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Pontifical   Listen
noun
Pontifical  n.  
1.
A book containing the offices, or formulas, used by a pontiff.
2.
pl. The dress and ornaments of a pontiff. "Dressed in full pontificals."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pontifical" Quotes from Famous Books



... altar the bier rested. The bishop of Dunkeld, in his pontifical robes, received the sacred deposit with a cloud of incense, and the pealing organ, answered by the voices of the choristers, breathed the solemn requiem of the dead. The wreathing frankincense parted its vapor, and a wan but beautiful form, clasping an urn to her breast, appeared stretched ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... of August, 1492, after the lingering death-agony of Innocent VIII, during which two hundred and twenty murders were committed in the streets of Rome, Alexander VI ascended the pontifical throne. Son of a sister of Pope Calixtus III, Roderigo Lenzuoli Borgia, before being created cardinal, had five children by Rosa Vanozza, whom he afterwards caused to be married to ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere

... latter remembered that before being pope under the name of Benedict XIII. he had been captain under the name of Pierre de Luna. For five months he defended himself, pointing his engines of war with his own hands from the heights of the chateau walls, engines otherwise far more murderous than his pontifical bolts. At last forced to flee, he left the city by a postern, after having ruined a hundred houses and killed four thousand Avignonese, and fled to Spain, where the King of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... quantities of tapestry and finery, and many triumphal arches, and there was music from flutes, trumpets, and other instruments. When the seal was taken to the door of the cathedral of Manila, the archbishop in pontifical robes came out with the cross, accompanied by the chapter and clergy of the church to receive it. Having lifted the box containing the seal from the horse under the canopy, the archbishop placed it in the hands of the president. Then ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... enlightened world, it is because the power so awfully abused has been wrested from the scarlet-robed tenants of the Vatican, The same fierce, intolerable tyranny is still exercised where their jurisdiction is unquestioned. From the administration of the pontifical states of Italy to the regulation of convent discipline, we trace the workings of the same iron rule. No barriers are too mighty to be overborne, no distinctions too delicate to to be thrust rudely aside. Even the sweet sacredness of the home circle is not exempt ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... green chalchivitl. The same precious gem, with emeralds of uncommon size, set in gold, profusely ornamented other parts of his dress. His feet were shod with the golden sandals, and his brows covered with the Mexican diadem, resembling in form the pontifical tiara. Thus attired and surrounded by a guard of Spaniards, and several Aztec nobles, and preceded by the golden wand, the symbol of sovereignty, the Indian monarch ascended the central ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... is no loss, but your wide embankment at the side loses good ground; and so my picturesque bridges are right as well as beautiful, and I hope to see them built again some day, instead of the frightful straight-backed things which we fancy are fine, and accept from the pontifical rigidities of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Lamas robe him in different vestments, combinations of yellow and red, and change his caps. The service always finishes at the solemn moment when the Living Buddha with the tiara on his head pronounces the pontifical blessing upon the congregation, turning his face to all four cardinal points of the compass and finally stretching out his hands toward the northwest, that is, to Europe, whither in the belief of the Yellow Faith must travel the teachings ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... most ludicrous was the present. They had a young lady, who brought a pig in the dress of a new-born infant: the countess carried it to the king, wrapped in a rich mantle. One Turpin, on this occasion, was dressed like a bishop in all his pontifical ornaments. He began the rites of baptism with the common prayer-book in his hand; a silver ewer with water was held by another. The marquis stood as godfather. When James turned to look at the infant, the pig squeaked: an animal which he greatly abhorred. At this, highly displeased, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... paintings of subjects from the Aeneid by Peter of Cortona. The whole city crowded to the show; and it was with difficulty that a company of Swiss guards could keep order among the spectators. The nobles of the Pontifical state in return gave costly entertainments to the Ambassador; and poets and wits were employed to lavish on him and on his master insipid and hyperbolical adulation such as flourishes most when genius and taste are in the deepest decay. Foremost among ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... free at the present day as at any previous period of its history. The perils and the difficulties which surround it arise from temporal concerns,—from the state of Italy, and from the possessions of the pontifical dominions. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... archbishop—for Fenelon had previously been made archbishop of Cambray—returned into his diocese as into an exile. But his cup of humiliation was by no means full. Bossuet will stain his own glory by following his exiled former pupil and friend, with hostile pontifical rage, to crush ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... seminarists exceeded twenty, and attributing that glory to the said gentlemen and to their efforts, it was advised that the said cardinal should select those persons whom he thought proper for master and rector. Pontifical commission was assigned him for that, and in fact, in the year 1707, the licentiate Don Gabriel de Isturis was appointed rector, and the bachelor Don Hypolito del Rio as master of the seminarists. On November 28 of that year, the first eight seminarists were received by the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... down exhausted with emotion, the Pope, Urban II., in all the splendor of his pontifical robes, arose from his throne in the midst of the prelates of the Church, and came forward. It was he who had called this solemn council of priests and nobles to consider the state of the Holy Land and to devise means for its rescue. Now, with dignity and eloquence, Urban added the sanction of the ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... had inadvertently omitted a considerable section of this audience" (tumult, during which the Professor stood with one hand raised and his enormous head nodding sympathetically, as if he were bestowing a pontifical blessing upon the crowd), "I have been selected to move a vote of thanks to Mr. Waldron for the very picturesque and imaginative address to which we have just listened. There are points in it with which I disagree, and it has been my duty to indicate ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... charmer and the camel ascended the cheering aisle and stopped in front of Jumbo, who adopted a grave pontifical air. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... fell sick, and the fleet put in at Tarentum, from which port the emperor, irritated by the presumption of Gregory IX., who excommunicated him because he was too slow in the gratification of his wishes, at a later date proceeded with ten thousand men, thus giving way to the fear inspired by the pontifical thunders. ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... his day in the calendar. Ignorance is more excusable on the question what constitutes saintship, and, supposing you to have found your saint, on the criterion by which the day of his festival should be adjusted in the calendar. Technically, to make a saint, there should be an act of pontifical jurisdiction, all the more solemn than any secular judicial act as the interests affected are more momentous; but only a small number of the saints stand on record in the proceedings of the Vatican. ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... regulated and guided them, to a large extent, in secular as well as religious affairs. Thus out of chaos, Christendom arose, a single homogeneous society of peoples. It was in the middle ages that the pontifical authority reached its full stature. The Holy See exercised the lofty function of arbiter among contending nations, and of leadership in great public movements, like the Crusades. Civil authority and ecclesiastical authority, emperors and popes, were engaged in a long ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... On Palm-sunday morning the Pontifical ceremonies begin at S. Peter's, at about 9 o'clock: no stranger can receive a palm without a permission signed by M. Maggiordomo. In the afternoon the Card. Penitentiary goes at about 4 or half past 4 to S. John Lateran's, where the Station of ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs

... the first modern treatise on aesthetics. The lady described is Joan of Aragon, the greatest beauty of her time, whose portrait by Raphael (or more probably Giulio Romano) is in the Louvre. Niphus, who was the philosopher of the pontifical court and the friend of Leo X, thus describes this princess, whom, as a physician, he had opportunities of observing accurately: "She is of medium stature, straight, and elegant, and possesses the grace which can only be ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... of charcoal, traced on the ground a black shield, in order to enclose within its compass the animal spirits whose duty it is to assist the ambient spirits, and rejoicing at having the mastery over Bouvard, he said to him, with a pontifical air: ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... to quote from the more recent ones because they are authoritative, in so far as they have been written on the basis of miracles attested by eye-witnesses and accepted as veracious by the Vatican tribunal. Sister Orsola, though born in 154.7, was only declared Venerable by Pontifical decree of 1793. Biographies prior to that date are therefore ex-parte statements and might conceivably contain errors of fact. This is out of the question here, as is clearly shown by ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... musical critic and composer of church music, was born at Rome on the 21st of October 1775. He was instructed in composition by his uncle, Lorenzo Baini, and afterwards by G. Jannaconi. In 1814 he was appointed musical director to the choir of the pontifical chapel, to which he had as early as 1802 gained admission in virtue of his fine bass voice. His compositions, of which very few have been published, were very favourable specimens of the severe ecclesiastical style; one in particular, a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... bad business either. I must make a note of that. But I can't hypnotise anybody. I tried lots of girls when I was at St. Ursula's and nothing ever came of it. Thank you for the idea all the same. By the way, I first must sterilise the pontifical—' She paused. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... to Matthews not too definitely. Before he could pursue the question farther, Magin clapped his hands. Instantly there appeared at the outer door a barefooted Lur, whose extraordinary cap looked to Matthews even taller and more pontifical than those of his fellow-countrymen at the oars. The Lur, his hands crossed on his girdle, received a rapid order and vanished as silently as ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... not fail to enjoy peculiar privileges. The abbot had complete jurisdiction, as well temporal as spiritual, over the parish of St. Ouen; in the Norman parliament he took precedence of all other mitred abbots; by a bull of Pope Alexander IVth, he was allowed to wear the pontifical ornaments, mitre, ring, gloves, tunic, dalmatic, and sandals; and, what sounds strange to our Protestant ears, he had the right of preaching in public, and of causing the conventual bells to be rung whenever he thought ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... disguise to Nice, and thence to Marseilles. Charles Albert was then on the throne of Sardinia, and though the most liberal sovereign in Italy, was tyrannical in his measures. Ferdinand II. ruled at Naples with a rod of iron; the Pontifical States and the Duchies of Modena and Parma were equally under despotic governments, while Venice and Lombardy were ground down ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... picture in a French pontifical of the fifteenth century, which is in the British Museum (Tiberius, B. VIII, f. 43), of the anointing and coronation of a king of France. An ecclesiastical procession is represented meeting the king and his courtiers at the door of the cathedral of Rheims, and amongst ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... matter of fact Wagner began, as I have said, with Siegfried's Death. Then, wanting to develop the idea of Siegfried as neo-Protestant, he went on to The Young Siegfried. As a Protestant cannot be dramatically projected without a pontifical antagonist. The Young Siegfried led to The Valkyries, and that again to its preface The Rhine Gold (the preface is always written after the book is finished). Finally, of course, the whole was revised. The revision, if carried out strictly, would have involved ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... their name, took his watch from him as he came out. They were not idle in 1843, when they renewed the old edicts against the Jews. And all the world knows that the inquisitors on their stations throughout the pontifical states, and the inquisitorial agents in Italy, Germany, and Eastern Europe, were never more active than during the last four years, and even at this moment, when every political misdemeanor that is deemed offensive to the Pope, is, constructively, a sin against the Inquisition, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... Florentine sculptor, whose fame and fortune were so far above his deserts as an artist. Coming to Venice after the sack of Rome, which so entirely for the moment disorganised art and artists in the pontifical city, he elected to remain there notwithstanding the pressing invitations sent to him by Francis the First to take service with him. In 1529 he was appointed architect of San Marco, and he then by his adhesion completed the Triumvirate ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... deep expression, and the drapery of the sacrificial robe, that he might display the human form in visible agony; but the other, by the charm of verse, could invest the priest with the pomp of the pontifical robe without hiding from us the interior sufferings of the human victim. We see they obtained by different means, adapted to their respective arts, that common end which each designed; but who will decide which invention preceded the other, or ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... cordiality and lemon-tea. On such occasions, Mr. BUMSTEAD, in his musical capacity, has sung so closely in Judge SWEENEY'S ear as to tickle him, a wild and slightly incoherent Ritualistic stave, to the effect that Saint PETER'S of Rome, with pontifical dome, would by ballot Infallible be; but for making Call sure, and Election secure, Saint Repeater's of Rum beats the See. With finger in ear to allay the tickling sensation, JUDGE SWEENEY declares that this young man smelling of cloves is a person of great intellectual attainments, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various

... Pope laughed. They understood each other. A fool would have gone next day to amuse himself with Julius II at Raphael's house or in the delightful Villa Madama; but Belvidero went to see him officiate in his pontifical capacity, in order to convince himself of his suspicions. Under the influence of wine della Rovere would have been capable of forgetting himself ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... the bishopric of Salzburg, assured as an indemnity to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and in Italy the territories of this prince were granted to the Duke of Parma. The articles made no mention of Piedmont or Parma, or of the Pontifical States. The First Consul did not wish to commit himself on this point or encounter the sluggish proceedings of a congress. The Emperor of Austria had treated for the Empire as for himself. The Diet assembled at Ratisbon simply ratified the conditions of the treaty. Henceforth England found itself ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... is the development of the mind, and the first condition for the development of the mind is that it should have liberty. The worst social state, from this point of view, is the theocratic state, like Islamism or the ancient Pontifical state, in which dogma reigns supreme. Nations with an exclusive state religion, like Spain, are not much better off. Nations in which a religion of the majority is recognized are also exposed to serious drawbacks. In behalf of the ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... for him certain small preferments, which, in his most profitable condition, aggregated about thirty scudi a month (perhaps equal to $20 of our money). On this miserable pittance he supported his wife and four children. In 1556 he was discharged from his place as a pontifical singer, on account of his marriage, a fact which had been ignored by the pope who appointed him. He then held the post of chapel master at the Lateran. In 1561 he was transferred to Santa Maria Maggiore, where he remained ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... history is losing its hold on the thought and feeling of the rising generation, Green is the last man whom we can