"Tonsure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... illumination does; and Mr. Walpole replies to that doubt. Upon the same subject, Mr. Cole says, qu. how Lord Orford came to know the kneeling figure in a clerical habit, was Caxton the printer? He is certainly a priest, as is evident from his tonsure, but I do not think that Caxton was in orders. I should rather suppose that it was designed for Jehan de ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... was indeed, but oh! how changed. His plump, olive-coloured countenance had shrunk to that of a skeleton still covered by yellow skin, in which the dark eyes rolled bloodshot and unnaturally large. His tonsure and jaws showed a growth of stubbly grey hair, his frame had become weak and small, his soft and delicate hands resembled those of a woman dead of some wasting disease, and, like his garments, were clogged with dirt. The mail shirt he wore hung loose upon him; one of his ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... miscellaneous assortment of ghosts. A monk with tonsure and cowl walks in at one window of the Priest's House, and out at another. There is also a little old man, dressed in the antique garb of a green cut-away coat, knee breeches, and buckled shoes: he is sometimes accompanied by an old lady in similar old-fashioned costume. Another ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... tonsure does an undisciplined man who speaks falsehood become a Samana; can a man be a Samana who is still held captive ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... day; I might have been her lover, her spouse. Instead of being wrapped in this dismal shroud of mine I would have had garments of silk and velvet, golden chains, a sword, and fair plumes like other handsome young cavaliers. My hair, instead of being dishonoured by the tonsure, would flow down upon my neck in waving curls; I would have a fine waxed moustache; I would be a gallant.' But one hour passed before an altar, a few hastily articulated words, had for ever cut me off from the number of the living, ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... were no longer thought enough without a good life; and, as the Greeks said, that beard and cloak did not make a philosopher, so the Egyptians said that white linen and a tonsure would not make a follower of Isis. All the sacrifices to the gods had a secondary meaning, or, at least, they tried to join a moral aim to the outward act; as on the twentieth day of the month, when they ate honey and figs in ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... My object is attained if I can but show that when my friend took me under his wing at the Institute long years agone, when the innocent-looking lad with the fair hair, that might have had an incipient tonsure superimposed without incongruity, drifted away from text-books of mechanics, and sat down with Schiller, Ducoudray, and Carlyle, he little imagined how adventurous a spirit there boiled under that demure disguise of retiring scholarship—a spirit fired with an untamable passion ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... council at Whitby, where the future ecclesiastical allegiance of his realm should be decided. The points actually contested were trivial enough. Colman, Aidan's successor at Holy Island, pleaded for the Irish fashion of the tonsure, and for the Irish time of keeping Easter: Wilfrid pleaded for the Roman. The one disputant appealed to the authority of Columba, the other to that of St. Peter. "You own," cried the king at last to Colman, "that Christ ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... century," says Masden, "or from the beginning of the sixth, the custom prevailed in Spain of the infirm, when so heavily afflicted as to be in danger of death, piously assuming the tonsure and the penitential habit, and engaging to continue both through life, if God raised them up. As the use of this penance became common enough to throw discredit on the piety of all who did not thus undertake it, if the sick or dying man was unable to demand the habit, his relations ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... to admire him. He resolved to eliminate the tonsure and dress in citizens' clothes. His resolution stuck, and as soon as his hair had grown out, he went home and told his father and patron that he had abandoned theology and wished to study law. And so he was sent ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... success the world and the spirit. The picture was painted for Jacopo Pesaro, a member of a family closely associated with this church, as the tombs will show us. Jacopo, known as "Baffo," is the kneeling figure, and, as his tonsure indicates, a man of God. He was in fact Bishop of Paphos in Cyprus, and being of the church militant he had in 1501 commanded the Papal fleet against the Turks. The expedition was triumphant enough to lead the Bishop to commission Titian to paint two pictures commemorating it. In the first ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... him where to begin; and when he had made a circular tonsure on the top of the head, had ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Church, since with them the Pope and Bishops are the Church, while they do according to their own pleasure whatever they choose, in virtue of the declaration, "The Church has forbidden it." Holiness is not that which