"Sacristan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stove, Akim was not there. The second cock had not crowed and the night was still so dark that the sky hardly showed grey overhead and at the horizon melted into the darkness when Akim walked out of the gate of the sacristan's house. His face was pale but he looked keenly around him and his step was not that of a drunken man.... He walked in the direction of his former dwelling, the inn, which had now completely passed into the possession ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... him, he was not naturally malignant, but really a most useful and serviceable being. His talents were many, and various. He could crochet most perfectly, and his coverlets were unrivalled in Lancia. He decked an altar, or dressed the images as well as any sacristan. He could upholster furniture, make wax flowers, paper walls, embroider with hair, and paint plates. And when any of his female friends wished to have her hair well dressed to go to some ball, Manuel Antonio gallantly went ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... wonderful enough; but there seems to me something more extraordinary in the successful conquest of the difficulties which confront an artist of such ambition as this Dort carver. His triumph is even more striking than that of the sculptor in marble. The sacristan of Dort's Groote Kerk seems more eager to show a brass screen and a gold christening bowl than these astounding choir stalls; ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... glimpses of the moon. These tricks of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. Can any biography shed light on the localities into which the Midsummer Night's Dream admits me? Did Shakspeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation? The forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone Castle, the moonlight of Portia's villa, "the antres vast and desarts idle" of Othello's captivity,—where ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... The sacristan opened a tall and narrow little recess in the wall of the chancel, and showed it entirely filled with the crosier of William of Wickham. It appears to be made of silver gilt, and is a most rich and elaborate relic, at least six feet high. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that being a more sacred place, he felt sure that God would favor him even more than Juan. He arranged his bier with the candles around him, and lay down to await the shower of money that should reward his devotions. When the sacristan went to the church to ring the bell for vespers, he saw the body lying there, and not knowing of any corpse having been carried in, he was frightened and ran to tell the padre. The padre, when he had seen the body, said it was a miracle, and that ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... the Indians how to shoot, they would bring from Chile certain Jesuits who in the world had served as soldiers. One sees them brought from the frontiers of Araucania, and from the outposts of the trans-Andean towns, half sacristan, half sergeant, instant in prayer, and yet with a look about them like a serious bull terrier — a fitting kind of priest for a frontier town, and such as could alone be ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... he not better recompense them; but he promised them, and swore oaths on the holy cross, that if he might go to England he should get them the minster of Peterborough; so that he should set there the prior of Clugny, with a churchwarden, a treasurer, and a sacristan: and all the things that were within the minster and without, he should procure for them. Thus he departed into France; and there remained all that year. Christ provide for the wretched monks of Peterborough, and for that wretched place. Now do they need the help of Christ and of ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... don't believe we need think of the man's work as mean or sordid. I should think it might be a very valuable sort of service that he renders at the hospital. Do you remember that day, the first week we were here, when we were waiting for the sacristan at the Madonna del Orto, and a little girl on the quay fell down ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... brethren tarried without. Pauline had been to the Cafe des Exiles in some degree what the image of the Virgin was to their churches at home; and for her father to whisper her name to one and not to another was, it seemed to Mazaro, as if the old man, were he a sacristan, should say to some single worshiper, "Here, you may have this madonna; I make it a present to you." Or, if such was not the handsome young Cuban's feeling, such, at least, was the disguise his jealousy put on. If Pauline was to be handed down from her ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... centuries, Christians met and prayed in the little church, unconscious of the wonder-working relic hidden so near them; and it was only through a miracle, in Charlemagne's time and some say in his presence, that the holy body was discovered. This is the history which a sacristan recites to curious pilgrims as he leads them to ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... to have run so fast again," ejaculated a very short and stout priest. "Faith, my legs seemed to grow under me, as our sacristan said after he had been tossed by ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... young mothers, with the refined and gentle faces of Madonnas, who hold the plaintive little ones beneath their black veils and seek to comfort them. And the sorcerer, who plays the cymbals, is a kind old priest, or sacristan, who smiles paternally. If he makes all this noise, in a rhythm which in itself is full of joy, it is to mark the gladness of Easter morn, to celebrate the resurrection of Christ—and a little, too, no doubt, to distract the little ones, some of whom are woefully put out. But their mammas ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... the Church of St. Roch, to see a famous piece of mosaic-work there. It is a famous work of art, and was bought by I don't know what king for I don't know how much money. All this information may be perfectly relied on, though the fact is, we did not see the mosaic-work: the sacristan, who guards it, was yet in bed; and it was veiled from our eyes in a side-chapel by great dirty damask curtains, which could not be removed, except when the sacristan's toilette was done, and at the price of a dollar. So we were spared this mosaic ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... president,[6] "elders,"[7] a hazzan, i.e., a recognized reader, or apparitor,[8] deputies,[9] who were secretaries or messengers, and conducted the correspondence between one synagogue and another, a shammash, or sacristan.[10] The synagogues were thus really little independent republics, having an extensive jurisdiction. Like all municipal corporations, up to an advanced period of the Roman empire, they issued honorary decrees,[11] voted resolutions, which had the force of law for ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... reality to be the glimpses of the moon. These tricks of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. Can any biography shed light on the localities into which the Midsummer Night's Dream admits me? Did Shakespeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation? The forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone Castle, the moonlight of Portia's villa, 'the antres vast and desarts idle' of Othello's captivity,—where is the third ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... now you cannot come!" A voice from the gallows distinctly replied: "Yes, I will come." To the wedding feast accordingly the dead man came, with the rope round his neck, and was placed between the pastor and the sacristan. He ate and drank in silence, and departed. As he left, he beckoned the bridegroom to follow him; and when they got outside the village the hanged man said: "Thanks to your Paternoster, I am saved." They ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... the smear—a portrait of the old Sacristan on a bench in front of the main entrance—started back in surprise on seeing the Bostonian, and asked with an anxious tone ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... an altar. Altar service was rewarded by a large piece of toast for breakfast. Handsome lads of sixteen were chosen for acolytes, the torch-bearers were selected from the smallest boys, the office of censer was filled by John Norton, and he was also the chief sacristan, and had charge of the altar plate and linen and the vestments. He spoke of the organ, and he depreciated the