"Abbess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... letters he entrusted to my charge. The one I have brought to the Contessa was enclosed in an envelope to me and marked 'To be personally delivered in case of my death.' But among the letters for the post was one to the Marquis's only sister, the Abbess of a convent in Paris—she will probably ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... and erudition, could not help exciting admiration, and making illustrious proselytes. Among them was Arnauld D'Antilly, the intimate friend of Richelieu and Anne of Austria; Le Maitre, the most eloquent lawyer and advocate in France; and Angelique Arnauld, the abbess of Port Royal. This last was one of the most distinguished ladies of her age, noble by birth, and still more noble by her beautiful qualities of mind and heart. She had been made abbess of her Cistercian convent at the age of eleven years, and at that time was gay, social, and light-hearted. The ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Black Friars, White Friars, Gray Friars, Crossed Friars, Crutched Friars; Bonhomme [Fr.], Carthusian, Benedictine^, Cistercian, Trappist, Cluniac, Premonstatensian, Maturine; Templar, Hospitaler; Bernardine^, Lorettine, pillarist^, stylite^. abbess, prioress, canoness^; religieuse [Fr.], nun, novice, postulant. [Under the Jewish dispensation] prophet, priest, high priest, Levite; Rabbi, Rabbin, Rebbe; scribe. [Mohammedan etc.] mullah, muezzin, ayatollah; ulema, imaum^, imam, sheik; sufi; kahin^, kassis^; mufti, hadji, dervish; fakir, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lip in charming confusion; while an abbess, with face serene in the frame of her snowy coif, caught ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... childless; but no public notice was taken until Duke Francis succeeded to the duchy in 1618. He was a ruthless enemy to witches; all in the land were sought out with great diligence and burned, and as they unanimously named the Abbess of Marienfliess [Footnote: Sidonia never attained this dignity, though Micraelius and others gave her the title.] upon the rack, she was brought to Stettin by command of the Duke, where she freely confessed all the evil wrought by her sorceries upon ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... through great emotion and subdued it. There was something formal, and even ascetic, in the character of her beauty, which was still considerable, in her air and in her dress. She might have suggested to you the idea of some Gothic baroness of old, half chatelaine, half-abbess; you would see at a glance that she did not live in the light world around her, and disdained its fashion and its mode of thought; yet with all this rigidity it was still the face of the woman who has known human ties and human affections. And now, as she gazed ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is worthy consideration. As the newspapers say, it is an "unprecedented opportunity for investment!" For the sole Helicon of the institution shall be—"Blackwood's Entire" its lady abbess— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... excellences. His own genius was strong enough to bear him up, and he soared longest and best on unborrowed plumes.—The only passage of a very Shakespearian cast in this comedy is the one in which the Abbess, with admirable characteristic artifice, makes Adriana confess her own misconduct in ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... ysse abbudissan. The abbess referred to is the famous Hild, or Hilda, then living in the monastery at Streones-halh, which, according to Bede, means "Bay of the Beacon." The Danes afterward gave it the name Whitby, or "White Town." The surroundings were eminently fitted ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... clothes or jewels, or about having a good time. Her only longing was to do good and to make other people happy, and to grow good and wise herself, so that she could do this all the better. So she studied and studied, worked and worked; and she became a holy woman, an Abbess. And while she was still very young and beautiful, she was given charge of a whole convent of nuns and school-girls not much younger than herself, because she was so much wiser and better than any one ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... the Giovedi Grasso, the Abbess had (in consultation with me) provided an entertainment which not only attracted the rank and fashion of Venice but (I will dare to say) made them forget the exhaustion of the maddest day of carnival with its bull-baiting and battles of confetti. An hour before ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... sculptured lid of roses white, She slumbered in unbroken night, By mortal eyes unseen. Above her marble couch was reared A monumental shrine, Where cloistered sisters, gathering round, Made night and morn the aisle resound With choristry divine The abbess died: and in her pride Her parting mandate said, They should her final rest provide The alabaster couch beside, Where slept the ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... in horror of his sacrilege, he still kept his head turned, staring over his shoulder at the stately figure of the abbess, either in fascination or with some lingering doubt of what he had seen and heard. Running thus, he crashed headlong into a pillar, and, stunned by the blow, he reeled and sank unconscious to ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... old welcomed to the city and installed in the See. Thither came all the clergy of the diocese to take part in a strange and beautiful ceremony. Attached to the church was a Benedictine convent, whose abbess seems to have represented the diocese of Florence. There in S. Piero the Archbishop came to wed her, and thus became the guardian of the city. The church is destroyed now, and, as we have seen, all the monks ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... to blush!' the Abbess cried, 'The veil and vow deriding That rescued thee, in baby days, From insolence of Norman gaze, In pure and holy hiding. —O royal child of South and North, Malcolm and Margaret, The promised bride of Heaven art thou, And Heaven will not forget! ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... he will not again treat in person with any Envoy from foreign parts, being of too hot temper, but will leave his Ministers to do it. [Dickens's Despatch, Berlin, 22d July (n.s.), 1730.] To Queen Sophie he says coldly, "Wilhelmina's marriage, then, is off; an end to IT. Abbess of Herford [good Protestant refuge for unprovided Females of Quality, which is in our gift], let her be Abbess there;"—and writes to the then extant Abbess to make Wilhelmina "Coadjutress," or Heir-Apparent to that Chief-Nunship! ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... interview. Richelieu, also, whose emissary received the following message: "Tell your master, that my tears reply for me and that I am his humble servant." Years after, Louis XIV. visited the once beautiful and high-spirited Italian, now an aged abbess occupying a bare cell and from his lips, despot and voluptuary though he was, might always be expected the right word in the right place. "Madame," he said, on taking leave, "we may learn something here. I need not ask you ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the robbers are detected in the oil-jars, and killed by pouring boiling oil over them. In one of Pitre's versions the robbers are hidden in sacks of charcoal, and the cunning daughter pierces the bags with a red-hot spit. In another, they are hidden in oil-skins, and sold to the abbess of a certain convent for oil. One of the nuns has some suspicion of the trick, and invites her companions to tap the skins with red-hot irons. Another Sicilian version (Gonz. No. 79, "The Story of the Twelve Robbers") contains the first part of the Arabian tale, the robbers' cave which opens ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... and queens may perfectly be adventurers and adventuresses, to put ourselves in the place of this young lady of a century ago, brought up as a dignitary of a chapter into which admission depended entirely upon the number and quality of quarterings of the candidate's escutcheon, under a superior—the Abbess of Ste. Wandru—who was the sister of the late Emperor Francis, the sister-in-law of Maria Theresa; we must try and conceive an institution something between a school, a sisterhood, and a club, in which the ruling idea, the source ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... which he proposed to attempt to storm the nunnery of Saint Bride, and carry me from hence to freedom and the greenwood, of which Wallace was generally called the king. In an evil hour—an hour I think of infatuation and witchery—I suffered the abbess to wheedle the secret out of me, which I might have been sensible would appear more horribly flagitious to her than to any other woman that breathed; but I had not taken the vows, and I thought Wallace and Fleming had the same ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of which Beatrice, sister of Reginald, was the first abbess, and which was apparently erected soon after 1203, consist of a quadrangle about 68 feet square, having the church on the north side, foundations of the chapter-house and other apartments on the east side, and the refectory ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... fastnesses to pillage and to desolate the valleys of the Rhine,—who spared neither sex nor age, neither tower nor hut, nor even the houses of God Himself,—laid waste the territories round Bornhofen, and demanded treasure from the convent. The abbess, of the bold lineage of Rudesheim, refused the sacrilegious demand. The convent was stormed; its vassals resisted; the robbers, inured to slaughter, won the day; already the gates were forced, when a knight, at the head of a small ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... embraced each other and mingled their tears together; and I hardly need say, that the lady abbess and I could not restrain our meed of pity at the affecting scene. As the evening closed, they separated, each to attend to the same mournful duty, of watching by the bodies of their husbands, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the reception-room Toporoff was in his study talking with an abbess, a lively and aristocratic lady, who was spreading the Greek orthodox faith in Western Russia among the Uniates (who acknowledge the Pope of Rome), and who have the Greek religion enforced on them. An official who was in the reception-room inquired ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... was mine in my noviciate, father. Thro' all closed doors a dreadful whisper crept That thou wouldst excommunicate the King. I could not eat, sleep, pray: I had with me The monk's disguise thou gavest me for my bower: I think our Abbess knew it and allow'd it. I fled, and found thy name a charm to get me Food, roof, and rest. I met a robber once, I told him I was bound to see the Archbishop; 'Pass on,' he said, and in thy name I pass'd From house to house. In one a son stone-blind Sat by his mother's hearth: ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... to speak ill of Lady Purbeck for not having lived in a convent "according to that strictness as was expected," because she left it. But this was done in the following letter:[97] "The Lady Purbeck is come forth of the English Nunnerie. For, the Lady Abbess being from home, somebody forgott to provide the Lady Purbeck her dinner, and to leave the roome open where she used to dine at night, expostulating with the Abbess, they agreed to part fairely, which the Abbess was the more willing unto in regard ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... 967, Eadgar the Peaceable, King of the English, placed nuns in the monastery which his grandfather, Eadward the Elder, King of the English, had built, and appointed St. Meriwenna abbess over them. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... Icelanders of any chief since King Eystein the Elder's death. Gregorius's body was carried to Hofund, and interred at Gimsey Isle, in a nunnery which is there, of which Gregorius's sister, Baugeid, was then the abbess. ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... wore was a large cross studded with dark-blue diamonds, only recognisable as such by the rays of blue, yellow, red, and green light which darted from them. This cross was suspended on a chain of black beads resembling a rosary, and giving to the black-robed figure the appearance of an abbess. The Spanish lace mantilla which she had thrown over her beautiful hair served as the veil, and made ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... the Maid was at Moulins in Bourbonnais.[1862] What was she doing there? No one knows. There was at that time in the town an abbess very holy and very greatly venerated. Her name was Colette Boilet. She had won the highest praise and incurred the grossest insults by attempting to reform the order of Saint Clare. Colette lived in the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Gaspar Trechsel fratres: 1538,"—the Trechsels being printers of German origin, who had long been established at Lyons. There is a verbose "Epistre" or Preface in French to the "moult reuerende Abbesse du religieux conuent S. Pierre de Lyon, Madame Iehanne de Touszele," otherwise the Abbess of Saint Pierre les Nonnains, a religious house containing many noble and wealthy ladies, and the words, "Salut d'un vray Zele," which conclude the dedicatory heading, are supposed to reveal indirectly the author of the "Epistre" ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... to pass the ten days, from the Ascension to Whitsuntide, at an abbey four leagues from Paris, the abbess of which had a particular friendship for me. Here my union with God seemed to be deeper and more continued, becoming always simple, at the same time more ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... Grantacaestir. This occurs in Bede's great Ecclesiastical History, concluded in A.D. 731, and the incident alluded to in connection with the Roman town throws a clear ray of light upon the ancient site in those unsettled times. It tells how Sexburgh, the abbess of Ely, needing a more permanent coffin for the remains of AEtheldryth, her predecessor in office, sent some of the brothers from the monastery to find such a coffin. Ely being without stone, and surrounded ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... the bigots; perhaps the figure of the cock alluded to our Gallic neighbours. A cat in the habit of a nun, holding a platter in its paws to a mouse approaching to lick it; alluding to the allurements of the abbesses to draw young women into their convents; while sometimes I have seen a sow in an abbess's veil, mounted on stilts: the sex marked by the sow's dugs. A pope sometimes appears to be thrust by devils into a cauldron; and cardinals are seen roasting on spits! These ornaments must have been generally executed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... time his pupil. Her monastery was famous for having educated five bishops, among them John of Beverley, and for giving birth, in Caedmon, to the father of English poetry. "Religious poetry, sung to the harp as it passed from hand to hand, must have flourished in the monastery of the abbess Hild, and the kernel of Bede's story concerning the birth of our earliest poet must be that the brethren and sisters on that bleak northern shore spoke to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.' "[1] of Melrose, an offshoot of Aidan's ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... (le Roux). The chapel of Notre Dame-de-Paradis formerly belonged to the convent; but when the parish church was demolished, the Abbey ceded this chapel to the town, reserving the privilege of a separate seat for the Abbess, who, on the Sunday after St. John's day, had her crosier carried before her in state by one of her vassals ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... and serious German talent for the applause of the crowd which he ought to have despised." And Mendelssohn wrote to his father in words of still more angry disgust: "When in 'Robert le Diable' nuns appear one after the other and endeavor to seduce the hero, till at length the lady abbess succeeds; when the hero, aided by a magic branch, gains access to the sleeping apartment of his lady, and throws her down, forming a tableau which is applauded here, and will perhaps be applauded in Germany; and when, after ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... she managed to find you.—It all fits beautifully. You may go back to la Gonore.—To go on: Jacqueline will arrange with Madame Nourrisson to purchase her business in the Rue Sainte-Barbe; and if you manage well, child, you may make a fortune out of it," he said to Prudence. "An Abbess at your age! It is worthy of a Daughter of France," he added ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... started concerning Easter, the tonsure, and other ecclesiastical matters, it was agreed that a synod should be held in the monastery of Streaneshalch, which signifies the bay of the lighthouse, where the Abbess Hilda, a woman devoted to God, presided; and that there the controversy should be decided. The kings, both father and son, came hither. Bishop Colman, with his Scottish clerks, and Agilbert,(259) and the priests Agatho and Wilfrid. James and Romanus were on their side. But the Abbess Hilda and ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... me of the beginning of created things." Therefore he began to sing and, on awaking, remembered his song and added to it. Thereafter he told what had befallen him to the bailiff who was over him, who repeated the tale to the Abbess Hilda. She having called together certain learned and pious persons, C. was brought before them, told his story, and recited his verses. A part of Scripture was read to him, which he was asked to turn into verse; and this being done he was received into the Abbey where, for the rest of his ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... confess the truth, madam, I stole it out of Hippolita's pocket, to take the print of it in wax; for I'll suppose you'll give my master leave to wait on you in the nunnery-garden, after your abbess has ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... had before appeared, returned in the evening to offer consolation to Emily, and brought a kind message from the lady abbess, inviting her to the convent. Emily, though she did not accept the offer, returned an answer expressive of her gratitude. The holy conversation of the friar, whose mild benevolence of manners bore some resemblance to those of St. Aubert, soothed ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... attracting so many pupils. In 1118 he established a school in Paris, but from a variety of persecutions which he endured, he was frequently obliged to retire to different parts of France; his unfortunate attachment to Heloise is but too well known, and she ultimately became the abbess of a convent which Abelard founded at Nogent-sur-Seine, and which he called Paraclet. The number of pupils at one time are stated to have been three thousand, and he instructed them in the open air; ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... been taken to bring you to reason; but we can no longer permit this advocacy of rebellion, and the last unmaidenly step which you took of setting at defiance your friends and relatives, and even of sending messages hence, must be punished. The abbess bade me reason with you and try and turn your obstinate will. Your cousins of Badenoch here have appealed to you in vain. This can no longer be tolerated. The lady abbess bids me tell you that she gives you three days to renounce the rebel opinions you ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... Page" is the tale of a lady who attends her knight to the Holy Land, disguised as a page, and without his knowledge. She saves his life several times, and finally at the cost of her own. A prophetic accompaniment or burden comes in ever and anon in the distant chant of nuns over the dead abbess. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of that; but if I could, say with Bull and Macwitty, suddenly attack him like three robbers, we might carry off something that would serve as a sort of passport to the lady abbess. For instance, he had a tremendously big ring on. I noticed it as he held up his hands, as if on purpose to show ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... Sister Maria Celeste obtained with much difficulty, a small quantity of a renowned liqueur, made by Abbess Ursula, an exceptionally saintly nun. This she sends to her ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... actually built a chapel for them at the extreme end point of the Island of Lindisfarne, where they might worship, instead of presuming to enter his church. He does not seem to have accepted of any favours from them but one. Veria, who was Abbess of Tynemouth at the time that he was at Lindisfarne, gave him a piece of fine linen or silk, which he condescended to keep for his winding sheet. It was a little too bad of him to keep up his antipathy ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... performance of Cefalo, one of the oldest of Italian dramas, a pastoral play composed by Niccolo da Correggio, chiefly taken from Ovid's "Metamorphoses," and which is said to have suggested the subjects of Correggio's famous frescoes in the Abbess of San Paolo's parlour at Parma. Each Christmas and carnival these theatrical representations were repeated, and many were the distinguished visitors who came to Ferrara to witness these celebrated performances. The Amphitryon ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... 'Yes! all is true my fears could frame; A prisoner lies the noble Graeme, And fiery Roderick soon will feel The vengeance of the royal steel. I, only I, can ward their fate,— God grant the ransom come not late! The Abbess hath her promise given, My child shall be the bride of Heaven;— Be pardoned one repining tear! For He who gave her knows how dear, How excellent!—but that is by, And now my business is—to die.— Ye towers! ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... return to Barcelona; but she was enjoined by the Holy Virgin, she said, to spend her days on that miraculous spot; and accordingly a church and convent was built there, the latter inhabited by Nuns, of which the Princess (who had risen from the dead) was the Abbess. It was called the Abbey des Pucelles, of the order of St. Benoit, and was founded in the year 801. But such a vast concourse of people, of both sexes, resorted to it, from all parts of the world, that at length it was thought ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... he, when Herrera paused, "of the convent you mention, and still more of its abbess. Carmen de Forcadell was long celebrated, both at Madrid and in her native Andalusia, for her beauty and intrigues. Her husband was assassinated by one of her lovers, as some said, and within three years of his death, repenting, it was believed, of her ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... to a daughter in Holland, she arranged a separation, for which the groom was, at least, as grateful as herself. The child—the very sight of whom, reminding her as she did of the father, she could not bear—was placed in a convent at Rouen, where she was tenderly cared for by the abbess and nuns. As for the mother, weary and disillusioned, she rambled aimlessly and miserably about the Continent until, after nine years of unhappiness, death came to her at Paris as a merciful friend. Such was the sordid close of a life that had ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... own; a glimpse, almost awe-stricken in its gratitude, of the miracle her old governess had wrought. That functionary could not in this connexion have been more impressive, even at second-hand, if she had been a prophetess with an open scroll or some ardent abbess speaking with the lips of the Church. She had clung day by day to their plastic associate, plying him with her deep, narrow passion, doing her simple utmost to convert him, and so working on him that he had at last really ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... it last when returning from the cemetery. It is the most beautiful monument in the cemetery. It consists of a chapel formed out of the ruins of the Abbey of Paraclete, which was founded by Abelard, and of which Heloise was the first abbess. It is fourteen feet in length, by eleven in breadth, and is twenty-four feet in height. A pinnacle rises out of the roof in a cruciform shape, and four smaller ones exquisitely sculptured stand between the gables. Fourteen columns, six feet high, support beautiful arches, and ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Austin Friars[obs3], Black Friars, White Friars, Gray Friars, Crossed Friars, Crutched Friars; Bonhomme[Fr], Carthusian, Benedictine[obs3], Cistercian, Trappist, Cluniac, Premonstatensian, Maturine; Templar, Hospitaler; Bernardine[obs3], Lorettine, pillarist[obs3], stylite[obs3]. abbess, prioress, canoness[obs3]; religieuse[Fr], nun, novice, postulant. [Under the Jewish dispensation] prophet, priest, high priest, Levite; Rabbi, Rabbin, Rebbe; scribe. [Mohammedan &c.] mullah, muezzin, ayatollah; ulema, imaum[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... than is supposed—more so than could be believed. I know that the possessed Abbess is his niece, and that he is provided with an order in council directing him to judge, without being deterred by any appeals lodged in Parliament, the Cardinal having prohibited the latter from taking cognizance of the ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... of her religious life was drawing to its close, and she had notified her superior of her wish now, after so many years of probation, to take the black veil, and make her vows perpetual. And the Abbess had, at length, listened favorably to her ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the phenomena described by the matchless Abbess had been exactly repeated. In Durtal, the Chambers of the Soul were deserted as after a long mourning; but in the rooms that had remained open, phantoms of sins confessed, of buried evil-doing, wandered like the sister of the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... and I'll tell you. The story goes, that in the old Popish times, when the nuns held Whitford Priors, the first Mr. Lavington that ever was came from the king with a warrant to turn them all out, poor souls, and take the lands for his own. And they say the head lady of them—prioress, or abbess, as they called her—withstood him, and cursed him, in the name of the Lord, for a hypocrite who robbed harmless women under the cloak of punishing them for sins they'd never committed (for they say, sir, he went up to court, and slandered the nuns there for drunkards and worse). ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... beneath the chin. When the eyes are dark, the eyebrows heavily marked, no hair visible, and the profile regular, the effect is one of poignant almost sensational beauty. Madame Goujon looks like a young abbess. ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... for a union of ecclesiastical buildings, for the housing of those conventual bodies presided over by an abbot or abbess, supposed to be derived from ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... and for my and your safety, to make our escape sure by coming with us. I made the young nobleman's promises glitter before her eyes and said to her: 'If you consent to go with him to-night you'll have a solid annuity, inscribed at the Hotel de Ville, and an outfit richer than any ballet dancer or Abbess of Panthemont may get, and a cupboard full of the finest silver.' 'He thinks me to be one of those creatures," she said; 'he is an impudent fellow.' 'He loves you,' I replied; 'you could not expect to be venerated?' 'I must have ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... to Gronow (Reminiscences, 1889, i. 62), a practical joke of Dan Mackinnon's (vide ante, p. 69, footnote) gave Byron a hint for this scene in the harem: "Lord Wellington was curious about visiting a convent near Lisbon, and the lady abbess made no difficulty. Mackinnon hearing this contrived to get clandestinely within the sacred walls ... at all events, when Lord Wellington arrived Dan Mackinnon was to be seen among the nuns, dressed out in their sacred costume, with his whiskers shaved; and, as he possessed good features, he was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... from peak to peak in a swift and dazzling flight as he talked rapidly and brokenly, kissing her cheek, her neck, straining her so close to him that she could hardly breathe. Suddenly it poised above the memory of an old book of Renan's, "The Abbess Juarre," in which the eminent skeptic had somewhat clumsily attempted to demonstrate that if the world unmistakably announced its finish within three days the inhabitants would give themselves up to an orgy ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... circa 1375. The churchyard contains a beautifully sculptured fourteenth-century lantern cross, of mediaeval date, in the form of an octagonal shaft. Under four niches at the summit are sculptured representations of: God the Father with the Dove bearing a crucifix; an Abbot; an Abbess; and a King and Queen. The height of the cross is 5 feet 2 inches, the breadth of the head being 1 ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... ANGE'LIQUE, La Mere Angelique as she was called, sister of the preceding and abbess of the Port Royal, a victim of the persecutions of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... wayfarers. In the midst of all was a closed horse litter, beside which rode two or three veiled and hooded ladies and a priest. Save the captain of the guards, there was no thane with the party, and but a few pack horses followed them, and I thought it would be some abbess, perhaps, who ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Something-or-other Wright, who said plainly that men cannot work side by side with women because they get excited.... And yet, you know, women have had glimpses of a freedom that was not mischievous. I could have been happy as a Lady Abbess—I must have space and dignity, Stephen—and those women had things in their hands as no women have things in their hands to-day. They came to the House of Lords. But they lost all that. Was there ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Isthmus of Panama for transportation to Spain. On board her were several priests returning to Spain headed by one Fra Antonio de Las Casas, together with a band of nuns under the direction of an aged abbess, Sister Maria Christina. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... in reality no doubt or problem about this Saint Clair. She was born in 1275, and joined the Augustinian Sisterhood, dying young, in 1308, as Abbess of her convent. Continual and impassioned meditation on the Passion of our Lord impressed her heart with the signs of His suffering which have been described above. I owe this note to the kindness of an anonymous correspondent, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Abbess," he went on presently, "and make your own rules. I only stipulate that there shall be no Father Confessor ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the books, except a little Elzevir, have disappeared. {7} Madame de Maintenon was fond of bindings. Mr. Toovey possesses a copy of a devotional work in red morocco, tooled and gilt, which she presented to a friendly abbess. The books at Saint-Cyr were stamped with a crowned cross, besprent with fleurs-de-lys. The books of the later collectors—Longepierre, the translator of Bion and Moschus; D'Hoym the diplomatist; McCarthy, and La Valliere, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... her widowhood. The general plan of the gardens has probably been but little altered since the days when the nuns paced their shady paths in pious meditation. An ancient manuscript of prayers, used by the abbess in the ninth century, is preserved in the British Museum. Ealhswith's son, Edward the Elder, levied a toll from all merchandise passing under the City Bridge by water, and beneath the East Gate by land, for the better support of the abbey founded ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... addition to physical beauty. Her water-colour sketches were on her uncle's walls: the beautiful in nature claimed and absorbed her. She dressed with a pretty rigour, a lovely simplicity, picturesque of the nunnery. She looked indeed a high-born young lady-abbess. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... year Archbishop Theodore appointed a synod at Hatfield; because he was desirous of rectifying the belief of Christ; and the same year died Hilda, Abbess of Whitby. ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... for the story of that last day at the island villa, she turned away her face, and entreated the questioner's forbearance. All else she told with a sad simplicity. Her religious conversion was the result of teaching she had received from the abbess, a Roman lady of great learning, who spoke of things till then unknown to her, and made so manifest the truth of the Catholic creed that her reason was constrained to accept it. Obeying the king's command, Athalfrida refrained from argument and condemnation, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... description of the Northumbrian coast, in his poem of Marmion may well be recalled here. It will be remembered that the Abbess of Whitby, with some of her nuns, was voyaging to Holy Island, and we take ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... "But what else could come from the blood of Godfrey? HE despair of safety, because he hath in former days lived PAR AMOURS? I will have the Pope send him an ample remission, and I would not less willingly be intercessor had his BELLE AMIE been an abbess." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... lay brother, a tender of cattle at the Abbey of Whitby under the Abbess Hilda who founded it. Until somewhat spent in years he had never learnt any poems. Therefore at a feast, when all sang in turn, so soon as he saw the harp coming near him, he would rise and leave the table and go home. Once when he had gone ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... attractions of women. Diderot's famous novel, La Religieuse, which, when first published, was thought to have been actually written by a nun, deals with the torture to which a nun was put by the perverse lubricity of her abbess, for whom, it is said, Diderot found a model in the Abbess of Chelles, a daughter of the Regent and thus a member of a family which for several generations showed a marked tendency to inversion. Diderot's narrative has been described as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... observe the Mother Abbess, or whatever she is, disguising the fact that she takes any interest in me. ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... well as royal bounty; and, when the consequences of these alienations in mortmain came to be visible in the impoverishment of the public revenue, every attempt at legislative interference was in a great measure defeated by the piety or superstition of the age. The abbess of the monastery of Huelgas, which was situated within the precincts of Burgos, and contained within its walls one hundred and fifty nuns of the noblest families in Castile, exercised jurisdiction ever fourteen ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... this the Abbess of Fontevrault came to see him. The King's mother Eleanor, her guest, had been sent for in a hurry. The king had been hurt. A serf of Achard of Chalus had ploughed up a golden relic, an emperor with his family seated round a golden table. Ademar of Limoges had seized it. Richard demanded the ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... supernatural light; and so, without any other death-struggle than a gentle sigh, she expired, at the age of eighty years. Her life has been written at length by F. Ignatius Nente; but the principal facts were drawn up by the Abbess of Florence very shortly after her decease, at the instance of the Grand Duchess of Lorraine, and forwarded to Rome, to form the process for ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... Marquis. "He will create a sensation at court; the king will give him command of a regiment, and he will marry some rich heiress. As for this young lady," he added, caressing his daughter who was named Martha, "if we cannot give her a dowry we will obtain an appointment as lady abbess for her." ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... enduring considerable persecution, she persisted in her steadfastness, and was released after a twelvemonth's confinement. Five years later she was again seized and sent to another convent; but, continuing immovable against the entreaties and threats of the abbess and confessor, she was again ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... chamber still exists, and we saw it in high preservation. This marriage, you will remember, laid the foundation for the claim of Lady Jane Grey to the crown. Here, too, for a season, the excellent abbess and the nuns of Port Royal found a refuge. Some forty years ago, it came into the hands of M. Sommerard, a man devoted to antiquarian pursuits, and here he expended a large property in forming a vast collection of all sorts of relics he could gather belonging to the medieval ages. A few years ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... words, such as I shall rap out when God takes me to task about the peccadilloes of my past life? I don't believe a word about the relationship. A nephew must be the son of either a brother or a sister. Now, your only sister is an abbess, and your late brother's marriage was childless. There is only one way of proving the relationship, and that is to confess that when your brother was young and wild he and Love ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... two picturesque towers" (quoting Bevan again), "which form so conspicuous a land and sea mark, are called 'The Sisters,' and are in reality modern-built by the Trinity Board in place of two erected traditionally by an Abbess of Faversham, who was wrecked here with her sister on their way to Broadstairs." The sea is fast encroaching on the land here, notwithstanding the erection of ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... to agony at times—they were resolutely shut within her chamber door; and when she came out in the early morning, her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those impassive cheeks, she looked like a lady abbess—as cold, as unyielding ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... as he was, he could not close his eyes till towards day, but had not slept above two hours before the peasant who had served him as a guide, and had also stayed at the inn, came into his room, and waked him abruptly, telling him the lady abbess desired to speak with him.—Natura was much vexed at this disturbance, and not sufficiently awaked to recollect himself, only cried peevishly, 'What have I to do with abbesses,' and ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... professional details; and, whatever the writing of them may be, we are prepared to contend that the reading of them is infinitely pleasanter. But as travellers and poets have of late left few mountains or molehills unsung in Palestine, we prefer extracting a picturesque account of a venerable abbess, who threw the light of Christian goodness over that benighted land about a century ago, and must have impressed the heathens in the neighbourhood with an exalted notion of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... however, has induced him to forgive her, and not actually renounce (as indeed, by French law, he could not) the child. Broken in heart and spirit, Suzanne at last accepts her doom. She is fortunate in one abbess, but the next persecutes her, brings all sorts of false accusations against her, strips, starves, imprisons, and actually tortures her by means of the amende honorable. She manages to get her complaints known and to secure a counsel, and though she cannot obtain liberation from her vows, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Japanese Buddhism welcomed womanhood to its fraternity and order,[56] yet the Japanese ama, bikuni, or nun, never became a sister of mercy, or reached, even within a measurable distance, the dignity of the Christian lady in the nunnery. In European history the abbess is a notable figure. She is hardly heard of beyond the Japanese nunnery, even by the ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... sister were similarly affected at the age of sixty, in the first case attributable to grief over the death of a son, in the second ascribed to fright. It seemed to be a peculiar family idiosyncrasy. Velasquez of Tarentum says that the Abbess of Monvicaro at the very advanced age of one hundred had a recurrence of catamenia after a severe illness, and subsequently a new set of teeth and a ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... shared the common fate of destruction, and when they withdrew, the common piety recalled it to existence. Richard IInd bestowed it upon Fecamp, but the same sovereign restored it to its independence, at the request of his aunt, Beatrice, who retired hither as abbess, at the head of a community of nuns. A convent, over which an abbess of royal blood had presided, could not fail to enjoy considerable privileges; and it retained them to the period of the revolution. The tower of the church still remains, a noble specimen of the Norman architecture of the ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... vision of heavenly glory, with clouds and angel faces, and adoring apostles, and Christ the Lord high over all; and that these were but the filling in between the springing curves of the magnificent arches; describing to her the Abbess's room in San Paolo, with its strange, beautiful heathen picture over the mantel, of Diana mounting her stag-drawn car, and its circular walls painted with trellis-work and medallioned with windows, where the heads of little laughing children, and graceful, ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... nature! Well, to say the truth, the Lady Gycia is not at all to my taste. It is a cold, insipid style of beauty, at the best; and she is as self-willed and as straitlaced as a lady abbess. I suppose she is well matched ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... in Picardy. The evangelic labours