"Ecclesiastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "For," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, "you rather neglected your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship. How many years is it since you approached the holy table? I understand that your work, that the whirl of the world may have kept you from care for your salvation. But now is the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... church at Barnstaple, probably on the site of the present parish church of St. Peter's, and the tithes were given to the Abbey of Malmesbury. The original ecclesiastic seal bore the seated figure of King Athelstan. After the Conquest the barony of Barnstaple (which comprised the church) was given to Judhael of Totnes; from him it passed to the famous family of Tracy, from them to the Martins (whose name remains in the little village of Martinshoe, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... no mountains," cried Father Iosif, and turning to the elder he continued: "Observe the answer he makes to the following 'fundamental and essential' propositions of his opponent, who is, you must note, an ecclesiastic. First, that 'no social organization can or ought to arrogate to itself power to dispose of the civic and political rights of its members.' Secondly, that 'criminal and civil jurisdiction ought not ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... unhappy middle-class association made me suppose that the elderly ecclesiastic was my "old Guv'nor,"—my father, the late Duke. But an instant's reflection proved to me that her Grace meant "tutor" by governor. I am ashamed to say that I now entered into the spirit of the scene, shook the holy man warmly by the hand, and quoted a convenient ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... reply of Wenceslas only strengthened his conviction of the futility of massing his own feeble forces against those of one so thoroughly entrenched as this man, who had the ear of the Bishop—nay, whose resourceful mind was now said to be actually directing the policies of the feeble old ecclesiastic who held ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the ecclesiastic, casting his eyes towards the chandelier, and passing a white cambric pocket-handkerchief gracefully before them. No man in London understood the ring business or the pocket-handkerchief business better, or smothered his emotion more beautifully. "In the gayest moments, in the giddiest ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... scandal. St. Austin himself seems to have had his scruples, though of their precise nature it would be difficult to determine, for it were idle to suppose him at all afraid of the Baron's boots. Be this as it may, the mode which he adopted was at once prudent and efficacious. As an ecclesiastic, he could not well call the Baron out—had his boots been out of the question; so he resolved to have recourse to the law. Instead of Shurland Castle, therefore, he repaired forthwith to his own magnificent monastery, situate just ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... on whom all the people believed. At length the saint, being moved with the entreaties of the man thus ashamed of himself, asked to whose form he would desire to be likened. Then he, regarding the people placed around him, preferred the form of Roichus, an ecclesiastic, the keeper of Saint Patrick's books; and this man was by birth a Briton, by degree a deacon, a kinsman of the holy prelate, and beautiful in his form above all men in those countries dwelling. Nevertheless was he a man of most holy life, so that he might ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... Canterbury Ply, to take the Creator to witness that the Archbishop, detained in town by business or pleasure, will never violate that foundation of piety over which he presides—all this seems to me an act of the most extraordinary indolence ever recorded in history. If an Ecclesiastic, not a Bishop, may express any opinion on the reforms of the Church, I recommend that Archbishops and Bishops should take no more oaths by proxy; but, as they do not wait upon the Sovereign or the Prime Minister, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... repentant tears. —But, O vain hope!—the truly Savage cries, "Priests, and their slavish doctrines, I despise. Shall I—— Who, by free-thinking to free action fir'd. In midnight brawls a deathless name acquir'd, Now stoop to learn of ecclesiastic men? No, arm'd with rhyme, at priests I'll take my aim. Though prudence bids me ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... or follies, or frolics, have been neatly removed from their correspondence. Let us take, for example, two batches of letters very lately published, and written by two men who have left their mark upon their generation. Of Dean Stanley it may be affirmed that no ecclesiastic of his time was better known, or had a higher reputation for strength of character and undaunted Liberalism. His public life and his place in the Anglican Church had been already described in a meritorious biography; and it might have been expected that these ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... mustache and a tuft on the chin,—was snow white, and his hair, which was thin, hung in long white waves almost to his shoulders. He walked with a stoop and wore spectacles, the glasses of which were slightly colored. Being an ecclesiastic, though not a priest, he wore no wig; but he was of the Order of the Cordon Bleu, and wore, in addition to his badge and blue ribbon, a sword beneath his long coat. It was the first time I had ever seen an ecclesiastic wearing a sword, though ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... of the government, regardless of birth, was at once entitled to be classed among the tchinovnik. From that time the terms gentleman and officer, became synonymous. Every service, civil, military, naval, or ecclesiastic, was divided into fourteen grades. The lowest grade in the civil service was held by the registrar of a college, the highest by the Chancellor of the Empire; the cornet was at the bottom, the field marshal at the top in the army; and ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... account of its distance from London, more of a local centre, and, to repeat a word already used, more of a "monarchy" than the other great monasteries of the Thames Valley. This is sufficiently proved by a glance at the ecclesiastic map, such as, for instance, that published in "The Victoria History of the County of Berkshire," where one sees the manors belonging to Abingdon at the time of the Conquest all clustered together and occupying ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... shining uniform was a showy figure, and that his captaincy had been bought and paid for was a matter that troubled nobody. The pair was married, and when once tied by an ecclesiastic knot, they proceeded to get acquainted. A captain in the English Army who has a few good working sergeants is nothing and nobody. If he has enough money he can pay to get the work done, and the only disadvantage is that real soldiers scorn him, for soldiers take the measure ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... replied Roland, who had recognized an ecclesiastic, "as, in spite of the sharp tone in which you speak, you seem a man of learning, permit a poor ignoramus to ask you a few details about this Jehu, dead these two thousand six hundred years, who, nevertheless, is honored ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... black cloth, and sports his gold chain and seals conspicuously, and wears his spectacles easily, and drops them in a genteel manner on the silk ribbon that is suspended around his neck; and if he is altogether neat and spruce, as becomes an ecclesiastic of some standing in his diocese, is that a reason why he should be stared at, and why men should put their hands in their pockets and whistle, and why rather perky young fellows should cry "Hallo!" and whisper, "Who's the stranger?" And even why ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Ecclesiastic: connected with the Church. For many centuries Rome was the centre of Christian influence, and is so ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... character of the accused, and it was essential that the result of this inquiry be added to the proces verbal and form a part of it. You remember that that was the first thing they did before the trial at Poitiers. They did it again now. An ecclesiastic was sent to Domremy. There and all about the neighborhood he made an exhaustive search into Joan's history and character, and came back with his verdict. It was very clear. The searcher reported that he found Joan's character to be in ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... had been a great admirer of the Templars. He wrote a letter to the Count of Champagne, on his entering the order (1123), praising the act as one of eminent merit in the sight of God; and it was determined to enlist the all-powerful influence of this great ecclesiastic in favor of the fraternity. "By a vow of poverty and penance, by closing his eyes against the visible world, by the refusal of all ecclesiastical dignities, the abbot of Clairvaux became the oracle of Europe and the founder of one hundred and sixty ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... India. It is so in the West to-day. The organized churches of the West have within themselves an ever diminishing portion of the vital Christian life and aspirations of the country. Christianity has overleapt ecclesiastic bounds. Its spirit is overflowing, in living streams, into the life of a thousand organizations which are altruistic and philanthropic, outside the limits of ecclesiastical Christianity. It will be so in India, and throughout the world. And the ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the frontispiece, to stamp the greater authority and obligatory power upon the acts after recorded, being done according to Christ's commandments; Christ intending their acts in the first founding of his kingdom and polity ecclesiastic to be the rule for after churches. For what Christ spoke of his kingdom to the apostles is like that, "What I say to you, I say to all," Matt. xiii. 37, as what was said to the apostles touching preaching and baptizing, ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... was soon, sailor-like, fast asleep. After some time, he was awakened by hearing the door open, and, looking up, he saw two persons enter the room. One was Villegagnon, who carried a lamp in his hand; the other was, he saw by the person's costume, an ecclesiastic. They advanced across the room towards the window, where stood a table and a couple of chairs. Villegagnon threw himself into one of them, with his back towards him, the other imitating his example. The latter produced writing materials, ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... an effigy, apparently of an ecclesiastic, but much decayed, of the 13th century, in the south wall ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... Like many others of the Humanist school he delighted in attacking the ignorance of the monks and Scholastics, and in denouncing the abuses of the age, though, as was the case with most of the literary reformers of the time, his own life as an ecclesiastic was far ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... their names were called. The queen, who was still a beautiful woman, was standing talking to a gentleman, in whose attire there were but few symbols that would betray to a stranger that he was an ecclesiastic ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... cigarette. God gave us tobacco to allay our passions and our pains. You seem to be downcast, or at any rate, you carry the symbolical flower of sorrow in your hand, like the rueful god Hymen. Come! all your troubles will vanish away with the smoke," and again the ecclesiastic held out his little straw case; there was something fascinating in his manner, and kindliness towards ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... medicine to the offices of his holy profession. Michael Wigglesworth, the poet of "The Day of Doom," and Charles Chauncy, the second president of Harvard College, were instances of this twofold service. In politics their influence has always been felt, and in many cases their drums ecclesiastic have beaten the reveille as vigorously, and to as good purpose, as it ever sounded in the slumbering camp. Samuel Cooper sat in council with the leaders of the Revolution in Boston. The three Northampton-born brothers Allen, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... exaggeration in Leopold Mozart's description of his child's powers, as to which, indeed, accounts from less partial sources had already reached the Archbishop's ears. None the less, however, was the old ecclesiastic inclined to attribute to a parent's pardonable pride the anticipations which the father had formed with regard to the boy's future, and more especially as those anticipations rested upon the assumption that the child was ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... recognised usage which did not augment this waste. The eldest son usually preserved the rank and status of the family, whether civil or military. Turgot's eldest brother was to devote himself to civil administration, the next to be a soldier, and Turgot himself to be an ecclesiastic. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... that the history here quoted by John Damascenus was not an ecclesiastical history, written by Euthymius, who died in A.D. 472, but a biographical history concerning Euthymius himself, written by an ecclesiastic, whom he supposes to be Cyril, the monk, who died in A.D. 531. This opinion of Lambecius is combated by Cotelerius; the discussion only adding to the denseness of the cloud which involves the whole tradition. But whether the work quoted had Euthymius for its author or its subject, ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... An ecclesiastic of Friesland, embraced the tenets of the Anabaptists, and, after being again baptized by Ubbo Philippi, became a powerful leader of his sect. He denied that Jesus Christ received a human shape from ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... advanced, the Prelate had adopted habits more beseeming a member of the hierarchy than his early reign had exhibited, and was loved among the neighbouring princes, as a noble ecclesiastic, generous and magnificent in his ordinary mode of life, though preserving no very ascetic severity of character, and governing with an easy indifference, which, amid his wealthy and mutinous subjects, rather encouraged than subdued ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... these, we cannot but assign a very different value when they are the spontaneous growth of common minds, unstimulated by sense of propriety or rules of the service, or other official influence lay or ecclesiastic, from what attaches to the somewhat similar ceremonials in which, among persons whose position is conspicuous, important enterprises ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... both those which are now in force, and those which have been repealed; and to send, to the next, and every succeeding, Convention, an accurate list of their officers for the time being, together with an account of the place of their abode, and of the offices, civil, military, or ecclesiastic, which they may sustain, with the number of members of which they consist: that it be further recommended, to the several Societies, to send, annually, to the Convention, an accurate list of all those persons who have been relieved and liberated by their ...
— Minutes of the Proceedings of the Second Convention of Delegates from the Abolition Societies Established in Different Parts of the United States • Zachariah Poulson
... to Karnak, in melodious pomp, through the great avenue of sphinxes, and ranging themselves in glorious groups around the gigantic columns of this sublime structure. What feudal splendour, and what Gothic ceremonies, what tilts and tournaments, and what ecclesiastic festivals, could rival the vast, the beautiful, and solemn magnificence of ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... captains and sergeants; but these wishing to put him out of the way, they were all afterwards hanged by his orders. He especially points out to Philip the corruption of morals among the monks, whom he intends to chastise severely; he remarks that there is not an ecclesiastic who does not think himself higher than the governor of a province; that they are given up to luxury, acquiring possessions, selling sacraments,—being at once ambitious, violent, and gluttonous. Aguirri—or, as he is still called by the common people, "the tyrant"—was ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... dig his spade haphazard into the earth and by that act liberate a small stream which shall become a mighty river. Not less casual perhaps, certainly not less momentous in its consequences, was the first attempt, by some enterprising ecclesiastic, to enliven the hardly understood Latin service of the Church. Who the innovator was is unrecorded. The form of his innovation, however, may be guessed from this, that even in the fifth century human tableaux had a place in the Church service on festival ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the apperception mass is radically different, we say popularly that they live in different worlds. The logician expresses this by saying that they occupy different "universes of discourse"—that is, they cannot talk in the same terms. The ecclesiastic, the artist, the mystic, the scientist, the Philistine, the Bohemian, represent more or less different "universes of discourse." Even social workers occupy universes ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... threatened death-bed, were induced to will all to the Church; or as an act of deep penance for some crime divulged at the confessional, they yielded up all. To preserve this property and possibly to cause it to produce an income for the Church, certain priests became active planters. Extreme ecclesiastic rule, as has been said, is greatly modified in Spain and her colonies, the natural reaction of the hateful days of ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... government, imposing though limited sacrifices, flattering himself that by these means he should acquire allies in the Church itself, who would aid him to restrain the overweening and imprudent pretensions of their own friends. Already, and shortly after his accession to the ministry, he had appointed an ecclesiastic in good estimation, and whom the Pope had named Bishop of Hermopolis, the Abbe Frayssinous, to the head-mastership of the University. Two months after the fall of M. de Chateaubriand, the Abbe Frayssinous entered the Cabinet as Minister ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... an elderly, benevolent-looking gentleman, played with astounding caution and still more remarkable luck for seventeen. Finally, after he had been in an hour and ten