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Gregorian   Listen
adjective
Gregorian  adj.  Pertaining to, or originated by, some person named Gregory, especially one of the popes of that name.
Gregorian calendar, the calendar as reformed by Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582, including the method of adjusting the leap years so as to harmonize the civil year with the solar, and also the regulation of the time of Easter and the movable feasts by means of epochs. See Gregorian year (below).
Gregorian chant (Mus.), plain song, or canto fermo, a kind of unisonous music, according to the eight celebrated church modes, as arranged and prescribed by Pope Gregory I. (called "the Great") in the 6th century.
Gregorian modes, the musical scales ordained by Pope Gregory the Great, and named after the ancient Greek scales, as Dorian, Lydian, etc.
Gregorian telescope (Opt.), a form of reflecting telescope, named from Prof. James Gregory, of Edinburgh, who perfected it in 1663. A small concave mirror in the axis of this telescope, having its focus coincident with that of the large reflector, transmits the light received from the latter back through a hole in its center to the eyepiece placed behind it.
Gregorian year, the year as now reckoned according to the Gregorian calendar. Thus, every year, of the current reckoning, which is divisible by 4, except those divisible by 100 and not by 400, has 366 days; all other years have 365 days. See Bissextile, and Note under Style, n., 7.






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"Gregorian" Quotes from Famous Books



... Gregorian tones are certain chants of peculiar beauty and solemnity handed down to us from remote antiquity. They are said to have been set forth in their present form by Gregory the Great in the Sixth Century, from whom they are named. They are numbered from one to eight, with a few ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller

... kin to set an example of economy, however desirable that virtue might be in the case of society at large. Further, it was provided that no wadded garment should be worn after the 1st of April—corresponding to about the 1st of May in the Gregorian calendar; that pantaloons and socks must not be lined; that men of inferior position must not wear leather socks, and that samurai must use only half-foot sandals, a specially inexpensive kind of footgear. Finally, no one was permitted to employ ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... Anselm to hold the council of the English Church which William Rufus had so long refused him. The council met at Westminster and adopted a series of canons, whose chief object was the complete carrying out of the Gregorian reformation in the English Church. The most important of them concerned the celibacy of the priesthood, and enacted the strictest demands of the reform party, without regard to existing conditions. No clerics of any grade from ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... begin to speak a richer language, the Church will take that language and find in it a fuller expression of her mind than she can in the present patois; she will be able again to say to them in other words, as yet unknown, what she said to the middle ages in Gregorian chaunt and Gothic cathedral. She, who in virtue of her Pentecostal gift of tongues, speaks in sundry times and divers manners, may in due season find words as eloquent of her heart and mind as those which she spoke to Durtal in the aisles of Chartres and in the cadences ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... two opposite faults; but it is true that where the popular emotions are not touched, the masses will cling to old abuses from mere force of habit. As Maine says, universal suffrage would have prohibited the spinning-jenny and the power-loom, the threshing-machine and the Gregorian calendar; and it would have restored the Stuarts. The theory of democracy—vox populi vox dei—is a pure superstition, a belief in a divine or natural sanction which does not exist. And superstition is usually obstructive. 'We erect the temporary watchwords of ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... GREGORIAN TREE. The gallows: so named from Gregory Brandon, a famous finisher of the law; to whom Sir William Segar, garter king of arms (being imposed on by Brooke, a herald), granted a coat ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... in imitation of the sombre Gregorian Mass, and then over the face of this dark background sketched in modern passionate music the lyrical and dramatic lightning of the action. This wonderful conception, both in idea, words and music, was "passed by censors" ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... repeater; timekeeper, timepiece; dial, sundial, gnomon, horologe, pendulum, hourglass, clepsydra[obs3]; ghurry[obs3]. chronographer[obs3], chronologer, chronologist, timekeeper; annalist. calendar year, leap year, Julian calendar, Gregorian calendar, Chinese calendar, Jewish calendar, perpetual calendar, Farmer's almanac, fiscal year. V. fix the time, mark the time; date, register, chronicle; measure time, beat time, mark time; bear date; synchronize watches. Adj. chronological, chronometrical[obs3], chronogrammatical[obs3]; cinquecento[Fr], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... wonderful golden Pagoda with its crown of jewels, the vast multitudes in many-hued garments, the flowers, fluttering flags, coloured lights, all as it were attuned to the accompaniment of merry voices, sonorous Gregorian ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... back in his great arm-chair, his legs all muffled up in furs, for he could get no heat; and by him stood Herluin the prior, and wondered when he would die, and Thorold take his place, and they should drive out the old Gregorian chants from the choir, and have the new Norman chants of Robert of Fecamp, and bring in French-Roman customs in all things, and rule the English boors ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... butlers, but in a morning coat and a black tie with blue spots. Still, he was large, with side whiskers, even if his clean-shaven mouth was weak and little. I sat among these people on a high, hard, early Gregorian chair, trying to exist, like a feeble seedling amidst great rocks, and my mother sat with an eye upon me, resolute to suppress the slightest manifestation of vitality. It was hard on me, but perhaps ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... Uilden or Wildeng.[8] In 791 a noble named Eardwulf, who had plotted against Ethelred, then King of Northumbria, was put to death (as it was thought) at the monastery gate by the king's orders. The monks carried him 'with Gregorian chantings' to the precincts of the church, where they laid him out, but after midnight he was found within the building—a recovery which was regarded ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

