HIERONYMITES, Hieronymiani, or Sancti HieronymiEremitae, an order of monks, originally hermits, who resolved to adopt the cenobite life under the patronage of St Jerome and the rule of St Augustine. The order first arose in the 14th century in the neighbourhood of Toledo, through the influence of a Franciscan Tertiary named Vasco, and Fernando Pecha, chamberlain of Pedro the Cruel. It soon received papal sanction (from Gregory XI. in 1373), and made considerable progress in Spain and Portugal, where its chief seats were at Guadalupe and Yuste (both in Caceres, the latter being the scene of the cloister-life of Charles V.), and at the Escorial, the palace-monastery of Philip II. near Madrid; afterwards it gained a footing in America also. From about the close of the 16th century it rapidly decayed, and now it is wholly extinct. The dress of the order consisted of a coarse white frock with tan-coloured scapulary and cowl. About 1375 an order of nuns of St Jerome was originated by Maria Garcias de Toledo, and for a time was highly popular. As branches of the Hieronymite order must be reckoned the Congregation of the Eremites of St Jerome of the Observance, which, originated by Lupus Olivetus, third general of the Hieronymites, was sanctioned by Martin V. in 1426, and still subsists in some parts of Italy as the Congregation of St Jerome of Lombardy, and the Pauperes Eremitae Sancti Hieronymi, a congregation founded by Peter of Pisa in 1377, which obtained some foothold in Tyrol and Bavaria, as well as in Italy, and subsisted until 1688. See Reinkens, Die Einsiedler des heiligen Hieronymus, Schaffh., 1864.