"Sacristan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we must pay the sacristan for showing them to us. We can ask him about them when we come down ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... before, and the hour for the ceremony fixed. One of the women went forward towards the door of the vestry, where she was met by a National Guard, who told her with a superfluity of oaths that she must not go in, that the —— cure, the sacristan, and all the d—— fellows of the church were locked up, and that they would no longer have anything to do with patriots. Then the mother approached and said, "But who will bury my poor child if the cure is in prison?" and then she began to weep bitterly at the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... song of Demeter"—says the prize-poet, or the Interpreter, the Sacristan of the holy places—"the song of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, whom Aidoneus carried away by the consent of Zeus, as she played, apart from her mother, with the deep- bosomed daughters of the Ocean, gathering ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... presently he knew that this would be his father and mother; so he stood still and waited till the service should be over; and by then it was done the twilight was growing fast in the church, and the sacristan was lighting a lamp here and there in some of the chapels, and the ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... connected with the Avenel family, as the Irish banshee is with true Milesian families. She announces good or ill fortune, and manifests a general interest in the family to which she is attached, but to others she acts with considerable caprice; thus she shows unmitigated malignity to the sacristan and the robber. Any truly virtuous mortal ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... fixed and livid lineaments of death. Just at that moment the whole choir burst forth with a 'Requiescat in pace,' that shook the vaults of the cathedral. Don Manuel sank senseless on the pavement. He was found there early the next morning by the sacristan, and conveyed to his home. When sufficiently recovered, he sent for a friar and made a full confession of all ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Scott's genius. The abbey is situated in a valley, surrounded by the Eildon hills. Some ruins of the abbey mill, with the dam belonging to "Hob Miller," the father of the "lovely Mysinda," are still to be seen; and the ford across the Tweed, where the worthy Sacristan was played so scurvy a trick by the White Lady, is also pointed out. Some miles off, on a wild and romantic spot on the course of the river, Elwin, or Allan, is Fairy Dean, or Nameless Dean, which is at once identified to be that place above the tower and vale ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... Next morning the sacristan of the church, who was making his rounds and placing fresh candles on the altar, received a shock. The Virgin's diamond was gone! The priests, the bishop, the governor, the general, the police were notified, and there was a mighty ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... Annunziata he drove us to the Church of Santa Giustina, where is a very famous and noble picture by Romanino. But as this paper has nothing in the world to do with art, I here dismiss that subject, and with a gross and idle delight follow the sacristan down under this church to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... From usurious insatiable Jews; every fresh Jew sticking on him like a fresh horseleech, sucking his and our life out; crying continually, Give, give! Take one example instead of scores. Our Camera having fallen into ruin, William the Sacristan received charge to repair it; strict charge, but no money; Abbot Hugo would, and indeed could, give him no fraction of money. The Camera in ruins, and Hugo penniless and inaccessible, Willelmus Sacrista borrowed Forty Marcs (some Seven-and-twenty Pounds) of Benedict the Jew, and patched-up ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... perceived, and said, you observe, good reader, concerning S. Francis of Assisi, and his sermons, when I was only five-and-twenty,—little thinking at that day how, Evangelical-bred as I was, I should ever come to write a lecture for the first School of Art in Oxford in the Sacristan's cell at Assisi,[25] or ever—among such poor treasures as I have of friends' reliquaries—I should fondly keep a little 'pinch' ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... graves, A lovely widow, much too gay for grief, Made peals from half a hundred campaniles To ring a wedding in. The seven bells Of Santo Pietro, from the nones to noon, Boomed with bronze throats the happy tidings out; Till the great tenor, overswelled with sound, Cracked itself dumb. Thereat the sacristan, Leading his swinked ringers down the stairs, Came blinking into sunlight—all his keys Jingling their little peal about his belt— Whom, as he tarried, locking up the porch, A foreign signor, browned ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... faithful of the Incarnation, and its daily thrice-repeated memorial” (F. G. Lee, “Pilgrimage of Grace”). The poor were never forgotten in these multiplied services. When mass was celebrated, it was a rule that the sacristan rang the “sanctus” bell (from its cherished sanctity often the only bell still preserved in our village churches), “so that the rustics who could not be present might everywhere, in field or home, be able to bow the knee to reverence” (Maskell’s “Ancient Liturgy,” ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... was wide open. The sacristan put out the candles, and the smoke from them rose like incense into the air. The tumbril rattled away in the dusk. My mind returned again to the phrases of the sermon,—original sin, death, life, of a sudden, ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... satiric terms, left in a huff, followed by acrimonious epithets from