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Ecclesiastic   Listen
adjective
Ecclesiastic  adj.  Of or pertaining to the church. See Ecclesiastical. "Ecclesiastic government."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ecclesiastic" Quotes from Famous Books



... with an effigy, apparently of an ecclesiastic, but much decayed, of the 13th century, in the south ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various

... had seen several of his co-religionists burned in France for their faith, likewise wrote in 1554, in Calvinistic Geneva: "What crime can be greater or more heinous than heresy, which sets at nought the word of God and all ecclesiastic discipline? Christian magistrates, do your duty to God, Who has put the sword into your hands for the honor of His majesty; strike valiantly these monsters in the guise of men." Theodore of Beza ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... some information as to the share which modiste and beautifier might claim in her rejuvenation, but Monsignor, very strict and happily ignorant of the details of the toilet, as an ecclesiastic should be, was lost in admiration of her. It took him ten minutes to come to the object of ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... sent as Commissioner of the Established Church, a Scotch ecclesiastic, Dr. James Blair. In virtue of his office he had a seat in, the Council, and his integrity and force soon made him a leader in the colony. A college in Virginia became Blair's dream. He was supported by Virginia planters with sons to educate—daughters' education being ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... told of a learned ecclesiastic, [6] dwelling in this city, whose goodness and pious life our Lord was beginning to make known to the world. I contrived to make his acquaintance through a saintly nobleman [7] living in the same ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... that faction; his name was Monteverde. I had him cut to pieces, as was just: for, believe me, Senor, wherever I am, people live according to the law. But the corruption of morals among the monks is so great in this land that it is necessary to chastise it severely. There is not an ecclesiastic here who does not think himself higher than the governor of a province. I beg of thee, great King, not to believe what the monks tell thee down yonder in Spain. They are always talking of the sacrifices they make, as well as of the hard and bitter life they are ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... the venerable ecclesiastic brought out the names of David Sechard and Eve, little Postel grew very red, and Leonie, his wife, felt it incumbent upon her to give him a jealous glance—the glance that a wife never fails to give when she is perfectly sure of her husband, and gives a look into the past by way ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... before them, and who, desiring to do what is right, have it brought home to them in a convincing way that it is not their opportunity. No one ought to assume great responsibilities if he is not equal to them. One of the saddest things ever said on a human deathbed was what was said by a great ecclesiastic, who had disappointed the hopes that had been formed of him. In his last moments he turned to one who stood near him and murmured, "I have held a great post, and I have not been equal to it." The misery was that no one could ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... they said, "excepting the lass that Cuddie took up, and two couriers that Captain Balfour had dispatched, one to the Reverend Ephraim Macbriar, another to Kettledrummle," both of whom were beating the drum ecclesiastic in different towns between the position of Burley and the head-quarters of the main army ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... later, he adhered to Lord Dunraven's proposals of devolution, but finding no rest in a half-way house, came into full support of Redmond and for some time was a member of our party; by temperament deeply conservative, he was in no way separated by that from many of the ablest Nationalists, lay and ecclesiastic. As a speaker he had few equals in the Convention; no man there, indeed, except Redmond, could throw equal passion into the plea of urgency for a settlement, for I think no other man felt it ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... was asserted to be to promote the common welfare and advance the interests of the political State; ministers of education began to be appointed by the State to take over and exercise control; the citizen supplanted the ecclesiastic in the organization of education and the supervision of classroom teaching; the instruction in the school was changed in direction, and in time vastly broadened in scope; and the education of all now ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... to following Christ is the leaving the dead to bury their dead." Perhaps this hypothetical anticipation is to be classed with the surmise of Cardinal Wiseman (if Father Prout rightly attributed to that eminent ecclesiastic a review of Men and Women in The Rambler) that Browning himself would one day be found in the ranks of converts to Catholicism. In each case a wish was father to the thought; Browning recognised ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... ecclesiastic wished two things, both of which his heritors flatly refused: (a) a new manse, and (b) a site with a wide prospect. Finding them intractable, he professed humility, and craved merely a species of scaffolding to buttress up one of the walls of the old manse. The heritors marvelled a little at ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... religious law exercises at first a sway far in excess of its proper province, and Rome was no exception to the rule. The publication of civil law is an era in civilization. Just as the chancellorship and primacy of England were often in the hands of one person and that an ecclesiastic, so in Rome the pontifices had at first the making of almost all law. What a canonist was to Mediaeval Europe, a pontifex was to senatorial Rome. In the time of which we are now speaking (133-63 B.C.), ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... fiancee, and the relics and papal bulls that his father had charged him to convey for him to Louis XII. These were followed by twenty gentlemen dressed in cloth of gold and silver, among whom rode Paul Giordano Orsino and several barons and knights among the chiefs of the state ecclesiastic. ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... contrast with those of the pala. There are five seats with backs, canopy, and ends at each side of the altar. At each end are well-executed figures among foliage scrolls, which are out of scale—on one side, a Virgin and Child and a bishop; on the other, two saints, one of whom is an ecclesiastic. The uprights between the seats are faced with twisted colonnettes, and the backs have a quatrefoil pattern made by cutting the bars of a ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... to Isabel in the person of the pale, slender young ecclesiastic who had shown her and Basil the pictures in the country church. She was confessing to the priest, and she was not at all surprised to find that he was Basil in a suit of medieval armor. He had an immense cross on ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... would wish, of course, to preserve beautiful historic buildings, that although they would dismiss the bishop and all the clergy, they would want to retain one or two scholars as custodians and interpreters. "And what next?" the imperturbable ecclesiastic asked. "We would democratize it," replied the men. But when it came to a more detailed description of such an undertaking, the discussion broke down into a dozen bits, although illuminated by much shrewd wisdom and affording a clue, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... presence of the venerable lady, who herself showed none, but simply recommended her accepted daughter to pray daily. "I can neither confess nor pray," Vittoria said to the priest, a comfortable, irritable ecclesiastic, long attached to the family, and little able to deal with this rebel before Providence, that would not let her swollen spirit be bled. Yet she admitted to him that the countess possessed resources which she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... worn a la Richelieu,—a mustache and a tuft on the chin,—was snow white, and his hair, which was thin, hung in long white waves almost to his shoulders. He walked with a stoop and wore spectacles, the glasses of which were slightly colored. Being an ecclesiastic, though not a priest, he wore no wig; but he was of the Order of the Cordon Bleu, and wore, in addition to his badge and blue ribbon, a sword beneath his long coat. It was the first time I had ever seen an ecclesiastic wearing a sword, though it has since become ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... entered the service of the government, regardless of birth, was at once entitled to be classed among the tchinovnik. From that time the terms gentleman and officer, became synonymous. Every service, civil, military, naval, or ecclesiastic, was divided into fourteen grades. The lowest grade in the civil service was held by the registrar of a college, the highest by the Chancellor of the Empire; the cornet was at the bottom, the field marshal at the top in the army; and the deacon in a church was fourteen ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen

... of the Spanish padre? Was it that city of golden gates and burnished towers? After all, was the story of the wandering priest true? Who had proved it a fable? Who had ever penetrated this region, the very country in which the ecclesiastic represented the golden ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... Testimonial Fund,'" so ran the rescript, "cannot be approved, and consequently it cannot be tolerated that any ecclesiastic, much less a bishop, should take any part whatever ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... perch On a cathedral or a church, Where, mid ecclesiastic style, It smiles an early-Gothic smile. And while the parson, dignified, Spouts at his weary flock inside, The Gargoyle, from its lofty seat, Spouts at the people in the street, And, like the parson, seems to say To those beneath him, "Let us spray." I like the Gargoyle best; ...
— The Mythological Zoo • Oliver Herford

... their predecessors. But, indeed, they were fitted to be Americans from the very start; they were kinsfolk of the Covenanters; they deemed it a religious duty to interpret their own Bible, and held for a divine right the election of their own clergy. For generations their whole ecclesiastic and scholastic systems had been fundamentally democratic. In the hard life of the frontier they lost much of their religion, and they had but scant opportunity to give their children the schooling in which they believed; but what few meeting-houses and school-houses ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... Ecclesiastic: connected with the Church. For many centuries Rome was the centre of Christian influence, and is so ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... bells. There had been a futile attempt at an area. The passenger saloon was on the upper deck, and had a tile roof. To this humplike structure the ship owed her name. Her designer had erected several churches—that of St. Ignotus is still used as a brewery in Hotbath Meadows—and, possessed of the ecclesiastic idea, had given the Camel a transept; but, finding this impeded her passage through the water, he had it removed. This weakened the vessel amidships. The mainmast was something like a steeple. It had a weathercock. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... characteristics of the ecclesiastic, as opposed to the religious mind, is its tendency to concentrate its attention upon detail to the exclusion of fundamental principles. We are assured that the same habit distinguishes the statesman from the party man, or mere politician. At any ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... are prepared, by instruction in German, &c., for a further course of study in the Gymnasium of Belgrade, the germ of a future university. A proof of the taste now spreading for general literature was afforded by the library of the Archpriest, "Jowan Paulovich, a self-taught ecclesiastic: the room in which he received us was filled with books, mostly Servian, but among them I perceived German translations of Shakspeare, Young's Night Thoughts, and a novel of Bulwer's." The son of this priest was studying mining engineering at the expense of government, at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... flourished in the Bestiaries, which were used everywhere, and especially in the pulpits, for the edification of the faithful. In all of these, as in that compiled early in the thirteenth century by an ecclesiastic, William of Normandy, we have this lesson, borrowed from the Physiologus: "The lioness giveth birth to cubs which remain three days without life. Then cometh the lion, breatheth upon them, and bringeth ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... reached his dignity in the church by secular instead of ecclesiastic influence, and is credited with employing his power in this and other instances with such lack of honor and probity that he became an object of the deepest popular contempt and execration. His name was derided in the popular ballads, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... Nature demands,—no more. The kind nun who accompanied us now showed us, with some pride, various large presses, set in the wall, and piled to the top with clean and comfortable children's clothing. We came presently to where the boys were reciting their catechism. An ecclesiastic was hearing them;—they seemed ready enough with their answers, but were allowed to gabble off the holy words in a manner almost unintelligible, and quite indecorous. They were bright, healthy-looking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... see, the venerable ecclesiastic he's afraid I'd want to come to breakfast too. He thinks I am ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... these ill-kempt pupils marched the grave professors and teachers, in square ecclesiastic caps and long gowns, whose colours marked their degrees and the Universities that had conferred them—some thin, some portly, some jocund, others dreamy; some observing all the humours around, others still ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... displeasing; she was glad also to show that she knew how verse should be spoken. But she noticed that in the orchestra stalls there was a priest wearing his cassock. It was not the first time that an ecclesiastic had been present at an afternoon performance of this tragedy drawn from the Scriptures. Nevertheless, it impressed her disagreeably. When she went on the stage she distinctly saw Louise Dalle, wearing the turban of Jehoshabeath; loading ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... (like many of his functions) an apostate from grace to faction; and, with a political pamphlet in his hand, instead of a moral discourse, the pulpit is now become (as Hudibras expresses it) a drum ecclesiastic, and volunteers are beat up for in that place, where nothing should be thought of but ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... attitude toward mysticism, there is a word to say. In the long history of religious thought those who have revolted against metaphysical interpretation, orthodox or unorthodox, have usually taken refuge in mysticism. Hither the prophet Augustine takes refuge when he would flee the ecclesiastic Augustine, himself. The Brethren of the Free Spirit, Tauler, a Kempis, Suso, the author of the Theologia Germanica, Molinos, Madame Gayon, illustrate the thing we mean. Ritschl had seen much of mysticism in pietist circles. He knew the history ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... (December 15) that the colony is going to destruction because the royal decrees have not been observed, especially those restricting Chinese immigration, and calls for a rigorous investigation of the conduct of the colonial authorities—to be made preferably by an ecclesiastic. Bishop Benavides writes, at the same time, a brief letter to the king, similar in tenor to that of the provincial. With his commendation of Fray Diego de Guevara to the king go other credentials for that envoy. Letters relating the events of the Chinese insurrection are sent to Spain by the governor ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... he heard, it being a standing joke among such roisterers to put quiet tradesmen of his melancholy profession into a false and ridiculous position.' He did not convince, but only half puzzled the ecclesiastic, who muttering, 'credat Judaeus,' turned his back upon Mr. Tressels, with an angry whisk, without bidding ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... models; that he did not know, at all events, that a nude model would be required to model a Virgin from, and he had replied ambiguously, making no promise to do this group before he left Ireland. "If I can get a model here I will do it," he had said to himself. "If not, the ecclesiastic will have to wait ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... is Bonaparte, unadorned amidst all this studied splendour, and wearing only a little tricoloured cockade. Maria Cosway, the painter, who was also in Paris at the time, took them to call at the house of Madame Bonaparte mere, where they were received by 'a blooming, courteous ecclesiastic, powdered and with purple stockings and gold buckles, and a costly crucifix. This is Cardinal Fesch, the uncle of Bonaparte. It is said that when Fox was introduced to the First Consul he was warmly welcomed by him, and was made to listen to a grand harangue upon the ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... account) had robbed the robbers. The relics were placed in a church; and a number of laymen and clerics, of whom Hunus was one, undertook to keep watch over them. One night, however, all the watchers, save the wide-awake Hunus, went to sleep; and then, according to the story which this "sharp" ecclesiastic foisted ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... left us with the strongest assurances of their grateful remembrance of his uncommon treatment. A Jesuit, in particular, whom the Commodore had taken, and who was an ecclesiastic of some distinction, could not help expressing himself with great thankfulness for the civilities he and his countrymen had found on board, declaring that he should consider it as his duty to do Mr. Anson justice ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter

... ended with three of the neighbouring family of Chisholm of Cromlix. Bishop James Chisholm was eldest son of Edmund Chisholm, and was a good administrator. Bishop William Chisholm, his half-brother, was an ecclesiastic of the worst possible type for fornication, church robbery, and persecution of so-called heretics. Bishop William Chisholm, nephew of the robber-bishop, became, after the Reformation, a Carthusian monk at Lyons. He is supposed to have taken ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... chapels filling the air with pleasant sound of bells. King James had himself endowed, besides many existing foundations, a monastery for the Franciscans or Grey Friars, which has always continued to be one of the chief ecclesiastic centres of Edinburgh. It was so fine a building, as the story goes, that the humble-minded Minors declined at first to take possession of it as being too magnificent for an Order vowed to poverty; though as their ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... five years in Australia would advise every young priest coming to this country to have a copy of Father Phelan's admirable book in his luggage, and read it more than once. The young ecclesiastic coming hither who treats lightly the advice given him will find by-and-by that every line of the book is true; every priest who has lived a few years on the Australian mission will know already that it is ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... of games in Rome is the Lottery. This is under the direction of the government, which, with a truly ecclesiastic regard for its subjects, has organized it into a means of raising revenue. The financial objection to this method of taxation is, that its hardest pressure is upon the poorest classes; but the moral and political ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... tobacco, patchouli, sachet, and a hundred other tintings of the earthly symphony. The finely specialized olfactory sense of the young man told him that it was either a bishop or a beautiful woman who imparted to the air the subtle, penetrating aroma of iris. But it was neither ecclesiastic nor maid. At his side was a short, rather thick-set woman of vague age; she might have been twenty-five or forty. Her hair was cut in masculine fashion, her attire unattractive. As clearly as he could distinguish her features he saw that she was not good-looking. A stern mask it was, though not ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... even though ordinarily kept in the background. She had not heard Miss Belinda mention any masculine name so far, but that of the curate of St. James's; and, when she had seen him pass the house, she had not found his slim, black figure, and faint, ecclesiastic whiskers, especially interesting. ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... apperception mass is radically different, we say popularly that they live in different worlds. The logician expresses this by saying that they occupy different "universes of discourse"—that is, they cannot talk in the same terms. The ecclesiastic, the artist, the mystic, the scientist, the Philistine, the Bohemian, represent more or less different "universes of discourse." Even social workers occupy universes of discourse ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... Lausanne, referring to his correspondent's interest in Paoli, and asking advice concerning the treatment of the canon's gout. The physician never replied, and the epistle was found among his papers marked "unanswered and of little interest." The old ecclesiastic listened to his nephew's patriotic tirades, and even approved; Mme. de Buonaparte coldly disapproved. She would have preferred calmer, more efficient common sense. Not that her son was inactive in her behalf; on the contrary, he began a series of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... that Louis XI., who seems not to have had a special secretary, being one day desirous of getting something written, perceived an ecclesiastic who had an inkstand hanging at his side; and the latter having opened it at the king's request, a set of dice fell out. 'What kind of SUGAR-PLUMS are these?' asked his Majesty. 'Sire,' replied the priest, 'they are a remedy for the Plague.' ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... About thirty years ago a zealous young ecclesiastic, to whom these heathen practices were an abomination, determined to extirpate them by the roots. With several boats well equipped with crosses, banners, pictures of saints, and all the approved machinery for driving out the Devil, he undertook the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... at the priest in astonishment as if he belonged to some peculiar race of beings, the like of which he had never seen before at such close quarters. He told a few smutty stories allowable enough with a friend after dinner, but apparently somewhat out of place in the presence of an ecclesiastic. He did not say, "Monsieur l'Abbe," but merely "Monsieur"; and he embarrassed the priest with philosophical views as to the various superstitions that prevailed on the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... commanded him to eat without disgust—as is read in chapter x of the Acts of the Apostles. For although it signified the calling of heathendom, it must not be understood in moral things of the barbarous and mean nature of some peoples that compose that heathendom, in order to constitute the ecclesiastic hierarchy. [320] When I come to discuss this matter, I find no end, and I find that we can only say: Domine adauge [nobis] fidem (Luke ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... is a feeling—by much too general as it seems to me—that the subject may not be approached except through the dicta of certain ecclesiastic bodies, and that the language which touches it must not be that every-day language which mirrors the vitality of our thought, but should have some twist of that theologic mannerism, which is as cold to the boy as to the busy ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... Vatican, as distinguished from the Pope, was and is systematically hostile to the Allies. Its press organs, inspired by an astute and influential Italian ecclesiastic named Tedeschini, by Koeppenberg, a rabid German convert, and by the