The Hieronymites or Jeronimites, also formally known as the Order of Saint Jerome (Latin: Ordo Sancti Hieronymi; abbreviated OSH), is a Catholic cloistered religious order and a common name for several congregations of hermit monks living according to the Rule of Saint Augustine, though the role principle of their lives is that of the 5th-century hermit and biblical scholar Jerome.

Two of these hermits, Pedro Fernández y Pecha and Fernando Yáñez y de Figueroa, decided it would be more advantageous to live a more regular way of life in a community, under an authorized monastic rule.

On 18 October 1373, Pope Gregory XI issued a papal bull recognizing them as a religious order, under the Rule of Saint Augustine.

[3][4] Though their way of life was very austere, the Hieronymites also devoted themselves to study and to active ministry, possessing great influence at the courts both of Spain and of Portugal.

In the 16th century they were a major supporter of the efforts of the Portuguese mystic John of God, who established the nursing order in Granada bearing his name.

[4] The islands of the Antilles in the Caribbean were entrusted to them for pastoral care by Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, who sent a small party of three monks to Hispaniola.

The leader of the monks, Luis de Figueroa, was later named the third bishop of Santo Domingo in 1523, which at the time also included the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico.

However, the troubles of the Republic of 1931 and of the subsequent Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 prevented any real progress until the general government of the order was constituted in 1969.

Through solitude and silence, assiduous prayer, and healthy penance, the order attempts to bring its monks into closer union with God.

This is the environment in which the life of the Hieronymite monk is developed, with the morning usually spent in manual work—the normal means of support for monks—while afternoons are dedicated to contemplation, prayer and study.

[8] Seventeenth-century Hieronymite Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was that convent's most famous member, known in her own era as "the Tenth Muse."