"Simony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... uncommon. Consequently an expensive lot. The fact is, Mr. Bolton, that the price is raised so high on United States Senator now, that it affects the whole market; you can't get any public improvement through on reasonable terms. Simony is what I call it, Simony," repeated Mr. Bigler, as if he had said a ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... brute force, despotism, outlawry. mob law, lynch law, club law, Lydford law, martial law, drumhead law; coup d'etat [Fr.]; le droit du plus fort [Fr.]; argumentum baculinum [Lat.]. illegality, informality, unlawfulness, illegitimacy, bar sinister. trover and conversion [Law]; smuggling, poaching; simony. [person who violates the law] outlaw, bad man &c 949. v.. offend against the law; violate the law, infringe the law, break the law; set the law at defiance, ride roughshod over, drive a coach and six through a statute; ignore the law, make the law a dead letter, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pope, scarcely had he completed the formalities of etiquette which his exaltation imposed upon him, and paid to each man the price of his simony, when from the height of the Vatican he cast his eyes upon Europe, a vast political game of chess, which he cherished the hope of directing at the will ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Burnet, but with the witnesses on whose evidence Watson was convicted. To tell you the truth, I am glad when such faults are found with Burnet; for it shows his enemies are not angry at his telling falsehoods, but the truth. Must not an historian say a bishop was convicted Of Simony, if he was? I will tell you what was said of Burnet's History, by one whose testimony you yourself would not dispute—at least you would not in any thing else. That confessor said, "Damn him, he has told a great deal ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... well-known answer was not without effect on him, but it was only temporary, for he afterwards appeared in Rome and continued to impose upon the people so as to persuade them to believe him as an incarnation of the Most High. Hence Simony, the sin of making gain by the buying or selling of spiritual privileges for ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of the clergy The monks, and the need of reform Character of the popes before Gregory VII. Celibacy of the clergy Alliance of the Papacy and Monasticism Opposition to the reforms of Hildebrand Terrible power of excommunication Simony and its evils Secularization of the clergy Separation of spiritual from temporal power Henry IV. of Germany Approaching strife between Henry and Hildebrand Their respective weapons Henry summoned to Rome Excommunication ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... never to be forgotten that neither he nor his Cabinet officers were ever upbraided for corruption; [Footnote: It is true that Lincoln's first war minister, Simon Cameron, was accused of smoothing the way to certain fat war contracts, a wit suggesting Simony as the term, but no charges were really brought. Lincoln said that if one proof were forthcoming, he would have the Cameronian head—but Mr. Cameron died intact.] some, like Secretary Stanton, though handling enormous sums, died poor men comparatively. It is in accordance with ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... had the power to give, nor had given, Rome to the Popes, and that they had no right to govern there. He backed up this terrible indictment by a round attack upon the clergy, its general corruption and its practices of simony; and as a result he fell into the hands of the Inquisition. There it might have gone very ill with him but that King Alfonso rescued him from the clutches of that ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the castle by the lake, a poor monk of the order of St. Basil was slowly dying, for having boldly refused a sacrilegious simony proposed to him by Ali. He was a fit subject for the experiment, and was successfully blown to pieces, to the great satisfaction of Ali, who concluded his bargain, and hastened to make use of it. He ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Anthony. I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning; I don't think so much learning becomes a young woman; for instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or algebra, or simony, or fluxions, or paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning—neither would it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments.—But, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... an hereditary descent, considered all the more real because it was spiritual and not carnal, of the Roman Church; to prevent his being entangled, whether by marriage or otherwise, in the business of this life; out of which would flow nepotism, Simony, and Erastian submission to those sovereigns who ought to be the servants, not the lords of the Church. For this end no means were too costly. St. Dunstan, in order to expel the married secular priests, and replace them by Benedictine monks of the Italian order of Monte Casino, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... the rich and great thought him proud. Moreover, he was a foe to idleness, and sent away from court to their distant sees a host of bishops who wished to bask in the sunshine of court favor, or revel in the excitements of a great city; and they became his enemies. He deposed others for simony, and they became still more hostile. Others again complained that he was inhospitable, since he would not give up his time to everybody, even while he scattered his revenues to the poor. And still others entertained towards him the passion of envy,—that which gives ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... concerning Pope Nicholas III. is deprived of its most telling points: "Nam fuit primus in cujus curia palam committeretur Simonia per suos attinentes. Quapropter multum ditavit eos possessionibus, pecuniis et castellis, super onmes Romanos": "For he was the first at whose court Simony was openly committed in favor of his adherents. Whereby he greatly enriched them with possessions, money, and strongholds, above all the Romans." "Sed quod Clerici capiunt raro dimittunt": "What the clergy have once laid hands on, they rarely give up." Nothing of this is found in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... from the gate, slowly, so as to get time to think. The question surprised me and I was not prepared to give, offhand, a definition of simony. ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... the said ordinaries very uncharitably handled, to their no little hindrance and impoverishment; which your said subjects suppose not only to be against all laws, right, and good conscience, but also to be simony, and contrary ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... us, the said apostolical commissary-general, his holiness concedes that we may be able to dispense and compound for any irregularity whatsoever, provided it shall not arise out of any wilful homicide, simony, apostasy from the faith, heresy, or bad inception of orders; and in like manner to absolve those who shall have contracted matrimony, there being impediment of secret affinity, arising from previous illicit ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... in no favor at Rome; they had refused to accept a Norman Primate appointed by Edward; and Stigand, their chosen Archbishop, was at present suspended by the Court of Rome, for having obtained his office by simony: the whole Anglo-Saxon Church was reported to be in a very bad and corrupt state, and besides, Rome had never enjoyed the power and influence there that the Normans had permitted her. Lanfranc, Abbot, of St. Stephens, at Caen, and one of the persons most highly ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... method of appointment to civil office was sale, it was felt as a special abuse in the church and was branded by the name of simony. Leo X made no less than 500,000 ducats[1] annually from the sale of more than 2000 offices, most of which, being sinecures, eventually came to be regarded as annuities, with a salary amounting to about 10 per cent. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... and for a whole month continued studying the affair, powerfully attracted by the visionary's pure, upright nature, but indignant with all that had subsequently sprouted up—the barbarous fetishism, the painful superstitions, and the triumphant simony. In the access of unbelief which had come upon him, this story of Lourdes was certainly of a nature to complete the collapse of his faith. However, it had also excited his curiosity, and he would have liked to investigate ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... a book, called the "Tax of the Sacred Roman Chancery," in which are the exact sums to be levied for the pardon of each particular sin, some of the fees are thus stated:—For simony, 10s. 6d.; for sacrilege, 10s. 6d.; for taking a false oath, 9s.; for robbing, 12s.; for burning a neighbor's house, 12s.; for defiling a virgin, 9s.; for murdering a layman, 7s. 6d.; for keeping a concubine, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... endowed with a revenue for the performance of Divine Service; the holder of which is called a Rector, or Vicar, or Incumbent, or Perpetual Curate (see under each head). Heresy, Simony, and other grave offences, disqualify a man from ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... for weeks, Brother Ambrose had witnessed and endured the false piety of the man. How he'd ever got admitted to the order in the first place beat all supposition. It must have been his sanctimonious apple-cheeks or (Heaven forbid such simony), some rich relative greased the palm ...
— G-r-r-r...! • Roger Arcot
... Gregory the Seventh." Born the son of a poor carpenter in the Tuscan village of Soana, this extraordinary man rose to eminence as a monk of Cluny, where he became famous for his extreme asceticism of life in an age of undisguised clerical corruption and luxury, when simony, lay investiture and priestly marriages were the rule rather than the exception on all sides, so that but few Churchmen were able to rise above their surrounding temptations. Such few as could resist the world, the flesh and the devil were accounted, and not ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... of the primitive church sample sins are given for our warning, as well as specimen graces for our emulation. One such sin, so subtle, so dangerous, and so constantly recurring in Christian history, having taken the name of its first author and being called "simony," has been handed down from generation to generation. "Because thou hast thought that the gift of God can be purchased with money" is the solemn indictment against one who had purposed to buy the power of the Holy ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... contrast than that between the Hildebrandine programme and the measures by which it was incompletely realised. To enforce the celibacy of the clergy the mobs of Milan and the South-German cities were commissioned to rabble married priests. To make an end of simony the German princes were encouraged in a policy of provincial separatism, a premium was placed on perjured accusations, and a son was suborned to betray his father. That the tide of the Albigensian heresy might be stemmed, Innocent ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Oliver Goldsmith the poet, and from the Duchess of Kingston down to the Bird of Paradise, or Kitty Fisher. Here I have met very queer characters, who came to queer ends too: poor Hackman, that afterwards was hanged for killing Miss Reay, and (on the sly) his Reverence Doctor Simony, whom my friend Sam Foote, of the 'Little Theatre,' bade to live even after forgery and the rope cut short ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ball, or play-house; connived at, or swore a profane oath; took a hand at cards; or ridiculed the mysteries, the experiences, the circumspect professor of the Christian faith, is almost certain to have the presentation: perhaps he covenanted for it as part of his wages. For what simony, sacrilege, and deceitful perjury, with respect to ordination vows, patronage opens a door, he that runs may read. Shocked with the view, let ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... about the wealth a man has amassed together. Thirdly, after the manner of a final cause, one sin causes another, in so far as a man commits one sin for the sake of another which is his end; as when a man is guilty of simony for the end of ambition, or fornication for the purpose of theft. And since the end gives the form to moral matters, as stated above (Q. 1, A. 3; Q. 18, AA. 4, 6), it follows that one sin is also the formal cause of another: because ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... some years of service, he was presented to a living sufficient to support him; but he often found it necessary to purchase his preferment by a species of Simony, which furnished an inexhaustible subject of pleasantry to three or four generations of scoffers. With his cure he was expected to take a wife. The wife had ordinarily been in the patron's service; and it was well if she was not suspected of standing too high ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... declared that they had been induced by others to swear; whereupon the judge declared him free from that calumny. Further, on the part of the archbishop, they accused the master Don Andres Xiron of an act of simony; but he gave the lie to that, as salt dissolves in water, by means of authentic documents and reports. They opposed him with other things of less account, but these were not proved, nor was there any witness of them, nor were the accusations completed; they could, therefore, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... employ'd on one, whose trust He wins, or on another who withholds Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes. Whence in the second circle have their nest Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries, Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce To lust, or set their honesty at pawn, With such vile scum as these. The other way Forgets both Nature's general love, and that Which thereto added afterwards gives birth To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle, Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis, The traitor is eternally ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... gazers as a blazing-star; no sooner he comes into the cathedral, but a train of whispers runs buzzing round the congregation in a moment: Who is he? Whence comes he? Do you know him?Then I, sir, tips me the verger with half-a-crown; he pockets the simony, and inducts me into the best pew in the church; I pull out my snuff-box, turn myself round, bow to the bishop, or the dean, if he be the commanding-officer; single out a beauty, rivet both my eyes to hers, set my nose a-bleeding by