the latter often acting as patrons. The approach adopted by the author is a qualitative, not a quantitative, one, so there are no attempts to count hermits or to plot them on maps. The sources particularly used are Lives of the saints, where extant (especially of Godric of Finchale, Godric of Throckenholt, Wulfric of Haselbury, and Christina of Markyate), and works written to guide hermits, for example, Goscelin of St. Bertin’s Liber Confortatorius.

After an introduction establishing the context of scholarship and the terminology used for solitaries in this period, the early Anglo-Saxon background and the European context are sketched in chapter 1. The early Anglo-Saxon scene is rather thinly sketched in; more could certainly have been said about Cuthbert and about Guthlac, both of whom were important role models for later hermits and cenobites. Their early religious training is skimmed over, too quickly, as “Benedictine”—which is open to discussion in Cuthbert’s case and wrong in Guthlac’s, since he was trained as a cleric. The continental European context is fuller, ranging from Italy to Normandy and then to the growth of “new hermits” across France; German solitaries are dealt with in a later chapter on recluses.

Chapter 2 examines evidence for hermits in tenth- and eleventh-century England. The tenth-century monastic reform movement took some interest in hermits; Æthelwold supported cults of anchorite-saints, and several Benedictine houses, notably Thorney and Ramsey, had hermits attached to them in the eleventh century. Benedictine houses in eleventh-century Worcestershire had an especially active network of hermits, some of whom played a role in the post-Conquest monastic revival in Northern England. The author could deepen his analysis on both points, and he could also take further his search for ascetic elements in the Vita Wulfstani—Wulfstan’s travels, for example, could be viewed as a form of spiritual peregrination. Chapter 3 deals with recluses, opening with the continental context in the tenth and eleventh centuries and then moving to the admittedly rather limited evidence for them in eleventh-century England. The abbeys of Peterborough and Bury St. Edmunds both supported female recluses by the late eleventh century, but cells for recluses, in spite of the fact that they were cheap to build, were still rare in England as late as 1100; it is noticeable that Eve, the inspiration for Goscelin’s Liber Confortatorius, chose to go to France to be enclosed there.

The rest of the book deals with the experiences of hermits and recluses in the twelfth century. Chapter 4 surveys the systems that provided for their economic support; the discussion of personal networks and patronage is effective, and the account of how hermits managed to feed themselves is gripping, although not appetizing, but more could have been done to link up discussion of their economic activity with current research on settlement and assarting. The following two chapters look at the spiritual motives for undertaking a solitary life, in theory and in practice; chapter 5 examines how anachoresis was viewed, first, as a penance and, then (in a more developed way), as a form of purgatory that would be continued after death. At the same time as this, in the twelfth century, it became fashionable to see it as an imitation of Christ. It is helpful to see the religious motives and devotional exercises of solitaries placed at the heart of the book since usually more emphasis has been placed on their spiritual guidance of others (the subject matter of chap. 7), and important though that was, it was not their main function. The final chapter looks at the process by which solitaries might become saints: support from a major monastic house, preferably Benedictine, went far to achieve this. Those who remained buried in minor churches, like Wulfric, did not manage to achieve canonization. Lives of post-Conquest English solitaries were essentially bunched into the twelfth century, with one outlier, Robert of Knaresborough, in the thirteenth.

This book has much to commend it, in particular, its stress on continuity across the period of the Norman Conquest, its account of motives for adopting a solitary life, and above all its discussion of the saints’ cults and hagiography associated with solitaries. It has considerably advanced our understanding of English hermits and recluses in the high middle ages. More polish, however, would have made the book a really good one. Better editing would have made the prose more controlled and more precise and would have eliminated the too-frequent typographical errors and occasional factual ones, such as the remark that Much Wenlock was still a nunnery in Goscelin’s lifetime (62). Better still, some areas of discussion, for example, the part played by hermits in the foundation of new religious houses in the early twelfth century or the question of how far experience varied for lay and clerical solitaries, could have been developed further.