"Sacerdotal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his house, before the Bench of Priests in Rome. It was for the priests to decide this question. The Senate could decree the restitution of property generally, but it was necessary that that spot of ground should be liberated from the thraldom of sacerdotal tenure by sacerdotal interference. These priests were all men of high birth and distinction in the Republic. Nineteen among them were "Consulares," or past-Consuls. Superstitious awe affects more lightly the consciences ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... well understood," says Jacolliot, "that it was but sacerdotal influence and Brahminical decay that, in changing the primitive condition of the East, reduced woman to a state of subordination which has not yet disappeared ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... certain omnibuses which carry signal lights of these colors. As for topazes, whether sparkling or dim, they are cheap stones, precious only to women of the middle class who like to have jewel cases on their dressing-tables. And then, although the Church has preserved for the amethyst a sacerdotal character which is at once unctuous and solemn, this stone, too, is abused on the blood-red ears and veined hands of butchers' wives who love to adorn themselves inexpensively with real and heavy jewels. Only the sapphire, among all these stones, has kept its fires undefiled ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... he assumes the sacerdotal habit and ceases to be a man, and speaks in the name of God, the tones of his voice, the refinement of his look, reveal innate distinction and that spotless courtesy which can not harm even a ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... productive son of the North American continent. Families of twenty, or even twenty-five, are not unknown, and, when a man has had more than one wife, it has even exceeded that. Life itself is full of camaraderie and good spirit, marked by religious traits and sacerdotal influence. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... candles. In Galway the Confraternity of the Holy Girdle was making full time, and in Westport three priests are laying on day and night in a mission. A few days ago they carried the Corpus Christi round the place, six hundred children strewing flowers under the sacerdotal feet, and the crowds of worshippers who flocked into the town necessitated the use of a tent, from which the money-box was stolen. On Sunday last the bridge convaynient to the chapel was covered with country folks who could not get into the building, and a big stall with sacred images in plaster ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... played the favorite airs and songs of the country. Nor was it deemed unbecoming the gravity and dignity of a priest to admit musicians into his house, or to take pleasure in witnessing the dance; and seated with their wives and family in the midst of their friends, the highest functionaries of the sacerdotal order enjoyed the lively scene. In the same manner, at a Greek entertainment, diversions of all kinds were introduced; and Xenophon and Plato inform us that Socrates, the wisest of men, amused his friends with music, jugglers, mimics, buffoons, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... things, the most excellent are those which are animated; of the animated, those which subsist by intelligence; of the intelligent, mankind; and of men, the sacerdotal class. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... treasurers, canons, clerks, deacons, scholasters, and choir boys. There is an inventory extant of the surplices, stoles, and amices, and the fur choir hats with crowns of squirrel and linings of vair. There are countless sacerdotal ornaments. We find vermilion altar cloths, curtains of emerald silk, a cope of velvet, crimson and violet with orpheys of cloth of gold, another of rose damask, satin dalmatics for the deacons, baldachins figured with hawks and falcons of Cyprus gold. We find ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... scarce resent the trampling of one more parvenu upon their necks, be she ever so broad of beam. If some years hence they should rise against the robbers, led on by "dangerous demagogues," repine not, for every dog, sacerdotal or otherwise, can ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... for a wealthy youth of the upper middle classes 'twas the one road to distinction, to social equality with the nobility—and whose fault but his own that even after the first stirrings of scepticism he had accepted semi-sacerdotal office as chief treasurer of a clerical college? But how should he foresee that these uneasinesses of youth would be aggravated rather than appeased by deeper study, more passionate devotion? Strange! All around him, in college or cathedral, was faith and peace; in his ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the disposition of the priesthood, the tone of Murtagh, like that of the rest of his brother saggarts, was considerably softened; he even went so far as to declare that politics were not altogether consistent with sacerdotal duty; and resuming his exorcisms, which he had for some time abandoned, he went to the Isle of Holiness, and delivered a possessed woman of six demons in the shape of white mice. He, however, again resumed the political mantle in the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... authorities for punishment; "because (in the words of a modern writer) she was too watchful over the immunities of the privileged order of Priests, to deliver them up to temporal jurisdiction, till stripped of the sacerdotal character, and degraded to the situation of laymen." (Dowling's History of Romanism, p. 551, New York, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... Above the half-suppressed hum of conversation the clerk's voice arose at regular intervals, calling out the name of one of the jurymen, and, as its owner stood up, the court usher, black-gowned and sacerdotal of aspect, advanced and proffered the book. Then, as the juryman took the volume in his hand, the voice of the usher resounded through the court like that of a priest intoning some refrain or antiphon—an effect that was increased by the rhythmical and archaic ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... Amen-mes ("Amen's son," or, "born of Amen") the steward of the deity's flocks,(439) beside whom is his deceased wife Nefer-t-aru and a young boy, his son, Amen-em-ua ("Amen in the bark"). In the second vignette, a principal priest (heb) of Osiris, dressed in the sacerdotal leopard's skin, offers incense to the lady Te-bok ("The servant-maid"); below is a row of kneeling figures, namely: two sons, Si-t-mau ("Son of the mother"), Amen-Ken ("Amon the warlike"), and four daughters, Meri-t-ma ("Loving ...