the strength of imagination, ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... to the indolent habit inherited from his father a depraved and vicious nature. After a regency of eight years he became king at the age of fifteen, and lived to defile his youth and dishonour his manhood by debauchery and adultery, simony and brigandage. Early in his career he followed the evil counsels of his provost Etienne, and purposed the spoliation of the treasury of St. Germain des Pres to pay for his dissolute pleasures. "As the sacrilegious pair," says ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... merchant, Francesco Coppola, who had entire control of the anchorage on the coast, and shared the profits with the King. Deficits were made up by forced loans, by executions and confiscations, by open simony, and by contributions levied on the ecclesiastical corporations. Besides hunting, which he practiced regardless of all rights of property, his pleasures were of two kinds: he liked to have his opponents ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... place." Yes, indeed, let that be so, every man in his place, and every man fit for it. See that he holds that place from Heaven's Providence; and not from his family's Providence. Let the Lords Spiritual quit themselves of simony, we laymen will look after the heretics for them. Let the Lords Temporal quit themselves of nepotism, and we will take care of their authority for them. Publish for us, you soldiers, an army gazette, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Republic,—God forgive me for saying so! Does the Most Christian King of France know that the man who pretends to rule in the name of Christ is not a believer in the Christian religion,—that he does not believe even in a God,—that he obtained the holy seat by simony,—that he uses all its power to enrich a brood of children whose lives are so indecent that it is a shame to modest lips even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... corrupt lives of Christians in the later centuries of the middle ages, the avarice of the Avignon popes, the selfishness shown in the great schism, the simony and nepotism of the Roman court of the fifteenth century, excited disgust and hatred toward Christianity in the hearts of the literary men of the Renaissance, which disqualified them for the reception of the Christian evidences; or that the social disaffection in the last ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... did, then the tother of that—getting them back again—must be right. But you needn't tell any body what I've said, mistress; for they might, perhaps, have Bill Piper and me up, and try to make barglary out of it—or simony, I don't know but the law folks would call it—the breaking into a log-barn. But hush! Somebody's ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... timorous." Let such a man therefore temper his fear with good hope, and think that since God hath set him in that place (if he think that God have set him in it), God will assist him with his grace to use it well. Howbeit, if he came to it by simony or some such other evils means, then that would be one good reason wherefore he should rather leave it off. But otherwise let him continue in his good business. And, against the devil's provocation unto evil, let him bless himself and call unto God ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... that ecclesiastics should be amenable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals, by freeing the whole body of the clergy from the jurisdiction of the temporal courts, in criminal as well as civil cases. Gradually the bishops acquired the right to try all cases relating to marriage, trusts, perjury, simony, or concerning widows, orphans, or crusaders, on the ground that such cases had to do with religion. Even the right to try all criminal cases was claimed on the ground that all crime is sin, and hence can properly be dealt with only by the Church. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... appeared intolerable. How could the Church keep itself unspotted from the world when its highest officers were chosen by laymen and were compelled to perform unpriestly duties? In the act of investiture the reformers also saw the sin of simony [35]—the sale of sacred powers—because there was such a temptation before the candidate for a bishopric or abbacy to buy the position with promises or ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... also, plays a part in the Inferno appearing not only in the demons taken from classical legend and deformed into caricatures, but also in the punishment of crimes, v.g. simony and malfeasance in public office, regarded by our poet as malicious in themselves and grotesque in ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... his tracts he said, speaking of the pope and his collectors: "They draw out of our land poor men's livelihood, and many thousand marks, by the year, of the king's money, for sacraments and spiritual things, that is cursed heresy of simony, and maketh all Christendom assent and maintain this heresy. And certes though our realm had a huge hill of gold, and never other man took thereof but only this proud worldly priest's collector, by process of time this hill must be spended; ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... that Church, and apprehending the great trouble and charge that he was like to draw upon himself, his relations and friends, before it could be finished, sent for him from London to Chelsea,—where she then dwelt,—and at his coming, said, "George, I sent for you, to persuade you to commit Simony, by giving your patron as good a gift as he has given to you; namely, that you give him back his prebend; for, George, it is not for your weak body, and empty purse, to undertake to build Churches." Of which, he desired ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... to our ears, being at once publicly notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot afore-mentioned, have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, you are so remiss, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... work: friars glossing the Gospel for their own profit; pardoners cheating the people with relics and indulgences; parish priests who forsook their parishes—that had been poor since the pestilence time—and went to London to sing there for simony; bishops, archbishops, and deacons, who got themselves fat clerkships in the Exchequer, or King's Bench; in short, all manner of lazy and corrupt ecclesiastics. A lady, who represents holy Church, then appears to the dreamer, explains to him the meaning of his vision, and reads ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Brother Thomas sold the grace of his relic, by the touching of rings, he dealt in a devilish black simony, vending to simple Christians no grace but that of his master, Sathanas. Thus he was not only evil (if I guess aright, which I submit to the judgment of my ecclesiastical superiors, and of the Church), but he had even found out a new kind of wickedness, such as I never read of in any books ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... traditions of the king's ancient inheritance. He laboured strenuously for the rebuilding of churches, the preservation and extension of ecclesiastical property, the education of the clergy, and the extirpation of clerical matrimony and simony. Despite his unsympathetic attitude, he did good work for the Welsh Church by his manful resistance to all attempts of Edward and his subordinates to