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Pontiff   Listen
noun
Pontiff  n.  A high priest. Especially:
(a)
One of the sacred college, in ancient Rome, which had the supreme jurisdiction over all matters of religion, at the head of which was the Pontifex Maximus.
(b)
(Jewish Antiq.) The chief priest.
(c)
(R. C. Ch.) The pope.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pontiff" Quotes from Famous Books



... The celebration of the new religion had been fixed for the 20th Prairial throughout France. On the 16th, Robespierre was unanimously appointed president of the convention, in order that he might officiate as the pontiff at the festival. At that ceremony he appeared at the head of the assembly, his face beaming with joy and confidence, an unusual expression with him. He advanced alone, fifteen feet in advance of his colleagues, attired in a magnificent dress, holding flowers and ears of corn in ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... which the pontiff did address to Elizabeth is given in Fuller, ix. 68., and Dodd, ii. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various

... knight in the field of fight, * Whose sabre and spear every foe affright! Jamrkan am I, to my foes a fear, * With a lance lunge known unto every knight: Gharib is my lord, nay my pontiff, my prince, * Where the two hosts dash very lion of might: An Imam of the Faith, pious, striking awe * On the plain where his foes like the fawn take flight; Whose voice bids folk to the faith of the Friend, * False, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... sway. Nor was he one to content himself with passive enmity. He must be up and doing, seeking the destruction of the thing he hated. And so it befell that upon the death of Pope Clement (the second Medici Pontiff), profiting by the weak condition from which the papal army had not yet recovered since the Emperor's invasion and the sack of Rome, my father raised an army and attempted to shatter the ancient yoke which Julius II had imposed upon Parma and Piacenza when he took ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... 1904, the new supreme pontiff presided at that session of the cardinals over which his illustrious predecessor had intended to preside. Two cases in particular were presented for examination. One was a question of the sudden cure of the youthful Adelaide Joly, and the other, that of little Leo Roussat. The latter, ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous

... acting in the place of another. The pope's claim was that God had ceased to reign and had delegated all power unto himself—the power to forgive sins and to grant indulgences. An indulgence is an act of the Roman pontiff, wherein men by making certain vows and paying certain sums of money receive pardon of their sins. By the payment of certain amounts they can commit most any crime and their purchased indulgence absolves them ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... in the autumn of 1508, when Raphael was in his twenty-fifth year, that he was called to Rome in the service of the Pope. The Pontiff at this time was Pope Julius II, whose successor was Leo X, and under their pontificates (from 1508 to 1520) Raphael produced these masterpieces which stand unrivalled in the world save by the creations of Michael Angelo in the Capella Sistina. The ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... Dietrich was damned for his Arianism, and that all his virtues went for nothing because he had not charity, which exists, he says, alone within the pale of the Church), cannot help the naive comment, that if the Pontiff did really write that letter, he cannot wonder at Dietrich's being a little angry. Kings now, it is true, can afford to smile at such outbursts; they could not afford to do so in Dietrich's days. Such words meant murder, pillage, civil ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... And all things in God's bounty did rejoice, She who, her Mother by, spake seldom word, Did her charm'd silence doff, And, to my happy marvel, her dear voice Went as a clock does, when the pendulum's off. Ill Monarch of man's heart the Maiden who Does not aspire to be High-Pontiff too! So she repeated soft her Poet's line, 'By grace divine, Not otherwise, O Nature, are we thine!' And I, up the bright steep she led me, trod, And the like thought pursued With, 'What is gladness without gratitude, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... William. We know not what emboldened William to risk so daring a step at this particular time, or what led Baldwin to consent to it. If it was suggested by the imprisonment of Pope Leo by William's countrymen in Italy, in the hope that a consent to the marriage would be wrung out of the captive pontiff, that hope was disappointed. The marriage raised much opposition in Normandy. It was denounced by Archbishop Malger of Rouen, the brother of the dispossessed Count of Arques. His character certainly added no weight to his censures; but the same act in a saint would ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... O Catiline! ought the consul to have doomed thy life a forfeit to thy country; and to have directed upon thy own head the mischief thou hast long been meditating for ours. Could the noble Scipio, when sovereign pontiff, as a private Roman kill Tiberius Gracchus for a slight encroachment upon the rights of this country; and shall we, her consuls, with persevering patience endure Catiline, whose ambition is to desolate a devoted world with fire ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... future," replied Sor Teresa, humbly; for the first duty of a nun is obedience, and there is no nunnery that is not under the immediate and unquestioned control of some man, be he a priest or in some privileged cases, the Pontiff himself. ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... youth the Abbe de Montigny, was, on the recommendation of the Jesuits, appointed apostolic vicar by Pope Alexander VII, who conferred upon him the title of Bishop of Petraea in partibus. The Church in Canada was then directly connected with the Holy See, and the sovereign pontiff abandoned to the king of France the right of appointment and presentation of bishops having ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath

... vanished from the pair. Then, after an interval of time, men perceived the cloudy mass once more assume a mortal shape, and a huge towering priest with flowing robes and tiara on head was left in solitary and victorious possession of the sky. The Churchman had swallowed up the soldier; the Pontiff had vanquished the King; it was a true premonition of the fatal field of Benevento, which saw the ultimate triumph of the Papal over the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... and inalienable right to live, as long as nature's laws operate in its favor. Being innocent it cannot forfeit that right. God is no exceptor of persons; a soul is a soul, whether it be the soul of a pontiff, a king or a sage, or the soul of the unborn babe of the last woman of the people. In every case, the right to live is exactly ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... within the Four-and-Twenty Hours, and sometimes sooner. The Funerals of Persons of Quality are performed with great Pomp and Solemnity; and the deceased are carried to the Place of Interment with their Faces bare. Whilst I was in Venice, their Patriarch (who is a kind of Independent Pontiff in his own way; for, as I have said, they reckon but little of his Holiness here) died, and was buried with this Ceremony. He was carried in one of his own Coaches, by night, to St. Mark's Church, which was all hung with Black for the occasion; ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... Rome. The relics which were venerated in the Constantinian basilica, were the bones of someone who died in the third century; they were not relics of the Prince of the Apostles. Constantine unfortunately sanctioned this fraud, by conferring upon the Roman pontiff an immense domain, together with the prestige that accompanies temporal authority.[1] How could anyone recognize under the insignia, the purple mantle, and the crown of the successors of St. Sylvester, a disciple of Jesus Christ? Christ had no place where ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... of bodily presence has never been fatal to the pretensions of the pontiff. Robespierre was only a couple of inches above five feet in height, but the Grand Monarch himself was hardly more. His eyes were small and weak, and he usually wore spectacles; his face was pitted by the marks of small-pox; his complexion was dull ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... to strangle the Pope at the altar. This Pope was Benedict IX, a youth of less than twenty, whose conduct is said to have been anything but exemplary. The assassins, terrified at the darkening of the Sun, dared not touch the Pontiff, ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... similar ducats. Moreover we reserve, grant, and assign forever to the king the right of patronage over the church of Manila; and should any vacancy occur therein (this the first occasion only excepted), to present, within one year, to the Roman Pontiff for the time being, persons fit for that office as bishop and pastor of the same church of Manila. We also grant the same right of presentation for dignities, canonries, prebends, and other benefices, from their first erection, ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson

... family. But the remaining inhabitants of the place, terrified by the intrusion of these spectres, chose rather to withdraw to the other extremity of the house, and abandon their warm seats, than to endure the neighbourhood of the phantoms. Complaints were at length made to a pontiff of the god Thor, named Snorro, who exercised considerable influence in the island. By his counsel, the young proprietor of the haunted mansion assembled a jury, or inquest, of his neighbours, constituted ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... forward the reformation effected by his predecessor, reviving that cause when it began to languish under the violence of Antichrist. "While the Roman pontiff," says Mosheim, "slumbered in security at the head of the church, and saw nothing throughout the vast extent of his domain but tranquillity and submission, and while the worthy and pious professors of genuine Christianity almost despaired of seeing ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... his death, Bernard had the gratification of seeing one of his own disciples raised to the papal chair, as Pope Eugenius III. The new pontiff recognized his master's authority no less than before his accession, and Bernard's counsel and influence were repeatedly used in his behalf. But the over-activity of the good abbot too soon decayed the slender strength ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... aside all these protests and questions, postponing the arraignment of his heart before the tribunal of slighted and indignant reason, and allowed the newly mitred pontiff to lead him whither ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... were brightned with artificial Meteors, and Stars of our own making; and all the High-street lighted up from one End to another, with a Galaxy of Candles. We collected a Largess for the Multitude, who tippled Eleemosynary till they grew exceeding Vociferous. There was a Paste-board Pontiff with a little swarthy Daemon at his Elbow, who, by his diabolical Whispers and Insinuations tempted his Holiness into the Fire, and then left him to shift for himself. The Mobile were very sarcastick with their Clubs, and gave the old Gentleman ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... high priest in the time of Alexander, and by his dignity and tact won over the conqueror of Asia. Onias succeeded Jaddua, and ruled for twenty-one years, and he was succeeded by Simon the Just, a pontiff on whose administration Jewish tradition dwells with delight. Simon was succeeded by his uncles, Eleazar and Manasseh, and they by Onias II., son of Simon, through whose misconduct, or indolence, in omitting the customary tribute to the Egyptian ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... illustration of this is possible than to recall the fact that, when the builders of the fifteenth century undertook to complete that astoundingly impressive choir at Beauvais, they sought to rival in size and magnificence its namesake at Rome, which, under the care of the Pontiff himself, was then being projected. Thus it was that this thoroughly Gothic structure of the north was to stand forth as the indicator of local influences, as contrasted with the Italian design and plans of the St. Peter's of ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... order, are rightly subject to the civil authority, since Jesus Christ has commanded that what is Caesar's is to be paid to Caesar, and what is God's to God. Sometimes, however, circumstances arise when another method of concord is available for peace and liberty; we mean when princes and the Roman Pontiff come to an understanding concerning any particular matter. In such circumstances the Church gives singular proof of her maternal good-will, and is accustomed to exhibit the highest possible ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... wedding-day,—even had not the precontract of marriage between the groom's father and the bride's mother rendered a consummation of the childish oath an obvious and a most heinous enormity,—why, that, in a sentence, and for all his coy verbosity, the new pontiff ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... heretics, and, thinking themselves brother and sister, insist upon being married, and upon being executed for their religion. The son stabs his father, who is half a Guebre, too. The high-priest rants and roars. The Emperor arrives, blames the pontiff for being a persecutor, and forgives the son for assassinating his father (who does not die) because—I don't know why, but that he may marry his cousin. The grave-diggers in Hamlet have no chance, when such a piece as the Guebres is written agreeably to all rules ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... of Afric bane, And hale the nurslings of thy flock remain Through the sick apple-tide. Fit victims grow 'Twixt holm and oak upon the Algid snow, Or Alban grass, that with their necks must stain The Pontiff's axe: to thee can scarce avail Thy modest gods with much slain to assail, Whom myrtle crowns and rosemary can please. Lay on the altar a hand pure of fault; More than rich gifts the Powers it shall appease, Though pious but with meal and ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... once supposed to belong by right to men of saintly lives; it is probable that this barefaced profligacy of the papal court was responsible for the widespread moral inertia which was characteristic of the time. The pontiff's chair at the dawn of this century was filled by Roderigo Borgia, known as Alexander VI., and it may well be said that his career of crime and lust gave the keynote to the society which was to follow him. By means of most open bribery he had been elected to his office, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... madly raging to destroy and to pull down; thinking only of the great interests of order and civilisation, of which it had been constituted the eternal protector, and showing its divine origin and inspiration alike by its unfailing wisdom and its unfailing benevolence. It is the Sovereign Pontiff who thus stands forth throughout the history of Europe, as the great Demiurgus of universal civilisation. If the Pope had filled only such a position as the Patriarch held at Constantinople, or if there had been no Pope, and Christianity had depended exclusively ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... favourite one. Bellini, in the same church, draws it between SS. Sebastian and Job, and Alvise Vivarini, in his last painting, balances a very youthful Sebastian with St. Jerome. This is the most grandiose, the least of a genre picture of all Carpaccio's creations, although he does make Simeon into a pontiff with attendant cardinals bearing his train. One of his last works is the S. Vitale over the high altar of the church of that name, where we forgive the wooden appearance of the horse which the saint rides for the sake of the simple dignity of the rider and the airy effect given by the balcony overhead. ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... orders in the Philippines and other colonies were wont, as still is their custom, to have head administrative quarters at Rome and Madrid, for the expedition of business with the pontiff or the king. The officer, always an expert in the management of affairs, was entitled the "procurador general," and his business was chiefly to attend to law problems in relation to the colonial missions, to guard against adverse legislation, and to promote favorable measures. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... Voltaire. Smith told Rogers he had been in Voltaire's company on five or six different occasions, and he no doubt enjoyed, as most English visitors enjoyed, hospitable entertainment at Ferney, the beautiful little temporality of the great literary pontiff, overlooking the lake. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... Lord Kelvin forbidding them to ask more than twenty million years for their experiments. No doubt the geologists had always submitted sadly to this last and utmost violence inflicted on them by the Pontiff of Physical Religion in the effort to force unification of the universe; they had protested with mild conviction that they could not state the geological record in terms of time; they had murmured Ignoramus under their breath; but they had never dared to assert the Ignorabimus ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... own position. The news of the disappearance of Claude Cazeau had materially added to his difficulties—and now he had been commanded, with a certain peremptoriness in the summons, to wait upon the Sovereign Pontiff in a private audience, bringing with him the boy who could, or would give no further account of himself than that of a world's waif and stray. Prepared for this visit and arrayed in all the splendour befitting his rank in the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... when? Such the burden of my inquiry. As yet, my Lord, no answer has been given. I am merely bid keep watch on the schism of the Church. In some way the end we hope has connection with that rancor, if, indeed, it be not the grand result. With clear discernment of the tendencies, the Roman Pontiff is striving to lay the quarrel; but he speaks to a rising tide. We cannot hasten the event; neither can he delay it. Our role is patience—patience. At last Europe will fall away, and leave the Greek to care of himself; ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... extinguished, and the genial influence of Cassiodorus, Senator by name and Consul by office, was successfully exerted to induce nobles, clergy, and people to unite in electing a new Pope. After eight days Hormisdas the Campanian sat in the Chair of St. Peter, an undoubted Pontiff. ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... of the Christian religion, it has become, and is daily becoming, more and more odious; that Washington and Jefferson, themselves slaveholders, living and dying, bore testimony against it; that it was the dying REMORSE of John Randolph; that it is renounced and abjured by the supreme pontiff of the Roman Church, abolished with execration by the Mahometan despot of Tunis, shaken to its foundations by the imperial autocrat of all the Russias and the absolute monarch of Austria;—all, all bearing reluctant and extorted testimony to the self-evident truth ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... wedlock worthily his daughter fair. And lo! another Hugh! O noble line! O! sire succeeded by an equal heir! He, thwarting with just cause their ill design, Shall thrash the Romans' pride who overbear; Shall from their hands the sovereign pontiff take, With the third ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... notwithstanding his desire of revisiting that country, the cause of which he pleaded, did not venture to approach it. But the invasion of the King of Naples having rendered his services necessary to the Sovereign Pontiff, the gratitude he owed to the Holy Father triumphed over his apprehensions. He departed under the title of secretary to the Pope's nuncio, and crossed the Alps without any obstacle. Arrived in the French territory, he wrote to Napoleon, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... Thou mighty Pontiff of the Sun, Robe him in the regal dress. Raise up the others from their knees, And free them ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham

... hierarchical organization for social power and control, which inherited part of the intense integration of the Roman empire. Fra Paolo Sarpi said of it, in the seventeenth century: "The interests of Rome demand that there shall be no change by which the power of the pontiff would be diminished, or by which the curia would lose any of the profits which it wins from the states, but the novelties by which the profits of the curia would be increased, or by which the authority of ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... da Uzzano, the head of the noble faction in the city, whose coloured bust by Donatello is in the Bargello. The tomb is exceedingly fine, the work of Donatello and his partner Michelozzo, who were engaged to make it by Giovanni de' Medici, the ex-pontiff's friend, and the father of the great Cosimo. The design is all Donatello's, and his the recumbent cleric, lying very naturally, hardly as if dead at all, a little on one side, so that his face is seen nearly full; the three figures beneath are Michelozzo's; but Donatello ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... and even secretaries of the Pope, and therefore obtained much [246] secular favour. Some, however, finding themselves opposed by the Court of Rome, were restrained by obvious reasons, and went away in confusion; for the Supreme Pontiff, with a scowling look, said to them, 'What means this, my brethren? To what lengths are you going? Have you not professed voluntary poverty, and that you would traverse towns and castles and distant places, as the case required, barefooted and unostentatiously, in order to preach ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... Constantine, Julian the Apostate, renounced Christianity, endeavored to restore the Pagan service in Constantinople, and "declared himself the implacable enemy of Christ." He assumed the character of Supreme Pontiff, and thus placed himself at the head of the Pagan worship. He labored incessantly to restore and propagate those dragonic rites, and even thought to disprove the predictions of Christ by rebuilding the temple of Jerusalem. "He affected to pity the unhappy Christians, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... attacked by a strange fever which drives everyone to the Vatican or to Monte Cavallo, according as the scarlet-robed assembly is held in one or the other of these two palaces: it is, in fact, because the raising up of a new pontiff is a great event far everybody; for, according to the average established in the period between St. Peter and Gregory XVI, every pope lasts about eight years, and these eight years, according to the character of the man who is elected, are a period either ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... other property, possession or use continued for one year gave the right of ownership to the husband. This marriage without contract or ceremony was called usus.[293] The form confarreatio, or patrician marriage, was a solemn union performed by the high Pontiff of Jupiter in the presence of ten witnesses, in which the essential act was the eating together by both the bride and bridegroom of a cake made of flour, water and salt.[294] The religious ceremony was in no way essential to the marriage. The second and most common ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... altars look for some repose: What cannot terror do in mortal mind? An instinct forced me to the Jewish temple, And I conceived the thought to appease their God: Some offerings, I believed, would calm His rage, And make that God, whate'er He be, more gentle. Pontiff of Baal excuse my feebleness! I entered; but the sacrifices ceased, The people fled; the high-priest furiously Rushed towards me; whilst he spake, O terrible surprise! I saw that selfsame child, my menacer, Such as my frightful dream had fashioned ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley

... come out of my hands in the position he ought {105} to hold, the Supreme Pontiff of cyclometers, the vicegerent of St. Vitus upon earth, the Mamamouchi of burlesque on inference. I begin with a review of him which appeared in the Athenaeum of May 11, 1861. Mr. Smith says I wrote ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... would have preferred Catholicism. He was, in fact, at a period of life when he wished to dedicate his time in quiet to metaphysical studies. He had matured his philosophy and brought it to a point at which he thought it could be presented as a peace-offering to the Supreme Pontiff. Conformity to ecclesiastical observances seemed no longer irksome to the world-experienced, wide-reaching mind of the man. Nor does he appear to have anticipated that his formal submission would not be readily accepted. He reckoned strangely, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... of Foundress of the house at Paris, on the express understanding that it should in due time be formed into a monastery. In this object she finally succeeded to her entire satisfaction. The reigning Pontiff, Paul V., approved the design, and on the 16th of June, 1612, issued a Bull converting the Congregation into a Monastery, under the patronage of St. Ursula and the rule of St. Augustine. His Holiness, moreover, ordained that for the greater stability of the order, the religious ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... boss. Why is he king? If we have a democracy how is it that everybody in office or in hope of office obeys the pontiff? It is the genius of the people for government. The boss is at a summer resort near ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... in Yucatan, Nicte (flower) the sister of Chaacmol, assisted her elder brother, Cay, the pontiff, in the sanctuary, her name being always associated with his in the inscriptions which adorn the western facade of that edifice at Uxmal, as that of her sister, Mo,[TN-24] is with Chaacmol's in some of the ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... nor will be so cut off in any manner, they may not appear to be so cut off in the estimation of men; [desiring further] to check and hold back our people whom God has given to us, lest, in the event of such injury, they refuse utterly to obey any longer the Roman Pontiff, as a hard and cruel pastor: [for these causes] and believing, from reasons probable, conjectures likely, and words used to our injury by his Holiness the Pope, which in divers manners have been brought to our ears, that some weighty act may ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... Pontiff takes a torch, Painter David handing it; mouths some other froth-rant of vocables, which happily one cannot hear; strides resolutely forward, in sight of expectant France; sets his torch to Atheism and Company, which are but made of pasteboard ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Hugo: Our Pontiff to manhood at Englemehr grew, The priests there are many, the nuns are but few. I love not the Abbot—'tis needless to tell My reason; but all of the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... of investigating its true meaning. I am willing indeed to admit that those persons (if any such there be) would be more absolutely certainly right, who have received either a trustworthy tradition or an assurance from the prophets themselves, such as is claimed by the Pharisees; or who have a pontiff gifted with infallibility in the interpretation of Scripture, such as the Roman Catholics boast. But as we can never be perfectly sure, either of such a tradition or of the authority of the pontiff, we cannot found any certain conclusion on either: the one is denied by the oldest sect of Christians, ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... the Pontiff corresponded perfectly to the sincere desires of the Spanish sovereigns, who had, from their first knowledge of the existence of the Indians, displayed the keenest and tenderest zeal to provide ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... modified, while some additions have been made. The Bab was succeeded on his death by Mirza Yahya of Nur (at that time only about twenty years of age), who escaped to Bagdad, and, under the title of Subh-i-Ezel ("the Morning of Eternity"), became the pontiff of the sect. He lived, however, in great seclusion, leaving the direction of affairs almost entirely in the hands of his elder half-brother (born 12th November 1817), Mirza Husayn 'Ali, entitled Baha' ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... with Margaret of Valois. Napoleon himself had likewise had recourse, though without success, to Pope Pius VII., in the matter of his brother Jerome's marriage with Miss Paterson. Now, when the Pope was his prisoner, Napoleon could not apply to him; and since the sovereign pontiff had taken part in the coronation of the Empress Josephine, and profoundly sympathized with her, could he dare to say, like the diocesan officials of Paris, that she, from the religious point of view, was only the ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... you in this degree of Grand Pontiff, which is Grand Master of all Lodges? A. 1st, The sign of the earth, or Apprentice; 2d, of water—Fellow Craft; 3d, of terror—the Master; 4th, of fire; 5th, of air; 6th, of the point in view; 7th, of the sun; 8th, of astonishment; ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... astonish'd sight: Her mould'ring fanes in ruin trac'd, Lie scatter'd on Campania's waste. Nor only these—alas! we find The wreck involves the human mind: The lords of earth now drag a chain Beneath a pontiff's feeble reign; The soil that gave a Cato birth No longer yields heroic worth, Whose image lives but on the bust, Or consecrates the medal's rust: Yet if no heart of modern frame Glows with the antient hero's flame, The dire Arena's ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams

... documents in reference to the case leaves us at a loss to know the effect produced on Edward III. by the letter of the Pontiff. It is highly probable that the king preferred to believe Bicknor rather than the Pope, and disregarded ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... powerful and grasping Pope was on the throne of Rome. Urban at this juncture pressed Francesco Maria hard; and in 1624 the last Duke of Urbino devolved his lordships to the Holy See. He survived the formal act of abdication seven years; when he died, the Pontiff added his duchy to the Papal States, which thenceforth stretched from Naples to the bounds of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... miscomprehension of the Machiavel redeemed by moral goodness. He thinks that without the hypocrisy being censurable he was more of the type of Pope Sixtus the Fifth. This celebrity, who, like Lincoln, was in the hog business at one time, pretended silliness to be elected pontiff. The die cast, he stood forth in all his native strength, keeping the friends who did not try to sway him, and becoming a rod of steel where he had been rated as lead. [Footnote: Greeley stamped Lincoln as "the slowest piece of lead that ever crawled."] At the same time ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... Saladin, who alleged their mutual ignorance of each other's language; and the negotiation was managed with much art and delay by their interpreters and envoys. The final agreement was equally disapproved by the zealots of both parties, by the Roman pontiff and the caliph of Bagdad. It was stipulated that Jerusalem and the holy sepulchre should be open, without tribute or vexation, to the pilgrimage of the Latin Christians; that, after the demolition of Ascalon, they should inclusively possess the sea-coast from Jaffa to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... the base. His little eyes were soft and brown and twinkled like onyxes. His tiny little hands were most beautifully shaped, and this child moved about the farmyard with the dignity of an Emperor and the serenity of a great Pontiff. Gravely and without a smile he watched the Cossacks unharnessing their horses, lighting a fire and arranging ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... of divine grace, His ardent eyes, what a spirit, what a countenance is His; yet His very resemblance to His mother denotes sufficiently that He is of us and takes care for us. Beneath are two figures adoring, each in their own manner. On one side is a pontiff, on the other a virgin each a most sweet and solemn example, the one of aged, the other of maidenly piety and reverence. Between, are two winged boys, evidently presenting a wonderful pattern of childlike piety. Their eyes, indeed, are not turned towards the Virgin, but both ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that of St Bernard, the pious monk of Clairvaux, the feeble, emaciated thinker, brooding, with his dove-like eyes, ("oculos columbinos,") over the wild motions of the twelfth century, and by the calm might of divine love, guiding the sceptre of the secular king, and the crosier of the spiritual pontiff alike? Was that a weak or a dark age, when the strength of mind and the light of love could triumph so signally over brute force, and that natural selfishness of public motive which has achieved its cold, glittering triumphs in the lives of so many modern heroes and heroines—a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... though more intense in their working, actuate men toward truth; and the same obstacles impede their progress; objections, in other forms perhaps, yet substantially the same, are urged against the very points against which the sainted pontiff wrote and struggled—God, Creation, the Bible, Christ, human infirmity or human strength, man's power to attain truth unaided, and his freedom from any supernatural dependence. No wonder that Augustine, who had passed through all these phases of action, should have ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... Pope recovered. The peace was soon broken; Berthier entered Rome on the tenth of February, 1798, and proclaimed a republic. The aged pontiff refused to violate his oath by recognizing it, and was hurried from prison to prison in France. Broken with fatigue and sorrows, he died on the nineteenth of August, 1799, in the French fortress of Valence, aged eighty-two years. No wonder that half Europe thought Napoleon's veto would ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... There is distinct advance in Massillon, and advance more than is accounted for by his somewhat later time, toward the easier modern spirit in church and in state, from the high, unbending austerity of that antique pontiff ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... scarcely be supposed that a funeral oration would find much favor in his eyes, accompanied, as it was, with the accessories of censer, candle, and cup; all evidently derived from that period when, under the three-crowned pontiff's sway, the shaven priest pronounced his benediction o'er the dead, and released the penitent's soul from purgatorial flames, while he heavily mulcted the price of his redemption from the possessions of his successor. Small resented the idea ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... waste not away, nor doth aught of chance or change affect His sway! Whom one case diverteth not from other case, and Who is sole in the attributes of perfect grace. And prayer and the Peace be upon the Lord's Pontiff and Chosen One among His creatures, our Lord MOHAMMED the Prince of mankind, through whom we supplicate Him for a goodly and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... portraits of the Pope in three different sizes, piling them up in the attic that served him for a studio and bedroom. His friends, the cardinals whom he visited frequently, took pity on "Poor Signor Cotoner" and for a few lire bought a picture of the Pontiff horribly ugly, to present it to some village church where it would arouse great admiration since it came from Rome and was by a painter who was a ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... been ever able to disturb. Pope Innocent X. was not exactly the kind of Pope whom one would have expected the Virgin to greet with such extraordinary condescension. If it had been the present amiable and venerable Pontiff there would have been less to ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... talents into play than the deliberations in full consistory which had obtained till his time. Sixteen of them are ecclesiastical, the remaining seven civil, although the number may at any time be restricted or enlarged according to the wants and the views of the reigning Pontiff. They have their stated meetings, their regular offices and officers; and while theoretically under the immediate direction of the sovereign, they actually relieve him from many of the details and not a few of the direct responsibilities ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... all the nations, which are governed by our clemency and moderation, should steadfastly adhere to the religion which was taught by St. Peter to the Romans; which faithful tradition has preserved; and which is now professed by the pontiff Damasus, and by Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the discipline of the apostles, and the doctrine of the gospel, let us believe the sole deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; under an equal majesty, and a pious Trinity. We authorize ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... Duke at all, is a Pope by toleration. There should be some such test at every crowning of our sort. Souse a Bishop in his bath before you let him warm his chair; cry 'Fire!' on the stairs of the Vatican and watch your Pontiff-elect scudding over the Piazza in his sark, before the Conclave sing Veni Creator. Judge of your Emperor with a swollen nose, blacken your Dukes in the eye: if they remain Dukes and Emperors you may safely obey them. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... royal glorification of it we have here!—what exquisite veining and edging of purple or rose; what a velvet lip of crimson darkening to claret! It is merely a sport of Nature, but she allows herself such glorious freaks in no other realm of her domain. And here is a new Brassia just named by the pontiff of orchidology, Professor Reichenbach. Those who know the tribe of Brassias will understand why I make no effort to describe it. This wonderful thing is yet more "all over the shop" than its kindred. ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... that it does not belong to the Sovereign Pontiff to draw up a symbol of faith. For a new edition of the symbol becomes necessary in order to explain the articles of faith, as stated above (A. 9). Now, in the Old Testament, the articles of faith were more and more explained as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... service of Castile. The notorious Rodrigo Borgia, who had lately been placed in the apostolic chair as Alexander VI., was a native of Valencia in the kingdom of Aragon, and would not be likely to refuse such a request through any excess of regard for Portugal. As between the two rival powers the pontiff's arrangement was made in a spirit of even-handed justice. On the 3d of May, 1493, he issued a bull conferring upon the Spanish sovereigns all lands already discovered or thereafter to be discovered in the western ocean, with jurisdiction and privileges in all respects similar ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... will be founded "The Missionary Union of the Clergy", which our Holy Father desires to see established in every diocese. For loving sons and faithful priests of the Church of God the desire of the Sovereign Pontiff is a command. This, we think, could be easily done by the field-organizer when he visits each parish for the purpose of organizing missionary parochial units, as ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... Roman Catholic Church, who was stationed at Newcastle-upon-Tyne about the date mentioned by your correspondent CEPHAS (he was there in 1787), was the translator of the letters of Pope Clement XIV. (Ganganelli); but as I have not the book, I do not know whether it contained also a life of that pontiff. Mr. Cordell was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various