— Egyptian Literature
... adoration of natural phenomena, and by its forms, as well as by its literal development, reminding us of the polytheism of the Greeks; the other founded upon a material pantheism, metaphysical, mysterious, sacerdotal, and presenting the most astonishing conformity with the religions of the East. That last has received the name of druidism, from the druids who were its founders and priests. We shall give to the first the name ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... themselves to one another, alleging that religious women were subject to some petty secret slips and imperfections which would be a foul and burning shame for them to discover and to reveal to men, how sacerdotal soever their functions were; but that they would freelier, more familiarly, and with greater cheerfulness, open to each other their offences, faults, and escapes under the seal of confession. There is not anything, answered the pope, fitting for you to impetrate of me which I would not most willingly ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the distance, various Chapels lighted, and in each of which Mass is celebrating: in all directions groups of kneeling Worshippers. Before the High Altar the Prior of Burgos officiates, attended by his Sacerdotal Retinue. In the front of the Stage, opposite to the Audience, a Confessional. The chanting of a solemn Mass here commences; ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... vicar set his teeth, And to the cobbler flew; And with his sacerdotal fist Gave him a box ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... important of the Syrian towns, where the temple of Venus was known to contain a vast treasure. The invaders approached, scarcely expecting to be resisted; but the high-priest of the temple, having collected a large body of peasants, appeared in his sacerdotal robes at the head of a fanatic multitude armed with slings, and succeeded in beating off the assailants. Emesa, its temple, and its treasure escaped the rapacity of the Persians; and an example of resistance was set, which was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... children, to instruct them in the law and canonically to bury himself (vol. viii. 22). Ritual, properly so called, there was none; congregational prayers were merely those of the individual en masse, and the only admitted approach to a sacerdotal order were the Olema or scholars learned in the legistic and the Mullah or schoolmaster. By thus abolishing the priesthood Mohammed reconciled ancient with modern wisdom. "Scito dominum," said Cato, "pro tota familia ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Herculaneum. A young priest has thrown himself on his knees against this candelabra and embraces its pedestal; in terror he has allowed his censer to fall to the earth. Standing by his side is Coresus, the high priest, crowned with ivy, enveloped in draperies, and seemingly floating in the sacerdotal whiteness of his vestments; a beardless priest, of doubtful sex, of androgynous grace, an enervated Adonis, the shadow of a man. With a backward turn of one hand he plunges the knife in his breast; with the other he has the appearance of casting ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... me," said Dubois, beginning to pull off his sacerdotal ornaments, "do you count on continuing to call me your gossip now ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... wealthy and influential family of Manila, of agreeable appearance and cheerful disposition, suited to shine in the world, he had never felt any call to the sacerdotal profession, but by reason of some promises or vows, his mother, after not a few struggles and violent disputes, compelled him to enter the seminary. She was a great friend of the Archbishop, had a will of iron, and was as inexorable as is every devout woman who believes that she is interpreting ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... how he had lost it, and who had won it. It relieved his mind, and the policeman kept the secret of confession until after the trial. Then he broke the seal, and related to me confidentially the story of his penitent, showing that he was quite as unfit for the sacerdotal office ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... labored to support it; and those from Paris, Bordeaux, Rheims, Lille, etc. were not greatly inferior to it in elegance. The sun shone brightly, and with the grandeur of the banners and the pomp of the prelates in their rich sacerdotal robes formed a scene of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... I have already said, is stated by Sahagun to have been the war chief of Tula, as Quetzalcoatl was the sacerdotal head (Lib. iii, cap. v). But Duran and most writers state that it was simply another ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... he was solemnizing a public sacrifice in the proper habit of his office, (for he was also a Flamen Carmentalis) hearing of the mutiny and insurrection of the people against the Senate, rushed immediately into the midst of the assembly, covered as he was with his sacerdotal robes, and quelled the sedition by his authority and the force of his elocution. I do not pretend to have read that the persons I have mentioned were then reckoned Orators, or that any fort of reward or encouragement was given to Eloquence: I only conjecture what ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Oracles which appeared in the following year was more characteristic. It was a free adaptation of an unreadable Latin treatise by a Dutchman, which in Fontenelle's skilful hands becomes a vehicle for applying Cartesian solvents to theological authority. The thesis is that the Greek oracles were a sacerdotal imposture, and not, as ecclesiastical tradition said, the work of evil spirits, who were stricken silent at the death of Jesus Christ. The effect was to discredit the authority of the early Fathers of the Church, though the writer ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... There was silently elaborated in their schools a spiritual monotheism, over against the crude polytheism of the people generally—a theocratic ideal inadequately apprehended by gross and sensuous Israel—Jehovism simple and sublime amid a sacerdotal worship which left the heart impure while cleansing the hands. Instead of taking their