HERMIT (late Lat. eremita, Gk. eremites, "an eremite, one living alone," from eremos, " desolate, solitary "): One who abandons society and lives alone, especially in a desert. In religious usage the word is applied to a Christian who, fleeing from persecution or seeking what was believed to be the more perfect life, retired to a lonely place and there led a life of contemplation and asceticism. Such hermits were especially common in the early time in the desert of Egypt. See Monasticism.

HERMIT ORDERS: A name given to religious orders whose members lived more or less isolated from one another, such as the Agonizants (q.v.), the Eremites of St. Augustine or Augustinian Hermits (see Augustinians), the Camaldolites, the Carmelites, the Carthusians, the Celestines, the Hieronymites, the Servites (qq.v.), the Order of Vallombrosa (see Gualberto, Giovanni), and the Williamites (q.v.).

HERMOGENES, hermej'e-nfz: A teacher of Gnostic tendency at the end of the second century. Tertullian wrote two treatises against him-the Adversus Hermogenem, which is still extant, and De causa anim�, which is lost. He mentions and quotes from him in several other places (Adv. Valentinianos, xvi.; De lortescriptione hareticorum, xxx., xxxiii.; De monogamia, xvi.). According to Eusebius (Hist. eccl., IV., xxiv. 1), Theophilus of Antioch wrote against a heretical teacher named Hermogenea. He is also mentioned in Hippolytus (Philosophuma, VIII., iv. 17), Theodoret (Har. fabttlarum compendium, i. 19), Philaatrius (Hær., xliv.)., and Augustine (Hær., xli). Mosheim and Walch have attempted to find in these references two heretics of the same name; but this is unlikely. It is better to suppose with Tillemont and Harnack that the earlier life of Hermogenes was spent in the East, where Theophilus wrote against him between 181 and 191, and that then he migrated to Carthage, where Tertullian wrote his treatises in 206 or 207 according to Uhlhorn (Hesaelberg gives 205; Noldechen, 202). He did not teach a thoroughgoing Gnostic system, but, probably in the belief that he was not contradicting the Church's faith, attempted to complete it by certain propositions taken from philosophy. He is thus not to be reckoned among the Gnostics proper. He asserted the eternity of matter, and denied the creation of the world out of nothing. The soul was material and thus mortal by nature, and obtained immortality only by the imparting of the divine spirit springing from the substance of God. What the Fathers tell of his christological errors is vague; Augustine and Philastrius reckon him among the Patripasians.

(G. Uhlhornt.)

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Bibliography: Harnack, Geschichte, i. 152-155, 200, i. 1, pp. 534-535, ii. 2, pp. 281-282; C. W. F. Walch, Historie der Ketzereien, i. 552, Leipsic, 1782; J. L. von Mosheim, Commentatio de rebus Christiania, p. 453. Helmetadt, 1753, Eng. transl., Commentaries on yhe Affairs of the Christians before the Time of Constantine the Great, London, 1813-35; C. Hesselberg, Tertulliana Lehre, Dorpat, 1848; A. Hauck, Tertulliana Leben and Schriften, pp. 259 sqq., Erlangen, 1877; C. P. Caepari, Kirchenhistorische Anecdota, pp . 225 sqq., Christiania, 1883; Krüger, History, passim; DCB, iii. 1-3; KL, v. 1900-02.