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A very small and close apartment, as in a prison or in a monastery or convent; the hut of a hermit. The heroic confessor in his cell. Macaulay.

A steward or butler of a monastery or chapter; one who has charge of procuring and keeping the provisions.

l known public school and charitable foundation in the building once used as a Carthusian monastery (Chartreuse) in London.

A Carthusian monastery; esp. La Grande Chartreuse, mother house of the order, in the mountains near Grenoble, France.

To rail at; to scold. [Obs.] In the aforesaid preamble, the king fairly claweth the great monasteries, wherein, saith he, religion, thanks be to God, is right well kept and observed; though he claweth them soon after in another acceptation. T. Fuller Claw me, claw thee, stand by me and I will stand by you; -- an old pr…

rt; (pl.) the series of such passages on the different sides of any court, esp. that of a monastery or a college. But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale. Milton.

A collection of the Lives of the Fathers or other devout work read daily in monasteries.

r loss or privation; amends; remuneration; recompense. The parliament which dissolved the monastic foundations . . . vouchsafed not a word toward securing the slightest compensation to the dispossessed owners. Hallam. No pecuniary compensation can possibly reward them. Burke.

A company of religious persons forming a subdivision of a monastic order.

A house occupied by a community of religious recluses; a monastery or nunnery. One seldom finds in Italy a spot of ground more agreeable than ordinary that is not covered with a convent. Addison.

Of or pertaining to a convent; monastic. "A conventual garb." Macaulay. Conventual church, a church attached or belonging to a convent or monastery. Wordsworth.

A lay friar or brother, permitted to enter a monastery for the service of the house, but without orders, and not allowed to sing in the choir.

ty; wickedness; impurity; bribery. It was necessary, by exposing the gross corruptions of monasteries, . . . to exite popular indignation against them. Hallam. They abstained from some of the worst methods of corruption usual to their party in its earlier days. Bancroft.

A convent or monastery. [Obs.] Bale. Covent Garden, a large square in London, so called because originally it was the garden of a monastery.

A friar who acted as porter at the gate of a monastery. Sir W. Scott.

rintend the erection of new buildings and see that they conform to the law. -- Dean of a monastery, Monastic dean, a monastic superior over ten monks. -- Dean's stall. See Decanal stall, under Decanal.

The renunciation of religious or monastic vows. [Obs.] Blount.

suffer corporal punishment without being previously desecrated. W. Tooke. The founders of monasteries imprecated evil on those who should desecrate their donations. Salmon.

A title anciently given to the pope, and later to other church dignitaries and some monastic orders. See Don, and Dan.

keep their wives afterward, but not to marry a second time, selects its bishops from the monastic clergy only, recognizes the offices of bishop, priest, and deacon as the three necessary degrees of orders, venerates relics and icons, and has an elaborate ritual.