English

Noun

monkery ‎(plural monkeries)

1. (dated, often pejorative) the practices of monks; the way of life, behavior, etc. characteristic of monks; monastic life
   • 1804, John Whitaker, The Ancient Cathedral of Cornwall Historically Surveyed, volume II, page 263:

     Even such monkery was confined entirely to the laity; the clergy having cures in villages or in towns, and being therefore precluded from monastic sequestrations. In time, however, monkery found its way among the clergy, [...]

   • 1867, Robert Mackay, The Eternal Gospel; or, The Idea of Christian Perfectibility:

     A different form of reaction was that of the monks, who aspired to resuscitate what they supposed to be the true Christian spirit in alliance with the Church. But monkery was after all only an intensified Church within the Church, exhibiting the peculiar vices as well as advantages of ecclesiastical discipline [...]

2. (dated, pejorative) monasticism
   • 1850, Henry Ruffner, The Fathers of the Desert; or An Account of the Orgin and Practice of Monkery, page 194:

     As the circumstances of their living on barley bread and herbs [...] existed nowhere, that we have seen, but in the monkish imaginations of Jerome and Bellarmine. As the circumstances on which the argument is founded, vanish upon inspection, so does the monkery of Elijah, Elisha, and the sons of the prophets [...]

   • 1882, John Stuart Blackie, Altavona: Fact and Fiction from my Life in the Highlands, page 241:

     You are not to suppose that I, as a good Catholic, am under any obligation to confound the active, intelligent, heroic, and fruitful monasticism of Columba with the systematic stupefaction of manhood in the monkery which came afterwards.

   • 1893, J. H. Merle d'Aubigné, History of the Great Reformation:

     The monk Gabriel did not relax in his fervid appeals from the pulpit of the Augustines. It was against the condition of monkery itself he now dealt his powerful strokes; and if the strength of Romish doctrines was principally in the mass, the monastic Order formed the main support of her priestly hierarchy.

3. (dated, often pejorative or humorous) a monastery
   • 1876, Lady Isabel Burton, The inner life of Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land: from my private journal, volume 2, page 190:

     The sides resemble castellated piles and Gothic cathedrals, so fantastic are the shapes assumed by the natural rock; under St. Saba it became a monkery for all penitents who wished to live a hermit's life.

   • February 1896, Ground-swells, by Jeannette H. Walworth, published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine; page 183:

     Polite society won't have the truth. You've got to feed it on lies, or go into a monkery — if that's what they call a masculine nunnery. Don't want to go into a monkery, so I lie. Reluctantly, delicately, frequently.

   • 1910, John M. Francis, Samuel French (publisher), Bill, the Coachman, No. II, French's American acting edition:

     MRS. B. Yes; and we are going to have it [ice cream] served on gold plates, too.

     BREW. Holy smoke, my house a monkery, and a gold-plated monkery at that. Now, you see here, all of you; I give you fair notice that I don't propose to have any more dances or parties or anything else after this one.

4. (dated, collectively) monks, considered as a group. (cf clergy, laity)
   • ???, John Borthwick, in an Answer to John Foxe, who wrote about The Persecution in Scotland, as published in The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, volume V (Stephen Reed Cattley, editor), in 1838; page 619:

     And furthermore, so long as they do entangle and bind themselves with so many and so perverse and wicked kinds of worshipping as the monkery now-a-days doth contain in it, I may well say that they are not consecrated unto God, [...]

   • 1840, Isaac Taylor, Ancient Christianity, and the doctrines of the Oxford tracts, page 431:

     Unquestionably the monkery of the middle ages was better ordered than that of the Nicene.

   • 1959 or earlier, published in Readings in Russian History and Culture in 1968 by Ivar Spector and Margaret Marion Spector (editors):

     The close ties existing between the monkery and the aristocracy were evident in many cloisters. Superior Stefan, who was expelled from Pechera Monastery, immediately secured the support of many boyars who "gave him from their estates what he needed for himself and for other purposes."

Quotations

• 1773, The Spirit of Laws (volume I, fifth edition), translated from M. de Secondat's French by Thomas Nugent:

  THE very same mischeifs result from monkery: it had its rise in the warm countries of the East, where they are less inclined to action than to speculation.