blame. He gave all his faculties unsparingly to his task—patience, enthusiasm, single-hearted love of truth; and he encouraged others to do the same. No man was more free from the pontifical airs of those historians who proclaimed history as an academic science to be confined within the chilly walls of libraries and colleges. We may apply to his work what Mr. G. M. Trevelyan has said of the English historians ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... decision for a future period, nevertheless, the view of the case adopted by the Pontiff could not be mistaken. Elizabeth's legitimacy, or, as Heylin has it, "legitimation and the Pope's supremacy could not stand together." No course was left open to her, then, than to reject the pontifical authority, and establish her own in her dominions, as she did not possess faith enough to set her soul above a crown; and the success of her father, Henry VIII., and of her half-brother, Edward VI., encouraged her in this step. This fully explains ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... was most imposing. Around the grand Cathedral, as around a fretted rock of marble, surged the waves of people, like a sea. The vast interior was filled, and beneath the groined roof he had reared, lay, in his pontifical vestments,—the hat, insignia of his highest dignity, at his feet,—the mild and gentle and patient Cardinal McCloskey, his life's work well ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... the year 1515, there was a kind of large printed placard, with figures on each side of it, suspended near a confessional. On one side, was a naked Christ, removing the fire of purgatory with his cross, and sending all those, who came out of the fire, to the Pope—who was seated in his pontifical robes, having letters of indulgence before him. Before him, also, knelt emperors, kings, cardinals, bishops and others: behind him was a sack of silver, with many captives delivered from Mahometan slavery—thanking the supreme Pontiff, and followed by clergymen paying ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... impressive. I could not but be struck by the contrast between the two Mikados—the one whom I had seen yesterday, an alert statesman, wearing Western clothes, and speaking French with hardly a trace of accent, and the one before me now, a solemn, pontifical figure, in his immemorial robes, moving, speaking with the etiquette ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... unerring legal tactician, deciding every move of the great game, the stake of which for him was life itself. About him were gathered the ablest members of the Richmond bar: John Wickham, witty and ingenious, Edmund Randolph, ponderous and pontifical, Benjamin Botts, learned and sarcastic, while from Baltimore came Luther Martin to aid his "highly respected friend," to keep the political pot boiling, and eventually to fall desperately in love with Burr's daughter, the beautiful ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... south side; and the bishop's tomb is on the north side with a window behind containing some fragments of stained glass. It is probable from its appearance that the monument contained two effigies, one representing the bishop in his pontifical robes and another on a higher ledge, which represented a body in a state of decay, as contrasting life and death. A carved oak door at the foot of the monument appears as an entrance to a chantry, or as by some supposed to have been a confessional. The bishop was buried in the centre of ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous

... defend it." It is unpopular, even among the troops sent on the expedition, as is acknowledged by the government journals themselves. To propitiate public opinion, the government has changed its course, and after making war upon the Romans to establish the pontifical throne, now tells the Pope that he must submit to place the government in the hands of the laity. This change of policy has occasioned a good deal of surprise and an infinite deal of discussion. Whatever may be its consequences, there is one consequence ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... Dutch, which had now become a secondary object, whilst he himself went at the head of fifty thousand men of the Armada and the flotilla, to accomplish the principal enterprise—that enterprise, which, in the highest degree, affected the interests of the pontifical authority. In a bull, intended to be kept secret until the day of landing, Sixtus V., renewing the anathema fulminated against Elizabeth by Pius V. and Gregory XIII., affected to depose her from our throne. [See Mignet's Mary Queen of ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... was light enough in that hall to illuminate the whole duchy of the Milanese, could it but find an outlet. As it is, I fear a few straggling rays are all that are able to escape. There is no catalogue of the books, save some very imperfect lists; and I was told that there is a pontifical bull against making any such. I saw a few visitors in its halls, attracted, like myself, by its curiosities; but I saw no one who had come to restore volumes they had read, and receive others in their room. The modern inhabitant of Milan gives his days and nights to the cafe ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... 1835, and at first became a seminarist. On the point of being ordained a priest, he disappeared only to return, in 1849, so rabid a republican that he was outlawed at the time of the reestablishment of the pontifical government. He then served as secretary to Mazzini, with whom he disagreed for reasons which clashed with Ribalta's honor. Would passion for a woman have involved him in such extravagance? In 1870 Ribalta returned to Rome, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... orders, next, the Cardinals in priest's orders, then the Cardinal's in deacon's orders, the Secretaries, the compisteria of the Holy College of Cardinals, the Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, and the Pontifical Family." ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... he had authority from the Holy See to detain those he thought fit, and to even excommunicate those who would not obey when stopped by him, and he thought in this case it was better for him not to remain. When he wished to show the pontifical papers giving him power to excommunicate, Ignatius said there was no need, as he believed his word. If they had the authority, ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola

... the year the appointments which Nero or Galba had made were allowed to stand. The brothers Caelius and Flavius Sabinus[168] were consuls for June and July, Arrius Antoninus[169] and Marius Celsus for August and September; even Vitellius after his victory did not cancel their appointment. To the pontifical and augural colleges Otho either nominated old ex-magistrates, as the final crown of their career, or else, when young aristocrats returned from exile, he instated them by way of recompense in the pontifical posts which their fathers or grandfathers had held. He restored Cadius Rufus, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... Venice are, perhaps, equally beautiful; but I am inclined to give the preference to the work of Bernardo Rossellini. He became acquainted with Leonardo Bruni at the Papal Court, where he, as well as Leo Battista Alberti, was a director of the pontifical works. The Madonna let into the upper part of the monument is ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... is said to be meant for the pontifical apex occurs as a round ball surmounted by something very like a cross, in the hand of a female figure representing Rome; exactly as the so-called Coronation Orb is to be seen upon coins of later date in the hand of ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... bigoted papist, ascending the pontifical chair, immediately solicited the parliament of Turin to persecute the Waldenses, as the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... lamentation of those interested in the continuance of the old order of things, against the prevalence of sects and schism, but who at the same time, as Milton shrewdly intimates, dreaded more the rending of their pontifical sleeves than the rending of the Church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with the "Defence of Unlicensed Printing" before him? Who scoff at Quakerism over the "Journal" of George Fox? Who shall join ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... crowd, which was succeeded by a deep stillness. The Swiss Guards drove the throng to either side, and a passage-way was thus formed through the people to the church. A carriage drove up in great state. In this was seated an elderly gentleman in rich pontifical robes. He had a mild and gentle face, upon which was a sweet and winning smile. No face is more attractive than ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... of this period were merely imitations of the Latin comedies; and if we may judge by the most celebrated of them which still exists—the Mandragora of Macchiavelli, for example—far exceeded their models in obscenity. When Benedict XIV. ascended the pontifical throne he established a severe censorship, and inaugurated the harsh system to which I have already alluded, with the effect of banishing immoral productions from the stage, though without improving its intellectual tone. In the eighteenth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... their fanciful garments looking more gay and gorgeous against the dark gray and streaky silver of the forest, so that the moving figures glowed like stained-glass saints walking. The effect had been more fitting because so many of them had idly parodied pontifical or monastic dress. But the most arresting attitude that remained in their memories had been anything but merely monastic; that of the moment when the figure in bright green and the other in vivid violet had for a moment made a silver ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... chosen as the Republican whose pontifical damnation would most impress Mr. Hoover. The late W. Murray Crane, whom I have heard described at Mr. Roosevelt's dinner table as "the Uriah Heap of the Republican party," was the emissary who would advise Mr. Hoover to confess the error of his ways ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... for the avenging of any national quarrel, as for the spreading of free institutions and of Protestantism. Capita vix duabus Anticyris medenda! Verily I admire that no pious sergeant among these new Crusaders beheld Martin Luther riding at the front of the host upon a tamed pontifical bull, as, in that former invasion of Mexico, the zealous Diaz (spawn though he were of the Scarlet Woman) was favoured with a vision of St. James of Compostella, skewering the infidels upon his apostolical lance. We read, also, that Richard of the lion heart, having gone to ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... the fold that ought to have been wide enough for both of them. Moreover, this difference of opinion on matters of public and spiritual interest ended in a private and mundane animosity. Mr. Knight could never forgive a pupil of his own, whose ability he recognized, who dared to question his pontifical announcements. To him the matter was personal rather than one of religious truth, for there are certain minds in whose crucibles everything is resolved individually, and his was one of them. He was the largest matters through ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... that this way of talking, while pretending to be something pontifical, is really not prose at all, nor reputable speech at all, but Jargon; nor is the offence to be excused by pleading, as I have heard it pleaded, that Mr Lloyd George was not using his own phraseology but quoting from a paper ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... a portly, dignified figure in sober black, solemn of visage, sonorous of voice, a living example of the triumph of established tradition over the most savage buffetings of Fate. His enunciation was, if anything, more mellow, his demeanour more pontifical than of yore. ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... in all priestly ceremonies, whether ritual or pontifical, care is taken not at such times to name one god more than another, for fear of impiety, since it is quite uncertain ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... (Vatican City) chief of state: Pope JOHN PAUL II (since 16 October 1978) head of government: Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo SODANO (since 1 December 1990) cabinet: Pontifical Commission appointed by the pope elections: pope elected for life by the College of Cardinals; election last held 16 October 1978 (next to be held after the death of the current pope); secretary of state appointed by the pope election results: Karol WOJTYLA ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... here, and was received with military display, a salvo of artillery, etc. He entered the city clad in his pontifical robes, and went to the palace of the governor, who was awaiting him; [107] they remained a short time in conversation, the governor straitly charging him [to maintain] peace. Then he went to his ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... the right hand of Dr. Stahl; opposite him, on the doctor's left, a talkative Moscow fur-merchant who, having come to definite conclusions of his own about things n general, was persuaded the rest of the world must share them, and who delivered verbose commonplaces with a kind of pontifical utterance sometimes amusing, but usually boring; on his right a gentle-eyed, brown-bearded Armenian priest from the Venice monastery that had sheltered Byron, a man who ate everything except soup with his knife, yet with a daintiness that ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... art not ashamed no one will set himself to put thee to the blush; and pride thyself rather upon being one of lowly virtue than a lofty sinner. Countless are they who, born of mean parentage, have risen to the highest dignities, pontifical and imperial, and of the truth of this I could give thee instances enough ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... came from Rome and was directed by Romans, we find no trace of such an office or order until the time of Ecgbert of York (767), the friand of Alcuin and therefore subject to Gallican influence. The Pontifical known as Ecgbert's shows that it was then in use both as an office and as an order, and Aelfric (1006) in both his pastoral epistle and canons mentions the acolyte. The conclusion, then, which seems warranted by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... entered the cathedral. Henry was by her side. The Pontifical High Mass had commenced, and the organ rolled its majestic tones through the aisles of the old church. Immense crowds had already gathered around the tomb, and Charles and Henry repaired to a quiet and obscure portion of the building, where they ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... never to have had a pope in the family, and you will with difficulty find a villa of any pretension, certainly not in Frascati, where memorial tassels and tiara carven in stone over porch and doorway do not attest pontifical kinship." ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... Paris, followed by all his clergy, the Pontifical cross before him, his mitre on his head, go forth in procession through the streets. Let him summon to him the National Assembly and the High Court, the Legislators in their sashes, the Judges in their scarlet ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... amid the thunders of Sinai. This oracle decided all final questions and difficult points of justice. It could not be interrogated by private persons, only by the High Priest himself, clad in his pontifical vestments, and with the sacred insignia of his office, by "urim and thummim." Within the most sacred recesses of the tabernacle, in the Holy of Holies, the Deity made known his will to the most sacred personage of the nation, in order ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... school. We have exchanged the French-bred priest, illread in Dens, with low notions of the supremacy, and proportionally high notions of the British Crown, for a race of crafty, Jesuitical, intriguing, thorough-trained priests of the ultramontane school, who recognise but one power in the world—the Pontifical—and who are incurably alienated from British interests and rule. The loud and fearful curses fulminated from the altar, which come rolling across the Channel, mingled with the wrathful howls of a priest-ridden and maddened people, proclaim the result. These are ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... same energy, accompanied by the same unfaltering cruelty, and a natural facility of dissimulation even more profound. It was by this man that the other question was settled as to the time for giving effect to their designs. His own pontifical character had suggested to him, that in order to strengthen their influence with the vast mob of simple-minded men whom they were to lead into a howling wilderness, after persuading them to lay desolate their own ancient hearths, it was indispensable that they should ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... of state: Pope BENEDICT XVI (since 19 April 2005) head of government: Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio BERTONE (since 15 September 2006) cabinet: Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City appointed by the pope elections: pope elected for life by the College of Cardinals; election last held 19 April 2005 (next to be held after the death of the current pope); secretary ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... been accommodated with lodgings here at the same time without incommoding one another." In 1244 it had become a mitred abbey, Pope Innocent IV. having, at the request of Alexander II., empowered and authorised the abbot to assume the mitre, the ring, and other pontifical