Abstract

This essay offers the first results of a survey of reclusion in medieval hagiography, an attempt to synthesise and summarise the phenomenon of voluntary reclusion in the Middle Ages, re-examined through the mirror of hagiographical sources. The starting point was a census based on the Acta Sanctorum and other repertories, which already demonstrated the need to rethink, at a taxonomic level, about the category of reclusion itself. The essay is accompanied by an Appendix with the results of the census.