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Recantation   /rˌɛkəntˈeɪʃən/  /rikæntˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Recantation

noun
1.
A disavowal or taking back of a previous assertion.  Synonyms: abjuration, retraction.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Recantation" Quotes from Famous Books



... opened upon politics more amply, and freely declared his opinions, which were so strongly against the government, and so much bordering upon the republican principles, that Dr. Johnson suddenly took fire; he called back his recantation begged Mr. Thrale not to vote for Sir Philip's bill, and grew' very ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... his home and ruined his policy, and the fierce resentment which rankled in his heart only waited its time to burst forth upon the man who had laboured to make impurity attractive. [43] Meanwhile Ovid attempted, two years later, a sort of recantation in the Remedia Amoris, the frivolity of which, however, renders it as immoral as its predecessor though less gross; and he finished his treatment of the subject with the Medicamina Faciei, a sparkling and caustic quasi-didactic treatise, of which only a fragment survives. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... such a state of mind in John Nicolls, who, in 1577 left England, made a recantation of his heresy, and was "received into the holy Catholic Church." Returning to England he recanted his Roman Catholic opinions, and even wrote "His Pilgrimage, wherein is displayed the lives of the proud Popes, ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... of the Italian or the French poet, is eager to observe that the satirist recanted or explained away this censure, and subsequently allowed the author of the Jerusalem to be "a genius sublime, vast, and happily born for the higher flights of poetry." To this we will add, that the recantation is far from satisfactory, when we examine the whole anecdote as reported by Olivet.[579] The sentence pronounced against him by Bouhours[580] is recorded only to the confusion of the critic, whose palinodia the Italian makes no effort ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... whom this may concern, being the Last Warning Peace at the Dreadful Day of Judgment. All discoverable copies of this book were to be burnt by the hangman at three different places (February 1st, 1650); and Coppe was imprisoned, but was released on his recantation of his opinions. His book was the cause of that curious ordinance of August 9th, 1650, for the "punishment of atheistical, blasphemous, and execrable opinions," which is the best summary and proof of the intense religious fanaticism then prevalent, and so curiously similar ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... urged him to write, and, after a due interval, of his own accord he wrote. The urging and the writing had a certain relation of cause and effect, but the writer did not think so. Also, the letter he wrote was very different from the document of penitence and recantation that Bates had advised, and now supposed him ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... door, she would leave it by another." By degrees she became less obstinate; and the propagator of the scandal found that his lies were likely to cost him dear. With the changed atmosphere, Berkeley learned that safety lay in recantation; and, with undiminished shamelessness, he now sought reconciliation with the new Duchess, the victim of his doubly loathsome lies. With craven hypocrisy he represented to the Duke that these lies had been the fruit only ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... been employed much more to my Credit and Advantage in other Pursuits. I shall therefore take the Liberty to acquaint you, however harsh it may sound in a Lady's Ears, that tho your Love-Fit should happen to return, unless you could contrive a way to make your Recantation as well known to the Publick, as they are already apprised of the manner with which you have treated me, you shall never more ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Cicero's Recantation (palindia). The time for the struggle between the Senatorial party (the Optimates) and the Triumvirs, weakened by their mutual jealousy, seemed to have come. Accordingly Cicero proposed in a full house to reconsider Caesar's Agrarian Law ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... however strongly he might have been impelled towards it by discovering the injustice and cruelty of his own unforgiveness towards his young wife at some previous time—as, for instance, in America—when she herself was beyond his reach, and a recantation of his error impossible. Unless we accept his conduct as the result of a momentary dementia, produced by overstrain, it ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... reverted to this book, and wrote an apology, in which he answered his accusers, and confessed to some passages which he exhorted them to tear out. There was good ground for recantation. Writing to dazzle the democracy by means of a bright halo, with himself in the midst of it, he was sometimes weak in exposing crimes that had a popular motive. His republicanism was of the sort that allows no safeguard for minorities, no rights to men ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... that Galileo was forced to recant his statements. In 1632 he published at Florence his Dialogue on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems of the World. For this he was cited to Rome, his book ordered to be burned, and he was sentenced to be imprisoned, to make a recantation of his errors, and by way of penance to recite the seven ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... what was due to events. While the nation overwhelmed with acclamation the king come to retake possession of England, while unanimity was recording its verdict, while the people were bowing their salutation to the monarchy, while the dynasty was rising anew amidst a glorious and triumphant recantation, at the moment when the past was becoming the future, and the future becoming the past, that nobleman remained refractory. He turned his head away from all that joy, and voluntarily exiled himself. While he could have been a peer, he preferred being an outlaw. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... could tell! It was here that John Wycliffe thundered against the Romanism of his day. It was here that Cranmer recanted his recantation, and promised that the hand that wrote it should be the first to suffer at the stake. Hither, too, were laid to rest the remains of Amy Robsart, brought after death from Cumnor. Space will not allow of any recital of the famous names of those ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How

... quite a different conclusion, and who, after having passed a life in vain endeavors to reconcile an irreconcileable book, flings it at last down in despair, and declares, with tearful eyes, and hands up to heaven, his revolt and recantation. If the truth is with all these, why should I take side with any one of them? Some are called upon to preach: let them preach. Of these preachers there are somewhat too many, methinks, who fancy they have the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... time in the life of Savonarola when he comes nearest to us is when his tortured flesh wrenched from his spirit a recantation. And who can forget that cry of Calvary, "My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me!" That call for help, coming to us across twenty centuries, makes the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... two years in prison and was condemned as a heretic by two successive commissions. After the death of Latimer and Ridley, Cranmer was degraded and deprived. It was after this that, in the hopes of saving his life, he made his famous recantation. He was brought into St. Mary's, and in his address to the people withdrew his recantation and declared that his right hand which had signed it should be the first to burn. He was hurried to the place of execution opposite ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... younger brother saw no practicable road to independence save that of relying upon his own exertions, and adopting a political creed more consonant both to reason and his own interest than the hereditary faith of Sir Everard in High Church and in the house of Stewart. He therefore read his recantation at the beginning of his career, and entered life as an avowed Whig, and friend of the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... As an example of the gravity and formality with which proceedings in matters of this nature were conducted, even as late as the end of the sixteenth century, take the subjoined palinode or recantation of a Flemish ecclesiastic, who had been guilty of the offence of doubting the evection, or bodily transport through the