Actually a hand-to-hand character is probably the most overpowered until you get into Daedric weapons. Khajiit get a flat +15 damage bonus to H2H, and then Heavy Gauntlets (using the perk) add the DEF bonus directly to damage as well. Khajiit in Heavy Armor hit harder than great axes and 4x as fast. Edit: Oh, you mean that kind of monk. That's called a Witchhunter though, no?
Actually the strongest weapons in the game are 1handed weapons. However we're not improving or enchanting anything so I can see h2h being strong.
However, h2h is directly affect by armor rating. Since monks dont specialize in Heavy armor, that would be restricted to only using gauntlets for heavy armor(for obvious reasons).
That means with 1 piece of heavy armor, you lost out on a 50% bonus to any armor combo.
That means their total armor rating would be 88 before perks/skill. 100 skill would grant 123. full 5/5 perks(Id assume theyd need 5/5 for gauntlets to get max def rating aswell) would be 246.
That means you have a total 346 armor as a monk(396 with lord stone) However I dont know if the bonus -invisible- armor rating also applies to h2h or if the visible AR is what is applied. Either way youre at a 41% PDT rate and overall your h2h is no where near what it could be with different gear + upgrades or even enchants.
Edit: the summoner suggestion was a total different setup, not monk + summoning things, but an actual summoner type.