present instrument, and enlarged upon some technical details anent the latest modern ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... from those heights of sanctity towards whose summits she had set her face, down into the muddy torrent of the world that went roaring down to the abyss—and who was responsible? There was Dame Avice, the Sacristan, with her businesslike movements going about the garden, gathering flowers for the altar, with her queer pursed lips as she arranged them in her hands with her head a little on one side; how annoying she used to be sometimes; but how good ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... conversation was interrupted by the Sacristan, who, in a voice almost inarticulate with anger, accused the Bohemian of having practised the most abominable arts of delusion among the younger brethren. He had added to their nightly meal cups of a heady and intoxicating ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Catholic Church, and none at all, I think, has so imperceptibly retired from the Church of England. For all the interest it excited, the secession of this extremely brilliant person might have been the secession of a sacristan or a pew-opener. He did not so much "go over to Rome" as sidle away from the Church ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... lines of the walls bend a little to the left from a line drawn across between the modern chapels. The floor of this basilica is about 2 ft. 9 in. below that of the present one. The mosaic pavement is well preserved nearly all over the surface; and the sacristan opens numerous trap-doors, and puts down tapers, to show the most interesting portions. The cills of two of the doors still remain 9 in. higher and much worn by traffic; the third was destroyed to place a sarcophagus ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... a white-bearded sacristan in a three-cornered hat of blue and gold and a gold-embroidered coat. For all his brave apparel he was a small, mild-mannered person, with kindly brown eyes and a way of smiling sadly as if he ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... brave recoil in terror from death, when it assumes a form and hovers near in a detested shape. Having informed the youth that a messenger had been despatched to his father, the priest left Gilbert in charge of the sacristan, and proceeded on his daily errand of mercy through the neighborhood. By men like him, fervent, fearless, faithful, the rude Northern hordes were induced to abandon their idolatry, and embrace the faith of the ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... ecstasy. The convent chaplain, who was so charitable as to come early to give me the Holy Communion, used to find me in this state, but as soon as he was come and had opened the church, I always recovered, and hastened to the holy table, there to receive my Lord and my God. When I was sacristan, I used all on a sudden to feel myself ravished in spirit, and ascend to the highest parts of the church, on to cornices, projecting parts of the building, and mouldings, where it seemed impossible for ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... is true his arrival was always heralded with music, he was given banquets by his debtors, and loaded with presents; but he was laughed at in secret, and called Sacristan Tiago. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Nicodemus, sir. Or I should say sacristan. They call him sacristan instead of sexton because St. Nicodemus is High, as I daresay you know, sir, living ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... sez, 'what we shall see.' So I waited, and at twelve o'clock out they came, dozens of them, and began to cross the meadow. 'And now,' sez I to myself, 'look out for larks.' But what happened? Why, when they came to the pole, the priest stood in front of it, and the sacristan rang the bell, and they all fell down on their knees. But they were saying their prayers, not doing obeisance to the hat. That's what they were ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... it becomes the walled Umbrian town, castellated. In this gloom, this sadness of icy evening sky between the high roofs, and after the appalling sadness of a church, squalid, dark, a few people kneeling, and the sacristan extinguishing the altars after a Benediction (every grief, one would think, laid down on that floor only to pick up a weight of the grief of others); after this there was something sweet and country-like in the splash of the fountains at Monte Giordano; ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... from his haste to reach the open Cathedral door. The choir are getting on their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service. Then, the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary from the chancel, and all of the procession having scuttled into their places, hide their faces; and then the intoned words, 'WHEN THE WICKED MAN—' ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... pillar in the church, half standing and half sitting, motionless. She stirred never a limb, but they saw quite plainly that she was alive, and she sits there down to this blessed day. Every New Year's Day the sacristan comes and puts a morsel of the holy bread in her mouth, and that is all she has to live on. Long, long has she rued her fatal wish who set this transient life above the eternal joys of heaven.[253] A third ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... This tale the sacristan of the church of St. Eulalie at Neuville d'Aumont told me, as we sat under the arbor of the White Horse, one fine summer evening, drinking a bottle of old wine to the health of the dead man, now very much at his ease, ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... church of the Templars at Luz, which we go to see. It stands at the top of a hilly street, shut off behind a stout fortified wall and between two square flanking towers. We pass through the gateway, and the old sacristan lets us into the church. There is a curious gate, a turret rough in traced carving, and inside, in the dim light, we are chiefly impressed with the rude-gilded altar and the grotesque frescoes on the walls. Yet there is a certain solemnity about the darkness ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the general poverty of the land. Henry II, an ardent sportsman, a ruler almost completely immersed in affairs of State, made time for private reading and for working out knotty questions,[1] and very probably he had a library to his hand. King John received from the sacristan of Reading a small collection of books of the Bible and severe theology, perhaps as a diplomatic gift, perhaps as a subtle reminder that a little food for the spirit would improve his morals and ameliorate the lot ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... replied the officer; "the iron chest is under an official lock as yet, for the 'Maticza' has put in a claim to the inheritance. The Slav parish priest in Dumanyfalva, as well as his housekeeper and his sacristan, affirm that your deceased uncle, on the eve of his death, dined with them (in parentheses, the fat pork he partook of and the strong wine he drank brought on the fatal stroke), and there at the table he declared that, even in case you, his nephew, should accept of the inheritance, the Maticza ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... that she could not and would not go without her remaining Tintoret, and the others yielded to her at once, with that indulgent tenderness one shows to the wilfulness of a sick child. She and Margaret followed the sacristan. Ashe lingered behind in a passage of the church, surreptitiously reading an Italian newspaper. He had the ordinary cultivated pleasure in pictures; but this ardor which Kitty was throwing into her pursuit of Tintoret—the ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... functionary of the place, became uneasy; went out on his house-top alone, and looked in that direction too; glanced down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the keys of the church, that there might be need ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... were favourite subjects of comic delineation, such as the "Marriage," the "First of March," "Harlequin Candidate"; so were also foreign nationalities—the Transalpine Gauls, the Syrians; above all, the various trades frequently appear on the boards. The sacristan, the soothsayer, the bird-seer, the physician, the publican, the painter, fisherman, baker, pass across the stage; the public criers were severely assailed and still more the fullers, who seem to have played in the Roman fool-world the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... In the Life of St. Francis Xavier by Bartholi and Maffei the following circumstance is given: "It seems that a rat had invaded the sanctuary and gnawed the ornaments of the altar. The sacristan appealed to the saint thus: 'Father Francis! people say that you passed from this life in the vicinity of China; that you were a saint, that your body still remains entire and incorrupt at Goa. Now here am I your sacristan; and I ask is it consistent with your honor that a rat should have the ...
