askesis

Noun

ascesis (countable and uncountable, plural asceses)

1. (Rigorous) self-discipline, particularly as a religious observance; asceticism.
   • The Neo Platonic philosophy, it will now be seen, is monism, and the completion, consequently, of ancient philosophy, so far as it would reduce the totality of being to a single ultimate ground. As able, however, to find its highest principle, from which all the rest are derived, not through...1867, Albert Schwegler, “Christianity and Scholasticism”, in James Hutchison Stirling, transl., Handbook of the History of Philosophy […], Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, →OCLC, pages 142–143
2. (specifically, chiefly Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism) The praxis or "exercise" of asceticism and self-denial of impulses or passions for the sake of piety, theosis, and connection with God.
   • And this we do find in the Basilican, the Byzantine, and the Romanesque architectures, each more perfect than another, and each lacking in an ever diminishing degree much of the perfect holiness of the Saint of "the most high,"—they came and passed away like different periods in the askesis of a...1845 March, “On the Nomenclature of Christian Architecture”, in The Ecclesiologist, volume I (New Series; volume IV overall), number II, Cambridge: John Thomas Walters […]; London: F[rancis] & J[ohn]...