The search for authentic eremitism in Western Christianity can be misleading. The Grandmontines were not true hermits at the beginning, except for the temperament of its founder, Stephen of Muret. Soon, that possibility was gone. Likewise the Camaldolese and Carthusians were never genuine hermits in the style of the desert fathers. They are too dependent on the formalities of ritual and sacrament to be true hermits. This, of course, is the pressure of the ecclesiastical authorities. This is not to say that their spirituality was essentially flawed. I dare not judge. But they were not hermits, and they did not live in solitude.