ascetic, ascetick

& 8. [In Ger. ascetisch (adj.), ascet (substan.); Fr. ascétique; Sp., Port., & Ital. ascetico; Gr. ἀσκητικός ( askēticos ) = industrious, belonging to an athlete; ἀσκητής ( askētes ) = (1) one who practises any art or trade, (2) a hermit; ἄσκησις (askēsis) =(1) exercise, training, (2) a profe ion; ἀσκέω ( askeo ) = (1) to form by art, (2) to practise, to exercise.] A. As adjective : 1. Retired from the world, and engaged in devotions and mortifications. he entered into such an ascetic course as had well nigh put an end to his life."- Life of Bishop Burnet, ch. 13. 2. Severe, harsh, rigid, precise. B. As substantive: I. Ordinary Language: 1. Spec.: One who retires from active and adopts a contemplative life spent in devotion, in mortification of the body, .; a hermit, a recluse. "I am far from commending those asceticks , that, out of a pretence of keeping themselves unspotted from the world, take up their quarters in desarta."Norris. 2. Gen.: One who, whether he retires from active life or not, adopts habits of self-mortification. II. Church History : A cla of persons who, aspiring after higher attainments in holine than other Christians, thought they would best attain their object by self-mortification. They therefore abstained from wine, flesh, matrimony, and worldly busine ; and moreover emaciated their bodies by long vigils, fasting, toil, and hunger. Both men and women embraced this austere mode of life. During the second century of the Christian era, when they first attracted notice, they lived by themselves and dre ed differently from others, but did not altogether withdraw from the society and converse of ordinary men. During the course of the third century they gradually withdrew to the Egyptian desert, and early in the fourth (about A.D. 305) were a ociated by Anthony into monastic communities. [ANCHORITE, MONASTICISM.] "The Ascetics who obeyed and abused the rigid precepts of the Gospel."- Gibbon : Decl . & Fall , ch. xxxvii