air, of witches and wizards. The original may be found in Delrio, at the end of the Appendix, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... new heresy were taken into custody, and compelled to recant. Some anabaptists were apprehended about the same time, who acknowledged their error at Paul's Cross, bearing faggots,—the tremendous symbol of the fate from which their recantation had rescued them. Two of these unhappy men, however, repented of the disingenuous act into which human frailty had betrayed them; and returning to the open profession of their opinions were burned in Smithfield, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... surveillance: those who refused to recant, even after torture, were degraded to the condition of slaves, or else put to death. In some parts of the country, extraordinary cruelty was practised, and every form of torture used to compel recantation. But it is tolerably certain that the more atrocious episodes of the persecution were due to the individual ferocity of local governors or magistrates—as in the case of Takenaka Uneme-no-Kami, who was ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... tell her why he had recanted his Wagnerian faith when they had been interrupted by Owen.... She could conceive nothing more interesting than the recantation by a man of genius of the ideas that had first inspired him. His opera had been accepted, and would be produced if she undertook the principal part. Why should she not? They could both help each other. Truly, he was the person with whom she could study Isolde, and she imagined ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... created Mrs. Featly In Ravenscroft's 'recantation play', Dame Dobson; she was also Sylvia in Otway's last comedy, The Atheist, and Lady Medlar in The Factious Citizen. In 1685 she played Isabella in Tate's farcical A Duke and no Duke, and five years later she is billed ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... In the course of the following month a writ of habeas corpus was sued out, but without result, and he was not liberated until March 4, 1771, when the assembly was prorogued. When the Assembly attempted to extort from him a humiliating recantation, he undauntingly answered their threat, that "rather than resign my rights and privileges as a British subject, I would suffer my right hand to be cut off at the bar of the house." When set at liberty he entered into correspondence ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... difference, or whether those of the tenderest and those of mature years should be treated alike; whether pardon should be accorded to repentance, or whether, where a man has once been a Christian, recantation should profit him; whether, if the name of Christian does not imply criminality, still the crimes peculiarly belonging to the name should be punished. Meanwhile, in the case of those against whom informations have been laid before me, I have pursued the following ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... Aristophanes has not yet said anything to justify her change of attitude: the seeing of him is enough to draw from her this recantation—for she trusts her own quick insight, and so, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... to the necessity of politeness, received him civilly. He told him, however, simply and briefly, that the Pope insisted on his recantation, and would accept nothing else. Luther requested the cardinal to point out to him where he was wrong. The cardinal waived discussion. 'He was come to command,' he said, 'not to argue.' And Luther had to tell him that it could ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... 1880 Mannhardt died. Mr. Max Muller does not say whether Mannhardt, before a decease deeply regretted, recanted his heretical views about the philological method, and his expressed admiration of the study of the lower races as 'an invaluable instrument.' One would gladly read a recantation so important. But Mr. Max Muller does tell us that 'if I did not refer to his work in my previous contributions to the science of mythology the reason was simple enough. It was not, as has been suggested, my wish to suppress it (todtschweigen), but simply my want of knowledge of the materials ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... believeth every word.' But if we should do likewise and believe every word that is told of you, we might say 'that Mr. Prynne was seduced by Sir Philip and Lady Carteret when he was their prisoner in Mont Orgueil.' And farther, it hath even been said that at that time you sent out a recantation to the King of that for ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... the thick packet of bank-notes in the tramp's bundle, and all that it might stand for, were as air-blown bubbles to refined gold. Yet he would not go back; he could not go back. To restore the money would be more than a confession of failure; it would be an abject recantation—a flat denial of every article of his latest social creed, and a plunge into primordial chaos in the matter of theories, out of which he could emerge only as a criminal ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... Benarage, and vpon one priest of Striueling called Duncane Sympson, and one Gentleman called Robert Foster in Striuelyng, with other three or foure, with them of the towne of Striuelyng: who at the day of their appearaunce after their summonyng, were condemned to the death without any place of recantation, because (as was alleged) they were heresiarkes or chiefe heretikes and teachers of heresies, and especially because many of them were at the bridal and marriage of a Priest, who was vicar of Twybodye beside Striuelyng, and dyd ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... domains, and oppressors of his nation. The friars complained that, in consequence of these evil communications, their convert suddenly relapsed into infidelity; but another and more grievous cause is assigned for his recantation. His favorite wife was seduced or treated with outrage by a Spaniard of authority; and the cacique renounced all faith in a religion which, as he supposed, admitted of such atrocities. Losing all hope of effecting his ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... favour of idiosyncrasy, he hoped to get out of his difficulty, and to allow Mr. Palmer to remain on British ground. Mrs. Beaumont's face, in spite of her powers of simulation, lengthened and lengthened, and darkened and darkened, as he proceeded in his recantation; but, when the exception to the general axiom was fairly made out, and a clear permit to remain in England granted, by such high medical authority, she forced a smile, and joined loudly in the general congratulations. Whilst her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... being impious, scandalous, schismatic, and wholly alien from the Christian doctrine, ought publicly to be consigned to the flames in the diocese of Meaux, whence it emanated. And Jacques Pauvan and Matthieu Saunier should, by all judicial means, be compelled to make a public recantation."[190] ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... "I knew it would be so. I told him so immediately after sentence. But, after all, what can we say for a recantation dictated by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various

... believer in human passion. With the zeal usually attributed to converts, he became as warm in his praise of the emotions as he had before been indifferent in his estimation of them. This change is greatly to Mary's credit. As, in his Introduction to "St. Leon" he made his public recantation of faith, so in the course of the story he elaborated his new doctrines, and, by so doing, paid tribute to the woman who had wrought the wonder. His hero's description of married pleasures being based on his own knowledge of them, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... was utterly mastered; "he pulled his hands off the grates and laid them together and said, It is finished; the Lord's will be done." In two months he had written a letter of recantation, was released from durance, and is heard ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... confession and a recantation of an illustrious sinner; the Coryphaeus of the amusing and new-found art, or artifice, of modern criticism. In the character of BURNS, the Edinburgh Reviewer, with his peculiar felicity of manner, attacked the character of the man of genius; but when ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... are my prisoner," said Titelmann, "and are to answer me and none other." The inquisitor proceeded accordingly to catechize him, and soon satisfied himself of the schoolmaster's heresy. He commanded him to make immediate recantation. The schoolmaster refused. "Do you not love your wife and children?" asked the demoniac Titelmann. "God knows," answered the heretic, "that if the whole world were