monachist

adj

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.”

   “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.”

   “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 ...”

noun

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

   “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.”

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

   “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.”

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