minutes, mid-on accepted the eighth easy chance offered to him, and the ecclesiastic had to retire. The three 'Varsity men knocked up a hundred between them, and the complete total was no less ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... been narrated in the History. The "single book" treating of the Caesars, which Vopiscus says Tacitus wrote, must have been the "History," ten copies of which the Emperor Tacitus ordered to be placed every year in the public libraries among the national archives. (Tac. Imp. x.) Orosius, the Spanish ecclesiastic, who flourished at the commencement of the fifth century, has several references to Tacitus in his famous work, Hormesta. This great proficient in knowledge of the Scriptures and disciple of St. Augustin quotes the fifth book of the History thrice (Lib. V., cc. 5 and ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... description of the expected guest. But, somehow or other, no sooner had he seen the priest than all his proposed railleries deserted him. Not a single witticism came to his assistance, and the calm, smooth face of the ecclesiastic seemed to operate upon the fierce resolves of the facetious knight in the same manner as the human eye is supposed to awe into impotence the malignant intentions of the ignobler animals. Yet nothing could be blander than the demeanour of the Abbe Montreuil; nothing more worldly, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very penal procedure, that wherever it existed Toleration would be unnecessary, inasmuch as there would be preciously little error to tolerate. Personally, I believe, Henderson was as moderate and tolerant a man as any British ecclesiastic of his time. In no Church where he bore rule could there, by possibility, have been any approach to the tetchy repressiveness, or the callous indifference to suffering for the sake of conscience, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... still stood erect, and, pointing to his heart, said in a clear voice, "Aim here!" Another mulatto author, educator and profound thinker was Antonio Medina, a priest and professor of San Basilio the Greater. He acquired wide reputation as a poet, novelist and ecclesiastic, both in Spain and Cuba, and was selected by the Spanish Academy to deliver the oration on the anniversary of Cerantes' death in Madrid. His favorite Cuban pupil was Juan Gaulberto Gomez, the mulatto journalist, ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... l'abb, 'my big brother the clergyman,' i.e. Henri Daudet, professor at the College of the Assumption at Nmes. He died at the early age of twenty-four. The term abb originally meant the Superior of an abbey, then was extended to any ecclesiastic. ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... behind the high altar, on the left, in the aisle along the Rue de St. Sulpice; the lamps of the choir organ were lighted. Far off, in the almost empty nave, an ecclesiastic was preaching. He recognized, by the unctuousness of his delivery, and his oily accent, a well-fed priest who poured on his audience, according to his wont, his best ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... heel, sat bending his fingers gracefully together and looking at me. His head was thrown back, I have said, and the lights of the colored windows striking on his gray hair and black skull-cap, caused him to look much more like some lean ascetic ecclesiastic and prince of the church than the chief lawyer of the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... find the place, he saw a priest passing by, and, trusting to the professional discretion which churchmen possess, he questioned the ecclesiastic. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... by the suggestive name of Sunday who works the religious graft. Sunday is the whirling dervish up to date. He and Chapman and their cappers purposely avoid any trace of the ecclesiastic in their attire. They dress like drummers—trousers carefully creased, two watch-chains and a warm vest. Their manner is free and easy, their attitude familiar. The way they address the Almighty reveals that their reverence for Him springs out of ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... to see how this came about. The necessary service-books would be placed in the hands of the ecclesiastic who had charge of the building in which the congregation assembled. To these volumes—which at first were doubtless regarded in the same light as vestments or sacred vessels—treatises intended for edification or instruction would be gradually ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... Solano, the first ecclesiastic who rose to much note as a missionary, and who made his celebrated journey through the Chaco in 1588-89 from Peru to Paraguay, was a Franciscan.* Thus, the Franciscans had the honour of having the first American saint in their ranks. It is noteworthy, though, that he was recalled ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... emphatically and solemnly declared in words such as Henry was to hear a few years later from another mouth, that there were two powers, secular and spiritual, and that the secular authority could not interfere with the spiritual jurisdiction, or depose any bishop or ecclesiastic without leave from Rome. "True enough, he cannot be 'deposed,'" cried the young king, "but by a shove like this he may be clean thrust out!" and he suited the action to the words. A laugh ran round the assembly ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... this nation, all such coercive influences, both of church and state, have ceased. Every man may think what he pleases about government, or religion, or any thing else; he may propagate his opinions, he may controvert opposite opinions, and no magistrate or ecclesiastic can in any legal way restrain ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... the collar, obliged to kneel down, to make an apology, and to kiss the ground. The punishment inflicted on children is given to him; he is ducked repeatedly in one of the fountain-basins, after which they him over to the mob, who roll him in the mud." On the following day an ecclesiastic is trodden under foot, and flung from hand to hand. A few days after, on the 22nd of June, there are two similar events. The sovereign mob exercises all the functions of sovereign authority, with those of the legislator those of the judge, and those of the