Representações eremíticas e santidade no norte da Inglaterra: Godric de Finchale e os beneditinos de Durham nos séculos XI e XII

Abstract

The hermitism was a form of solitary holiness that was opposed to cenobitic life. In the Anglo-Norman period, the north of current England, the royal domain in the Nortumbria region faced opposition and difficulties in implantation. Benedictine monasteries had an influence in the region. The interactions between the Benedictine priory of Durham and Saint Godric of Finchale (1067-1170), a local saint hermit who lived in Finchale, showed the ecclesiastical interest, particularly the monastic one, in the hermitic manifestations that occurred in the area. Our research proposal is to understand the strategies developed by the Benedictines of that institution for the construction of a model of eremitic sanctity through the Life of Saint Godric (VSG). This Vita was made in the Benedictine priory of Durham in the second half of the 12th century and is attributed to the monk Reginaldo de Durham (? -1190). It was necessary to discuss the particularities of the hermitage movement and its close connection with the reintroduction of regular life in the wide Northumbria region. The relations between the ideals of ascetic and cenobitic life were also marked by tensions and by points of contact and reciprocity. These two models of religious life (the cenobitic and the hermitic) can be related from the connections of the priory of Durham, the monastic community, with the hermits that were in their orbit, between the second half of the 11th century and the 12th century. The identification and understanding of the holiness model conveyed in the VSG indicate the demands that the stereotype of holy man and the concept of holiness sought to meet.