Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Pontificate   Listen
noun
Pontificate  n.  
1.
The state or dignity of a high priest; specifically, the office of the pope.
2.
The term of office of a pontiff.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Pontificate" Quotes from Famous Books



... revive the animosities which had accumulated against its Founder, and eventually brought about his death. The Sadducee family of Hanan, who had caused the death of Jesus, was still reigning. Joseph Caiaphas occupied, up to 36, the sovereign pontificate, the effective power of which he gave over to his father-in-law Hanan, and to his relatives, John and Alexander. These arrogant and pitiless men viewed with impatience a troop of good and holy people, without official title, winning the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... titles are known, is the best evidence of his versatility. A bit of criticism here and there shows the estimation in which Caesar the writer and orator was held by his countrymen and contemporaries. Besides the military memoirs and the works spoken of above in connection with his pontificate, we may mention, as of a semi-official character, his astronomical treatise On the Stars (De Astris), published in connection with his reform of the calendar, when dictator, shortly before the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... There can be little doubt that the pope fostered the sleepless disaffection of the dukes, but when their revolt matured Desiderius was able to crush it, laying waste the Pentapolis on his way. He was then wise enough to visit Rome and to arrange a peace which was only once broken during pope Paul's pontificate: in 761 when ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... answered modestly, "the great-grandson of the unfortunate Marco Antonio Casanova, secretary to Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, who died of the plague in Rome, in the year 1528, under the pontificate of Clement VII." The words were scarcely out of my lips when he embraced me, calling me his cousin, but we all thought that Doctor Gennaro would actually die with laughter, for it seemed impossible to laugh ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... merciful provision both for the manslayer, that he might be preserved, and for the avenger, that his blood might be cooled by the removal of the manslayer out of his sight. In the year 1487, during the Pontificate of Innocent VIII. a bull was issued, and sent here, to lay a little restraint on the privileges of sanctuary. It stated, that if thieves, murderers, or robbers, registered as sanctuary-men, should sally out and commit fresh nuisances, which they frequently did, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various