encroach upon her liberties. He quaintly thought ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... (Revers'd ambition!) pant to be forgot. Thus ends your courted fame: does lucre then, The sacred thirst of gold, betray your pen? In prose 'tis blameable, in verse 'tis worse, Provokes the muse, extorts Apollo's curse: His sacred influence never should be sold: 'Tis arrant simony to sing for gold: 'Tis immortality should fire your mind; Scorn a less paymaster than all mankind. If bribes you seek, know this, ye writing tribe! Who writes for virtue has the largest bribe: All's on the party of the virtuous man; The good will surely serve him, if they can; The bad, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... of the altar or to the benefices of the church, they sold and bought indifferently for a price, making a greater traffic and having more brokers thereof than folk at Paris of silks and stuffs or what not else. Manifest simony they had christened 'procuration' and gluttony 'sustentation,' as if God apprehended not,—let be the meaning of words but,—the intention of depraved minds and would suffer Himself, after the fashion of men, to be duped by the names of things. All this, together ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... timber. Nor was he alone, for he had found there already two hermits, who agreed to join him; so under the rule of St. Benedict the Vallombrosan Order was founded.[133] Of S. Giovanni's work in Florence, of his fight with Simony and Nicolaitanism, this is no place to speak. He became the hero of that country; yet such was his humility that he never proceeded further than minor orders, and, though Abbot of Vallombrosa, was never a priest. He founded many houses, S. Salvi among them, while ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... new system of centralization developed, maxims, that in the olden times would have been held to be shocking, were boldly avowed—the whole Church is the property of the pope to do with as he will; what is simony in others is not simony in him; he is above all law, and can be called to account by none; whoever disobeys him must be put to death; every baptized man is his subject, and must for life remain so, whether he will or not. Up to the end of the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the archbishop took very ill. His voice choked, his lips quivered. He took up the tale, however, without comment, and asked Herbert le Poor, Bishop of Salisbury, the very man who, as Archdeacon of Canterbury, had been snubbed for simony at Hugh's installation, and who might be expected to render a public nothing now for his then empty hand. But he had learnt something since that day, and he replied curtly that he could give no other answer than that of my ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... SIMONY. Then, we are luckily well-met; and, seeing we wish all for one thing, I would we our wills and wishing ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... me, Sir Anthony—I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning; I don't think so much learning becomes a young woman; for instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or Algebra, or Simony, or Fluxions, or Paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning; nor will it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments; but, Sir Anthony, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... cathedral of St. Paul, walks were laid out for merchants, as in the Royal Exchange. Thus, "the south alley for usurye, and poperye; the north for simony and the horse fair; in the middest for all kinds of bargains, meetings, brawlings, murthers, conspiracies; and the font for ordinary paiements of money, are so well knowne to all menne as the beggar ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... limits of the kingdom, it enters into the constitution of the "Sacred College," and fixes the number of the cardinals at twenty-four, while placing the minimum age of candidates for the hat at thirty years. The exaction of the annats is stigmatized as simony. Priests living in concubinage are to be punished by the forfeiture of one-fourth of their annual stipend. Finally the principle is sanctioned that no interdict can be made to include in its operation the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... quantities was carried out of the realm from the proceeds of these offices, and it was necessary to insist emphatically that the papal nominations should cease. They were made in violation of the law, and were conducted with simony so flagrant that English benefices were sold in the papal courts to any person who would pay for them, whether an Englishman or a stranger. It was therefore decreed that the elections to bishopricks should be free as in time past, that the rights of patrons should be preserved, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... whole affair. To be sure, now I remember, the weather has been too thick for a man to see the head of his own horse. The Doones (if still there be any Doones) could never have come abroad; that is as sure as simony. Master Huckaback, for your good sake, I am heartily glad that this charge has miscarried. I thoroughly understand it now. The fog explains the whole ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... man Of an unbounded Stomach, ever ranking Himself with Princes; one that by Suggestion Ty'd all the kingdom. Simony was fair play. His own opinion was his law, i' th' presence He would say untruths, and be ever double Both in his words and meaning. He was never, But where he meant to ruin, pitiful. His promises were, as he then was, mighty; But his performance, as he now is, nothing. Of his own body he ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... been sent to him as legate. This bull directed the Archbishop to visit all the larger monasteries in which he had reason to suspect that evil practices prevailed, and the Archbishop threatens to visit St. Albans because he has heard of cases of simony, usury, lavish expenditure, and immorality. He says unless within sixty days things are reduced to order, not only in the monastery but also in the nunneries of Pre and Sopwell and other cells, he will visit personally or by commission to inquire into matters and set things in order. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... Egyptian bondage, sir. Your worm of Nile Betrays not with its flattering tears like they; For, when they cannot kill, they whine and weep. 110 Nor is it half so greedy of men's bodies As they of soul and all; nor does it wallow In slime as they in simony and lies And close ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... excited my curiosity and made me feel uneasy. I was afraid that I might have been guilty of it unawares. I mustered up courage enough, one day, to ask my confessor what was meant by the phrase: "To be guilty of simony in the collation of benefices." The good priest reassured me and told me that I could not have committed ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... appointments to benefices, the absence of seminaries, and the failure of the universities to give a proper ecclesiastical training, produced their natural effect on a large body of the clergy. Grave charges of ignorance, indifference, concubinage, and simony were not wholly groundless, as the decrees of various councils ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... Church,—and, a little later, the founding of the Society of Jesus, with its immense potency for good and for evil. At the same time the court of Rome, sobered in some measure, by the perilous crisis that confronted it, from its long orgy of simony, nepotism, and sensuality, began to find time and thought for spiritual duties. The establishment of the "congregations" or administrative boards, and especially of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... had indeed a difficult team to drive; especially as his coadjutors were not wholly proof against Martin's jibes. In '84 his brother of York had been mixed up in a shocking scandal; in '85 the Bishop of Lichfield was accused of simony; Bishop Aylmer was continually under suspicion of avarice, dishonesty, vanity and swearing; and the Bench as a whole was universally reprobated ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... year, 400, St. Chrysostom held a council of bishops in Constantinople; one of whom had preferred a complaint against his metropolitan Antoninus, the archbishop of Ephesus, which consisted of several heads, but that chiefly insisted on was simony.