Bionic Teutonic

So I’ve been reading about St. Paul the Hermit (don’t ask) and in every bio I read, it mentions that he became good friends with Anthony the Abbot. I’ve been totally obsessed about this all day. Hermits have friends? Doesn’t that sort of defeat the whole purpose? I wonder what kind of etiquette one needs to follow when one is the friend of a hermit. Can you just swing by for tea, or is that considered rude? Of course, I imagine a Hermit rarely leaves his cave (solitude being harder to come by when one does), so it’s not like you run in to him at parties or the grocery store. How else are you going to stay in touch? Did Paul ever feel the urge to pump Anthony for all the latest village gossip? (So-and-so just got married. So-and-so was fed to the lions last week, etc.). Did they ever just hang out and kick it? Perhaps their friendship was based on taking care of each-others errands while the other was undertaking 40 days of silence and fasting. And how does a hermit maintain their solitude and still feed themselves anyway? Maybe Paul was just putting up with Anthony because he needed somebody to bring food, perhaps an occasional bottle of wine. Maybe every hermit has a friend who they rely on in such as way. Also, when your friend the Hermit starts to smell a little bit, do you tell him? Because really, who else will?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Musings, Randomata. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.