... inflicting on that sweet Bride, at a time when you ought to be shields, to ward off the blows of heresy. In spite of which, you clearly know the truth, that Pope Urban VI. is truly Pope, the highest Pontiff, chosen in orderly election, not influenced by fear, truly rather by divine inspiration than by your human industry. And so you announced it to us, which was the truth. Now you have turned your backs, like poor mean knights; your shadow has made you afraid. You have divided ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... was the Roman Pontiff Gregory, surnamed the Great. He was born in 540, and died in 604. He designed the conversion of the Saxons. He was a great author, though he was ignorant of Greek. We will here notice three of his works—the "Commentary on Job," the "Pastoral Care," ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... be related in its place, caused the origin of Venice. After the taking and ruin of Aquileia, he directed his course towards Rome, from the destruction of which he abstained at the entreaty of the pontiff, his respect for whom was so great that he left Italy and retired into Austria, where he died. After the death of Attila, Velamir, king of the Ostrogoths, and the heads of the other nations, took ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... undertook a journey to Jerusalem on foot and after the fashion of a pilgrim. In this garb he was seized in Italy by a military leader, his relative, who found a pretext for bringing him before the Sovereign Pontiff, from whom he obtained a command for Peralta to return to Spain. All these events did not occur then, but years afterward. Exaggerated reports arose against Ignatius at Paris, especially among the Spaniards. De ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola

... ardent reformers were as much outraged by this pregnant confession as the ecclesiastics. It would indeed be a slow process, they thought, to move step by step in the Reformation, if between each step, a whole century was to intervene. In vain did the gentle pontiff call upon Erasmus to assuage the stormy sea with his smooth rhetoric. The Sage of Rotterdam was old and sickly; his day was over. Adrian's head; too; languishes beneath the triple crown but twenty months. He dies 13th Sept., ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of the prince and the repose of his kingdom depended solely upon the caprice of a priest. In these times of ignorance, of devotion, and of commotions so favorable to the clergy, a weak and poor monarch, surrounded by a miserable nation, was at the mercy of a Roman pontiff, who could at any instant destroy his felicity, excite his subjects against him, and precipitate him into the abyss ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... Sovereign Pontiff," responded the Deacon Militant, who proved to be the man in the uniform, "save certain strangers who appear within the confines of our ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... others?" cried Titianus angrily. She, above all, ought not to be missing from the hall of audience of Caesar the pontiff of heaven! What is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... belief amongst the Romans that if in the midst of an unsuccessful engagement the general devoted himself to the infernal gods, "panic and flight" passed forthwith to the enemies' ranks. "Why daily?" said Decius to the grand pontiff, whom he had ordered to follow him and keep at his side in the flight; "'tis given to our race to die to avert public disasters." He halted, placed a javelin beneath his feet, and covering his head with a fold of his robe, and supporting his chin on his right ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the Knight of Loch Awe was so fortunate as to have an audience of the Pope himself, who was touched by the devotion which brought these stern warriors so far from their home. Black Colin knelt in reverence before the aged pontiff, whom he held in truth to be the Vicar of Christ on earth, and received his blessing, and commands to continue his journey to Rhodes, where the Knights of St. John would give him opportunity to fight for the faith. The small ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... shouters, prayers and exhorters of Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any other man's. Now and then you may see one bend and give a delicate tug, of a purely symbolical character: as when the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a year to wash the feet of the poor; or when the Sunday-school Superintendent of the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters shakes the hand of one of his Colorado mine-slaves. But for the most part the priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting walk haughtily ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... maintained with the intent which the Jews fable, who absurdly affirm that Adam vowed perpetual chastity, like our monks, and that he would still have kept his vow had he not been commanded by an angel from heaven to live together with his wife. Such a story as this is only fit to be told to a Roman pontiff of the age of forty, who alone is worthy of listening to such fables. No, Adam was not so wicked as thus to refuse the gift and command of God! Such abstinence would have been taking vengeance on ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... have an established priesthood and a numerous body of clergymen: their spiritual head, in Turkey, whose power is not inferior to the Roman Pontiff, or the Grecian Patriarch, is denominated the Mufti, and is regarded as the oracle of sanctity and wisdom. Their houses of worship are denominated mosques, many of which are very magnificent, and very richly ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... wholly under ecclesiastical control. He forbade heretical worship, called the country the "Republic of the Sacred Heart," and entered into a concordat with the Pope under which the Church in Ecuador became more subject to the will of the supreme pontiff than western Europe had been in the days ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... brought into a single dominion practically all Western Europe from the Elbe and the Danube to the Ebro. He stood the champion and the head of Western Christendom, palpably the master, and not even in theory the subordinate, of the Pontiff from whom he received the imperial crown. But he established ecclesiastics as a territorial nobility, counteracting the feudal nobility; and when the mighty emperor was gone, and the unity of what was nominally one empire passed away, this ecclesiastical nobility became an instrument ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... to Rome, and obtained a bull, permitting him to resume all past grants; absolving him from the oath which he had taken to maintain them; even enjoining him to make such a resumption, and representing those grants as invalid, on account of the prejudice which ensued from them to the Roman pontiff, in whom the superiority of the kingdom was vested.[**] The opposition made to the intended resumption prevented it from taking place; but the nation saw the indignities to which the king was willing to submit, in order to gratify ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... clergy as well as laity in every kingdom of Europe. England itself, though sunk in the deepest abyss of ignorance and superstition, had seriously entertained thoughts of shaking off the papal yoke;[**] and the Roman pontiff was obliged to think of new expedients for rivetting it faster upon ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... according with a religious turn of mind, rose to the position of a great dignitary of the Church and a powerful arbiter of the destinies of his kind. As that was an age when Alexander VI. was a Pope, and Lucretia Borgia the daughter of a Pontiff and consort of a reigning Duke of Italy, we can readily credit the author of the Annals, and laud him for admirable, life-like portraiture, when he says that a character and conduct, such as Piso's, "met with the approbation of a large number of people, who, indulging ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... affectionately about the younger lad. "The Pope, Jose, is, always has been, and always will be, supreme, crowned with the triple crown as king of earth, and heaven, and hell. We mortals have not made him so. Heaven alone did that. God himself made our Pontiff of the Holy Catholic Church superior even to the angels; and if it were possible for them to believe contrary to the faith, he could judge them and lay the ban ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... supreme pontiff says that he can give, and does really give them, he would be rash who could have any scruples about the right of our kings to possess these provinces, and the right of the conquistadors therein to make war, since the latter did it by order of their kings. For who doubts that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... Popes have curst the plant; Kings bade its use to cease; But all the Pontiff's rant And Royal Jamie's cant Ne'er made ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... usages." Yet a little farther on he exclaims: "But what sort of faith is yours, if you talk of leaving the Church because certain antiquated doctrines of its heads, certain decrees of the Roman congregations, certain ways in a pontiff's government offend you? What sort of sons are you who talk of renouncing your mother because she wears a garment which does not please you? Is the mother's heart changed by a garment? When, bowed over her, weeping, you tell your infirmities to Christ and Christ heals you, do you think ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... against the howling iconoclasm and atheism of the Age,—he would be Poet henceforth in the true meaning of the word, namely Maker, . . he would MAKE not BREAK the grand ideal hopes and heaven-climbing ambitions of Humanity! ... he would endeavor his utmost best to be that "Hierarch and Pontiff of the world"—as a modern rugged Apostle of Truth has nobly said,—"who Prometheus-like can shape new Symbols and bring new fire from heaven to fix them into the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... belonged to the great Franciscan family. His fine talents and rare virtues had caused him to be appointed a preacher of the Order. The Sovereign Pontiff, seeing all the good that Berthold was destined to do by his eloquent sermons, had given him power to grant to each of his hearers, an indulgence of ten days; which was a great privilege for the faithful, as well as a mark of esteem and ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... cut off from their character its whole importance. We even find some chiefs of the Pagan priesthood amongst the foremost in submitting to the new doctrine. On the first preaching of the Gospel in Northumberland, the heathen pontiff of that territory immediately mounted a horse, which to those of his order was unlawful, and, breaking into the sacred inclosure, hewed to pieces the idol he had so ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... was discoverable; wherefore the learned of the Church—i dotti della chiesa—came to the conclusion that under the guise of a friar there had actually appeared "N. S. G. C." The Supreme Pontiff and his prelates had not yet delivered a judgment in the matter, but there could be no sort of doubt that they would pronounce the authenticity of the miracle. With a general assurance that the good Christian ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... conquered the dreadfulness of our origin. My love, I smile at you! I know it to be impossible for the Protestant heresy to offer a shade of consolation. Earthly-born, it rather encourages earthly distinctions. It is the sweet sovereign Pontiff alone who gathers all in his arms, not excepting tailors. Here, if they could know ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in His infinite goodness, proposes to extend our society; it is therefore necessary that we should prescribe for ourselves a rule of life, and go and give an account thereof to the most holy Roman Pontiff; for I am persuaded that in matters of faith, and in such as concern religious orders, nothing can be done which is pure and stable without his consent and approbation. Let us then go and find our Mother, the Holy Roman Church. Let us make known to our ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... The Dairo was formerly the sovereign of Japan, uniting the supreme civil and spiritual power, committing the military affairs to a kind of generalissimo, who usurped supreme authority, and reduced the Dairo to be a kind of sovereign pontiff or chief-priest.—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... themselves pontiffs. Possibly we ought to place Smonkhari of the XIVth dynasty in the same category, if, as Brugsch assures us, his name, Mir-mashau, is identical with the title of the high priest of Osiris at Mendes, thus proving that he was pontiff of Osiris in that ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... opinion of Mahomet if he had done miracles? What a proof, how full, how perfect! That Christianity, in spirit, in power, in simplicity, and in truth, had no more hold over B—— than it had over any Pagan Pontiff in Rome, is clear to me from that. So, then, the argument against Mahomet is not that he wants utterly the meekness—wants? wants? No, that he utterly hates the humility, the love that is stronger than the grave, the purity that cannot be imagined, the holiness ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... Governing class and a Teaching class—these two sometimes combined in one, a Pontiff King—there did not society exist without those two vital elements, there will none exist. Whenever there are born Kings of men you had better seek them out and breed them to the work.... The few wise will have to take command of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... then a mendicant dealer in water-melons; chief pontiff lastly of the sect of the Stoics; Cleanthes, as we see him in anecdote [49] at least, is always a loyal, sometimes a very quaintly loyal, follower of the Parmenidean or Stoic doctrine of detachment from all material things. It was at the ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... confidence restored by the order of the general, he revealed that the pope, terrified at the power of the order, was weaving a plot for the general expulsion of the Jesuits, and was tampering with the different courts of Europe in order to obtain their assistance. He described the pontiff's auxiliaries, his means of action, and indicated the particular locality in the Archipelago where, by a sudden surprise, two cardinals, adepts of the eleventh year, and, consequently, high in authority, were ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Pius X., and he took up the matter cautiously, so that the honour due to the cult of the saints should not be diminished, nor the onus on the clergy increased by the weekly recitation of the full Psalter. Begging the help of God, the pontiff formed a commission of learned and industrious men, who with judgment and care carried out his wishes. The results of their labours were submitted to the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and after careful consideration by the members of the ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... Master and the Italian liberator, the two founders also sharing the power between them. A Supreme Dogmatic Directory was created at Charleston, with Pike at its head, under the title of Sovereign Pontiff of Universal Freemasonry. Mazzini took over the Supreme Executive, having Rome as its centre, under the title of Sovereign Chief of ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... Gregory the Great, in whose time, at a certain season, the air was filled with an unwholesome vapor or malaria which so affected the people that those who sneezed were at once stricken with death-agonies. In this strait the pontiff is said to have devised a form of prayer to be uttered when the paroxysm was seen to be coming on, and which, it was hoped, would avert ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... than the other. The name of Prester John signifies Great Lord, and is not Priest [Presbyter] as many think. He has always been a Christian, but often schismatic. At the present time he is a Catholic and recognizes the Pope as sovereign pontiff. I met one of his bishops in Jerusalem, and often conversed with him through the medium of our guide. He was of grave and serious bearing, pleasant of speech, but wonderfully subtle in everything he said. He took great delight in what I had to relate concerning ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... treatment of the Sovereign Pontiff at Rome by the government of United Italy, since 1871, has been entirely consistent with the principles of the 'glorious English Revolution,' or of the 'great American. Revolution,' I need not now consider. But that all the living political doctrines of which intelligent Frenchmen mean to speak ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... standpoint in the interpretation of the few facts that we do know. There can be no question of the emperor's fitness for the task so far as priestly learning went, for he was from a very early age a member of three priesthoods: a pontiff, an augur, and a guardian of the Sibylline books. With characteristic modesty however he refrained from becoming Chief Pontiff until in B.C. 12 the death of Lepidus, the discarded member of the Second Triumvirate, left ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter

... Soldiers work, Whether the Pontiff or the Turk, Will e'er renew th' expiring lease Of Empire; whether War or Peace Will best play off the CONSUL'S game; What fancy-figures, and what name Half-thinking, sensual France, a natural Slave, On those ne'er-broken Chains, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... here. [Applause and laughter.] So we say to our countrymen that come from dear old Ireland, the best country in the world to emigrate from, [laughter], to the Italian, to the Spaniard, to the German, you may belong to the church of the spiritual pontiff but you must renounce all allegiance to temporal pontiffs. I hold that under our laws of naturalization, that it is the duty of every cardinal, every archbishop, every bishop, and every priest, every monk, Franciscan or Jesuit, to solemnly renounce before God ...
— 'America for Americans!' - The Typical American, Thanksgiving Sermon • John Philip Newman

... actual fighting was still confined to the north of Italy, to hasten to Rome, and obtain this coveted prize, before the Emperor should succeed in deposing Pope Clement and possibly set up another pontiff less friendly to the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... curbing Garibaldi and preventing the erection of a South Italian Republic; but finally the French Emperor looked on uneasily while the Pope's eastern territories were violated, and while the cause of Italian Unity was assured at the expense of the Pontiff whom France was officially supporting in Rome. A plebiscite, or mass vote, of the people of Sicily, South Italy, and the eastern and central parts of the Papal States, was resorted to by Cavour in order to throw a cloak of legality over these irregular proceedings. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... Domitian was in a great rage and was boiling over with fury because his witnesses had left him in the lurch. His mind was set upon burying alive Cornelia, the chief of the Vestal Virgins, as he thought to make his age memorable by such an example of severity, and, using his authority as Chief Pontiff, or rather exercising the cruelty of a tyrant and the wanton caprice of a ruler, he summoned the rest of the pontiffs not to the Palace but to his Villa at Alba. There, with a wickedness just as monstrous as the crime which he pretended ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... and died in Ynti-cancha. He was 132 years of age, having succeeded at the age of 21, so that he was sovereign or "ccapac" for 111 years. He died in 786, Alfonso el Casto being King of Spain and Leo IV Supreme Pontiff. Some of this ayllu still live at Cuzco. The chiefs are Putisuc Titu Avcaylli, Titu Rimachi, Don Felipe Titu Cunti Mayta, Don Agustin Cunti Mayta, Juan Bautista Quispi Cunti Mayta. They are Hurin-cuzcos. The Licentiate Polo found the body of this ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... also dated 755, in which is described the ceremony of consecrating the church of St. Sauveur, attached to the abbey, which in the first-mentioned document Pepin is said to have founded. Here it is related that when the Pontiff approached the church strains of mysterious music were heard issuing from the edifice, and such a cloud stood before it that the procession waited for hours before entering. Then, when the Pope walked up to the altar-stone, he found that it had been miraculously consecrated, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... living under a government which Humboldt has compared to the theocracies of Tibet and Japan. These were the Chibchas, Muyscas, or Mozcas, divided into two kingdoms, with capitals at Bogota and Tunja, but united apparently in spiritual allegiance to the high pontiff of Sogamozo or Iraca. By a long and ascetic novitiate, this ghostly ruler was reputed to have acquired such sanctity that the waters and the rain obeyed him, and the weather depended on his will. The Mexican kings at their accession, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... guillotined. The son and daughter of Louis XVI. employed to make shoes and shirts for the nation. 10. General Clairfait is obliged to retreat. The French take Port-Vendre, Collieure, and St. Elme. 13. A festival to the Eternal. Robespierre acts the part of Pontiff. The ceremony is designed to satisfy the people, by putting an end to atheism. The members of the convention assume the distinction of a plume of feathers in the hat, and a three-coloured scarf. The French army in Maritime Flanders ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz

... authority, called upon his king to do justice; and Louis was on the point of restoring the stolen property. Pope Honorius, however, sent letters to the king, raising the interdict, and thereupon Bernard turned his fearless indignation upon the supreme pontiff himself. "We speak with sadness; the honour of the Church has been not a little blemished ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... first endeavoured to suppress, but they had been revived and confirmed by the alarming declaration of the Bishop of Tarbes in the presence of his Council. To tranquillise his mind he had recourse to the only legitimate remedy: he had consulted the Pontiff, who had appointed two delegates to hear the case, and by their judgment he was determined to abide. He would therefore warn his subjects to be cautious how they ventured to arraign his conduct. The proudest among them should learn ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... of Innocent in his hand. "You know, my brethren (said he), that I am ordered to proclaim an excommunication against Frederick. I am ignorant of the motive. All that I know is, that there exist, between this Prince and the Roman Pontiff great differences, and an irreconcileable hatred. God only knows which of the two is wrong. Therefore with all my power I excommunicate him who injures the other; and I absolve him who suffers, to the great scandal ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... pope's hands, thinking that at all events the authority of his holiness would insure his safety. Eugenius then sent word to Niccolo Barbadoro, and the rest who remained without, that they were to lay down their arms, for Rinaldo was remaining with the pontiff, to arrange terms of agreement with the signors; upon which they immediately dispersed, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... for a pontiff's palm, Upraised in blessing o'er his high emprise; And bows his mailed forehead prayerful-wise, Sinking his turbulency in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... consciousness, as to whether there could be a slightly farcical aspect to such an episode between two most Catholic and Christian governments? He saw them both fired with feelings of very human strength, both dealing only with shadows of reality—the Sovereign Pontiff grasping at a semblance of power in insisting that this candidate, named by Venice to a see within her gift, to which he, the Pope, would dare present no other, was invested by his examination and approval; and ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... years 1474-8 Lorenzo had managed to incur the jealous hatred of Pope Sixtus IV, who was determined to become the greatest power in Christendom. This Pontiff skilfully detached Naples from her alliance with Florence and Milan by promising to be content with a nominal tribute of two white horses every year instead of the handsome annual sum she had usually exacted from this vassal. He congratulated ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... de contemptu mundi, delivered in the presence of the assembled Senate, by the emperor Aurelius, who had thus, on certain rare occasions, condescended to instruct his people, with the double authority of a chief pontiff and a laborious student of philosophy. In those lesser honours of the ovation, there had been no attendant slave behind the emperors, to make mock of their effulgence as they went; and it was as if ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... and proclaimed him Emperor of the Romans. Pius VII. he determined should do the same for a successor to much more than the actual power of Charlemagne. But though Charlemagne had repaired to Rome to receive inauguration from the hands of the Pontiff of that day, Napoleon resolved that he who now owned the proud, and in Protestant eyes profane, title of Vicar of Christ, should travel to France to perform the coronation of the successful chief, by whom the See of Rome had been more than once humbled, pillaged, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various

... the picturesque lines of Mantua's noblest son,[53] the three earliest races of Northern Italy had striven; and when the power of imperial Rome was waning, the fierce Attila pitched his camp on the banks of the Mincio, and there received the pontiff Leo, whose prayers and dignity averted the threatening torrent of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... divine kings or priests is regulated. The first of the rules to which I desire to call the reader's attention is that the divine personage may not touch the ground with his foot. This rule was observed by the supreme pontiff of the Zapotecs in Mexico; he profaned his sanctity if he so much as touched the ground with his foot.[2] Montezuma, emperor of Mexico, never set foot on the ground; he was always carried on the shoulders of noblemen, and if he lighted anywhere they laid rich tapestry ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... attention toward his contest with the pope; and he extricated himself from it with an adroitness that proved the whole force and cunning of his character. Having first publicly obtained the opinion of several doctors of theology, that he was justified in taking arms against the pontiff (a point on which there was really no doubt), he prosecuted the war with the utmost vigor, by the means of the afterward notorious duke of Alva, at that time viceroy of his Italian dominions. Paul soon yielded ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... pontiff with the starched band, old Schwalbach, the famous dealer in pictures, displayed his prophet's beard, yellow in spots like a dirty fleece, his three mouldy-looking waistcoats and all the slovenly, careless attire which people forgave him in the name of art, and because he ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... in his books, yet during his sojourn at Rome he manifested a great regard for religion. He solicited the honour of being admitted to kiss the feet of the Holy Father, Gregory XIII.; and the Pontiff exhorted him always to continue in the devotion which he had hitherto exhibited to the Church and the service of the Most ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... and moral sweetness of the Semitic Nazarene became the law of society, and the church organization gradually assimilated everything to itself, and received divine worship in the person of the supreme Pontiff, who continued for many ages to be the temporal ruler of consciences, of public institutions, and of civilization. Strange daring in a race which from its early beginnings down to our own days has been always true to its ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... impatient, peevish though devout, With wit disgusting, and despised without; Saints in design, in execution men, Peace in their looks, and vengeance in their pen. Methinks I see, and sicken at the sight, Spirits of spleen from yonder pile alight; Spirits who prompted every damning page, With pontiff pride and still-increasing rage: Lo! how they stretch their gloomy wings around, And lash with furious strokes the trembling ground! They pray, they fight, they murder, and they weep,- Wolves in their vengeance, ...
— The Library • George Crabbe

... to the English crown.[v] The earl of Thomond, in 1570, attempted a rebellion in Connaught, but was obliged to fly into France before his designs were ripe for execution. Stukely, another fugitive, found such credit with the pope, Gregory XIII., that he flattered that pontiff with the prospect of making his nephew, Buon Compagno, king of Ireland; and, as if this project had already taken effect, he accepted the title of marquis of Leinster from the new sovereign.[v*] He passed next into Spain; and after having received much encouragement ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... that Fisher had his head cut off is somewhat mitigated to me by the circumstance that the Pope should have sent him, of all things in the world, a cardinal's hat after that incapacitation. Theology herself becomes less unamiable to me when I find the Supreme Pontiff writing to the Council of Trent that "they should begin with original sin, maintaining yet a due respect for the Emperor." That infallibility should thus courtesy to decorum, shall make me think better of it while I live. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... distance," Father Benwell briskly replied. "Ah, you heretics only know the worst side of that most unhappy pontiff! Mr. Winterfield, we have every reason to believe that he felt (privately) the ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... stealing in, now and then, or the swell of vespers from some side chapel. The ceremonies of the church have been numerous and splendid, during our stay, and they borrow unusual interest from the love and expectation inspired by the present pontiff. He is a man of noble and good aspect, who has set his heart on doing something solid for the benefit of man. A week or two ago, the Cardinal Secretary published a circular, inviting the departments to measures which would give the people a sort of representative council. Nothing ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... which was evidently copied from the policy of the church. In all the great cities of the empire, the temples were repaired and beautified by the order of Maximin, and the officiating priests of the various deities were subjected to the authority of a superior pontiff destined to oppose the bishop, and to promote the cause of paganism. These pontiffs acknowledged, in their turn, the supreme jurisdiction of the metropolitans or high priests of the province, who acted as the immediate vicegerents of the emperor himself. A white robe was the ensign of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... a title originally given to all bishops of the Church, and eventually appropriated by Leo the Great, the bishop of Rome, as the supreme pontiff in 449, a claim which in 1054 created the Great Schism, and which asserted itself territorially as well as spiritually, till now at length the Pope has been compelled to resign all territorial power. The present Pope, Pius X., is the successor of 258 who ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... have received the news of his father's death with those tears of sincere grief, which surprised some of his princely companions; and did not much appear to quicken his progress toward England. Being challenged to a tournament, by the count of Chalons, the exhortations of the reigning Pontiff could not induce him to forego the combat; he felt his honour, as the champion of the cross, at stake; and appeared in the lists at the appointed day, attended by a thousand knights. The trial of skill was converted into a deadly battle, ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... succeeded to the place of the Apostles pertain especially to the hierarchy and are superior to priests, that neither the consent of the people nor of the civil power is necessary for the valid reception of orders, and that bishops who are appointed by the authority of the Roman Pontiff are true bishops.[7] The question whether the duty of episcopal residence is /de jure divino/, about which such a protracted and heated controversy had been waged, was settled amicably by deciding that the bishops as ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey



Words linked to "Pontiff" :   Leo X, John XXIII, Gregory VII, Antonio Pignatelli, Benedetto Caetani, Oddone Colonna, Urban VI, Innocent XI, Gregory XII, Clement XIV, Achille Ratti, Albino Luciano, spiritual leader, Antonio Ghislieri, Giulio de' Medici, John Paul II, Giacomo della Chiesa, Otho of Lagery, Giovanni Francesco Albani, Pius XII, Pius IX, Karol Wojtyla, Pius II, Guy of Burgundy, Angelo Correr, Martin V, Pope Alexander VI, pontificate, Urban II, Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti, antipope, Sixtus IV, Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, Borgia, St. Leo I, Gregory I, Maffeo Barberini, Paul III, pope, Innocent III, Boniface VIII, Nicholas V, Benedict XV, Leo I, Clement VII, Hildebrand, Guillaume de Grimoard, Gregory XIII, Bartolomeo Prignano, Aeneas Silvius, catholic, Lotario di Segni, Calixtus II, Francesco della Rovere, Bruno of Toul, Leo III, Benedetto Odescalchi, Leo the Great, Eugenio Pacelli, Tomasso Parentucelli, St. Gregory I, Clement XI, Urban VIII, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Odo, Urban V, Benedict XIV, Catholic Pope, Calixtus III, Pius XI, Holy Father, Odo of Lagery, Pius V, Gioacchino Pecci, Giovanni de'Medici, Innocent XII, Leo XIII, pontifical, Leo IX, Gregory



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