ornaments; and in the same year, in consideration of the excessive coldness of the climate, he granted to the monks the privilege of wearing caps suitable to their order; but they were, notwithstanding, enjoined to show proper ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... union with theology, which is not remarkable, as the learning of the time was chiefly in the hands of the clergy. One of the most popular works, the "Thesaurus Pauperum," was written by Petrus Hispanus, afterwards Pope John XXI. We may judge of the pontifical practice from the page here reproduced, which probably includes, under the term "iliac passion," all varieties ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... riches it possessed, a terrible thunder came from heaven and struck four thousand men dead, the rest ran mad. [1105]A little after, the like happened to Brennus, lightning, thunder, earthquakes, upon such a sacrilegious occasion. If we may believe our pontifical writers, they will relate unto us many strange and prodigious punishments in this kind, inflicted by their saints. How [1106]Clodoveus, sometime king of France, the son of Dagobert, lost his wits for uncovering the body of St. Denis: and how a [1107]sacrilegious Frenchman, that would have stolen ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... receiving in return the forged signature of "Marie-Antoinette de France." On August of the same year, in the midst of a banquet given at Bar-sur-Aube, a visitor arrived with startling news. "The Prince Cardinal de Rohan, Grand Almoner of France, was on the Festival of Assumption, arrested in pontifical robes, charged with having purchased a diamond necklace in the ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... could in any thing stand apart. Happily the theoretical fire-eater had faith superior to his own arguments;—faith in a woman's insight as finer than his own;—and he is let off with a gratified rebuke for preternatural submissiveness and for arraying her in pontifical garments of authority which hang loose upon so small a figure. The other application of his doctrine of resisting evil was even more trying to her feelings and the preacher was instant certainly out of season. Not the least important ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... you see that solemn figure, adorned with all the gold and purple of his pontifical dress, ascending, with the thought, the prayer of a multitude of ten thousand men, the triumphal steps in the choir of St Denis? Do you see him still, above all that kneeling mass, hovering as high as the vaulted roofs, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... out, and if, by any neglect on the part of the vestal in attendance, this was allowed to occur, the guilty maiden was punished terribly by scourging. The punishment was inflicted by the hands of the highest pontifical officer of the state. The laws of the institution however evinced their high regard for the purity and modesty of the vestal maidens by requiring that the blows should be administered in the dark, the sufferer having been previously prepared to receive them by being ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... a Pontiff in the West and ecclesiastical Councils in the East.—Nature of those Councils and of pontifical Power. ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... recollect, was a magnificent Jewish place of worship, in which my father, who was the high priest, appeared in vestments such as I believe the Jewish priests still wear in their solemn ceremonies, and which were so closely copied from the description of Aaron's sacred pontifical robes that I felt a sense of impropriety in such a representation (purely historical, as it was probably considered, and in no way differing from the costume accepted on the French stage in Racine's Jewish plays). And I think it extremely likely that the failure of the piece, which had been imminent ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... sounded along the arches; cowled figures knelt in the stalls of the choir; and on the steps of the high altar a priest in pontifical vestments celebrated mass. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the picturesqueness of his lion head set close on a pair of powerful shoulders, no less than by the vivacity of his dark face and southern gesture. He wore a linen jacket with bulging pockets, and a black skullcap, which gave him a masterful, pontifical air. To Victoria's thinking, indeed, he "pontified" at all times, a great deal more than ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... opportunity was afforded him by an apparition, which showed itself more than once at noonday to the wife of the Censier of Rothenkirchen, and above all, on the 7th of May for two succeeding years. She swears, and can make oath, that she has seen a venerable priest in pontifical garments embroidered with gold, who threw before her a great heap of stones; and although she is a Lutheran, and consequently not very credulous in things of that kind, she thinks nevertheless that if she had had the presence of mind to put down a handkerchief or an apron, all the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... frame capable of containing one or two persons within it; and the frame was covered over with thick canvas, so that those within could not be distinguished. In the front of the frame on the top, the Pope was seated in a chair of state, in his pontifical dress; and at a distance immediately behind him the Devil was placed in a standing position, holding a barbed dart in his right hand; between the Pope and the Devil, on each side, Lords Grenville and North ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... Chevalier Taylor, Ophthalmiator Pontifical, Imperial, and Royal,' as he styled himself. Gent. Mag. xxxi. 226. Lord Eldon said that—'Taylor, dining with the barristers upon the Oxford circuit, having related many wonderful things which he had done, was asked by Bearcroft, "Pray, Chevalier, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... carefully out of the way wherever he and his wife might go; nay, more, he had replaced over the doorway of his residence the royal escutcheon of Great Britain, only to return from the country one day and find that the Pontifical police had taken it down during his absence. After this we can understand, as I said, the disappointment and rage which must have accumulated in his heart, and which, fifteen months after his wedding, made him abandon the base town of the popes and seek ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... ecclesiastical history is a blot on his otherwise excellent "Life of St. Patrick." How can he reconcile these statements with St. Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians, which Eusebius admits to be genuine, or with Pope Stephen's exercise of pontifical authority in the case of St. Cyprian and the question of validity of baptism conferred by heretics; or with the celebrated declaration of St. Irenaeus on the authority of the Church of Rome, which is as follows: "It ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming

... M. de Talleyrand, who was at this time Minister of Foreign Affairs, giving, among other reasons, this, which seemed to him unanswerable, that, as no Pope had ever worn a wig, they would not fail to attribute to him, Cardinal Caprara, an intention of aspiring to the pontifical chair in case of a vacancy, which intention would be clearly shown by the suppression of his wig in the picture of the coronation. The entreaties of his Eminence were all in vain; for David would not consent to restore his precious wig, saying, that ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... aside. And ere the Pope had finished there were other interruptions; the chief of his band of musicians came for instructions for the concert at his Ferragosto on the first of August; and—most vexatious of all—a couple of goldsmiths came with their work, and with rival models of a button for the Pontifical cope. Giuseppe fumed and fretted while the Holy Father put on his spectacles to examine the great silver vase which was to receive the droppings from his table, its richly chased handles and its festoons of acanthus leaves, and its ingenious masks; and its fellow which was ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Vellano made many small things in marble and in bronze for the said Pope and for others, but I have not been able to find them. In Perugia the same master made a bronze statue larger than life, in which he portrayed the said Pope from nature, seated in his pontifical robes; and at the foot of this he placed his name and the year when it was made. This figure is in a niche of several kinds of stone, wrought with much diligence, without the door of S. Lorenzo, which is the Duomo ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... died he left Prussia in the grip of this enervating pontifical socialism, which always everywhere ends by palsying the individual, and through the individual the state, with the blight of demagogical and theoretical legislation. The fine army grew pallid and without spirit, the citizens lost their individual pride, the nation as a whole ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... Never, throughout his pontifical career, had the pope beheld such a crowd before. And these hundreds of thousands had assembled to bid him welcome. A smile of gratification flitted over his handsome features, and he raised his eyes to the face ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... was seated at the entrance of the church in a chair draped with white damask. The Cardinal of Bourbon, and several bishops glittering in pontifical robes, composed his brilliant retinue. The monks of St. Denis were also in attendance, clad in their sombre attire, bearing the cross, the Gospels, and the holy water. Thus the train of the exalted dignitary of the Church even eclipsed in splendor ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... minds and their minds being so confirmed in them that it would be almost like parting soul and body to give them up. It was said of Luther, by one of the later reformers, that he cut a large piece out of the Pope's pontifical robe as he left the Vatican, and kept it all his life as a sacred relic. This is of course highly figurative, and not to be understood literally; but to mean that he incorporated many papal errors in his subsequent ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... understanding, he betook himself to the sanctuary of the church, and there caused the candles to be lighted upon the altar, and the sacrament of his bread god to be taken out of the tabernacle, and attiring himself with his pontifical vestments, with his mitre on his head, his crosier in one hand, in the other he took his god of bread, and thus, with his train of priests about him at the altar, he waited for the coming of the sergeant and officers, whom he thought, with his god in his hand, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... formerly damned the Pontifical See, And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P.; But he turned up his nose at their murmuring and shamming, And cared (shall I say) not a d—— for their damning. So they first read him out of their church, and next minute Turned round ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... seemed to the emperor, Henry III, to call for his interference. He accordingly went to Italy and summoned a council at Sutri, north of Rome, in 1046, where two of the claimants were deposed. Gregory VI, more conscientious than his rivals, not only resigned his office but tore his pontifical robes in pieces and admitted his monstrous crime in buying the papal dignity, though his motives had been of the purest. The emperor then secured the election of a worthy German bishop as pope, whose first act was to crown Henry and ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... for a brief space, except the hated cypresses; a worthier heir shall consume your Caecuban wines now guarded with a hundred keys, and shall wet the pavement with the haughty wine, more exquisite than what graces pontifical entertainment. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... from the field of battle. A runaway, seated outside a cafe amidst a group of eager questioners, recounts that the barricade at the Neuilly bridge has been attacked by sergents de ville dressed as soldiers, and Pontifical Zouaves carrying a white flag.—"A parliamentary flag?" asks some one.—"No! a royalist flag," answered the runaway.—"And the barricade has been taken?"—"We had no cartridges; we had not eaten for twenty-four hours; of course ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... slow and solemn character, but all laughter, levity and exuberance are sedulously discountenanced, the aim of all present being to attain an attitude of serene and complacent ecstasy which enables them to invest utterances of the most perfect ineptitude with a portentous and pontifical significance. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various

... was well aware that St. Peter's throne rests on a solid basis, proof against all human attacks and needing no mortal defenders." The Nuncio returned thanks and praises and referred Garibaldi's tender to the Pontifical Government at Rome. But Garibaldi, never well disposed to losing time, after vainly waiting for further communication from Pope or Nuncio, brooked no longer delay. With incredible difficulty he scraped together money and means, and embarked ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... 144,) is a very learned and judicious performance, which explains the state, and prove the toleration, of Paganism from Constantino to Gratian. The assertion of Zosimus, that Gratian was the first who refused the pontifical robe, is confirmed beyond a doubt; and the murmurs of bigotry on that subject are ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... place in which Rudolf was mortally wounded, and the party opposed to Henry left without a leader, though the war continued. And now Henry, seeing that he could trust his cause in Germany to the hands of his lieutenants, determined to march upon his pontifical foe in Italy, and take revenge for his ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... Such a one to be in evil savour—to have the splendour of the pontifical countenance turned from him, as though he had taken Christians for Amalekites, and slain the people ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... call my landlord, is also a notary. He regrets the Pontifical Government, having had a cousin who was a Cardinal's train-bearer, and believes that if only you lay a table for two, light four candles made of dead men's fat, and perform certain rites about which he ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... book containing the daily services in the Roman Catholic Church and corresponding to the English Prayer-Book; differs from the "Missal," which gives the services connected with the celebration of the Eucharist, and the "Pontifical," which gives ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... subject: never were you less pleased, Morus, with Pontia's lines of beauty. At last, with difficulty, either margin of his cheeks fully written on, but the chin not yet finished, up he rises, a man, by your leave, absolutely nail-perfect, no mere Professor now but a Pontifical Doctor,—for you might have inscribed upon him, as on a painting, Pontia fecit. [We see now the reason for keeping to the form 'Pontia.'] Doctor? Nay rather a codex in which his vengeful critic had scraped her adverse comments with a ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... some of them. They seem now, after the lapse of years, frankly incredible, and yet they were real enough to give me not a little pain at the time. It is the fashion nowadays, if one says anything about oneself, to preface it by the pontifical remark that what one writes is penned for the sake of others, to save them, to cheer them, etc., etc. This, of course, now I come to think of it, must be my reason also for my lapse into autobiography. I see now that I only do it out of tenderness for the next generation. Therefore, young writers ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... others reserved and severe in air, sitting at the great ebony table which filled the middle of the room, and turning over some of those pious journals printed at Fouvieres, just above Lyons, the Echo of Purgatory, the Rose-bush of Mary, which give as a present to all yearly subscribers pontifical indulgences and remissions of future sins. Some muttered words, a stifled cough, the light whispered prayers of the sisters, recalled to Jansoulet the distant and confused sensation of the hours of waiting in the corner of his village church round the confessional on the eves ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... he gave the king the most certain pledge of his docility. After having held his pontifical court at Bordeaux and Poitiers he declared that he would fix his residence in France, in the county of Venaissin, at Avignon, a territory which Philip the Bold had remitted to Pope Gregory X. in execution of a deed of gift from Raymond VII., ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... joy in Mr. Nowell Charles Smith's new and comprehensive edition of Wordsworth, published by Methuen in three volumes as majestic as Wordsworth himself at his most pontifical. The price is fifteen shillings net, and having regard to the immense labour involved in such an edition, it is very cheap. I would sooner pay fifteen shillings for a real book like this than a guinea for the memoirs of any tin god that ever sat up at nights to keep a ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... pope); results - Karol WOJTYLA was elected for life by the College of Cardinals head of government: Secretary of State Archbishop Angelo Cardinal SODANO (since NA 1991) was appointed by the pope cabinet: Pontifical Commission was appointed ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... of state, Umbrellas were generally used in the south of Europe; they are found in the ceremonies of the Byzantine Church; they were borne over the Host in procession, and formed part of the Pontifical regalia. ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster

... hands gave him a vaguely pontifical air (Bishop Blessing Pilgrims), and the kindly smile he wore heightened the illusion. Mr MacGinnis, who followed, suggested no such idea. He was muttering moodily to himself, and he ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... her estates; and therefore Count Orso, whose respect for law causes him to have a keen eye for matrimonial alliances, is now paternally willing, and even anxious to bestow Michiella upon him when the Pontifical divorce can be obtained; so that the long-coveted fruitful acres may be in the family. The chorus sings a song of praise to Hymen, the 'builder of great Houses.' Camilla goes forth into exile. The word was not spoken, but the mention of 'bread of strangers, strange ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Proconessus, where he had died in exile and been buried. The whole city gathered to welcome the remains of the venerated prelate, and saw them borne in solemn and stately procession from the landing at the Gate of Eugenius (Yali Kiosk) to the church of S. Sophia. There, robed in pontifical vestments, the body was first seated upon the patriarchal throne, then laid before the altar, while the funeral service was intoned, and finally placed on the right hand of the bema in a chest locked and sealed ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... only subalterns, subject to the beck of the Pontiff; who frequently sent word to them, concerning the duties of their watch. His mandates were intrusted to one Ravoo, the hereditary pontifical messenger; a long-limbed varlet, so swift of foot, that he was said to travel like a javelin. "Art thou Ravoo, that thou so pliest thy legs?" say these islanders, to one ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... satisfaction, my dear son. Only, you must be prudent." And then, as if fearing that the young priest might have understood by his first words that he had just seen Monsignor Gamba, the most easily terrified prelate of the whole prudent pontifical family, he related that he had been running about since an early hour on behalf of two French ladies, who likewise were dying of a desire to see the Pope. However, he greatly feared that the help he was giving them would not ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... he saw one of the swords move. These were not statues but an armed order of chivalry thrown in three circles round the cross. MacIan drew in his breath, as children do at anything they think utterly beautiful. For he could imagine nothing that so echoed his own visions of pontifical or chivalric art as this white dome sitting like a vast silver tiara over London, ringed with a triple ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... Christian missionaries who proceeded to Thibet were surprised to find there in the heart of Asia a pontifical court and several other ecclesiastical institutions resembling those of the Roman Catholic church. They found convents for priests and nuns; also processions and forms of religious worship, attended with much pomp and splendor; and many ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... possible facts. It would not be knowledge of selection or of spontaneous variation, terms which are mere verbal bridges over the gaps in that knowledge, and mark the lacunae and unsolved problems of the science. Yet it is just such terms that seem to clothe "Science" in its pontifical garb; the cowl is taken for the monk; and when a penetrating critic, like M. Henri Poincare, turned his subtle irony upon them, the public cried that he had announced the "bankruptcy of science," whereas it is merely the language of science that he had reduced ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... to the ducal court of Milan, which served as a stepping-stone from which he advanced into the wider world of Rome. The papal capital knew him first as a disciple, then as a master, but the doubt whether he was satisfied to wait upon laggard pontifical favours is certainly permissible. He had made warm friendships, had enjoyed the intimacy of the great, and the congenial companionship of kindred spirits, but his talents had secured no permanent or lucrative ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... I have remarked in these pages that female limitations may be the limits of a temple as well as of a prison, the disabilities of a priest and not of a pariah. I noted it, I think, in the case of the pontifical feminine dress. In the same way it is not evidently irrational, if men decided that a woman, like a priest, must not be a ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... unworthy Benedict, thus to end the scandal which so foully disgraced the Holy See. As opinions were divided on this point, Gregory VI, to set all doubts at rest, stripped himself, with his own hands, of the Pontifical vestments, and gave up to the bishops his pastoral staff. Having given to the world this noble example of self-denial, Gregory withdrew to the monastery of Cluny, bearing with him the consciousness of a great ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... myself to the books which were taken over at and after the Dissolution. There is a Bury Psalter with drawings at the Vatican, a St. Albans Psalter at Hildesheim, a fine Book of Hours at Nuremberg, a Winchester Pontifical at Rouen, a Sherborne Book at Paris, a Ramsey Psalter at an Austrian abbey, another English Psalter at the Escurial. The Canterbury Codex Aureus is at Stockholm. The famous Utrecht Psalter, written, ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... pontifical, arraid, Her the archbishop Turpin did baptize; Charlemagne from the healthful font the maid Uplifted with befitting ceremonies. But it is time the witless head to aid With that, which treasured in the phial lies, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... Sunday was entered (p. 149) into; the inhabitants of the town pledging themselves by a most solemn oath to abide by the terms of the agreement. The ceremony on this occasion must have had a very imposing effect. The King's chaplain, Benedict Bishop of Bangor, in his pontifical dress, carried the consecrated Host to the walls of the town, preceded by thirty-two chaplains, each in full canonicals, and attended by as many esquires, one of whom bore a lighted taper before each priest. As soon as the parties were sworn on the elements, the townsmen ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... Their spirit of profanation and impiety arrived at the extreme pitch. They composed satirical and other songs against the Pope—one of these in the form of a parody on our Lord's prayer—and sung them in the public streets, and even under the windows of the pontifical palace. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... promoting popular education, and especially for the moral, religious, and industrial instruction of the children of the poor. Commissions were appointed to deliberate and advise upon many subjects of proposed reform. Great, indeed, was the need of change in the institutions of the Pontifical States; but the Government had a delicate part to play in amending them, and it wisely determined not to be precipitate in its measures. "Already the Liberals had conceived boundless desires, and the Retrogradists were haunted with unreasonable fears. The Government had, to-day, to moderate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... insurrection, had found his way into the mansion disguised in woman's apparel, and, having been detected, had made his escape by the help of a female slave. The matter was laid before the Senate, and by them referred to the members of the Pontifical College, who passed a resolution that sacrilege had been committed. Caesar forthwith divorced his wife. Clodius was impeached and brought to trial. In defense he pleaded an alibi, offering to prove that he was at Interamna at the very time when the crime ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... permitted me to describe the vicissitudes through which the structure passed before reaching completion. Nicholas V., founder of the secular papacy and chief patron of the humanistic movement in Rome, had approved a scheme for thoroughly rebuilding and refortifying the pontifical city.[46] Part of this plan involved the reconstruction of S. Peter's. The old basilica was to be removed, and on its site was to rise a mighty church, shaped like a Latin cross, with a central dome and two high towers flanking the vestibule. Nicholas died before his project could be carried into ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... from the year 1080. It was sung at the closing of the Council called by order of William the Conqueror. Gregory VII was Pope and Philip I King of France. To this day, in the Cathedral of Rouen it is customary to render this chant on all solemn Pontifical feasts. ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various

... John the foundation of their Secret Church, and the Grand Pontiffs of the Sect assumed the title of Christos, Anointed, or Consecrated, and claimed to have succeeded one another from Saint John by an uninterrupted succession of pontifical powers. He who, at the period of the foundation of the Order of the Temple, claimed these imaginary prerogatives, was named THEOCLET; he knew HUGUES DE PAYENS, he initiated him into the Mysteries and hopes of his pretended church, he seduced him by the notions of Sovereign Priesthood and Supreme ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... end, a fact that gave Horace ground for his expression, ab ovo usque ad mala, from the egg to the apple, from the beginning to the end. [Footnote: The practical side of the Roman priesthood was the priestly cuisine; the augural and pontifical banquets were, as we may say, the official gala days in the life of a Roman epicure, and several of them form epochs in the history of gastronomy: the banquet on the occasion of the inauguration of the augur Quintus Hortensius, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... with papal permission, no public official or agent in the performance of his public duties shall so much as enter the papal palaces or grounds, or any place where there may be in session at any time a conclave or ecumenical council. During a vacancy of the pontifical chair no judicial or political functionary may, on any pretext, invade the (p. 389) personal liberty of the cardinals, and the Government engages specifically to see to it that conclaves and ecumenical councils shall not be ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... horror-stricken with the slaughter which for three days had been going on, resolved to attempt a reconciliation between the contending parties, or perish in the attempt. Having obtained leave from General Cavaignac to repair to the headquarters of the insurgents, he set out, dressed in his pontifical robes, having the cross in his hand, attended by his two chaplains, also in full canonicals, and three intrepid members of the Assembly. Deeply affected by this courageous act, which they knew was almost certain death, the people, as he walked through ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... 7.45 to be precise—we four sat down to such a dinner as, I hold, only The Infant's cook can produce, with wines worthy of pontifical banquets. A man in the extremity of rage and injured dignity is precisely like a typhoid patient. He asks no questions, accepts what is put before him, and babbles in one key—very often of trifles. But food ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... must have understood it. He is my friend of friends as he lies opposite my window in his alabaster sleep, clad in pontifical robes, with unshod feet, a little island of white peace in a many-coloured marble sea. The faithful sculptor has given every line and wrinkle, the heavy eyelids and sunken face of tired old age, but withal the smile ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... the day, these spread their cloths five or six times, and in such wise as I before rehearsed. They brought in also the custom of long and stately sitting at meat, whereby their feasts resembled those ancient pontifical banquets whereof Macrobius speaketh (lib. 3, cap. 13), and Pliny (lib. 10, cap. 10), and which for sumptuousness of fare, long sitting, and curiosity shewed in the same, exceeded all other men's feasting; which fondness is not yet left with us, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... craft, address, and dissimulation, thanks to mighty promises of corruption, thanks to the singular mixture of admiration, fear, and confidence, with which his genius inspired many influential persons, Rodin now learned from members of the pontifical government, that, in case of a possible and probable occurrence, he might, within a given time, aspire, with a good chance of success, to a position which has too often excited the fear, the hate, or the envy of many sovereigns, and which has in turn, been occupied ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... present government of United Free Italy under the constitutional sway of King Humbert, in particular. Since 1859 the Italians of what was once known as the States of the Church, have been deprived of this great blessing of the Pontifical rule, and with what dire ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... land of many petty states, each more or less a law unto itself, and each, in the fifties, issuing its own separate series of postage stamps. The stamps of the Pontifical States are made familiar by their typical design of a tiara and keys, and pompous King Bomba ordered the best engraver to be found to immortalise him in a portrait for a series of stamps. The other states had each its own heraldic design till the foundations of ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell

... equality mean that all men are equally rude? Should it not rather mean that all men are equally polite? Might it not quite reasonably mean that all men should be equally ceremonious and stately and pontifical? What is there specially Equalitarian, for instance, in calling your political friends and even your political enemies by their Christian names in public? There is something very futile in the way in which certain Socialist leaders ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... Valentin was still sleeping; the surgeon, who had had a fairly tranquil night, was at present sitting with him. Before M. de Grosjoyaux's associate reappeared, Newman learned that his name was M. Ledoux, and that Bellegarde's acquaintance with him dated from the days when they served together in the Pontifical Zouaves. M. Ledoux was the nephew of a distinguished Ultramontane bishop. At last the bishop's nephew came in with a toilet in which an ingenious attempt at harmony with the peculiar situation was visible, and with a gravity tempered ...
— The American • Henry James

... Italian realm. From the moment that Rome was separated from the authority of the Italian Kings, there existed two powers in the Peninsula—the one secular, monarchical, with the military strength of the barbarians imposed upon its ancient municipal organization; the other ecclesiastical, pontifical, relying on the undefined ambitions of S. Peter's See and the unconquered instincts of the Roman people scattered through the still surviving cities.[1] Justinian, bent upon asserting his rights as the successor of the Caesars, wrested Italy from the hands of the Goths; ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... reputation for wisdom that led people to seek them for their advice. Permission was given by the Church authorities to those who took up this mode of life, the assumption of which formed part of a special service. The Pontifical of Archbishop Bainbridge, who held the see from 1508 to 1514, contains an office for the Enclosing of an Anchorite. Hermits lived in less strict seclusion. Their aims were similar, but they went about in the ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... general pardon, and the remission which he had granted of old debts, and to impose new and arbitrary taxes without consent of parliament. The archbishop went so far, in a letter to the king himself, as to tell him, that there were two powers by which the world was governed, the holy pontifical apostolic dignity, and the royal subordinate authority: that of these two powers, the clerical was evidently the supreme; since the priests were to answer, at the tribunal of the divine judgment, for the conduct ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... Maximus, Scipio's brother, and Lucius Mancinus were Consuls, how much the people seemed to favor the law of Caius Licinius Crassus about the priests. The law proposed to transfer the election of priests from their own respective colleges to the suffrage of the people; [Footnote: The several pontifical colleges had been close corporations, filling their own vacancies. The law which Laelius defeated proposed transferring the election of priests to the people.] and he on that occasion introduced the ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... not prevent the devout from breaking the law whenever a chance offered. They hid themselves more or less when they sacrificed before a temple, a chapel, or on some private estate. The rites could not be carried out according to all the minute instructions of the pontifical books. It was no more than a shadow of the ceremonies of former times. But in his childhood, in the reign of Julian, for instance, Augustin could have attended sacrifices which were celebrated with full pomp and according to all the ritual forms. They were veritable ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand



Words linked to "Pontifical" :   pope, grandiloquent, pretentious, vestment, bishop, pontiff, apostolical



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