[27] All our saint's endeavors to discuss this affair being frustrated by the distance of places, he found it necessary, at the solicitation of the clergy and people of Ephesus, to go in person to that city, though the severity of the winter season, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Papa, to whose doings already attaches considerable importance. One of the last acts of the Senate which had any real meaning was to make a decree with regard to the election of this Bishop, forbidding his advance by the way of Simony. Theodoric, an Arian, interferes only with the Church of Rome in so far as public peace demands it. In one of his letters occurs a most remarkable dictum on the subject of toleration. "Religionem imperare ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... avaricious that human, nay Christian blood, and things sacred of what kind soever, spiritualities no less than temporalities, they bought and sold for money; which traffic was greater and employed more brokers than the drapery trade and all the other trades of Paris put together; open simony and gluttonous excess being glosed under such specious terms as "arrangement" and "moderate use of creature comforts," as if God could not penetrate the thoughts of even the most corrupt hearts, to say nothing of the signification of words, and would suffer Himself ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... out in life, the Pope was naturally short of money. He relied on two principal methods for replenishing his coffers. One was the public sale of places about the Court at Rome, each of which had its well-known price.[1] Benefices were disposed of with rather more reserve and privacy, for simony had not yet come to be considered venial. Yet it was notorious that Sixtus held no privilege within his pontifical control on which he was not willing to raise money: 'Our churches, priests, altars, sacred rites, our prayers, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... to follow CHRIST and his Apostles in wilful poverty and other virtues; and coveteth worldly worship, and taketh it gladly, and gathereth together with pleting [? pleading] menacing or with flattering, or with simony, any worldly goods: and most if a priest busy him not chiefly in himself, and after in all other men and women, after his cunning and ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... 'donnat', or 'donet' (Chaucer), from Donatus, a famous grammarian. Lazarus, perhaps an actual person, has given us 'lazar' and 'lazaretto'; St. Veronica and the legend connected with her name, a 'vernicle'; being a napkin with the Saviour's face portrayed on it; Simon Magus 'simony'; Mahomet a 'mammet' or 'maumet', meaning an idol{95}, and 'mammetry' or idolatry; 'dunce' is from Duns Scotus; while there is a legend that the 'knot' or sandpiper is named from Canute or Knute, with whom this bird ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... that about a third of the houses, including the bulk of the larger abbeys, were fairly and decently conducted. The rest were charged with drunkenness, with simony, and with the foulest and most revolting crimes. The character of the visitors, the sweeping nature of their report, and the long debate which followed on its reception leave little doubt that these charges were grossly exaggerated. But the want of any effective ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Kirchenrechts. The relation of the vicariate to the papacy and also to the royal power is indicated by the fact that the pallium is given in response to the request of the king. The condition of the church under Childebert is also shown; see 98 for canons bearing on simony and ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... having been played before the King at Woodstock on Palm Sunday. The piece is now lost; but a copy was seen by Warton, who gave an account of it. As the matter is very curious, I must add a few of its points. The persons are a Conjurer, the Devil, a Notary Public, Simony, and Avarice. The plot is the trial of Simony and Avarice, the Devil being the judge, and the Notary serving as assessor. The Conjurer has little to do but open the subject, evoke the Devil, and summon the court. The prisoners are found guilty, and ordered off straight to Hell: the Devil kicks ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... recovered. The soldier brought the remainder to their author, who bought them at the price of a vacant benefice, which he persuaded the pope to confer on the freebooter, in his native land of Cordova. It is not often that simony has found so good an apology. The deficiency, although never repaired by Giovio, was in some degree supplied by his biographies of eminent men, and, among others, by that of Gonsalvo de Cordova, in which he has collected ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... obtaining a benefice on the most honourable terms for the most pious divine. Yet to such a degree had his manners been corrupted by evil communications, and his understanding obscured by inordinate zeal for a single object, that he did not scruple to become a broker in simony of a peculiarly discreditable kind, and to use a bishopric as a bait to tempt a divine to perjury. Hough replied with civil contempt that he wanted nothing from the crown but common justice. "We stand," he said, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... when his follower, Herbert de Losinga, who, not content with having purchased the bishopric for L1900, bought also the abbacy of Winchester for his father, for L1000, was cited before the Pope for this double act of simony, and, with difficulty, retained his mitre, upon the condition of building sundry churches and monasteries. Norwich has, indeed, a superiority in its tower, in regard to which, it may safely be put in competition with any edifice of the same style, in Normandy ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... missionaries to Finland, Greenland and the Orkney Islands, and aimed at making Bremen a patriarchal see for northern Europe, with twelve suffragan bishoprics. He consolidated and increased the estates of the church, exercised the powers of a count, denounced simony and initiated financial reforms. The presence of this powerful and active personality, who was moreover a close friend of the emperor, was greatly resented by the Saxon duke, Bernard II., who regarded him as a spy sent by Henry into ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... bishops. The petitioners prayed, that whereas a great number both of regulars and seculars who were presumptuous and ignorant were ordained, a decree might be passed that all before ordination should be strictly examined; and that a remedy should be provided against simony.