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Pontifical   Listen
adjective
Pontifical  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to a pontiff, or high priest; as, pontifical authority; hence, belonging to the pope; papal.
2.
Of or pertaining to the building of bridges. (R.) "Now had they brought the work by wondrous art Pontifical, a ridge of pendent rock Over the vexed abyss."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pontifical" Quotes from Famous Books



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

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

... sculptors! I do not know the authority on which these statues (Castor and Pollux, I presume) are attributed to Phidias and Praxiteles; but they impressed me as noble and godlike, and I feel inclined to take them for what they purport to be. On one side of the piazza is the Pontifical Palace; but, not being aware of this at the time, I did not look ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

... Bishop ordains Priests he uses the precise words which I have quoted, because the Book of Common Prayer borrows them from our Pontifical. But he means exactly what he says, viz: That the Priest receives through the ministration of the Bishop the power of ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

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

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

... father, Domenico. In this sacristy, then, besides the Christ and some little Angels that are seen in foreshortening on the vaulting, he painted in the lunettes, two in each niche, and robed in their pontifical vestments, the various Popes who have been exalted to the Pontificate from the Order of S. Benedict. Round the sacristy, below the lunettes of the vaulting, is drawn a frieze four feet high, and divided into compartments, wherein are ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari

... light of a few tapers, make up a weird scene all the morning till about nine o'clock, when the relic, in its 'chasse,' or tabernacle, is carried to the Cathedral of St. Sauveur, and placed on the high altar, while a pontifical Mass is celebrated by one of the Bishops. When that is done, the procession starts on its march along the chief thoroughfares of the town. The houses are decorated with flags, and candles burn in almost every window. Through the narrow ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond

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

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

... has, besides, afforded fresh corroborations of the conditions essential to the rise of this spirit, and of the modes of thought which it reflects and in which it is always to be found. Roman historical composition had its origin in the pontifical college of ecclesiastical lawyers, and preserved to its close the uncritical spirit which characterised its fountain-head. It possessed from the outset a most voluminous collection of the materials of history, which, however, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... Tomasa. They say they are such great friends because she makes a lotion that calms him like an angel's hand. In the morning when he wakes in a bad temper all the palace trembles, and very soon all the diocese. He is a good man, but when the mad dog bites him everyone must fly. I have seen him on pontifical days wearing his mitre, looking at us with such eyes, as though he were ready to seize his crozier and belabour us all with it, from what the aunt says—if he ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

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

... he had given them his benediction, retired and withdrew himself to the pontifical lodgings of his own palace. But he was hardly gone three steps from without the gates of their cloister when the good ladies throngingly, and as in a huddled crowd, pressing hard on the backs of one another, ran thrusting and shoving who should be first at the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

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

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

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

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

... appoint various of the most learned and experienced men, to whom is entrusted and delegated the faculty of giving dispensation in regard to the obstacles of marriage, and the exercise of other favors and privileges contained in the pontifical briefs. Those powers are never exercised if the diocesans are intra duas dietas, [31] without their permission and approbation; and always this is done [only] in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... sensations, was shaken to its centre by tidings of a new and startling event. The Cardinal de Rohan, grand almoner of France, at mass-time, and when dressed in his pontifical robes, had been suddenly arrested in the palace of Versailles and taken to the Bastille. Why? No one knew; though many had their opinions and beliefs. Rumors of some mysterious and disgraceful secret beneath this arrest, a mystery in which the honor of Marie ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

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

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

... the woman, what shall we say of her? She came to him unspotted by the world. A demand for divorce which her husband made was rejected. A pontifical brief pronounced a formal separation between the two. The countess gladly left behind "her palaces, her equipages, society, and riches, for the love of the poet ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... upon his wife to take his place at the sacrificial altar. Numberless instances are supplied in such works as Tylor's, Lubbock's, and Spencer's Ecclesiastical Institutions, which go to show this primatial or pontifical authority resident in the chief of the State, and the transference of its offices to subordinate people, who gradually and naturally became an official body or caste called priests or elders, as representatives of heads ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