judge with ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... radically a sacred one and connected with the highest priesthoods, or rather being itself the outcome and acme of all priesthoods, and divinest conquests of intellect here below. As will appear one day, when men take off their old monastic and ecclesiastic spectacles, and look with eyes again! In essence the Physician's task is always heroic, eminently human: but in practice most unluckily at present we find it too become in good part beaverish; yielding a money-result alone. And what ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... his brother the Duke of Calabria. It seems to have been the poet's purpose in each of his Italian tragedies to unmask Rome as the Papal city really was. In the lawless desperado, the intemperate tyrant, and the godless ecclesiastic, he portrayed the three curses from which Italian ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... moment. He felt the intoxication of the presence of Miss Morison, and he yielded to it with frank unscrupulousness. He resolved that he would repent afterward; yet instantly demanded of himself if this were really a sin. He was after all a man, if he had chosen the ecclesiastic calling. If indeed he were transgressing he told himself half contemptuously that as he did penance doubly, once that imposed by his own spiritual director and again that set by the Catholic at the North End, he might ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... two died. A negro who was being taken along as a witness for an accused man of this city died at sea. If it is thought best not to have salaries, the matter can be remedied by appointing two religious or ecclesiastic persons, and one of the auditors of the Audiencia—who, as they are advisers, can likewise carry on the suits. These, as they conduct the office of commissary (which is here the same thing as an inquisitor), would be able to hear the cases and would do so as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... it has been the avowed principle of Scotch Presbyterians, that they have a divine warrant to choose their own pastors and other ecclesiastic officers. The first book of discipline, published A.D. 1560, declares the lawful calling of the ministry to consist in the election of the people, the examination of the ministry, and administration by both, and that no pastor should be intruded on any particular ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... or STOLE, is the only ecclesiastic symbol now retained in the investiture of our kings. In "MS. W. Y. in the College of Arms," quoted by Mr. Taylor, Henry VI. is said to have been "arrayed at the time of his coronation as a bishop that should sing mass, with a dalmatic like a tunic, and a stole about ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... arts of Fritigern, and the prudent admonitions of the emperor of the West. The advantages of negotiating in the midst of war were perfectly understood by the general of the Barbarians; and a Christian ecclesiastic was despatched, as the holy minister of peace, to penetrate, and to perplex, the councils of the enemy. The misfortunes, as well as the provocations, of the Gothic nation, were forcibly and truly described by their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the table is Titian, with the point of his bow almost touching the dog, playing the fundamental tones on the Violono. He apparently displays an amount of real relish for his task, which bespeaks a knowledge of the responsibility belonging to the post of Basso. The ecclesiastic seated next to Titian, wearing the chain with crucifix, is performing on a Soprano Viol. The instruments, in short, are Italian Viols, the Tenors of which were strung with six strings, and the Violono, or Bass, with six ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... to state, been paid from that day to this. If you will go play at his table, you may; but nobody forces you. If you lose, pay with a cheerful heart. Dulce est desipere in loco. This is not a treatise of morals. Friar Tuck was not an exemplary ecclesiastic, nor Robin Hood a model man; but he was a jolly outlaw; and I dare say the Sheriff of Nottingham, whose money he took, rather relished his feast at ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you see, the venerable ecclesiastic he's afraid I'd want to come to breakfast too. He thinks I am ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... no doubt whatever that the high and solemn ecclesiastic, Pierre Cauchon, suspected Jeanne of witchcraft. Wishing to bring her to trial, he exercised his ecclesiastical functions. But he knew her to be the enemy of the English as well as of himself; there is no doubt on that point. So when he wished to bring her ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... sets upon himself, is now (like many of his functions) an apostate from grace to faction; and, with a political pamphlet in his hand, instead of a moral discourse, the pulpit is now become (as Hudibras expresses it) a drum ecclesiastic, and volunteers are beat up for in that place, where nothing should be thought ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... The orange-robed ecclesiastic gave me an affectionate pat. Staging a mock rebuke, he admonished a few near-by disciples. "Don't bother Mukunda. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... that I have not seen myself, and if I should ever have the pleasure of meeting any of my English friends in Le Morvan, I could introduce them to ten cures one and all similar in every respect to the ecclesiastic I am about ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... in shovel-hat and cassock, the renowned ecclesiastic Dean Swift. He has just nodded patronizingly to Bononcini in the Strand, and suddenly meets Handel, who cuts him dead. Nothing disconcerted, the dean moves on, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... seen, early in the morning, Mr. Beale ride out with his men to go to my lord Shrewsbury, who was in the neighbourhood, and had seen him return in time for dinner, with a number of strangers, among whom was an ecclesiastic. On inquiry, he found this to be Dr. Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough, who had been appointed to attend Mary both in her lodgings and upon the scaffold. In the afternoon the street was not empty for half an hour. ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... this time made by the opposite party, in the person of Caccini, a Dominican friar, who made a personal attack upon Galileo from the pulpit. This violent ecclesiastic ridiculed the astronomer and his followers, by addressing them sarcastically in the sacred language of Scripture—"Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye here looking up into heaven?" But this species of warfare was disapproved of even by the church; and Luigi Maraffi, ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... ecclesiastic's little house without any difficulty; it was by the side of a large, ugly, brick church. I knocked at the door with my fist, as there was neither bell nor knocker, and a loud voice from inside asked: 'Who is there?' To which I replied: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Empire, who had died, a Colonel of Maria Theresa, in the battle of Leuthen; and of Elisabeth Philippine, Countess of Horn, born at Mons in Hainaut, the 20th September 1752, educated there in a convent, and subsequently admitted to the half-ecclesiastic, half-worldly dignity of Canoness of Ste. Wandru in that town: Louise, Princess of Stolberg, now in her twentieth year, had been betrothed, and, a few weeks ago, married by proxy in Paris to Charles Edward Stuart, known ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... purchase, by the aid of a Spanish renegade and two Valencian merchants resident in Algiers, an armed vessel in which he and about sixty of the leading captives were to make their escape; but just as they were about to put it into execution one Doctor Juan Blanco de Paz, an ecclesiastic and a compatriot, informed the Dey of the plot. Cervantes by force of character, by his self-devotion, by his untiring energy and his exertions to lighten the lot of his companions in misery, had endeared himself to all, and become the leading spirit in the captive colony, and, incredible as ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... St. Mary's Bay, conducted by De Champdore, an experienced pilot, with a mineralogist, to search for silver and iron ore. While Some of the party were on a fishing excursion, they rescued him, as stated in the text. The safe return of the young and too venturesome ecclesiastic gave great relief to De Monts, as Lescarbot says a Protestant was charged to have killed him, because they quarrelled sometimes about their religion.—Vide Histoire de Nouvelle-France, par Mare Lescarbot, Paris, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... Goths, says in the most solemn manner: "I esteem it a very foolish temerity to be disposed to penetrate into the knowledge of the nature of God;" and further on he acknowledges, "that he has nothing more to say of him, except that he is perfectly good. He who knoweth more, whether he be ecclesiastic or layman, has only to tell it." The weakness, the obscurity of the proofs offered, of the systems attributed to him, the manifest contradictions into which they fall, the sophisms, the begging of the question, which are employed, evidently prove they are ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... struggle against their kingly suzerain, who had, besides, all around his domains, several neighbors more powerful than himself in the extent and population of their states. But lord and peasant, layman and ecclesiastic, castle and country and the churches of France, were not long discovering that, if the kingdom was small, it had verily a king. Louis did not direct to a distance from home his ambition and his efforts; it was within his own dominion, to check the violence of the strong against ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... more properly the title of the bishop of Carthage; but the name of patriarch was given by the sects and nations to their principal ecclesiastic. See Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... behind a couple of grisettes in order to see the opera, and that the parterre espying him, were insisting upon his holding up both his hands during the representation.—And can it be supposed, said I, that an ecclesiastic would pick the grisettes' pockets? The old French officer smiled, and whispering in my ear, opened a door of knowledge which I had ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... and those performing other services, are paid in the same manner. They are all under royal patronage, and are provided in accordance with the king's orders. The archbishop's office and jurisdiction consists of and extends to all, both the spiritual and temporal, that is ecclesiastic, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... Squire, leaning heavily on the Parson's left shoulder, extended his cane in a line parallel with the right of that disputatious ecclesiastic, so that he might guide the organ of sight to the object he had ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... "Almost ecclesiastic, I'll say," chuckled Nell, when the old serving man was out of the room. "He is a lot more ministerial looking than the Reverend. I expect him, almost any time, to say grace before meat. Fred convulsed us all at the table last evening. We take turns, you know, giving thanks. ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... noted) of Greek thought. It arose partly because of the fact that the culture of Rome and of barbarian Europe was not a native product, being borrowed directly or indirectly from Greece, and partly because political and ecclesiastic conditions emphasized dependence upon the authority of past knowledge as that was transmitted in ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... them. Both sides were waiting for re-enforcements. Saladin was indeed continually receiving accessions to his army from the interior, and Richard was expecting them from Europe. He sent to a distinguished ecclesiastic, named the Abbot of Clairvaux, who had a high reputation in Europe, and enjoyed great influence at many of the principal courts. In his letter to the abbot, he requested him to visit the different courts, ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Bixby, in a powerful plea for truth-seekers, quoted approvingly the words of an eminent ecclesiastic of the church of England who characterized the present age as "preeminently the age of doubt." Another writer says that Europe is turning in despair toward Nirvana. The almost unprecedented success of Hartman's "Philosophy ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... were equally pleased with the other: Sir James, at finding so much knowledge and understanding in a Scottish castle; and Malcolm, at, for the first time, meeting anything but contempt for his tastes from aught but an ecclesiastic. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... above. Thereafter presently appeared Giles (that chanced to be captain of the watch) very joyously haling along a little man placid and rotund. A plump little man whose sober habit, smacking of things ecclesiastic, was at odds with his face that beamed forth jovial and rubicund from the shade of his wide-eaved hat: a pilgrim-like hat, adorned with many small pewter images of divers saints. About his waist was ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... bicycle down the lonely road to Bridget's cottage, the thought passed through his mind that if Nora Glynn were a stupid, intelligent woman no objection would have been raised against her. 'An independent mind is very objectionable to the ecclesiastic,' he said to himself as he leaped off his bicycle.... 'Nora Glynn. How well suited the name is to her. There is a smack in the name. Glynn, Nora Glynn,' he repeated, and it seemed to him that the name belonged ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... islands and islets of the lagoon, I should say, is her continual contrast between the ever-recurrent idyllicism of open meadows or wilding clusters of simple rustic thickets, and the enormous antiquity of these two hoary ecclesiastic fanes. History is in the air, and you feel that the very daisies you crush underfoot, the very copses from which you pluck a scented spray, have their delicate rustic ancestries, dating back to Attila, who is said once to have brought his destructive presence where now ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... in the 14th century, after the great plague, the Black Death, had passed, an immensely increased proportion of the landed and personal property of every European country was in the hands of the Church. Well did a great ecclesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... events have been known to cast conspicuous shadows in the likeness of mitre and crosier. The Bishop heard of a man in Montana who had an old book of plays with an autograph of William Shakespeare pasted in it. Being a wise ecclesiastic, he did not exclaim 'Tush' and 'Fie,' but proceeded at once to go book-hunting in Montana. He went by proxy, if not in person; the journey is long. In due time the owner of the volume was found and the book was placed in the Bishop's hands ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... overreached himself in his plan for silently sapping the liberty that was so obnoxious to his designs. But to neutralize the influence of the restive members, he had left Granvelle the first place in the administration. This man, an immoral ecclesiastic, an eloquent orator, a supple courtier, and a profound politician, bloated with pride, envy, insolence, and vanity, was the real head of the government.[3] Next to him among the royalist party was Viglius, ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... words of eight letters each, so that the letter A shall come at each of the four corners where the words intersect. The words mean: Sweet-smelling, to make a scale, a fillet, an ecclesiastic. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... known him in the day of his pride. It was necessary to support him while his irons were being removed. He was attended by a benevolent person who commonly assists criminals in their last moments, and who, though no ecclesiastic by profession, seemed equal to the duty of imparting religious consolation. His voice now contributed to soothe his unhappy charge, and in a few moments all that was necessary there to be done had been performed. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... further delay. Peter Martyr, however, received this intimation with unruffled calm and, to the stupefaction of Tangriberdy, refused to leave until he had accomplished his mission. Such audacity in a mild-mannered ecclesiastic was as impressive as it was unexpected. The Grand Dragoman had no choice but to report the refusal to the Sultan. By what arguments he prevailed upon Cansu Alguri to rescind his command, we know not, but a secret audience was arranged in which ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... ill-kempt pupils marched the grave professors and teachers, in square ecclesiastic caps and long gowns, whose colours marked their degrees and the Universities that had conferred them—some thin, some portly, some jocund, others dreamy; some observing all the humours around, others still intent on Aristotelian ethics; all men of high fame, with doctor at the beginning of ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... An ecclesiastic having approached the berlin, and exhibited some traces of respect and sorrow on his features, was seized by the people, thrown under the horses' feet, and was on the point of being massacred before the queen's eyes, when Barnave, with a noble impulse, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... not follow that William de Bolton was an ecclesiastic because he was called Clericus; that designation being, even in that early time, often used in ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.22 • Various
