'In this study, Henrietta Leyser looks first at the shaping of the eremitical tradition in the Dark Ages, then at the dramatic change of the eleventh and twelfth centuries which led to hermits no longer living only as solita-ries but to their joining together to form commnunities. She points to the characteristics of these hermits and to ther anious search for the true 'apostolic life' which was to be the basic of a new monasticism, and e direct challenge to the established Cluniac rule. The values attached to poverty, manual labor, hospitality and the
liturgy are explained as the hermits, many of whom were laymen and women, found structures for their
observances and founded communities, both of monks and of canons. Grandmont, la Grande Chartreuse, Citeaux and Prémontré are among the most renowed and suggest something of the success and variety of the hermits' foundations.
Contemporary reactions to the new orders varied: the hermits often depended on their local bishop for support, but faced opposition from priests and black monks whose position they threatened. In France, the most outstanding of the new communities was Citeaux, but it was only the existence of so many like-minded communities which can explain its phenomenal growth.

The eremitical movements gave opportunities to more people to lead a religious life and created institutions with a new spirituality. At the same time the demands placed on its adherents were often too strict and many of the new houses lapsed back into a way of life which their founders had intended to avoid; yet the monastic face of Europe and the nataure of the monasdtic vocation had been irrevocably changed.

A list of religious houses with eremitical origins and an account of the sources used are provided in this book, which in common with others in this series, draws on material which has never been available before in English'.

'Henietta Leyser lives near Oxford.This is her first book'.