— Japan • David Murray
... and inconsistent part in the pages assigned to her in the narrative; manifesting interest and attachment to the family with whom her destinies are associated, but evincing whim, and even a species of malevolence, towards other mortals, as the Sacristan, and the Border robber, whose incorrect life subjected them to receive petty mortifications at her hand. The White Lady is scarcely supposed, however, to have possessed either the power or the inclination to do more than inflict terror or create embarrassment, and ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... little-known sanctuary dedicated to St. Anne, about three-quarters of a mile south of Borgo-Sesia station. The situation is, of course, lovely, but the sanctuary does not offer any features of architectural interest. The sacristan told me it was founded in 1631; and in 1644 Giovanni d'Enrico, while engaged in superintending and completing the work undertaken here by himself and Giacomo Ferro, fell ill and died. I do not know whether or no there was an earlier sanctuary on the same site, but was ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... with something austere and primitive, to make it the most fitting background for herself. But while her presence perfected it for him, it was her guardian's absence that preoccupied Karen. Again, and comically, she reminded Gregory of the sacristan explaining to the sight-seer that the famous altar-piece had been temporarily removed and that he could not really judge the chapel without its culminating and consecrating object. "If only Tante were here!" she said. "It seems so strange ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... "but we must pay the sacristan for showing them to us. We can ask him about them when we come down ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... the church of St. Aspais locked. A courteous hair-dresser thereupon told me that all churches in Melun were closed from noon till half past one, but that, as noon had only just struck, if I were brisk I might possibly catch the sacristan. After a pretty hot chase I succeeded in finding a deaf, decrepit, dingy old man who showed me round the church, although evidently very impatient for his mid-day meal. He informed me that this closing of ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... style in 1128, by Inge II., one of the early kings of Sweden. While the steamer was slowly toiling through the locks, a party of the passengers, including myself, paid a visit to the church, and, aided by a venerable sacristan, saw all that was to be seen in it, chief among which are the tombs of the kings and the arms of the Douglas family, those warlike Scots who took such an active part in the military exploits of Sweden during the Thirty ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... tons of brick and stone sank bodily to the ground and not a human bruise resulted. Here its behaviour was better than that of the previous campanile of S. Giorgio Maggiore, which, when it fell in 1774, killed one monk and injured two others. Nor was S. Mark's harmed, although its sacristan confesses to have been dumb for three days from the shock. The falling golden angel from the top of the campanile was found in front of the central door as though to protect the church. Sansovino's Loggetta, it is true, was crushed and buried beneath the debris, but human energy ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... admirable piece of historical painting. In it there is a portrait of a surly cardinal-bishop; and once, during an evening at Becker's house, having noticed a study for this bishop's head, I referred to it, when he said: "Yes, that bishop is simply the sacristan of an old church in Venice, and certainly the most dignified ecclesiastic I have ever seen.'' The musical soires at Becker's beautiful apartments were among the delights of my stay both then and during ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... The sacristan was quickly found, however, and lost no time in disclosing the youthful Archangel, setting his divine foot on the head of his fallen adversary. It was an image of that greatest of future events, which we hope for so ardently, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... find themselves surrounded by memorials which might stimulate their zeal for the goddess. If the 'town-clerk' had desired to make good his assertion, 'What man is there that knoweth not that the city of the Ephesians is sacristan of the great goddess Artemis?' he had only to point to the inscriptions which lined the theatre for confirmation. The very stones would have cried out from the walls in response to ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... friars, I never was a friend to impudence: I hate loose suggestions. In girls' minds you will find little dust but what is carried there by gusts from without. They seldom want sweeping; when they do, the broom should be taken from behind the house door, and the master should be the sacristan. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... before the last, but found no one else awake when I went out—no one stirring in the house,—no one moving in the street. The Cathedral doors were shut fast, a thing I have never seen before since I remember. Get up early who will, Pere Laserques the sacristan is always up still earlier. He is a good old man, and I have often heard him say God's house should be open first of all houses, in case there might be any miserable ones about who had found no shelter in the dwellings of men. But the darkness had cheated even Pere Laserques. To see ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... obtaining at least a clue to his extraordinary behaviour. As soon as the service as over, he prepared for his departure. Before he could quit the church, however, I crossed it unperceived by him, and walked straight up to the sacristan. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... and violets and primroses colouring all the brown earth. They went into the little chapel together. It smelt of incense after the ceremonies of the morning. The mournful black had been removed. There were flowers on a side-table, and the sacristan was setting the candlesticks on the fair white cloth which he had just laid along the altar. The scents in the woods at home had been thin and faint by these. Standing with his hat in his hand at the threshold of the ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... of this prisoner seems to be particularly sad. He was a chorister or sacristan in a Roman Catholic church, with several others, and was arrested, with his companions, by the civil guard, charged with "sacrilege." The truth of the matter, however, seems to be as follows: The prisoner had a sweetheart with whom a lieutenant of the civil guard, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... weather, and in his ears a sentence running, chiming, striking upon the word "gold"— "Ding-a-ding-a-dong! 'Taty-patch a gold mine—'taty-patch a gold mine!" The prosaic Mr Latter had set the chime ringing, as a dull sacristan might unloose the music of a belfry; but like a chime of faery it rippled and trilled, closing ever upon the deep note "gold," and echoed back as from a veritable gong ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... an hour later the sacristan showed us into this granite jewel-case which contains the three marble gems called the tombs of Marguerite of Austria, Marguerite or Bourbon, and ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... had promised his cure if the King would, on his own royal neck, carry him to the Monastery. The King immediately consented; and, amidst the scoffs of the court, bore the poor man to the steps of the High Altar. There the cripple was received by Godric the sacristan, and walked away on his own restored feet, hanging his stool on the wall for ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... stored gorgeous vestments, wonderfully beautiful in color and material, and enriched with gold and precious stones. Costly presents from kings and Spanish grandees were shown to me by the brother sacristan, who took an honest pride in exhibiting those blessed things. Magnificent society banners, used during processions on great festivals, were subjects of intense interest to the good brother. I saw lace albs there, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... on Marana, who was led forth in grand procession as the victim of the dragon. Pithyrian, in distraction, rushed into a Christian church, and fell before an image which attracted his attention, at the base of which was the real arm of a saint. The sacristan handed the holy relic to Pithyrian, who kissed it, and then restored it to the sacristan; but the servitor did not observe that a thumb was missing. Off ran Pithyrian with the thumb, and joined his daughter. On came the dragon, with tail erect, wings extended, and mouth wide open, when Pithyrian ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... wealth and influence of the clergy through his reign, was not unaccompanied by an immorality which was conspicuous under Archbishop Hugh II., and became flagrant during the office of Mauger later on. It appears that the Sacristan of St. Ouen fell most uncanonically in love with a lady who dwelt on the other side of the Robec. On his way to meet her one dark night, his foot slipped from the plank that crossed the rapid little stream, and he fell into the water. ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... answered White; "a sacristan in a cotta. Do you like the short cotta or the long?" he continued, turning to ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... when the priest, bowed humbly too, In hand uplifted high, Facing the altar, showed to view The present Deity, The sacristan proclaimed it well, Sounding the clearly-tinkling bell, While all knelt down, and beat the breast, And with a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... in one of the churches, whereupon the edges of the cut canvas began to bleed, and the blood remains there to this day, and may be seen by the curious in one of the parish churches of that city! They relate numerous cases in which the host when profaned has, when broken, sent forth blood. If a sacristan omits to light the lamp which burns at night before the eucharist, the lamp lights itself. There are innumerable persons in Spain who believe that he who is born on Good-Friday has a cross on the roof of his mouth, and the faculty of curing diseases ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... pink-tinted house at Fiesole, which, crowned with a long balustrade, overlooked the incomparable city. The maid followed with the luggage. Choulette, lodged, by Miss Bell's attention, in the house of a sacristan's widow, in the shadow of the cathedral of Fiesole, was not expected until dinner. Plain and gentle, wearing short hair, a waistcoat, a man's shirt on a chest like a boy's, almost graceful, with small hips, the poetess was doing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Mass, they were approached by the Sacristan, a little, shrunken, brown old man in a cassock, who offered to serve them as a guide. The church was very dim and very silent. Here and there a woman knelt at prayer; here and there a candle burned. The Sacristan removed the frontal from ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... broke in the sacristan; "they watch every door. Hark! hark! hark!" and as he spoke there came the sound of battering on the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... all very good, useful, and profitable," rejoined the elder. "You will readily find the Sacristan of some church who will give your worship the offering-bread of All Saints' Day, for cutting him his paper flowers to decorate the Monument[8] ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sunk in fat, were fixed upon the ikon stand. He saw the long familiar figures of the saints, the verger Matvey puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles, the darkened candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to the churchwarden.... All these things he had seen for years, and seen over and over again like the five fingers of his hand.... There was only one thing, however, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the Pontifical 'family,' and of her parents, the young invalid was soon at the last extremity. The vice-cure of the palace (which, as is known, is a foundation), a member of the Augustin order (Monseigneur the Sacristan of the same order is the titular cure), had administered to her the sacrament of extreme unction, and had recited the prayer recommending her soul. Her last sigh was hourly expected. For the sake of enabling our readers ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... to the place where the bronze pine-cone is, on a wall between the arches of the portico on the outer side; and in this he counterfeited the manner of Giotto very well, receiving so much praise, above all because he portrayed therein a sacristan of S. Pietro lighting some lamps before the said figures with much promptness, that he was summoned with very great insistence to the Court of the Pope at Avignon, where he wrought so many pictures, in fresco and on panels, that he made his works correspond to the reputation that ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... their seats, and look after the pennies which attendants have to pay on taking them. Not one of these collectors has officiated less than 11 years; three of them have been at the work for 27; and what is still better they discharge their duties, as the sacristan once told us, "free gracious." That is a philanthropic wrinkle for chapel keepers and other compounders of business and piety which we commend to special notice. The singers at St. Augustine's are of more than ordinary merit. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... building on the north side of the cathedral was the early song-school of the church, which passed into the hands of the college of vicars choral, and was a hall for their business meetings and musical practice, the second storey being probably their reading-room, or the sleeping-place of the sacristan, who was required to ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... the table fast chained in St. Peter's Church, Cornhill; and says, "he was after some chronicle buried at London, and after some chronicle buried at Glowcester"—but, oh! these incorrect chroniclers! when Alban Butler, in the "Lives of the Saints," v. xii., and Murray's "Handbook," and the Sacristan at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I saw his tomb ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sound well? No, no; I'm a done man. Of course, she had no business to accept me unawares; but as she has done so, I must help her to keep up the grisly fraud of feminine reluctance; for, as the abbot sings, so must the sacristan respond. It is kismet. This is how all these unaccountable marriages are brought about; though, to be sure, I have the dubious satisfaction of knowing that the enterprise brings me a good many days' ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... sacristan stood ready on the steps of the portal to grant us admittance; and, throwing open the valves, we entered the chapel and were struck by the justness of its proportions, the simple majesty of the arched roof, and the mild solemn light, equally diffused over every ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... accident that Harry was here. She would have liked to slip along the aisle in his shadow, to have called him by his name, but the presence of his two unknown companions, and some diffidence in herself, restrained her until the opportunity was gone, and he disappeared, inveigled by the sacristan into making the regular tour of the building. She knew every word he would hear, every antiquity he would admire. She saw him in the choir turning over the splendid manuscript books of Holy Writ and of the Mass which were in use in the church when the kings ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Buvat found the whole house in commotion. The doctor had said that they must send for the viaticum. They had sent for the cure, and he had arrived, and, preceded by the sacristan and his little bell, he had without any preparation entered the sick room. Clarice received it with her hands joined, and her eyes turned toward heaven; but the impression produced on her was not the less terrible. Buvat heard singing, and thought what must have happened. He went ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... they knew not what to do, one of them went to fetch the parish-priest, who owned Korneliz' farm. He came out of his house with the sacristan, bringing the keys of the church. All followed him into the churchyard; and he shouted to them from the top of the tower that he could see nothing in the fields