of gold, and my own, I would give it all only to have them with me, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... terrible climax of her suffering. Once she called out over their heads, "All that I did was done for good, and it was well to do it:"—her last cry. Then she would seem to have recovered in some measure her composure. Probably her agitated brain was unable to understand the formula of recantation which was read to her amid all the increasing noises of the crowd, but she had a vague faith in the condition she had herself stated, that the paper should be submitted to the Church, and that she should ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... reforms: open communion; abolition of the Mass; new English liturgy Marriage among the clergy; the Forty-two Articles Accession of Mary Persecution of the Reformers Reactionary measures Arrest, weakness, and recantation of Cranmer His noble death; his character Death of Mary Accession of Elizabeth, and return of exiles to England The Elizabethan Age Conservative reforms and conciliatory measures The Thirty-nine Articles Nonconformists Their doctrines and discipline The great Puritan controversy ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... that fortunate inconsequence of our nature, which permits the heart to rectify the errors of the understanding. The detailed examination of the consular Government and its pretended constitution, and the proof given by me, that it was a consummate despotism in masquerade, extorted a recantation even from the Morning Chronicle, which had previously extolled this constitution as the perfection of a wise and regulated liberty. On every great occurrence I endeavoured to discover in past history the event, that most nearly ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... authority the Star Chamber had adopted (June, 1616). This he affected to do, but the corrections were manifestly only colourable; his explanations of his legal heresies against the prerogative, as these heresies were formulated by the Chancellor and Bacon, and presented to him for recantation, were judged insufficient; and in a decree, prefaced by reasons drawn up by Bacon, in which, besides Coke's errors of law, his "deceit, contempt, and slander of the Government," his "perpetual turbulent carriage," and his affectation of popularity, were noted—he ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... prominence recently given to the subject of Spiritualism in the Times, and undeterred by that journal's subsequent recantation, or the inevitable scorn of the Saturday Review, I determined to test for myself the value of the testimony so copiously quoted by believers in the modern marvel. Clearly if certain published letters of the period were to be put in evidence, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... herself of this speech, Hermia paused, sure of her effect, and calmly awaited the usual recantation and reconciliation. But to her surprise Mrs. Westfield continued to move slowly toward the door, through which, after a formal word of farewell, she presently disappeared and ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... The recantation was uttered with sufficient awkwardness. But Clarice was too engrossed in her own thoughts to notice his embarrassment. 'Do you remember when I first met you?' she asked. 'It was at a ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... that M^r. Robinson and his company may not goe over to our plantation, unless he and they will reconcile themselves to our church by a recantation under their hands, &c. ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... church. To this he fell a sacrifice, and accordingly prepared himself for the stake; while I, not at all ambitious of the crown of martyrdom, resolved to temporize; so that, when I was brought to the question the second time, I made a solemn recantation. As I had no worldly fortune to obstruct my salvation, I was received into the bosom of the church, and, by way of penance, enjoined to walk barefoot to Rome in the habit ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... only the bitterness of a man who finds, in looking back upon an ambitious course, that what he has sacrificed in sentiment was worth as much as what he has gained in substance; but the superadded bitterness of seeing his very recantation nullified. He had been sorry for all this long ago; but his attempts to replace ambition by love had been as fully foiled as his ambition itself. His wronged wife had foiled them by a fraud so grandly simple as to be almost a virtue. It was an odd sequence that out of all ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... Poet, "stung to the quick by such unmerited contumely, I retired to my attic, and produced a philippic named the Recantation: I cannot accommodate you at present with a copy of the Poem, but the concluding stanzas I can ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... The night before she suffered she wrote a few sentences of advice to her sister on the blank leaf of a New Testament. To her father, knowing his weakness, and knowing, too, how he would be worked upon to imitate the recantation of Northumberland, {p.112} she sent a letter of exquisite beauty, in which the exhortations of a dying saint are tempered with the reverence of a daughter ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... extremity of love, crying for help, are as curious to cool strong men as the contortions of the proved heterodox tied to a stake must have been to their chastening ecclesiastical judges. Why go to the fire when a recantation will save you from it? Why not break the excruciating faggot-bands, and escape, when you have only to decide to do it? We naturally ask why. Those martyrs of love or religion are madmen. Altogether, Nevil's adjurations and supplications, his threats of wrath and appeals ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... said Paul, taking her cold hands in his—"after his last solemn recantation does not touch the true spirit of his sacrifice. It was finished. My father died to us then as he meant to die. The body remained—to serve out its time, as he said. But his brain was tired. I do not think he connected the past very clearly ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... which the hemp had been a witness: how once a gentleman of Telsze, Dzindolet, whom he had summoned to court, had put a pistol against his breast, and bidden him crawl under the table and from there bark out a recantation of that summons with a dog's voice,111 so that the Apparitor had to run full speed for the hemp; how later Wolodkowicz,112 a haughty and insolent grandee, who used to break up district diets and violate ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... into temporary submission; not by the prospect of death, which he met gladly, but by the horrors of a lonely and protracted imprisonment in a noxious dungeon. But his fortitude did not long abandon him; tortured by his own conscience, he solemnly announced at the next audience his recantation; and declared, that of all the sins he had committed, he repented of none more than his apostasy from the doctrines he had maintained. In consequence of this he was subjected to the same condemnation as his illustrious friend; and met his painful ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... him with a mind accustomed to historical researches and to political affairs; and I am astonished at my own former blindness, and at his greatness. I could not bear Euripides at college. I now read my recantation. He has faults ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... discovered therein from first to last, that all the churches may hear and fear. I do believe such a heap of hideous errors at once to be vented by such a self-deluding and deluded creature, no history can record; and yet, after recantation of all, to be cast out as unsavory salt, that she may not continue a pest to the place, that will be forever marvellous in the eyes of all ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... April 21, 1818.—Sir: Having been informed that you have a design to write a history of the life and writings of Thomas Paine, if you have been furnished with materials in respect to his religious opinions, or rather of his recantation of his former opinions before his death, all you have heard of his recanting is false. Being aware that such reports would be raised after his death by fanatics who infested his house at the time it was expected he ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... it produced more heat than light. Both the mover and the seconder (Mr. SEXTON) were rich in denunciation of the present Government of Ireland, but poverty-stricken in suggestions for its improvement. Lord HENRY BENTINCK seized the opportunity to make final recantation of his Unionist principles, but in default of more practical proposals was reduced to imploring the people of Ulster "to show some spirit of compromise;" and Lord HUGH CECIL in a despairing moment declared that he would sooner see three-fourths of Ireland independent than ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various