[61] They petitioned, also, that foreigners who could not speak English should have no cures in England; and they complained of the practice of patrons exacting from the priests whom they nominated ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... bawdery, Of defamation, and adultery, Of churche-reeves,* and of testaments, *churchwardens Of contracts, and of lack of sacraments, And eke of many another manner* crime, *sort of Which needeth not rehearsen at this time, Of usury, and simony also; But, certes, lechours did he greatest woe; They shoulde singen, if that they were hent;* *caught And smale tithers were foul y-shent,* *troubled, put to shame If any person would on them complain; There might astert them no pecunial pain. For smalle tithes, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Takes God to witness he affects your cause, And lies to every lord in every thing, Like a king's favourite, or like a king. These are the talents that adorn them all, From wicked Waters ev'n to godly Paul.[172] Not more of simony beneath black gowns, 80 Not more of bastardy in heirs to crowns. In shillings and in pence at first they deal; And steal so little, few perceive they steal; Till, like the sea, they compass all the land, From Scots to Wight, from ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... to give her notice, if any person about her should happen to be of libertine principles or morals? Might not all those who enter upon any office in her Majesty's family, be obliged to take an oath parallel with that against simony, which is administered to the clergy? 'Tis not to be doubted, but that if these, or the like proceedings, were duly observed, morality and religion would soon become fashionable court virtues; and be taken up as the only methods to get or keep employments there, which alone would have ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... system which can lessen the agonies it inflicts only by debasing the minds and souls of the race on whom it inflicts them. Is your Christianity, then, he would say, a respecter of persons, and does it condone the sin because the sinner can contribute to your coffers? Was there ever a Simony like this,—that does not sell, but withholds, the gift of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... capital of two millions and a half in addition, it may be safely asserted that the prelate had at least made a good beginning. Besides his regular income, moreover, he had handsome receipts from that simony which was reduced to a system, and which gave him a liberal profit, generally in the shape of an annuity, upon every benefice which he conferred. He was, however, by no means satisfied. His appetite was as boundless as the sea; he was still a shameless mendicant ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... stall at Barchester was to be given as pecuniary recompense in return for certain money accommodation to be afforded by the nominee to the dispenser of this patronage. Nothing on earth could be worse than this. In the first place it would be simony; and then it would be simony beyond all description mean and simoniacal. The very thought of it filled Mark's soul with horror and dismay. It might be that Lord Lufton's suspicions were now at rest; but others would ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... [Footnote 127: Simony was not unknown in those times; and the clergy some times bought what they intended to sell. It appears that the bishopric of Carthage was purchased by a wealthy matron, named Lucilla, for her servant Majorinus. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... then left his father, and went down to the hospital; but Mr Harding wouldn't listen at all to the Puddingdale scheme. To his eyes it had no attraction; it savoured of simony, and was likely to bring down upon him harder and more deserved strictures than any he had yet received: he positively declined to become vicar ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... of St. Anthony. It was the half-allegorical, half-dramatic representation of the reigning Borgia pope and his children; it was the rude and hesitating moulding into dramatic shape of those terrible rumours of simony and poison, of lust and of violence, of mysterious death and abominable love, which had met the invaders as they had first set their feet in Italy; which had become louder and clearer with every onward step through the peninsula, and now circulated around them, with frightful distinctness, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... consideration which he did not always extend to schismatics, heretics, and heathen. He seems to have reserved his most violent language for Lombards and Patriarchs of Constantinople. He called worldly or negligent bishops to order, and in particular took vigorous measures to root out simony, which was very prevalent. He sent Augustine and his companions to England, and wrote them letters of exhortation and instruction; he found time to send them also church furniture, vessels and vestments, and ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... of October 1671 died Alexander,[608] Lord Halkerton, at his oune house, of the age of 77. He entered to his place in Session by simony, or rather committendo crimen ambitus, for he payed to my Lord Balmanno 7000 merks (a great soume at that tyme when their salaries ware small), to dimit in his favors, and by my Lord Traquaires moyen, then Threasurer whosse creature ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... otherwise by them, than they do by us. If it be for their advantage, I know many of their sect which have taken orders, in hope of a benefice, 'tis a common transition, and why may not a melancholy divine, that can get nothing but by simony, profess physic? Drusianus an Italian (Crusianus, but corruptly, Trithemius calls him) [164]"because he was not fortunate in his practice, forsook his profession, and writ afterwards in divinity." Marcilius Ficinus was semel et simul; a priest and a physician at once, and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... might accrue on any certain line of action. But it may be said that his letters appear to date from the later period of his life, and after he had founded the cathedral as an expiation of that sin of simony he appears to ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... committed a crime or not. That's bad enough; but what you charge them with is infinitely worse. You say that they are habitually guilty of nepotism—that is to say of partiality to their own nieces, which is one of the worst crimes there is in a judge, as bad as simony would ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... that usury is no deadly sin. And they sell benefices of Holy Church. And so do men in other places: God amend it when his will is! And that is great sclaundre, for now is simony king crowned in Holy Church: God ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... members of the Sacred College, with the result that he was elected on the 11th of August, and proclaimed Pope under the title of Alexander VI. The secret Archives of the Vatican[28] give full particulars of this election, which was obtained by the most flagrant simony, and proved a prelude to the days of confusion and misery which Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican of Florence, daily prophesied were in store for the Church. Ascanio Sforza was the first to reap the reward of his base compliance. The new Pope loaded him with ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... all others, where preferment was most easily obtained. John XXII. had fixed his residence entirely in that city since October, 1316, and had appropriated to himself the nomination to all the vacant benefices. The pretence for this appropriation was to prevent simony—in others, not in his Holiness—as the sale of benefices was carried by him to an enormous height. At every promotion to a bishopric, he removed other bishops; and, by the meanest impositions, soon amassed prodigious wealth. Scandalous emoluments, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... labours at the laws, Takes God to witness he affects your cause, And lies to every lord in every thing, Like a king's favourite—or like a king. These are the talents that adorn them all, From wicked waters even to godly * * Not more of simony beneath black gowns, Nor more of bastardy in heirs to crowns. In shillings and in pence at first they deal; And steal so little, few perceive they steal; Till, like the sea, they compass all the land, From Scots to Wight, from mount to Dover strand: And when rank widows purchase luscious ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... There were the indolence and neglect of duty which wealth too often brings in its train; the covert secularising of that wealth, just as in the old Celtic church, by various devices, to get it into the hands of unqualified men and minors; luxury, avarice, oppression, simony, shameless pluralities, and crass ignorance; and above all that celibate system, which nothing would persuade them honestly to abandon, though it had proved to be a yoke they could not bear, and was producing only too generally results humiliating and disastrous to themselves and ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... Society. The Editor (and, I believe, proprietor) is a Mr. Bendyshe, the most talented man in the Society, and, judging from his speaking, which I have often heard, I should say the articles on "Simeon and Simony," "Metropolitan Sewage," and "France and Mexico," are his, and these are in my opinion superior to anything that has been in the Reader for a long time; they have the point and brilliancy which are wanted to make leading ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... give up his canonry, which he sold to Menage's man-servant, a little bit of simony which was not even noticed in those days. It is amusing to find a man who laughed at all religion, insisting that his wife should make a formal avowal of the Romish faith. Of the character of this marriage ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... against his will, he led a life of anguish, mourning for the lost peace of his cloister; but he fought none the less with incredible energy against the inroads of the Barbarians, the heresies of Africa, the intrigues of Byzantium, and the Simony ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... new-fall'n[161] churches, to the chaffering; Stake three years stipend: no man asketh more. Go, take possession of the Church porch door, And ring thy bells; luck stroken in thy fist The parsonage is thine, or ere thou wist. Saint Fool's of Gotam[162] mought thy parish be For this thy base and servile Simony. ...
— English Satires • Various
... condemned there by Annas and Caiaphas for Christ's cause. Their images hung on every wall, pillar and door, with their pilgrimages and worshipings of them: passing over their massing and many altars, and the rest of their popish service. The south alley was for usury and popery, the north for simony; and the horse fair in the midst for all kind of bargains, meetings, brawlings, murders, conspiracies. The font for ordinary payments of money as well known to all men as the beggar knows his dish.... So that ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Christianity, heresy, schism, ordinations, institutions of clerks to benefices, celebration of Divine service, matrimony, divorces, bastardy, tythes, oblations, obventions, mortuaries, dilapidations, reparation of churches, probate of wills, administrations, simony, incests, fornications, adulteries, solicitation of chastity; pensions, procurations, commutation of penance, right of pews, and other such like, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... commons, the attention of the upper house was employed upon the case of Dr. Watson, bishop of St. David's. This prelate was supposed to have paid a valuable consideration for his bishopric; and, after his elevation, had sold the preferments in his gift with a view of being reimbursed. He was accused of simony; and, after a solemn hearing before the archbishop of Canterbury and six suffragans, convicted and deprived. Then he pleaded his privilege: so that the affair was brought into the house of lords, who refused to own him as a peer after he had ceased to be a bishop. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... railing. It was customary for the chapter to lease at a handsome price to seignorial families, and even to rich burghers, the right to be present at the services, themselves and their servants exclusively, in the various lateral chapels of the long side-aisles of the cathedral. This simony is in practice to the present day. A woman had her chapel as she now has her opera-box. The families who hired these privileged places were required to decorate the altar of the chapel thus conceded to them, and each made it their pride ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... early dramas, which exhibit Kemp in propria persona, must necessarily form a portion of the present essay. The Retvrne from Pernassvs: Or The Scourge of Simony. Publiquely acted by the Students in Saint Johns Colledge in Cambridge, 1606,[x:1] 4to. ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... air rather of reformation than oppression. He began with Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury. A synod was called, in which, for the first time in England, the Pope's legate a latere is said to have presided. In this council, Stigand, for simony and for other crimes, of which it is easy to convict those who are out of favor, was solemnly degraded from his dignity. The king filled his place with Lanfranc, an Italian. By his whole conduct he appeared resolved to reduce his subjects ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Returne from Parnassus or The Scourge of Simony. Publiquely acted by the Students in Saint Johns ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... of Hereward's, Godric (1099-1103), brother of Brando, became the next abbot. The monks had purchased from the king the right to elect their own abbot; and Godric, being considered by this transaction to have committed simony, was (with the neighbouring abbots of Ely and Ramsey) deposed by a council held under the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... and fixing the men of its choice on the thrones of the North. Despite all its slavish superstition, the Saxon Church was obnoxious to Rome. Even the pious Edward had offended, by withholding the old levy of Peter Pence; and simony, a crime peculiarly reprobated by the pontiff, was notorious in England. Therefore there was much to aid Hildebrand in the Assembly of the Cardinals, when he brought before them the oath of Harold, the violation ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Protestant