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Nunnery   Listen
noun
Nunnery  n.  (pl. nunneries)  A house in which nuns reside; a cloister or convent in which women reside for life, under religious vows. See Cloister, and Convent.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nunnery" Quotes from Famous Books



... have any wish to meet, I am sure. We have never liked one another. But I have something on my conscience, and I may not have another opportunity of speaking to you. I don't suppose you have heard that very shortly I intend to enter a nunnery ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... the kingdom, there was nothing that more excited their hostility than these virgin asylums. The very sight of a convent-spire was sufficient to set their Moslem blood in a foment, and they sacked it with as fierce a zeal as though the sacking of a nunnery were ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... and swift and sure, The whirling water was round my belt. She breasted the bank with a savage snort, And a backward glance of her bloodshot eye, And "Our Lady of Andover's" flash'd like thought, And flitted St. Agatha's nunnery, And the firs at "The Ferngrove" fled on the right, And "Falconer's Tower" ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... buffet behind him to give me what I required. Accidentally I lifted up my head, and there being a large pier-glass opposite to me, I saw the figure of my valet, and that he was pouring a powder in the flagon of wine which he was about to present to me. I recollected the hat being found at the nunnery, and also the stiletto in the body of ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... shall go to the sole use and benefit of him that shall discover the offence. And[z] if any parent, or other, shall send or convey any person beyond sea, to enter into, or be resident in, or trained up in, any priory, abbey, nunnery, popish university, college, or school, or house of jesuits, or priests, or in any private popish family, in order to be instructed, persuaded, or confirmed in the popish religion; or shall contribute ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... myself and put them in the stove here.' And then she started pulling them to pieces, taking ever so many pages at a time and throwing them in the stove. 'Don't be so excited, Lovise,' said the Captain. 'The Nunnery,' she said—that was one of the books. 'But I can't go into a nunnery. There's nothing I can do. When I laugh, you think I'm laughing,' she said to the Captain, 'but I'm miserable all the time and not laughing a bit.' 'Is your ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... the mysterious disease called leprosy was an ever present terror. Other plagues appeared at intervals and disappeared. Leprosy remained. It never left the land. It struck the King on his Throne, the Bishop in his Cathedral, the Abbess in her Nunnery, the soldier in camp, the merchant in his counting house, the sailor at sea. No class could escape it. Robert Bruce died of it; Orivalle, Bishop of London, died of it; Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, died of it. To this day it ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... leaning to melancholy; and this unexpected and evidently enjoyable flight—or plunge—into pure nonsense, caused him a distinct uneasiness. The girl was brightening up, even becoming merry; a state of mind that never leads to a nunnery. ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... credence, baldachin, baldacchino[obs3]; apse, belfry; chapter house; presbytery; anxious-bench, anxious-seat; diaconicum[Lat], jube[obs3]; mourner's bench, mourner's seat. [exterior adjacent to a church] cloisters, churchyard. monastery, priory, abbey, friary, convent, nunnery, cloister. Adj. claustral, cloistered; monastic, monasterial; conventual. Phr. ne vile fano[It]; "there's nothing ill can dwell in such ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Church of S. Giustino, in the Chapel of S. Antonio. In the Church of S. Lorenzo, on one side, he made some stories of the Madonna, and without the church he painted her seated, showing great grace in this work in fresco. In a little hospital opposite to the Nunnery of S. Spirito, near the gate that leads to Rome, he painted a portico entirely by his own hand, showing, in a Christ lying dead in the lap of the Maries, so great genius and judgment in painting, that he is recognized to have proved himself the peer of Giotto in design, and to have ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... church that was there before it—having been rebuilt indeed upon Saxon foundations in the days of William Rufus—yet lies among its ancient elms. Farther on, situate upon the slope of a vale down which runs a brook through meadows, is the stark ruin of the old Nunnery that was subservient to the proud Abbey on the hill, some of it now roofed in with galvanised iron sheets ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... were one that evening Dame Isabel lay in the pallet in my stead, and was so late up, and passed by the antechamber door with her shoes in her hands, as little Meliora the sub-damsel would have it she saw by the keyhole): and we might nearhand as well have been in nunnery for all the folks we saw that were not of the house. Verily, I grew sick irked [wearied, distressed] of the calm, that was like a dead calm at sea, when ships lie to, and can win neither forward nor backward. Ah, foolish Cicely! thou hadst better have given thanks ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... majesty thinks it is really a worthy vocation for me to go to Quedlinberg and become the shepherdess of that fearful flock of old maids who took refuge in a nunnery because no man desired them? No, your majesty, do not send me to Quedlinberg; it is not my calling to build up the worthy nuns into saints of the Most High. I am too unsanctifled myself to be an example ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... to mark the grave of Lope de Bardeci, the founder of the chapel. Other churches are the lofty Mercedes church by the side of the ruined monastery of the friars of Mercy; the church of Regina Angelorum, the spacious building adjoining which, now used by the courts of justice, was formerly a nunnery; that of St. Clara, formerly a nunnery and rebuilt from ruin in 1885 by the sisters of charity; the church of San Lazaro, at the leper asylum; the quaint old church of Santa Barbara; and the chapel of San Miguel, founded about 1520 by Miguel de Pasamonte, the royal treasurer, an inveterate enemy ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... to that part of the letter which named the Count of Clarinau, but he stopped, and was scarce able to proceed, for the charming Calista was his sister, the only one he had, who having been bred in a nunnery, was taken then to be married to this old rich count, who had a great fortune: before he proceeded, his soul divined this was the new amour that had engaged the heart of his friend; he was afraid to be farther convinced, and ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... also surnamed the Unconquered, was the son and successor of the greatest of the Old English Kings, AElfred, and reigned from 901 to 925. Sometime during his reign he founded the Romsey nunnery. There is no documentary evidence to fix the exact date, but it is generally assumed to have been 907. It is said that about two centuries earlier there had been a monastery at Nursling nearer the mouth of the Test, and on the tideway of the river. It was here that the great missionary ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... Legions, there went down the long roads, our youth and hope. Where the present church stands, in part a Norman building, there was probably a Saxon Chapel. Then in 1153 came Fulke de Newenham and founded here and built a Benedictine nunnery in honour of St Mary Magdalen. That the house was never richly endowed nor large at all, we may know from that name it had—the house of the poor nuns of Davington. We know, however, very little about them or it, but its poverty did not save it of course at the dissolution. ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... follow Hamlet now to the scene with Ophelia, where, 'in an ecstasy of divine inspiration, equally weak in reason, and violent in persuasion and dissuasion,' [12] he calls upon her to go to a nunnery, we must direct attention to the concluding part of an Essay [13] of Montaigne. It is only surprising that nobody should as yet have pointed out how unmistakeably, in that famous scene, the inconsistencies of the whimsical French writer are scourged. ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... Upon the lower shelf are deposited an interesting series of busts, including one of the Emperor Septimius Severus, found on the Palatine Hill; one of Hadrian, found at Tivoli, on the site of Hadrian's Villa; one from Athens, of the Emperor Nero; and one of Caracalla, found in the Nunnery Gardens at the Quatro Fontane, on the Esquiline Hill. Upon the upper shelf are two busts in relief, and the front of a sarcophagus, with elaborate representations of the Muses. Here is Terpsichore with the lyre of dancing, Thalia with the mask of ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... service in which even fame has lost its charm. And hark you, Calderon, I tell you that I will not forego this pursuit. So fair, so innocent a victim shall not be condemned to that living tomb. Through the walls of the nunnery, through the spies of the Inquisition, love will find out its way; and in some distant land I will yet unite happiness and honour. I fear not exile; I fear not reverse; I no longer fear poverty itself. All lands, where ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... very injudicious step, for who could be supposed to attend to any thing else, when the lovely Harriet Byron continued in suspence, when the fate of Lady Clementina was undetermined, when it was not yet settled, whether she was to marry Grandison, retire to a Nunnery, or continue crack-brain'd all her lifetime. After all, I am well-pleased to see Grandison and Harriet fairly buckled. And I hope soon to hear, that the ceremony is performed between the Count de Belvedere and Lady Clementina. I am afraid ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... herself glided by, with a look as if to approve of my antiquarian enthusiasm! Having gratified my curiosity by a careful survey of this subterraneous abode, I revisited the regions of day-light, and made towards the large building, now a manufactory, which in Ducarel's time had been a nunnery. The revolution has swept away every human being in the character of a nun; but the director of the manufactory shewed me, with great civility, some relics of old crosses, rings, veils, lachrymatories, &c. which had been taken from the crypt I had recently visited. These ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... which miraculously escaped their industry, being very richly laden with all the King's plate and great quantity of riches of gold, pearl, jewels and other most precious goods, of all of the best and richest merchants