ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book ultimately derived from Henrietta Leyser's B. Litt thesis, and it is an original account of an important subject. Its central difficulty is indicated by the book's full title. This implies some such question as: 'When is a hermit not a hermit', requiring an answer of the kind which has to fall over itself. For example, 'When he is a member of the Cistercian order' or of one of the other twelfth-century monastic associations which had eremitical influences on their origins and aspirations. These movements have many diversities, if also underlying coherences. The history of women, or at least what can be known of the history of women in Anglo-Saxon times, is largely a matter of religion: the wonderful greatness of the seventh and eighth century abbesses; the uniqueness of Anglo-Saxon missionary women.