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

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

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

... and instigating unfortunate Finland to resist the latter power, he profited by the favorable moment, and took Stralsund and the Island of Rugen, both of which belonged to the King of Sweden, who had been his ally up to that time. In Italy only the Pontifical states and the holy father at Rome still resisted him, after the remainder of the peninsula had awakened from its dreams of liberty under the rule of French marshals and Napoleonic princes. He instigated Naples and Sardinia against Rome, and when the struggle had commenced, he magnanimously ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... the meanest employments. "Anyway, whelp of an inquisitor, your pious aunt will not remember you, and you need not expect the slightest assistance from her." It was now being whispered about the city that, definitely renouncing the pomps of this world and perhaps even the pontifical Golden Rose, which never arrived, she was about to turn over all her property to the priests of her court, going to shut herself up in a convent, with all the advantages of a privileged lady. The Popess was going ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... books to the flames, and the praetor's to see that it was done, generally in the Forum. But for this evil habit we might still possess many valuable works, such as the books attributed to Numa on Pontifical law (Livy xl.), and those eulogies of Paetus Thrasea and Helvidius, which were burnt, and their authors put to death, under the tyranny of Domitian (Tacitus, Agricola 2). Let these cases suffice to connect the custom with Pagan Rome, and to prove that this particular mode of warring ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

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

... shone around it, and the expanded wings, edged with a silvery light, seemed almost to move in the light breeze: there were guards on the battlements, who marched with solemn, measured tread; and high above all floated the Pontifical banner, with the keys of St. Peter in its huge folds flapping in the breeze,—the emblem of sovereignty, spiritual and temporal. No one can judge of the immense extent of St. Angelo from the interior. The ashes of the great Emperor, how small a space could they have occupied ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... most questionable means for raising money: he created many new offices and shamelessly sold them; he increased the revenue from indulgences, jubilees, and regular taxation; he pawned palace furniture, table plate, pontifical jewels, even statues of the apostles; several banking firms and many individual creditors ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

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

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

... thrones and senates the warning of Rome's ambition, the moral of Rome's downfall! It is but a poor recompense to their present unhonoured solitude, that their melancholy battlements are emblazed at intervals with the pontifical escutcheons. Those triple tiaras and cross keys, so perpetually recurring, do not half so much consecrate as they are themselves consecrated by the lonely bulwarks of this desolated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

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

... true, Eck claimed the victory, because he had driven Luther to expressions at variance with those doctrines. On the other hand, Luther had shown that the pontifical claims were without foundation in primitive Christianity or the Holy Scriptures; that the Papacy was not of divine authority or of the essence of the Church; that the Church existed before and beyond the papal hierarchy, as well ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... homage to the old King. Sunday, 24th of October, at two o'clock in the afternoon, the body was transferred from the chapelle ardente to the catafalque prepared to receive it. Then the vespers and the vigils of the dead were sung, and the Grand Almoner, clad in his pontifical robes, officiated. The next day, Monday, the 25th of October, the services ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

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

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

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

... to prefer the nude, rejected the veiling fillet from the forehead, that he might not conceal its deep expression, and the drapery of the sacrificial robe, that he might display the human form in visible agony; but the other, by the charm of verse, could invest the priest with the pomp of the pontifical robe without hiding from us the interior sufferings of the human victim. We see they obtained by different means, adapted to their respective arts, that common end which each designed; but who will decide which invention preceded the other, or who was ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

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

... the Fifth, although his Holiness carefully superintended every sheet as it passed through the press, has ever remained without a rival in typographical inaccuracy. Still more curious was the fact, that the Pope, in the plenitude of pontifical infallibility, prefixed to the first volume a bull of excommunication against any and every printer, who in reprinting the work, should ever make any alteration in the text. To the amazement of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... state: Pope JOHN PAUL II (Karol WOJTYLA; since 16 October 1978) head of government: Secretary of State Archbishop Angelo Cardinal SODANO (since 2 December 1990) cabinet: Pontifical Commission appointed by Pope elections: pope elected for life by the College of Cardinals; election last held 16 October 1978 (next to be held after the death of the current pope); secretary of state appointed by the pope election results: Karol ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

