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 ἔρημος, desert or wilderness; and according to the etymology, should rather be wrote Eremit.
Paul surnamed 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.—Several of the ancient hermits, as St Anthony, &c. though they lived in deserts, had yet numbers of religious accompanying them.
There are also various orders and congregations of religious distinguished by the title of hermits; as, hermits of St Augustine, of St John Baptist, of St Jerome, of St Paul, &c.