Folia Canonica 5. (2002)

STUDIES - W. Becket Soule: Hermits in Current Eastern Catholic Legislation; CCEO cc. 481-485

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W. BECKET SOULE

A.D.3 In the period following the Edict of Milan, the number of hermits increased astronomically; according to some calculations, there were more than 5,000 in the Judaean desert alone.4

In the western Church, the eremitical life has been overshadowed almost completely by the common monastic life of cenobites, although in several periods there was a brief revival of eremitical life (such as the eremitical movements of the eleventh century). Although the gradual extinction of the solitary life in the Latin Church was well advanced by the time of Benedict XIV, that pontiff spelled out the existing rules for the eremitical life in his De Synodo Dioecesana.5 There are currently no canons in the 1983 Code of Canon Law (CIC) comparable to cc. 481^185 of the CCEO. CIC c. 603, in the section on general norms for the consecrated life, provides for an eremitical life under the supervision of the diocesan bishop; this figure of consecrated life, however, would parallel the “ascetics who imitate the eremitical life” mentioned in CCEO c. 603, rather than those called “hermits” by the CCEO.

The eremitical life took various forms. Some hermits were recluses, living in cemeteries, caves, cisterns, etc. This form of life was widespread in the East, and practiced by both men and some women.6 Other observances included perpetual silence, living in the open, or on top of pillars (as in the case of the famous stylites). Some were shepherds, while others simulated madness and insanity.7 Pope John

3Cf. J-M. Besse, Les moines d'Orient, Paris, 1900, 19-56; Id., Anachorètes in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, Paris, I, 1134—1141; A. J. Festugiere, Les Moines d'Orient. I. Culture ou sainteté: Introduction au monachisme oriental, Paris, 1961, 41-57.

4Cf. B. Luykx, Eastern Monasticism and the Future of the Church, Stamford, 1993, 94—100. For a fuller introduction to Egyptian and Palestinian monasticism, see D. J. Chitty, The Desert a City, London, 1966.

5 Benedictus XIV, De Synodo Dioecesana, Lib. 4, cap. 3, par. VI, Parma, 1760, I, 169-170. The matter was left virtually untouched by the 1917 Code of Canon Law.

6 There were women hermits until the eleventh century; thereafter nuns were found only in cenobitic convents. Cf. A-M. M. Talbot, Monastic Experience of Byzantine Men and Women, in Greek Orthodox Theological Review 30 (1985) 16-18.

7Cf. Besse, Les Moines, (nt. 3), 46—47; Theodoret, Historia Religiosa 17-21 (SC 257, edd. Pierre Canivet and Alice Leroy-Molinghen [Paris, 1979], 34—123), which records the exploits of the shepherd-monks James and Abraham of Cyr, who imposed on themselves the penance of standing in the open all their lives; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 6.33, in PG 67, 1394. The practice of hermits living on the top of pillars was a penitential custom of the fifth century: the practice began in Syria and spread to Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine and Greece. Lucian, in the second century A.D., recorded a pagan ascetic in Hieropolis who climbed a column twice a year to spend two weeks in contemplation (De Syria Dea 28-29 in The Works of Lucian v. 4, ed. with a highly eccentric Eng. trans, by A. M. Harmon [Cambridge, Mass., 1925], 378-383). Palladius wrote of Elpidius, a Palestinian hermit who inhabited a cave on the top of a mountain, and never turned his face to the west for 25 years: J. A. Robinson (ed.),