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

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

... viewed in the roadstead at Venice beat by a storm; arrives at Zante to refresh; enters the port of Simiso; there having landed, he and his companions are proceeding to the town on asses, for Christians were not permitted to travel in Turkey on horses. In the church at Jerusalem the bishop, in his pontifical habit, receives him as a knight of the Holy Sepulchre, arraying him in the armour of Godfrey of Bouillon, and placing his sword in the hands of Magius. His arrival at Bethlehem, to see the cradle of the Lord—and his return by Jaffa with his companions, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... custom in the older Christian churches. The mosaics on the tribune representing the "Transfiguration" and "Annunciation" are more than a thousand years old, and are interesting besides as the first embodiments in art of these sacred subjects. Behind the high altar is the pontifical chair, supported by lions, with a Gothic gable, on which Gregory the Great was seated when he delivered his twenty-eighth Homily, a few sentences of which are ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... supposed that a Saint on whom lay the "solicitude of all the churches," should neglect the tradition, which his predecessors of so many centuries had bequeathed to him, of zeal and hostility against the Turkish power. He was only six years on the Pontifical throne; and the achievement of which I am going to speak was among his last; he died the following year. At this time the Ottoman armies were continuing their course of victory; they had just taken Cyprus, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... St. Peter, under the pastoral disguise of Pamphilus, upbraids the licentious Clement VI with the ignoble servitude in which he is content to abide; a third shows us Clement wantoning with the shameless mistress of a line of pontifical shepherds, a figure allegorical of the corruption of the Church[25]; in yet a fourth Petrarch laments his estrangement from his patron Giovanni Colonna, a cardinal in favour at the papal court, whom it would appear his outspoken censures ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... The Pontifical States thought they could not send less than 7,040 Roman crowns, and Portugal pushed her devotion to the extent ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... accession of his friend Cardinal Barberini to the pontifical throne in 1623, under the title of Urban VIII., Galileo undertook a journey to Rome to offer him his congratulations upon his elevation to the papal chair. He was received by his Holiness with marked attention and kindness, was granted several prolonged audiences, and had conferred ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... Vigilius! The pest seize thee, O Vigilius! May'st thou perish eternally, O Vigilius!' shrilled and shouted all manner of voices, while fists were shaken towards the pontifical abode. ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... after breakfast I met in the South Mall a charming ecclesiastic, whose acquaintance I made in Rome while I was attending the great celebration there in 1867 of St. Peter's Day. Father Burke introduced me to him after the Pontifical Mass at San Paolo fuori le Mure; and we had a delightful symposium that afternoon. I walked with him to his lodgings, talking over those "days long vanished," and the friend whose genius made them, like the suppers of Plato, ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... Prelate, not of severe morals, demanding that 'religious costumes and such caricatures' be abolished. Bishop Torne warms, catches fire; finishes by untying, and indignantly flinging on the table, as if for gage or bet, his own pontifical cross. Which cross, at any rate, is instantly covered by the cross of Te-Deum Fauchet, then by other crosses, and insignia, till all are stripped; this clerical Senator clutching off his skull-cap, that other his frill-collar,—lest Fanaticism return on us. (Moniteur, du 7 Avril 1792; Deux Amis, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

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

... of Rome by the Gauls led to the destruction of nearly all public and private records, and it was only from this date onwards that such permanent and contemporary registers—the consular fasti, the books of the pontifical college, the public collections of engraved laws and treaties—were extant as could afford material for the annalist. That a certain amount of work in the field both of law and history must have been going on at ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... the dignity of literature looked to its large and human side, not to any parade of curious information. Everywhere in his writings plain people are conciliated by his frank attitude as to his own calling, by his perfect freedom from any pontifical airs of the mystery of authorship. "I could have written longer notes," he says in the great Preface to his Shakespeare, "for the art of writing notes is not of difficult attainment." "It is impossible for an expositor not to write too little for some, and too much for others." "I ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

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

... not ignorant of the jibes his Latin evoked amongst the purists in Rome. The cultivated tympanum of Cardinal Bembo and other Ciceronians at the Pontifical Court received painful shocks from certain corrupt expressions in his decades. His repeated explanations of his deflections from classical nomenclature ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... being delayed by successive obstacles, and fearing that the grand khan would be disappointed or might despair of their return, they set out again for the East, taking with them young Marco Polo. But at Jerusalem they heard of the accession to the pontifical throne of Gregory X., and hastened back to Italy. The new pope welcomed them with great honour, furnished them with credentials, and commissioned to accompany them to the East two friars of great learning and talent, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... the Exeter Book, the Exeter Domesday, Grandisson's Ordinale, Lacy's Pontifical, and other beautiful examples of illumination. Also the original charter of Edward the Confessor appointing Leofric Bishop of Exeter, signed by the King and Queen, Earl Godwin, and a notable group ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw

... a political standpoint, how would the papal government in these days appear compared with the great kingdoms of Europe? Formerly mediocre men succeeded to the pontifical throne at an age in which one breathes well only after resting. At this period of life routine and habit are everything; and nothing is considered but the elevated position, and how to make it redound to the advantage of his family. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... nothing of my fears. Ever since I learned that Adrian was putting the finishing touches to his novel, I had dismissed them from my mind. Such accounts as I had given of Adrian had been in a jocularly satirical vein. I had mentioned his pontifical attitude, the magnification of his office, his bombastic rhetoric over the Higher Life and the Inspiration of the Snows, and, all that being part and parcel of our old Adrian, we had laughed. Six months before I would have told Jaffery quite a different story. But ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... morning, October 18th, having previously celebrated the mass of St. Stephen the first martyr, he proceeded to court, arrayed as he was in pontifical robes, and bearing in his hand the archiepiscopal cross. As he entered, the King with the barons retired into a neighboring apartment, and was soon after followed by the bishops. The Primate, left alone with his clerks in the spacious hall, seated himself on a bench, and with calm and intrepid ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... pontifical, rapped with his bow on his rack, lifted his violin to his chin, and—an obliterating sponge was passed over Sylvia's memory. All the queer, uncomfortable talk, the unpleasant voices, the angry or malicious or uneasy eyes, the unkindly smiling lips, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... which occurred after the death of Hyginus accords with this view. Valentine a candidate for the Roman bishopric, 545 8. The letters of Pius to Justus corroborate this view, 547 9. It is sustained by the fact that the word bishop now began to be applied to the presiding elder, 550 10. The Pontifical Book remarkably confirms it—Not strange that history speaks so little of this change, 552 Little alteration at first apparent in the general aspect of the Church in consequence of the adoption of the new principle, 554 Facility with which the change ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... of peace had been sworn upon the Gospels, there was a general presentation before the two Kings. Cantocarrero, the Castilian secretary of state, presented the Spanish notabilities, while Cardinal Mazarin, in his pontifical robes, presented the French. As he announced M. de Turenne, the old King looked at him repeatedly. "There's one," quoth he, "who has given me ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

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

... I must come armed with authority. I must carry the sword and keys of St. Peter. I must be sustained by all the pomps of that church of pomps and triumphs. My divine mission must speak through signs and symbols, through stately stole, pontifical ornaments, the tiara of religious state on the day of its most solemn ceremonial; and with these I must bring the word of power, born equally of intellect and soul, and my utterance must be in ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

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

... on either side are also so posed as to arouse no surprise at their presence. We should have said beforehand that heavy pontifical robes would be absurdly incongruous in such a composition, but Raphael solves the problem so simply that few would suspect the difficulties. The final touch of beauty is added in the cherub heads below, recalling the naive charm of the similar figures ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... ambition. Provisions were made, however, for holding some sort of control over the individual to whom so much power was to be intrusted. The actual election of Loyola to the generalship did not formally take place until after the time when the order had received pontifical authentication. Meantime, all implicitly regarded him as their master; from him emanated the acts of the body; and to him was assigned the task—aided by Lainez—of preparing what should be the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

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

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

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

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

... the Burgundian Abbot of Saint-Denys. In English hands likewise were the sceptre surmounted by a golden Charlemagne in imperial robes, the rod of justice terminated by a hand in horn of unicorn, the golden clasp of Saint Louis' mantle, and the golden spurs and the Pontifical, containing within its enamelled binding of silver-gilt the ceremonial of the coronation.[1499] The French must needs make shift with a crown kept in the sacristy of the cathedral.[1500] The other signs of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... oratorical impressiveness, coming forward, and bowing to Zotique, "Monsieur l'Honorable; Monsieur;" bowing low; "and Messieurs. I speak not against the clergy, whom the good God and His Pontifical Holiness have set over us for instruction and guidance. I am not speaking against those holy men. But it seems to me to-day that you, my friend, are a little rash—a very little severe—in reproaching my friend, Mr. Cuiller, upon the language ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... the Pope's superior. If, said the emperor, or his lawyers for him, the civil power is from God, as it must be, since non est potestas nisi a Deo, the state stands on the same footing with the church, and the imperial power emanates from as high a source as the Pontifical. The emperor is then as supreme in temporals as the Pope in spirituals, and as the emperor is subject to the pope in spirituals, so must the Pope be subject to the emperor in temporals. As at the time when the ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... ever felt a great affection, that she was bitter on the subject. And it is the only subject on which I ever knew her to feel in any degree bitterly. Many of her verses written during her latter years are fiercely denunciatory or humorously satirical of the Italian priesthood, and especially of the Pontifical Government. I wish that my space permitted me to give further specimens of them here. But I must content myself with giving one line, which haunts my memory, and appears to me excessively happy In the accurate truthfulness of its ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

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

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

... In the fourteenth century, what took place for the race and language takes place also for the nation. It coalesces and condenses; it becomes conscious of its own limits; it discerns and maintains them. The action of Rome is circumscribed; appeals to the pontifical Court are prohibited,[406] and, though they still continue to be made, the oft-expressed wish of the nation is that the king should be judge, not the pope; it is the beginning of the religious supremacy of the English sovereigns. Oxford has ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... innumerable stairs to inspect the garrets of which he was soon to take proud possession, sallying forth from them only to enjoy an agitated delightful afternoon among the shops. Expenditure, always charming, becomes under these circumstances a sacred and pontifical act. Never had Mrs. Elsmere bought a teapot for herself with half the fervour which she now threw into the purchase of Robert's; and the young man, accustomed to a rather bare home, and an Irish lack of the little elegancies of life, was overwhelmed when his mother ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