his late brethren. He became a monk at Reading, and filled a larger part upon a more spacious stage, and yet would have most gladly returned; but the strait cell was shut to him relentlessly and for ever. Andrew, erst sacristan of Muchelney, was another who left the Order for his first love, but his dislike of the life was less cogently put. It was not exactly that the prior could not brook opposition: but he hated a man who did not know his own mind, and nothing would ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs, and the comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack cavalry. There were also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and groups of peasants and landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan commanded one party which captured several hundred prisoners in the course of a month; and there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village elder, who slew ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... White; "a sacristan in a cotta. Do you like the short cotta or the long?" he continued, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... along the aisle in his shadow, to have called him by his name, but the presence of his two unknown companions, and some diffidence in herself, restrained her until the opportunity was gone, and he disappeared, inveigled by the sacristan into making the regular tour of the building. She knew every word he would hear, every antiquity he would admire. She saw him in the choir turning over the splendid manuscript books of Holy Writ and of the Mass which were in use in the church when the kings of England were still dukes of Normandy; ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... the high altar. Luna recognised him also: it was Eusebio, the sacristan of the chapel of the Sagrario, "Azul de la Virgen,"[1] as he was called by the Cathedral staff, on account of the celestial colour of the cloak ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that one of the monks of his order, Don Ippolito, who subsequently played a part in the history of the saint, and who had been now residing ten years in the convent, was about this time appointed to the office of sacristan, although he had previously filled with distinction divers important functions in the monastery. He had accepted this appointment out of obedience and humility of spirit; but after a while the devil sorely tempted him to regret having ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... them from clever parents, and, as he had never been frightened or coerced, all his lessons and acquirements were but play to him. He acquitted himself admirably, and the crockery-venders came and looked on, and a sacristan came out of the church and smiled, and the barber left his customer's chin all in a lather while he laughed, for the good folk of the quarter were all proud of Moufflou and never tired of him, and the pleasant, easy-going, good-humored ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the old monastic buildings were dilapidated; the rest were in good order, being frequented as a summer retreat by the inhabitants of Palma. Now, in December, the Chartreuse was entirely abandoned, except by a housekeeper, a sacristan and a lone monk, the last offshoot of the community—a kind of apothecary, whose stock-in-trade was limited to guimauve ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... whereupon the edges of the cut canvas began to bleed, and the blood remains there to this day, and may be seen by the curious in one of the parish churches of that city! They relate numerous cases in which the host when profaned has, when broken, sent forth blood. If a sacristan omits to light the lamp which burns at night before the eucharist, the lamp lights itself. There are innumerable persons in Spain who believe that he who is born on Good-Friday has a cross on the roof of his mouth, and the faculty of curing diseases by mere contact with his hands, or even a piece ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... seems to be particularly sad. He was a chorister or sacristan in a Roman Catholic church, with several others, and was arrested, with his companions, by the civil guard, charged with "sacrilege." The truth of the matter, however, seems to be as follows: The prisoner had a sweetheart with whom a lieutenant of the civil guard, named de Vega, appears to have ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... on tiptoe, with eyes modestly cast down, he entered the chamber of his master, opened the curtains, lit the fire, and made all the necessary preparations for the toilet with the discreet demeanor and respectful gestures of a sacristan placing the sacred vessels on the altar ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... and sunlight seemed to furnish it, and, with something austere and primitive, to make it the most fitting background for herself. But while her presence perfected it for him, it was her guardian's absence that preoccupied Karen. Again, and comically, she reminded Gregory of the sacristan explaining to the sight-seer that the famous altar-piece had been temporarily removed and that he could not really judge the chapel without its culminating and consecrating object. "If only Tante were here!" she said. "It ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... son of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... preacher, reader, lecturer; capitular[obs3]; missionary, propagandist, Jesuit, revivalist, field preacher. churchwarden, sidesman[obs3]; clerk, precentor[obs3], choir; almoner, suisse[Fr], verger, beadle, sexton, sacristan; acolyth[obs3], acolothyst[obs3], acolyte, altar boy; chorister. [Roman Catholic priesthood] Pope, Papa, pontiff, high priest, cardinal; ancient flamen[obs3], flamen[obs3]; confessor, penitentiary; spiritual director. cenobite, conventual, abbot, prior, monk, friar, lay brother, beadsman[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. Can any biography shed light on the