... that what rule, or laws, or customs, or people, were flat against the word of God, are diametrically opposite to Christianity. If I have said amiss in this, convince me of my error, and I am ready here before you to make my recantation. ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... Manly Recantation.—During the first half of his ecclesiastical activity C.P. Krauth was a pronounced unionistic theologian. He fully endorsed the indifferentistic principles of the General Synod, whose champion he was till 1864. During the Platform controversy Krauth was zealous to settle the difficulties ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... O'Connell, on the other hand, certainly lost ground in Ireland by his London journey. He had, unquestionably, given his assent to both "wings," in 1825, as he did to the remaining one in 1828, and thereby greatly injured his own popularity. His frank and full recantation of his error, on his return, soon restored him to the favour of the multitude, and enabled him to employ, with the best effect, the enormous influence which he showed he possessed at the general elections of 1826. By him mainly the Beresfords were beaten in Waterford, the Fosters in ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... my Errors in that point, for even the 'AEneid' was a political poem, and written for a political purpose; and as to my unlucky opinions on Subjects of more importance, I am too sincere in them for recantation. On Spanish affairs I have said what I saw, and every day confirms me in that notion of the result formed on the Spot; and I rather think honest John Bull is beginning to come round again to that Sobriety which Massena's retreat [2] had begun to reel from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... to the women, who thereupon held a meeting and passed an ironical resolution thanking the board for their liberal allowance. The board then required them to sign a paper saying they did not intend an insult, and those who did not make such recantation were discharged. The speaker then referred to the power of the ballot. No politician dared oppose the eight-hour agitation, because the workingman held the franchise. Give the workingwoman a vote and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... thought, it would be to interfere with such neat arrangements by submitting to a Nolle Prosequi—as I would have done, had I tendered the recantation of my error ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... of the commission not to exceed the established discipline of this Kirk; subscribed by the Clerk, book 3, pag. 147, and the blotting out the certification of the excommunication against Bishop Adamson, book 4, pag. 30, who in his Recantation generally acknowledgeth the same: but which, without that recantation, cannot be presupposed to have been done, but by corrupt men of intention to corrupt the books, which were not necessary, if ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... Vienna back to Venice, and at length, at the prompting of the Holy See, lured across the Piedmontese frontier by Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, and imprisoned for life in the citadel of Turin. The memory of his tragic history—most of all, perhaps, of his recantation and the "devout ending" to which solitude and persecution had forced the freest spirit of his day—hovered like a warning on the horizon of thought and constrained political speculation to hide itself behind the study of fashionable ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... member of "The Destroyers'" Administration who sought reelection, found it well to assert the claims of his youth by making a public recantation of all his previously expressed views and policy, and seeking to outdo every one else in the direction of patriotic reform. Though he gulled nobody, he was listened to good-humouredly, and defeated with great ease by Abel Winchester, the Australian, who saw years of work ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... Sir J——s M——h. Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), the philosopher, whose apostasy consisted in his public recantation of the opinions in favour of the French Revolution expressed in his Vindiciae Gallicae, published in 1791. In 1803 he accepted the offer of the Recordership of Bombay. Lamb's epigram, which, as has been stated above, cannot have ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... attributed to Galileo a hundred years after his death. M. Ponsard, in his play on the subject, succumbed to the extent of making his final scene end with Galileo "frappant du pied la terre," and crying, "pourtant elle tourne." Galileo's recantation was a far more subtle and tragically complicated affair than that. Even Landor succumbed to the easy method of making him display his entirely legendary scars to Milton. If these familiar pictures are not to be ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes

... He was a clergyman of the old school, and this recommended him to the lady. He had always been an opponent of free trade as long as free trade was an open question; and now that it was no longer so, he, being a clergyman, had not been obliged, like most of his lay Tory companions, to read his recantation. He could therefore be regarded as a supporter of the immaculate fifty-three, and was on this account a favourite with Mr Thorne. The little bell was tinkling, and the rural population were standing ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... ever said this of Sir John Cheke. I regret his recantation as one of the cruelties suffered by him, and always see the guilt flying off from him ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... officiated as a Medium for a period of seven years, my name had been mentioned, incidentally, only once or twice in the papers devoted especially to Spiritualism. I had no such reputation as that of Hume or Andrew Jackson Davis, which would call for a public statement of my recantation. The result would be, therefore, to give prominence to a weakness, which, however manfully overcome, might be remembered to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... he recanted by word of mouth he might have saved himself unpleasant dreams. This shows everybody the absurdity of writing what they can so easily say. The best thing Arnold ever wrote was his letter to Booth refusing to engage in murder. Yet this recantation is more in evidence against ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... me is not kept, I am in a seventh heaven to think that our friend the Jerusalemitish plebeian-maker[216] will learn what a fine return he has made to my brilliant speeches, of which you may expect a splendid recantation. For, as well as I can guess, if that profligate is in favour with our tyrants, he will be able to crow not only over the "cynic consular,"[217] but over your Tritons of the fish-ponds also.[218] For I shall not possibly be an object of anybody's jealousy when robbed of power and of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... and recant. Presiding over this Diet was Charles V., Emperor of Germany; here were Electors, Princes and crowned heads, popish priests, bishops and cardinals, together with the principal nobility of Catholic Europe—these all came together to compel the recantation of Friar Martin Luther. But Luther said; "Unless I be convinced by Scripture and reason, I neither can nor dare retract anything for my conscience is a captive to God's Word, and it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience," ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... desist from teaching and advocating the Copernican theory, and pledge himself that he would neither publish nor defend it for the future. Knowing well that Truth has no need of martyrs, he assented to the required recantation, and ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... indeed. Whimsical enough, faith! My father wants to force me to marry the very girl I am plotting to run away with! He must not know of my connection with her yet awhile. He has too summary a method of proceeding in these matters. However, I'll read my recantation instantly. My conversion is something sudden, indeed—but I can assure him it is very sincere. So, so—here he comes. He looks plaguy ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... he presented to the upper house; but apprehending it might be published separately, and misunderstood, he afterwards delivered an explanation to the bishop of London. This was satisfactory to the bishops; but the lower house resolved that it was no recantation of his heretical assertions. The