"Prioress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bishop countenanced him, endorsed his aims, and signalized an official friendliness by accompanying him on a visit to the Ursuline Convent, and there the son of a Protestant preacher chatted pleasantly with my lady prioress and her demure nuns. Burr went everywhere, and wherever he went, he made discreet use of his opportunity to inquire, to observe, to listen, to make friends and proselytes. He felt the pulse of public ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... after his friend's death. For example, a daughter is to have a copy of the Golden Legend, "and to occupye to hir owne use and at hir owne liberte durynge hur lyfe, and after hur decesse to remayne to the prioress and the convent of Halywelle for evermore, they to pray for the said John Burton and Johne his wife and alle crystene soyles (1460)."[1] A manuscript now in Worcester Cathedral Library bears an inscription telling us that, likewise, one Thomas Jolyffe left it ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... "A Grumble About Christmas Books," 1847, considered that the motto for humor should be the same as the talisman worn by the Prioress in Chaucer:— ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... when that knight over there sees me so small and ill-favoured he will none of me, and then I'll thank him so, and pray my father to let him have all my lands and houses except just enough to dower me to follow thee with, dear Lady Prioress.' ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Carthusian nun, was the name of the singular woman who was chosen to be my teacher. She was at once the most pious and learned soul living; she was Prioress of a Carthusian nunnery and had written ten large choirbooks, besides others. Though the rule of her order forbade discourse, she was permitted ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... on her mind!' No! I—I did not even attempt to. How could I, when I only saw her behind a grate, with the prioress on one side of her and the portress on the other? My visit was silent enough, and short enough, and sad enough. Why can't she come out of that? What have I done to deserve to be made miserable? I don't deserve it. I am the most ill-used man ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... means north that these twain rode, but as near south as might be. The Sisters were good to them, and gave them each a gown such as their lay-sisters wore, for they said that so arrayed they would be the less meddled with. Therewithal the Prioress gave them a writing under her seal, praying all religious houses to help them wheresoever they came, whereas they were holy women and of good life. And the twain thanked them and blessed them, and made an oblation each one of them, of a ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... This Prioress was a short little person, round and white, with a double chin, and a complexion at once fresh and placid. You never see faces like that in worldly persons: it is a kind of embonpoint quite different from others—one which has been formed more quietly and more methodically—that ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... we would, because it would be something to do, and it was a very wet day; but they looked difficult, especially the Miller's. Denny wanted to be the Miller, but in the end he was the Doctor, because it was next door to Dentist, which is what we call him for short. Daisy was to be the Prioress—because she is good, and has 'a soft little red mouth', and H. O. WOULD be the Manciple (I don't know what that is), because the picture of him is bigger than most of the others, and he said Manciple was a nice portmanteau word—half mandarin ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... obey; Yet nothing stern was she in cell, And the nuns loved their Abbess well. Sad was this voyage to the dame; Summoned to Lindisfarne, she came, There, with Saint Cuthbert's Abbot old, And Tynemouth's Prioress, to hold A chapter of Saint Benedict, For inquisition stern and strict, On two apostates from the faith, And, if need were, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... to change their clothes and wash their hands; and when they had done, as she perceived how much taller in stature Chih Neng had grown and how much handsomer were her features, she felt prompted to inquire, "How is it that your prioress and yourselves haven't been all these days as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the little child slain in Jewry, (which is told by the Prioress, and worthy to be told by her who was "all conscience and tender heart,") is not less touching than that of Griselda. It is simple and heroic to the last degree. The poetry of Chaucer has a religious sanctity about it, connected with the manners and superstitions of the age. It ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... I entreated the prioress to let me live in perfect obscurity, without corresponding with my friends, or even with my relations. She declined to grant this last request, thinking that my zeal was leading me too far. On the other hand, she ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... places where executions for witchcraft took place were mainly in the neighbourhood of great nunneries; and the last famous victim, of the myriads executed in Germany for this imaginary crime, was Sister Anna Renata Singer, sub-prioress of a nunnery ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... to my friend BERNARDO. He is thus anxious, because an original fragment of the fair lady's work, which you have just mentioned, is coming under the hammer; and powerful indeed must be the object to draw his attention another way. The demure prioress of Sopewell abbey is his ancient sweetheart; and he is about introducing her to his friends, by a union with her as close and as honourable as that of wedlock. Engaged in a laborious profession (the duties of which are faithfully performed by him) Bernardo devotes his few leisure hours to the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... outline of the history, furnished or