... their covenant, thereby to prevent covenant curses, and procure covenant blessings; as we find both in scripture record, 2 Chron. xv. 12, 13; xxix. 10; xxxiv. 30, 31; Ezra x. 3, and in our own ecclesiastic history. And the practice was justified by the success, for the most part terminating in some reviving and reformation. 6th, The time being come to such a crisis, that such as would keep the word of Christ's patience cannot any longer do it in a distinguishing ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... St. John's, Dean of Worcester, Bishop of Hereford, and Bishop of London. He also became Lord Treasurer, a post which had been held by no churchman since the days of Henry VII., and was the last instance of any of the great offices of State being filled by an ecclesiastic. He attended Charles I. on the occasion of his execution. On the Restoration he became Archbishop of Canterbury, and died three years afterwards. He lies in the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... theological studies, he had been the disciple of the famous and unfortunate Abelard, [21] who was likewise involved in the suspicion of heresy: but the lover of Eloisa was of a soft and flexible nature; and his ecclesiastic judges were edified and disarmed by the humility of his repentance. From this master, Arnold most probably imbibed some metaphysical definitions of the Trinity, repugnant to the taste of the times: his ideas of baptism and the eucharist are loosely censured; but a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... authority of the divine will which regulates us without contradiction, and which occupies its rank above those human and vain disputes.' This chairman, as often observed, by which Montaigne's thoughts are to be guided, is an ecclesiastic authority. ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... number those of Greene, Taylor, and Prynne, their prefaces—those fruitful sources of information—throw no light upon the life or circumstances of their author. The late Mr. Octavius Gilchrist considered that "Rowlands was an ecclesiastic [?] by profession;" and, inferring his zeal in the pulpit from his labours through the press, adds, "it should seem that he was an active servant of the church." (See Fry's Bibliographical Memoranda, p. 257.) Sir Walter Scott (Preface to his reprint ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... Mr. Drone is not one person but about eight or ten. To make him I clapped the gaiters of one ecclesiastic round the legs of another, added the sermons of a third and the character of a fourth, and so let him start on his way in the book to pick up such individual attributes as he might find for himself. Mullins and Bagshaw and Judge Pepperleigh and the rest are, it is true, ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... this pastoral staff are found in ancient Irish history. St. Fiacc speaks of it as having been richly adorned by an ecclesiastic contemporary ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... met Monseigneur Duchesne at the house of Count Ugo Balzani, or in the drawing-room of the French Embassy, all that showed, at first, was the witty ecclesiastic of the old school, an abbe of the eighteenth century, fin, shrewd, well versed in men and affairs, and capable of throwing an infinity of meaning into the inflection of a word or the lift of an eyebrow. I remember listening to an account by him of certain ceremonies in the catacombs in which ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... great defect in Anglo-Indian society; it is composed too exclusively of the servants of government, civil, military, and ecclesiastic, and wants much of the freshness, variety, and intelligence of cultivated societies otherwise constituted. In societies where capital is concentrated for employment in large agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... to teach subtlety to the Signoria, my Lady Laura! Is not every noble a statesman trained, and every one at the service of the Republic? But there is no greater theologian at the Court of Paul V, nor any ecclesiastic among them all more familiar with the writings of their authorities; and he hath a memory so astounding that he beareth the meaning of all their codes on the end of his tongue wherewith to confute the fallacious arguments ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Poetry after the new style. His chief work was the Criticon, an allegory of the Spring, Autumn, and Winter of life. The Discreto was one of his minor works. All that he wrote was published, not by himself, but by a friend, and in the name of his brother Lorenzo, who was not an ecclesiastic.] ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... bishop who was before all things an ecclesiastic. To Ralph Luffa's foundation of the dean's office he added those of the chancellor and treasurer, if not also, as is supposed, that of the praecentor. With Hilary began the traditional post of confessor to the queen of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... city of Manila lives a respectable ecclesiastic, one Christoval Ramires de Cartagena, who of the many years since he came to these regions has been several minister in the islands of Pintados. For many years he has been chaplain of the royal Audiencia. While a layman he served your Majesty in the army; and since ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... sweetness and growth. There was no one to whom she could turn. Had good Dr. Bayly been at home—but he was away on some important mission from his lordship to the king: and indeed she could scarcely have looked for refuge from such misery as hers in the judgment of the rather priggish old-bachelor ecclesiastic. Gladly would she have forsaken the castle, and returned to all the dangers and fears of her lonely home; but that would be to yield to a lie, to flee from the devil instead of facing him, and with her own hand to fix the imputed smirch upon ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... impossible, the journey was too long and doubtful, especially in the winter; that he was subject to sea-sickness and did not like to leave his congregation over Sunday. Rahal, I felt the paper on which his letter was written crinkling and crackling in my hand, it was that stiff with ecclesiastic pomp and spiritual pride. I would not show thee the letter, I put ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... solemnized, being a sacrament of the Church, would hold fast until the crack of doom unless the Pope annulled it, and, as you know, the Pope is out of favour in this realm on this very matter of marriage. Let me explain the law to you, ecclesiastic and civil——" ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... very dear at the price. La Motte higgled very hard for more, and talked pathetically of his services and his wounds—for he had been a most distinguished and courageous campaigner—but Alonzo was implacable. Moreover, one Robert Bien-Aime, Prior of Renty, was present at all the conferences. This ecclesiastic was a busy intriguer, but not very adroit. He was disposed to make himself useful to government, for he had set his heart upon putting the mitre of Saint Omer upon his head, and he had accordingly composed a very ingenious libel ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