disputes about the Trinity increasing, the archbishops and bishops received directions, which were published, for preserving unity in the church, the purity of the christian faith concerning the holy Trinity, and for maintaining the peace and quiet ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... in favour of his lordship's paper-books, it was in the way of dutiful dedication, and more from the advice of others than my own judgment; and I seize the first opportunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation." As was frequently the case with him, he recanted again. In a letter of 1814 he expressed to Rogers his regret for his sarcasms; and in his reference to the death of the Hon. Frederick Howard, in the third canto of Childe Harold, he tried to make ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... emperor he inaugurated a new system of persecution. Instead of at once consigning to death those who boldly made a profession of Christianity, as had heretofore been customary in times of trial, he employed various expedients to extort from them a recantation. He threw them into confinement, bound them with chains, kept them in lingering suspense, and subjected them to sufferings of different kinds, in the hope of overcoming their constancy. It would seem that ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen

... this nature, he discovered, to the sacerdotal eye wore the face of virtue. Other misdoings also, such as a young man might have upon his mind, were not thought weighty. What really was considered important proved to be the earnestness of his recantation of heretical errors, and when once his confessor was satisfied upon that point, the penitent soul was relieved by absolution full ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... turned from the severest hatred to the tenderest pity. Notwithstanding Sir Walter's proof that he was innocent of any such plot, and that lord Cobham, who had once accused him had recanted, and signed his recantation, nor was produced against him face to face, a pack'd jury brought him in guilty of high treason. Sentence of death being pronounced against him, he humbly requested that the king might be made acquainted with the proofs upon which he was cast. He accompanied the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... than he withdrew his confession. He prayed to be taken before the King, knelt, and denied all. Next day he did the same before the Council. He was restored to his pleasant quarters in Newgate, and recanted his recantation. He again withdrew, and maintained that his confession was false, before King and Council (December 30), 'He knows nothing in the world of all he has said.' The Lord Chancellor proposed 'to have him ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... Philemon. Then began to be considered there also what was to be done to libelous books and authors; for Naevius was quickly cast into prison for his unbridled pen, and released by the tribunes upon his recantation; we read also that libels were burnt, and the makers punished by Augustus. The like severity, no doubt, was used, if aught were impiously written against their esteemed gods. Except in these two points, how the world went in books, the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... "perpetual picnic," we are making a bird's life one cloudless holiday; contradicting what we have before admitted about a struggle for existence, and leaving out of sight altogether the seasons of scarcity, the storms, and the biting cold. But we intend no such foolish recantation. These hardships are real enough, and serious enough. What we maintain is that evils of this kind are not necessarily inconsistent with enjoyment, and may even give to life an additional zest. It is a matter of every-day observation that the people who have nothing ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... over to Linwood and telling Morris that when she said she was sorry he loved her she did not mean it. But this Katy would not do. Helen could tell him, if she liked, but she must not encourage him to hope for a recantation of all she had said to him. She meant the rest. She could ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... Thomas Johnson, the nominee of the Atchison faction, was elected.[435] In the meantime Senator Atchison had again changed his mind: he was now opposed to the organization of Nebraska, unless the Missouri Compromise were repealed.[436] The motives which prompted this recantation can only be surmised. Presumably, for some reason, Atchison no longer ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... Ecclesiae Regimen resembles Purvey's confession at his recantation in 1400 (the previous criticism ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... utterances upon the occasion of his death was that in which 'Punch' made its magnanimous recantation of the spirit with ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... I have a story to tell you of his Grace the Duke of Richmond.(205) Lord Rawdon, I hear, came over from Ireland for no earthly reason but to oblige his Grace to a recantation of what he had said in the H(ouse) of L(ords) about Haines. He wrote to him here a very civil but a very peremptory letter, and at last Lord Ligonier(206) went to him, at Lord Rawdon's request, with the words wrote ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... private morals is sympathy; the law of natural jurisprudence, justice; the law of the production of wealth, free labor. But while he defended this principle with energy, he did not become guilty of a real recantation by worshiping the idol he had just overthrown. He would have been culpable of the strangest of all contradictions if he had made the vice which he had just lacerated the very pivot of another ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... recognise that as a Calvinist he could never hope for peaceful possession of the French throne. He determined, therefore, to yield to the entreaties of his most powerful supporters and to make his submission to the Catholic Church. In July 1593 he read a public recantation in the Church of St. Denis, and was absolved conditionally from the censures he had incurred. The following year he made his formal entrance into Paris, where he was welcomed by the people, and acknowledged as lawful king of France by the Sorbonne. Having pledged himself ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... Pem. A recantation of my former wordes, A servitude to him that conquers me; But who soever is by me subdued Must leave his Shield to ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... Benjamin D'Urban's Kafir policy, they must have had the veil removed from their eyes when that nobleman himself confessed his error with a candour that said much for his heart; reversed his own decrees, and fell back upon that very plan which at first he had condemned in such ungenerous terms. His recantation could not, however, recall the thousands of Dutch-African farmers whom he helped to expatriate. Perhaps it was well that it should be so, for good came out of this evil,—namely, the reclamation of vast tracts of the most beautiful and fertile regions of ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... reason or excuse for prolonging the conversation, and it ended here. Within three hours the oakum-headed apparition once more dived into the Leaving Shop, and that night Rogue Riderhood's recantation lay in the post office, addressed under cover to Lizzie Hexam ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... misfortune when compared with the fate under which so many other poor men were at this time overwhelmed. Under Wolsey's chancellorship the stake had been comparatively idle; he possessed a remarkable power of making recantation easy; and there is, I believe, no instance in which an accused heretic was brought under his immediate cognizance, where he failed to arrange some terms by which submission was made possible. With Wolsey heresy was an error—with More it was a crime. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... describe. The churches of the diocese held public prayers for this calamity, and every one expected to see the devil tumble into his house by the chimney. But the truth of it is that the good Master Hierome had a fever, and saw cows in his room, and then was this recantation obtained of him. The access passed, the poor saint wept copiously on learning this trick from me. In fact, he died in my arms, assisted by his physicians, heartbroken at this mummery, telling us that he was going to the feet of God ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... love than Desmond himself had ever been, notwithstanding the fact of his marriage. His theories had proved mere dust in the balance when weighed against his strong, simple-hearted love for Honor Meredith. Yet the passing of nine months found him no nearer to open recantation. If a man has learnt nothing else by the time he is thirty-eight, he has usually gained possession of his soul, and at no stage of his life had Paul shown the least talent for taking a situation by storm. In the attainment of Honor's friendship, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... appease: but on the return of the bill to the House of Lords, where our amendments were to be read, the Chancellor in the most personal terms harangued against Fox, and concluded with saying that "he despised his scurrility as much as his adulation and recantation." As Christian charity is not one of the oaths taken by privy-counsellors, and as it is not the most eminent virtue in either of the champions, this quarrel is not likely to be soon reconciled. There are natures whose disposition it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... sufficient cause of their catastrophe, a petty mean creature, snarling and spiteful and passionate for trivialities—just like Geoffrey, just such a creature as she hated most. Pride and honour instantly demanded that she must seek Harry, indict herself and read her recantation. She needed that, longed for it, and to satisfy herself, not him. It is possible that she then began ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... Free-thinking works; this soon resulted in an avowal of Deism on the part of Taylor, who tendered his resignation to his Bishop. His friends and family were much alarmed, and much pressure was brought to bear upon him, and we regret to state that it had the effect of producing a temporary recantation. This, however, brought Taylor no relief; he found himself in distress, and shunned by his family. Through the kindness of an old friend, he obtained the curacy of Yardley, near Birmingham, but his previous apostacy having ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... the hands of the bishops of to-day, and the journalists threw them over as soon as the war began. But, unfortunately for us all, G.K.C. fell seriously ill in the early period of the war, and was in a critical state for many months. But not before he had published a magnificent recantation—for it is no less—of all those bitternesses which, in their sum, had very nearly caused him to hate the British. It is a poem, Blessed ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... gave at the same moment a more terrible proof of his loyalty to the Church in personally assisting at the burning of a layman, Thomas Badby, for a denial of transubstantiation. The prayers of the sufferer were taken for a recantation, and the Prince ordered the fire to be plucked away. But when the offer of life and a pension failed to break the spirit of the Lollard Henry pitilessly bade him be hurled back to his doom. The Prince was now the virtual ruler of the realm. His father's earlier popularity had disappeared ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... we are told, wrote some severe verses on Helen, for which he was punished by Castor and Pollux with loss of sight, but on making his recantation in a palinodia, his eyes were graciously restored to him. Lucian has affronted her still more grossly by making her run away with Cinyrus; but he, we are to suppose, being not over superstitious, defied the ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian

... the tempestuous fluctuation of my thoughts between grief and revenge, between rage and despair? Why should I repeat my vows of eternal implacability and persecution, and the speedy recantation ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... these he gives one illustrating the suspension of a martyr in a pit on the 16th of August, 1633. The victim is swathed in a covering which confines all parts of the body except one hand with which he can make the signal of recantation. A post is planted by the side of the pit, with an arm projecting out over it. The martyr is then drawn up by a rope fastened to the feet and run over the arm of the post. He is then lowered into ...
— Japan • David Murray

... of himself and his fellows in similar cases, he had anticipated nothing short of the gibbet. That punishment, however, was to be inflicted at a later period, by other hands, and not until he had added treason to his country and a shameless recantation of all his violent professions in favor of civil and religious liberty to the list of his crimes. On the present occasion he was permitted to go free. In company with his clerical companion, Peter Dathenus, he fled to the abode of his excellent friend, John ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... dissent; discordance &c (disagreement) 24; difference diversity of opinion. nonconformity &c (heterodoxy) 984; protestantism, recusancy, schism; disaffection; secession &c 624; recantation &c 607. dissension &c (discord) 713; discontent &c 832; cavilling. protest; contradiction &c (denial) 536; noncompliance &c (rejection) 764. dissentient, dissenter; non-juror, non-content, nonconformist; sectary, separatist, recusant, schismatic, protestant, heretic. refusal ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... He returned to Ciudad Real especially to preach a sermon of retraction and to read a paper prepared for him by Fray Tomas de la Torre, containing a full vindication of his Bishop's opinions. This recantation produced no small effect upon the colonists, some of whom were moved to express regret for their part in the maltreatment of Las Casas and the friars. This business terminated, the Canon rejoined Las Casas at Cinacatlan and accompanied ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... after sermon, making confession openly of that sin, with deep sense on their knees; renounced any such gift or faculty which they had to God's dishonour, and earnestly desired the minister to pray for them; and this their recantation recorded; and after this, they were never troubled with such ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... Mr. ASQUITH was about to make a public recantation of his hostility to Women's Suffrage caused a large attendance of Members, Peers and the general public. The interval of waiting was beguiled by, among others, Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING, who, having been told by Mr. MACPHERSON that the number of accidents during the training of pilots ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... Margaret read the recantation of her confession before the Court, and was, as she says, forthwith ordered by them into a dungeon. She obtained permission to visit Mr. Burroughs the day before his execution, acknowledged that she had belied him, and implored his forgiveness. He freely ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... successful reform, and Johnson may be claimed by the eighteenth century; which serves to illustrate the blight cast upon British literature by the prolonged resistance of British statesmen to the prevailing current—a resistance which took its keynote from the dying recantation and protest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... but allowed to see nobody, not even to write. Before being arrested, however, she had been put into the hands of M. de Meaux, who used all his endeavours to change her sentiments. Tired at last of his sermons, she feigned conviction, signed a recantation of her opinions, and was set at liberty. Yet, directly after, she held her secret assemblies in the Faubourg Saint Antoine, and it was in consequence of this abuse of freedom that she was arrested. These adventures bring me far into the year 1696, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... trembling, waist deep, not knowing what they meant to do. Then they held her head under the water till she made some sign to show she would give in. They released her then, rubbed ashes on her brow, sign of recantation, and they led her back sobbing—poor little girl. She is not made of martyr stuff; she was only miserable. For some months we saw nothing of her. We used to go to the next house and persuade the people ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... his feet, confessed her treachery, and to have begged him never to have mentioned it to Caelia; but now she was conscious her repentance would come too late; and he would despise her, if possible still more, for such a recantation, after her knowledge of what had passed ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding

... itself again in six successive recantations by which he hoped to purchase pardon. But pardon was impossible; and Cranmer's strangely mingled nature found a power in its very weakness when he was brought into the church of St. Mary at Oxford on the 21st of March, to repeat his recantation on the way to the stake. "Now," ended his address to the hushed congregation before him,—"now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that ever I said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth; which ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... Conway's mouth. Thinking himself on the point of death, he wrote a farewell line to Washington "expressing my sincere grief for having done, written or said anything disagreeable to your Excellency.... You are in my eyes a great and good man." And with this recantation he disappeared from the army. A third officer in this "cabal" was Thomas Mifflin. He was the first man appointed on Washington's staff at the beginning of the war, but did not long remain in that position, being promoted by Washington to be quartermaster-general. In this position the rumor reached ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... for some years back the re-awakening of a religious tone, now culminating in a pronounced mysticism which they could not understand, and in a recantation of the sceptical judgments of his middle period. He found, now, new excellences in the early Christian painting; he depreciated Turner and Tintoret, and denounced the frivolous art of the day. He searched the Bible more ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... opportunity. As a satire, the book would have brought its author nothing; in fact, its cost would have come out of his own pocket, since, as Harviss assured him, no publisher would have risked taking it. But as a profession of faith, as the recantation of an eminent biologist, whose leanings had hitherto been supposed to be toward a cold determinism, it would bring in a steady income to author and publisher. The offer found the Professor in a moment of financial perplexity. His illness, his unwonted ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... this difficult moment, every one who was sincerely ready to help the working masses of Russia in their struggle had the right to be given a place in the ranks of the fighters. The Social Revolutionaries should be allowed to prove in deeds the sincerity of their recantation. The resolution which was passed recapitulated the recantations, mentioned by name the members of the party with whom discussions had been carried on, withdrew the decision of June 14th (excluding the S.R.'s from the Executive Committee on the ground of ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... retract. He preferred a quiet life to his honour and his philosophy. His wife had a nobler soul than he, as she wanted to sell all they had, and to take refuge in Holland rather than submit to the shame of a recantation. Perhaps Helvetius would have followed the noble advice of his wife if he had foreseen that this monstrous recantation would make his book into a fraud; for he had to confess that he had written without due reflection, that he was more in jest than earnest, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... population." "In Park Street Church," he goes on to add, "on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren, the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... also you now owe this opportunity to abjure the writings which have caused us and yourself such great sorrow; to them you owe this privilege of confessing before us, who will receive your recantation, remit your unintentional sins, and restore you to honor and service in our ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... treatment stopped the bleeding, but, though she was soon rescued, she remained twenty-one days in great pain and danger. Her sister had previously escaped in time to give the alarm. Some months after they came to Dublin and read their recantation in Dr. Delany's church. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... were tied each to the stake. The flames kindled dully and heavily; the wood, hastily piled up, was green or wet; or in cruel mercy the tardiness was designed that the victims might have time, while the fire was still curling round their extremities, to recant their bold recantation. But there was no sign, no word of weakness. Du Molay implored that the image of the Mother of God might be held up before him, and his hands unchained, that he might clasp them in prayer. Both, as the smoke rose to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the inquisitors was well known, they agreed to say no word of the hopes they still cherished; but to talk of other matters, purely personal to themselves. Here, as hour after hour passed, they strengthened each other in their resolutions, by an agreement that no torture should wring from them a recantation of their faith, and by many prayers for strength and ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... its dreaded design to seize upon his property. Deception? Ay, but the fault was theirs who drove him to it, leaving him only a leper's life. In the Peninsula they had dissembled among Christians; he would dissemble among Jews, aping the ancient apes. He foresaw no difficulty in the recantation. And—famous idea!—his brother Joseph, poor, dear fool, should bring it about under the illusion that he was the instrument of Providence: for to employ Dom Diego as go-between were to risk the scenting of his real motive. Then, when the Synagogue had ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... argument, or upon better consideration of his own; for he shall never be preferred to the chair for a mere clatter of words and syllogisms, and is no further engaged to any argument whatever, than as he shall in his own judgment approve it: nor yet is arguing a trade, where the liberty of recantation and getting off upon better thoughts, are to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... in the words "But if not . . ." This suggestion is a very helpful one, for it enables us to work up gradually to this point, and then, as it were, unwind, until we reach the words of Nebuchadnezzar's dramatic recantation. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... nor his attitude of opposition to Mr. Gladstone's own wishes as to Egypt had in the least impaired his standing, and promotion was felt to be his due. The old difficulties, however, were still in the way, and Sir Charles refused to buy his way into the Cabinet by a sham recantation. The matter accordingly stood over, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... was attended by Diego Columbus, the crown officers, and all the notabilities, denounced their proceedings with regard to the Indians so vehemently that they left the church deeply offended, and that same day intimated to the bishop the necessity of recantation, else the Order should leave the island. The bishop answered that Montesinos had but expressed the opinion of the whole community; but that, to allay the scandal among the lower class of Spaniards in the island, ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... despotism. Now, with his death, following so closely the collapse of the Confederacy, there poured out from British press and public a great stream of laudation for Lincoln almost amounting to a national recantation. In this process of "whitening Abraham's tomb," as a few dyed-in-the-wool Southern sympathizers called it, Punch led the way in a poem by ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... which a hundred crosses can not efface. And if he did not want to bring the matter to our immediate cognisance, why, we ask, did he not re-write the page? Why did he not cover well that said paragraph with crosses and arabesques? We do suspect him here of chicanery; for by this plausible recantation he would shift the responsibility to the shoulders of the Editor, if the secret is divulged. Be this as it may, no red crosses can conceal from us the astounding confession, which we now give out. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... connection of whom had lived in the house with Tom Payne, some account of the last hours of that wretched man, who appears to have become so fully sensible of his fatal errors as to have written a recantation, which some of his infidel friends destroyed. The account they gave to Cobbett was entirely false; as the friend related that he expressed to her the greatest sorrow for the harm that he had done, and, on hearing that she had burned ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... purchase pardon. But pardon was impossible; and Cranmer's strangely mingled nature found a power in its very weakness when he was brought into the church of St. Mary at Oxford on the twenty-first of March to repeat his recantation on the way to the stake. "Now," ended his address to the hushed congregation before him, "now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that ever I said or did in my ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... Refusing to observe the ecclesiastical regulations of Archbishop Laud, he was brought before the court of high commission in 1629, and again in 1634, when, for opposing the placing of a rail around the communion table, he was suspended and imprisoned. His formal recantation in February 1637 caused him lasting self-reproach and humiliation. In 1637 he emigrated to America, and from 1638 until 1641 was an associate pastor at Plymouth, where, however, his advocacy of the baptism of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... Charles ordered that he should be believed upon his oath. (1) To a modern mind this seems as honourable to his father's memory as if John the Fearless had been hanged as high as Haman. And as things fell out, except a recantation from the University of Paris, which had justified the murder out of party feeling, and various other purely paper reparations, this was about the outside of what Charles was to effect in that direction. He lived five years, and grew up from sixteen ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... they introduced a fresh measure, which the Conservatives again curtailed of its most severe clauses, and which, in the form in which it was eventually passed, gave the Assembly time to reconsider its conduct, and, without the humiliation of confessing itself guilty, to give a practical recantation of their offensive resolutions, by resuming its work of legislation, any farther delay of which would on many subjects be very mischievous to the island itself. The distinct assertion by both parties of the power of the Parliament ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... nation, subject, doctrine. Afterwards he is brought into a relation with the person or nation, into a position as regards the thing, subject, or doctrine, which necessitates, if not exactly a distinct recantation in the humiliating sense attached to the Latin, yet a more or less graceful and ingenious palinode in the more honourable one which we allow to the Greek equivalent and original. Mr Arnold could never be lacking in grace or ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... rudely deposed from office, and thrown into prison. Finding he could not be induced to sign a paper of recantation, drawn up for him by the Patriarch, he was hurried by the Patriarch's beadles, with great violence, into an open sail-boat, without opportunity to obtain even an outer garment from his house, although it was midwinter, and sent across the sea of Marmora to the monastery of Ahmah, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... that threatened any limitation of his efficiency, had the slightest chance of Abolitionist support. The one dread that alarmed the whole Abolitionist group was a possible change in the President's mood, a possible recantation on January first. In order to hold him to his word, they were ready to humor him as one might cajole, or try to cajole, a monster that one was afraid of. No time, this, to talk to Abolitionists about strictly constitutional issues, or about ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... court-chaplain Andreas, and the prolific rhymester Matfre Ermengau, actually elaborated the theory of spiritual love contrary to the spirit of the Church, but both men hastened to utter a timely recantation and recommendation of orthodoxy as the only means of salvation. After establishing all the desirable details of love according to substance and accidents, Andreas deduced that every love not dedicated ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... unbelievers and materialists. Naturally the dissenters grew all the more fractious for this currying, and held another meeting, in which the reaction kicked up higher than ever. Being resolved now to proceed to extremities, and, if necessary, to form a new congregation, they drew up the following recantation and sent it to Dr. Potter,—not with any hope that he would put his name to it, but for the purpose of ridiculing his infatuation, and driving him to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... said to be the love of truth, convinced Lauder, that it would be more for his interest to make a full confession of his guilt, than to stand forth the convicted champion of a lie; and, for this purpose, he drew up, in the strongest terms, a recantation, in a letter to the reverend Mr. Douglas, which Lauder signed, and published in the year 1751. That piece will remain a lasting memorial of the abhorrence, with which Johnson beheld a violation of truth. Mr. Nichols, whose attachment to his illustrious friend was unwearied, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... but a single answer. The caviller, if any there should prove to be, is challenged to produce the log-book of the Montauk, London packet, and if it should be found to contain a single sentence to controvert any one of our statements or facts, a frank recantation shall be made. Captain Truck is quite as well known in New York as in London or Portsmouth, and to him also we refer with confidence, for a confirmation of all we have said, with the exception, perhaps, of the little occasional touches of character that ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... their exhortations, the Jesuits, for the present, baptized but few. Indeed, during the first year or more, they baptized no adults except those apparently at the point of death; for, with excellent reason, they feared backsliding and recantation. They found especial pleasure in the baptism of dying infants, rescuing them from the flames of perdition, and changing them, to borrow Le Jeune's phrase, "from little Indians ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... of Stilicho, the trifling sacrifice of an obnoxious poet. The poet concealed himself, however, during the tumult of the revolution; and, consulting the dictates of prudence rather than of honor, he addressed, in the form of an epistle, a suppliant and humble recantation to the offended praefect. He deplores, in mournful strains, the fatal indiscretion into which he had been hurried by passion and folly; submits to the imitation of his adversary the generous examples of the clemency of gods, of heroes, and of lions; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... 'affairs of State' in the pot-house over a mug of ale, Spencer had nothing but contempt; but to the parliamentary people who settle the same 'affairs' over champagne and prostitutes, he played the lick-spittle.... The recantation of his 'Social Statics' is the worst case of intellectual cowardice on record.... He went down with final contempt for the workers who served him, gave him his daily bread, made his ink, pen, and paper and bound the twenty volumes of his ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... book and always spoke of it as being full of youthful priggishness; but I think he was a little hard upon it. Years afterwards, in one of his later books, after quoting two passages from Mr. Grant Allen and pointing out why he considered the second to be a recantation of the first, he wrote: "When Mr. Allen does make stepping-stones of his dead selves he jumps upon them to some tune." And he was perhaps a little inclined to treat his own dead self too much in ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones

... father slipped into my uncle Cornelius's shoes and took the family estate. Besides the force of my mother's bright eyes, several persons, and of the genteelest society too, contributed to this happy change; and I have often heard my mother laughingly tell the story of my father's recantation, which was solemnly pronounced at the tavern in the company of Sir Dick Ringwood, Lord Bagwig, Captain Punter, and two or three other young sparks of the town. Roaring Harry won 300 pieces that very night at faro, and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 359 he accompanied Basil of Ancyra from Seleucia to the conferences at Constantinople, and on his return home came forward as a resolute enemy of Arianism at Caesarea. The young deacon was soon recognised as a power in Asia. He received the dying recantation of Dianius, and guided the choice of his successor Eusebius in 362. Yet he still acted with the Semiarians, and helped them with his counsel at Lampsacus. Indeed it was from the Semiarian side that he approached the Nicene faith. In his own city of Caesarea Eusebius ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... more bound by them than their ancestors had been in times past." Heresy indeed was still a felony by the common law, and if as yet we meet with no instances of the punishment of heretics by the fire it was because the threat of such a death was commonly followed by the recantation of the Lollard. But the restriction of each bishop's jurisdiction within the limits of his own diocese made it impossible to arrest the wandering preachers of the new doctrine, and the civil punishment—even if it had been sanctioned by public opinion—seems to have ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green



Words linked to "Recantation" :   disavowal, disclaimer, recant, withdrawal, climb-down, retraction, abjuration, backdown



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