Calabrian Daffina, organized a formidable campaign against the King's Government and their supposed interventionist leanings. Its agents, including the priest Boncampagni and the German Catholics Erzberger, Koeppenberg, and others, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... Huron and North State streets. Directly opposite was St. James' Church, and at one time the house had served as the rectory. For the matter of that, it had been built for just that purpose. Its style of architecture was distantly ecclesiastic, with a suggestion of Gothic to some of the doors and windows. The material used was solid, massive, the walls thick, the foundation heavy. It did not occupy the entire lot, the original builder seeming to have preferred garden space ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... in England a French ecclesiastic, called the Abbe Gaultier,[3] who had resided several years in London, under the protection of some foreign ministers, in whose families he used, upon occasion, to exercise his function of a priest. After the battle of Blenheim, this gentleman went down to Nottingham, where several ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... to—namely, blood relations. But there is no law against total strangers meeting at the altar for the first time, and the marriage by proxy of people who have never seen each other has had the frequent blessing of ecclesiastic pomp. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... the eighteenth century any attempt to deal with the life of Jesus upon purely historical methods would have been not only contemned as irrational, but stigmatized as impious. And even in the eighteenth century, those writers who had become wholly emancipated from ecclesiastic tradition were so destitute of all historic sympathy and so unskilled in scientific methods of criticism, that they utterly failed to comprehend the requirements of the problem. Their aims were in the main polemic, not historical. They thought more of overthrowing ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... class of nobility, and very often upon those of the first. He was a judge, with royal and pontifical privileges, exempt from the authority of the bishop in ecclesiastical, and from the royal tribunals in secular, matters. His morals were sifted with the strictest scrutiny; and yet this dignified ecclesiastic is the person whom Le Sage represents as lying in the streets stupefied with intoxication, and this not from accident, but from habitual indulgence in a vice which, throughout Spain, is considered infamous, and which none but those who are below the influence of public opinion, and even those but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... Danish king, Sweyn, received the submission of the western thegns. At Glastonbury were buried three of the Saxon kings, Edmund (son of Edward the Elder), Edgar, and Edmund Ironside. Here too was born Dunstan, who was so prominent an ecclesiastic in the reigns of the first Edmund and five of his successors. He was made abbot of the abbey by Edmund, and, after becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, was buried at Glastonbury (988). Two other Somerset men who filled the see of Canterbury during the Saxon period were ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... example of this relation, sustained with great fullness and warmth, was given by Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica in the sixth century. In the ecclesiastic legends connected with. The canonization of this brother and sister, it is narrated that they were accustomed to meet at a place intermediate between their retreats on Mount Cassino and at Plombariola, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... said to have had a natural son, Dugal, who became a priest and was Superior of the Priory of Beauly, which he repaired about 1478, and in which he is buried. This ecclesiastic is said by others to have been Alexander's brother. [Anderson's 'History of the Frasers,' p.66; and MS. ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... manner. They are all under royal patronage, and are provided in accordance with the king's orders. The archbishop's office and jurisdiction consists of and extends to all, both the spiritual and temporal, that is ecclesiastic, and ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... God, on whom all the people believed. At length the saint, being moved with the entreaties of the man thus ashamed of himself, asked to whose form he would desire to be likened. Then he, regarding the people placed around him, preferred the form of Roichus, an ecclesiastic, the keeper of Saint Patrick's books; and this man was by birth a Briton, by degree a deacon, a kinsman of the holy prelate, and beautiful in his form above all men in those countries dwelling. Nevertheless was he a man of most holy life, so that he might say with the Psalmist, ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... the fashion to breakfast two days running?" he asked. "And yesterday was Thursday." He finished his reply by tracing with his mahl-stick the ecclesiastic ordinance: ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... he utterly refused to adopt her scheme, would not master any but the barest rudiments of learning, and spent his time in wrestling, boxing, fighting and all manly exercises. Despairing of making him an ecclesiastic, his mother set herself to inspire him with a noble ideal of knighthood, but his wildness and recklessness increased with his years, and often his mother had to stand between the riotous lad ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... church, it is also, in less degree, a challenge to the state. The woman who takes a fearless stand for the incoming sex ideals must expect to be assailed by reactionaries of every kind. Imperialists and exploiters will fight hardest in the open, but the ecclesiastic will fight longest in the dark. He understands the situation best of all; he best knows what reaction he has to fear from the morals of women who have attained liberty. For, be it repeated, the church has always known and feared the spiritual ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... Canterbury Ply, to take the Creator to witness that the Archbishop, detained in town by business