consists in the estate of monks, priests and nuns,—the wearing of the tonsure and cowl; it is a spiritual word, meaning that there is an inward holiness in the spirit before God. And this is the reason specially why he said this, in order to show that there is nothing holy but that holiness which ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... barbarians. They knew little of the traditions of the Roman Church and diverged from its customs in some respects. They celebrated Easter upon a different date from that observed by the Roman Church and employed a different style of tonsure. Missionaries from this Irish church were busy converting the northern regions of Britain, when the Roman monks under Augustine began their work in the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... its foundation. Some information about it is gained from the Life of S. Guthlac by Felix. Guthlac was a noble of Mercia, and in his youth a great warrior; but at the age of twenty-four, he went to Repton and received the tonsure under the abbess Aelfthryth. Her rule was apparently very strict, for we find Guthlac getting into trouble for breaking a rule by not ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney
... which vied in quaint picturesqueness with anything in Europe; but, alas! the old monk who showed us round, though wearing the regulation gown and knotted cord, had replaced his sandals by elastic-sided boots and covered his tonsure with a common chummy.[4] ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... for she pined from famine after the years of the great sickness; and my brother was slain in the French wars, and none thanked him for dying save he that stripped him of his gear; and my unwedded wife with whom I dwelt in love after I had taken the tonsure, and all men said she was good and fair, and true she was and lovely; she also is dead and gone from the earth; and why should I abide save for the deeds of the flesh which must be done? Truly, friend, this is but an old tale that men ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... coming hither to France and England, what do we find? Those who have vowed themselves to the service of the Church walking gaily in the dress of soldiers, engaged in carnal matters, letting their hair hang down their shoulders curled and powdered, and thinking scorn of the tonsure, which is the mark of the Kingdom of Heaven. And does not God see? Will He not recompense to His people their sins? Yea, verily He will; and in an hour when they little think it, the wrath of God shall fall upon them. It is even now upon its way. I have seen it; I have marked ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... encounter in their priest. We may say, therefore, that he was a wise man,—and probably, on the whole, a good man; that he did good service in his parish, and helped his people along in their lives not inefficiently. He was a small man, with dark hair very closely cut, with a tonsure that was visible but not more than visible; with a black beard that was shaved every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, but which was very black indeed on the Tuesday and Friday mornings. He always wore the black gown of his office, but would ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... in time of faith, When parable was life, When the red cross in Holy Land Led on the glorious strife. Oh! for the days of golden spurs, Of tournament and tilt, Of pilgrim vow, and prowess high, When minsters fair were built; When holy priest the tonsure wore, The friar had his cord, And honour, truth, and loyalty ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... still sitting Julius died and a new pope was chosen. This was the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Medici Leo X. Having taken the tonsure at the age of seven, and received the red hat six years later, he donned the tiara at the early age of thirty-eight. His words, as reported by the Venetian ambassador at Rome, "Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given it to us," exactly express his program. To make life one ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... was not a priestly robe; his black coat, and his waistcoat, tightly gathered in at the waist, set off to great advantage the elegance of his figure: his black cassimere pantaloons disguised his feet, exactly fitted with lace boots, brilliantly polished. And all traces of his tonsure disappeared in the midst of the slight baldness which whitened slightly the back part of his head. There was nothing in his entire costume, or aspect, that revealed the priest, except, perhaps, the entire absence of beard, the more ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... hardly necessary to mention that, although already Bishop of Pampeluna and Archbishop of Valencia, he had received so far only his first tonsure. He never did receive any ecclesiastical orders beyond the minor and ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... that he had lost his reason, which may have been true or false. Catherine disposed of him. She said: "It is my opinion that he should not be allowed to escape, so as to place him beyond the power of doing harm. It would be best to tonsure him (that is, to make a monk of him), and to transfer him to some monastery, neither too near nor too far off; it will suffice if it does not become a shrine." She did not desire that the people should make a martyr of ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... quite right; but, believe me, I only wear my hair long so as to save myself the trouble of going to the hairdresser's. If I dared imagine that I should be less insupportable with a tonsure—" ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... among the foremost,' must fly indignant over the marches, with the Contrat Social in his pocket,—towards outer darkness, thankless intriguings, ignis-fatuus hoverings, and death by the stiletto! Abbe Sieyes has left Chartres Cathedral, and canonry and book-shelves there; has let his tonsure grow, and come to Paris with a secular head, of the most irrefragable sort, to ask three questions, and answer them: What is the Third Estate? All.