nor in the forest, but that there were red clouds in the neighbourhood of his farm, though the sky was blue ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... voice, two or three dirty choristers, in soiled surplices, were charting the prayers for the dead, with an absent and sullen air, round a plain deal coffin, followed only by a sobbing old man and a child, miserably clad. The beadle and the sacristan, very much displeased at being disturbed for so wretched a funeral, had not deigned to put on their liveries, but, yawning with impatience, waited for the end of the ceremony, so useless to the interests of the establishment. At length, a few drops ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... own against the French if it encountered them. Some weeks previously, after the siege of Bologna had been raised by the Spaniards, there were distributed about at Rome little bits of paper having on them, "If anybody knows where the Spanish army happens to be, let him inform the sacristan of peace; he shall receive as reward a lump of cheese." Gaston de Foix arrived on the 8th of April, 1512, before Ravenna. He there learned that, on the 9th of March, the ambassador of France had been sent away from London by ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... dedicated to the holy guardian angel (unless it be dedicated to the holy archangel, St. Michael, as is so fitting, as he was the first titular of that village). That church has its sacristy, with its cura and sacristan. There is a provisor, and some secular clergy with benefices are located in some of the islands of its jurisdiction. In that city the order of the great father St. Augustine has a convent, in which is venerated [an image of] the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... charming church, a cemetery with a palm-tree and a stone cross like the one in the third act of Robert le Diable. Then, too, there are beds of shrubs cut in form. All this we have to ourselves with an old woman to wait on us, and the sacristan who is warder, steward, majordomo and Jack-of-all-trades. I hope we shall have ghosts. The door of my cell leads into an enormous cloister, and when the wind slams the door it is like a cannon going off through all the monastery. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... one and her people looked upon the choice more as an honor than otherwise, for besides the social standing that it gave her there was the proud prospect of becoming the mother of children who could claim kinship with the dominant race. The curate's "companion" or the sacristan's wife was a power in the community, her family was raised to a place of importance and influence among their own people, while she and her ecclesiastical offspring were well cared for. On the death ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... buildings were dilapidated; the rest were in good order, being frequented as a summer retreat by the inhabitants of Palma. Now, in December, the Chartreuse was entirely abandoned, except by a housekeeper, a sacristan and a lone monk, the last offshoot of the community—a kind of apothecary, whose stock-in-trade was ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... know what to do, one of them ran to fetch the cure, who owned Korneliz's farm. He came out of the house with the sacristan carrying the keys of the church. All followed him into the churchyard, whither his cry came to them from the top of the tower, that he beheld nothing either in the fields, or by the forest, but that around the farm he saw ominous red clouds, for all ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... He had been sacristan and afterwards prior of the cell at Hertford. The Pope's bull confirming his election required him to present himself at Rome every three years. The church was again struck by lightning, notwithstanding the fact that ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... rid me of Bolt there—and there's an office under the sacristan that he might fill as well as another knave—the fellow might do for me well enow as a body servant," said Mr Alworthy, speaking to himself. "He would brush my gowns and make my bed, and I might perchance trust him with my marketings, and by and by there might be some office ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the devotee persisted, he was ceremoniously conducted to the shaft. He was lowered down by means of a rope, with a loaf and a vessel of water to strengthen him in the combat against the fiend which he proposed to wage. On the following morning the sacristan offered the rope anew to the sufferer. If he mounted to the surface again, they brought him back to the church, bearing the cross and chanting psalms. If he were not to be found, the sacristan closed the door and departed. In more modern times pilgrims to the sacred isles spent nine days there. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... and Saracenic style which was in vogue in the years when the house of Hohenstaufen were masters of Southern Italy. We found little that was worth seeing inside the building, except the pretty black-eyed daughter of the toothless tottering old sacristan, who slunk off grumbling on his child's appearance, leaving her to do the honours of the place. Her merry face with its welcoming smile and her modest loquacity excited our interest, and in answer to our questions we gathered that she was twenty years old, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... he had dug up the Grinning Sailor, and that the Saint had helped to throw him into the river again. All was thenceforth wonderment and devotion. Masses were sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled; the monks of St. Romuald had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas a Becket in the centre; —Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water. The Rood of Gillingham was deserted; the chapel of Rainham forsaken; every one who had a soul to be saved, flocked with his offering to ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... The sacristan, in fact, advised me not to go up after he had taken my fee and obtained a view of my proportions over the tube of his key, which he pretended to whistle into. We sat down together as I recovered my breath, after which I wandered through the nave with my guide, admiring the statue of the original ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... cemetery, visited it alone in the dead of night for the purpose of prosecuting his inquiries on that fearful subject. As he opened the trap-door of the vault a light burst from below; but deeming it to be only the lamp of the sacristan, the monk drew back and awaited his departure concealed behind the high altar. The sacristan emerged not, however, from the opening; and the monk, tired of waiting, approached, and finally descended the rugged ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... perpetual curate, residentiary^, beneficiary, incumbent, chaplain, curate; deacon, deaconess; preacher, reader, lecturer; capitular^; missionary, propagandist, Jesuit, revivalist, field preacher. churchwarden, sidesman^; clerk, precentor^, choir; almoner, suisse [Fr.], verger, beadle, sexton, sacristan; acolyth^, acolothyst^, acolyte, altar boy; chorister. [Roman Catholic priesthood] Pope, Papa, pontiff, high priest, cardinal; ancient flamen^, flamen^; confessor, penitentiary; spiritual director. cenobite, conventual, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... foreign cathedral, or even into one of the Catholic churches in our large towns. The celebrant, deacon and sub-deacon, acolytes with lights, the incense and the chanting all combine to one end, one act of worship." White is much exercised by the question whether a sacristan should wear the short or the long cotta. But he finally marries and settles down into a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... ring a wedding in. The seven bells Of Santo Pietro, from the nones to noon, Boomed with bronze throats the happy tidings out; Till the great tenor, overswelled with sound, Cracked itself dumb. Thereat the sacristan, Leading his swinked ringers down the stairs, Came blinking into sunlight—all his keys Jingling their little peal about his belt— Whom, as he tarried, locking up the porch, A foreign signor, browned with southern suns, Turbaned and slippered, as the Muslims use, Plucked ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... moreover, that the sacristan had forgotten to wind up the great town clock. The agreement with the party first entering and making their way to the opposite end of the city, had been that at the striking of a certain hour after midnight they ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one the sacristan who has charge of the entire church, and is responsible for its treasures; the other exercising what authority is left to the convent among the people of the town. They are both so good and innocent and sweet, one can't pity them enough. ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... and the hour for the ceremony fixed. One of the women went forward towards the door of the vestry, where she was met by a National Guard, who told her with a superfluity of oaths that she must not go in, that the —— cure, the sacristan, and all the d—— fellows of the church were locked up, and that they would no longer have anything to do with patriots. Then the mother approached and said, "But who will bury my poor child if the cure is in prison?" and then she began to weep bitterly at the thought that there would be no prayers ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... the very excellent chance of five francs. The performance in question, of which the good San Carlo paid in the first instance the cost, was impressive certainly, but as a monstrous matter or a grim comedy may still be. The little sacristan, having secured his audience, whipped on a white tunic over his frock, lighted a couple of extra candles and proceeded to remove from above the altar, by means of a crank, a sort of sliding shutter, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... fervent in their love to the Great Mother of God. Whence we may believe that to satisfy their ardent desires he was continually applying himself to this task of so much glory to Mary and her blessed Son." But the sacristan of the church at Caulonia, to whom I applied for information regarding these local treasures, knew nothing about them, and his comments gave me the impression that he has relapsed into a somewhat pagan way of ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... let anything in the way of acquaintance, sacristan, or chance sight, stop you in doing what I tell you. Walk straight up to the church, into the apse of it;—(you may let your eyes rest, as you walk, on the glow of its glass, only mind the step, half way;)—and lift the curtain; and go in behind the grand marble ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... no telling what these people are up to. That this woman's home life is unhappy, and that she does not love the sneaky sacristan to whom she is married, is quite possible, but what is her real role in that household? Is she accessory to Chantelouve's pecuniary dodges? If that is the case I don't see why she should pick on me. If she is in connivance with her husband, she certainly ought to have sense enough to seek an ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the Mocenigo hand, severe ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... which he had come out after matins. When he arrived he found the door, through which he had come, built up and a new one opened in another place. The porter asked who he was and what he wanted, and he answered, 'I am the sacristan who a few hours ago went out, and now returning find all changed.' He gave too the names of the Abbot and of the Prior, and wondered much that the porter still would not let him in, and seemed not to remember these names. At last he was led ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... had not recognized in the girl dressed as a bonne-a-toute-faire her protegee of Le Bon Pasteur, was naturally somewhat startled at this unexpected demonstration, and called aloud for the sacristan. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... was empty when I pushed past the leather hanging that covered the door, but the sacristan was lighting the candles for Benediction, so I went up to the bronze screen, the Cancello, that divides the public part from the part occupied by the Sisters, and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... "there is always the risk of a mistake when we judge of people by appearances; but how startling is the truth of that commonplace remark when applied to the clergy! This Abbe Plomb looks like a scared sacristan; he goes about gaping at invisible crows, and he seems so ill at ease, so loutish, so awkward—and this is our learned man and devoted mystic, in love with his Cathedral! Certainly it is not safe to judge of an Abbe from appearances. Now that it is to be my fate to live ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... accepted, but I had another object in view, namely, to procure capable young persons to teach my school. Mlle. Mance was well pleased that I should accompany her, and, as our simple preparations were easily made, we left Montreal on the Feast of St. Michael, Sept. 29, 1658. Having been the sacristan of the parish church, I requested M. Galimier, a priest of the seminary, to keep matters so arranged that I could resume the pious duty on my return. I made the request before starting for Europe, and he promised that my desire should be complied ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... his father sent him to Eisenach, bearing in mind the numerous relatives who lived in the town and surrounding country, and who might be of service to him. But of these no mention has reached us, except of one, named Konrad, who was sacristan in the church of St. Nicholas. The others, no doubt, were not in a position to give ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... infantry, artillery, staffs, and the comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack cavalry. There were also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and groups of peasants and landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan commanded one party which captured several hundred prisoners in the course of a month; and there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village elder, who slew ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... you sacristan, show us a light there! Down it dips, gone like a rocket. What, you want, do you, to come unawares, Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers, And find a poor devil has ended his cares At the foot of your rotten-runged rat-riddled stairs? Do ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... additional chapels and vaults in the Church. In the following Century a great many separate altarages were endowed; and in the year 1466, it was erected by James the Third, into a Collegiate Church, consisting of a provost, a curate, sixteen prebendaries, a sacristan, a minister of the choir, and four choristers. (Maitland's ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... arrival in the country, at Aclan. While bathing in the river, suddenly a current came whose rapidity seized me and bore me beyond my depth. I was already lost and surrendered myself to the mercy of the water, for I could not swim. God inspired a sacristan who was there, who dived quickly into the water, followed me, and, catching hold of me, drew me ashore. The second was while prior of Ibahay, and when I was visiting the islands. While crossing to one, so fierce a storm struck me that the Indians ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... surrounded with lights, while the spectators below sang a cradle-song.{55} According to a recent writer the "rocking" is still continued in the Upper Innthal.{56} In the Tyrolese cathedral city of Brixen it was once performed every day between Christmas and Candlemas by the sacristan or boy-acolytes. That the proceedings had a tendency to be disorderly is shown by an eighteenth-century instruction to the sacristan: "Be sure to take a stick or a thong of ox-hide, for the ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... of the altar stood the priest, a reverend old man, with long flowing silver hair and beard. Near him the sacristan, not less reverend in appearance. No one else was present except Marianne, who, in tears, knelt behind her mistress, and with folded hands prayed for her beloved princess, who was now ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... confession. Some days he would be called away to other barrios to hear a last confession; but the distance or the weather never daunted him, and he would tuck his gown well up, and, followed by a sacristan, ride merrily away. On his return a cup of pasty chocolate would await him. Padre Pedro used to make a certain egg-fizz which was a refreshing drink of a long afternoon. The eggs were lashed into a froth by means of a bamboo brush twisted or rolled between the palms. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... church. It is built of hewn stone, and has three naves, and its main chapel, and choir, with high and low seats. The choir is shut in by railings, and has its organ, missal-stands, and other necessary things. The cathedral has also its sacristan [175] and his ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... Gibbie knew that there was not any evil in the world, except wrong. But it had been the dreariest week he had ever passed. As they came from the public room, he lay in wait for him once more, but again in vain: he must have gone through the sacristan's ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... between them, sustain the gable of the north transept), is planted in the small cloister, of which the door on the farther side of the little soundless Rue de la Psalette, where nothing seems ever to pass, opens opposite to that of Mademoiselle Gamard. There is a very genial old sacristan, who introduced me to this cloister from the church. It is very small and solitary, and much mutilated; but it nestles with a kind of wasted friendliness beneath the big walls of the cathedral. Its lower arcades have been closed, and it has a small plot of garden in the middle, with fruit-trees ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... beautiful Day of Judgment. Summoned, next, to the Certosa, he painted for the Acciaiuoli, who built that place, the panel of the high-altar, which was consumed by fire in our day by reason of the inadvertence of a sacristan of that monastery, who left the thurible full of fire hanging from the altar, wherefore the panel was burnt, and afterwards the altar was made by those monks, as it stands to-day, entirely of marble. In that same place, also, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... the sacristan, "this place is no longer consecrated")—everything is swept clear or burned out from end to end, except two candlesticks in front of the niche where Joan of Arc's image used to stand. There is a French flag there now. [And the last time I saw Rheims Cathedral was in a spring ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... of our Saviour, over the altar of the SS. Annunziata, ordered by the sacristan of the order. A magnificent head, full of grandeur and expression, and very clear in the flesh tints. Empoli made several ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... it for the first time, in the chapel of that villa, once a monastery, near Siena. Even through the haze of twenty years (like those delicate blue December mists which lay between the sunny hills) I can see that picture, illumined piecemeal by the travelling taper on the sacristan's reed, far more distinctly than I see it to-day with bodily eyes in the National Gallery. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that where it hangs in that gallery it has not once given me one half-second of real pleasure. It is a third-rate picture now; ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... by the loophole when our turnkey threw the door open. I heard the priest and his sacristan joking in the corridor before they entered carrying their sacred parcels. The priest was a doddering old fellow, almost deaf, for the turnkey shouted at his ear, and dim of sight, for he stooped close to look at the dying man, who ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the Rzhanoff house I found the sacristan already reading prayers over the dead woman. They had taken her to the bunk which she had formerly occupied; and the lodgers, all miserable beings, had collected money for the masses for her soul, a coffin and a shroud, and the old women had dressed her and laid her out. The sacristan was ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... On one of these occasions Martin locked her up in the great hayloft of the convent, where she could actually hear the chants in the chapel, and distinguish the chatter of the lay-sisters in the yard. Another time, in conjunction with the sacristan, he bestowed her in the great seigneurial tribune (or squire's pew) in the village church, a tall carved box, where she was completely hidden; and the only time when she had failed to obtain warning beforehand, she stood kneading bread at a tub in Martin's ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... than courage, that was found among them. The disturbances that broke out in several places on the day of enrolment, were conducted by men of the people. Cathelineau, one of the earliest, was a carrier, sacristan in his village, who had never seen a shot fired when he went out with a few hundred neighbours and took Cholet. By his side there was a gamekeeper, who had been a soldier, and came from the eastern frontier. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... six or seven leguas distant from Manila by land, and three by sea, and the seamen live there with a Spanish garrison; they have their castellan, who is also the chief justice. There is a secular cura who ministers with the help of his assistant and sacristan. There is a college of the Society of Jesus; a convent of St. Francis, another of St. Dominic, and another of discalced Augustinians, as well as a hospital in charge of the religious of St. John of God. The cura of that port also has charge of the natives living about the walls, who ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... we found that as an office was about to be sung no one would be allowed in the ambulatory until after its completion. It was pouring live Belgian rain without; already the choristers in surplices were filing into the choir. Not a moment to be spared! The sacristan was a practical man. He hustled us into a side chapel, locked the heavy doors, and left us in company with the great picture of the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck. A monk knelt in prayer outside, the rain clouds made the lighting obscure. We were hemmed in, but by angels and ministers ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... chime, thrice a day, to remind the faithful of the Incarnation, and its daily thrice-repeated memorial” (F. G. Lee, “Pilgrimage of Grace”). The poor were never forgotten in these multiplied services. When mass was celebrated, it was a rule that the sacristan rang the “sanctus” bell (from its cherished sanctity often the only bell still preserved in our village churches), “so that the rustics who could not be present might everywhere, in field or home, be able to bow the knee to reverence” (Maskell’s “Ancient Liturgy,” p. 95. “Constit.,” ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... fell under the suspicion of 'possession' in order to exorcise the spirit with prayers and holy water. Aretino has made a witty scene about this in the 'Cortegiana,' where one of the Vatican servants cheats a poor fisherman, and then hands him over to the sacristan of Saint Peter's to be cured of an imaginary possession by a ceremonious exorcism. Such proceedings must have been common enough in those days when witchcraft and demonology were elements with which rulers and lawgivers had to count ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the song of Demeter"—says the prize-poet, or the Interpreter, the Sacristan of the holy places—"the song of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, whom Aidoneus carried away by the consent of Zeus, as she played, apart from her mother, with the deep- bosomed daughters of the Ocean, gathering flowers ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... tipsy enthusiasm, ejaculates, "Oh, mein Gott in Kimmel!" instead of "im Himmel" (heaven), becoming guilty of an unconscious alliteration, and confessing, according to the proverb in vino veritas, where his God really abides; "whose God is their belly." Künster,(Ger.) - Sacristan. ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... with in the most formal, mechanical, business-like manner possible. Some palms, not in natural branches, but cut and wreathed in various strange, fantastic forms, lay on the altar. The Pope's chief sacristan took one of these, a deacon another, a sub-deacon a third, and knelt at the foot of the throne. His Holiness read prayers over them, sprinkled them with holy water, and incensed them three times. One of these is held beside the throne by the prince assistant during the service; another ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... was of a revolting hideousness: his cheeks were covered by a network of blue veins, his eyes squinted horribly, his lips vanished inwards over toothless gums, and a fringe of white hair hung in matted wisps from his high, bald crown. This was the infamous Abbe Guibourg, sacristan of Saint Denis, an ordained priest who had consecrated himself to ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... evil spirits are capable, that they scarcely fear them at all. It is especially in the night that all these worthies, grave-diggers, flaxdressers, and ghosts, exercise their industry. It is in the night also the flaxdresser relates his lamentable stories. But he is no more than the sacristan addicted exclusively to the pleasure of inspiring his auditors with fear; he delights in raising a laugh; and is jocose and sentimental by turns, when he comes to speak of love and Hymen. He is the man to collect and store up in memory the most ancient songs, and to hand them down ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... this fracas, a personage of venerable appearance presented himself at Epinal, and applied for the post of sacristan and bell-ringer, at that time vacant. Though he squinted, his appearance was far from disagreeable, and he obtained the appointment without difficulty. His deportment in it was in all respects edifying; or if he ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... (of the Vydts family) contains the famous altar piece of the Adoration of the Lamb, by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, to study which is the chief object of a visit to Ghent. See it more than once, and examine it carefully. Ask the sacristan to let you sit before it for some time in quiet or he will hurry you on. You must observe it in close detail. Taking it in its entirety, then, the altar-piece, when opened, is a great mystical poem of the Eucharist and the Sacrifice of the Lamb, with the Christian folk, both Church ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... be compared with the episode of Tappe-coue or Tickletoby in Pantagruel:—"Villon, to dress an old clownish father grey-beard, who was to represent God the Father [at the performance of a mystery], begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan Friars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole. Tickletoby refused him, alleging that by their provincial statutes it was rigorously forbidden to give or lend anything to players. Villon ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... an orphan. Being at leisure, he studied life from an eminently social aspect. If we are to believe a certain ancient sage, we are all in the world to solve a problem: as to Trespolo, he desired to live without doing anything; that was his problem. He was, in turn, a sacristan, a juggler, an apothecary's assistant, and a cicerone, and he got tired of all these callings. Begging was, to his mind, too hard work, and it was more trouble to be a thief than to be an honest man. Finally he decided in favour of contemplative ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... which is a very considerable sum, he applied five hundred pesos of it as a means of sustenance for the chief chaplain, and sums at the rate of two hundred pesos for the other chaplains. It has a chief sacristan who looks after its adornment, and its administration is in charge of either the master-of-camp or the sargento-mayor. The soldiers are buried there, and they pay well for it when they die. It has the advocacy of our Lady of the Annunciation, and there they celebrate other feasts during the year, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... that they and their curates shall not keep back the Holy Sacrament from us and ours for the sake of money. Still, it is our purpose that, whatever from ancient times has been assigned in each canon to the pastor or sacristan, it shall continue to him and yield him a fair support; but if any one in the collection thereof is dealt with severely and dangerously, it shall concern the civil authority, so that the common man be not overmatched. Item, the priests of every rank shall ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... man hastened out of the room to fetch the prelate, who was waiting in the viridarium with two deacons, an exorcist, and a sacristan bearing the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Sacristan, acolyte, player, or preacher, Each to his office, but who holds the key? Death, only Death—thou, the ultimate teacher Wilt ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stone in the church of Santa Sabina a curious legend has gathered. The sacristan, a Dominican friar of the neighbouring convent, is in the habit of telling the visitors that the devil one day, while St. Dominic was kneeling on the pavement as usual, hurled the huge stone in question, with his utmost force, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... aloft. The sacristan showed us a marble stairway (of course it was marble, and of the purest and whitest—there is no other stone, no brick, no wood, among its building materials) and told us to go up one hundred and eighty-two steps ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and murderers whom the Vicar of Christ would punish. You know, sire, that these men had committed sacrilege. They had plundered the altar of St. Peter's of its golden pyx and candlesticks, and had poniarded the sacristan that had ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... which we call Sementivae I came to the temple of Tellus at the invitation of the Sacristan (I was taught by my ancestors to call him Aeditumus but the modern purist tells me I must say Aedituus). There I found assembled C. Fundanius, my father-in-law, C. Agrius, a Roman Knight and a disciple of the Socratic school, and P. Agrasius, ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... I was knocking at the north door of the cathedral. A sacristan, who carried in his hand a long lighted taper, admitted me at once. Save for this taper and four candles which stood at the four corners of the bier, the vast ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... that the nuns of the community should see me converse with such holy persons as those of the Society of Jesus; for I was afraid of my own wickedness, and I thought I should be obliged to cease from it, and give up my amusements; and that if I did not do so, I should grow worse: so I persuaded the sacristan and the portress to tell no one of it. This was of little use, after all; for when I was called down there was one at the door, as it happened, who told it to the whole convent. But what difficulties and what terrors Satan troubles them with who would ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... a coarse brown woollen dress, in Italy or Spain we should esteem him a simple Capuchin, but in truth he is a prelate, and a prelate of great power; Bishop Nicodemus, to wit, prime councillor of the patriarch, and chief prompter of those measures that occasioned the civil war of 1841. A single sacristan walks behind him, his only retinue, and befitting his limited resources; but the Maronite prelate is recompensed by universal respect; his vanity is perpetually gratified, and, when he appears, Sheikh and peasant ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... genius. The abbey is situated in a valley, surrounded by the Eildon hills. Some ruins of the abbey mill, with the dam belonging to "Hob Miller," the father of the "lovely Mysinda," are still to be seen; and the ford across the Tweed, where the worthy Sacristan was played so scurvy a trick by the White Lady, is also pointed out. Some miles off, on a wild and romantic spot on the course of the river, Elwin, or Allan, is Fairy Dean, or Nameless Dean, which is at once identified to be that place above the tower and vale of Glendearg, which was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... form, partly crumbled, may be seen. This seems strange to the verge of fantasy, but it is, apparently, true. The writer of this volume visited the Church of Santa Domenica Maggiore in Naples in December of 1906, and was assured by the sacristan that this sarcophagus contains the body of the Marchesa. Inquiries were then made of other prelates and of the Archbishop, who gave the same assurance. Later, learned archaeologists in Rome were appealed ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... the south aisle and came to the anteroom of the treasury. Its door was open. They entered what had once been a tower of the old palace. The door of the treasury was also open. They went in and found the sacristan and a woman. She held the ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... said, that he prostituted himself to Nerva, who succeeded him. In the war with Vitellius, he fled into the Capitol with his uncle Sabinus, and a part of the troops they had in the city [797]. But the enemy breaking in, and the temple being set on fire, he hid himself all night with the sacristan; and next morning, assuming the disguise of a worshipper of Isis, and mixing with the priests of that idle superstition, he got over the Tiber [798], with only one attendant, to the house of a woman who was the mother of one of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus |
