abstract:The Hermit is a Canadian electronica group started by Hamish Thomson. Based in Vancouver, the group initially consisted solely of Thomson but has come to include other musicians, notably singer Allison Shevernoha.
You don't have to believe that legend, but Henry Plantagenet, later Henry II of England, husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the father of Lionhearted, did, and he came here to pray to the Black Madonna that still looks down on those who come to the little chapel by the tomb where the hermit's body was found.
Naive as he is about finding fish, he writes well about the Russians he meets, from his friend Yuri Brodsky who has spent 25 years cataloguing the history of the first Soviet gulag on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea to Fyodorovich, a trapper, who survived the camps in Siberia and stayed on to live like a hermit in the boundless far eastern taiga.
Did his two visits to Celestine's tomb and words of admiration for the saint, hermit and pontiff convey a secret message that Benedict was contemplating retirement?