—What has it hitherto been in our form of government? Nothing.—What does it want? ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... on the ground round the stove, as close as they could get without scorching, and the atmosphere was quickly heavy with their presence. When they slipped back their hoods it was seen that two of the men wore the "tartar tonsure," after ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... passengers on board, and among others a monk, in a long brown frock of woollen cloth, with an immense cape, and a little black covering over his tonsure. He was a tall figure, with a gray beard, and might have walked, just as he stood, out of a picture by one of the old masters. This holy person addressed me very affably in Italian; but we found it impossible to hold ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the old worship within the city was often met with scornful mockery, sometimes attended with violence. A dead cat, for instance, was one day found hanging in Cheapside, its head shorn in imitation of a priest's tonsure, and its body clothed in a mock ecclesiastical vestment, with cross before and behind, whilst a piece of white paper to represent a singing-cake was placed between its forefeet, which had been tied together. Bonner was ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... with the scissors and I received the 'tonsure' for the third time, which left only a circle of hair around my head, and no Pinkerton detective, or even Bertillion himself could ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... guillotine both of my comrades were sent, But the Church, saving me for the tonsure, Hid me off in the wilds, and my dame, to her shame, To be Pere sold me out from a Monsieur; And now she is clad in the silk of the court, And I in the wool of confessor,— Hate me not, ere hence you go, Jean Victor Moreau! And with France be my ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... than that of consecrating himself to the divine service. About the year 821, bidding adieu to the court, he retired from Aix-la-chapelle to Metz, where he entered himself amongst the clergy, in the bishop's seminary, and received the clerical tonsure. Two years after, he was promoted to the holy orders of deacon, and, after three years more, to the priesthood. The emperor Lewis le Debonnaire called him again to court, and made him his first chaplain ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and geraniums, and delicate tinted German stocks, which fill the air with fragrance; a place made only for young lovers:—certainly not for those black, petticoated worthies, each with that sham of a sham, the modern tonsure, pared down to a poor florin's breadth among their bushy, well-oiled curls, who sit at little tables, passing the lazy day "a muguetter les bourgeoises" of Sarrebruck and Treves, and sipping the fragrant Josephshofer—perhaps ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... ready for the eye to be drilled, and finally the whole has to be filed up and smoothed off, and all by one man. The Japanese are but indifferent sewers, all their seams exhibiting numerous "holidays." Pretty children, with their hair clipped around their heads like a priest's tonsure, sport around us, but are not intrusive. Each child has a little pouch attached to his girdle, which, we are informed, contains the address of the child's parents, and also an invocation to the little one's protecting god, in case of ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... towers the inscription This made Wykeham may or may not be meant to convey a double meaning, but it is certainly true that his architectural successes furthered his fortunes. In 1357 he received the tonsure, and in 1360 was made Dean of S. Martin's Le Grand, Archdeacon of Lincoln, Northampton, and Buckingham, and Provost of Wells. In 1361 he commenced Queenborough Castle on the island of Sheppey; this important edifice, covering over three acres of ground, was demolished about ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... the tonsure and the dignity, and made a very tolerable Abbot. It is even recorded to his honour that he bestowed a handsome funeral on his ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... short Norman cloak, in bright green. An embroidered girdle sustained, in lieu of offensive weapons, an inkhorn with its appurtenances on the one side, on the other a knife for the purposes of the table. His hair was cut in imitation of the clerical tonsure, which was designed to intimate that he had arrived to a certain rank in his profession; for the Joyous Science, as the profession of minstrelsy was termed, had its various ranks, like the degrees in the church and in chivalry. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... an appropriate insult malediction, may be stripped from him again. The sacred vessels are placed in his hands, that from him, "accursed Judas that he is," they may be taken again. There is some difficulty in erasing his tonsure; but this difficulty with a little violence and cruelty is overcome. A tall paper cap, painted over with flames and devils, and inscribed "Heresiarch," is placed upon his head. This done, and his soul having been duly delivered to Satan, his body is surrendered to the secular arm. One last ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... marble, of the early part of the sixteenth century. The figures just mentioned are of white marble, kneeling upon cushions, beneath a rich canopy of Gothic fretwork. They are in their professional robes; their heads are bare, exhibiting the tonsure, with the hair in one large curl behind. A small whole-length figure of St. George, their tutelary saint, is below them, in gilded marble: and the whole base, or lower frieze, of the monument, is surrounded by six delicately ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... order has also given a denomination to them. There exists some differences of opinion among judicial antiquarians as to the origin of the coif. It is supposed by some to have been invented about the time of Henry III, for the purpose of concealing the clerical tonsure, and thus disguising those renegade clerks, who were desirous of eluding the canon, restraining the clergy from practising as counsel in the secular courts. Hortensius, 349. By others it is referred to a much earlier period, when the ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... ornaments set in the choir by the hand of Paolo Sasono." He died in the 68th year of his age, and was buried in S. Maria in Organo. He is called "prior" in a chronicle of the monastery under date 1511, and in the list of dead. In his portrait in the sacristy, by Caroto, he is represented with the tonsure and with the hood and cowl of the form which was proper to monks who were ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... type, full of missionary zeal and inspired by high culture. That Christianity even swept eastward, and for a time dominated Scotland and England from its homes in Iona and Lindisfarne. This Irish Christianity brought upon itself the enmity of Rome by continuing the Eastern tonsure and the Eastern ritual, and finally, at the great Synod at Whitby in the year 664[7], Rome conquered in the struggle for Britain, and the Irish religion was driven ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... bending over a cell in better preservation than most of them, and was illuminating with his candle the bones of the dweller in it. The light flickered on the skull of the Early Christian and the tonsure of the modern one and made comparisons. It also cut the darkness into solid blocks, and showed us broken bits of marble, faint stains of old frescoes, strange rough letters, and where it wavered furthest the uncertain ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... was stirred by other desires than those for spiritual honors. He assumed the hated garb of the priest only on his father's command. Although he was an archbishop he had only the first tonsure. His life was wholly worldly. It was even said that the King of Naples wanted him to marry one of his natural daughters and that if he did so he would relinquish the priesthood. The Ferrarese ambassador called upon ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... as infinitely ludicrous when I saw them on the heads of the judges and counsel in Westminster Hall. Originally the clergy were forbidden to practise law, and, as they were the best lawyers, the wig was worn to conceal the tonsure. He had anecdotes to tell of Johnson, Lamb, Macaulay, Voltaire, Talleyrand, etc., and quoted passages from Burke and from Junius at length in the exact words. Junius he considers proved to be Sir Philip Francis. He told a good story against Wordsworth, contained in a letter from Lamb to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... the University in expert tonsure is now well understood, but the craving for the subjugation of falsifying hair must have been quite secondary to that for the sustenance of the bodily powers, and accordingly the cooks stood very near to the purveyors of intellectual aliment. Nor did the ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... in the little clusters or "peppercorn" bunches peculiar to negro races. The Negrito man and woman usually wear the hair short, cutting it more or less closely so that it resembles a thick pad over the head. Sometimes a tonsure on the back is cut away, and among still other Negritos a considerable part of the hair is removed from the head. In persons of mixed Negrito-Malayan blood the hair, if left uncut, grows into a great wavy or frizzly mop standing ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... to good purpose; admitted—what then?—he is no priest! If the tongue of scandal is over-free with his private life; still the ready reply, that he is not a priest! If Deacons are thus privileged, what latitude may we not claim who have not even assumed the tonsure? ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... brasses throws much light upon the costumes and fashions of the day when they were engraved. We see priests, who may be recognised by the tonsure and vestments, amongst which we find the alb, amice, stole, maniple, and chasuble. The pastoral staff, ring, mitre, sandals, tunic, dalmatic, and gloves mark the graves ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... age for receiving the tonsure and taking the solemn vow of religion is the age of puberty, when a man is able to make use of his own will; but before the age of puberty it is possible to have reached the lawful age to receive the tonsure and be educated in a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... observes, instituted the inferior orders. Subdeacons are mentioned by Pope Cornelius and S. Cyprian in the 3rd century, as well as acolythes, exorcists, and lectors. S. Augustine and S. Gregory Nazianzen speak of ostiarii; and the clerical tonsure is mentioned by S. Isidore at the beginning of the 5th century, as a rite established before his time. Orders are conferred by the laying on of hands and prayer, as the scripture teaches, and also by the delivery of the instruments belonging to ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... opposition of the nobles, against the formal charges of the magistrates, against the clamorous outcry, not only of Parisians, but of all France. This explains the indifference, or rather the firm resolve, on Mazarin's part; never to take orders, but to remain simply 'tonsure' or 'minore',—he who controls at least forty abbeys, as well ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... period great families devoted to God from early youth the younger members who showed inclination for the religious life. Francois was only nine years old when he received the tonsure, and fifteen when he was appointed canon of the cathedral of Evreux. Without the revenues which he drew from his prebend, he would not have been able to continue his literary studies; the death of his father, in ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... hill that rose out of green meadows. It was covered with dingy pine trees except the top that was bared like a tonsure. A trail ran through the woods; a trail singularly morose and unattractive. The pines looked shabby and black in comparison to the sun on the spring meadows. This was Break-Neck Hill. Perhaps Cuddy ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Don't let him come here," cried the Major, "or I'll let him know what tonsure is, and read him the order of Melchisedec. A priest! After going round the world three times, to come home and be hailed as the father of a priest! Don't let him come near ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... suffered in his feet, which were swollen and bound up with rags; and also the fingers of his hands had been twisted, so that the inside was turned clean outwards, and on the top of his head was a wound, where priests make the tonsure, as though the scalp had been raised by a knife; and he was dressed in a cotton doublet, yet his own had been of fine black silk. Also they had put on him a miserable pair of hose, torn from the half of the leg downwards; ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of both boys, he carefully raised Pen into a sitting position, signed to Punch to hold him up, and then taking off his curiously fashioned hat and hanging it upon a broken branch of the tree, the boys saw that Nature had furnished him with the tonsure of the priest without the barber's aid, and they had the opportunity now of seeing that it was a pleasantly wrinkled rosy face, with a pair of good-humoured-looking eyes that gazed ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... five minutes to eleven. 'The eleventh hour,' said Mateo, with his dry laugh. Bernaldez set the clock down again. He took off his hat and threw it down to mark the ground. 'Ten paces,' he said, and, turning on his heel, counted aloud. I looked half-instinctively at his bared head. The tonsure was still visible to any who sought it; for it was but half-grown over. Mateo counted his steps and then turned. The clock gave a little tick, as such clocks do, four minutes before they strike. ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... restoring the University, c. 1477. He was without the degree in theology which would have enabled him to teach in that faculty, and was not even in orders: indeed a proposal that he should qualify by entering the lowest grade and receiving the tonsure, he contemptuously rejected. So the Theological Faculty would not hear him, but to the students in Arts he lectured on Greek and Hebrew and philosophy. For some years, too, he was physician to David of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht, whom he cured of gout by making him take baths of ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... to explain why the legend grew up, above the name, why the name attached itself, in many instances, to the bravest work of other men. The Concert in the Pitti Palace, in which a monk, with cowl and tonsure, touches the keys of a harpsichord, while a clerk, placed behind him, grasps the handle of the viol, and a third, with hat and plume, seems to wait upon the true interval for beginning to sing, is undoubtedly Giorgione's. The outline of the lifted finger, the trace of the plume, the very threads ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... and the regulations of the Church pure and undefiled. Thus arose the renowned contest between the early Scottish Church and the rest of Christendom about the proper period of observing Easter, and about the form of the tonsure. Hence, too, arose the debates about the peculiar discipline of the communities called Culdees, who, having to frame their own system of church government for themselves, humble, poor, and isolated as they were, constructed it after ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... young men, although, like the Indians, he wore a garb of dressed deerskin. His face, albeit no stranger to the use of their pigments and unguents, still showed fair and freckled. His hair bore no resemblance to their lank black locks; of an auburn hue and resolutely curling, it defied the tonsure to which it had been for years subjected, coming out crisp and ringleted close to his head where he was designed to be bald, and on the top, where the "war-lock" was permitted to grow, it floated backward in two long tangled ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Church—so destined by his parents as securing a wealthy provision for a younger son, but educated by his good tutor with more real sense of his obligations—felt the question in its full import. He was under no vows; he had, indeed, received the tonsure, but was otherwise unpledged, and he was bent on proving all things. The gaieties in which he had at first mingled had become abhorrent to him, and he studied with the earnestness of a newly-awakened mind in search of true light. The very ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sister of Mucio, the Duchess of Montpensier, carried the scissors at her girdle, with which she threatened to provide Henry with a third crown, in addition to those of France and Poland, which he had disgraced—the coronal tonsure of a monk. The convent should be, it was intimated, the eventual fate of the modern Childeric, but meantime it was more important than ever to supersede the ultimate pretensions of Henry of Navarre. To ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sallies of Father Tom there was generally to be found a method. His exuberances when he was Prior of San Clemente, for instance, were attributed to his desire that his tonsure might not be made to bear the weight of a mitre: 'It got whispered among the cardinals' (writes Canon Brownlow), 'that their eminences were at times the objects of his jokes, and that he even presumed to mimic those exalted personages. Some of them spoke seriously about it, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... not that. I was talking this day with Warbel. He has been about in the world. He has seen priests and monks accused of heresy the one by the other; and none are so fearfully persecuted as those who wear the tonsure, if men do but suspect them of ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... purificatory rites [Footnote: Of these only six are now generally performed, viz.:—1, the birth-ceremony, or touching the tongue of a new-born infant with clarified butter, etc.; 2, the name-giving ceremony on the tenth day; 3, tonsure; 4, induction into the privileges of the twice-born, by investiture with the sacred thread; 5, solemn return home from the house of a preceptor after completing the prescribed course of study; 6, marriage. See Indian Wisdom, p. 246.] (sanskara), the (six) daily duties ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... judged from the break in his tonsure, a few scatter'd white hairs upon his temples being all that remained of it, might be about seventy—he ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... it is a fashion, and nothing more, is unhappily fully established on ample and high authority within the medical prescriptive pale. And, in fact, even as "The Tonsure" or shaving of the crown, became by fashion and mendicity a feature of priesthood and monastic piety, so has the slaughter of the Tonsils come to be regarded by fashion and mendacity as a feature of childhood and medical expediency ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... connected with his reign, ten years. The latter revisited Ireland in 697, under the short reign of Loingsech, and concerned himself chiefly in endeavouring to induce his countrymen to adopt the Roman rule, as to the tonsure, and the celebration of Easter. On this occasion there was an important Synod of the Clergy, under the presidency of Flan, Archbishop of Armagh, held at Tara. Nothing could be more natural than such an assembly in such a place, at such a period. In every recorded instance the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Vol. ii., p. 230., the excellent vicar of Morwenstow asks the reason why combs are found in the graves of St. Cuthbert and others, monks, in the cathedral church of Durham. I imagine that they were the combs used at the first tonsure of the novices, to them a most interesting memorial of that solemn rite through life, and from touching affection to the brotherhood among whom they had dwelt, buried with ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... and colours, and chance-wise Doth daub, befouling walls and canvases, Is not a painter; but, unhelped by these, He who in art is masterful and wise. Cowls and the tonsure do not make a friar; Nor make a king wide realms and pompous wars; But he who is all Jesus, Pallas, Mars, Though