HERMIT, or EREMIT, Eremita, a devout person retired into solitude, to be more at leisure for prayer and contemplation, and to disencumber himself of the affairs of this world.—The word is formed from the Greek ερεμίς, desert, or wilderness; and, according to the etymology, should rather be wrote Eremit.
Paul furnished the hermit is usually reckoned the first hermit; though St Jerome at the beginning of the life of that saint says, it is not known who was the first.—Some go back to John the Baptist, others to Elias: others make St Anthony the founder of the eremitical life; but others think that he only rekindled and heightened the fervour thereof, and hold that the disciples of that saint owned St Paul of Thebes for the first that practised it. The persecutions of Decius and Valerian are supposed to have been the occasion.—A hermit is not reputed a religious, unless he have made the vows.