localities into which the Midsummer Night's Dream admits me? Did Shakespeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation? The forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone Castle, the moonlight of Portia's villa, 'the antres vast and desarts idle' of Othello's captivity,—where is the third cousin, or grand-nephew, the chancellor's file of accounts, or ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... recourse to this means, it invariably succeeded. I will give you a striking example, which will, I am sure, amuse you. You had been ill with bronchitis for several days, and we were all uneasy about you. One morning, in my duty as sacristan, I came to put back the keys of the Communion-grating. This was my work, and I was very pleased to have an opportunity of seeing you, though I took good care not to show it. One of the Sisters, full of solicitude, feared I should awake you, and tried to ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... day was gone, the night came on, The monks and the friars they searched till dawn; When the sacristan saw, on crumpled claw, Come limping a poor little lame Jackdaw! No longer gay, as on yesterday; His feathers all seemed to be turned the wrong way; His pinions drooped, he could hardly stand,— His head was as bald as the palm of your hand; His eye so dim, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... sent him to Eisenach, bearing in mind the numerous relatives who lived in the town and surrounding country, and who might be of service to him. But of these no mention has reached us, except of one, named Konrad, who was sacristan in the church of St. Nicholas. The others, no doubt, were not in a position to ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... in Campo d' Armata. So this picture is called by the sacristan. I could see no San Rocco in it; nothing but a wild group of horses and warriors in the most magnificent confusion of fall and flight ever painted by man. They seem all dashed different ways as if by a whirlwind; and a whirlwind there must ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... find the place good, you are the master; and, besides, I must be just—speaking of the notary—if there's something against, there's also something for him. He is as miserly as a dog, hard as an ass, bigoted as a sacristan, it is true; but he is as honest as one can be. He gives small wages, but he pays like a man. The food is bad. In fine, it is a house where one must work like a horse, but where there is no risk of a young girl's reputation. Louise was ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... pretence of inspecting the smear—a portrait of the old Sacristan on a bench in front of the main entrance—started back in surprise on seeing the Bostonian, and asked with an anxious ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 1618 the Cardinal-Archbishop of Rheims presented an arm-bone of the saint to the Scots College in Rome. It was removed for safety to the Vatican Treasury when the college was closed during the French occupation of Rome. Through the good offices of the Right Rev. Bishop Pifferi, the Papal sacristan, the relic was restored to the college in 1893. A notable relic of this saint was obtained from Rheims by the Abbey of Fort-Augustus and is now honoured there. There is no other record of the saint's connection ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... the radiant face of the Virgin, the sweet and pale countenance of Christ, the statues of the saints, the niches, the old pillars, the small chapels, all this mystic poetry pleases them, everything enchants and intoxicates them, even to the sanctimonious and hypocritical face of the beadle and the sacristan. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... assembly. It had a president,[6] "elders,"[7] a hazzan, i.e., a recognized reader, or apparitor,[8] deputies,[9] who were secretaries or messengers, and conducted the correspondence between one synagogue and another, a shammash, or sacristan.[10] The synagogues were thus really little independent republics, having an extensive jurisdiction. Like all municipal corporations, up to an advanced period of the Roman empire, they issued honorary decrees,[11] voted resolutions, which had the force of law ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Vydts family) contains the famous altar piece of the Adoration of the Lamb, by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, to study which is the chief object of a visit to Ghent. See it more than once, and examine it carefully. Ask the sacristan to let you sit before it for some time in quiet or he will hurry you on. You must observe it in close detail. Taking it in its entirety, then, the altar-piece, when opened, is a great mystical poem of the Eucharist ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... in a low voice, two or three dirty choristers, in soiled surplices, were charting the prayers for the dead, with an absent and sullen air, round a plain deal coffin, followed only by a sobbing old man and a child, miserably clad. The beadle and the sacristan, very much displeased at being disturbed for so wretched a funeral, had not deigned to put on their liveries, but, yawning with impatience, waited for the end of the ceremony, so useless to the interests of the establishment. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... he studied life from an eminently social aspect. If we are to believe a certain ancient sage, we are all in the world to solve a problem: as to Trespolo, he desired to live without doing anything; that was his problem. He was, in turn, a sacristan, a juggler, an apothecary's assistant, and a cicerone, and he got tired of all these callings. Begging was, to his mind, too hard work, and it was more trouble to be a thief than to be an honest man. Finally he decided in favour of contemplative philosophy. He had a passionate preference ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... especially in the night that all these worthies, grave-diggers, flaxdressers, and ghosts, exercise their industry. It is in the night also the flaxdresser relates his lamentable stories. But he is no more than the sacristan addicted exclusively to the pleasure of inspiring his auditors with fear; he delights in raising a laugh; and is jocose and sentimental by turns, when he comes to speak of love and Hymen. He is the man to collect and store up in memory the most ancient songs, and to hand ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... who were vesting in the sacristy. Enormous chests lined the walls of several rooms, and in those were stored gorgeous vestments, wonderfully beautiful in color and material, and enriched with gold and precious stones. Costly presents from kings and Spanish grandees were shown to me by the brother sacristan, who took an honest pride in exhibiting those blessed things. Magnificent society banners, used during processions on great festivals, were subjects of intense interest to the good brother. I saw lace albs there, with crotchet work marvellously executed ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... more rare than courage, that was found among them. The disturbances that broke out in several places on the day of enrolment, were conducted by men of the people. Cathelineau, one of the earliest, was a carrier, sacristan in his village, who had never seen a shot fired when he went out with a few hundred neighbours and took Cholet. By his side there was a gamekeeper, who had been a soldier, and came from the eastern frontier. As his name was Christopher, the Germans corrupted it ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... church with two assistants armed with crowbars and pickaxes, and proceed immediately to the crypt, where no doubt could exist as to the noises at that moment, as the yellings, scamperings and scramblings were loud enough in all conscience. The sacristan came out from the body of the church and suggested another exorcism to the reverend father, who answered that he preferred the pickaxe, and, turning to beckon to his workmen, found they had fled. Nowise daunted, the reverend gentleman ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... must know that, on one occasion, when, for two days, I had felt certain that at any moment I might have to depart for Rome on business, I repaired to the Embassy of the Holy See in Paris, to have my passport visaed. There I encountered a sacristan of about fifty, and a man dry and cold of mien. After listening politely, but with great reserve, to my account of myself, this sacristan asked me to wait a little. I was in a great hurry to depart, but of course I sat ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... surprise, we examine these phantoms, we find that, for the most part, they are young mothers, with the refined and gentle faces of Madonnas, who hold the plaintive little ones beneath their black veils and seek to comfort them. And the sorcerer, who plays the cymbals, is a kind old priest, or sacristan, who smiles paternally. If he makes all this noise, in a rhythm which in itself is full of joy, it is to mark the gladness of Easter morn, to celebrate the resurrection of Christ—and a little, too, no doubt, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... she had acquired in the ultra-religious environment in which she had lived since her conversion and her recent baptism, completed the resemblance. And you can imagine whether worldly curiosity was rampant around that ex-odalisque turned fervent Catholic, as she entered the room, escorted by a sacristan-like figure with a livid face and spectacles, Maitre Le Merquier, Deputy for Lyon, Hemerlingue's man of business, who attended the baroness when the baron was "slightly ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the Countess Martin-Belleme and Madame Marmet to her pink-tinted house at Fiesole, which, crowned with a long balustrade, overlooked the incomparable city. The maid followed with the luggage. Choulette, lodged, by Miss Bell's attention, in the house of a sacristan's widow, in the shadow of the cathedral of Fiesole, was not expected until dinner. Plain and gentle, wearing short hair, a waistcoat, a man's shirt on a chest like a boy's, almost graceful, with small hips, the poetess was doing for her French friends the honors of the ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... and there we found that as an office was about to be sung no one would be allowed in the ambulatory until after its completion. It was pouring live Belgian rain without; already the choristers in surplices were filing into the choir. Not a moment to be spared! The sacristan was a practical man. He hustled us into a side chapel, locked the heavy doors, and left us in company with the great picture of the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck. A monk knelt in prayer outside, the rain clouds made the lighting obscure. We were hemmed in, but by ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the altar stood the priest, a reverend old man, with long flowing silver hair and beard. Near him the sacristan, not less reverend in appearance. No one else was present except Marianne, who, in tears, knelt behind her mistress, and with folded hands prayed for her beloved princess, who was ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... in Rome. At Monte Giordano (Palazzo Gabbrielli) it becomes the walled Umbrian town, castellated. In this gloom, this sadness of icy evening sky between the high roofs, and after the appalling sadness of a church, squalid, dark, a few people kneeling, and the sacristan extinguishing the altars after a Benediction (every grief, one would think, laid down on that floor only to pick up a weight of the grief of others); after this there was something sweet and country-like in the splash of the fountains at Monte Giordano; the water bringing from the free ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... fracas, a personage of venerable appearance presented himself at Epinal, and applied for the post of sacristan and bell-ringer, at that time vacant. Though he squinted, his appearance was far from disagreeable, and he obtained the appointment without difficulty. His deportment in it was in all respects edifying; or if he evinced some little remissness ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... been to the Cafe des Exiles in some degree what the image of the Virgin was to their churches at home; and for her father to whisper her name to one and not to another was, it seemed to Mazaro, as if the old man, were he a sacristan, should say to some single worshiper, "Here, you may have this madonna; I make it a present to you." Or, if such was not the handsome young Cuban's feeling, such, at least, was the disguise his jealousy put on. If Pauline ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... all very good, useful, and profitable," rejoined the elder. "You will readily find the Sacristan of some church who will give your worship the offering-bread of All Saints' Day, for cutting him his paper flowers to decorate ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... at the stove, Akim was not there. The second cock had not crowed and the night was still so dark that the sky hardly showed grey overhead and at the horizon melted into the darkness when Akim walked out of the gate of the sacristan's house. His face was pale but he looked keenly around him and his step was not that of a drunken man.... He walked in the direction of his former dwelling, the inn, which had now completely passed into the possession ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... his time in religious thought. In the church of Santa Cruz near by his home, was a picture of the "Descent from the Cross" by Campana. Before this picture he spent many hours, so much did he admire it. One evening he remained later than usual. The Angelus had sounded, and the Sacristan wished to close the church. He asked the painter why he lingered so long. He responded, "I am waiting until those men have brought the body of our blessed Lord down the ladder." When Murillo died he was buried, according to his ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... trusted. The church has been carefully restored—quite recently, I fancy, by the look of it. Then I went into the churchyard, where a newly-filled-in grave showed me where my poor godfather had been laid. The sacristan, a very old, infirm man was putting it tidy; and to my astonishment I saw a low vase of white flowers placed in the very centre of ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... or ALUREDUS, OF BEVERLEY, was sacristan of the church of Beverley in the first half of the 12th century. He wrote, apparently about the year 1143, a chronicle entitled Annales sive Historia de gestis regum Britanniae, which begins with Brutus and carries the history of England down ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the Pontifical 'family,' and of her parents, the young invalid was soon at the last extremity. The vice-cure of the palace (which, as is known, is a foundation), a member of the Augustin order (Monseigneur the Sacristan of the same order is the titular cure), had administered to her the sacrament of extreme unction, and had recited the prayer recommending her soul. Her last sigh was hourly expected. For the sake of enabling our readers ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... had come out after matins. When he arrived he found the door, through which he had come, built up and a new one opened in another place. The porter asked who he was and what he wanted, and he answered, 'I am the sacristan who a few hours ago went out, and now returning find all changed.' He gave too the names of the Abbot and of the Prior, and wondered much that the porter still would not let him in, and seemed not to remember these names. At last he was led to the Abbot, but they did not know ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... a famous work of art, and was bought by I don't know what king for I don't know how much money. All this information may be perfectly relied on, though the fact is, we did not see the mosaic-work: the sacristan, who guards it, was yet in bed; and it was veiled from our eyes in a side-chapel by great dirty damask curtains, which could not be removed, except when the sacristan's toilette was done, and at the price of a dollar. So we were spared this mosaic ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as well as a pretty artist-story, which, however, is marred, I think, by the additions of a choir that gathers round the organist and without exception forgets like him time and place, and of a mother superior who sends the sacristan to remind those music-enthusiasts in the organ-gallery of the impatiently waiting priest and acolyte, &c. Men willingly allow themselves to be deceived, but care has to be taken that their credulity ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... instruct the Indians how to shoot, they would bring from Chile certain Jesuits who in the world had served as soldiers. One sees them brought from the frontiers of Araucania, and from the outposts of the trans-Andean towns, half sacristan, half sergeant, instant in prayer, and yet with a look about them like a serious bull terrier — a fitting kind of priest for a frontier town, and such as could alone ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... anything in the way of acquaintance, sacristan, or chance sight, stop you in doing what I tell you. Walk straight up to the church, into the apse of it;—(you may let your eyes rest, as you walk, on the glow of its glass, only mind the step, half way;)—and ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... at four o'clock, Buvat found the whole house in commotion. The doctor had said that they must send for the viaticum. They had sent for the cure, and he had arrived, and, preceded by the sacristan and his little bell, he had without