... Cut to Culture; and he would read with what at that time, it being new to them, seemed to the twins a strange exotic pronunciation, Wordsworth's "Ode to Dooty," and the effect was as if someone should dig a majestic Gregorian psalm in its ribs, and make it ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... Eastbourne).—Went, morning and evening, to the new chapel-of-ease belonging to S. Saviour's. It has the immense advantage of not being crowded; but this scarcely compensates for the vile Gregorian chants, which vex and weary ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... he had so strangely adopted came to the mind of the earl; they were not of his blood, yet they might be "an heritage and gift of the Lord." And as the psalms rose and fell to the rugged old Gregorian tones—old even then—their words seemed to Simon de Montfort ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge—'" the parson suddenly chanted under his breath, using the old Gregorian measure for the few words of the oldest song of impersonal love extant. "Thank you for bringing Martha's boy up to the Little House. Jacob has refused both Mother Spurlock and ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... heard Mass at the church of the Cowley Fathers, a strengthening experience, because the Gregorian there so strictly and so austerely chanted without any consideration for sentimental humanity possessed that very effect of liberating and purifying spirit held in the bonds of flesh which is conveyed ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... Augustine, either just before his English mission, or sent to him soon afterward, nine volumes, which were put in St. Augustine's monastery —the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, beyond the walls. Being for church purposes, the books were very beautiful and valuable. There was the Gregorian Bible in two volumes, with some of its leaves coloured rose and purple, which gave a wonderful reflection when held to the light; the Psalter of Augustine; a copy of the Gospels called the Text of St. Mildred, upon which a countryman in Thanet ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... and Canticles are generally sung to a chant. These are of two kinds—Gregorian and Anglican. Gregorian chants are very ancient; a collection of them was compiled by Gregory, Bishop of Rome, about A.D. 600. They are sung in unison. Anglican chants, which are of much more recent invention, are sung in harmony. Nearly ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous

... uplifted by the mystic effluence, the very emanation of the Middle Ages, for ever lost; and yet their works have retained a certain pomp, and in spite of all are pretentious, as opposed to the humble magnificence, the sober splendour of the Gregorian chant—with them the whole thing came to an end, for composers ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... matters, still bears evident marks of the ancient Tuscan constitution; and that, although they be frequently exposed to inconveniences from their stubbornness in this respect, they have not yet been prevailed upon to adopt the Gregorian ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.

