"Tonsured" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nineteenth, and by the original and characteristic institution which is technically known as nepotism, the selection of a Prime Minister, not from the College of the ecclesiastical aristocracy, but from the family of the reigning sovereign, the tonsured statesmen introduced a dynastic infusion into the fluctuations ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... with her spiritual calm, her gracious promise of immortality, should have appeared to many like a star in a stormy sky, and should have roused in their breasts a rapture of devotion not unlike that which was paid in the Middle Ages to the Virgin Mary. Indeed her stately ritual, with its shaven and tonsured priests, its matins and vespers, its tinkling music, its baptism and aspersions of holy water, its solemn processions, its jewelled images of the Mother of God, presented many points of similarity to the pomps and ceremonies of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... employed and be made responsible for the necessary rigors. Now, by virtue of the indigenous constitution, the governors of the Catholic annex—all designated beforehand by their suitable and indelible character, all tonsured, robed in black, celibates and speaking Latin—form two orders, unequal in dignity and in number; one inferior, comprising myriads of cures and vicars, and the other superior, comprising ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the temper of the people were the riots in London. On the last day of the first Parliament a dog with a tonsured crown, a rope around its neck and a writing signifying that priests and bishops should be hung, was thrown through a window into the queen's presence chamber. At another time a cat was found tonsured, surpliced, and with a wafer in its mouth in derision of the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... attire, laid their meal. It seemed an odd thing to be served thus, like St. Jerome by the lion, as if by some imperiously beautiful wild animal tamed. You hesitated to permit, were a little afraid of, his services. Their silent tonsured porter himself, contrast grim enough to any creature of that kind, had been so far seduced as to permit him to sleep there in the Grange, as he loved to do, instead of in ruder, rougher quarters; and, coaxed into odd garrulity on this one matter, told the new-comers the little he ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... solemn monk, tossing on his pallet, pierced with his gaze the grey walls of his monastery, annihilated the space between him and the fruitful wilderness, and saw in fancy the building of great cities and cathedrals and a glittering miter on his own tonsured head. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... Irish physiognomy, was at once recognised by Diccon. Donne and Salisbury followed; and the seventh conspirator, John Ballard, was carried in a chair. Even Diccon's quick eye could hardly have detected the ruffling, swaggering, richly-clad Captain Fortescue in this tonsured man in priestly garb, deadly pale, and unable to stand, from the effects of torture, yet with undaunted, penetrating ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tone pervades the whole. Courage, affection, and truth are native to all who live in this world. Under the dramatic image of Ossian wrangling with the Talkend, [Note: St. Patrick, on account of the tonsured crown.] the bards, themselves vainly fighting against the Christian life, a hundred times repeat through the lips of Ossian like ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... the king a sleeping potion, and while he was under its influence had him tonsured,—that is, had the crown of his head shaved. He then proclaimed that this had been done at the wish of the king, who was weary of the throne. But whether or not, the law was strict. No matter how or why it was done, no man who had received the tonsure could ever again sit upon the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... and rope, after getting more gas from some Christian monks, who swore they hadn't any and wept when one of Feisul's officers demonstrated that they lead. You couldn't see any monastery; I don't even know that there was one—nothing but lean faces with tonsured tops that nodded in ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... my end approaches; my confessor is dead, and has appeared to me." Strange as it may seem; it was actually found to be true that the priest was dead. He now had all the officers of the garrison of Brunn assembled, tonsured his head like a capuchin, took the habit of the order, publicly confessed himself in a sermon of an hour's length, exhorted them all to holiness, acted the part of a most exemplary penitent, embraced ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... said charges, have ordered and do hereby order that Urbain Grandier, the accused, be quietly taken to the prison in our palace in Poitiers, if it so be that he be taken and apprehended, and if not, that he be summoned to appear at his domicile within three days, by the first apparitor-priest, or tonsured clerk, and also by the first royal sergeant, upon this warrant, and we request the aid of the secular authorities, and to them, or to any one of them, we hereby give power and authority to carry out this decree ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... also been reported to us, that some persons being laymen, through the desire of temporal glory, are tonsured on the death of bishops, and all at once ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D. |
