Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Basilica   /bəsˈɪlɪkə/  /bəzˈɪləkə/   Listen
Basilica

noun
(pl. basilicas; sometimes basilicae)
1.
An early Christian church designed like a Roman basilica; or a Roman Catholic church or cathedral accorded certain privileges.
2.
A Roman building used for public administration.  Synonym: Roman basilica.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Basilica" Quotes from Famous Books



... the sides of the Sahel and face the bright bow of the sunlit bay; a villa with balconies, and awnings, and cool, silent chambers, and rich, glowing gardens, and a broad, low roof, half hidden in bay and orange and myrtle and basilica, and the liquid sound of waters bubbling beneath a riotous ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... of the sacred Eucharist in the basilica of Mary," replied the Bishop. "It is just now the hour—but no, stop. You are a stranger here you say; you have run away from your master—and you are young, very young and very. . . . It is dark too. Where are you intending ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... we passed in the home where she was born, and on the hillside where she toiled as humble shepherdess. Reverently, and in very awe of its beauty, we visited the magnificent Basilica the people of France have raised to her memory. The structure is but partially finished; and I urged the good Fathers there in charge to visit America some day and give its people opportunity to contribute to ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... place: a great city, a great personal destiny, a famous school, and ultra-celebrated pictures. All this is imposing, and our imagination becomes excited rather more than usual when, in the centre of the Place Vert, we see the statue of Rubens and, farther on, the old basilica where are preserved the triptychs which, humanly speaking, have ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... 800 he went to Rome. It was Christmas Day. He entered the basilica of St. Peter's to attend Mass. He approached the altar, and bowed to pray. The Pope secretly uplifted the crown of the world and ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... revelation threw me into a stupor which overwhelms me even to-day in this abode of bliss. I go all through Paradise without ever meeting a single one of those Christians whom formerly I admitted to the holy table in the basilica of the blessed Modestus. Deprived of the bread of angels, they easily gave way to the most abominable vices, and they have all gone to hell. It gives me some satisfaction to think that Barjas, the tavern-keeper, is damned. There is in ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... vulgar critic will give very scant thanks to this writer for having given him a double task. For vulgar criticism has not the feeling for this harmony, it only runs after details, and even in the Basilica of St. Peter would exclusively attend to the pillars on which the ethereal edifice reposes. The fact is that this critic must begin by translating it to understand it—in the same way that the pure understanding, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... and all that was discordant unheard, as only the harmonious cadence of the united response was wafted fitfully on the breeze to the two elderly men who, unable to scale the wild mountain paths in the procession, had, after the previous service in the basilica and the blessing of the nearer lands, returned to the villa, where they sat ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... conquered the Empire. It adapted, not merely its architecture, but its very buildings, to its worship. The Roman Basilica became the Christian church; a noble form of building enough, though one in which was neither darkness, solitude, nor silence, but crowded congregations, clapping—or otherwise—the popular preacher; or fighting about the election of a bishop or a pope, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... in love with the armorer's trade, and it had more attraction for Dickon than anything else he had found in that place. Wedged in, like a nutshell in the jaws of a nutcracker, between a round tower built by Rollo's men and the far older wall of a Roman basilica, it was partly built of Norman stone-work and partly of oak. Set close to the old Roman road through Gaul, it was in view of any knight or squire or man-at-arms who went by, and it was so arranged that all the contents could be seen ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... the city than its ancient antiquity demands. In fact, the excavations lately undertaken by a learned archaeologist of the place, Monsieur Armand Peremet, have brought to light, under the celebrated tower of Issoudun, a basilica of the fifth century, probably the only one in France. This church preserves, in its very materials, the sign-manual of an anterior civilization; for its stones came from a Roman temple which stood ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... humanity and justice. The offence was aggravated by the thought that the victims were Roman and orthodox, the murderers barbarians and Arians; St. Ambrose, with a noble courage, stopped the Emperor at the door of the Basilica of Milan, and forbad him to enter, till he had atoned for the fatal order by public penance. The Caesar submitted nobly to the noble demand; and the repentance of Theodosius is the last scene in the downward ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... along the Appian Way, we passed the tomb of the Scipios; and, making our exit by the Sebastian gate, we came, after a ride of two miles in the open country, to the basilica of San Sebastiano, erected over the entrance to the Catacombs. Pulling a bell which hung in the vestibule, a monk appeared as our cicerone, and we might have been pardoned a little misgiving in committing ourselves ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... Archbishop of Paris at the head of his clergy. The Domine salvum, fac regem, was intoned and repeated by the deputations of all the authorities and by the crowd filling the nave, the side-aisles, and the tribunes of the vast basilica. Then a numerous body of singers sang the Te Deum. On leaving the church, the King remounted his horse and returned to the Tuileries, along the quais, to the sound of salvos of artillery and the acclamations ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... the most remarkable buildings now in the course of erection is the Basilica, or Church of St. Bonifacius. It represents another form of the Byzantine style, a kind of double edifice, a little like a North River steamboat, with