corroborated by her voluntary confession, of a lady witch, nearly the last executed for this crime. She was, at the time of her death, seventy years of age, and had been many years sub-prioress of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... archbishop strike the imagination vividly, yet the picture presented by Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" is in reality much more impressive. For we find there all ranks of society alike making the pilgrimage—the knight, the yeoman, the prioress, the monk, the friar, the merchant, the scholar from Oxford, the lawyer, the squire, the tradesman, the cook, the shipman, the physician, the clothier from Bath, the priest, the miller, the reeve, the manciple, the seller of indulgences, and, ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... account of the death of Robin Hood varies from all the popular narratives and ballads. The MS. Sloan, 715, nu. 7, f. 157, agrees with the ballad in Ritson, ii. 183, that he was treacherously bled to death by the Prioress of Kirksley. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... garbed appropriately as Chaucer's Prioress, received the company at the top of the sun-dial steps, looking, in the opinion of the Foursome League, quite sufficiently like the ghost of yesterday to have justified squeals had they met her alone. When the ceremony of introduction was over, the guests dispersed about the lawn, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... severe sentence compared with the sentence passed upon another priest who confessed to incest with the prioress of Kilbourn. The offender was condemned to bear a cross in a procession in his parish church, and was excused his remaining guilt ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... and the gay Squire, the one a model of Chivalry at its best, "a verray parfit gentil knight," the other a young man so full of life and love that "he slept namore than dooth a nightingale"; to the modest Prioress, also, with her pretty clothes, her ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... is alive, not a ruin,' said Emma, with a sigh, and she asked many questions about it, while showing Violet the chief points of interest, where the different buildings had been, and the tomb of Osyth, the last prioress. Her whole manner surprised Violet, there was a reverence as if they were actually within a church, and more melancholy than pleasure in the possession of what, nevertheless, the young heiress evidently loved ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... comment: The school of Oxford seems to have been in much the same estimation for its dancing as that of Stratford for its French—alluding of course to what is, said in the Prologue of the French spoken by the Prioress: ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... refectory or hall passed into the hands of the Leathersellers' Company and formed the company's hall until the close of the last century. The conduct of the inmates of the priory had not always been what it should be.(1208) The last prioress, in anticipation of the coming storm, leased a large portion of the conventual property to members of her own family, and at the time of the suppression was herself allowed a gratuity ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... could right well fit you. We have here at this instant moment a small maid of twelve years, that my Lady the Prioress were well fain to put with such as you be, and she bade me give heed to the same. 'Tis a waif that Anthony, our goatherd, found in the forest, with her mother, that was frozen to death in an hard winter; but the child abode, and was saved. Truly, for cunning ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... {153c} The convent was so entirely shut in by walls, according to the old regulation, “as scarcely to leave an entrance for birds.” They were not allowed even to converse with each other without license from the Prioress. If strangers wished to communicate with them, it was only allowed through a grating, veiled, and in the presence of witnesses. They confessed periodically to the Incumbent of the parish, with a latticed window ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... had resolved to point this person out to his father, Sir Patrick was summoned to speak to the Lady Prioress. Therefore the youth thought it incumbent upon him to deal with the matter, and advancing towards the stranger, said, 'Good fellow, thou art none of our following. How, now!' for a pair of gray eyes looked up with recognition in them, and a low voice ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Orders of nuns, certain corresponding features were becoming usual. But little in the way of religious guidance could fall to the lot of a sisterhood presided over by such a "Prioress" as Chaucer's Madame Eglantine, whose mind—possibly because her nunnery fulfilled the functions of a finishing school for young ladies—was mainly devoted to French and deportment, or by such a one as the historical Lady Juliana Berners, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... the sovereign, before entering the Cathedral, paused before the threshold of the Hotel-Dieu. Fifty nuns presented themselves before him, "Sire," said the Prioress, "you pause before the house so justly termed the Hotel-Dieu, which has always been honored with the protection of our kings. We shall never forget, Sire, that the sick have seen at their bedside the Prince who is today their King. They know that at this moment your march is arrested by charity. ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... his Life of St. Alban, tells of an excellent embroideress, Christine, Prioress of Margate, who lived in the middle of the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century several names occur. Adam de Bazinge made, in 1241, by order of Henry III. of England, a cope for the Bishop of Hereford. Cunegonde, Abbess of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... or stir. She beckoned the good prioress, who had followed Torfrida in, to go away. She saw that something dreadful had happened; and prayed as she ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... the Tabard Inn in Southwark, where Harry Bailey was host, are said to have numbered "wel nyne and twenty in a company," and the Prologue gives full-length sketches of a Knight, a Squire (his son), and their Yeoman; of a Prioress, Monk, Friar, Oxford Clerk, and Parson, with two disreputable hangers-on of the church, a Summoner and Pardoner; of a Serjeant-at-Law and a Doctor of Physic, and of a Franklin, or country gentleman, Merchant, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... tyranny is the Semitic trouble in all times. It is certain that in popular sentiment, this Anti-Semitism was not excused as uncharitableness, but simply regarded as charity. Chaucer puts his curse on Hebrew cruelty into the mouth of the soft-hearted prioress, who wept when she saw a mouse in a trap; and it was when Edward, breaking the rule by which the rulers had hitherto fostered their bankers' wealth, flung the alien financiers out of the land, that his people probably saw him most plainly at once as a knight errant and a tender father ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... you. The story goes, that in the old Popish times, when the nuns held Whitford Priors, the first Mr. Lavington that ever was came from the king with a warrant to turn them all out, poor souls, and take the lands for his own. And they say the head lady of them—prioress, or abbess, as they called her—withstood him, and cursed him, in the name of the Lord, for a hypocrite who robbed harmless women under the cloak of punishing them for sins they'd never committed (for they say, sir, he went up to court, and slandered the nuns there for drunkards ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... pardon, madame," said she, earnestly, "but I cannot receive this letter from the prioress of the Carmelite convent at St. Denis; for you well know that when Madame Louise sent me some years ago, through your highness, a letter which I read, that I never again will receive and read letters from the prioress. Have the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... gives way to a sort of mirthless laughter. "It is a farce!" she says. "Consider my feeling anything. And so virtuous a thing, too, as remorse! Well, as one lives, one learns. If I had seen the light for the first time in the middle of the dark ages, I should probably have ended my days as the prioress of a convent. As it is, I shouldn't wonder if I went in for hospital nursing presently. Pshaw!" angrily, "it is useless lamenting. Let me face the truth. I have acted abominably toward her so far, and the worst of ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... weep for me?' asked Robin; 'the Prioress is the daughter of my aunt, and my cousin, and well I know she would not do me harm for all the world.' And he passed on, with Little John ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... more his own is the invocation in the "Prioress's Tale." I give the stanzas as modernized ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... no longer a young man, so life in the open no longer proved as delightful as of yore. Seized with a fever which he could not shake off, Robin finally dragged himself to the priory of Kirk Lee, where he besought the prioress to bleed him. Either because she was afraid to defy the king or because she owed Robin a personal grudge, this lady opened an artery instead of a vein, and, locking the door of his room, left him there ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... down his hand violently upon the arm of his chair, with a blow which made Margery start. "I cry you mercy, fair mistress—but if I knew of any among my kin or meynie [Household retinue] that leaned that way—ay, were it mine own sister, the Prioress of Kennington—I tell thee, Ralph, I would have her up before the King's Grace's council, and ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... are everywhere apparent in his verse. The simplest and humblest words come readily to his lips. No one can read the Prioress's tale, understanding the spirit in which it was written, and in which the child sings O alma redemptoris mater, or the account of the departure of Constance with her child upon the sea, in the Man of Lawe's tale, without feeling the native innocence and ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... another dart over the city, as far as Stratford at Bow, where, with all due tenderness for boarding-school French, a joke of Chaucer has existed as a piece of local humour for nearly four hundred and fifty years. Speaking of the Prioress, who makes such a delicate figure among his Canterbury Pilgrims, he tells us, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... last, with great reluctance,[1145] the twenty-fourth of September was selected for a third conference. The obstinate resistance of the Romish ecclesiastics gained them one point. The public character of the colloquy was abandoned.[1146] The large refectory was exchanged for the small chamber of the prioress. The king was not present. Catharine presided, and Antoine and Jeanne d'Albret, with the members of the royal council, replaced the more numerous assemblage of the previous occasions. Instead of the crowd of prelates whose various and striking dress formed a notable feature of the colloquy, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Canon Fulbert, born at Paris; celebrated for her amour with ABELARD (q. v.); became prioress of the convent of Argenteuil and abbess of the Paraclete, where she founded a new convent and lived a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in the English language, has generally been ascribed to a certain (or uncertain) Juliana Berners, Bernes, or Barnes, who lived in the early part of the fifteenth century, and who is reputed to have been prioress of the Nunnery of Sopwell,—long since in ruins,—near St. Albans, and close to the little river Ver, which still conceals in its quiet pools the speckled trout. If this attribution be correct, Dame Berners was the first woman to write a book ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner |
