Eremitismo e reclusione volontaria a Verona

Eremitism and Voluntary Reclusion in Verona Drawing on early medieval hagiographical sources as well as notarial sources from the early and high middle ages, this paper aims to describe the sites and communities of hermits of the city of Verona, while looking at the practice of voluntary reclusion which has hitherto received little attention. It is often difficult to tell the two phenomena apart even if historiographic tradition tended to attribute the hermitic lifestyle –mobile and restless – to men and voluntary reclusion – protected and stable – to women. The terminology used in the sources (especially in notarial documents which this study is largely based on) does not always help us distinguish between the two phenomena. In fact, the terms heremita, inclusus/a, reclusus/a sometimes appear to be used indiscriminately which suggests that there was a degree of permeability between the practices of voluntary reclusion and eremitism. Of note for their peculiarity, also with regard to the abovementioned tradition, are the figures of the priest Bonsignore who in the first half of the thirteenth century lived in a cell near the church of Santa Lucia of Verona and his contemporary the hermit Sofia, who was never confined to a cell but moved about in various contexts of the city’s religious life.