a two story cabin on deck. The inside is not yet finished, although the artists have been ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... painting as his profession. He had fallen ill, and a trip to Italy was ordained. There he did not, as has been asserted, linger over Pompeii, or in the Roman Catacombs, but saved his time and enthusiasm for the Quattrocentisti. He admired the old Umbrian and Tuscan masters, he was ravished by the basilica of St. Francis at Assisi, and by Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Titian, Tintoretto, finally Veronese, riveted his passion for what has been falsely styled the "archaic." Returning to Paris he was conducted by his friend Beauderon to the studio of Delacroix, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... impious Constans, who, far from imitating the wisdom of his brother, Constantine, inclines to the errors of Arius and Marcus. Go! The bronze gates shall fly open before thee, and thy sandals shall resound on the golden floor of the basilica before the throne of the Caesars, and thy awe-inspiring voice shall change the heart of the son of Constantinus. Thou shalt reign over a peaceful and powerful Church. And, even as the soul directs the body, so shall the Church govern the empire. ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... in August. c. 28. Augustus built in Rome the temple and forum of Mars the Avenger; the temple of Jupiter Tonans in the Capitol; that of Apollo Palatine, with public libraries; the portico and basilica of Caius and Lucius; the porticos of Livia and Octavia; and the theatre of Marcellus. The example of the sovereign was imitated by his ministers and generals; and his friend Agrippa left behind him the immortal monument of the Pantheon.] [See Theatre ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... throne, like the high altar of a cathedral, rose beneath innumerable arches springing from columns, thick-set as Roman pillars, enamelled with vari-coloured bricks, set with mosaics, incrusted with lapis lazuli and sardonyx, in a palace like the basilica of an architecture at once Mussulman and Byzantine. In the centre of the tabernacle surmounting the altar, fronted with rows of circular steps, sat the Tetrarch Herod, the tiara on his head, his legs pressed together, his ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... Gilbert loved to wander in the opposite direction, across the castle bridge and under the haunted battlements of Sant' Angelo, where evil Theodora's ghost walked on autumn nights when the south wind blew, and through the long wreck of the fair portico that had once extended from the bridge to the basilica, till he came to the broad flight of steps leading to the walled garden-court of old Saint Peter's. There he loved to sit musing among the cypresses, wondering at the vast bronze pine- cone and the great ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... convinced partisan of the French. Louis received his ally clothed in a purple dalmatic, with crown on head and with sceptre and orb in hand, surrounded by the electors and the higher dignitaries of the empire, and seated on a lofty throne erected in the Castorplatz, hard by the Romanesque basilica that watches over the junction of the Moselle with the Rhine. Another throne, somewhat lower in height, was occupied by the King of England, clothed in a robe of scarlet embroidered with gold, and surrounded by three hundred knights. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... functions. A partition, covered with ill-wrought images and a few gilt ornaments, divided it from the main body of the church, and the whole edifice produced an impression that was neither splendid nor particularly edifying. The basilica, which had once been richly decorated, had been plundered by the Melchites in a fight between them and the Jacobites, and the impoverished city had not been in a position to restore the venerable church to anything approaching its original ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... altar, Napoleon crowning Josephine with his own hands, I hear the echo of distant litanies, of the trumpets, of the organ, and of the applause. Then I think of the nothingness of all human glory and grandeur. Of all the illustrious persons who have knelt in this old basilica, what is left? Scarcely a few handfuls of dust. I open my eyes. The days are silent; the crowd has quietly withdrawn. The lights are out, and at the end of the church, in the shadow, like a timid star in a cloudy day, burns a ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... his life, Innocent held a general council in the basilica of St. John Lateran. A vast gathering of bishops heads of orders, and secular dignitaries gave brilliancy to the gathering and enhanced the glory of the Pontiff. Enthroned over more than four hundred bishops, the Pope proudly declared the law to the world. "Two things we have specially to heart," ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... temples, and their colonnades stood forth like mast heads of ships becalmed in a sea of verdure. The doctor, guide-book in hand, was pointing them out with masterly authority—that was Neptune's, that Ceres', and that was called the Basilica without any special reason. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... fish stalls, and shooting galleries half hidden in clumps of verdure, from which arose staves bearing the tricolor; and farther away, in a bluish haze, a line of tree tops marked the location of a road. To the right she could see Saint-Denis and the towering basilica; at her left, above a line of houses that were becoming indistinct, the sun was setting over Saint-Ouen in a disk of cherry-colored flame, and projecting upon the gray horizon shafts of light like red pillars that ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... which lies between the Neckar and the Maine,[16] and is nowadays called the Odenwald by those who live in and about it. And here having built, according to my capacity and resources, not only houses and permanent dwellings, but also a basilica fitted for the performance of divine service and of no mean style of construction, I began to think to what saint or martyr I could best dedicate it. A good deal of time had passed while my thoughts fluctuated about this matter, when it happened that a certain deacon of the Roman ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... minster is said to have been in ruins. At the latter date Bishop Lozing (Robert de Losinga) began to rebuild the cathedral, and there are vague accounts that it was in the form of a round church in imitation of a basilica of Charlemagne which had been built at Aix-la-Chapelle between 774 and 795. If such a form ever existed it must have been completely destroyed, as the work of the Norman period that remains is clearly English ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher

... Iroquois—representatives of the old Indian tribes of Canada—French Canadians, men, women, and children, from the valleys of the Ottawa, and the St. Maurice, and all parts of Quebec, as well as tourists from the United States. The handsome grey stone church—now dignified as a "basilica"—which has been built of late years, attests the faith of many thousands who have offered their supplications at the shrine of La bonne Ste. Anne for centuries.[1] Piles of crutches of every description, of oak, of ash, of pine, are deposited in every available corner as ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... place to the Coelian to invoke the aid of these new martyrs. The visitors picked off the plaster, scribbled their names on the walls, applied kerchiefs to the tomb, and collected the dust, stained with the blood of the chamberlains. Pope Hadrian IV., 1158, built a basilica on top of the house, driving the foundations through it, and transferred to this upper church the bones of SS. John and Paul. At once the stream of devotion was deflected from the substructure to the superstructure, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... mount Ida, are still very remarkable. This city being destroyed by the Saracens in 823, these relics could never since be discovered: only the head of our saint was conveyed safe to Venice, and is venerated in the Ducal basilica of St. Mark (See Creta Sacra, Auctore Flaminio Cornelio, Senatore Veneto. Venetiis, anno 1755, de S. Tito, T. 1, p. 189, 195.) St. Titus has been looked upon in Crete as the first archbishop of Gortyna, which metropolitical see is fixed ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... tassels and usually decorated at the top by a flower or some other ornament. The Greeks used it as a mystic symbol in some of their sacred festivals, and the Romans introduced the custom of hanging an umbrella in the basilican churches as a part of the insignia of office of the judge sitting in the basilica. It is said that on the judgment hall being turned into a church the umbrella remained, and in fact occupied the place of the canopy over thrones and the like; and Beatian, an Italian herald, says that a vermilion umbrella in a field argent symbolises dominion. It is also ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... From the eighth century to the thirteenth there was little change in that form:[8] four-square, rising high and without tapering into the air, story above story, they stood like giants in the quiet fields beside the piles of the basilica or the Lombardic church, in this form (fig. 9), tiled at the top in a flat gable, with open arches below, and fewer and fewer arches on each inferior story, down to the bottom. It is worth while noting the difference in form between these and the towers built for military service. The latter were ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... "quod scripta, principalia de sapientia philosophiae non possunt fieri ab uno homine, nec a pluribus, nisi manus praelatorum et principum juvent sapientes cum magna virtute." "Horum quos enumeravimus omnium defectuum remedia," says the Bacon of the seventeenth century, "...opera sunt vere basilica; erga quae privati alicujus conatus et industria fere sic se habent ut Mercurius in bivio, qui digito potest in viam intendere, pedem inferre non potest."—De Aug. Scient. Lib. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... necessary as it is appropriate. The sandy soil of North Hants is a better protection to these remnants of a former civilization than all the tarpaulins or sheds that would otherwise have to be used. Minute and accurate plans of the foundations, that include those of a small Christian Basilica, were made in sections, as they were uncovered, over a period extending from 1864 to 1910. For a detailed study of the surveys, and of the many antiquities capable of removal, those interested must visit the Reading Museum. It has been found that the walls of Calleva followed the irregular outline ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... twinkled drowsily. The great city, still chiefly pagan, lay more than half-asleep. But multitudes of the Christians, dressed in white and carrying lighted torches in their hands, were hurrying toward the Basilica of Constantine to keep the new holy-day of the church, the festival of ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... magnificent edifices, and is said to have been designed by Apollodorus of Damascus. Trajan's forum must have measured two hundred and twenty yards in width, and was probably of still greater length; it was considered the most magnificent in Rome. On the north side of the Basilica rises Trajan's Column, one hundred and forty-seven feet high, constructed entirely of marble. Around the column runs a spiral band, covered with admirable reliefs from Trajan's War with the Dacians. Beneath this monument ...
— Shepp's Photographs of the World • James W. Shepp

... emperor Constantine gave the place to the pope, and from that period it continued to be the residence of the successive pontiffs for a thousand years. A church was built upon the ground, called the Basilica of St. John of Lateran, where many ancient councils were held, known in ecclesiastical history as the councils of the Lateran. This church is still used for some of the ceremonies connected with the inauguration of the pope, but the palace is now uninhabited. It presents, ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... cases indeed the Roman cities were allowed to decay: the forest resumed its rights: the feudal castle was constructed from the ruins of the Proconsul's palace and the Basilica, or if these edifices were too massive for demolition, they were left standing in the waste—the Mammoths and Saurians of a bygone civilization. The great Viae were for leagues overgrown with herbage, or concealed by wood and morass; and for the direct arms of ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... crown imperial might be his own. However that may be Charles came to Rome and made a triumphal entry on November 24, 800. The charges against the pope were heard and he swore to his innocence. On the feast of the Nativity, in the basilica of S. Peter, when Charles had worshipped at the confessio, the tomb of S. Peter, Leo clothed him with a purple robe and set a crown of gold upon his head. "Then all the faithful Romans beholding ...
— 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

... proceed from Calvary to the Holy Sepulchre. Entering the Basilica, the vast church where the Holy Sepulchre is, we find a little chapel enclosing the grave. It stands under the centre of the great dome, which covers the whole Basilica. The Holy Sepulchre itself, all of it cut in one solid rock, consists of a little ante-chamber and ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... when he came upon a short figure, lurking in the shadow of one of the great piers. He saw it was that of an artist, hastily transferring to his sketch-book a memento of some fleeting variation in the scenery of the basilica; and in a moment he perceived that the artist was ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... instead of saying Westminster Abbey, said National Valhalla. It seemed to make a point of not mentioning Westminster Abbey by name, as though Westminster Abbey had been something not quite mentionable, such as a pair of trousers. The article ended with the word 'basilica,' and by the time you had reached this majestic substantive, you felt indeed, with the Sunday News, that a National Valhalla without the remains of a Priam Farll inside it, would be shocking, if ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... little shrug and drew her robe closer. "He had come out of the Basilica Julia, and I am sure he had been over-drinking. I cried 'Help!' and quickly a man came and stood between us; and oh! young sir, as I live, it was our great father Augustus, and Antipater ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller

... expenses he was at in Italy, for the purpose of enriching his partisans, or securing the favor of the Roman people. It was with the produce of imposts and plunder in Gaul that he undertook the reconstruction at Rome of the basilica of the Forum, the site whereof, extending to the temple of Liberty, was valued, it is said, at more than twenty million five hundred thousand francs. Cicero, who took the direction of the works, wrote to his friend Atticus, "We shall make it the most glorious thing in the world." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Jerusalem, and describes the wall that surrounds the holy city, then the circular church built over the Holy Sepulchre, the tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the stone that closed it, the church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the church built upon Calvary, and the basilica of Constantine on the site of the place where the real cross was found. These various churches are united in one building, which also encloses the Tomb of Christ, and Calvary, where our ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... departed! Such cavalcades are no longer to be seen crawling along the Via Appia, or following His Eminence on a fine and sunny afternoon about four o'clock as he walks on the footpath between the Porta Pia and the Basilica of St. Agnes in search of an appetite for his dinner. The world will never see such carriages and such servants any more. Fuit Ilium! I thought of the old lines on the "high—mettled racer," and of "imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay, stopping a hole to keep the wind away." To see ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... built, the people of Palestrina could look across the Campagna—the great plain between—and see the walls and towers of Rome. At the time of our story, Saint Peter's had withstood the sack of the city, which happened a dozen years before, and Bramante's vast basilica had already begun to rise. The artistic life of Rome was still at high tide, for Raphael had passed away but twenty years before, and Michael Angelo was at ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... the basilica was almost as much a place of fashion as the baths of Julius Caesar, except that there were some admitted into the basilica whose presence, later in the day, within the precincts of the baths would have led ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy

... temple is converted into a senate-house; one man's villa into another; how Caracalla is driven from his circus to make way for Romulus; how Peace resigns her claim to a Pagan temple to make way for a Christian basilica of Constantine; how statues, arches, gardens, baths, forums, obelisks, or columns, are in a constant state of transition, so far as regards their nomenclature; and, to borrow the conceit of Quevedo, nothing about Rome remains permanent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... account, to be greatly exaggerated. Certain it is, the city must have been formerly very extensive, as appears from the circuit of the antient walls, the remains of which are still to be seen. Its present size is not one third of its former extent. Its temples, baths, statues, towers, basilica, and amphitheatre, prove it to have been a city of great opulence and magnificence. At present, the remains of these antiquities are all that make it respectable or remarkable; though here are manufactures of silk and wool, carried on with good success. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... already made the bishopric to be sought after by those who esteem the ease and luxuries of life, as well as by the ambitious. Fierce contests arose on the occurrence of vacancies. At the election of Damasus, one hundred and thirty of the slain lay in the basilica of Sisinnius: the competitors had called in the aid of a rabble of gladiators, charioteers, and other ruffians; nor could the riots be ended except by the intervention of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... Thy secret treasury stored uncorrupted so many years), whence Thou mightest seasonably produce them to repress the fury of a woman, but an Empress. For when they were discovered and dug up, and with due honour translated to the Ambrosian Basilica, not only they who were vexed with unclean spirits (the devils confessing themselves) were cured, but a certain man who had for many years been blind, a citizen, and well known to the city, asking and hearing the reason of the people's confused joy, sprang forth desiring his guide ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... difference—the nave, or arm opposite the sanctuary, being lengthened so as to resemble the supposed shape of the actual instrument of suffering, and form what is now distinctively called the Latin Cross. The crypt and absis, or tribune, are retained from the Romish basilica, but the absis is generally pierced with windows, and the crypt is much loftier and more spacious, assuming almost the appearance of a subterranean church. The columns of the nave, no longer isolated, are clustered so as to form compound piers, massive ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... further says (p. 230), "the new birth and the remission of sins by the shedding of bull's blood appear to have been carried out above all at the sanctuary of the Phrygian Goddess (Cybele) on the Vatican Hill, at or near the spot where the great basilica of St. Peter's now stands; for many inscriptions relating to the rites were found when the church was being enlarged in 1608 or 1609. From the Vatican as a centre," he continues, "this barbarous system of superstition seems to ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... scarcely showed themselves, though Stradella's return was known in Rome, and he received many invitations to rich men's houses and requests for new compositions, and pressing offers of money if he would but sing at mass or vespers in this basilica or that. If he had needed gold, he could have had it for an hour's trouble, or for an effort of a few minutes which was no effort at all. But for the moment he had enough, and nothing should disturb the first days of his ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... It is the crypt of the basilica of St. Sergius during the Coptic mass of Easter morning. And when, after the first surprise, we examine these phantoms, we find that, for the most part, they are young mothers, with the refined and gentle faces of Madonnas, who hold the plaintive little ones beneath their black veils and ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... instead of that of Leo X., should by right be given to the golden age of letters and of arts in Rome. He stamped the century with the impress of a powerful personality. It is to him we owe the most splendid of Michael Angelo's and Raphael's masterpieces. The Basilica of S. Peter's, that materialized idea, which remains to symbolize the transition from the Church of the Middle Ages to the modern semi-secular supremacy of Papal Rome, was his thought. No nepotism, no loathsome sensuality, no flagrant violation of ecclesiastical justice, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... They then went in further search of the King himself, and having met him at Kindrochet, in Braemar, and subsequently at Monichi (Monikie), they returned in company with him to Forteviot, where he built a church ("basilica"[3]) ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... construction of public works, on the ground that they were disadvantageous to the state. They also encouraged the boldest of the tribunes to prosecute him before the people, and to fine him two talents. He likewise received violent opposition in the matter of the basilica, or public hall, which he built at the public expense in the forum below the senate house, and which was called the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... them. If each individual among the faithful were to give a halfpenny per annum, the head of the Church would have something like L300,000 to spend upon his wax tapers and his incense, his choristers and his sacristans, and the repairs of the basilica of St. Peter's. No Roman Catholic would think of refusing his quota, because the Holy Father, entirely separated from worldly interests, would not be in a position to offend anybody. This small tax would, therefore, restore independence to the Romans ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... in the heart of the Castello, was built by the Pisans with part of the remains of a basilica founded by Constantine. It is on a grand scale, having three naves, and a presbytery ascended by several ranges of steps. The church is embellished with fine marbles, and the ornaments being rich, with some good pictures ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... to have lined the dome with mosaics, and to have placed a grand baldacchino in the choir. Tho a comparison with St. Peter's inevitably forces itself upon those who are familiar with the great Roman basilica, there can scarcely be a greater contrast than between the two buildings. There, all is blazing with precious marbles; here, there is no color except from the poor glass of the eastern windows, or where a tattered banner waves above a hero's monument. In ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... and yet prophecies of the second coming of their divinity had not been accomplished. When the last Pope of Rome dies, so it was said, then time would be accomplished. The last Pope had died. Their basilica with its mighty dome was a desert where scorpions and snakes abounded. The fifth Buddha would appear, not the second Christos. Suddenly I saw before me in a puny boat a beautiful beardless youth. He was ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... some waste ground lying to the south of Victoria Street, in spite of the great Roman Catholic Cathedral, begun in 1895, which covers a vast area. The material is red brick with facings of stone, and the style Byzantine, the model set being the "early Christian basilica in its plenitude." The high campanile tower, which is already seen all over London, is a striking feature in a building quite dissimilar from those to which we in England are accustomed. The great entrance at the west end has an arch of forty feet span, ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... was shewn to the worshipping Magi is but few paces distant. An altar is erected opposite, on the place where the manger stood in which the shepherds found our Lord. The manger itself is deposited in the basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, in Rome. This altar belongs to the Roman Catholics. A little door, quite in the background of the grotto, leads to a subterranean passage communicating with the convent and the ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... midst of the atrium, so in the atria annexed to the Christian churches was one or more fountains (Eus. Eccl. Hist. l. X, c. 4) and sometimes a well or cistern. In these the faithful used to wash their hands (Tertull. De orat. Sec., De lavat. man.) Thus in the atrium of St. Paul's basilica there was a cantharus, restored by Pope Leo I, of which the saint writes ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs

... of the early Christian basilica churches; they were long and arcaded and were called "narthex." In later times, they assumed two forms, one the projecting erection, covering the entrance and divided into three or more doorways, and the other a kind of covered chamber ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... vult hominem, mitto in Comitium; Qui mendacem et gloriosum, apud Cluasinae sacrum; Dites, damnosos maritos, sub basilica quaerito," &c. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... have been found. At the south-eastern corner, too, but at a lower level, another pavement, which still exists under the Corn Exchange, may have been part of a bath. There are no remnants of a church or a temple, but some antiquaries fancied they saw relics of a Roman basilica, or judgment hall, among the fragments of masonry removed for the station. There were no burials within the walls, but they begin, even among the pavements and villas, just outside the limits marked by the wall of the Pretorium. That it was defended ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... being bound by the will to buy and deliver them to the legatee, or to give him their value if the owner is unwilling to sell them. If the thing given be one of those of which private ownership is impossible, such, for instance, as the Campus Martius, a basilica, a church, or a thing devoted to public use, not even its value can be claimed, for the legacy is void. In saying that a thing belonging to a third person may be given as a legacy we must be understood to mean that this may be done if the deceased knew that it belonged to a third ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... beautiful though effeminate Saracenic—the exotic of the South. And of these latter, each is traceable, though by different lines, to the same great prototype, the Roman. For when Rome was divided, the Dome fell to the inheritance of the Eastern Empire, and the Basilica (which was only a Greek temple turned inside out) to the Western. The former, joined to the Arabian, and the latter to the Gothic, formed two great families, from the union of whose descendants sprang the Moresco. But even the Roman ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... I. The Basilica: an oblong hall divided into nave and aisles, and roofed in wood, as in the Italian and Salonican examples, or with stone barrel-vaults, as in Asia Minor ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... they went to watch the workmen engaged in building the huge basilica consecrated to ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... house of God, meeting house, fane; cathedral; chapel, oratory, minster, bethel, tabernacle, chantry; kirk (Scotch); synagogue (Jewish); denomination, sect; basilica. Associated Words: ecclesiastical, ecclesiology, ecclesiolatry, ecclesiasticism, parish, hierarch, hierarchy, hierocracy, hierolatry, hierology, hierarchism, irenics, cure, evangelical, verger, beadle, chancel, clearstory, nave, transept, vestry, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... tell you that your Baccio Bigio Did greater damage in a single day To that fair harbor than the sea had done Or would do in ten years. And him you think To put in place of Michael Angelo, In building the Basilica of St. Peter! The ass that thinks himself a stag discovers His error when he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... in the rich gloom of the great basilica, traced out and accentuated, as it were, by long bars of light that made a golden pathway down from the high western windows, a light entered into his mind, and he knew what his mother ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller

... Surveys [of Salisbury with elaborate report for the Bishop, Seth Ward] and other occasional Inspections of the most noted cathedral Churches and Chapels in England and foreign Parts" ("Parentalia," p. 306). He never saw, we may assume, his three favourite buildings at Rome—the Pantheon, the Basilica of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... not go so far as to say that it is quite the ugliest, for, although there are certain things in Saint-Hilaire which are well worth a visit, there are others that are very old now, in my poor basilica, the only one in all the diocese that has never even been restored. The Lord knows, our porch is dirty and out of date; still, it is of a majestic character; take, for instance, the Esther tapestries, though personally I would not give a brass farthing for the pair of them, but experts put ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... now by the Adrian sea, In the shrine of Loreto, he bendeth his travel-tired suppliant knee; And now by the brown troubled Tiber he taketh his desolate way, And in many a shady basilica lingers to listen and pray. He prays for the dear ones snatched from him, nor vainly nor hopelessly prays, For the strong faith in union hereafter like a beam o'er his cold bosom plays; He listens at morning and evening, when matin and ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... Porta Nigra stands the Cathedral, one of the oldest in Germany, archaeologically interesting, inasmuch as it owes its inception to the Romans. The Basilica, built by Valentinian as a court of law, is clearly traceable in the present cathedral, and one reads a strange tale of Romans and Franks in the sandstone and limestone and brick of its walls. Here is treasured the famous Heilige Rock, or holy coat worn by ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson

... indeed but almost as remote from classical Latin as German itself: the tongue in truth of a new intellectual world. Open Aquinas and ask yourself how much is left of the language or the mind of Rome. The eye of the antiquary sees the Basilica in the Cathedral, but what essential resemblance does the Roman place of judicature and business bear to that marvellous and fantastic poetry of religion writing its hymns in stone? In the same manner the Roman castra are traceable in the form as well as the designation of the mediaeval ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... Dominicans saw in the cross no sign of triumph, but of trial.[Footnote: I have never obtained time for any right study of early Christian church-discipline,—nor am I sure to how many other causes, the choice of the form of the basilica may be occasionally attributed, or by what other communities it may be made. Symbolism, for instance, has most power with the Franciscans, and convenience for preaching with the Dominicans; but in all cases, ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... characteristic twelfth-century work of its first foundation. The alliance of the city with Genoa was that of a perfectly free State. The terms of the treaty which was concluded between the two Republics in 1361 in the Genoese basilica of San Lorenzo are curious as illustrating the federal relations of Italian States. It was in effect little more than a judicial and military convention. Internal legislation, taxation, rights of independent ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... long since departed, architects and builders and donors, are not cut off from it, their works follow them, and their memory lives in the beauty which stands as a memorial to their great ideals. It is all theirs, it is all ours, it is all God's. And so of the great basilica of theology, built up and ever in course of building; it is for all—but for each according to his needs—-for their use, for their instruction, to surround and direct their worship, to be a security and defence to their souls, a great Church in which the spirit is raised ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... never been defeated by the enemy, was defeated by her own King. She had said once that all she feared for her cause was treachery. It had struck its first blow now. She hung up her white armor in the royal basilica of St. Denis, and went and asked the King to relieve her of her functions and let her go home. As usual, she was wise. Grand combinations, far-reaching great military moves were at an end, now; for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... white marble, and enriched with magnificent draperies. The wooden one was, in the seventh century, at the time of the Mahometan Invasion in the East, transported to Rome, then become the new Jerusalem, the Bethlehem of a new people. It there reposes in the superb basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where it is guarded by the eternal city with more affection than the Ark of the Covenant, and with more respect than the cottage of Romulus. Centuries have not been able to enfeeble the veneration and the love with which this trophy of the love of God for his creatures ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... still really hear on Sundays at the neighbouring town of Novara, famed for it from of old. Here, again, the art of Gaudenzio Ferrari reigns. Gaudenzio! It is the name of the saintly prelate on whom his pencil was many times employed, First Bishop of Novara, and patron of the magnificent basilica hard by which still covers his body, whose earthly presence in cope and mitre Ferrari has commemorated in the altar-piece of the "Marriage of St. Catherine," with its refined richness of colour, like a bank of real flowers blooming there, and like nothing ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... She could not shake it off. To her all things were empty, blank, immensely purposeless. Religion failed to touch her state—religion, that is, in the only form accessible. The interior of some frowning Gothic church of old Castile, or, from another angle, of some mellow Latin basilica, might have found the required mystic word to say to her. But Protestantism, even in its mild Anglican form, shuts the door on its dead children with a heavy hand.—And she suffered this religious coldness, although any idea that death of the body implies extinction of the spirit, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... Christ, or the Virgin, or saints. Notwithstanding this, a synod, held at Frankfort in 794, anew condemned the practice, and the dispute remained unsettled at Adrian's death. An epitaph written by Charlemagne in verse, in which he styles Adrian "father,'' is still to be seen at the door of the Vatican basilica. Adrian restored the ancient aqueducts of Rome, and governed his little state with a firm and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... lotiform or lotus-bud capitals. There was a clerestory over the four central rows of columns, with windows in its walls. The general plan, therefore, of this hypostyle hall has some resemblance to that of a Christian basilica, but the columns are much more numerous and closely set. Walls and columns were covered with hieroglyphic texts and sculptured and painted scenes. The total effect of this colossal piece of architecture, even in its ruin, is one of overwhelming majesty. No ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... same internal woodwork, the same logical arrangement of parts. Whatever may be the carved and embroidered envelope of a cathedral, one always finds beneath it—in the state of a germ, and of a rudiment at the least—the Roman basilica. It is eternally developed upon the soil according to the same law. There are, invariably, two naves, which intersect in a cross, and whose upper portion, rounded into an apse, forms the choir; there are always the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... Apulia. ix. Principal Doorway to Cathedral, Trani. x. Principal Doorway to Cathedral, Trani. xi. Principal Doorway to Cathedral, Conversano. xii. Portion of Facade, Basilica at Altamura. xiii. Principal Doorway, Basilica at Altamura. xiv. Detail of Doorway, Basilica at Altamura. xv. Doorway of Madonna di Loreto, Trani. xvi. Entrance to Church of the ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, 1895 • Various

... does not seem to have believed he could be really withstood by any subject, and on Ambrose's return, he found the imperial procession, lictors, guards, and all, escorting the Emperor as usual to the Basilica or Justice Hall, that had been turned into a church. Then to the door came the Bishop and stood in the way, forbidding the entrance, and announcing that there, at least, sacrilege should not be ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... protection which your Excellency extends to the spiritual interests of the empire permit me to bring forward the wish and the petition that the Mass which I composed by order of His Eminence the Prince Primate of Hungary for the Dedication- Festival of the Basilica at Gran, and performed there on the 3lst August, may be printed and published in full score and piano score by the Royal Imperial State printing-press at ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... his work at Ripon. With the exception of the crypt under the present crossing, and of some Norman work south of the present choir, he rebuilt the whole church, and history has recorded the wording of a deed in which he gives "L1000 of the old coinage for the building of the basilica ... which we have begun afresh."[12] Roger's church was a cruciform building, and its nave had no aisles. A great portion of his work remains—the two transepts, half of the central tower, and portions of the nave and choir. The plan (see below, p. 67) was typical of the early history of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

... Athens, where she studied law. She went to Rome and studied theology, earning so great a reputation that, at the death of Leo IV., she was chosen his successor. Her sex was discovered by the birth of a child, while she was going to the Lateran Basilica, between the Coliseum and the church of St. Clement. Pope Joan died, and was buried, without honors, after a pontificate of two years and five months ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... efforts to maintain a barbarian religion stricken with moral decadence were in vain. On the very spot on which the last taurobolia took place at the end of the fourth century, in the Phrygianum, stands to-day the basilica of ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... died about midnight before Holy Saturday, April 4, 397; and his body reposes in a vault under the high altar of the basilica of Milan—the church that he had served so long and so well. His feast is kept in the Latin Church on December 7th, and he is justly regarded as one of the most illustrious doctors ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... distinguished these great families, so jealous for the honor and glory of religion, and so faithful in preserving its monuments. The church of Saint-Paul has long needed a monstrance in keeping with the magnificence of that basilica, itself due to the Company of Jesus. Neither the vestry nor the curate were rich enough to decorate the altar. Monsieur Baudoyer has bestowed upon the parish a monstrance that many persons have seen and admired at Monsieur Gohier's, the ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... of S. Honore is now reached by a long avenue of poplars lined with Pagan Roman tombs. The nave of the church is in ruins, but the choir is in tolerable condition, and is the most interesting portion. It consists in fact of an early Romanesque basilica with three aisles ending in three apses. The pillars separating nave from aisles, three on each side, are great drums ten feet in diameter. The later, ruinous nave contains the reputed chapel of S. Trophimus, apostle of Arles. When the fourteenth century church ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... Vesuvius, transformed into an imposing temple, covered with polychrome decoration, not in the best of taste according to our modern ideas of art, but gorgeous and cheerful in the clear atmosphere of the south. Rebuild, in the mind's eye, the Basilica and the temple of Apollo on the left, and straight before us, as we look forward from our coign of vantage at the narrow southern end of the colonnade, let us plant the three dominant statues of Augustus, Claudius and Agrippina to form our foreground. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... himself was supposed to have the gift of divination; his foreknowledge overleapt the extinction of his own house, and foresaw, across a gap of fifty years, the brief reign of Galba. Caligula threw an arch of prodigious span over the Roman Forum, above the roofs of the basilica of Julius Caesar, that from his house on the Palatine he might cross more easily to sup with his brother, Jupiter Capitolinus. Nero's death was for years regarded over half the Empire as incredible; men waited in a frenzy of excited terror for the reappearance of the vanished Antichrist. ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... all the defects formerly enumerate, except the last, and of the active part also of the last (which is the designation of writers), are opera basilica; towards which the endeavours of a private man may be but as an image in a crossway, that may point at the way, but cannot go it. But the inducing part of the latter (which is the survey of learning) may be set forward ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... a marble group executed by the order of the Cardinal di San Dionigi according to a contract drawn up August 28, 1498. It was placed in the old basilica of St. Peter's (Rome), in a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Fever (Madonna della Febbre). In the present church of St. Peter's it occupies a side chapel, to which it gives its name, where it is placed so high that it is impossible to see it well, and where ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... Vasari. Giotto was also distinguished in the art of mosaic, particularly for the famous Death of the Virgin at Florence, greatly admired by Michael Angelo; also the celebrated Navicella, or Boat of St. Peter, in the portico of the Basilica of St. Peter's at Rome, which is now so mutilated and altered as to leave little ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... marked by its surrounding plantation of trees, they built a great synagogue, of which it is said in the Talmud, "He who has not seen it has not seen the glory of Israel."[3] It was in the form of a basilica, with a double row of columns, and so vast that an official standing upon a platform had to wave his head-cloth or veil to inform the people at the back of the edifice when to say "Amen" in response to the Reader. The congregation was ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... the Basilica of Constantine existed no longer, while that of Michael Angelo, the masterpiece of thirty popes, which cost the labour of three centuries and the expense of two hundred and sixty millions, existed not yet. The ancient edifice, which had lasted for eleven hundred and forty-five years, had been threatening ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... building the renaissance art. The changes, beginning with Brunelleschi, were continued until nearly all buildings were completely Romanized. Then came Michael Angelo, who excelled in both architecture and sculpture at Rome, and Palladio, who worked at Venice and Verona. In the larger buildings the Basilica of Rome became the model, or at least the principles of its construction became the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... [Basilica is a name given to a digest of laws commenced by the Emperor Basilius in the year 867, and completed by his son Leo the philosopher in the year 880, the former having carried the work as far as forty books, and the latter having added twenty more, in which state it was published. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... stood, and knew Both this and more. For see, for see, The dark is rent, mine eye is free To pierce the crust of the outer wall, And I view inside, and all there, all, As the swarming hollow of a hive, The whole Basilica alive! Men in the chancel, body and nave, Men on the pillars' architrave, Men on the statues, men on the tombs With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs, All famishing in expectation Of the main-altar's consummation. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... was an ancient basilica, satisfactorily ascertained to be the one dedicated to St. Stephen, built by Santa Demetria,—the first nun,—at the instigation of the pope, St. Leo the Great. [A.D. 440- 461.] Sig. Fortunati, who made the discovery and directs the excavations, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... circumstances of the prisoner. He tells us that one part of his trial is already over. Not a friend stood by him as he faced the bloodthirsty tyrant who sat on the judgment-seat. But the Lord stood by him and enabled him to make the emperor and the spectators in the crowded basilica hear the sound of the gospel. The charge against him had broken down. But he had no hope of escape. Other stages of the trial had yet to come, and he knew that evidence to condemn him would either ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... apartments the lamplight brought in a swarm of noxious insects, and it was too hot for closed windows. Accordingly I spent the late hours either on the water (the moonlight of Venice is famous), or in the splendid square which serves as a vast forecourt to the strange old basilica of Saint Mark. I sat in front of Florian's cafe, eating ices, listening to music, talking with acquaintances: the traveler will remember how the immense cluster of tables and little chairs stretches like a promontory into the smooth lake of the Piazza. The whole place, of ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... to the basilica of the Sacre Coeur of Montmartre, where special services were held. This church was planned and built in expiation of the war of 1870. It was finished only a few months ago, and was to have been definitely ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... will still look hundreds of years hence, for the Government owns it now and guards it and protects it from the hammer of the vandal and the greed of the casual collector. Here it is—all of it; the tragic theater and the comic theater; the basilica; the greater forum and the lesser one; the market place; the amphitheater for the games; the training school for the gladiators; the temples; the baths; the villas of the rich; the huts of the poor; the cubicles of the slaves; shops; ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb



Words linked to "Basilica" :   Roman building, narthex, church building, church



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org