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

... that the Benedictines took formal possession of Westminster Abbey, and simultaneously that Pontifical High Mass was sung in the University churches of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, to mark the ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... political movement; any political body, any organization whatever, that professes to stand for Socialism, makes an altogether too presumptuous claim. The whole is greater than the part, the will than the instrument. There can be no official nor pontifical Socialism; the theory lives and grows. It springs out of the common sanity of mankind. Constructive Socialism shapes into a great system of developments to be forwarded, points to a great number of systems of activity amidst which its adherents may choose ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... pontifical throne when he sent legates to southern France, and wrote urgent letters full of apostolic zeal to the Archbishops of Auch and Aix, the Bishop of Narbonne, and the King of France. These letters, as well as his instructions to the legates, are similar in tone: "Use against heretics the spiritual ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

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

... with the ecclesiastical World, even since I wrote the Letters that have roused your Spleen. Whether it be through a Decline of the Romish Religion, in particular; or, possibly, through a Decline of all Religion, in general; the pontifical and episcopal Dictatorship and Authority are wofully fallen, from the Chair of Infallibility, where they had been seated by Opinion. The Sons of the most bigotted Ancestors do now perceive, that Piety and Immorality ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... classes of omissions, as being violations of divine prescriptions and commands. The law administered at Athens by the Senate of Areopagus was probably a special religious code, and at Rome, apparently from a very early period, the Pontifical jurisprudence punished adultery, sacrilege and perhaps murder. There were therefore in the Athenian and in the Roman States laws punishing sins. There were also laws punishing torts. The conception of offence against God produced the first class of ordinances; ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... will of the French king was that the Pope should remain within the zone of royal influence. So Clement lived at Bordeaux and at Poitiers, and finally retired to the County of Venaissin which the Holy See possessed by right, and established the pontifical court at Avignon. ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... the claim which preeminently should be set forth in advance, is this: that De Quincey was the prince of hierophants, or of pontifical hierarchs, as regards all those profound mysteries which from the beginning have swayed the human heart, sometimes through the light of angelic smiles lifting it upwards to an altitude just beneath the heavens, and sometimes shattering it, with the shock ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

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

... young prince might well tremble with emotion. Before him stood the archbishop, clad in full pontifical vestments; around were the most noted prelates and wisest abbots of England; behind him the nobility, gentry, and commonalty of the whole country—all gazing upon him, as the archbishop dictated the solemn words of the oath, which Edwy repeated with ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... acclamations are redoubled. I had not yet understood on what account, when some one called my attention to the light which was shining through the window-blinds at the farthest end of the Pontifical Palace. The people had observed that the Holy Father was traversing the apartment in order to reach the balcony. It was speedily thrown open, and the Sovereign Pontiff, in a white robe and scarlet mantle, made his appearance, surrounded ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... heads of the faithful on pardons, as a specific against headache and earache—a singular remedy! The cathedral has a fine marble tomb of Bishop Visdelou, preacher to Queen Anne of Austria; he is represented in a half reclining posture, in his pontifical garments. In every part of the cathedral are the little boxes ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... hearing this, said: "Beware Nahoum!" But those who had been at the Palace said: "Beware the Inglesi!" This still Quaker, with the white shining face and pontifical hat, with his address of "thee" and "thou," and his forms of speech almost Oriental in their imagery and simplicity, himself an archaism, had impressed them with a sense of power. He had prompted old Diaz Pasha to speak of him as a reincarnation, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... 11th of August, 1492, after the lingering death-agony of Innocent VIII, during which two hundred and twenty murders were committed in the streets of Rome, Alexander VI ascended the pontifical throne. Son of a sister of Pope Calixtus III, Roderigo Lenzuoli Borgia, before being created cardinal, had five children by Rosa Vanozza, whom he afterwards caused to be married ...
— Widger's Quotations from Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas, Pere • David Widger

... the spirit of the wearers, who testified that they held things temporal in contempt whenas they wrapped their bodies in so mean a habit,—those of our time have them made full and double and glossy and of the finest cloth and have brought them to a quaint pontifical cut, insomuch that they think it no shame to flaunt it withal peacock-wise, in the churches and public places, even as do the laity with their apparel; and like as with the sweep-net the fisher goeth about to take many fishes in the river at one cast, even so these, wrapping themselves about ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio



Words linked to "Pontifical" :   papal, overblown, apostolic, episcopal, pope, grandiloquent



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