cloistral

adj

1. Of, pertaining to, resembling or living in a cloister.

   “1606, Samuel Daniel, The Queen’s Arcadia, in The Poetical Works of Mr. Samuel Daniel, London: R. Gosling, 1717, The Epistle, pp. 151-152, … it is in that Kind [of Words], as best accords With rural Passions, which use not to reach Beyond the Groves, and Woods, where they were bred And best become a Cloistral Exercise, Where Men shut out retir’d, and sequestred From publick Fashion, seem to sympathize With innocent and plain Simplicity:”

   “As to the marriage of the friars in this cloystral house, their founder, Ivon, in my opinion, was quite right in this notion.”

   “Coming straight from the convent, she had gone in behind the high walls of the manor-house that was almost more cloistral than any convent could have been.”

   “[T]he three men followed, rushing into the hall, pausing, bringing with them into its stale and cloistral dimness something of the savage summer sunlight which they had just left.”

2. Sheltered from the world; monastic.

   “Speak not! he is consecrated— / Breathe no breath across his eyes: / Lifted up and separated / On the hand of God he lies, / In a sweetness beyond touching,—held in cloistral sanctities.”

   “[H]owever cloistral our elementary schools may be, sheltering the eternal flame of the high ideal of human existence, Jimmy Shepherd, aged twelve, and Nancy Shepherd, aged thirteen, know very well that the eternal flame of the high ideal is all my-eye.”

3. Secluded.

   “[C]loistral avenues, / Where silence dwells if music be not there: […]”

   “Then, responsive to the bird’s insistence, / From the margin of some cloistral shore / Came a murmur up the hollow distance, / “On the morrow will I ope the door!””