Abstract

This article offers an overview of voluntary reclusion in Germanic-speaking lands in the Middle Ages. It shows that recluses could often be found in the vicinity of monasteries, parish churches, chapels and other ecclesiastical institutions. The paper also focuses on the kind of records that give us information about recluses. These demonstrate that the anchoritic way of life was widespread over a period of several centuries, but particularly in the Late Middle Ages, when they could still be found not only in urban but also in rural contexts, as is proved by the example of a fifteenth-century recluse on whom the closing section of the paper focuses.