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Penitential   Listen
noun
Penitential  n.  (R. C. Ch.) A book formerly used by priests hearing confessions, containing rules for the imposition of penances; called also penitential book.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Penitential" Quotes from Famous Books



... Carthusian house in England was founded by Henry II. at Witham, in Somersetshire, about the year 1178, in fulfilment of his penitential vow taken at the tomb of Thomas Becket. Another house was founded at Hinton, also in Somersetshire, in 1227. An attempt to found a house in Ireland did not succeed, the institution only lasting forty ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... previously made of relating the history of the whole Passion. It formed the subject of her Lenten meditations during this year, and of them the present volume is composed. But she did not on this account take less part in the fundamental mystery of this penitential season, or in the different mysteries of each of the festival days of the Church, if indeed the words to take part be sufficient to express the wonderful manner in which she rendered visible testimony to the mystery celebrated in each festival by a sudden change in her corporal and spiritual ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... with a mass of discreditable and licentious works we find several books on morality and theology. These he wrote, not from any sense of piety and devotion, but simply for gain, while his immoral life was a strange contrast to his teaching. He published a Paraphrase on the seven Penitential Psalms (Venice, 1534), and a work entitled De humanitate sive incarnatione Christi (Venice, 1535), calling himself Aretino the divine, and by favour of Pope Julius III. he nearly obtained a Cardinal's hat. Concerning his Paraphrase ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... defends by precedents unnecessary to enumerate here. On the first Sunday in Lent, 1819, its proceedings were commenced at Avignon, by a solemn procession, which made the circuit of the principal streets of the town, singing penitential psalms, and halted on the hill of Notre Dame; where an inaugural sermon was delivered on a spot called Calvary, and supposed to represent that sacred place. The multitude, assembled by curiosity or a better feeling, was so great, that ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... shook off dull sloth, and, lashing his sides in a penitential manner with his tail, glided through the opening in the mimosa-bush, bounded into the branches of a neighbouring tree, ran nimbly out to the end of one of them, and leaping with a magnificent spring over a gully, alighted softly on the turf at the other side. Trotting ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... means admitted that Baur was deeper than the early Jesuits and Oratorians, or gained more than he lost by constriction in the Hegelian coil. He took pleasure in pointing out that the best recent book on the penitential system, Kliefoth's fourth volume, owed its substance to Morinus. The dogmas of pantheistic history offended him too much to give them deep study, and he was ill prepared with counsel for a wanderer lost in the pervading haze. Hegelians said of him that he lacked ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... rules which his Church enjoined. It was no proof of magnanimity in Burns to use his talent in reviling the minister, who had done nothing more than his duty. One can hardly doubt but that in his inmost heart he must have been visited with other and more penitential feelings than those unseemly verses express. But, as Lockhart has well observed, "his false pride recoiled from letting his jovial associates know (p. 017) how little he was able to drown the whispers of the still small voice; and the fermenting ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... may her old nurse and she; an old coachman; and a pair of old coach-horses; and two or three old maid-servants, and perhaps a very old footman or two, (for every thing will be old and penitential about her,) live very comfortably together; reading old sermons, and old prayer-books; and relieving old men and old women; and giving old lessons, and old warnings, upon new subjects, as well as old ones, to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... of the two cousins breathed a penitential sigh, dropped her bare, jewelled arms out of her cloak, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... Holy Scripture. Whereupon they call upon him to abjure, execrate, and detest these errors and heresies; prohibiting his book and condemning him to confinement, with the penance of reciting once a week, for three years, the seven penitential psalms. And thereupon, this man, Galileo Galilei, of the age of seventy, on his knees, with his hands on the Gospels, abjures ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... can we rejoice in Christ, as having been redeemed by Him, if we are in this sort of gloomy penitential state? How much is said in St. Paul about peace, thanksgiving, assurance, comfort, and the like! Old things are passed away; the Jewish law is destroyed; pardon and peace are come; that ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... with olive-buds for baiting; Something is needed just a shade less crude, Something, for instance, faintly indicating The penitential mood. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various

... moment when he wished to leave the temple at once; but afterward he thought that they might not open the gate to him. The sight of his dirty legs, of the ashes falling out of his hair, the roughness of his penitential rags, all this disgusted him. If he had had his sword even! But would he, dressed as he was in that place, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... penitential sheet, and when one goes in that guise, one goes alone. I had half a ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... that he did not care to be judged by such mere externals as the shade of a tie or the color of a pair of hose. Under his hands—for the spirit of reform was strong upon him—his rooms took on a sober appearance. He amused himself by making sundry penitential offerings to the flames; numerous evidences of his unrighteous bachelorhood disappearing from walls and book-shelves. Coincident with this he owned to a feeling of intense satisfaction. What remained he would have his friend Marshall Langham sell after he was gone, his finances having ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... and for centuries after his death his influence was widely felt throughout Europe, especially in France and Italy. His zeal for the interests of God was unbounded, and this was the secret of his immense power. Some of his writings have come down to us, and comprise his Rule for Monks, his Penitential, sixteen short sermons, six letters, and several poems, all in Latin. His letters are of much value as evidence of Ireland's ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... country, which take place at Easter, on the first of May, Ascension Day, Trinity Sunday, and other occasions. The great majority of these promenades are of a festive nature, but some, like that which is made on the 19th of May to the monastery and cemetery of the Don, have a penitential, or, at least, a mournful character. The samovar, however, is present even in the churchyard. I never joined in one of the funeral pilgrimages to the Donskoi convent; but in other cemeteries outside Moscow ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... would he stay, And long lock'd in silence his tongue; Then he humm'd an elegiac lay, Or a Psalm penitential he sung: But if with his Friends he regal'd, His Mirth, as his Griefs, knew no bounds; In no Tale of Mark Sargent he sail'd, Nor in all Robin ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield

... days came on, oh, how Katy longed to be in Silverton, to kneel again in its quiet church, and offer up her penitential prayers with the loved ones at home. At last she ventured to ask Wilford if she might go, her spirits rising when he did not refuse her request at ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... and clear to their understanding; when they said their prayers at night and asked pardon for their offences, I would remind them of the sins of the past day, solemnly, but in perfect kindness, to avoid raising a spirit of opposition; penitential hymns should be said by the naughty, cheerful ones by the comparatively good; and every kind of instruction I would convey to them, as much as possible, by entertaining discourse—apparently with no other object than their present ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... know what had brought her back, nor did he care, now that he saw her across his table, enjoying tearlessly her fricassee chicken, and sipping the claret he always produced for a guest. The penitential husks which her sisters would have thought proper in the circumstances were not for Lois. He could not imagine her, no matter how grievously she might sin, as meekly repenting in sackcloth and ashes. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... discovered, as it were, feasting in the house of mourning. "At the present sad juncture, to drink sherry-wine with all its untamed richness might, I feel, smack of callousness. Therefore I tell the man to dash it with bitters, which, whilst it has a penitential sound, adds a not untoothsome flavour in anticipation ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various

... to stray, And find, like him, one long and stormy day; Objects less noble might thy soul have swayed, Or crimes around thee cast a deeper shade. While poring o'er another's mad career, Drop for thyself the penitential tear; Though prized by friends, and nurs'd in innocence, How oft has folly wrong'd thy better sense: But if some virtues in thy breast there be, Ask, if they sprang from circumstance, or thee! And ever to thy heart the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... sin; reclaim; repent in sackcloth and ashes &c, (do penance) 952; learn by experience. Adj. penitent; repenting &c v.; repentant, contrite; conscience- smitten, conscience-stricken; self-accusing, self-convicted. penitential, penitentiary; reclaimed, reborn; not hardened; unhardened^. Adv. mea culpa. Phr. peccavi; erubuit [Lat.]; salva res est [Lat.] [Terence]; Tu l'as voulu [Fr.], Georges Dandin; and wet his grave with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... performers in this catastrophe approached with penitential looks. They had nothing to say, nor had we. They bent down slowly, and touched our feet with both hands. "Ku kuata moendo"—"to catch the foot"—is their way of asking forgiveness. It was so like what we have seen a little ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... he wept, 'till all was won, Then, as the spring-born zephyrs fly, He fled, he left her, lost! undone! In penitential tears to die. ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... each doubt, gone every fear; My spirit seems in heaven to stay; And e'en the penitential tear ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... therefore suppress the rest of this conversation, and only observe that it ended at last with perfect innocence, and much more to the satisfaction of Jones than of the lady; for the former was greatly transported with the news she had brought him; but the latter was not altogether so pleased with the penitential behaviour of a man whom she had, at her first interview, conceived a very different opinion of from what she now entertained ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... scourge themselves, as a voluntary penance—a practice then common among religious devotees. It was probably a survival from the earlier practices of the associations of Flagellants, who publicly scourged themselves, in penitential processions through the streets; they appeared ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... wondered, in passing, why everybody should not make their cards of invitation such thorough works of art as his. Now I am going to do even-handed justice all the way round; and I must say that Dr. Lynn's experiment of fastening his attendant to a sort of penitential stool with copper wire, surrounded by scrutineers from the audience, and then making the man's coat come off, and a ring pass over his arm, behind a simple rug held in front of him, is quite as wonderful as anything I have ever witnessed at a seance. It has the great advantage of being done in the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... had always made her wince. Gwendolen's nature was not remorseless, but she liked to make her penances easy, and now that she was twenty and more, some of her native force had turned into a self-control by which she guarded herself from penitential humiliation. There was more show of fire and will in her than ever, but there was more calculation ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... knowing whether to believe it or not. Derues sobbed and wept at his feet, beat his breast and tore out his hair, calling on God and the saints as witnesses of his good faith and his innocence. He showed the book he was reading while the mason excavated: it was the Seven Penitential Psalms. "How unfortunate I am!" he cried. "This woman died in my house, I assure you—died suddenly, before I could call a doctor. I was alone; I might have been accused, imprisoned, perhaps condemned for a crime I did not commit. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... sackcloth, sitting back against the rocks, and Dante takes particular note of two figures supporting each other. He next discovers that one and all of these victims have their eyelids sewn so tightly together with wire that passage is left only for streams of penitential tears. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... monumental, and given over to puddles and to shabby cafes. I recall with tenderness the tortuous and featureless streets, which looked liked the streets of a village and were paved with villainous little sharp stones, making all exercise penitential. Consecrated by association is even a tiresome walk that I took the evening I arrived, with the purpose of obtaining a view of the Rhone. I had been to Arles before, years ago, and it seemed to me that I remembered finding on the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... day of clouds, when you have watched the distant hills, dark and gray with mist, suddenly a gleam of sunshine passing over reveals to you, in that flat surface, valleys and dells and spots of sunny happiness, which slept before unsuspected in the fog, so in the gloom of penitential life there will be times when God's deep peace and love will be felt shining into the soul with supernatural refreshment. Let the penitent be content with the servant's lot at first. Liberty and peace, and the bounding sensations of ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... abodes will be astonished at the neatness, the order, the embellishments, which many of them display. The home feeling that seems to be natural to most of us develops itself here with affecting energy. No man could surround his penitential cell with graces so profuse and pleasing as do some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... the Penitential System.—In 668, four years after Oswiu's decision was taken, Theodore of Tarsus was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury at Rome by the Pope himself. When he arrived in England the time had come for the ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... monastic rod from each of the bishops and abbots present, and afterwards the eighty monks each administered three strokes. Henry was now quite absolved, but he remained for the whole night with his bare feet still muddy and in the same penitential garb. ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home

... coloured our accounts of this experience, but for purposes of valuation it is of little moment to us whether the dynamic flash came to him in his cell at Wittenberg as he was studying the Epistle to the Romans, or whether it came while he was climbing the penitential stairway in Rome.[7] When all legendary coverings are stripped away we have left an inner event of the first importance, a live idea bursting into consciousness like a new star on the field of vision. By processes much deeper and richer than those of logical argument, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... then his senses wandered; now again his mind was calm, And he wrung from out his suffering penitential draughts of balm; Then again his senses left him, and he lay in phrenzy there, Talking wildly in his madness with the dim, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... of imprisonment was it coincided, much to his own surprise, with the Jewish Penitential period, and the Day of Atonement came in the middle. A wealthy Jewish philanthropist had organized a prison prayer-service, and Elkan eagerly grasped at the break in the monotony. Several of the prisoners who posed as Jews with this same motive were detected and reprimanded; ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... suffering, that national guilt can be expiated and national punishment averted by animal sacrifices, or even by human sacrifices, is repugnant to rather than conformable with natural reason. There exists no discernible connection between the one and the other. We may suppose that eucharistic, penitential, and even deprecatory sacrifices may have originated in the light of nature and reason, but we are unable to account for the practice of piacular sacrifices for substitutional atonement, on the same principle. The ethical principle, that one's own sins are not transferable either ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... "mean," could hardly fail to strike a responsive chord. He coloured a little, and he was silent; his companions got into their vehicle, the front seat of which was adorned with a large parcel. Mr. Ruck gave the parcel a little poke with his umbrella, and then, turning to me with a rather grimly penitential smile, "After all," he said, "for the ladies that's ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James

... penitential court, and the court of archives shall be established in the place of residence of ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... appropriate to such exigencies. If it were any part of their plan of life to appear statedly in public to confess themselves 'miserable sinners,' we should doubtless have sent over here the design of some graceful penitential habit, which would give our places of worship a much more appropriate air than they now have. As it is, it would form a subject for such a court of inquiry and adaptation as we have supposed, to draw a line between the costume of the theatre and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... attractive. Of course, as a matter of prejudice he attended its ceremonials from time to time and found them comfortable and satisfying. Comfortable also were the dogmas of forgiveness to be obtained by an act of penitential confession, and the sense of a great supporting force whose whole weight was at the disposal ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... erudition; and great must have been that erudition which could form a pretended language and its grammar, and fertile the genius which could invent the history of an unknown people: it is said that the deception was only satisfactorily ascertained by his own penitential confession; he had defied and baffled the most learned.[45] The literary impostor Lauder had much more audacity than ingenuity, and he died contemned by all the world.[46] Ireland's "Shakspeare" served to show ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... distinction. It is a delicious moment for Mrs. Johnson when she is able to say to Mrs. Thompson, 'My dear, I am quite worn-out; we dined out every day last week, and have four more dinners in the next five days.' These good people show their British grit by the persistency with which they go on with their penitential hospitality, and their lack of ideas in never attempting to modify it so as to make it a pleasure instead of a ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters

... In the Seven Penitential Psalms, written 1517, Luther says: "If God's mercy is to be praised, then all [human] merits and worthiness must come to naught." (Weimar 1, 161.) "Not such are blessed as have no sins or extricate ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... finally satisfied by the dozen or by the score; so it came to pass that the garden is once more herbaceous, and far-famed as such. The father—a perennial gardener in more senses than one, long may he flourish!—has told me, chuckling, of many a penitential pilgrimage to the rubbish-heaps, if haply fragments could be found of the herbaceous treasures which had been so ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, cordially concurring with the Congress of the United States in the penitential and pious sentiments expressed in the aforesaid resolution and heartily approving of the devotional design and purpose thereof, do hereby appoint the first Thursday of August next to be observed by the people of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... of the Latin classics—of Horace and of Vergil. Its work was twofold. In the first place, it exemplified a strict life of obedience, self-sacrifice, and prayer, the home of which was ever ready to minister to sick souls without; and, secondly, it supplied the religion of the age with a penitential system—in the penitential based upon Irish models—which was of great influence in the secular and ecclesiastical legislation of the future. Columban was not favourably received by all the episcopate of his new country. They were men of different ideals, unacquainted with the culture which meant ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... Volante, tenanted by fairy forms lightly and gaily dressed, with a pleasant smile on their lips and an encyclopedia of language beaming from the orbs above, would arrest the attention of the most inveterate old bachelor that ever lived; nay, it might possibly give birth to a deep penitential sigh and a host of good and sensible resolutions. Ordinary Volantes are the same style of thing, only not so gay, and the usual pace is from three to five and a half miles an hour, always allowing five ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... only sinners see the depth of beauty there; Angels never have bowed o'er them with a penitential tear. Angels may regard the nail-print, with a holy, reverent calm; Ye who read the love it tells of, must break forth ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings

... the Penitential Psalms, etc., by Hans Mielich. Vienna, too, can show a magnificent Missal by Georg Hoefnagel, bearing the dates 1582 to 1590. Venice is represented in the work of Benedetto Bordone and the Ducali. Florence in the splendid Missals, etc., of Attavante ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... obstinate sinners. Their Master rebuked the unkind suggestion. Peter, the trusted but treacherous disciple, expected nothing but harsh and merited reproof for faithlessness. He who knew well how that heart would be bowed with penitential sorrow, sends first the kindest of messages, and then the gentlest of rebukes, "Lovest thou me?" The watchmen in the Canticles smote the bride, tore off her veil, and loaded her with reproaches. When she found her lost Lord, there was ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... perfect beauty than we have ever yet actually seen, by way of a parallel to the gradual elevation of mind towards perfect [136] knowledge, knew all that, we may be sure—ta erotika —hetton ton kalon —subject to the influence of fair persons. A certain penitential colour amid that glow of fancy and expression, hints that the final harmony of his nature had been but gradually beaten out, and invests the temperance, actually so conspicuous in his own nature, with the charms of a patiently elaborated ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... regulations" of the house on the other, he felt constrained to take some decisive step towards its liquidation. Accordingly, having breakfasted, he combed his hair straight over his face, and putting on a very penitential look, called a cab, and desired the man to drive him to the Rue des Mauvais-Garcons.—After zigzagging, twisting, and turning about in various directions, they at last jingled to the end of a very narrow dirty-looking ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... those great practical truths, which ought ever to be kept before your mind. You may bring up your sins, and set them in order before you; and discover your easily besetting sins. You may be led to exercise penitential sorrow of heart, and be driven anew to the cross of Christ for pardon, and for strength to subdue indwelling corruption. Whenever you discover that you have exercised any correct feeling, or that your conduct has in any ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... commanded by the Koran to keep a rigorous fast every day from sunrise till sunset. All the followers of the Prophet were therefore busy with their devotions—holding a revival, as it were; hence there was no chance whatever to be presented to the Sultan, Abdul Aziz, it being forbidden during the penitential season for him to receive unbelievers, or in fact any one except the officials of his household. However, the Grand Vizier brought me many messages of welcome, and arranged that I should be permitted to see and salute ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan

... you behold our penitential rites Performed without impediment by saints Rich only in devotion, then with pride Will you reflect:—Such are the holy men Who call me Guardian; such the men for whom To wield the bow I bare my nervous arm, Scarred by the motion ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... folded under the sod. Only a little bunch of withered brown flowers, tied with a faded blue ribbon, that a poor girl bought with her hard earned pennies, and carried to a sick mother, to brighten a dreary attic; only a dead nosegay, which that mother requested should be laid as a penitential tribute on the tomb of the mother whom she had disobeyed; and this faithful young heart made the pilgrimage, and left the offering—and in consequence thereof, missed the train that would have carried her safely back to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... merely, were her "voices" delusions, had she been given up by Heaven, of which she had called herself the servant? It was a stupor which quenched every voice—a great silence through the country, only broken by the penitential psalms at Tours. The Compiegne people, writing to Charles two days after May 23d, do not mention Jeanne at all. We need not immediately take into account the baser souls always plentiful, the envious captains and the rest who might ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... along London streets from the Fleet prison to St. Paul's Cathedral. The warden of the Fleet was there, and the knight marshal, and the tipstaffs, and "all the company they could make," "with bills and glaives;" and in the midst of these armed officials, six men marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five pounds' weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the lookers-on the fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which this time, in mercy, was remitted. One of these was Barnes; the other five were "Stillyard men," undistinguishable ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... lofty hill o'erlooks For leagues the forest-girdled plain, ere long A monastery stood. That self-same day In tears the penitential work began; In tears the sod was turned. The rugged brows Of March relaxed 'neath April's flying kiss: Again the violet rose, the thrush was loud; Mayday had come. Around that hallowed spot Full many a warrior met; some Christians vowed; Some muttering low of Odin. ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... go no farther in your cruelty: Send her a penitential garment to put on Next to her delicate skin, and furnish her With ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... twelve years since the youth Ivan, graduated from his four penitential years of military schooling, had taken his first long flight from Moscow, northward, into the joyous unknown: twelve years since he had put behind him all that half-comprehended blackness of evil and grim unhappiness that had ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... To speed the penitential prayer Our rosary we finger o'er, A yellow necklace rich and rare— 'Twas purchased at the dollar store; But oh, it makes us sigh to see That land ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... of the ancient ritual code for females during this primary condition to eat as little as possible, and to remain lying down, especially in course of each monthly flow, not only as a natural consequence of the prolonged fast and resulting weakness; but chiefly as an exhibition of a becoming penitential spirit which was believed to be rewarded by long life and continual ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... 4. P. Godefridus de Amor. lib. 3. cap. 1. [5962]Nevisanus, lib. 3. Alex. ab Alexandro, lib. 4. cap. 8. Tunstall, Erasmus' tracts in laudem matrimonii &c., and I doubt not but in the end he will rest satisfied, recant with Beroaldus, do penance for his former folly, singing some penitential ditties, desire to be reconciled to the deity of this great god Love, go a pilgrimage to his shrine, offer to his image, sacrifice upon his altar, and be as willing at last to embrace marriage as the rest: There will not be found, I hope, [5963]"No, not in that severe family of Stoics, who shall ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... said that he had been drowned, while bathing, at Caen, about half-past two on July 31. The appearance was naked to the waist, his head bare, showing his beautiful yellow locks. He asked Bezuel to learn a school task that had been set him as a penalty, the seven penitential psalms: he described a tree at Caen, where he had cut some words; two years later Bezuel visited it and them; he gave other pieces of information, which were verified, but not a word would he say of heaven, hell, or purgatory; 'he seemed not to hear my questions'. There ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... suffereth exceeding distress to see me in this tribulation with yonder enemy of God; wherefore I would have you say me forty masses of Saint Gregory for her and their souls, together with certain of your own prayers, so God may deliver them from that penitential fire.' So saying, she put a florin into his hand, which the holy father blithely received and confirming her devoutness with fair words and store of pious instances, gave her his benison and let her go. The lady being gone, the friar, never thinking how he was gulled, sent for his friend, who, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... the three months he came back, and one afternoon surprised them all by appearing amongst them again. Mollie, sitting perseveringly at work over her penitential sewing, shrank a little, and dropped her eyelids when he came in, but she managed to behave with creditable evenness of manner after all, and the rest ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... been much increased of late as one preparing for death; and with them were associated all her household of the Roman Catholic faith, leaving out Cicely and the two Mrs. Curlls. The long oft-repeated Latin orisons, such as the penitential Psalms, would certainly have been wearisome to the girl, but it gave her a pang to be pointedly excluded as one who had no part nor lot with her mother. Perhaps this was done by calculation, in order to incline her to embrace her mother's faith; and the time was not spent very pleasantly, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... bound their hearts. They knelt and bowed their faces upon the cold sod that covered the sacred dust of their dead. They stretched forth their hands across the little grave, each to the other, and the Angel of God washed all the bitterness of the years from their hearts with a rain of penitential tears, and sent them down life's pathway hand-in-hand, as in the old days when Love was lord of their two lives and the lost babe was cradled upon ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... in the house, went to her room and wrote to her friend. Litanies were being said in the chapel. The distant, melancholy sounds mounted to her now and then. Otherwise the house was wrapped in a mourning silence; and outside, trailing clouds hung round the old walls, making a penitential ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... preservation of another yet holier. This act of devotion, so worthy of the true Crusader, recalled from carnage those who had forgotten their vows in the thirst for vengeance, and the whole army, led by the clergy, followed him to the same church in penitential procession. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... doctors tell him how long he had still to live. One of them knelt down before his bed and said, "Sir, be thinking of your soul; it seemeth to us that, saving the divine mercy, you have not more than two hours." The king summoned his confessor with the priests, and asked to have recited to him the penitential psalms. When they came to the twentieth versicle of the Miserere,—Ut oedificentur muri Hierusalem (that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up),—He made them stop. "Ah!" said he, "if God had been pleased ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... morning to the cathedral; and the excellent woman who guards the portal—where in ancient stone the Last Judgment is enacted, and the cheerful and conceited wise virgins stand over against the foolish virgins, one of whom has been in the penitential attitude of having a stone finger in her eye now for over three hundred years—refused at first to admit us to the German Lutheran service, which was just beginning. It seems that doors are locked, and no one is allowed to issue forth until after service. There ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... outbreak of the last French war in America, he returned to New France, a changed and reformed man; an ascetic in his living, and, although a soldier, a monk in the rigor of his penitential observances. His professional skill and daring were conspicuous among the number of gallant officers upon whom Montcalm chiefly relied to assist him in his long and desperate struggle against the ever-increasing forces of the English. From the capture of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Those places on his heels that had been so badly galled had begun to be troublesome again. Well, it wouldn't do any good to holla about it—the only thing to do was to harden one's foolish feet. But in his heart he felt that all the time-honoured conditions of a penitential journey were being complied with, except on the part of the arch sinner. Ol' Chief seemed to be getting ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... austerities of Simon Stylites almost pale. The Irish saints' love of solitude was also a very marked characteristic. Desert places and solitary islands of the ocean possessed an apparently wonderful fascination for them. The more inaccessible or forbidding the island the more it was in request as a penitential retreat. There is hardly one of the hundred islands around the Irish coast which, one time or another, did not harbour some saint or solitary upon ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda

... outcasts by the whole military and naval forces of the Republic. Its supreme hero is Comstock Himself, with his pious boast that the sinners he jailed during his astounding career, if gathered into one penitential party, would have filled a train of sixty-one coaches, allowing sixty to ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... the Bible or any particular division of it begin with a capital; as, "Holy Writ, The Sacred Book, Holy Book, God's Word, Old Testament, New Testament, Gospel of St. Matthew, Seven Penitential Psalms." ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... away from me. Create in me a clean heart, O God.' 'A broken and a contrite heart; a broken and a contrite heart,' was her continual cry till she died with these words on her lips, 'A broken and a contrite heart Thou wilt not despise.' And, thus, with the most penitential of David's penitential Psalms in her mouth, and with the holy candle of her Church in her hand, Teresa of Jesus went forth from her banishment ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte

... of voices blithe Of early day, the hissing scythe Across the dew drawn and withdrawn, The noisy peacock on the lawn, These, and the sun's eye-gladding gleam, This morning, chased the sweetest dream That e'er shed penitential grace On life's forgetful commonplace; Yet 'twas no sweeter than the spell To which I woke to say farewell. Noon finds me many a mile removed From her who must not be beloved; And us the waste sea soon shall part, Heaving for aye, without a heart! Mother, what need to warn ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... you will find me in my box just before mass; I will hear you then. My child, I know that in your heart, now, you begrudge the time it would take; and that is right. There are moments when we are not in place even on penitential knees. It is so with you now. We must find your mother. Go you at once to your house; if she is there, comfort her as best you can, and keep her in, if possible, until I come. If she is not there, stay; leave me to find her; one of you, at least, must be where I can get word to ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable

... the salt gabelle. Finally the peace protocol was drawn up in a form which satisfied all the powers as well as the Chinese court. The formal signature was, however, delayed at the last moment by a fresh difficulty concerning Prince Chun's penitential mission to Berlin. This prince, an amiable and enlightened youth,[56] son of the Prince Chun who was the emperor Hien-feng's brother, and thus himself half-brother to the emperor Kwang-su, had reached Basel ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... had said she would so like to see the sea; and the morning after they arrived there—the morning after their wedding—Mary wrote an affectionate penitential letter to her father, telling him that she was married, and praying ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... therefore a Ghibelline, as was plainly the folk-poet who made him the hero of the ballad which tells of his adventure with Venus. Tannhauser's extant poems, when not in praise of princes, are gay in character, with the exception of a penitential hymn—a circumstance which may have had some weight with the ballad-makers. There is a picture labelled with his name in a famous collection of minnesongs called the Manessian Manuscript, which shows him with the Crusaders' cross upon his cloak. This may be looked ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... delighted in the romantic comedies of Shakespeare. This people, so appallingly credulous and ignorant, so brutal, childish, so mercurial compared with Englishmen of to-day, yet set the standard of national greatness. This absurdly decorated gallant could stab a rival in the back or write a penitential lyric. Each man presents strange, almost inexplicable, contrasts in character, as Bacon or Raleigh, or Elizabeth herself. The drama mingles its sentiment and fancy with horrors and bloodshed; and no wonder, for poetry was no occupation of the cloister. Read the lives of the ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... David has discovered not an angry, but a forgiving God; a God of love and goodness, who desires to make his creatures good. Penitential prayers in all ages have too often wanted faith in God, and therefore have been too often prayers to avert punishment. This, this—the model of all truly penitent prayers—is that of a man who is to be punished, and is content to take his punishment, ...
— David • Charles Kingsley

... smuggling Mrs. Grazinglands into the obscurest corner of the building. This slighted lady (who is the pride of her division of the county) was immediately conveyed, by several dark passages, and up and down several steps, into a penitential apartment at the back of the house, where five invalided old plate- warmers leaned up against one another under a discarded old melancholy sideboard, and where the wintry leaves of all the dining-tables in the house lay thick. Also, a sofa, of incomprehensible form regarded from any sofane ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... into the choir—and halted before a monument of black marble. He paused for a few moments: then cried with a loud voice in Welch, English, and Latin, "Bastard of Walladmor!" to which summons the choir sang a penitential antiphony. Then he raised his spear and struck the outside of the tomb: to which again the organ muttered and the choir sang a response. Then a second time he raised the golden spear, and plunged it through ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... employed all the methods of attack that experience could suggest or courage execute, while the garrison of forty thousand Turks, who maintained the city for their master, the caliph of Egypt, resisted with determined obstinacy. At length, after a confession of sins by the whole army, and a penitential procession around the walls, a simultaneous attack was made with battering-rains, mangonels, and all manner of besieging engines. At one quarter a huge wooden tower was wheeled close to the walls, a movable ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... the war in Spain. But it must not be supposed that social questions were neglected, even in the darkest days of the war, however meagre the legislative fruits may appear. Session after session, Romilly pressed forward reforms of the criminal law, the institution of penitential houses in the nature of reformatories, and the abolition of state lotteries. Others laboured, and with greater success, to remedy the delays and reduce the arrears in the court of chancery. Constant efforts were made to expose defalcations ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... active and enterprising; such as the noble pilgrim would have been, but for the satiety which had relaxed his energies. There is also about him a solemnity different from the animation of the Giaour—a penitential despair arising from a cause undisclosed. The Giaour, though wounded and fettered, and laid in a dungeon, would not have felt as Conrad is supposed to feel in that situation. The following bold and terrific verses, descriptive of the maelstrom agitations of remorse, could ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... their persons, and the sacrifice of their lives,—"not loving their lives unto the death." All these tribulations, however, could not separate them from the love of God. (Rom. viii. 37-39.) They had "washed their robes,"—not in penitential tears, their own martyr-blood, their doing or suffering in the cause of Christ; but their robes were "made white in the blood of the Lamb," who was "made of God unto them ... justification and sanctification." (1 Cor. i. 30.) Could the human mind conceive the idea of rendering linen garments ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... it changes into stone The living fibres of a loving heart; Like fell disease, it breeds within the veins The living agents of a living death; And as in gardens overgrown with weeds, Nothing but patient labor, day by day, Uprooting cherished evils one by one, Watering its soil with penitential tears, Can fit the soul to grow that precious seed, Which taking root, spreads out a grateful shade Where gentle thoughts like singing birds may lodge, Where pure desires like fragrant flowers may ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... her odours yield In homage, Mighty One! to thee; From herbs and flowers in every field, From fruit on every tree, The balmy dew at morn and even Seems like the penitential tear, Shed only in the sight of heaven— ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... of that melting into sorrow, which, as I believe, is absolutely necessary for any permanent victory over sins. No man will ever conquer his evil as long as he only shudderingly recoils from it. He has to be broken down into the penitential mood before he will secure the victory over his sin. You remember the profound words in our Lord's pregnant parable of the seeds, how one class which transitorily was Christian, had for its characteristic that immediately with joy they received the word. Yes; a Christianity ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... assiduous parasites at that of their maitre d'hotel. Madame Victoire was not indifferent to good living, but she had the most religious scruples respecting dishes of which it was allowable to partake at penitential times. I saw her one day exceedingly tormented by her doubts about a water-fowl, which was often served up to her during Lent. The question to be determined was, whether it was 'maigre' or 'gras'. She consulted a bishop, who happened to be ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... a narrow side street toward a high-walled brick church, and presently they walked side by side up the broad aisle so far that it seemed to Nan as if her aunt were aiming for the chancel itself, and had some public ceremony in view, of a penitential nature. They were by no means early, and the girl was disagreeably aware of a little rustle of eagerness and curiosity as she took her seat, and was glad to have fairly gained the shelter of the high-backed pew as she bent her head. But ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... went to church in Crocusville. The back of the pine bench on which she sat had a penitential forward tilt that would have brought St. Simeon down, in jealousy, from his pillar. The preacher singled her out, and thundered upon her vicarious head the damnation of the world. At each side of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... hear. To lead your way across Gray carpet aisles of moss Unto the chantry stalls, The sumach candelabra are alight; Along the cloister walls, Like chorister and acolyte, The shrubs are vested white; The dutiful monastic oak In his gray-friar cloak Keeps penitential ways And solemn orisons of praise; For beads upon the cincture-vine Red berries warm with color shine, And to their constant rosary The bedesmen firs incline; And fair as frescoes be Among the shrines of Italy, These ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls

... rich beyond expression. All that opulent devotion and inventive ingenuity could devise, in wood, bronze, marble, silver, gold, precious jewelry, or blazing sacramental furniture, had been profusely lavished. The penitential tears of centuries had incrusted the whole interior with their glittering stalactites. Divided into five naves, with external rows of chapels, but separated by no screens or partitions, the great temple forming an imposing whole, the effect was the more impressive, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the voice of chanticleer Fulfilled what Christ had prophesied; And oh, that pitying look sincere From him whom thou hadst just denied! Thy burst of penitential grief! Heaven those tears did surely send. Tears give the burdened heart relief; Dry ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass

... consists in the triple nature of the supreme being according to the newer creed. As the original and supreme being, God is not only the Creator, but the watchful Judge as well, demanding reverent obedience to the laws of the world in which he has placed man, and imposing sacrifices and penitential observances when his mandates have been disobeyed. As the God of Mercy he is incarnated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and offered as a vicarious sacrifice for sinners who are thus enabled to escape the penalties ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... presence of which we are tolerably aware of a sort of balance and compensation of emotions. The sorrow and the beauty, the hopelessness and the consolation, mingle and merge into a kind of joy which has its poignancy, indeed, but which is far too passive and penitential to contain the louder and sublimer of our tragic moods. In these there is a wholeness, a strength, and a rapture, which still demands ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... wonderfully gifted in prayer. Here all his intellectual, imaginative, and spiritual powers were fused into one and poured themselves forth in an unbroken stream of penitential and adoring affection. When he said, "Let us pray," a divine influence seemed to rest upon all present. His prayers were not mere pious mental exercises, they were ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... you bear marks of weariness. You stoop like an old man. Look at me, always the same, firm as a rock. "God smites the wicked with many plagues, but he encompasseth with his help those that hope in him." Second penitential psalm. You are not wicked: what plague consumes you? Ambition? Patience, everything will be changed, since your enemy is vanquished. Is it your conscience which is ill at ease? But conscience should be cheerful; that is its true sign. Is it anything ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... on the difference between the King and Monsieur his brother, was the procession of penitents in which Monsieur accompanied the King through the streets, after the hollow reconciliation. I could scarcely convince myself that the sanctimonious-looking person, in coarse penitential robe, heading the procession through the mire and over the stones of Paris, from shrine to shrine, was the dainty King whom I had beheld in sumptuous raiment in the gallery of the Louvre. The Duke of Anjou, who wore ordinary attire, seemed to take to this mummery ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... of Vesalius (1514-64) was the first modern to dissect the human body, and for so doing was sentenced by the Inquisition to perform a penitential journey to Jerusalem. One of his disciples discovered the valves in the veins and was the teacher of the Englishman, William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood and later (1628) dared to publish the fact to the world. These men established ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... the state thanksgiving for a triumph of the national armies, was but a mode of ostentatiously publishing the news. As to C, it is scarcely necessary to say that this was wanting, when I mention that penitential feelings were unknown amongst the ancients, and had no name; for pœnitentia[Footnote: In Greek, there is a word for repentance, but not until it had been rebaptized into a Christian use. Metanoia, however, is not that word: it is grossly to ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... the foreman, he discovered that individual, several degrees less breezy than usual, engaged in an animated conversation with a young man whose prevailing expression was so penitential that Dennis, with prompt Celtic intuition, decided that he was gazing upon his predecessor ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... present. Once more (Shrove Tuesday, 1527) the great Cardinal came in dignity; it was to denounce the translation of the Bible and to condemn the Lutherans. Certain "heretics" were marched through the cathedral in penitential dresses, and carrying faggots, which they threw into the fire by the great rood at the north door, in which Testaments and Lutheran tracts were also burned. On this occasion, also, Fisher preached the sermon. A few years later ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... or the other, or both. Like the holy religion which she symbolises, her sweet face draws blessing and love wherever it goes; it heals old wounds with its beauty, it carries peace into the heart of discord, it touches murder itself into soft and penitential tears. In reading the old tender-hearted poet, we feel that there is something in a woman's sweetness and forgiveness that the masculine mind cannot fathom; and we adore the hushed step and still countenance of Constance almost as if ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... But even as one who, followed unawares, Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear, So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low The wail of David's penitential woe, Before him still the old temptation came, And mocked him with the motion and the shame Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord To free his soul and cast the demon out, Smote with his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the "Matthew" the noise of the people and the expression of keen remorse are subordinated to love and human tenderness and infinite sorrow. The small number and conciseness of the people's choruses have already been alluded to, and it may easily be shown that the penitential music is brief compared with the love music, besides having a great deal of the love, the yearning love, feeling in it. The list of penitential pieces is exhausted when I have mentioned "Come, ye daughters," "Guilt ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... in the poorhouse on his music-paper had been the solace of those long, dark penitential hours. His alternations between deep depression and dawning hope, and at last his full, deep conviction that there was pardon for all in the abundant mercy of God through Christ, had been expressed in the musical compositions that had made ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker

... persecution led to the non-recognition of any rights of "spiritual" persons other than the bishops. These confessors had frequently abetted laxity of conduct, whereas, if we consider the measure of secularisation found among the great mass of Christians, the penitential discipline insisted on by the bishops is remarkable for its comparative severity. The complete adoption of the episcopal constitution coincided with the introduction of the unlimited right ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... dry of tears" as he looked out on the sea toward his country; "for the nymph was no longer pleasing to him," whatever may have been the case once. Surely the hero is in bonds which he cannot break, though he would; a penitential strand we may well find in his sorrow; thus he is ready ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider



Words linked to "Penitential" :   penitent, penitence, penitentiary, repentant



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