or pleasure, will never violate that foundation of piety over which he presides—all this seems to me an act of the most extraordinary indolence ever recorded in history. If an Ecclesiastic, not a Bishop, may express any opinion on the reforms of the Church, I recommend that Archbishops and Bishops should take no more oaths by proxy; but, as they do not wait upon the Sovereign or the Prime Minister, or even any of the Cabinet, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... was the stronghold of the Moors in this part of the Peninsula. The morning after my arrival I was about to ascend the mountain to examine it, when I observed a person, advanced in years, whom, by his dress, I judged to be an ecclesiastic; upon enquiry I found in effect that he was one of the three priests of the place. I instantly accosted him, and had no reason to repent for so doing, for I found him affable and communicative. After praising the beauty of the scenery, I made some enquiry as to the state of ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... was completing, an ecclesiastic went round to collect money of the visitors. But as there were few, so were the offerings. The convicts at the same time produced the fruits of their ingenuity in straw work-boxes, needle-cases, carved ivory and wood. The guardians, to do ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various

... it does not! I allow that it is the face of a refined, thorough-bred ecclesiastic. He was the son ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... incidents might deepen the force of his mental inequalities, they could not have created them, and that the difference between the Bishop of Autun and the ancient noble, had he succeeded to his inheritance, would have amounted to little more than the difference between a proscribed ecclesiastic and a proscribed aristocrat. No doubt, if the generous affections expand and blossom under genial culture, they as certainly contract and wither under neglect and harshness; nor should we, in ordinary cases, have any hesitation ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... a sacred one and connected with the highest priesthoods, or rather being itself the outcome and acme of all priesthoods, and divinest conquests of intellect here below. As will appear one day, when men take off their old monastic and ecclesiastic spectacles, and look with eyes again! In essence the Physician's task is always heroic, eminently human: but in practice most unluckily at present we find it too become in good part beaverish; yielding a money-result alone. And what of it is not ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... suite Monsignor Pamphilio, who afterwards became Innocent X. The Cardinal paid a visit to Du Monstier in his studio, where Monsignor Pamphilio spied, on a table, "L'Histoire du Concile de Trent"—the good edition, the London one. "What a pity," thought the young ecclesiastic, "that such a man should be, by some accident, the possessor of so valuable a book." With these sentiments Monsignor Pamphilio slipped the work under his soutane. But little Du Monstier observed him, and said furiously to ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... The ecclesiastic slowly descended the avenue, along which lean elm trees were placed as landmarks, and Bouvard, when he no longer saw the priest's three-cornered head-piece, expressed his relief; for he hated Jesuits. Pecuchet, without ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... let me receive thy shrift at the convent of Saint Bridget," continued the ecclesiastic. "There also I will hear thy secret. But tell me," he added, looking round the room with some surprise—"how comest thou here ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... offered to him by his uncle, the constable; and, rich with the revenues of bishoprics and abbeys, he subsequently renounced all his rights as eldest son to his brother Gaspard. Froude is, however, in good company. Even the usually accurate Tytler-Fraser says of Cardinal Chatillon: "This high-born ecclesiastic was in most things the reverse of his elder brother D'Andelot." England under Edward ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... the lovely Lady Theodora became insane in the convent, and how Sir Ludwig determined, upon the demise of the old hermit (consequent upon the shock of hearing the news), to retire to the vacant hermitage, and assume the robe, the beard, the mortifications of the late venerable and solitary ecclesiastic. Otto was NOT drowned, and all those personages of our history ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... resort, except in extreme cases, to any very penal procedure, that wherever it existed Toleration would be unnecessary, inasmuch as there would be preciously little error to tolerate. Personally, I believe, Henderson was as moderate and tolerant a man as any British ecclesiastic of his time. In no Church where he bore rule could there, by possibility, have been any approach to the tetchy repressiveness, or the callous indifference to suffering for the sake of conscience, that characterized the English Church-rule of Laud. But Henderson, though ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... and treacherous designs is, somehow or other, that he comes to his death; and Middleton and Alice are left to administer on the remains of the story; perhaps, the Mayor being his friend, he may be brought into play here. The foreign ecclesiastic shall likewise come forward, and he shall prove to be a man of subtile policy perhaps, yet a man of religion and honor; with a Jesuit's principles, but a Jesuit's devotion and self-sacrifice. The old Hospitaller must die in his bed, or some other ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... its just weight to this reflection, viz. that there cannot be done a greater mischief to prince and people, than the propagating wrong notions concerning government; that so at last all times might not have reason to complain of the Drum Ecclesiastic. If any one, concerned really for truth, undertake the confutation of my Hypothesis, I promise him either to recant my mistake, upon fair conviction; or to answer his difficulties. But he must remember two things. First, That cavilling here and ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke

... asked Mr. Smirke to be of the party. That ecclesiastic had been bred up by a fond parent at Clapham, who had an objection to dramatic entertainments, and he had never yet seen a play. But, Shakspeare!—but to go with Mrs. Pendennis in her carriage, and sit a whole night by her side!—he could not resist the idea of so much pleasure, and made a ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... earlier," said the ecclesiastic coolly. "Young men require a lesson now and then." He shut the wicket and retired deliberately into ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the lagoon, I should say, is her continual contrast between the ever-recurrent idyllicism of open meadows or wilding clusters of simple rustic thickets, and the enormous antiquity of these two hoary ecclesiastic fanes. History is in the air, and you feel that the very daisies you crush underfoot, the very copses from which you pluck a scented spray, have their delicate rustic ancestries, dating back to Attila, who ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... cosmopolitan spirit of Christianity, yet we venture to assert that it was vastly preferable in its effects to some abortions of our common creed. That there was a conflict between the two religions we know. As late as the sixteenth century a Christian ecclesiastic complains that the leaders of Gaelic thought of the period were heathen enough to delight in "stories about the Tuath de Dhanond and about the sons of Milesius, and about the heroes and Fionn (Fingal), the son of Cumhail with his ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various

... ecclesiastic who rose to much note as a missionary, and who made his celebrated journey through the Chaco in 1588-89 from Peru to Paraguay, was a Franciscan.* Thus, the Franciscans had the honour of having the first American saint in their ranks. It is noteworthy, though, that he was ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... and character of the accused, and it was essential that the result of this inquiry be added to the proces verbal and form a part of it. You remember that that was the first thing they did before the trial at Poitiers. They did it again now. An ecclesiastic was sent to Domremy. There and all about the neighborhood he made an exhaustive search into Joan's history and character, and came back with his verdict. It was very clear. The searcher reported that he found Joan's character to be in every way what he "would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and who knew nobody. To him ladies were only bright phantoms such as his books had taught him to regard like the temptations of St. Anthony, but whom he actually saw treated with as free admiration by the ecclesiastic as by ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... said, "Who shall know how many cultured pagans were led by the books of Josephus to read the Bible and to look on Judaism with other eyes?"[1] If the apologies of Philo and Josephus could not pierce the armor of prejudice and hatred which enwrapped a Tacitus or a Christian ecclesiastic, they at least found their way through the lighter coating of ignorance and misunderstanding which had been fabricated by Hellenistic Egyptians, but which had not fatally warped the minds ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... full of bones, but without any inscription, has also been found, longer than those of the founder's, having a semicircular top, and six large rings of 3-1/4 inches diameter attached to the outsides. At a little distance from the two small chests, there was also found the remains of an ecclesiastic, buried without any coffin, but lying upon a bed of coarse gravel within a hollow space formed by large flat stones. His hands were in a position indicating that they had been joined together in the attitude of prayer over his breast, as usual. Not only his bones, but much of his thick woollen gown, ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... buildings are located; the cathedral, after the Romano-Byzantine style of architecture; the Palacio, built after Spanish notions of magnificence, around a courtyard shaded by rare trees; and many other edifices, used for official and ecclesiastic purposes. The streets are paved with cobblestone and laid out regularly in squares, in accordance with the plan of De Legaspi, so that one side or the other will be always in the shade. Beautiful plazas, with their palms and statues, frequently relieve the glare of the white walls. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... ecclesiastical judge to do penance, no doubt, nowhere save in the prisons of the Church. The ecclesiastic in pace, however severe it might be, would at the least withdraw her from the hands of the English, place her under shelter from their insults, save her honor. Judge of her surprise and despair when the Bishop coldly said, "Take her back ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the way of it. It is felt that we show better taste in leaving the essentials of the soul's development to chance, even that such development is not wholly desirable or manly: that the atrophy of one aspect of "man's made-trinity" is best. I have heard one eminent ecclesiastic maintain that regular and punctual attendance at morning service in a mood of non-comprehending loyalty was the best sort of spiritual experience for the average Englishman. Is not that a statement which should make the Christian teachers who are responsible for the average Englishman, ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... who would deserve the execration of succeeding centuries. In Roderigo Borgia the people only saw, as yet, a man accomplished at all points, of handsome person, royal carriage, majestic presence, affable address. He was a brilliant orator, a passionate lover, a demigod of court pageantry and ecclesiastic parade—qualities which, though they do not suit our notions of a churchman, imposed upon the taste of the Renaissance. As he rode in triumph toward the Lateran, voices were loud in his praise. 'He sits ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... instances of Perez, the admiral departed from the monastery of Rabida, accompanied by that ecclesiastic, and went to the camp of St Faith, where their Catholic majesties were then carrying on the siege of Granada. Perez here made such pressing instances to Isabella, that she was pleased to order a renewal of the conferences, which were still ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... in fair argument to step out of the limits you have prescribed yourself. To dispute with you is a pleasure equal almost to that of agreeing with another person. You have candour enough to allow it possible that an atheist may be a moral man. Where is that other ecclesiastic who will allow the same? Your answerers ought also to hold themselves precluded from using ridicule in handling this subject. I am no great supporter of Lord Shaftesbury's doctrine that ridicule is the test of truth. I own truth can never be ridiculous, that is, ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner

... arts of carpentry, of working in iron, and in the precious metals, are however to be excepted, in which they have made considerable progress, in consequence of the information and example of some German artists, who were introduced into Chili by that worthy ecclesiastic Father Carlos, a native of Hainhausen in Bavaria. The important changes which the beneficence of an enlightened administration in Spain have lately introduced into the American colonies, by directing the attention of the subjects to useful improvements, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... Pandours, or Illyrians. When he ascended the papal chair, he assumed the name of Clement XIII. in gratitude to the last of that name, who was his benefactor. Though of a disagreeable person, and even deformed in his body, he enjoyed good health, and a vigorous constitution. As an ecclesiastic, his life was exemplary; his morals were pure and unimpeached; in his character he is said to have been learned, diligent, steady, devout; and, in every respect, worthy to succeed such a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... which created an enormous and free Hungary, but only free for the Magyars—a State founded on a mixture of democratic and feudal principles, reserving always the chief places for the magnates, lay and ecclesiastic, while rejecting the idea of universal suffrage—then the Serbs of southern Hungary assembled at Karlovci at the beginning of May and conferred upon Archbishop Rajacsich the title of Patriarch, at the same time electing Colonel Stephen [vC]uplikac the voivoda or chief of the Serbian Voivodina, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... their correspondence. Let us take, for example, two batches of letters very lately published, and written by two men who have left their mark upon their generation. Of Dean Stanley it may be affirmed that no ecclesiastic of his time was better known, or had a higher reputation for strength of character and undaunted Liberalism. His public life and his place in the Anglican Church had been already described in a meritorious biography; and it might have been expected that ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... Corypheus of the art. Among his successful portraits is that of a CAT; but all yield to what are known as the GREAT BEARDS, being the portraits of WILLIAM DE RYCK, an ophthalmist at Amsterdam, and of GELLIUS DE BOUMA, the Zutphen ecclesiastic. The latter is especially famous. In harmony with the beard is the heavy face, seventy-seven years old, showing the fulness of long-continued potation, and hands like the face, original and powerful, if ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner

... him by chance. [He rings.] You are a mother to me. [To Dubois.] You will find an ecclesiastic in Madame's carriage. Tell him I'm much obliged for his kind alacrity, but I think I won't die ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... it is an exceedingly unpretentious and an exceedingly sleepy place; but in the seventeenth century it was in vastly better estate. Then its markets, its shops, its inns, lacked not business. Its churches were thronged with worshipers. Through its narrow streets proud noble and prouder ecclesiastic, thrifty merchant and active artisan, passed and repassed in an unceasing stream. It was rich in points of interest, preeminent among which were its castle and its convent. In the castle the stout-hearted ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... heard her touch the keys of the piano at the other end of the drawing-room. And so, still smiling and with her last words sounding in his ears, he walked slowly up the stairs and knocked at the door of the bishop's study. The bishop's room was not ecclesiastic in its character. It looked much like the room of any man of any calling who cared for his books and to have pictures about him, and copies of the beautiful things he had seen on his travels. There were pictures of the Virgin and the Child, but they were those ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... the laity and clergy of the Russian Church. . . . The moujiks are convinced that Lenin is Anti-Christ;" and an urgent appeal for Russian Testaments and Bibles to be sent from England, the writer having been told by a prominent ecclesiastic that "Russian Bibles ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... identical with those which were forced, in my own country, two years ago, upon a most courageous and gifted member of the American Catholic hierarchy, the Archbishop of New York, by the open adhesion of an eminent Irish American ecclesiastic, the Rev. Dr. M'Glynn, to the social revolution of which Mr. Henry George is the best-equipped and most indefatigable apostle. Entertaining this conviction (which events have since shown to have been well-founded), I was anxious to survey on the spot ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... enlightened prelate had been imprisoned by the savage and fanatical Paul IV., on a charge of favouring opinions analogous to Protestantism, but Pius IV., the easy-going Milanese jurisconsult, turned ecclesiastic, enlarged him by one of the first acts of his Papacy, and restored him to the charge of the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters



Words linked to "Ecclesiastic" :   reverend, Thomas a Kempis, man of the cloth, churchman, a Kempis, Bruno, church, divine



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