For a brief time around 1968, the Beatles lived with the Maharishi in India, living there like other pilgrims with no possessions and with very simple food, clothing and shelter. I'm pretty sure that when George Harrison is explaining this business in the Beatles Anthology, he refers to such people as renunciants.

Definition of renunciant  plural -s  : one who renounces (as the world)

-Merriam Webster

When I looked for this word in Google Books, almost all of the uses were from books about Oriental or Arabic ways of life, and almost none by standard Western authors. So I cannot say the word is widely used GMT - 1 to 10.

I did find this single (though very long) sentence in Google Books:

There was here a veritable consecration, hopeful and animating, of the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, now in some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch or see, in the midst of a jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things, and in strong contrast to the wise emperor's renunciant and impassive attitude towards them.

-On page 138 of The Works of Walter Pater

So that's one use at least. Apparently Pater thought it was an adjective.

For a brief time around 1968, the Beatles lived with the Maharishi in India, living there like other pilgrims with no possessions and with very simple food, clothing and shelter. I'm pretty sure that when George Harrison is explaining this business in the Beatles Anthology, he refers to such people as renunciants.

Definition of renunciant 

plural -s 

: one who renounces (as the world)

-Merriam Webster

When I looked for this word in Google Books, almost all of the uses were from books about ways of life characteristic of Arabia, India or the Orient, and almost none by standard Western authors. So I cannot say the word is widely used GMT - 1 to 10.

I did find this single (though very long) sentence in Google Books:

There was here a veritable consecration, hopeful and animating, of the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, now in some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch or see, in the midst of a jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things, and in strong contrast to the wise emperor's renunciant and impassive attitude towards them.

-On page 138 of The Works of Walter Pater

So that's one use at least. Apparently Pater thought it was an adjective.