stand upon the law, with its rules of worship, its ceremonial precepts and penalties against transgressors, the prophets set themselves above it, speaking slightingly of the forms and customs which the ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... devotional structure the old man directed his steps, followed by young Durward; and, as they approached, the priest, dressed in his sacerdotal garments, made his appearance in the act of proceeding from his cell to the chapel, for the discharge, doubtless, of his holy office. Durward bowed his body reverently to the priest, as the respect due to his sacred office demanded; whilst his companion, with an appearance of still ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... in front of the celebrated temple at Delphi, which occupies the background; the aged Pythia enters in sacerdotal pomp, addresses her prayers to all the gods who at any time presided, or still preside, over the oracle, harangues the assembled people (represented by the actual audience), and goes into the temple to seat herself on the tripod. She returns full of consternation, and describes ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... gives his usual brilliant summary of the movement in chapter xxxvii. of the Decline and Fall. A host of facts similar to those cited by Lecky will be found in The Book of Paradise, 2 vols., trans. by Wallis Budge. Lea's History of Sacerdotal Celibacy gives the classical and authoritative account of the moral consequences of the practice of celibacy. For a vivid picture of the psychology of the ascetic, see Flaubert's great ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... priests—although he was of the tribe of Levi, but to the Senate, and received the confirmation of the people through their deputies. "But the priests belonged to the tribe of Levi, which was set apart to God—the king of the commonwealth." "They were thus, not merely a sacerdotal body, appointed to the service of the altar, but also a temporal magistracy having important civil and political functions, especially to teach the people the laws." The high priest, as head of the hierarchy, and supreme interpreter of the laws, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... have similar contradictions to record. The meek Galilean who preached the religion of a personal revelation, without ceremonial or dogmatic law, triumphed only on condition of being conquered, and of permitting his words of spirit and life to be confiscated by a church essentially dogmatic and sacerdotal. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... probably among the reasons that induced the sculptor of that wonderful figure of Laocoon to exhibit him naked, notwithstanding he was surprised in the act of sacrificing to Apollo, and consequently ought to be shown in his sacerdotal habits, if those greater reasons had not preponderated. Art is not yet in so high estimation with us as to obtain so great a sacrifice as the ancients made, especially the Grecians, who suffered themselves to be represented naked, whether they were generals, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... Grillparzer's experiences with Charlotte von Paumgarten and Marie Daeffinger are poetically fructified, and his capacity for tracing the incalculable course of feminine instincts attains to the utmost of refinement and delicacy. The theme is the conflict between duty to a solemn vow of sacerdotal chastity and the disposition to satisfy the natural desire for love. But Grillparzer has represented no such conflict in the breast of Hero. Her antagonist is not her own conscience but the representative of divine law in the temple of which she is priestess. The action of the play ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... promises. He will not hear of a constitution, and endeavors to abolish or discountenance all that has been effected during his absence. The priests are caressed and restored to their privileges, so that the inhabitants of Piedmont are exposed to a double despotism, a military and a sacerdotal one; the last is ten times more ruinous and fatal to liberty ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Decalogue. Mark you, paganism drew fine lines in morals, long anterior to the era of monotheism and of Moses, and furnished immortal types of all the virtues; yet the excess of its religious ceremonial, robbed it of vital fructifying energies. The frequency and publicity of sacerdotal service, usurped the place of daily individual piety. The tendency of all outward symbolical observances, unduly multiplied, is to substitute mere formalism ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Social institutions had been weighed by their real value for humanity. Minds the most devoted to power had spoken to sovereigns of duties, and to people of rights. The holy boldness of Christianity had been heard even in the consecrated pulpit, in the presence of Louis XIV. Bossuet, that sacerdotal genius of the ancient synagogue, had mingled his proud adulations to Louis XIV. with some of those austere warnings which console persons for their abasement. Fenelon, that evangelical and tender genius, of the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of all minds to which breadth of interest or length of years has brought balance and dignity. The sacerdotal quality of old age comes from this same sympathy in disinterestedness. Old men full of hurry and passion appear as fools, because we understand that their experience has not left enough mark upon their brain to qualify with the memory of ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... depth. His opinions arrested and influenced me, even when they did not gain my assent. He professed openly his admiration of the Church of Rome, and his hatred of the Reformers. He delighted in the notion of an hierarchical system, of sacerdotal power, and of full ecclesiastical liberty. He felt scorn of the maxim, "The Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants;" and he gloried in accepting Tradition as a main instrument of religious teaching. He had a high severe idea of the intrinsic ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... it with that antique order of dark, mysterious, low-studded churches, apparently crusht by the semicircular arch—almost Egyptian, save for the ceiling; all hieroglyphic, all sacerdotal, all symbolic, more loaded in their ornamentation with lozenges and zigzags than with flowers, with flowers than with animals, with animals than with men; less the work of the architect than of the bishop; the first ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... had at least as great a share in it as the sharpness of the season. They took off his cassock, which was all in tatters; and the four, who had paid him those last duties, divided it amongst them, out of devotion; after which they arrayed him in his sacerdotal habits. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... righteous soul should avoid all appearance of evil. I will not palter and parley with the unholy thing. Even though you go to a registry-office and get rid as far as you can of every relic of the sacerdotal and sacramental idea, yet the marriage itself is still an assertion of man's supremacy over woman. It ties her to him for life, it ignores her individuality, it compels her to promise what no human heart can be sure of performing; for you can contract to do or not ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... all the world, and if practically acted upon would every where produce the same pure and upright character in the people. Vice and wickedness were the hateful effect of aristocratic pride, kingly lusts, or sacerdotal delusion; the human heart was naturally innocent, and bent only upon virtue; when the debasing influence of these corrupters of men was removed, it would universally resume its natural direction. Hence the maxim of Robespierre—"Le ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... warfare between scientific positivism and religious metaphysics was declared. Henceforth God could not be worshipped under the forms and idols of a sacerdotal fancy; a new meaning had been given to the words "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." The reason of man was at last able to study the scheme of the universe, of which he is a part, and to ascertain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... upon dainties fed, St. Paul's lifts up his sacerdotal head; While his lean curates, slim and lank to view, Around him point ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and Specimens of the Sacerdotal Caste, (now nearly extinct,) of the Ancient Aztec Founders of the Ruined Temples ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... why do I argue thus, as if the cause of the patricians, respecting the priesthood, were untouched? and as if we were not already in possession of one sacerdotal office, of the highest class? We see plebeian decemvirs, for performing sacrifices, interpreters of the Sibylline prophecies, and of the fates of the nation; we also see them presidents of Apollo's festival, and of other religious ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... but open, like foreign churches, to the whole congregation. The women sat apart in a gallery. The altar was in the centre, on a platform, raised several steps and railed round. Within this railed space were the high-priest and his assistants. The high-priest with his long beard and sacerdotal vestments, struck me as a fine venerable figure. The service was in Hebrew: but I had a book with a translation of it. All I recollect are the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... poetry,—the interpreter of the popular beliefs,—and afterwards in art; we can discover how Phidias and Praxiteles, to speak only of sculptors, treated the types created by Homer and Hesiod. In the case of Chaldaea we have no such opportunity. She has left us neither monuments of sacerdotal theology like those we have inherited in such countless numbers from Egypt, nor the brilliant imagery in which the odes and epics of the Greeks sketched the personalities of the gods. But even in Chaldaea art was ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... within her hearing. "Ribald ruffian," she had once said of him; "but that he thinks his priestly rags protect him, he would not have dared to insult me." It was said that she had complained to Stumfold; but Mr Stumfold's sacerdotal clothing, whether ragged or whole, prevented him also from interfering, and nothing further of a personal nature had ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... punishment for having caused the fall of man. Christian theology thus at once struck a blow at these old beliefs in woman's equality, broadly inculcating the doctrine that woman was created for man, was subordinate to him and under obedience to him. It bade woman stand aside from sacerdotal offices, forbidding her to speak in the church, commanding her to ask her husband at home for all she wished to know, at once repressing all tendency toward her freedom among those who adopted the new religion, and by various decretals taught her defilement through the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the governor. Flavius Josephus, as the Romans afterwards called him, came of a noble Jewish family—his father, Matthias, belonging to the highest of the twenty-four classes into which the sacerdotal families were divided. Matthias was eminent for his attainments, and piety; and had been one of the leading men in Jerusalem. From his youth, Josephus had carefully prepared himself for public life, mastering the doctrines of the three leading sects ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... and the male officiants are only their deputies (p. 121); in one important state, Khyrim, the High Priestess and actual head of the State is a woman, who combines in her person sacerdotal ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... nations believed that the malign beings which animated diseases could, like men, be propitiated by ceremonies and incantations. The Redskins are always in fear of the assaults of evil spirits, and have recourse to incantations, and to the most absurd sacerdotal rites, or to the influence of their manitu, in order to be safe. Their devotions and sacrifices are prompted by ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... the inestimable boon of freedom. Freedom from sacerdotal dogma, from secular law, she ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... bishop is caught sight of, tripping down a side-path leading from the town. Blessing any who chance to meet him on the way, chatting pleasantly with his companion, a portly gentleman wearing the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, the bishop hastens towards the grotto, dons his sacerdotal robes of ivory-white and gold, and celebrates mass. The ceremony over, there is a general stir. Adjusting their harness, the bearers form a procession, the bishop emerges from the grotto, and one by one the thirty and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... word Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, Night of the many secrets, whose effect— Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread— Themselves alone may fully apprehend, They tremble and are changed: In each, the uncouth individual soul Looms forth and glooms Essential, ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... days to elevate many intellects, and to purify many hearts. Some things also which at a later period were justly regarded as among her chief blemishes were, in the seventh century, and long afterwards, among her chief merits. That the sacerdotal order should encroach on the functions of the civil magistrate would, in our time, be a great evil. But that which in an age of good government is an evil may, in an ago of grossly bad government, be a blessing. It is better that mankind should be governed by wise laws well administered, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... April came Macaulay's article in the Edinburgh, setting out with his own incomparable directness, pungency, and effect, all the arguments on the side of that popular antagonism which was rooted far less in specific reasoning than in a general anti-sacerdotal instinct that lies deep in the hearts of Englishmen. John Sterling called the famous article the assault of an equipped and practised sophist against a crude young platonist, who happens by accident to have been taught ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... religion which does not appear to them divine, but because it gives them the right to command like gods over their fellow-citizens. They would undoubtedly consider the destruction of their empire a very grievous thing; but yet if the sovereigns of the earth and their people should once grow weary of the sacerdotal yoke, we may be sure the Sovereign of heaven would not require a longer time to ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... indulgence, the various errors of the vulgar, they diligently practised the ceremonies of their fathers, devoutly frequented the temples of the gods; and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of an atheist under the sacerdotal robes. Reasoners of such a temper were scarcely inclined to wrangle about their respective modes of faith, or of worship. It was indifferent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose to assume; and they approached with the same inward contempt, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... on chairs, and appeared to listen; then a second and a third ascended the pulpit, and afterwards another sermon was preached from the altar, and another psalm sung; then a sermon was again read from the pulpit. While ceremonies were performed at the altar, the sacerdotal garments were often put on and taken off again. I frequently thought the service was coming to a close, but it always began afresh, and lasted, as I said before, until four o'clock. The number of forms surprised me greatly, as the ritual of the ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... foes within the gates of the Establishment. He regarded them, moreover, as ministers of religion who were hostile to the work of the Reformation, and therefore he deemed that they were in a false position in the Anglican Church. Their priestly claims and sacerdotal rites, their obvious sympathies and avowed convictions, separated them sharply from ordinary clergymen, and were difficult to reconcile with adherence to the principles of Protestantism. Like many other men at the time, and still more of to-day, he was at a loss to ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... distinguished also by an extraordinary wide range of vision. He lays under contribution with equal felicity and suggestiveness the Old Testament, the Homeric poems, the Latin dramatists, the laws of the Barbarians, the sacerdotal laws of the Hindus, the oracles of the Brehon caste, and the writings of the Roman jurists. In other words, he was a master of the Comparative Method. Few writers have thrown so much light on the development of the human mind in its social ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... The sacerdotal vestment of their priests was like a woman's petticoat plaited, which they put about their necks, and tied over the right shoulder; but they always kept one arm out, to use it as occasion required. This cloak was made round at bottom, and descended no lower than the middle of ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... these people keeping well through the ordinary exercise of their religion, they have, owing to their absurd Protestant beliefs, to pay me through the nose for providing them with a scientific instead of a sacerdotal confessional box." ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... insisted upon the celibacy of the priesthood, for himself he would suggest the middle ground of permitting such priests as had already married to retain their wives, while prohibiting others from following their example, unless they resigned the sacerdotal office. He would have the sacramental cup administered to the laity when desired, and hoped to obtain the Pope's consent. He even admitted the necessity of reform in some of the daily prayers, and reprehended the want of moderation exhibited by the Sorbonne, which not only condemned the Germans, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... blood of that celebrated Boanerges of the Covenant, Donald Cargill,[I-G] who was slain by the persecutors at the town of Queensferry, in the melancholy days of Charles II., merely because, in the plenitude of his sacerdotal power, he had cast out of the church, and delivered over to Satan by a formal excommunication, the King and Royal Family, with all the ministers and courtiers thereunto belonging. But if Josiah was really derived from this uncompromising champion, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... teachers; First and last of those appointed In the ranks of the anointed; With their songs like swords to sever Tyranny and Falsehood's bands! 'Tis the Poet—sum and total Of the others, With his brothers, In his rich robes sacerdotal, Singing with his golden psalter. Comes he now to wed the twain— Truth and Beauty— Rest and Duty— Hope, and Fear, and Joy, and Pain, Unite for weal or ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... our own. It is with the same feeling intensified, as I have already noted, that we read some of the letters of the early fathers—those grave and hallowed figures seen through a mist of centuries—and find them jesting at one another in the gayest and least sacerdotal manner imaginable. "Who could tell a story with more wit, who could joke so pleasantly?" sighs St. Gregory of Nazienzen of his friend St. Basil, remembering doubtless with a heavy heart the shafts of good-humored raillery that had brightened their lifelong intercourse. With what kindly and loving ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... the arena, was a wide terrace where the senate sat. There were the dignitaries of the empire, and with them priests in their sacerdotal robes; vestals in linen, their hair arranged in the six braids that were symbolic of virginity; swarms of Oriental princes, rainbows of foreign ambassadors; and in the centre, the imperial pulvinar, an enclosed pavilion, in which Nero ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... hearse awaited them. It was placed in the carriage, covered with a pall of violet-coloured velvet, and with the cloak which the hero wore at Marengo. The Emperor's household were in mourning. The cavalcade was arranged by order of the Governor in the following manner: The Abbe Vignale in his sacerdotal robes, with young Henry Bertrand at his side, bearing an aspersorium; Doctors Arnott and Antommarchi, the persons entrusted with the superintendence of the hearse, drawn by four horses, led by grooms, and escorted by twelve grenadiers without arms, on each side; these last ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... his companions, meanwhile, journeyed to Rome. There they obtained from Paul III. permission to visit Palestine upon a missionary enterprise, together with special privileges for their entrance into sacerdotal orders. Those of the ten friends who were not yet priests, were ordained at Venice in June 1537. They then began to preach in public, roaming the streets with faces emaciated by abstinence, clad in ragged clothes, and using a language strangely compounded of Italian and Spanish. Their obvious ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... The Holy See (State of the Vatican City) conventional short form: Holy See (Vatican City) local long form: Santa Sede (Stato della Citta del Vaticano) local short form: Santa Sede (Citta del Vaticano) Digraph: VT Type: monarchical-sacerdotal state Capital: Vatican City Independence: 11 February 1929 (from Italy) Constitution: Apostolic Constitution of 1967 (effective 1 March 1968) Legal system: NA National holiday: Installation Day of the Pope, 22 October (1978) (John Paul II) note: Pope ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in this scene! In the old days of Egypt Philae was sacred ground, was the Nile-protected home of sacerdotal mysteries, was a veritable Mecca to the believers in Osiris, to which it was forbidden even to draw near without permission. The ancient Egyptians swore solemnly "By him who sleeps in Philae." Now they sometimes swear angrily at him who wakes in, or at least by, Philae, and keeps them steadily ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... deferential deportment from them all; and he could not help feeling that there was in it a violation of some natural principle long sacred to his heart. But the all-prevading and indefinite awe felt for that sacerdotal character into which his brother was about to enter, subdued all, and reconciled him to those inroads upon violated Nature, despite her own voice, loudly expressed as it ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... 1821 and January 1822) are of no particular note. In May 1825 he read a paper on the Prometheus of 'schylus before the Royal Society of Literature; but "the series of disquisitions respecting the Egyptian in connection with the sacerdotal theology and in contrast with the mysteries of ancient Greece," to which this essay had been announced as preparatory, never made their appearance. In the same year, however, he published one of the best known of his prose works, his ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... declaring that this pagan emblem and its accompaniments no longer served any purpose in an assembly of which the majority was Christian. By the same stroke, he suppressed the incomes of the sacerdotal colleges with all their privileges, particularly those of the Vestals; confiscated for the revenue the sums granted for the exercise of religion; seized the property of the temples; and forbade the priests to receive ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... from what is still taking place in these distant countries why the worship of fire should have existed among our ancestors, and why sacerdotal associations, such as the Brahmins of India, the Guebers of Persia, the Vestals of Rome, the priests of Baal in Chaldea and Phenicia should have been specially instituted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... away from the home among the hills to the crowded Temple courts. The devout priest has come up to the city, leaving his aged wife in solitude, for his turn of service has arrived. Details of the arrangements of the sacerdotal 'courses' need not detain us. We need only note that the office of burning incense was regarded as an honour, was determined by lot, and took place at the morning and evening sacrifice. So Zacharias, with his censer in his hand, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... were appropriated, within the enclosure of the principal temple of each city. Here the youth of both sexes, of the middle and higher classes, were placed when very young; the girls being entrusted to the care of priestesses, for women exercised all sacerdotal functions except those of sacrifice. In these institutions the boys were drilled in monastic discipline. They decorated the shrines of the gods with flowers, fed the sacred fires, and took part in the religious chants and festivals. Those in the higher ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... where a Man had a subtle enterprising Genius, and some Friends; for such a one wou'd, in a short Time, rise to such Dignities in the Church, the Hopes of which was the Motive of all the wiser Sort, who voluntarily took upon them the sacerdotal Habit. That the ecclesiastical State was govern'd with the same Policy as were secular Principalities and Kingdoms; that what was beneficial, not what was meritorious and virtuous, would be alone regarded. That there were no more Hopes ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... of Mahayana Buddhism from the teaching of the Gautama Buddha has been often compared with that of the Christian faith from the Jewish, but it may be better compared with the growth of a sacerdotal system from the simplicities of the Gospel of St. Mark. That the development should have been on the same lines in all essential matters of symbol and (in the most important respects) of doctrine, modified only by Eastern habits of thought and environment, is a miracle of coincidence which cannot ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... of the Lord is, there is liberty,' and if a man has in his heart the grace of God, then he stands erect as a man. 'Ye are bought with a price; be ye not the servants of men.' The Christian democracy, the Christian rejection of all sacerdotal and other domination, flows from the access of each individual Christian to the fountain of all wisdom, the only source of law and command, the inspirer of all strength, the giver of all grace. By faith ye stand. 'Stand fast therefore ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... play with him. His parents were old, and he had been born late to them—twelve years after Philip, his only brother and the heir. From the first his mother had destined him for the priesthood, and a succession of priests had been his tutors: but—What instinct is there in the sacerdotal mind which warns it off some cases as hopeless from the first? Here was a child, docile, affectionate, moody at times, but eager to please and glad to be rewarded by a smile; bred among priests and designed to be a priest; yet amid a thousand ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the ages stand out white and shining and free from the mud and slime with which His priests have bespattered Him. I believe in Him absolutely! But I can find nowhere in His Gospel that He wished us to turn Religion into a sort of stock-jobbing company managed by sacerdotal ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the envoys of the King of France very graciously, and seeing their poverty, he supplied them with all that they required. They were to be presented to the prince in their sacerdotal dress, when, bearing on a cushion a splendid Bible, the gift of the King of France, a Psalter given by the Queen, a Missal, a crucifix and a censer, they entered the royal presence, taking good care not to touch the threshold of the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... never thought the less of the additions to, and provisions for, the fortunes and splendour of the family name, which he was winning, because he was himself a priest, and would leave no heirs of his name. The peculiarities in the position of a sacerdotal aristocracy have engrafted the passion of nepotism in the hearts, as well as the practice of it in the manners, of the members of ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... famous in North Italy; while his evenings were given to the more private diversions which his age and looks still justified. In religious ceremonies or in formal intercourse with his clergy he was the most imposing and sacerdotal of bishops; but in private life none knew better how to disguise his cloth. He was moreover a man of parts, and from the construction of a Latin hexameter to the growing of a Holland bulb, had a word worth hearing on all subjects likely to engage the dilettante. A liking soon sprang ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... to the embrace of Father Panizzoni, it would have been a wonderful bargain both for him and me. But this was not the only invitation I then received to enter upon a sacerdotal career. Monsignor Morozzo, my great-uncle and god-father, then secretary to the bishops and regular monks, one day proposed that I should enter the Ecclesiastical Academy, and follow the career of the prelacy under his patronage. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... sensualists, the morality of the 'Satyricon' or the 'Decamerone,' are its only natural concomitants and outcome; but as yet it is not honest enough to say this. It affects the soothsayer's long robe, the sacerdotal ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... direction.] Now please don't forget, my boys. When I raise my hands so, you begin, "Enduring love, sweet end of strife," etc. [CYNTHIA has risen. On the table by which she stands is her long lace cloak. MATTHEW assumes sacerdotal importance and takes his position inside the altar of flowers.] Ahem! Philip! [He signs to PHILIP to take his position.] Sarah! [CYNTHIA breathes fast, and supports herself against the table. MISS HENEAGE, with the silent air of a martyr, goes toward her and stands ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... in the priesthood of all believers, we are ready enough to assert it in opposition to sacerdotal assumptions. Are we as ready to recognise it as laying a very real responsibility upon us, and involving a very practical inference as to our own conduct? We all have the power, therefore we all have the duty. For what purpose did God give us the blessing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... assassination, and the more robust vices, were appeased, not by amendment of life, but by penances, servility to the monks, and an abject and illiberal devotion [p]. The reverence for the clergy had been carried to such a height, that, wherever a person appeared in a sacerdotal habit, though on the high way, the people flocked around him, and, showing him all marks of profound respect, received every word he uttered as the most sacred oracle [q]. Even the military virtues, so inherent in all the Saxon tribes, began to ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... the piazza and entered the compartment reserved for them without making any religious demonstration; while Savonarola, on the contrary, advanced to his own place in the procession, wearing the sacerdotal robes in which he had just celebrated the Holy Eucharist, and holding in his hand the sacred host for all the world to see, as it was enclosed in a crystal tabernacle. Fra Domenico di Pescia, the hero of the occasion, followed, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as our misguided brothers have assumed our sacerdotal garments, they may adopt our faith, that their speech may conform to their dress. Then, having laid aside their earthly stoles, may they deserve, like all faithful Priests, to be seen "standing before the throne, and in sight of the Lamb, with white stoles and palms in their hands, ... saying: ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... precipitation, and looked round the sacristy: I was there, entirely alone. I looked into the garden—it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was wandering among the flowers. I took courage, I examined all the corners of the room; I looked behind the praying-desk, which was very large, and I shook all the sacerdotal vestments which were hanging on the walls, everything was in its natural condition, and could give me no explanation of what had just occurred. The sight of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy that my brain had, probably, been weakened by the haemorrhage, and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Throughout the history of the New Kingdom we can detect the influence of a strong opposition centred at Asshur. There the last monarch of the Middle Kingdom had fixed his dwelling under the wing of the priests; there the new dynasty had dethroned him as the consummation of an anti-sacerdotal rising of nobles and of peasant soldiery. Sargon seems to have owed his elevation two generations later to revenge taken for this victory by the city folk; but Sargon's son, Sennacherib, in his turn, found priestly domination intolerable, and, in an effort to crush ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... mystic views and tone, they found a practical ally in the sullen dissatisfaction which drove Dissenters to opposition against the Government. So it was under Nicholas. So it still is under Alexander II. It may suit the sacerdotal Ritualists, who would fain establish a connection of High Church Anglicanism with the official orthodoxy of the East, to promote the aggressive policy of the Czar. But English Dissenters, who prize their freedom from clerical trammels, might remember that Autocracy in Russia represents ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... venerable alchemist's time, for spurious Talayots may be seen in every direction. These latter-day edifices have one advantage over the hoary prototypes. Their purpose is clearly defined. We know that they were not intended for the burial-places of kings, or for temples to conceal sacerdotal rights, or for observatories, or even for granaries. They were simply run up by men who wanted to build shelters for cattle or pigs or sheep on some plan which would expend a maximum of material on a minimum of basement. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... of the community is generally a sugar or indigo plantation, under the direction of the missionary; and its produce, if the law were strictly observed, could be employed only for the support of the church and the purchase of sacerdotal ornaments. The great square of San Fernando, in the centre of the village, contains the church, the dwelling of the missionary, and a very humble-looking edifice pompously called the king's house (Casa del Rey). This is a caravanserai, destined ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... the old gentleman in an outrageous manner. They wore their hair on their shoulders, they sprinkled it with flour; they even went to such lengths as to paint purplish excrescences on their chins and brows. They wore semi-sacerdotal robes, they held their hands in the peculiar and affected style of Liszt, and they one and all wore shovel hats. When Liszt left me—we studied together with Czerny—they trooped after him, their garments ballooning in the breeze, and upon their silly faces ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Rama, son of Jamadagni, called Parasurama, or Rama with the axe, from the weapon which he carried. He was while he lived the terror of the Warrior caste, and his name recalls long and fierce struggles between the sacerdotal and military order in which the latter suffered severely at the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... among the children of the century of Voltaire. Condorcet, the youngest of the intimates and disciples of Voltaire, of D'Alembert, of Turgot, was the first to sound bitter warning that Robespierre was at heart a priest. The suggestion was more than a gibe. Robespierre had the typic sacerdotal temperament, its sense of personal importance, its thin unction, its private leanings to the stake and the cord; and he had one of those deplorable natures that seem as if they had never in their lives known the careless joys of a springtime. By and by, from mere priest he developed ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... went to Court, and, horrible to relate, with strings to my shoes instead of buckles—not from Jacobinism, but ignorance. I saw two or three Tory lords looking at me with dismay, was informed by the Clerk of the Closet of my sin, and, gathering my sacerdotal petticoats about me (like a lady conscious of thick ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... rites sacerdotal were o'er, In the depths of his cell with its stone-covered floor, Resigning to thought his chimerical brain, Once formed the contrivance we now shall explain; But whether by magic's or alchemy's powers We know not; indeed, 'tis no business ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... scenes may be enacted in England. Ritualistic forms and ceremonies, and public processions, and, still more, the insidious teaching of numbers professing to be ministers of religion, are accustoming the people to a system which must end in their subjugation to sacerdotal despotism. ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... had outgrown the intellectual husks which a narrow, inadequate and erroneous account of God's dealings with man had caused to form around the minds of their countrymen, and they had the moral courage to put their words into harmony with their thoughts. Clearly perceiving that, whatever the sacerdotal class might say to the contrary, the political strength of the Hebrew people was spent and its religious ideals exploded, they sought to shift the centre of gravity from speculative ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... creature, which is like a lion, signifies Christ's efficacy, principality, and regality, viz. John; the second, like a calf, denotes His sacerdotal order, viz. Luke; the third, having as it were, a man's face, describes His coming in the flesh as man, viz. Matthew; and the fourth, like a flying eagle, manifests the grace of the Spirit flying into the Church, ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... neutralized by Elizabethan genius and enterprise. No doubt when the revival came, there was a High Church as well as a Puritan morality, and that fact ought always to be borne in mind; but the High Church morality was inextricably bound up with sacerdotal superstition and with absolute government; it had no hold on the people; and it found itself suspiciously at home in the Court of James, in the households of Somerset and Buckingham, and in the tribunal which lent itself to ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith |
