in church-history, a sect who condemned all use of flesh, and marriage, as not instituted by God, but introduced at the instigation of the devil. The word is compounded of the privative a and yw woman. They are sometimes also called Agynneni, and Agynii; and are said to have appeared about the year 694. It is no wonder they were of no long continuance. Their tenets coincide in a great measure with those of the Abelians, Gnostics, Cerdonians, and other preachers of chastity and abstinence.

AGYRTÆ, in antiquity, a kind of strolling impostors running about the country, to pick up money by telling fortunes at rich men's doors, pretending to cure diseases by charms, sacrifices, and other religious mysteries; also to expiate the crimes of their deceased ancestors, by virtue of certain odours and fumigations; to torment their enemies, by the use of magical verses and the like. The word is Greek Αγγρται, formed of the verb συνειδη, I congratulate; alluding to the practice of Charlatans, who gather a crowd about them.

AGYRTÆ, among the Greeks, amount to the same with Ἐρυθραῖοι among the Latins, and differ not much from gypsies among us.