... exact than this when we adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, and the people marched about the streets in procession, crying "Give us back our eleven days!" Perhaps this is not quite a fair way of putting the case, however, for the new style would have been adopted in our country long before, had it not been ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... by the Persians, called Dhu'lkaddeh by the Arabians, which is the eleventh month of the Mahometan year. As this year is lunar, the months run through all the seasons, for want of a properly regulated kalendar, or a period like the Julian or Gregorian. To enable the reader to understand the journal, we give the Persian names of the months in their order: 1. Moharram; 2. Safar; 3. Rabiya-al-awal, or Prior; 4, Rabiya-al-Akher, or Latter; 5. Jomada-al- awal; 6. Jomada-al-akher; 7. Rajeb; 8. Shaaban; 9. Ramazan; 10. Shawal; 11. Zu'lkaadeh; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... age, which witnessed a very great expansion of commerce, especially of foreign trade. In the earlier centuries remuneration for undertaking risk was prohibited on the authority of a passage in the Gregorian Decretals, but the later writers refused to disallow it.[1] The following passage from Dr. Cunningham's Growth of English Industry and Commerce correctly represents the attitude of the Church towards commerce ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... His knowledge of astronomy led him to accomplish one important change, for which we have reason to remember him to-day. He reformed the calendar, substituting the one used until 1582 (known from him as the Julian calendar) for that which was then current. [Footnote: The Gregorian calendar was introduced in the Catholic states of Europe in 1582, but owing to popular prejudice England did not begin to use it until 1752, in which year September 3d became, by act of Parliament, September 14th. Usage in America followed that of ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... The discrepancy of dates is based on the difference of the two calendars. When Columbus discovered this country, the old Julian calendar was in vogue, and the date of discovery was marked the 12th; but Pope Gregory XIII. introduced the Gregorian calendar, according to which the 21st would now be the date. We will avail ourselves of both dates—the first date to be of a religious, the second of a civil, character. We therefore order that on the 12th of October a solemn votive mass (pro gratiarum actione dicendo Missam votivam de S. S. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... Note 2 S, p. 330. One of the most remarkable acts which passed in the course of this session, was that for regulating the commencement of the year, and correcting the calendar, according to the Gregorian computation, which had been adopted by all other nations in Europe. By this new law it was decreed that the new year should begin on the 1st day of January, and that eleven intermediate nominal days, between the second and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... the solar year of the Romans as now restored; whilst others commenced with the Annunciation; a custom which became very prevalent in honour of the Virgin Mary, and was not formally abolished here till the year 1752; when the Gregorian calendar, commonly called the New Style, was substituted by Act of Parliament for the Dionysian. This diversity of computation would alone occasion some confusion; but in addition to this, the INDICTION, or cycle of fifteen ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... up, so the name of Flatbush was called. He, too, was absent, and Mr. Quelson explained in exasperated accents that these two were his prize pupils, but had begged off to umpire a game of Gregorian-chant cricket down in the village. "Ask for Palestrina McVickar," said Mr. Quelson, in an ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... to be placed in the thickest of danger. When he falls, they find on his breast a withered spray from the pear-tree under which Perrine had first plighted troth. On these simple lines the music builds up a drama. From the opening shimmer and rustle of the garden, through the Gregorian chant that solemnizes the drawing of the lots, and is interrupted by the youth's start of joy at his own luck (an abrupt glissando); through his sturdy resolve to go to war in his friend's place, on through many battles to his death, all is on a high plane ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... the thrilling harmonies they were creating. The stars came on one at a time, the odd one out meanwhile augmenting the chorus, and sang a few verses of a song to a tune that can only be described as a Gregorian chant with squiggly bits thrown in. Of course I was unable to understand the words, but can bear witness to the fact that the tune did not vary the whole evening, and every gesture and attitude of the singer ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell

... hour: the bare little church made beautiful with our garlands of green, and the twinkle of many candles around the altar; the heads bowed in prayer; the subdued murmur of voices making the responses; the swelling note of triumph in the Gregorian chant; and then coming out under the quiet stars and exchanging greetings with ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... indication observe that in the "Pater noster" I simply modulate and develop somewhat,—in the somewhat confined limits of a sentiment of trusting and pious submission,—the Gregorian intonation as ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... He passed to the Scriptorium: round he gazed, And thought of happy days, when Gregory, One time their Abbot, next their Pope, would send Some precious volume to his exiled sons, While they in reverence knelt, and kissed its edge, And, kissing, heard once more, as if in dream, Gregorian chants through Roman palm trees borne With echoes from the Coliseum's wall Adown that Coelian Hill; and saw God's poor At feast around that humble board which graced That palace senatorial once. He stood: ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... and any lasting peace stood the anti-Pope Clement III; for all who had received consecration at Clement's hands were bound at all hazards to maintain the lawfulness of his election. Moreover, Clement's opponent now was a man to be reckoned with. The first choice of the Gregorian party, Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, could not be consecrated for a year after his election, and four months later he was dead (September, 1087). The partisans of Clement were too strong in Rome, and the next election was carried out with total disregard ...
— 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

... the earth's axis; to these two discoveries, Delambre says, we owe the exactness of modern astronomy. It promoted the improvement of the thermometer, the measure of temperature, and in Harrison's watch, the chronometer, the measure of time. Through it the Gregorian Calendar was introduced into England, in 1752, against a violent religious opposition. Some of its Fellows were pursued through the streets by an ignorant and infuriated mob, who believed it had robbed them of eleven days of their lives; it was found necessary to conceal the name of ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... formed of these vases. The British Museum contains the finest collections, purchased by government from Sir William Hamilton and others. The Museum at Naples, and the Gregorian Museum in the Vatican, also contain many beautiful specimens from Magna Graecia and Etruria. The British Museum has about 2,600 vases of all kinds. The Museum at Naples contains about 2,100, and the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... somewhat unsympathetic holiday-makers, you may hear God served with perhaps more touching circumstances than in any other temple under heaven. An Indian, stone-blind and about eighty years of age, conducts the singing; other Indians compose the choir; yet they have the Gregorian music at their finger ends, and pronounce the Latin so correctly that I could follow the meaning as they sang. The pronunciation was odd and nasal, the singing hurried and staccato. "In saecula saeculo-hohorum," they went, with a vigorous ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... my blanket and again was just closing my eyes when the unexpected sound of Gregorian chant made me sit up. Nearer and nearer it drew, louder and louder rose the priests' voices, and then a much-befringed and flower-laden hearse, preceded by the clergy and followed by the mourners (the men in evening dress and ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... comparable, although Italy affords many strange things in the way of sacred music. Into the deep nasal chanting of the priests there had suddenly burst a chorus of children, singing absolutely independent of all time and tune; grunting of priests answered by squealing of boys, slow Gregorian modulation interrupted by jaunty barrel-organ pipings, an insane, insanely merry jumble of bellowing and barking, mewing and cackling and braying, such as would have enlivened a witches' meeting, or rather some mediaeval Feast of Fools. And, to make the grotesqueness of such music ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... o'clock in the morning. I would have leave to do what my heart night prompt in the great hours of adoration. Reading the Scriptures with a word of comment, sometimes, or t word uttered as the spirit moved, without reading; or instead, a matin hymn or old Gregorian chant, solemn seasons, free breathings of veneration and joy; sometimes he reading of a prayer of the Episcopal Church, or of he venerable olden time, always a bringing down A the great sentiment of devotion into young life, to De its guidance and strength,—this should be college ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... winter vacation when Payson, Sr., fagged from his long day at the office sought the "Frolics" or the "Folies," Payson, Jr., might be seen at a concert for the harpsichord and viola, or at an evening of Palestrina or the Earlier Gregorian Chants. Had he been less supercilious about it this story would never have been written—and doubtless no great loss at that. But it is the prerogative of youth to be arrogantly merciless in its judgment of the old. Its bright lexicon has no verdict "with mitigating circumstances." Youth is just ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... said to have been derived originally from the initial syllables of the "Hymn to Saint John," the music of which was a typical Gregorian chant. The application of these syllables to the scale tones will be made clear by reference to this hymn as given below. It will be observed that this hymn provided syllables only for the six tones of the hexachord then recognized; ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... product was there of nature and art working together? Here is a supreme priest who believes God to be—what, in the name of God, does he believe God to be?—and discerns that all worship of God is a scenic phantasmagory of wax candles, organ blasts, Gregorian chants, mass-brayings, purple monsignori, wool-and-iron rumps, artistically spread out, to save ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... stricken with paralysis of the brain, and died two days later, while the bishop and the Sisters of Mercy were praying for his soul. It is almost certain that he had some presentiment of his death, as he selected the Gregorian Requiem Mass for his obsequies, and asked the choir to practise it. August 28, his sacred remains were committed to the earth, the funeral sermon being preached by the bishop, who had been as a son to the venerable patriarch. In real, personal holiness, Father MacDonald possessed the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... and fascinating style, soon to give birth to the characteristic genius of the opera, was as yet unborn, though dormant. In Rome, the chief seat of the Belgian art, the exclusive study of technical skill had frozen music to a mere formula. The Gregorian chant had become so overladen with mere embellishments as to make the prescribed church-form difficult of recognition in its borrowed garb, for it had become a mere jumble of sound. Musicians, indeed, carried their profanation so far as to take secular melodies ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris



Words linked to "Gregorian" :   Gregorian calendar, Gregory, Gregorian chant, Gregorian telescope, Gregory XIII, Gregory I, Gregorian mode



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