MONASTIC HABIT • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Monastic habit

... would seem unlawful for religious to beg. For Augustine says (De oper. Monach. xxviii): "The most cunning foe has scattered on all sides a great number of hypocrites wearing the monastic habit, who go wandering about the country," and afterwards he adds: "They all ask, they all demand to be supported in their profitable penury, or to be paid for a pretended holiness." Therefore it would seem that the life of mendicant religious is ...

— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... chose to reside in the Abbey put on a monastic habit during the services; then their religious duties ended; they doffed the convent livery, dressed in splendid attire, the hoops and bows and farthingales and ruffs that were then the fashion, and sat in the parlour where visitors ...

— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans