asceticism
/əˈsɛtɪsɪz(ə)m
/noun [mass noun]
Severe self-discipline and avoiding of all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons: acts of physical asceticism...
- With regard to marriage Luther pursues the same idea: The marital relationship between a man and a woman is true chastity and of higher value than monastic asceticism.
- The icon, in particular, is a practical form of art, dealing directly with questions of spiritual life such as holiness and asceticism.
- In his time the religious energy and zeal were flowing away from the empirical world into the desert of otherworldliness, asceticism and renunciation.
Synonyms
austerity, self-denial, abstinence, abstemiousness, non-indulgence, self-discipline, frugality, simplicity, rigour, strictness, severity;
a hair shirt, a spartan life, monasticism, monkishness, reclusiveness, solitude, hermitism, celibacy, continence, chastity, puritanism, self-abnegation, other-worldliness, self-mortification
archaic anchorism