Andrew Jotischkey. The Perfection of Solitude: Hermits and Monks in
the Crusader States. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1995.
As the author's doctoral dissertation, The Perfection of Solitude is a
scholarly work with a thorough bibliographical apparatus, but does not have the
popular appeal that the subject matter merits. Introduction: Monks and Jerusalem Perhaps the most intriguing topics are the rise and fall of eremitical
Carmelites and the many good biographies and hagiographical accounts of hermits.
But the author's focus does not permit pursuit of the history of the Carmelites
nor reproduction of the many interesting hermit stories. Along the way, however,
Jotischkey offers enough insights to provide good clues to the nature of
eremiticism in Crusader and Orthodox lands, and these insights provide a
summation of the book. The crisis of European monasticism that began in the eleventh century was the
decline of monastic spirituality in the face of growing benefices and the
corrupting effect of increasing property and bureaucracy. While the Crusades
were promoted by no less a monastic authority than Bernard of Clairvaux, the
intended spiritual beneficiaries were laymen, not monks. The scandal of seeing
monks desert their monasteries to go to the Middle East, even if for spiritual
purposes, gave European monasticism the embarrassing scenario of being
insufficient to address the spiritual needs of its closest adherents. The monk renounces mendicancy and travel because his vowed monastery should
be his equivalent Jerusalem, the sufficient holy land for working out salvation.
As Bernard wrote in reprimand to the Cistercian abbot Arnold of Morimond, for a
monk to renounce his vow of stability to go East was "a grave scandal for the
whole Order." The monastic reformer Peter Damian concurred. But the Crusades had unleashed the strong interest in biblical places, what
one scholar has more broadly termed "geopiety." Official suspicion of
pilgrimages and sacred places could not be contained. The emigration of monks to
Crusader lands continued, and the creation of new monastic communities was bound
to be seen in Europe as a challenge to institutional monasticism. The emergence
of Western hermits in the Middle East only added to the dilemma of control for
Western churchmen. Westerners discovered Orthodox hermits for the first time, and though they
could not readily communicate because of language, the different spirituality of
eastern Christianity was a strong influence. Where eremiticism was seen as an
uncontrolled eccentricity in the West, the Orthodox saw it as the culmination of
a spiritual progression, the pinnacle from coenobitic life ascending in
worthiness to the life of a hermit. The continued presence of hermits in Syria
and Palestine reinforced the assembly of Western hermits settling on Mount
Carmel. The Western hermits modeled their lives after the Old Testament figure of
Elijah, whom they saw as the first hermit. Jotischkey shows the many medieval
sources which maintained this view of Elijah. Patristic and medieval commentary celebrated Elijah as the Old Testament
"type" of the hermit. Jerome discussed the respective claims of Elijah and John
the Baptist to the title of "the first monk," alongside the Egyptian desert
fathers Anthony and Paul of Thebes. Rupert of Dentz, in the twelfth century,
described Elijah as the "author and initiator" of monasticism. To Peter Damian,
Elijah was the originator of the eremitical life. Monks themselves, like the
Egyptian Onuphrius, were aware of following the example of Elijah; Peter the
Venerable, looking back at the generation of Onuphrius as founders, saw Elijah
as the ultimate monastic founder-figure. ... Gerard of Nazareth prefaced his
biographical collection of hermits by appealing to the example of Elijah. And the list goes on: Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St. Victor, Peter
Comestor, Philip Ribot. So it was logical that the first Western monks in the Middle East with an
eremitical interest would want to settle near Elijah's residence. The place was
already known, mentioned as early as the fourth century by the Spanish pilgrim
Egeria, as Carmel. Even earlier Jewish sources knew the site. Christian hermits
had been living on the mountainside for centuries, in abandoned tombs and caves.
The mountain was fertile and offered good springs of fresh water. Western monks had but to link Elijah as the precursor of John the Baptist and
to link the Virgin Mary to Carmel as spiritual protector of Ejijah and grantor
of his visions to find Carmel their special home. Jotischkey documents the many commentators and interpreters. He follows the
origins of the Carmelites in the Middle East as an eremitical order (hermits in
private cells coming together only for their liturgy) and their acceptance of a
modest "rule" by Albert of Vercelli. He chronicles the overwhelming pressure
from papal and Western monastic officials to curb the independence of the
Carmelites, to control their eremiticism. Basically, the order was forced to move to Europe and transform its founding
principles -- eremiticism and the rejection of property -- into the principles
of existing mendicant orders of "friars" -- namely, Dominicans and Franciscans,
both of whom had likewise been reigned in and forced to reform. And that, in
summary, was the end of the Carmelites as they were originally inspired. Only Chapter 7 touches on individual hermits and their stories, all of which
are hidden away in Latin primary sources and collections. How we should
like to read them, not, perhaps , as rich as the stories of desert fathers and
mothers but offering intriguing insights of a far different generation and its
attempts to follow the perennial spiritual vision of eremiticism. Jotischkey rightly summarizes the Christian hermit quest: In widely diverging traditions, and throughout the medieval period, the
solitary life was proclaimed as the consummation of monasticism, and hermits as
the purest interpreters of the traditions established by Moses, Elijah, and John
the Baptist. The heights of perfection that could be climbed in solitude were
described in similar terms by both Eastern and Western monks. And the link from spiritual solitude to mysticism is strengthened by the
shared experiences of Western and Eastern Christianity. As tenuous as the shared
experiences might have been, the Carmelite John of the Cross in
sixteenth-century Spain would have understood the sentiment of his Eastern
counterpart, the Syrian Jacobite monk Gregory bar Hebraeus, who wrote: When, by the hard labors of asceticism, the body has been cleansed and the
mind purified, the windows of the sense have been shut and the room of the heart
is enlightened, then the dove will show herself to the mind: not lastingly,
however, but as a flash of lightning which appears and vanishes, she shows her
beauty, making sweet her fruit to the palate. ¶
1. Gerard of Nazareth and Western Hermits of the Crusader States
2. The Character of Latin Monasticism in the Crusader States
3.Orthodox Monks and Monasticism in the Holy Land
4.The Origins of Monasticism on Mount Carmel
5.The Early Carmelites
6. The Development of the Carmelite Order in the Latin East
7. The Geography of Holiness
Conclusion