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A house of religious retirement, or of secusion from ordinary temporal concerns, especially for monks; -- more rarely applied to such a house for females.

A monastery or society of persons of either sex, secluded from the world and devoted to religion and celibacy; also, the monastic building or buildings.

A chief of a monastery, corresponding to abbot in the Roman Catholic church.

A treasurer, or cash keeper; a purser; as, the bursar of a college, or of a monastery.

The treasury of a college or monastery.

An apartment in a monastery, warmed and used as a sitting room.

wing the Sanctus, which never changes. -- Honorary canon, a canon who neither lived in a monastery, nor kept the canonical hours. -- Minor canon (Ch. of Eng.), one who has been admitted to a chapter, but has not yet received a prebend. -- Regular canon (R. C. Ch.), one who lived in a conventual community and followe…

A register, or record, as of a monastery or church.

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.

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 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.

entual 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.

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.

A monastery; a convent of friars. Drugdale.