any preparation entered the sick room. Clarice received it with her hands joined, and her eyes turned toward heaven; but the impression produced on her was not the less terrible. Buvat heard singing, and thought what must have happened. He went ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the Holy Virgin's veil used to be kept in, to begin with), and leave to rummage in it at will! Things that are only shown twice in the year or so, with fumigation! all the congregation on their knees—and the sacristan and I having a great heap of them on the table at once, like a dinner service. I really looked with great respect on St. Francis's ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... in the little town of Cap Franais, in 1701. The chapel was not much better than an ajoupa, that is, a four-posted square with a sloping roof of leaves or light boards. The aisle had half a foot of dust in the dry season, and the same depth of mud during rain. "I asked the sacristan, who also filled the office of chanter, if he should chant the Introit, or begin simply with the Kyrie Eleson; but he replied that it was not their custom to chant a great deal, they were content with low mass, brief, and well hurried ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... various shelters from the weather and being driven from each by unforeseen circumstances—a cloister or two, a church (where the sacristan surprised us asleep one morning and turned us out into the rain), an old family sepulchre, an empty palace, and a baker's oven which had fallen to be let (and had been occupied by cockroaches)—we finally discovered ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... The sacristan was quickly found, however, and lost no time in disclosing the youthful Archangel, setting his divine foot on the head of his fallen adversary. It was an image of that greatest of future events, which ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you go and call the sacristan from the bell," the prior said, "and bid him lead you to the ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... have run so fast again," ejaculated a very short and stout priest. "Faith, my legs seemed to grow under me, as our sacristan said after he had been ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... a padre (now removed) who emulated the example of the shamans and was frequently in his cups. On one occasion he was unable to perform the marriage ceremonies, and the sacristan accompanying him had to take his place. All this man knew about the rite was to ask the man and the woman whether they would have each other. On hearing their "Yes" he would say, "Where is the dollar?" ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... them in a few days, to correspond to the great devotion of those early Christians, fervent in their love to the Great Mother of God. Whence we may believe that to satisfy their ardent desires he was continually applying himself to this task of so much glory to Mary and her blessed Son." But the sacristan of the church at Caulonia, to whom I applied for information regarding these local treasures, knew nothing about them, and his comments gave me the impression that he has relapsed into a somewhat pagan way of regarding ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... According to a recent writer the "rocking" is still continued in the Upper Innthal.{56} In the Tyrolese cathedral city of Brixen it was once performed every day between Christmas and Candlemas by the sacristan or boy-acolytes. That the proceedings had a tendency to be disorderly is shown by an eighteenth-century instruction to the sacristan: "Be sure to take a stick or a thong of ox-hide, for the ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... eyes, sunk in fat, were fixed upon the ikon stand. He saw the long familiar figures of the saints, the verger Matvey puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles, the darkened candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to the churchwarden.... All these things he had seen for years, and seen over and over again like the five fingers of his hand.... There was only one thing, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... there is an exceedingly fine Ancona by Gaudenzio, to which I have already referred. Over an altar in the north transept, but for the most part hidden behind a painted tela, is Tabachetti's very beautiful Madonna del Rosario, which the visitor should ask the Sacristan to show him; and last, but hardly least, there is a Madonna by Dedomenici of Rossa—a village higher up the Valsesia—painted on linen, in the chapel dedicated ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... church door; besides, that being a more sacred place, he felt sure that God would favor him even more than Juan. He arranged his bier with the candles around him, and lay down to await the shower of money that should reward his devotions. When the sacristan went to the church to ring the bell for vespers, he saw the body lying there, and not knowing of any corpse having been carried in, he was frightened and ran to tell the padre. The padre, when he had seen the body, said it was a miracle, and that it must be buried within ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... was gone, The night came on, The monks and the friars they searched till dawn; When the Sacristan saw, On crumpled claw, Come limping a poor little lame Jackdaw; No longer gay, As on yesterday; His feathers all seemed to be turned the wrong way; His pinions drooped, he could hardly stand, His head was as bald as the palm of your hand; His eye so dim, So wasted each ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Sacristan.—An old word derived from the Latin sacra, meaning sacred things, still retained to designate one who has charge of the Sacristy with all its contents, viz., the vestments and sacred vessels. The word has been corrupted into sexton which is now ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller |
