The character of Merlin has been a recurring figure in Western popular culture ever since the Middle Ages. In his many iterations, Merlin is most often associated with the legendary King Arthur...
Archaeologists conducting a survey of a previously overlooked cave dwelling in Derbyshire have concluded that the sandstone caves were actually an Anglo-Saxon home way back in the 9th century. They’...
Railway engineers in Britain have made a remarkable discovery, uncovering a cave that may have been used as a shrine or hermitage in the Middle Ages . The cavern was uncovered after a landslide by...
In our contemporary world, noise pollution has reached dangerous levels. But even in what many reminisce as “quieter times” in the “more peaceful” past people were still searching out silence and...
In our crowded modern cities, there are some who wish that they could live by themselves in a remote wilderness area sometime in the past. They yearn for a time when life was, at least supposedly,...
2014 was certainly a year to remember for a then-24-year-old Russian man. He spent eight months of that year in a social experiment. The purpose? To experience what life was like for a 10th century...
Kim Haines-Eitzen / The Conversation In today’s world, loneliness seems to have reached epidemic proportions. Countless studies have highlighted the serious and negative impact that loneliness has on...
St. Daniel was completely devoted in his quest to contemplate spiritual and religious issues through a life of solitary contemplation. He really did not want to be disturbed in this endeavour and...
William “Amos” Wilson, who is known also as the Pennsylvania Hermit, is a figure in the folklore of Pennsylvania, more specifically of its south-eastern and south-central regions. William lived...
The word “hermit” often elicits thoughts of men with long, scraggly hair and beards, eyes lined with wrinkles and filled with wisdom, and clothes a bit torn and dirty but otherwise, no worse for wear...
The Katskhi Pillar is the name given to a natural limestone column located in Georgia. On the top of this monolith is a monastery, which was built during the 1990s. Today, a solitary monk by the name...
On the 3rd of January 1931, an article appeared in the Modesto News-Herald entitled ‘Mystery of the Loltun Cave hermit’. The article recounted the encounter between a man by the name of Robert Stacy-...
Theodoret of Cyrrhus (423–457) tells us that when little girls played games in forth-century Syria, they played monks and demons. One of the girls, dressed in rags, would reduce her little friends...
A 24-year-old man in Russia is spending eight months living alone in the freezing Russian wilderness as a 10 th century hermit as part of a social experiment. The project began in September and is...