Hermits places and contexts in Byzantine Cappadocia

With the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, pressure against Christians in the empire increased. As a result of these pressures, monkhood and hermitage life began with people who wantes to live their religion more freely. Monasticism, which spread in Palestine and Egypt, spread to Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia over time. The hermit life of St Basileus and the Cappadocian Fathers, which extends to Cappadocia, can be seen in the rock-carved places. The monks, who withdrew from the world and minimised their vital needs, sometimes separately and sometimes together, worshipped both individually and together in the cells where they lived their retteatsIn some cases they continued their retreats within a church or monastery, in other cases in rock-carved places near a church or monastery. With this retreat life, which is closer to the Kenobitic life, the monks were also seen as an internediary between the Divine and the wordly perception. The place where the monk Lives his hermitages is shaped According to the state and perception of the monk's hermitage. Within the scope of the thesis, among the monk cells belonging to the Byzantine Period in Cappadocia, there are monk cells on the upper floor of the St. Simeon Chapel in Paşabağları in Zelve Ruins and across a chapel located to the east of the St. Simeon Chapel, and 9 monk cells in Keşlik Monastery in Cemil village of Ürgüp, A cell belonging to the monk Niketas on the Üzümlü Church in the Kızılçukur Valley, the room in the fourth nave of the Karabaş Church in the Soğanlı Valley, the monk cell in the upper part of the Ayvalı Church in the Güllüdere Valley and the monk cell in the Başköy settlement in Mavrucandere were examined.