cilices

We have heard so much of Monks; everywhere, in real and fictitious History, from Muratori Annals to Radcliffe Romances, these singular two-legged animals, with their rosaries and breviaries, with their shaven crowns, hair-cilices, and vows of poverty, masquerade so strangely through our fancy; and they are in fact so very strange an extinct species of the human family, --

Past and Present Thomas Carlyle 1838

A "retreat" _without cilices, _ thistle-mattresses; and with

The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. Thomas Carlyle 1838

“retreat” without cilices, thistle-mattresses; and with silent devotions (if any) instead of blockhead spoken ones to the Virgin and others!

The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II Carlyle, Thomas 1883