he be slave or base-born, wears the tiar. Man is not born crowned like the natural king Of beasts, for beasts by ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... his neighbourhood. But he took her aside, and pressed upon her the claims of the ascetic life with such fervour that she instantly consented to renounce the world with him. She therefore went into a convent; and he received the tonsure, and was in due time ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Easter, passed the night. In the morning, having heard mass, he remained at his devotions till every one had quitted the chapel of St. Piranus. {82} As he mounted his horse at the door, a man of a fair complexion, with a round tonsure and meagre countenance, tall, and about forty years of age, habited in a white robe falling down to his naked feet, thus addressed him in the Teutonic tongue: "God hold the, cuing," which signifies, "May God protect you, king;" and proceeded, in the same language, "Christ and his ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... his zeal will dilute itself, and culture will come to take the place of frenzy. Art is better than austerity, and silken robes and 'broidered chasubles are preferable to horsehair and rope. A crown looks better than a tonsure." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... accounted a judgment of heaven upon his sin. He determined to quit the world, and devote himself to religion and prayer. I was then nine years of age. He placed me in the Academy of Arts, wound up his affairs, and retired to a remote convent, where he shortly afterwards assumed the tonsure. There, by the severity of his life, and by the unwearied punctuality with which he fulfilled the rules of his order, he struck the whole brotherhood with surprise and admiration. The superior of the monastery, hearing of his skill as a painter, requested ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... man, untrained in logic, might adopt the teaching, but he could not understand it. The "Congregation of the son of the C[a]kyas"—such was the earliest name for the Buddhistic brotherhood—were required only to renounce their family, put on the yellow robe, assume the tonsure and other outward signs, and be chaste and high-minded. But the teachers were instructed in the subtleties of the 'Path,' and it needed no little training to follow the leader's thought ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... as nor to attract attention. A short time afterwards we met two more horsemen, one of whom asked us if he was going right for the house we had been at. As he was speaking a gust of wind blew off his hat. I fetched it and gave it to him, and as he stooped to put it on I saw that a tonsure was shaven on the top of his head. The matter had already seemed strange to us; but the fact that one of this number of men, all going to a lonely house, was a priest in disguise, seemed so suspicious that my brother and myself determined to try and ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... covered his head; he seemed occupied in arranging papers, which he then passed to the judges. The accusers, all ecclesiastics, sat upon the right hand of the judges; they wore their albs and stoles. Father Lactantius was distinguishable among them by his simple Capuchin habit, his tonsure, and the extreme hardness of his features. In a side gallery sat the Bishop of Poitiers, hidden from view; other galleries were filled with veiled women. Below the bench of judges a group of men and women, the dregs ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... suppress contending factions, to conciliate a hostile populace, and to capture many cities which refused to submit. In seven years he effected the subjugation of the eighteen provinces, everywhere imposing the tonsure and the "pigtail" as badges of subjection. Many a myriad of the Chinese forfeited their heads by refusing to sacrifice their glossy locks; but the conquest was speedy, ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... intelligence and immaculate virtue for a divinity, Buddhism accords honour to all in proportion to their approaches towards absolute wisdom, and as the realisation of this perfection is regarded as almost hopeless in a life devoted to secular cares, the priests of Buddha, on assuming their robe and tonsure, forswear all earthly occupations; subsist on alms, not in money, but in food; devote themselves to meditation and self-denial; and, being thus proclaimed and recognised as the most successful aspirants to Nirwana, they claim the homage of ordinary mortals, acknowledge no ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... lips livid, and his eyes black and deep sunken in their sockets, with a bistre-coloured circle around them. His frame was meagre and bony. What remained of hair on his head was raven black, but either he was bald on the crown, or carried his attention to costume so far as to adopt the priestly tonsure. His forehead was lofty and sallow, and seemed stamped, like his features, with profound gloom. His garments were faded and mouldering, and materially contributed to his ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... said one of the tall footmen, throwing open the drawing-room, and a tall, thin, ascetic looking man, with a shaved, dark face, and an incipient tonsure, entered ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens |
