Hieromonk in the context of "Tonsure"

In certain Christian denominations, holy orders are the ordained ministries of bishop, priest (presbyter), and deacon, and the sacrament or rite by which candidates are ordained to those orders. Churches recognizing these orders include the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox (ιερωσύνη [hierōsynē], ιεράτευμα [hierateuma], Священство [Svyashchenstvo]), Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, Assyrian, Old Catholic, Independent Catholic and some Lutheran churches. Except for some Lutherans and some Anglicans, these churches regard ordination as a sacrament (the sacramentum ordinis).

Denominations have varied conceptions of holy orders. In some Lutheran and Anglican churches the traditional orders of bishop, priest and deacon are bestowed using ordination rites contained within ordinals. The extent to which ordination is considered sacramental in these traditions has, however, been a matter of some internal dispute. Baptists are among the denominations that do not consider ministry as being sacramental in nature and would not think of it in terms of "holy orders" as such. Historically, the word "order" (Latin ordo) designated an established civil body or corporation with a hierarchy, and ordinatio meant legal incorporation into an ordo. The word "holy" refers to the church. In context, therefore, a holy order is set apart for ministry in the church. Other positions, such as pope, patriarch, cardinal, monsignor, archbishop, archimandrite, archpriest, protopresbyter, hieromonk, protodeacon and archdeacon, are not sacramental orders but specialized ministries.

The Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, or Holy Community of the All-Holy Sepulchre, is an Eastern Orthodox monastic fraternity guarding the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and other Christian holy places in the Holy Land. It was founded in its present form during the British Mandate in Palestine (1920-1948). Headed by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the brotherhood also administers the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, such as metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, archimandrites, hieromonks, hierodeacons, and monks.

The brotherhood's symbol is the taphos, a monogram of the Greek letters tau (Τ) and phi (Φ), for the word taphos (τάφος, meaning "sepulchre, grave"). It can be seen on most Greek Orthodox buildings in Jerusalem.

The title archimandrite (/ˌɑːrkɪˈmændraɪt/; Greek: ἀρχιμανδρίτης, romanized: archimandritēs), used in Eastern Christianity, originally referred to a superior abbot (hegumenos, Greek: ἡγούμενος, present participle of the verb meaning "to lead") whom a bishop appointed to supervise several "ordinary" abbots and monasteries, or as the abbot of some especially great and important monastery, but nowadays it is most often used purely as a title of honor (with no connection to any actual monastery) and is bestowed on a hieromonk as a mark of respect or gratitude for service to the Church.

This title is only given to those priests who have been tonsured monks, while distinguished non-monastic (typically married) priests would be given the title of protopresbyter. In history, some women were able to obtain that title, notably when cross-dressing as male monks, such as Susanna the Deaconess.

Christianity in the 21st century is characterized by the pursuit of church unity and the continued resistance to persecution and secularization.

Saint Paisius of Hilendar or Paìsiy Hilendàrski (Bulgarian: Свети Паисий Хилендарски) (1722–1773) was a Bulgarian Orthodox clergyman and a key Bulgarian National Revival figure. He is most famous for being the author of Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya (1762), the first significant modern Bulgarian history that became famous and has been copied and distributed everywhere in the Bulgarian lands. The book is, overall, the third modern work of Bulgarian history, after the works titled "History of Bulgaria" by Petar Bogdan Bakshev in 1667 and by Blasius Kleiner in 1761. He is considered the forefather of the Bulgarian National Revival.

Paisius was born in the Samokov eparchy of the time. There is a scientific dispute about the exact place of his birth, although the prevailing consensus points to the town of Bansko. He established himself in the Hilandar monastery in 1745, where he was later a hieromonk and deputy-abbot. Collecting materials for two years through hard work and even visiting the Habsburg monarchy, he finished his Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya in 1762 in the Zograf Monastery. The book was the first attempt to write a complete history of Bulgaria and attempted to awaken and strengthen Bulgarian national consciousnesses.

Josaphat Kuntsevych, OSBM (c. 1580 – 12 November 1623) was a Basilian hieromonk and archeparch of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Polotsk from 1618 to 1623. On 12 November 1623, he was beaten to death with an axe during an anti-Catholic riot by Eastern Orthodox Belarusians in Vitebsk, in the eastern peripheries of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

His death reflects the conflict between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches that intensified after four Ruthenian Orthodox Church (Kiev Metropolitanate) bishops transferred their allegiance from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople to the Holy See, under the terms laid down by the 1439 Council of Florence, by signing the 1596 Union of Brest. Archeparch Josaphat remains one of the best-known victims of anti-Catholic violence for his role in both personally accepting and very effectively spreading the Eastern Catholic Churches as a hieromonk and bishop, and was canonized in 1867 by Pope Pius IX as a saint and a martyr of the Catholic Church.