Fuller, in his “Church History,” says: “St. Guthlake, a Benedictine monk in 708, was the first Saxon that professed a hermitical life in England, to which purpose he chose a fenny place in Lincolnshire called Crowland—that is, the ‘raw or crude land’; so raw, indeed, that before him no man could digest to live therein. Yea, the devils are said to claim this place as their peculiar, and to call it their own land. Could those infernal fiends, tortured with immaterial fire, take any pleasure or make any ease to themselves by paddling here in puddles and dabbling in the moist dirty marshes? However, Guthlake took the boldness to ‘enter common’ with them, and erect his cell in Crowland. But if his prodigious life may be believed, ducks and mallards do not now flock thither faster in September than herds of devils came about him, all whom he is said victoriously to have vanquished. After the example of Moses and Elias, he fasted forty days and nights, till, finding this project destructive to nature, he was forced in his own defence to take some necessary but very sparing refection. He died in his own cell; and Pega, his sister, an anchoritess, led a solitary life not far from him.”
ST. GUTHLAC, HERMIT OF CROYLAND (A.D. 708).
This St. Guthlac, according to his biographer, after he had been two years living in a monastery, began to long for the wilderness and a hermitage. Being directed to a fen of immense size in the east of England, he met a man named Tatwaine, who told him of an island which many had attempted to inhabit, but no man could do it on account of manifold horrors and fears and the loneliness of the wide wilderness, so that no man could endure it and fled from it. The holy man at once selected and went through the wild fens till he came to a spot called Croyland. It was a place of accursed spirits; but he was strengthened with heavenly support, and vowed that he would serve God on that island all the days of his life. He used neither woollen nor linen garments, but was clothed in skins; and he tasted nothing but barley bread and water. He was sorely tempted by the devil; but at last the ravens, the beasts, and the fishes came to obey him. Once a venerable brother named Wilfred visited him, and they held many discourses on the spiritual life, when suddenly two swallows came flying in, and, behold, they raised up their song rejoicing. And often they sat fearlessly on the shoulders of the holy man Guthlac, and then lifted up their song, and afterwards they sat on his bosom and on his arms and his knees. When Wilfred had long beheld with wonder the birds so submissively sitting with him, he asked the reason, and Guthlac answered him thus: “Hast thou never learned, brother Wilfred, in Holy Writ, that he who hath led his life after God’s will, the wild beasts and birds have made friends with him? And the man who would separate himself from worldly thoughts, to him the very angels come near.” When Guthlac died in due time, angelic songs were heard in the sky, and all the air had a wondrous odour of exceeding sweetness.
ST. SIMEON STYLITES (A.D. 459).
St. Simeon Stylites, who immortalised himself by living on a high pillar, flourished about 459, was the son of a shepherd, and in his youth displayed a genius for mortifications of the flesh. He begged admittance to a monastery, and at once outdid all the monks there; for while they ate only once a day, he ate only once a week, and that on Sunday. He at a later stage passed the forty days of each Lent without eating or drinking. Not content with a hermitage, he built himself a small unroofed enclosure of rude stones, on a high mountain forty miles east of Antioch, exposed to the weather. Crowds began to flock to see him and get his benediction. He next built a pillar six cubits high, and lived on it four years. He gradually raised higher pillars; and the fourth time he made a pillar of forty cubits (sixty feet) high, on which he spent his last twenty years of life. It was only three feet in diameter at the top, so that he might not have even the luxury of lying down or sitting. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross; but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to the feet. He bowed his body in continual prayer, and a visitor once counted twelve hundred and forty-four reverences of adoration made by him in one day. He made exhortations to the people twice a day. He died at sixty-nine in the act of prayer on his pillar, and the bishops and all the people round attended his burial, and many miracles were said to have been worked that day in testimony of his sanctity.
A PILLAR MONK IN WESTERN CLIMATES (A.D. 591).
In 591 Vulfilaic, a monk of Lombardy, had a pillar erected for him at Treves, and stood upon it barefoot, enduring great hardship in the winter. The bishops therefore compelled him to come down and to live like other monks, telling him that the severity of the climate would not permit him to imitate the great Simeon of Antioch. He obeyed his superiors, but with tears and reluctance. And this, says Fleury, is the only instance that we know of a stylites or pillar monk in the Western world.
ST. HERBERT, THE HERMIT OF DERWENTWATER (A.D. 650).
Herbert was a monk of Lindisfarne or of Melrose at the same time as St. Cuthbert, by whose advice he retired to the island in Derwentwater, which is five miles long and one and a half miles broad, and lived there. He used to meet St. Cuthbert once every year; and at their meeting about 687 that saint, being then Bishop of Lindisfarne, said to him on parting, “Remember at this time, brother Herbert, to ask and say to me all that you wish, for after our parting now we shall not see each other with the eyes of the flesh in this world; for I know that the time of my departure is at hand, and that I must shortly put off this tabernacle.” On this Herbert, falling at his feet with groans and tears, said, “For our Lord’s sake, I beseech you not to leave me, but remember your most faithful companion, and entreat the mercy of Heaven that we who have together served Him on earth may pass together to behold His grace and glory in the heavens. You know I have always studied to live according to your direction; and if from ignorance or infirmity I have in any point failed, I have taken pains to chastise and amend my fault according to the decision of your will.” The bishop bent in prayer, and being immediately informed by the Spirit that his request was granted, said, “Rise up, my brother, and do not mourn, but rather rejoice greatly, for the mercy of Heaven has granted what we asked.” They separated, and never again met; for on March 20th, 687, their spirits, departing from the body, were immediately united in the blessed vision of each other, and by the ministry of angels translated to the kingdom of heaven. In 1374 the then Bishop of Carlisle directed that the anniversary of these saints’ death should be commemorated by the vicar of Crosthwaite, with a choir chanting the Mass of St. Cuthbert on this St. Herbert’s isle.