Anchorite Anchoret, or more properly Aua-cliorct (Gr. ), a person retired from society, especially one who has withdrawn himself with the specific purpose of attaining a higher degree of spirituality. The term is particularly applied to the hermits who began to appear in the Christian church about the 3d century, living in solitude generally in desert places, and not, like the later cenobites or monks, in communities. They often subjected themselves to extreme penances and mortifications. St. Paul the Hermit, St. Simeon Stylites, and St. Anthony of the Desert were among the most celebrated of them, Paul being reckoned the earliest of the solitaries. After the institution of monasticism they gradually disappeared in the West. A synod in 092 ordained that no person should be admitted an anchoret until he had resided three years in a monastery. Hermits are still to be found in the East, unconnected with any convent. Some writers consider Enoch, Elijah, John the Baptist, and Jesus to have been anchorets. The Thera-peutae of Egypt, who were probably derived from the Jewish Essenes, were anchorets, or at least ascetics.

The same is true to a degree of the Nazarites of the Old Testament. But so far as Christian anchorets are concerned, they must be referred to the time of the Decian persecution, as the era when they first attained to any historic consideration.