of many of his Irish disciples, are matter of history in the Gallic Church. It is said that the fame of the Irish for their skill in music, was so well known on the Continent at this period, that St. Gertrude, daughter of King Pepin, and Abbess of Nivelle, in Brabant, invited the brothers of St. Fursey to instruct her community in sacred music. They complied with her request, and soon after erected a monastery at Fosse, near Nivelle. Nor were ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... she said, "of the saintly Margherita of thine house, the Abbess of San Lazzaro; why left she ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Duc de Verneuil,—but his natural daughter. My mother, a Demoiselle de Casteran, who became a nun to escape the reproaches of her family, expiated her fault by fifteen years of sorrow, and died at Seez, where she was abbess. On her death-bed she implored, for the first time and only for me, the help of the man who had betrayed her, for she knew she was leaving me without friends, without fortune, without a future. The duke accepted the charge, and took me from the ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... of which we are writing was some years before convents were abolished; but the strictness of their rules had in many instances been considerably relaxed. Without much difficulty, permission was obtained from the abbess for our nun to devote her time during the day to the care of these poor children, upon condition that she should regularly return to her convent every night before evening prayers. The house which Madame de Fleury chose for her little ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... at least as old as the beginning of the eleventh century, for in 1041 it was ceded to the monastery of Aquileia; at this time it was probably unwalled, for in 1165 the Abbess Valperta allowed the inhabitants to remove to Monte Albuciano and build fresh houses there, as they did not feel secure. After the dedition to Venice in 1280 it was strengthened; but that did not prevent a body of the patriarch's troops scaling the walls and taking ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... fulfilled. I must first tell your decision to the Abbess of a convent, so that when I take you away through the underground passage to the Madocsany Castle, a nun may be waiting for you there with a closed carriage. Great prudence and careful preparations are necessary. We must agree upon the ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... the priest returned on board the ship, with the intelligence that he had obtained a reception for Amine in the Ursuline convent, the abbess of which establishment he was acquainted with; and, before Amine went on shore, he cautioned her that the lady-abbess was a strict woman, and would be pleased if she conformed, as much as possible, to the rules of the convent; that this convent only received young persons of the highest ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... lack, poor gentleman! he was absent, when this sad event took place: for you must know, my lord, that when after the departure of her parents he went to visit his betrothed at the convent-grate, the sour-faced old abbess would'nt suffer him to see the lady Josepha. Nay, what is the strangest circumstance of all, she produced a letter from the marchioness commanding positively, that during her absence no person whatever should have access ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... some goddess connected with the moon?' Very likely; quis negavit? Then our author, like myself (loc. cit.), dilates on Artemis as 'sister of Apollo.' 'Her chapels,' I say, 'are in the wild wood; she is the abbess of the forest nymphs,' 'chaste and fair, the maiden of the precise life.' How odd! The classical scholar and I both say the same things; and I add a sonnet to Artemis in this aspect, rendered by me from the Hippolytus of Euripides. Could a classical scholar ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... of current interest. Among her "occasional" poems; several of which are in this volume, may be mentioned the touching stanzas on the "Monument to the Irish Emigrants," those on the "Old Towers" at the "Priest's Farm," those on the renewal of her vows by the Lady Abbess of the Congregation of Notre Dame, the poem on the "Recollect Church," and the address "To the Soldiers of Pius The Ninth." One of her most important efforts of this kind was her translation of the Cantata composed by M. Semp on the occasion of the visit of the Prince ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... or a monastery, they say. She has turned abbess or monk; but, upon my conscience, from the little I've seen of her, if a strong will and a plucky heart be the qualifications, she might ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... "I thank the abbess," he wrote; "but we are used to choose for our gifts the most precious thing we have—not the most worthless. I will not lighten my house from a heavy burden, by offering ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Emir Othman. The fourth of the pillars, my Lord Ali dear, Inspector acute of the dark and the clear. Then the light of our eyes, the delectable twain, The Lovely Prince Hassan, the Emir Hoseyn. Nor unnoticed by men shall be suffered to pass Those excellent uncles, Hanozah and Abbess. Unto each of that band be a thousand salaams, An bless'd through all ages be each of ...
— The Song of Deirdra, King Byrge and his Brothers - and Other Ballads • Anonymous
... it was richly endowed by kings and princes, especially by the early English kings who loved this beautiful valley of the Loire. Many noble and royal ladies presided over Fontevrault, among them, Renee de Bourbon, sister of Francis I who, while she was Abbess, rebuilt the beautiful cloister which we saw to-day. Another and later Lady Abbess was Marie Madelaine Gabrielle de Rochechouart, who found time in the midst of her religious duties to make translations of some of Plato's works. New ideas, you see, were finding their way into the convent, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton |
