monachist

comparative more monachist · superlative most monachist

1. Synonym of monastic.

   At its beginning, the monachist movement was a non-violent protest against the worldliness of a Church in service to the empire.

   1989, Ronald P. Hamel, Kenneth R. Himes, Kenneth B. Himes, Introduction to Christian Ethics, page 36

   2 more examples

   The tragedy of Hamlet resides in the revelation that marriage, monachist celibacy, secular libertinism, and imperial joinery — institutions which at first blush seem quite different from each other — are one and the same.

   1993, Marc Shell, Children of the Earth: Literature, Politics, and Nationhood, page 119

   This monachist regime which excites the soul and over-persuades these people (already lazy as the result of the climate and the lack of necessity) that life is only a transition and that the goods of this world are superfluities, combines with ...

   1995, Jean-François de Galaup comte de La Pérouse, John Dunmore, The Journal of Jean-François de Galaup de la Pérouse, 1785-1788, →ISBN

   Synonyms: monastic

plural monachists

1. A monk, especially one who was part of the religious reform movement of the fourth century.

   Indeed, the friars went much farther than the reforming monachists.

   1928, John David Griffith Davies, Frederick Robert Worts, England in the Middle Ages: Its Problems and Legacies, page 143

   3 more examples

   He lives in monastic loneliness, not that he is a hermit, but he makes himself into a monastery from which, as at Mount Athos, everything that deals with sex is excluded, and like the monachists of the Middle Ages he pays the penalty to desregarded Nature.

   1921, James Harold Edward Crees, Meredith Revisited, and Other Essays, page 95

   Both required industry and productive labor from all able-bodied members and were thus sharply distinguished from the begging, communal orders, such as the Buddhist and Christian monachists.

   1967, Martin Alfred Larson, The Essene Heritage

   The rage for production had swept England, as the rage for piety had swept the age of the monachists.

   1970, Philip A. M. Taylor, The industrial revolution in Britain: triumph or disaster?, page 69