of Panama. On board of this galleon were also the religious women, belonging to the nunnery of the said city, who had embarked with them all the ornaments of their church, consisting in great quantity of gold, plate, and other things of ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... dear Papa, We one and all seem quite to be upset, 'Tis hotter than last summer was by far, At least so everybody says, but yet Much hotter than last June it could not be, And that's what I think, what do you think, pet? To sit indoors 'tis like a nunnery, With nought to do but tamely sit and knit, In fact I never liked such ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... Hood's Garland, which was published at York, contains the generally believed account of his death and burial. In it we read how he visited his cousin, the Prioress of Kirklees Nunnery, for the purpose of being bled. She, who must have been soul-sister of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, took advantage of his defencelessness, and, after opening a vein, locked up the room and left ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist

... from the mention of "children strangely decked and apparelled to counterfeit priests, bishops, and women," that on these occasions "divine service was not only performed by boys, but by little girls," and "there is an injunction given to the Benedictine Nunnery of Godstowe in Oxfordshire, by Archbishop Peckham, in the year 1278, that on Innocents' Day the public prayers should not any more be said in the church of that monastery per parvulas, i.e. little ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... to their uncle; he could secure great matches for them, but Marie—pah! she would bring discredit on the whole family. And so it was decided in conclave that the "ugly duckling" should be left in a nunnery—the only fit place for her. But Marie happily had a spirit of her own. She would not be left behind, she declared; and if she must go to a nunnery, why there were nunneries in plenty in France to which they could send her. And ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... sort of animal, who hasn't much brain, but knows what he likes, and usually does it without wasting time on pros and cons. Consequently, I'm just as likely to end in prison as anywhere else, and take it without much concern as all in the day's work. You are more likely to end in a nunnery, as the most devout ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... windy Piazza del Gesu, where their principal church stands, adjoining what was once their convent, or monastery, as people say nowadays, though Doctor Johnson admits no distinction between the words, and Dryden called a nunnery by the latter name. The story is this. One day the Devil and the Wind were walking together in the streets of Rome, conversing pleasantly according to their habit. When they came to the Piazza del Gesu, the Devil stopped. 'I have ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... largely under glass, brick-making and saw-mills are the chief industries of Cheshunt. Roman coins and other remains have been found at this place, and an urn appears built into the wall of an inn. A Romano-British village or small town is indicated. There was a Benedictine nunnery here in the 13th century. Of several interesting mansions in the vicinity one, the Great House, belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, and a former Pengelly House was the residence of Richard Cromwell the Protector after his resignation. Theobalds Park was built ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... others both of man kind and woman kind, be brought up in virtue, learning and in the English tongue and behaviour, to the great charge of the said houses; that is to say, the woman kind of the whole Englishry of this land, for the more part, in the said nunnery, and the man kind in the other said houses."[35] This petition received but scant consideration, and no wonder; because, although the Archbishop of Dublin had agreed to it, he wrote on the same day to Cromwell ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... there was a priest who told us strange tales of the miracles wrought in the Mortimer household by my father's severed hand; nay, that it had so worked on Lord Mortimer's sister, that she had left the vanities of the world, and gone into a nunnery. He seemed so convinced of my father's saintliness, and so honest a fellow, that Isabel insisted on unbosoming ourselves to him under seal of confession. No longer was the old nurse to be my mother and she my ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... her residence there with somewhat the feeling of a novice entering a nunnery. She was not quite sure how she and Aunt Harriet were going to get on. To her great relief, however, things turned out better than she expected. Miss Beach received her with unusual complacency, and the two settled down quite harmoniously ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... over-flowing with love and delight, was among the first to enter. He enquired of every one he met of the fate of Isabelle; but all turned from him with disgust. At length he found her out, but what was his grief and surprise—in a nunnery! Firm to the troth she had so solemnly plighted, she had rejected the proposition of her mercenary parent; and, having no idea but that her lover had shared the fate of all Christian captives, she had shut herself up from the world, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... to a nunnery: Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... no grief at the death of his father, and he made no show of any. Geoffrey had gone for the burial to the nunnery of Fontevrault, a favourite convent of Henry's, and there Richard appeared as soon as he heard the news, and knelt beside the body of his father, which was said to have bled on his approach, as long as it would take to say the Lord's prayer. Then we are told he turned at once to business. ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... to perform the office of a bailiff, and had retired to the parent abbey. The brothers therefore renounced their first scheme of taking Silkstede in their way, and made for Romsey. There, under the shadow of the magnificent nunnery, they dined pleasantly by the waterside at the sign of Bishop Blaise, patron of the woolcombers of the town, and halted long enough to refresh Ambrose, who was equal to very little fatigue. It amused ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... and she gave him a terrible look, and returned him his ten cents, saying, "Do you think, sir, because you are a Chicago drummer, that for ten cents you can take a kiss right out of the best part of it? Go! Get thee to a nunnery," and he went and bought a lemonade ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... exercise. I suspect she is right, and that I've been coddling the fellow as if I'd been his grandmother. Let him do what he likes, as long as he is happy. He can't get into mischief in that little nunnery over there, and Mrs. March is doing more for him than ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... monastery of the Carmelites, or White Friars, with the church and houses of the Knights Templars beyond it. Within the City, to the east, were the great establishments of the Austin Friars and St. Helen's nunnery, while east and west the churches spread—many of monastic origin—culminating in two of the most important buildings in Europe, the Tower of London and the palace of Westminster, each with its ecclesiastical dependencies, the whole dominated ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... distinguished young apostle of Reform, Mr. Philip Vandal, to deliver the opening lecture. He has just done so, and, from what I have heard about his discourse, it would have been fitter as the introductory to a nunnery of Kilkenny cats than to anything like universal brotherhood. He opened our lyceum as if it had been an oyster, without any regard for the feelings of those inside. He pitched into the world in general, and all his neighbors past and present in particular. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... God Almighty." It was all of no use; the Prince insisted, and his wrath was dangerous. The Bismarcks gave in; they surrendered Burgstall and received in exchange Schoenhausen and Crevisse, a confiscated nunnery, on condition that as long as the ejected nuns lived the new lords should support them; for which purpose the Bismarcks had annually to supply a certain quantity of food and ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... Radegonde's memory is dear to us in England, for it was a small company of her nuns who settled on the Green Croft by the river bank below Cambridge, and founded a priory whose noble church and monastic buildings were subsequently incorporated in Jesus College when the nunnery was suppressed by Bishop Alcock ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... is with the old soldier thus left desolate, with Agricola in his prison, Adrienne in hers, the madhouse, and Rose and Blanche Simon in theirs, the nunnery; we hasten to assure him (or her, as the case may be), that not only will their future steps be traced, but the dark machinations of the Jesuits, and the thrilling scenes in which new characters will perform their varied parts, pervaded by the watching spirit ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... more from him, having delivered him thus miraculously. At length, the infirmities of age increasing, and having a great sickness upon him, Robin was desirous to lose a little blood, and for that purpose he applied to the prioress of Kirkleys Nunnery, in Yorkshire; who, though a relation, treacherously suffered him to bleed to death, in, it is said, his 87th year. According to Grafton's Chronicle, it is said that after his death, the prioress caused him to be buried under a great stone "by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various

... he was in doubt whether to regard Henry's attachment to Rosamond as only a liaison—to represent Becket as so treating it, or to place Eleanor manifestly in the wrong, as being herself not the wife she pretends to be. "Go to a nunnery, go!" is the end of it all. But at that nunnery, it seems, Fair Rosamond remained for some time permissu superiorum as, I suppose, a lady-boarder, not assuming the habit of even a postulant, much less compelled, as a novice, to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various

... came to Arthur's court at Camelot and asked Sir Launcelot to ride with her into the forest hard by, for a purpose not then to be revealed. Launcelot consenting, they rode together until they came to a nunnery hidden deep in the forest; and there the lady bade Launcelot dismount, and led him into a great and stately room. Presently there entered twelve nuns and with them a youth, the fairest that Launcelot had ever seen. "Sir," said the nuns, "we have brought ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... wait at the loathsome sick-bed; impelled by filial piety. The three Princesses, Graille, Chiffe, Coche (Rag, Snip, Pig, as he was wont to name them), are assiduous there; when all have fled. The fourth Princess Loque (Dud), as we guess, is already in the Nunnery, and can only give her orisons. Poor Graille and Sisterhood, they have never known a Father: such is the hard bargain Grandeur must make. Scarcely at the Debotter (when Royalty took off its boots) could they snatch up their 'enormous hoops, gird the long train round their waists, huddle on their ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... they had supp-ed well, Certain withouten lease, Cloudeslie said: "We will to our King, To get us a charter of peace; Al-ice shall be at our sojourning, In a nunnery here beside, And my two sons shall with her go, And there they ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... window Wallace leap'd Fifteen feet to ground, And never stopp'd till fast within A nunnery's ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... with the heathen who come raiding over the North Sea. They plunder and pillage as they list, whether it be palace, abbey or nunnery that lies in their way. Honor has no meaning to those who ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... there any hope for her? Could he not take her to some nunnery midway, and let her write to her uncle to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... oft at the nunnery gate, As the darkness fell over the village, Would a swart savage crouch and await, With the patience of devilish hate, A chance to kill women, ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir

... a friar of a neighbouring convent is my friend; you have already been diverted by the manners of a nunnery; let us see whether there is less ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... discussed later. We are also aware that strong feeling which cannot find vent in one direction will secure expression in another. The annals of Roman Catholicism contain accounts of numerous persons who have sought refuge in a monastery or a nunnery as the result of disappointment in love, and it would be foolish to conclude that strong amorous feelings are annihilated because there is a change in the object to which they are directed. Paul was not a different man from the Saul of pre-conversion days, but the same person with ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... of churches one Episcopalian, one Roman Catholic, one Methodist mission, one Congregational mission, one nunnery school, Sisters of St. Ann's, one private educational institute (by the author) for both sexes, and one Young ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... Grave governor, list not to his exclaims: Convert his mansion to a nunnery; His house will harbour ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe

... great kindness for an old chambermaid, sister to one of my monks of Buzai, I did all I could to gain her, and by the means of a hundred pistoles down, and vast promises, I succeeded. She made her mistress believe that she was designed for a nunnery, and I, for my part, told her that I was doomed to nothing less than a monastery. She could not endure her sister, because she was her father's darling, and I was not overfond of my brother,—[Pierre de Gondi, Duc de Retz, who died in 1676.]—for ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... recluse, bird of the cloister, Margot of the Nunnery, sable-frocked Abbess, Church fowl of the lustrous coat, ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... then but this. Persuade thy beauteous child To leave the nunnery and return to court, And I protest from henceforth to forswear All such conceits of lust as I ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... any child's face fresh out of the convent; it does not last a month!' was the still displeased, rather jealous answer. 'That little thing—I believe they call her Nid-de-Merle—she has only just been brought from her nunnery to wait on the young Queen. Ah! your gaze was perilous, it is bringing on you one of the jests ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... let you go; we will provide for her. Better still if you were to persuade her for the public benefit to go into a nunnery; that would make it possible for you to become a monk, too, and join the expedition as a priest. I can arrange it ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... she said one day, when she had sat for some time looking at Dolly, who was drawing. "He seems to think it quite natural that you should live down here at this cottage, year in and year out, like a toad in a hole; with no more life or society. We might as well be shut up in a nunnery, only then there would be more of us. I never heard of a nunnery with only ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... had remained to take charge of the household and the newly-arrived family of grandchildren. She was one of those calm, quiet, big-souled women who in the early centuries would have been a saint, and in mediaeval times the abbess of a nunnery, but happening to be born in the nineteenth century, her mental outlook had a modern bias, and both her philanthropy and her religious instincts had developed along the latest lines of thought. She had schemes of her own for work in the world, ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... dell—a deep hollow cup, lined with turf as green and short as the sod of this Common: the very oldest of the trees, gnarled mighty oaks, crowd about the brink of this dell; in the bottom lie the ruins of a nunnery. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... tassels and fringe! That is the burden of what I have to say to you this time; for indeed and indeed this is to be a fringe-and-tassel season, and you must cover yourself all over with fringe and the rest of yourself with tassels, or else "to a nunnery go." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... the result of this idea, and this Buddhistic practice was adopted by the first Christian church, since which time the real purpose and intention of the monastery and the nunnery have become lost in the concept of sacrifice or punishment. The Christian monk almost invariably retires to a monastery, not for the purpose of consciously attaining to that enlarged area of consciousness which insures liberation, mukti, but as ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... subsequent journey, when at a short distance from Torquemada, she ordered the corpse to be carried into the court-yard of a convent, occupied, as she supposed, by monks. She was filled with horror, however, on finding it a nunnery, and immediately commanded the body to be removed into the open fields. Here she encamped with her whole party at dead of night; not, however, until she had caused the coffins to be unsealed, that she might satisfy herself of the safety of her husband's relics; ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... well," said he, when he came within hearing, "a holyday for you! Ods fish,—and a holier day than my old house has known since its former proprietor, Sir Hugo, of valorous memory, demolished the nunnery, of which some remains yet stand on yonder eminence. Morton, my man of might, the thing is done; the court is purified; the wicked one is departed. Look here, and be as happy as I am at our release;" and he threw me a note in ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... laughing, "one might as well go to a nunnery. May not a girl enjoy her beauty? It is sweet ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... may not be accentuated. Other parents, observing their daughter's inclination to be frivolous, or seeing the instinct of sex begin to manifest itself in her interest in young men, send her away to a girl's school—a sort of intellectual nunnery. ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... said Alexius; "he becomes mine, or he shall never know what it is to be again his own.—And thou, girl, mayst rest assured that, if I will it, thou art next day the bride of my present captive, or thou retirest to the most severe nunnery, never again to mix with society. Be silent, therefore, and await thy doom, as it shall come, and hope not that thy utmost endeavours can avert the current ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... there he and the Russian came to blows, and, in the confusion, Vera made her escape, while Rose was conveyed, as Vera, to Siberia. Not knowing how to dispose of her, the Russian police consigned her to a nunnery at the mouth of the Obi. Her lover, in a yacht, found her hiding-place, and got a friendly nun to give her some narcotic known to the Samoyeds. It was the old truc of the Friar in "Romeo and Juliet." At ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... historical, and as the latter really did commission a body of moss- troopers to divert an instalment of King James's ransom into his own private coffers, I do not think I can have done him much injustice. As the nunnery of St. Abbs has gone bodily into the sea, I have been the less constrained by the inconvenient action of fact upon fiction. And for the Hospital of St. Katharine's-by-the-Tower, its history is to be found in Stowe's 'Survey of London,' and likewise in the evidence before ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and I are alive this glorious day, with our destinies in our pockets and the great round world at our feet. I wonder whether I ought to go into a nunnery." ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... me not, sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, To ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... a lawn, than skies more clear, Some ruffled roses nestling were: And, snugging there, they seem'd to lie As in a flowery nunnery: They blush'd, and look'd more fresh than flowers Quicken'd of late by pearly showers, And all because they were possess'd But of the heat of Julia's breast: Which, as a warm and moisten'd spring, Gave them ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... giving descriptions of life in the cloister, we find additional details: for instance, in the memoirs of the Countess Kaunitz, mother of the well-known statesman Kaunitz, we find an account of the severe whippings which were administered to her during her childhood spent in a nunnery. ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... of fabliaux, short humorous tales or satirical pieces in verse. It describes a lubber-land, or fool's paradise, where the geese fly down all roasted on the spit, bringing garlic in the bills for their dressing, and where there is a nunnery upon a river of sweet milk, and an abbey of white monks and gray, whose walls, like the hall of little King Pepin, are "of pie-crust and pastry crust," with flouren cakes for the shingles and fat ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... was known to hesitate at nothing which might lead to his aggrandizement. Therefore she seldom moved beyond the outer wall of the hold, except to go down to visit the sick in the village. She herself had been a Seaton, and had been educated at the nunnery of Dunfermline, and she now taught Archie to read and write, accomplishments by no means common even among the better class in those days. Archie loved not books; but as it pleased his mother, and time often hung heavy on his hands, he did not mind devoting two or three hours ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... preserver; and while he abides here, I will never consent to leave his feet. When he goes hence, if it be to bless mankind again, I shall find the longest life too short to pour forth all my gratitude; and for that purpose I will dedicate myself in some nunnery of my native land. But should he be taken from a world so unworthy of him, soon, very soon, I shall cease to feel its ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... village belief in the heathenish character of the French lady. Dame Tourtelot was shrewdly of the opinion that the woman represented some Popish plot for the abduction of Adele, and for her incarceration in a nunnery,—a theory which Miss Almira, with her natural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... her Highness's pleasure was to lend her tongue to the language—or something like it—of a besotted fish-wife; so! very well, and just as it is the case with that particular old Hock you youngsters would disapprove of, and we cunning oldsters know to contain more virtues in maturity than a nunnery of May-blooming virgins, just so the very faults of a royal lady-royal by birth and in temper a termagant—impart a perfume! a flavour! You must age; you must live in Courts, you must sound the human bosom, rightly to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... thus been reared in a manner as near to that of the nunnery as tribal conditions would permit, it was with a great and maidenly anxiety that she peeped out at the man who had surely come for her, at the husband who was to teach her all that was yet unlearned of life, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... lady very discreetly weighed the different treatment she was likely to find in her native country. Her relations (as the kindest thing they could do for her in her present circumstances) would certainly confine her to a nunnery for the rest of her days.—Her infidel lover was very handsome, very tender, very fond of her, and lavished at her feet all the Turkish magnificence. She answered him very resolutely, that her liberty was not so precious to her ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... admiration in a sensual, splendor-loving court, where all acknowledged the sway of Clotilda. Her father lavished the whole of his affection upon his elder daughter: the latter seldom noticed her, and thought her more fit for a nunnery or for a peasant's cottage, than for the station of a princess. And so Edith grew to womanhood, unspoiled by flattery—that incense was reserved for Clotilda's shrine. Not in that crowd of selfish courtiers and of worldly ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... settlers in his part of Munster paid him an annual tribute of forty pounds to protect them from the attacks and insults of the Irish. To him is also ascribed the building of the Abbey and Castle of Kilcrea, the Nunnery of Ballyvacadine, and many other religious houses; in the former of which he was buried.[2] It would be a matter of little importance and considerable labour to trace the Castle of Blarney from one possessor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various

... done: your fathers may chance spy your parting. Refuse not you by any means, good sweetness, To go unto the Nunnery; far from hence Must we beget your love's sweet happiness. You shall not stay there long; your harder bed Shall be more soft when Nun and maid ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare

... is certain. Its ruins are situated on a high rocky point; and, doubtless, many a vow was made to the shrine by the distressed mariners, who drove towards the iron-bound coast of Northumberland in stormy weather. It was anciently a nunnery; for Virca, abbess of Tynemouth, presented St. Cuthbert (yet alive) with a rare winding- sheet, in emulation of a holy lady called Tuda, who had sent him a coffin: but, as in the case of Whitby, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... boat? Signor!" Maria Angelina laughed mischievously. "One reads of such in novels—yes? But as to that boat, it was a floating nunnery." ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... would have had me sent to prison and punished without too close a reckoning. [1] But the good Prinzivalle put a stop to that. So they sentenced me to pay four measures of flour, which were to be given as alms to the nunnery of the Murate. [2] I was called in again; and he ordered me not to speak a word under pain of their displeasure, and to perform the sentence they had passed. Then, after giving me another sharp rebuke, they sent us to the chancellor; I muttering all the while, "It was a slap and not a ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... as founders of the Benedictine monastery at Coventry, which rose upon the ruins of an earlier house of Benedictine nuns founded by Osburg, a lady of the royal house, nearly two hundred years before. This nunnery had been destroyed in the Danish wars about the year 1016. Consequently, if any legend, or ceremony, was known or practised at Coventry in connection with some traditional patroness, the name of Godgifu ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... willingly have given, and greater labor into the bargain, for one galleon, which miraculously escaped, richly laden with all the king's plate, jewels, and other precious goods of the best and richest merchants of Panama: on board which were also the religious women of the nunnery, who had embarked with them all the ornaments of their church, consisting in much gold, plate, and other things of ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... head of the monastery of Selenginsk, later a prisoner at Solovetzk. He preached eloquently and fervently the renunciation of property, and persuaded his mother and sisters to abandon their worldly goods and devote themselves to the service of the Virgin. "To a nunnery!" he cried, with all the conviction of Hamlet driving Ophelia from this world, and they sang psalms with him and went to conceal their misery in a convent. Then, with a staff in his hand, he traversed Russia, and visited many staretz, or holy men. They ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... you bring her with you, you foolish boy? Why, you have no more spunk than a hooked cod-fish! You'll never see her again, if you make fifty voyages round the cape; she's in a nunnery by this time, or, what is more likely, married to that ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... the disert for the reception of pilgrims.[195] Somerled appears to have rebuilt the ruined monastery on a larger scale, and about 1203 the Lord of the Isles (Reginald) adopted the policy of the Scottish kings, and founded at Iona a monastery of Benedictine monks (Tyronenses), and at the same time a nunnery for Benedictine nuns, of which Beatrice, sister of Reginald, was first prioress. It is of this Benedictine monastery and nunnery that the present ruins are the remains, and they were formerly connected by a causeway which extended from the nunnery ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... diphtheria. Her husband wept aloud, unaware of everybody. But the war went on, and soon he was back at his work. A darkness had come over Lydia's mind. She walked always in a shadow, silenced, with a strange, deep terror having hold of her, her desire was to seek satisfaction in dread, to enter a nunnery, to satisfy the instincts of dread in her, through service of a dark religion. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... description of the awful happenings he had witnessed from the buffoon who had hidden under the table, to dispose their plans for the future (for Ottavio and Anna, marriage in a year; for Masetto and Zerlina, a wedding instanter; for Elvira, a nunnery), and platitudinously to moralize that, the perfidious wretch having been carried to the realm of Pluto and Proserpine, naught remained to do save to sing the old song, "Thus do the wicked find their end, dying as they ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... abroad? Suppose I should join the play actors—and they do tempt me sorely—why should my father's name and rank be known and defamed? And, truly, I grant you, I'm as likely to join the play actors as to enter a nunnery, the one as the other and the other as the one. Both draw me strangely, and I'm likelier to do either than to marry you. Here's my hand and seal on that, or, rather, here's my hand and a kiss, for a kiss is more binding than a seal. And now for the last word—will you put me out of your ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... Peng, ne Wang, exercises her authority in the Iron Fence Temple. Ch'in Ching-ch'ing (Ch'ing Chung) amuses himself in the Man-t'ou (Bread) nunnery. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... repairing to a house which had been taken for them in Paris, but others retiring to the well-known farm on the hill known as Les Granges. There was, of course, the strictest seclusion maintained in the nunnery, as before, and the inmates of Les Granges were wellnigh as completely severed from it as the ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... bid[FN586] you, give me meat and drink And what that I will after think, Till I have kevered[FN587] my might." The king a great oath sware, As soon as he whole were, That he would dub him knight. In a nunnery they him leaved, To heal the wound in his heved,[FN588] That he took in that fight. The nuns of him were full fain, For he had the soudan slain, And many heathen hounds; For his sorrow they gan sore rue; Every day they salved him new, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... pp. 119. 407. 444.).—The libellous pamphlet, entitled The Arminian Nunnery at Little Gidding, is printed entire in the Appendix to Hearne's Preface to Langtoft. One of the Harmonies of the Life of Christ is in the British Museum, and another at St. John's College, Oxford (Qy.) (See the list of MSS. once at Gidding, Peckhard, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various

... pretty Character! a Woman of my Beauty, and five Thousand Pound, marry a Merchant—a little, petty, dirty-heel'd Merchant; faugh, I'd rather live a Maid all the days of my life, or be sent to a Nunnery, and that's Plague ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... the gem of his collection, and who had never before trusted it out of his own hands. My copy, when completed, was to be placed over the high altar of the convent chapel; and my work throughout its progress was to be pursued entirely in the parlor of the nunnery, and always in the watchful presence of one or other of the inmates of the house. It was only on such conditions that the owner of the Correggio was willing to trust his treasure out of his own hands, and to suffer it to be copied by a stranger. The restrictions he imposed, which I thought ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins



Words linked to "Nunnery" :   convent



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