clergy of the period as "bad, licentious, and most disordered." "Whatever disorders," he writes, "you see in the Church of England, you may find in Ireland, and many more, namely, gross simony, greedy covetousness, incontinence, careless sloth, and generally all disordered life in the common clergyman. And, besides all these, they have their particular enormities; for all Irish ministers that now enjoy church livings are in a manner mere laymen, saving ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... [The charge of simony is loosely noticed by Shaw in his History of Staffordshire, vol. i. p. 278. He says, "Edward Chandler was translated from Lichfield and Coventry to Durham in 1730; and it was then publicly said ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... his treatise "On Traffic in Holy Things"; the second his great, elaborate work, "The Church."1 In the first he denounced the sale of indulgences, and declared that even the Pope himself could be guilty of the sin of simony. In the second, following Wycliffe's lead, he criticised the whole orthodox conception of the day of the "Holy Catholic Church." What was, asked Hus, the true Church of Christ? According to the popular ideas of the day, the true Church of Christ was a visible body ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... predecessor had served the parish fourteen years, for twelve pounds per annum. The present rector was in the annual receipt of forty-three pounds, out of which he had to pay me, but with the aid of a little simony, this was easily avoided, and as I took no fees, I can hardly call it a lucrative appointment, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... at twenty-one; he was consecrated, in 1705, Bishop of St. Davids, at the almost equally exceptional age of seventy. He succeeded a bad man who had been expelled from his see for glaring simony; and it was felt, not without justice, that the cause of religion and the honour of the Episcopate would gain more by the elevation of a man of the high repute in which Bull was universally held, than it would lose by the growing infirmities of his old age. He accepted the dignity with hesitation, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... church with Simony, Not on the bench with Bribery, Nor in the court with Machiavel, Nor in the city with deceits, Nor in the country with debates; For what hath Heaven to ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... conduct; and there are many other accounts of the same general tenor. Pope Gregory VII. tried again to do something for the cause of public morality, in 1074, when he issued edicts against both concubinage and simony—or the then prevalent custom of buying or selling ecclesiastical preferment; but the edict was too harsh and unreasonable with regard to the first, inasmuch as it provided that no priest should marry in the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Head of the Church, the Cardinals the body of the Church, and all commands of this Church are to be obeyed. Of course, Hus and his followers could not accept such monstrously wicked teaching. On the contrary, Hus held it the duty of kings to restrain the wickedness of the clergy and root out simony. ...
— John Hus - A brief story of the life of a martyr • William Dallmann
... Ascanio, a "half pope." While the Medici expected much from Alexander, the Aragonese of Naples looked for little. Bitterly did Venice express herself. Her ambassador in Milan publicly declared in August that the papacy had been sold by simony and a thousand deceptions, and that the signory of Venice was convinced that France and Spain would refuse to obey the Pope when ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... of England, that is but what the Church of England hath alway held: Bishop Grosteste did as fervently abhor the Pope's power—"Egyptian bondage" was his word for it. Much has this Father also to say against simony: and he would have no private confession to a priest (verily, this would I gladly see abolished), nor indulgences, nor letters of fraternity, nor pilgrimages, nor guilds: and he sets his face against the new fashion ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... the church, but never would take advantage of them; for if a living of greater value than his own was offered him, he would refuse it, saying, I am content with what I have; and he frequently preached so forcibly against simony, that many of his superiors, who were not so delicate upon the subject, took umbrage at his doctrines upon ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... all-absorbing truth in the universe? How should such a fellow as I"—he went on, growing scornful at himself in the presence of the truth—"judge of its sacred probabilities? or, having led such a life of simony, be heard when he declares that such a pretended message from God to men seems too good to be true? The things therein contained I declare good, yet went not and did them. Therefore am I altogether out of court, and must not ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... as satisfactory. It was long before the Churches entered into communion with him; and even to the last, the northern sees of Italy refused. He ruled, unquietly enough, for four years; and died, leaving a memory free at least from simony, and honoured as ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... do so. This casket is loaded with your sins; 'tis the cargo of rapines, simony, and extortions; the iniquity of thirty years muftiship ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... in the sixteenth century recognized the existence of abuses in the Catholic Church. The scandals connected with the papal court at Rome were notorious at the opening of the century. Several of the the popes lived grossly immoral lives. Simony (the sale of church offices for money) and nepotism (favoritism shown by a pope to his relatives) were not rare. The most lucrative ecclesiastical positions throughout Europe were frequently conferred upon Italians who seldom discharged ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... however, gave the council cause to doubt its competence to judge him. Gregory, who was an upright man, or one at least conscious of good intentions, consented publicly to describe the circumstances of his elevation, and was thereby forced to condemn himself as guilty of simony and unworthy of the papal office. He quietly laid down the insignia of the papacy, and his renunciation did him honor. Henry, with the bishops and the margrave Boniface, immediately started for the city, which did not shut its gates ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... of his works which caused the greatest sensation, were his treatise 'On the Church,' and a pamphlet entitled 'The Six Errors;' both of which he caused to be fixed on the walls and gates of the chapel of Bethlehem. Both were directed against indulgences, against the abuse of excommunication, simony, transubstantiation, and the like; and, above all, against the unlimited obedience required by the see of Rome; maintaining that the Scriptures presented the only rule of faith and conduct ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... that confides in him, or on one that owns no confidence. This latter mode seemeth to destroy only the bond of love that nature makes; wherefore in the second circle[1] nestle hypocrisy, flatteries, and sorcerers, falsity, robbery, and simony, panders, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri |
