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Ecclesiastic   /ɪklˌiziˈæstɪk/   Listen
Ecclesiastic

noun
1.
A clergyman or other person in religious orders.  Synonyms: churchman, cleric, divine.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ecclesiastic" Quotes from Famous Books



... we are compelled to recognise; and there seems to be a harmony between the two rights—the parental and the magisterial, with the salary of the one and the fees of the other—suited, we think, to unlock many a difficulty; but the authoritative standing, in this question, of the ecclesiastic as such, we have hitherto failed to see. The parent, as a Church member or minister, is amenable to discipline; but his natural rights in the matter are simply those of the parent, and his political rights simply those of the subject ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... not to lose a single look of his face; that is, he sat with both his hands resting on both his knees, and his head stretched out towards the grocer. "Come, explain yourself," he said, "and tell me how you could possibly utter such a blasphemy. M. d'Herblay, your old master, my friend, an ecclesiastic, a musketeer turned bishop—do you mean to say you would raise your sword against ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... immediately afterwards, another auto-da fe was held, in which fifty living heretics were burned, besides the bones of Doctor Constantine Ponce de la Fuente, once the friend, chaplain, and almoner of Philip's father. This learned and distinguished ecclesiastic had been released from a dreadful dungeon by a fortunate fever. The holy office, however, not content with punishing his corpse, wreaked also an impotent and ludicrous malice upon his effigy. A stuffed figure, attired in his robes and with its arms extended in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... twenty-three feet at the base. Its structure appears to consist of alternate strata of bricks and clay. In the midst of this pyramid there is a church, where mass is, every morning, celebrated by an ecclesiastic of Indian extraction, whose ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... Paris; Fouche, Real, harped on the same string, but could give me no proof of their assertion. 'What a fool you are,' said I to Real, when in an instant you may ascertain the fact. Pichegru has a brother, an aged ecclesiastic, who resides in Paris; let his dwelling be searched, and should he be absent, it will warrant a suspicion that Pichegru is here; if, on the contrary, his brother should be at home, let him be arrested: he is a simple-minded man, and in the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... ecclesiastic brought out the names of David Sechard and Eve, little Postel grew very red, and Leonie, his wife, felt it incumbent upon her to give him a jealous glance—the glance that a wife never fails to give when she is perfectly ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... the cottage were in existence, it appeared to Mr. Baylis ridiculous to allow a misnomer to attach itself to the spot. After due deliberation, therefore, respecting the situation upon a delightful bank of gravel, and the association which an assemblage of ecclesiastic carvings and objects connected with "monkish memories," there collected, were likely to produce upon the mind, the new house was ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... stood under the tree, while the ordinary was performing his last office. They therefore began to batter the cart with stones, brick-bats, dirt, and all manner of mischievous weapons, some of which, erroneously playing on the robes of the ecclesiastic, made him so expeditious in his repetition, that with wonderful alacrity he had ended almost in an instant, and conveyed himself into a place of safety in a hackney-coach, where he waited the compulsion with a temper of mind ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... his God, on whom all the people believed. At length the saint, being moved with the entreaties of the man thus ashamed of himself, asked to whose form he would desire to be likened. Then he, regarding the people placed around him, preferred the form of Roichus, an ecclesiastic, the keeper of Saint Patrick's books; and this man was by birth a Briton, by degree a deacon, a kinsman of the holy prelate, and beautiful in his form above all men in those countries dwelling. Nevertheless was he a man of most holy life, so that he might say with the Psalmist, "Lord, by thy will ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... was essential that the result of this inquiry be added to the proces verbal and form a part of it. You remember that that was the first thing they did before the trial at Poitiers. They did it again now. An ecclesiastic was sent to Domremy. There and all about the neighborhood he made an exhaustive search into Joan's history and character, and came back with his verdict. It was very clear. The searcher reported that he found Joan's character to be in every way what he "would like his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... art thou to a fool?" cried the minor canon, so startling Ambrose that he had almost answered, and turning to another ecclesiastic whose siesta seemed to have ended about the same time, "Look at this varlet, Brother Cloudesley! Would you believe it? He comes to me with a letter from mine old friend, in consideration of which I offer him that saucy lubber Bolt's place, a gown of mine own a year, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... manque, ambassadeur manque, homme d'affaires manque, and auteur manque—no, he is not homme de naissance manque. He would think freely, but has some ambition of being governor to the Dauphin, and is more afraid of his wife and daughter, who are ecclesiastic fagots. The former out-chatters the Duke of Newcastle; and the latter, Madame de Gisors, exhausts Mr. Pitt's eloquence in defence of the Archbishop of Paris. Monsieur de Nivernois lives in a small circle of dependent admirers, and Madame de Rochfort is high-priestess ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... divides with Italy and the Volunteers the attention of general society. Everybody has read Mr. Darwin's book, or, at least, has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits; pietists, whether lay or ecclesiastic, decry it with the mild railing which sounds so charitable; bigots denounce it with ignorant invective; old ladies of both sexes consider it a decidedly dangerous book, and even savants, who have no better mud to throw, quote antiquated writers to show that its author is no better than an ape ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... l'abb, 'my big brother the clergyman,' i.e. Henri Daudet, professor at the College of the Assumption at Nmes. He died at the early age of twenty-four. The term abb originally meant the Superior of an abbey, then was extended to any ecclesiastic. ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... had lashed and frightened his horses to a runaway pace, singing and hallooing in the filthy way he heard, it being a standing joke among such roisterers to put quiet tradesmen of his melancholy profession into a false and ridiculous position.' He did not convince, but only half puzzled the ecclesiastic, who muttering, 'credat Judaeus,' turned his back upon Mr. Tressels, with an angry whisk, without ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... essentials of the soul's development to chance, even that such development is not wholly desirable or manly: that the atrophy of one aspect of "man's made-trinity" is best. I have heard one eminent ecclesiastic maintain that regular and punctual attendance at morning service in a mood of non-comprehending loyalty was the best sort of spiritual experience for the average Englishman. Is not that a statement which should make the Christian teachers who are responsible for the ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... awoke if his feet were tickled, or if a horn was blown in his ear. Tissot transmits to us the example of a medical student who arose in the night, pursued his studies, and returned to bed without awaking; and there is another record of an ecclesiastic who finished ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... the word "monk", which is properly used of a cloistered ecclesiastic who does not leave his convent. "Friar" would be a more exact term. The Benedictines are monks; the Augustinians, Dominicans, ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal

... ardent young disciples, as well as defenders and followers of mature age and acknowledged talent; a hundred pulpits propagated the dogmas which he had engrafted on the stock of Calvinism. Nor did he lack numerous and powerful antagonists. The sledge ecclesiastic, with more or less effect, was unceasingly plied upon the strong-linked chain of argument which he slowly and painfully elaborated in the seclusion of his parish. The press groaned under large volumes of theological, metaphysical, and psychological ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... a parson, whom he had lately attended, and found him as constipated and as convinced he was John the Baptist engaged to the Princess Mary as could be. "But," continued the learned doctor, "upon investigation of this afflicted ecclesiastic's antecedent history, I discovered that, for years before this, he had exhibited conduct incompatible with the hypothesis of a mind whose equilibrium had been undisturbed. He had caused a number of valuable trees to be cut down on his estate, without being able to offer a sane ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... lives—nothing will avail them, if one blot can be discovered in their character. There must be no moral blemish in the priesthood. In the Catholic religion, where more is professed, still more is demanded, and the errors of one padre or one ecclesiastic seem to throw a shade over the whole community to which ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... seems to be only what Nature demands,—no more. The kind nun who accompanied us now showed us, with some pride, various large presses, set in the wall, and piled to the top with clean and comfortable children's clothing. We came presently to where the boys were reciting their catechism. An ecclesiastic was hearing them;—they seemed ready enough with their answers, but were allowed to gabble off the holy words in a manner almost unintelligible, and quite indecorous. They were bright, healthy-looking little fellows, ranging apparently from eight to twelve in age. They ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... constrained to put in force against it the rigour with which elsewhere it pursued the slightest traces of mythology. The conscientious essay by W. Rees on the "Saints of Wales", and that by the Rev. John Williams, an extremely learned ecclesiastic of the diocese of St. Asaph, on the "Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the Cymry", suffice to make one understand the immense value which a complete and intelligent history of the Celtic Churches, before their absorption in the Roman Church, would ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... the armed cap-a-pied figure of St. George, whose point-device armour is crowned by a wide Tuscan hat and feather. The artist's knowledge and love of animals and wild nature comes out in them, and his interest in beauty and chivalry as opposed to the outworn conventionalities of ecclesiastic demands. ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... of Angers, in 1066, having refused to present a horse to the Viscount of Tours, which the viscount claimed in right of his lordship, whenever an abbot first took possession of that abbey, the ecclesiastic offered to justify himself by the trial of the ordeal, or by duel, for which he proposed to furnish a man. The viscount at first agreed to the duel; but, reflecting that these combats, though sanctioned by the church, depended wholly on the skill or ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... might possibly be produced upon festive occasions, even though ordinarily kept in the background. She had not heard Miss Belinda mention any masculine name so far, but that of the curate of St. James's; and, when she had seen him pass the house, she had not found his slim, black figure, and faint, ecclesiastic whiskers, especially interesting. ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... before them, and who, desiring to do what is right, have it brought home to them in a convincing way that it is not their opportunity. No one ought to assume great responsibilities if he is not equal to them. One of the saddest things ever said on a human deathbed was what was said by a great ecclesiastic, who had disappointed the hopes that had been formed of him. In his last moments he turned to one who stood near him and murmured, "I have held a great post, and I have not been equal to it." The misery was that no one could sincerely contradict him. It is not a piece of noble self-sacrifice ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... with great solemnity by the priest of the expedition, Fra Vincente de Valverde, an iron-souled, fierce-hearted Dominican, meet ecclesiastic for such a band. Refreshments were then provided liberally for the soldiers—it is not so stated, but it may be presumed that some of them were in liquid shape—and then the whole party settled down to await developments. Nothing ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... Reverend Mr. Drone is not one person but about eight or ten. To make him I clapped the gaiters of one ecclesiastic round the legs of another, added the sermons of a third and the character of a fourth, and so let him start on his way in the book to pick up such individual attributes as he might find for himself. Mullins and Bagshaw and Judge Pepperleigh and the rest are, it is ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... and of Elizabeth. Not only was there a quiet but arbitrary denial of the right of the Roman Catholic Bishop to manage the affairs of his diocese, the possibility of negotiating the Reverend Coadjutor Plessis out of his influence was entertained. Mr. Attorney-General ultimately waited upon that ecclesiastic to explain his own private sentiments to him. The bishop was studiously guarded and significantly polite. The Attorney-General thought that a good understanding ought to exist between the government and the ministers ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... A proud ecclesiastic requested one of his devotees to give him a leg on mounting his horse, which he did so heartily as to throw him to the other side of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... afterwards became Innocent X. The Cardinal paid a visit to Du Monstier in his studio, where Monsignor Pamphilio spied, on a table, "L'Histoire du Concile de Trent"—the good edition, the London one. "What a pity," thought the young ecclesiastic, "that such a man should be, by some accident, the possessor of so valuable a book." With these sentiments Monsignor Pamphilio slipped the work under his soutane. But little Du Monstier observed him, and said furiously to the Cardinal, that a holy man should not bring thieves and robbers in his ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... component estate of the realm, the 'enclesia';—the Puritans in requiring of the 'enclesia' what was only requisite or possible for the 'ecclesia'.[5] Archbishop Grindal is an illustrious exception. He saw the whole truth, and that the functions of the enclesiastic and those of the ecclesiastic were not the less distinct, because both were capable of being exercised by the same person; and vice versa, not the less compatible in the same subject because distinct in themselves. The Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench is a Fellow ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... existed regarding the decease, but doctors are often mistaken. So hardly had the priest crossed the threshold than she flung herself at his feet, and implored him to administer Extreme Unction. The father, who seems to have belonged to the ordinary type of country-bred ecclesiastic so common abroad, and who probably in the whole course of his life had never before availed himself of so startling a method of enrolling a new convert, demurred. There had been no profession of faith, he urged; there could be none now, for—and he hardly liked to pronounce the cruel words—Burton ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... control. This reckless lad the Lady Godiva vainly tried to educate for the monkish life, but he utterly refused to adopt her scheme, would not master any but the barest rudiments of learning, and spent his time in wrestling, boxing, fighting and all manly exercises. Despairing of making him an ecclesiastic, his mother set herself to inspire him with a noble ideal of knighthood, but his wildness and recklessness increased with his years, and often his mother had to stand between the riotous lad ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... Ecclesiastic: connected with the Church. For many centuries Rome was the centre of Christian influence, and is so still to all ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... as these, we cannot but attach a very different value when they are the spontaneous growth of common minds, unstimulated by sense of propriety or rules of the service, or other official influence lay or ecclesiastic, from what we attach to the somewhat similar ceremonials in which, among persons whose position is conspicuous, important enterprises are now ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... example of this relation, sustained with great fullness and warmth, was given by Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica in the sixth century. In the ecclesiastic legends connected with. The canonization of this brother and sister, it is narrated that they were accustomed to meet at a place intermediate between their retreats on Mount Cassino and at Plombariola, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... archness whenever he heard our reverential description of the expected guest. But, somehow or other, no sooner had he seen the priest than all his proposed railleries deserted him. Not a single witticism came to his assistance, and the calm, smooth face of the ecclesiastic seemed to operate upon the fierce resolves of the facetious knight in the same manner as the human eye is supposed to awe into impotence the malignant intentions of the ignobler animals. Yet nothing could be blander than the demeanour ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... at the Commission the Cardinal handed me his list of suggestions, which were not only revolutionary, but ill- considered, and I have to note how curiously impracticable a schemer, given to the wildest plans, this great ecclesiastic showed himself. He suggested the removal out of London, not only of prisons and infirmaries (which no doubt are under the control of public authorities), but also of breweries, ironworks, and all factories not needed for daily or home work, as a means of giving us areas for housing the working ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... saints, and weeping over the sorrows of the heathen, and rushing out to haul the whole vicinage up to grace, and spending hours on their knees in hysterical abasement before the heavenly throne, it is quite safe to assume, even without an actual visit, that the ecclesiastic who has worked the miracle is a fair and toothsome fellow, and a good deal more aphrodisiacal than learned. All the great preachers to women in modern times have been men of suave and ingratiating habit, and the great majority ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... what had once been costly garments of silk, velvet, satin, cloth with gold braid, and wonderfully fine linen; but these were now useless, for time had quite spoiled them. Among these raiments of a bygone age were a number of copes, chasubles, stoles, and such-like ecclesiastic raiment; there was also a beautifully worked mitre, and as these were in good condition we kept them. Their preservation was evidently owing to their being contained in a bullock's hide, which was sewn together apparently by the ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... was inclined to think it was the devil, for at this point he discusses at some length various cases in which Satan so acted. He seems to imply that it was a peculiar and cynical pleasure to the Lord of Evil to disguise himself as an ecclesiastic.].... ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson

... strong Church of England colony like Virginia. One of them suggested that, as the title to the Three Lower Counties, as Delaware was called, was in dispute, it should be taken by the Crown and given to the Church as a manor to support a bishop. Such an ecclesiastic certainly could have lived in princely state from the rents of its fertile farms, with a palace, retinue, chamberlains, chancellors, feudal courts, and all the appendages of earthly glory. For the sake of the picturesqueness of colonial history it is perhaps a pity that this pious ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... Curates, long dust, will come and go On lissom, clerical, printless toe; And oft between the boughs is seen The sly shade of a Rural Dean ... Till, at a shiver in the skies, Vanishing with Satanic cries, The prim ecclesiastic rout Leaves but a startled sleeper-out, Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls, The falling ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... is not a bishop, but he may be so designated; coming events have been known to cast conspicuous shadows in the likeness of mitre and crosier. The Bishop heard of a man in Montana who had an old book of plays with an autograph of William Shakespeare pasted in it. Being a wise ecclesiastic, he did not exclaim 'Tush' and 'Fie,' but proceeded at once to go book-hunting in Montana. He went by proxy, if not in person; the journey is long. In due time the owner of the volume was found and the book was placed ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... "I discovered the ecclesiastic's little house without any difficulty; it was by the side of a large, ugly, brick church. As there was neither bell nor knocker, I knocked at the door with my fist, and a loud voice from inside asked: 'Who is there?' to which I replied: 'A ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... ecclesiastic wished two things, both of which his heritors flatly refused: (a) a new manse, and (b) a site with a wide prospect. Finding them intractable, he professed humility, and craved merely a species of scaffolding to buttress up one ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... records a case argued before the Justices Itinerant, in the reign of Edward I., when it was stated that Ralph de Rhodes "enfeoffed Walter Mauclerk to hold the church, manor and appurtenances in Horncastre, to him and his heirs, of the gift of the said Ralph." {18a} That the Bishop, although an ecclesiastic, was bound to do service to the heirs of Ralph is shown by another document, {18b} in which John, son of Gerard de Rhodes, a descendant of Ralph, makes a grant to certain parties of "the homage and whole service of the Bishop of Carlisle, and his successors, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... there nothing," asked the Baroness, "between these extremes—this mysterious ecclesiastic and that ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... had to say about it was in the shape of a profane jest that "it was like the peace of God—it passed all understanding." Other men had the ear of Buckingham; shrewd, practical men of business like Cranfield, who hated Bacon's loose and careless ways, or the clever ecclesiastic Williams, whose counsel had steered Buckingham safely through the tempest that wrecked Bacon, and who, with no legal training, had been placed in Bacon's seat. "I thought," said Bacon, "that I should have known my ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... as these, we cannot but assign a very different value when they are the spontaneous growth of common minds, unstimulated by sense of propriety or rules of the service, or other official influence lay or ecclesiastic, from what attaches to the somewhat similar ceremonials in which, among persons whose position is conspicuous, important enterprises are now and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... that furious and ridiculous article in the "Morning Chronicle" on the second volume (the first article, as yet without a continuation) by the same man (of Jesus College?) on whose article in the "Ecclesiastic" on Hippolytus' book I have thrown some degree of light? The leading thought is exactly the same in both; the account of Calixtus' knavery is interpolated (by Novatianus), says the writer in the "Chronicle." ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... priest-written history of Ireland, with the rebel doggerel of 1798 and the more seductive sedition of later years. At Maynooth he meets a crowd of students like himself, crammed to the throat with his own prejudices, viewing everything from the same standpoint. He returns to the people a full blown ecclesiastic, saturated with a sense of his own importance and the absolute supremacy of the Church he represents; knowing nothing of mankind outside his own narrow sphere, profoundly ignorant of the world's political systems, and intensely inimical to England. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... Mazarin used to call him the 'Old Satyr.' St. Evremond was also Norman in other respects: he called himself a thorough Roman Catholic, yet he despised the superstitions of his church, and prepared himself for death without them. When asked by an ecclesiastic sent expressly from the court of Florence to attend his death-bed, if he 'would be reconciled,' he answered, 'With all my heart; I would fain be reconciled to my stomach, which no longer performs its usual functions.' And his talk, we are told, during the fortnight that preceded his ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... on his neck. His face, over which one of the bars threw a sinister shadow, was the yellow of a dried tobacco-leaf, and veined as strongly. His garb was a strange mingling of the vaquero and the ecclesiastic—velvet trousers, open from the knee down, and fringed with bullion buttons; a broad red sash around his waist, partly hidden by a long, straight chaqueta; with a circular sacerdotal cape of black broadcloth slipped over his head through a slit-like opening braided with gold. His restless ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... challenge to the church, it is also, in less degree, a challenge to the state. The woman who takes a fearless stand for the incoming sex ideals must expect to be assailed by reactionaries of every kind. Imperialists and exploiters will fight hardest in the open, but the ecclesiastic will fight longest in the dark. He understands the situation best of all; he best knows what reaction he has to fear from the morals of women who have attained liberty. For, be it repeated, the church has always known and feared the ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... CAMALDULIAN, the common name of AMBROGIO TRAVERSARI (1386-1439), French ecclesiastic, born near Florence at the village of Portico. At the age of fourteen he entered the Camaldulian Order in the monastery of Sta Maria degli Angeli, and rapidly became a leading theologian and Hellenist. In Greek literature his master was Emmanuel Chrysoloras. He ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... chronology, from the disputes, which were carried on with so much heat and so little effect, concerning the proper time of celebrating Easter; and the English owed the cultivation of these noble sciences to one of the most trivial controversies of ecclesiastic discipline. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... and allow its just weight to this reflection, viz. that there cannot be done a greater mischief to prince and people, than the propagating wrong notions concerning government; that so at last all times might not have reason to complain of the Drum Ecclesiastic. If any one, concerned really for truth, undertake the confutation of my Hypothesis, I promise him either to recant my mistake, upon fair conviction; or to answer his difficulties. But he must remember two things. ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke

... tone of the unfortunately-accoutered ecclesiastic, there was something of defiance in his flashing eye and crimson cheek, as he turned his brightening glance upon what might almost be called the host of his foes; and the nervous pressure which returned the grasp ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... over the evil which had blinded his spiritual vision. A man had to choose between the worship of God and the worship of the devil, there was no alternative. Nobody knew the limits of human knowledge; everybody, the learned ecclesiastic as well as the unlearned, plain man, believed others to be in possession of the key to profound secrets and unlimited power. One thing only was needful: to possess one's self of the philosopher's stone; therefore the belief in witchcraft and the fear of certain men supposed to be endowed ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... obnoxious visitor from the capital without further delay. Peter Martyr, however, received this intimation with unruffled calm and, to the stupefaction of Tangriberdy, refused to leave until he had accomplished his mission. Such audacity in a mild-mannered ecclesiastic was as impressive as it was unexpected. The Grand Dragoman had no choice but to report the refusal to the Sultan. By what arguments he prevailed upon Cansu Alguri to rescind his command, we know not, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... comes, in shovel-hat and cassock, the renowned ecclesiastic Dean Swift. He has just nodded patronizingly to Bononcini in the Strand, and suddenly meets Handel, who cuts him dead. Nothing disconcerted, the dean moves ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... ecclesiastic, with a pleasant face and an unfailing supply of good-humoured fun. Everybody seemed to get acquainted with him directly, and to become quite confidential after the first half-hour; and a drove of young men followed him about everywhere. His reverence kept ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... to his brother ecclesiastic, who was looking and smiling at him in a kindly way. The Abbe Judaine was the parish priest of Saligny, a little village in the department of the Oise. Tall and sturdy, he had a broad pink face, around which clustered a mass of white, curly hair, and it could be divined ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... of them retain in their bosom, in their ecclesiastic organizations, worship, doctrines, and observances, various relics of popery. They are at best a reformation of popery, and only reformations in part. The doctrines and traditions of men yet impair the power and progress of the gospel ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... observation. Let diaries, therefore, be brought in use. The things to be seen and observed are: the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes; and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities, and towns, and so the heavens and harbors; antiquities and ruins; libraries; colleges, disputations, and lectures, where any ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... with this now historic sickness of the Heir Apparent were the sermons preached by Dean Stanley. No one has ever been closer in friendship and in personal knowledge to the Prince of Wales than had this eloquent and saintly ecclesiastic. No one has been more admired and respected in the Church of England in modern days than he; nor has any of its clergy possessed a wider view or more generous heart. Speaking in Westminster Abbey on December 10th, 1871, when the nation was ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... farmer's barn when summer lightning stabs the roof. There was a twist in Faneuil Hall, and the doors could not open wide enough for Liberty to regain her ancient Cradle; only soldiers, greedy to steal a man, themselves stole out and in. Ecclesiastic quicksand ran down the hole amain. Metropolitan churches toppled, and pitched, and canted, and cracked, their bowing walls all out of plumb. Colleges, broken from the chain which held them in the stream of time, rushed ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... (cathedrant). My chairman is the authority of the divine will which regulates us without contradiction, and which occupies its rank above those human and vain disputes.' This chairman, as often observed, by which Montaigne's thoughts are to be guided, is an ecclesiastic authority. ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... affably, he came into the little parlor where Madame de Talbrun was waiting for him. There was probably no ecclesiastic in all Paris who had a salon so full of worked cushions, each of which was a keepsake—a souvenir of some first communion. The Abbe did not know his visitor, but the name Talbrun seemed to him connected with ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... see how this came about. The necessary service-books would be placed in the hands of the ecclesiastic who had charge of the building in which the congregation assembled. To these volumes—which at first were doubtless regarded in the same light as vestments or sacred vessels—treatises intended for edification or instruction would be gradually added, and so the nucleus of a ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... "The ecclesiastic was absent, and I read the letter by myself. At another time, or in another case, it might have excited my ridicule. But into what quackeries will not people rush for a last chance, where all accustomed means have failed, and the life of a ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... to St. Mary's Bay, conducted by De Champdore, an experienced pilot, with a mineralogist, to search for silver and iron ore. While Some of the party were on a fishing excursion, they rescued him, as stated in the text. The safe return of the young and too venturesome ecclesiastic gave great relief to De Monts, as Lescarbot says a Protestant was charged to have killed him, because they quarrelled sometimes about their religion.—Vide Histoire de Nouvelle-France, par Mare Lescarbot, Paris, 1612, Qvat. Liv. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... The ecclesiastic slowly descended the avenue, along which lean elm trees were placed as landmarks, and Bouvard, when he no longer saw the priest's three-cornered head-piece, expressed his relief; for he hated Jesuits. Pecuchet, without absolving ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... in the church by secular instead of ecclesiastic influence, and is credited with employing his power in this and other instances with such lack of honor and probity that he became an object of the deepest popular contempt and execration. His name was derided in the popular ballads, and he came to be looked upon as the scapegoat of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... very penal procedure, that wherever it existed Toleration would be unnecessary, inasmuch as there would be preciously little error to tolerate. Personally, I believe, Henderson was as moderate and tolerant a man as any British ecclesiastic of his time. In no Church where he bore rule could there, by possibility, have been any approach to the tetchy repressiveness, or the callous indifference to suffering for the sake of conscience, that characterized ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... has been said, "Who shall know how many cultured pagans were led by the books of Josephus to read the Bible and to look on Judaism with other eyes?"[1] If the apologies of Philo and Josephus could not pierce the armor of prejudice and hatred which enwrapped a Tacitus or a Christian ecclesiastic, they at least found their way through the lighter coating of ignorance and misunderstanding which had been fabricated by Hellenistic Egyptians, but which had not fatally warped the minds of the general ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... your correspondent, but I would just remark that, from what we know of the feeling of our ancestors respecting the remains of the dead, it appears probably that if from any cause a large quantity of human bones were found, or were from any cause obliged to be disturbed, some ecclesiastic or pious layman would take measures to have them removed to some consecrated spot where they might be safe from further molestation. They would hardly be treated in any such manner as Dr. Mantell states ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various

... there were two people in the colony who were to help him. One of them was a soldier of fortune named Diego Almagro, an older man than Pizarro, who in his early life had been equally neglected; the other was a Spanish ecclesiastic, Hernando de Luque, a man of great prudence and worldly wisdom, who had, moreover, control of the necessary funds. Between these three, then, a compact was made, most of the money being supplied by De Luque, Pizarro taking ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... royal court, his Lordship, having sent away all persons except me, commanded that I should make an official statement of the affair—with a solemn declaration (which I made) that this demand was made with no intention of proceeding against any ecclesiastic, but only for the purpose of rendering an account of this occurrence to his Majesty and to his royal Council of the Indias. By this command I give the present; and it is witnessed by Captain Lope Ossorio de Soto, Eugenio ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... "I have conversed of Zosimus and the gnostics at the table of a very learned ecclesiastic, quite another Peiresc. The wine was coarse and the fare but middling, but nectar and ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... worn in Roman Catholic seminaries, not necessarily denoting that the person who wears it has taken priest's vows upon him. Brian was not sufficiently well versed in the subject to know what grade was signified by the dress of the young ecclesiastic, but he conjectured (chiefly from its plainness and extreme shabbiness) that it was not a very high one. The young man's face pleased him. It was intellectual and refined in contour, rather of the ascetic type; with that faint redness about the heavy eyelids which suggests an insufficiency of ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... commonly received on public occasions with speeches, which sometimes lasted for hours. This happened of course only when the prince was known as a lover of eloquence, or wished to pass for such, and when a competent speaker was present, whether university professor, official, ecclesiastic, physician, or court-scholar. Every other political opportunity was seized with the same eagerness, and according to the reputation of the speaker, the concourse of the lovers of culture was great or small. At the yearly change of public officers, and even at the consecration of new bishops, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... Chinese seal-character, of an INSCRIPTION on a Memorial raised by Kublai Kaan to a Buddhist Ecclesiastic, in the vicinity of his summer-palace at SHANGTU in Mongolia. Reduced from a facsimile obtained on the spot by Dr. S. W. Bushell, 1872, and by ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... This noted ecclesiastic was a native of Pavia; he was bred up to the law, and, coming to France, established a school at Avranches, which was attended by pupils ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... they said, "excepting the lass that Cuddie took up, and two couriers that Captain Balfour had dispatched, one to the Reverend Ephraim Macbriar, another to Kettledrummle," both of whom were beating the drum ecclesiastic in different towns between the position of Burley and the head-quarters of the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... away. What renders Torcello so individual among all the islands and islets of the lagoon, I should say, is her continual contrast between the ever-recurrent idyllicism of open meadows or wilding clusters of simple rustic thickets, and the enormous antiquity of these two hoary ecclesiastic fanes. History is in the air, and you feel that the very daisies you crush underfoot, the very copses from which you pluck a scented spray, have their delicate rustic ancestries, dating back to Attila, who is said once to have brought his destructive presence where now such sweet solemnity of desertion ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... of horror throughout the realm. The Pope proclaimed Becket a saint with the title of Saint Thomas. The mass of the English people looked upon the dead ecclesiastic as a martyr who had died in the defense of the Church, and of all those—but especially the laboring classes and the poor—around whom the Church cast its ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... disguise not displeasing; she was glad also to show that she knew how verse should be spoken. But she noticed that in the orchestra stalls there was a priest wearing his cassock. It was not the first time that an ecclesiastic had been present at an afternoon performance of this tragedy drawn from the Scriptures. Nevertheless, it impressed her disagreeably. When she went on the stage she distinctly saw Louise Dalle, wearing the ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... this politic ecclesiastic, mostly anxious not to commit himself, ready to let whoever would risk a struggle with Rome, so that he kept out of the fray and survived to profit by it, cuts beside the disciples, who had chosen their side, had done with 'ifs,' and went ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... Madeleine carried her temerity in this matter still farther. Here is a portion of the certificate of an ecclesiastic, for whose uprightness and truthfulness Montgeron vouches in strong terms, and who relates what he alleges he saw on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... the ecclesiastic writers in contending against this sidereal fatalism were taken from the arsenal of the old Greek dialectics. In general, they were those that all defenders of free will had used for centuries: determinism destroys responsibility; rewards and punishments ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... this world. They are not fit to govern themselves. How could you elect a minister of any religion president of the United States. Could you elect a bishop of the Catholic church, or a Methodist bishop, or Episcopal minister, or one of the elders? No. And why? We are afraid of the ecclesiastic spirit. We are afraid to trust the liberties of men in the hands of people who acknowledge that they are bound by a standard different from that of the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... Ellicott has won a place of honour among women composers. She was born in 1857, and is a daughter of the Bishop of Gloucester. Her music is not especially ecclesiastic in vein, but includes many notable secular compositions. Among her important works are dramatic, concert, and festival overtures, and a fantasia for piano and orchestra, all given at various English festivals. Of her various cantatas, the "Birth ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... Mexican feather-work. The opposition of the Bishop of Burgos thwarted the conqueror of Mexico, as he had already successfully opposed the schemes of the "Great Admiral" and his son Diego Columbus. We shall presently see how this influential ecclesiastic was able to thwart ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... never seen before, was the first to speak. He was a type of the fashionable ecclesiastic, suave, smiling, faultlessly dressed in silk soutane and silver buckled shoes, and wearing a heavy gold ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... An ecclesiastic of Friesland, embraced the tenets of the Anabaptists, and, after being again baptized by Ubbo Philippi, became a powerful leader of his sect. He denied that Jesus Christ received a human shape from his mother, the virgin Mary; and while he ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... set him at ease; and the Abbe puzzled him, as is often the case when inexperienced strangers encounter unacknowledged deficiency. The perpetual coaxing chatter, and undisguised familiarity of La Jeunesse with the young ecclesiastic did not seem to the somewhat haughty cast of his young Scotch mind quite becoming, and he held aloof; but with the two children he was quite at ease, and was ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of laymen and clerics, of whom Hunus was one, undertook to keep watch over them. One night, however, all the watchers, save wide-awake Hunus, went to sleep; and then, according to the story which this "sharp" ecclesiastic foisted ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... fairest books which have fallen into my hands, are the Institutes of Canon Law, by the Abbe de Fleury, and the Civil History of Naples, by Giannone. Their moderation was the effect of situation as well as of temper. Fleury was a French ecclesiastic, who respected the authority of the parliaments; Giannone was an Italian lawyer, who dreaded the power of the church. And here let me observe, that as the general propositions which I advance are the result of many particular and imperfect facts, I must either refer the reader ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... asked Mr. Smirke to be of the party. That ecclesiastic had been bred up by a fond parent at Clapham, who had an objection to dramatic entertainments, and he had never yet seen a play. But, Shakspeare!—but to go with Mrs. Pendennis in her carriage, and sit a whole night by her side!—he could not resist the idea of so much ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... alone declared null and void all that which was enacted after the edict. Although the governor has been advised of this in writing, no reparation has been made; for, as it is a matter that touches the fiscal, he defies the laws entirely. A few days ago Juan Cevicos, an ecclesiastic and presbyter, presented to the royal Audiencia a decree of your Majesty directed to the audiencias. In it you prohibit offices of justice to the sons, brothers, or brothers-in-law of auditors and fiscals, under penalty of a fine of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair

... as remain are chiefly in museums now. They were usually "coffin chalices"—that is, they had been buried in the coffin of some ecclesiastic. Of Gothic chalices, or those of the Tudor period, fewer remain, for after the Reformation, a general order went out to the churches, for all "chalices to be altered to decent Communion cups." The shape was ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison



Words linked to "Ecclesiastic" :   a Kempis, churchman, St. Bruno, pardoner, Thomas a Kempis, Saint Bruno, church, ordainer, cleric, man of the cloth, reverend, pluralist, clergyman, Bruno



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