HERMIT (Gaytier Peter the), a French officer of Amiens in Picardy, who quitted the military profession, and commenced hermit and pilgrim. Unfortunately, he travelled to the Holy Land about the year 1093; and making a melancholy recital of the deplorable situation of a few Christians in that country to Pope Urban II. and at the same time enthusiastically lamenting that Infidels should be in possession of the famous city where the Author of Christianity first promulgated his sacred doctrines, Urban gave him a fatal commission to excite all Christian princes to a general war against the Turks and Saracens the possessors of the Holy Land. See CRUSADES.
HERMITAGE properly signifies a little hut or habitation, in some desert place, where a hermit dwells.
Hermitage is also popularly attributed to any religious cell, built and endowed in a private and reclusive place, and thus annexed to some large abbey, of which the superior was called hermita.