Eremitic Tradition: An eremite is a hermit--one who deliberately lives alone seeking spiritual enlightenment in the desert, forest, or wilderness. The first five centuries of Christianity were marked by a number of eremitic (hermitic) traditions and cenobitical (monastic) traditions in which devout Christians attempted to remove themselves from what they saw as a corrupt, materialistic world in favor of spiritual contemplation either alone in the wilderness or together with like-minded folk within a monastery's walls. They often modeled themselves on Old Testament prophets or on the example of Christ spending forty days and nights in the wilderness facing Satan's temptations. Examples of eremites from The New Catholic Encyclopedia include John the Baptist, Saint Athanasius, Saint Basil, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Saint Jerome (the translator of the Bible into Latin), Saint Nilus, Saint Isidore of Pelusium, Saint Epiphanius, Saint Mary Magdalene, and countless others.

 

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