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 ἐρημός, desert or wilderness; and, according to the etymology, should rather be wrote Eremit.

Paul furnishes 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 led 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 An- thony, &c., though they lived in deserts, had yet num- bers of religious accompanying them.

There are also various orders and congregations of re- ligious distinguished by the title of hermits; as, hermits of St Augustine, of St John Baptist, of St Jerome, of St Paul, &c.

Hermit (Gaytier Peter the), a French officer of Amiens in Picardy, who quitted the military profes- sion, and commenced hermit and pilgrim. Unfortunate- ly, 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 lament- ing 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 commis- sion to excite all Christian princes to a general war against the Turks and Saracens the possessors of the Holy Land. See Crusades.