... which he entitled concordia discordantium canonum, but which are generally known by the name of decretum Gratiani. These reached as low as the time of pope Alexander III. The subsequent papal decrees, to the pontificate of Gregory IX, were published in much the same method under the auspices of that pope, about the year 1230, in five books entitled decretalia Gregorii noni. A sixth book was added by Boniface VIII, about the year 1298, which is called sextus decretalium. The Clementine ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... Joseph Kaiapha, but beside and behind him we always see another man, Hanan, his father-in-law. He had been High Priest, and in reality kept all the authority of the office. During fifty years the pontificate remained in his family almost without interruption. The family spirit was haughty, bold, and cruel. It was Hanan, his family, and the party he represented, who really put Jesus to death. After the death of Jesus was decided, he escaped for a short ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... it, which are the initials of the Latin words conveying the same meaning. But if we would learn how the figure of a man came to be suspended upon this form of the cross, we must refer to Mediaeval History, which teaches that in the year 680, under the Pontificate of Agathon, and during the reign of Constantine Pogonat, at the sixth council of the church, and third at Constantinople, it was ordered in Canon 82 that "Instead of a lamb, the figure of a man nailed to a cross should be the distinguishing ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... permanent place, does not, however, consist in any formal narrative of events, or in its pictures of noted individuals, but in its representation of the states of mind and feeling of the Romans during the first years of the pontificate of the present Pope, of the objects and methods of action of the various parties that were then called into active existence, of the occasions of the rapid changes in the popular disposition from the time when Pius IX. was the idol of the crowd to that when he was a faithless fugitive to Gaeta, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... of Rodrigo's private life during the pontificate of the four popes who followed Calixtus—Pius II, Paul II, Sixtus IV, and Innocent VIII—for the records of ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... His Holiness will exercise the pontificate in France, and in the Kingdom of Italy, in the same manner and under the same ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... the authority of the Popes, both as Heads of the Church and as temporal rulers, had been impaired by exile in France and by ruinous schisms. A new era began with the election of Nicholas V. in 1447, and ended during the pontificate of Clement VII. with the sack of Rome in 1527. Through the whole of this period the Popes acted more as monarchs than as pontiffs, and the secularization of the See of Rome was earned to its utmost limits. The contrast between the sacerdotal pretensions and the personal immorality ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... the base falsehoods that had been bruited by that time-serving vassal Guicciardini, and others of his kidney, whom the upstart Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere—sometime pedlar—in his jealous fury at seeing the coveted pontificate pass into the family of Borgia, bought and hired to do his loathsome work of calumny and besmirch the fame of as sweet a lady as Italy has known. But this poor chronicle of mine is rather concerned with the history of Madonna Paola di Santafior, and it were a divergence ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... IX., consulting for the special wants of the Catholics of Ireland, has not ceased, almost from the very beginning of his glorious pontificate, to repeat similar instructions in his apostolic letters to the Irish Bishops. Hence, by his rescripts of October 1847, and October 1848, he condemned, from their first institution, the Queen's Colleges, on account of their ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... public affairs, and only reappeared in the days of Sixtus IV, who made him the gift of the abbacy of Subiaco, and sent him in the capacity of ambassador to the kings of Aragon and Portugal. On his return, which took place during the pontificate of Innocent VIII, he decided to fetch his family at last to Rome: thither they came, escorted by Don Manuel Melchior, who from that moment passed as the husband of Rosa Vanozza, and took the name of Count Ferdinand of Castile. The Cardinal ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Rome, at St. Mark's, under the seal of the Fisherman, on the fifteenth day of September, in the year 1582, the eleventh of our pontificate. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... Latin Christianity, to the Pontificate of Nicholas V.," which is here presented, was published in 1854-56. It covers the religious or ecclesiastical history of Western Europe from the fall of paganism to the pontificate of Nicholas V., a period of eleven centuries, corresponding practically with what are commonly called the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... by this time know well enough; adequately to describe Pope Leo I, we should have to travel too far into the region of ecclesiastical history. Chosen pope in the year 440, he was now about half way through his long pontificate, one of the few which have nearly rivalled the twenty-five years traditionally assigned to St. Peter. A firm disciplinarian, not to say a persecutor, he had caused the Priscillianists of Spain and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... him to Rome. Pope Paul V. was soon interested in him, and Cardinal Barberini assisted him in his studies; from this fortunate beginning all through his life good fortune attended his steps. He lived through the pontificate of nine popes, and was always in favor with the reigning head of the Church. This gave him the opportunity to fill Rome with his works, and he imprinted himself upon the art of the Eternal City; no artist since the time of Michael Angelo held such sway, and Bernini ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... Council held in Spain during the pontificate of Sylvester I., which forbids us to light a taper by day in the cemeteries of martyrs, adding, as a reason, that we must not disturb the spirits of the saints, is of no consideration; because besides that these words are ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... Bologna, and proposed further to dig up and burn the bones of the poet at Ravenna, as having been a heretic; but so much opposition was roused that he thought better of it. Yet this was during the pontificate of the Frenchman, John XXII., the reproof of whose simony Dante puts in the mouth of St. Peter, who declares his seat vacant,[41] whose damnation the poet himself seems to prophesy,[42] and against ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... The short pontificate of the new Nicholas was devoted largely to measures for securing the freedom of papal elections from secular interference. By a decree passed in a numerously attended Council at the Pope's Lateran palace, a College or Corporation was formed of the seven bishops of the sees in the immediate ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... more vigorous intellect, or one to exercise his art and carry it into execution with greater invention and proportion, or with a more thorough knowledge, than Bramante. But no less essential than all this was the election to the Pontificate, at that time, of Julius II, a Pope of great spirit, full of desire to leave memorials behind him. And it was fortunate both for us and for Bramante that he found such a Prince (a thing which rarely happens to men of great genius), at whose expense he might be ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... afterwards, when a time came when it behoved him to have done with patience and gentleness, he knew not how to drop them, and was ruined together with his country. Pope Julius II., throughout the whole of his pontificate, was governed by impulse and passion, and because the times were in perfect accord, all his undertakings prospered. But had other times come requiring other qualities, he could not have escaped destruction, since he could not have changed his ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... his story on this occasion with a most fantastical and exaggerated account of the celebrated Santissima Casa of Loretto, which he imagined was still endowed with all the treasures it possessed anterior to its losses during the pontificate of Pius VI. He asserted that it was the richest tabernacle in Europe, and that the adornments of the altar were valued at several millions of crowns,—the votive offerings and legacies of devotees during a ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... the fifth century the light of the gospel was eclipsed in the darkness of Romanism. During this century the papacy secured political recognition of its claims to direct jurisdiction over all churches. This occurred during the pontificate of Leo I, who, because of his success in furthering the interests of the popedom, shares alone with Pope Gregory the title of "the Great." To quote from the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Leo "entered upon a pontificate which was to be epoch-making for the centralization of the government ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... sculptors and painters, like Michael Angelo; and the ancient writers praise the paintings of these great artists as much as their sculpture. The Aldobrandini Marriage, found on the Esquiline Mount during the pontificate of Clement VIII., and placed in the Vatican by Pius VII., is admired both for drawing and color. Polygnotus was praised by Aristotle for his designs, and by Lucian ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... clericalism, sacerdotalism^, episcopalianism, ultramontanism^; theocracy; ecclesiology^, ecclesiologist^; priestcraft^, odium theologicum [Lat.]. monachism^, monachy^; monasticism, monkhood^. [Ecclesiastical offices and dignities] pontificate, primacy, archbishopric^, archiepiscopacy^; prelacy; bishopric, bishopdom^; episcopate, episcopacy; see, diocese; deanery, stall; canonry, canonicate^; prebend, prebendaryship^; benefice, incumbency, glebe, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... some other into the background. Though the population of the city at the inception of the Reformation had sunk to eighty thousand, there were vast crowds of placemen, and still greater ones of aspirants for place. The successful occupant of the pontificate had thousands of offices to give away—offices from many of which the incumbents had been remorselessly ejected; many had been created for the purpose of sale. The integrity and capacity of an applicant were never inquired into; the points considered ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... monument of Caius Cestius, which is entirely uninjured, in form of a pyramid, near which the Protestants are buried; the Cloaca Maxima, built by Tarquin, etc. Besides the obelisk near the Porta del Popolo, that raised in the pontificate of Pius VI., on mount Cavallo, is deserving of notice. The principal collections of literature and the arts have already been noticed; but the Museo Kircheliano deserves to be particularly mentioned; there are, besides, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner



Words linked to "Pontificate" :   administrate, Catholic Pope, regime, pope, Roman Catholic Pope, pontifex, Bishop of Rome, administer, speak, Vicar of Christ, pontiff, papacy, Holy Father, authorities, government



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com