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Medieval   /mɪdˈivəl/  /midˈivəl/  /mɪdjˈivəl/   Listen
Medieval

adjective
1.
Relating to or belonging to the Middle Ages.  Synonym: mediaeval.  "Medieval times"
2.
As if belonging to the Middle Ages; old-fashioned and unenlightened.  Synonyms: gothic, mediaeval.
3.
Characteristic of the time of chivalry and knighthood in the Middle Ages.  Synonyms: chivalric, knightly.  "The knightly years"



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"Medieval" Quotes from Famous Books



... connection specimens of coffee pots in stoneware by Elers (1700), and in salt glaze by Astbury, and another of the period about 1725. These are in the department of British and medieval antiquities of the British Museum, where are to be seen also some beautiful specimens of coffee-service pots in Whieldon ware, and in Wedgwood's ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... Ages held the strange and, to our judgement, the obviously insane belief that the normal result of religious error was eternal punishment. And yet by the crimes to which that false belief led them they almost proved the truth of something very like it. The record of early Christian and medieval persecutions which were the direct result of that one confident religious error comes curiously near to one's conception of the wickedness of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... help thinking that we three bespectacled figures lacked only the flowing robes to be taken for a group of medieval alchemists set down a few centuries out of our time in the murky light of Prescott's sanctum. Yet, though he accepted us at our face value, and began to talk of his strange discoveries there was none of the old familiar prating ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... of the college lay clustered among the trees; and in the Sunday quiet, with the sunlight shining on the towers, it looked like some medieval village sleeping in the valley. Patty gazed down dreamily with half-shut eyes, and imagined that presently a band of troubadours and ladies would come riding out on milk-white mules. But the sight of Peters, strolling to the gateway in his Sunday clothes, ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster

... 45. Medieval English Literature. By W.P. KER, Professor of English Literature, University College, London. "One of the soundest scholars. His style is effective, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... men who make it their calling to teach goodness and their duty to practise it, I should feel that I had done myself an injury rather than them. Go and talk with any professional man holding any of the medieval creeds, choosing one who wears upon his features the mark of inward and outward health, who looks cheerful, intelligent, and kindly, and see how all your prejudices melt away in his presence! It is impossible to come into intimate relations with a large, sweet nature, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... Bank is the huge barometer to which both speculative and investing Wall Street looks for guidance. Whom that bank protects is as safe as was the medieval fugitive who laid hold of the altar in the sanctuary; whom that bank frowns upon in the hour of stress is lost indeed if he have so much as a pin's-point area of heel that is vulnerable. Melville, president of the National Industrial, was a fanatically religious man, with as keen a nose ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... small overhanging turret with loop-holes and embrasures projecting from the parapet of a medieval building. ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... at Rome, about 480 A.D.; died at Pavia, 524. Gibbon speaks of him as "the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman." His works on arithmetic, music, and geometry were classics in the medieval schools. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... the old, especially of men who have achieved scientific eminence; such men will be hostile to those among the young who do not flatter them by agreeing with their theories. Under a bureaucratic State Socialism it is to be feared that science would soon cease to be progressive and acquired a medieval respect for authority. ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... Reader, you have not forgotten that it was in Bagdad in the surprising reign of Haroun-al-Raschid that Sinbad the Sailor lived! Nor can it have escaped you that scarce a mule's back distance—such was the method of computation in those golden days—lived that prince of medieval plain-clothes men, Ali Baba! ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... gladly obeyed the call to arms, would have been equally ready to bear permanent and heavy burdens of taxation. Haggling about war contributions is as pronounced a characteristic of the German Reichstag in modern Berlin as it was in medieval Regensburg. These conditions have induced me to publish now the following pages, which were partly written some ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... other traditions there survives in Kentucky the medieval rite of blessing the hounds which takes place usually on the first Saturday in November. In his clerical robes the Bishop of Lexington, in the heart of the Blue Ridge, performs the ceremony much in the manner of the prelates of ages past. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... a revolution of incalculable beneficence. To be wealthy, says Undershaft, is with me a point of honor for which I am prepared to kill at the risk of my own life. This preparedness is, as he says, the final test of sincerity. Like Froissart's medieval hero, who saw that "to rob and pill was a good life," he is not the dupe of that public sentiment against killing which is propagated and endowed by people who would otherwise be killed themselves, or of the ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... has an almost personal character, which gives this simple life, where all art is unknown, something of the artistic beauty of medieval life. The curaghs and spinning-wheels, the tiny wooden barrels that are still much used in the place of earthenware, the home-made cradles, churns, and baskets, are all full of individuality, and being made from materials that are common here, yet to some extent peculiar to the ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... opportunity to exert themselves "naturally." In America the old abuses never had taken deep root, as the conditions of a new continent were not favorable to monopoly and privilege. Altho the movement for the repeal of medieval laws has continued in Europe from 1776 till the present time, yet custom still is stronger to-day in Europe than in America. Serfdom was not abolished until the first half of the nineteenth century in Austria and southeastern Europe, and not ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... revelation from God Himself." The Fairie Queen was "the first poem I ever read," he says, and the bosky glades of Elmwood were often transformed into an enchanted forest where the Knight of the Red Cross, and Una and others in medieval costume passed up and down before his wondering eyes. This medieval romanticism was a perfectly natural ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... to marry my daughter," rejoined the professor. " Rather than let that man make love to you-or even be within a short railway journey of you, I'll cart you off to Europe this winter and keep you there until you forget. If you persist in this silly fancy, I shall at once become medieval." ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... physically explicable and definable. The union of the antique with the modern meant simply the absorption by the art of the Renaissance of elements of civilization necessary for its perfection, but not existing in the medieval civilization of the fifteenth century; of elements of civilization which gave what the civilization of the fifteenth century—which could give colour, perspective, grouping, and landscape—could never have afforded: the nude, drapery, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... If we are ill-prepared for war, we arbitrate. If we are sure of a favorable award, we arbitrate. But we must have a loophole, an ever-ready escape from obligation. Posing as the most enlightened nation on the face of the globe, we refuse entirely to displace those medieval notions according to which personal honor found its best protection in the dueling pistol, and national honor its only vindication in slaughter and devastation. To unlimited arbitration we ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... darkness, and the dark forms, outlined in their glimmering beams, seemed like beings of an unreal world; the bearers of the body, with their unconscious burden, appeared like a mournful procession of medieval times, when in the solemn hours of the night the bodies of the dead were borne away ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... after all, what are my sufferings compared to yours? Incredible as it may seem to anybody who has heard these talks, they had originally a certain consistent plan. I dealt first with heroic and half-legendary stories, touched upon medieval chivalry, then on the party-heroes of Elizabethan or Puritan times; then on the eighteenth century and then the nineteenth. In this address I had meant to face the twentieth century; but I find it almost faceless, largely featureless; and, anyhow, very ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... malfeasance, malignity, malleable, mandate, matutinal, medieval, mephitic, mercenary, mercurial, meretricious, metamorphose, meticulous, microcosm, misanthropic, misogyny, misprision, mitigate, monitor, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... least of all the kind that pretends to be ignorant of one's own popularity; but surely he cared little for popularity. Here again he puts us in mind of a medieval poem. In Gilbert de Metz, one of our oldest epics, the daughter of Anseis is described seated at the window, "fresh, slim, and white as a lily" when two knights, Garin and his cousin Gilbert, happen to ride near. "Look up, cousin Gilbert," says Garin, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... such as those mentioned above see the World Almanac, the Statesman's Yearbook, and any good encyclopedia. For Germany, see Hazen, The Government of Germany, published by the Committee on Public Information, Washington, D.C.[1] Reference may also be made to Harding's New Medieval and Modern History or to ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson

... classic mould. Bice is serene. She reminds me of Artemis. Bice is an artist to her inmost heart. Bice I love as I love you, my Teresina, and I never expect to meet with one who can so interpret my ideas with so divine a voice. But this girl is more spiritual. Bice is classic, this one is medieval. Bice is a goddess, this one a saint. Bice is Artemis, or one of the Muses; this one is Holy Agnes or Saint Cecilia. There is in that sweet and holy face the same depth of devotion which our painters portray on the face of the Madonna. This little family group stand amidst all the ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... least, under the heading of the organization comes the financial aspect. Out of the five milliards of francs, the war indemnity paid by France to Germany in 1871, 200,000,000 marks in gold coin, mostly French, were put away as the nucleus of a ready war chest. In a little medieval-looking watch tower, the Julius Thurm near Spandau, lies this ever-increasing driving force of the mightiest war engine the world has ever seen. Ever increasing, for quietly and unobtrusively 6,000,000 marks in newly minted gold coins are taken year by year and added to the store. On ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... Rue de Vesle behind the church of St. Jacques. This church, originally built at the close of the twelfth century, is hemmed in on all sides by old houses, above which rises its tapering steeple surmounted by a medieval weathercock in the form of an angel. A life-size statue of the patron saint decorates the Gothic gateway leading to the church, from which a troop of Remish urchins in the charge of some Frres de la Doctrine Chrtienne ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... the dial with the aid of a pocketlite, and made a notation. The scene and the martial music faded out, to be replaced by stock footage from medieval epics: Peter the Hermit exhorting knights to smite the Saracen, the clash of Mediterranean men o' war, chivalric pageantry ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds

... the red light, it certainly was, reminding me of some unused conventicle, bare of pews or pulpit, ugly and severe, and I was forcibly struck by the contrast between the normal uses to which the place was ordinarily put, and the strange and medieval purpose which had brought us ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... thirty fixed in the face of a child. What else the Colonel saw there Heaven only knows! He felt his inmost secrets plucked from him—his whole soul laid bare—his vanity, belligerency, gallantry—even his medieval chivalry, penetrated, and yet illuminated, in that single glance. And when the eyelids fell again, he felt that a greater part of himself had been swallowed up ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... feasibility of throwing the same vivid light upon the old Border life of his ancestors as Goethe had thrown upon that of the Rhine barons. This led him to subordinate the part played by the goblin page in the proposed story, which was now widened to include elaborate pictures of medieval life and manners, and to lay the scene in the castle of Branksome, formerly the stronghold of Scott's and the Duke of Buccleugh's ancestors. The verse form into which the story was thrown was due to a still more accidental circumstance, i.e., Scott's overhearing Sir ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... have been a species of marjoram (Origanum maru); by others, the caper-bush (Capparis spinosa); and by the author of the 'History of Bible Plants,' to have been the name of any common article in the form of a brush or a broom." In ancient and medieval times hyssop was grown for its fancied medicinal qualities, for ornament and for cookery. Except for ornament, it is now very little cultivated. Occasionally it is found growing wild in ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... that the patron saints of cities should mould the temper of the people to their own likeness? S. George, the chivalrous, is champion of Ferrara. His is the marble group above the Cathedral porch, so feudal in its medieval pomp. He and S. Michael are painted in fresco over the south portcullis of the Castle. His lustrous armour gleams with Giorgionesque brilliancy from Dossi's masterpiece in the Pinacoteca. That Ferrara, the only place in Italy where chivalry struck any root, should have had S. George ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... preluded by Gray, Collins, Chatterton, Macpherson, and others, culminated in Walter Scott (1771-1832). His passion for the medieval was first excited by reading Percy's Reliques, when he was a boy; and in one of his school themes he maintained that Ariosto was a greater poet than Homer. He began early to collect manuscript ballads, suits of armor, pieces of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... Nyaya sutras known as Nyayasutravivara@na. In addition to these works on the Nyaya sutras many other independent works of great philosophical value have been written on the Nyaya system. The most important of these in medieval times is the Nyayamanjari of Jayanta (880 A.D.), who flourished shortly after Vacaspatimis'ra. Jayanta chooses some of the Nyaya sutras for interpretation, but he discusses the Nyaya views quite independently, and criticizes the views of other systems of Indian thought ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... toward the camp at a slow dogtrot; and as they approached it could be seen that save for a turban apiece they were stark naked; and save for a spear and a water gourd apiece they were without equipment. One held something straight upright before him, as medieval priests carried a cross. The turbans were formed from their blankets; mid-blade of each spear was wound with a strip of red cloth; the object one carried was a letter held in the cleft of ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... everywhere by that marvellous Oriental fancy, wherein the spiritual and the supernatural are as common as the material and the natural; it is this contrast, I say, which forms the chiefest charm of The Nights, which gives it the most striking originality and which makes it a perfect expositor of the medieval Moslem mind. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... It was a big, fortresslike building on top of one of the highest hills at the northern end of Manhattan Island—an old building that had once been a museum and was built like a medieval castle. ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett

... arguing after that. There must have; for she had not the slightest intention of being disposed of in this medieval fashion. But in the midst of some determined though shaky sentence of hers, he had said quite kindly and finally that they need not discuss the matter any further—besides, she had to have a good stiff lunch right off—and had piloted her ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... and the other Channel Islands represent the last remnants of the medieval Dukedom of Normandy, which held sway in both France and England. The islands were the only British soil occupied by German troops ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... * The medieval belief that there were only four elements—fire, earth, air, and water—was widely accepted until about 1500 AD when the current atomic ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt

... simply that each link in the human chain, like those in the animate and inanimate worlds above and below it, is predestined to a specific function for the better ordering of the whole. Lewis Maidwell, for instance, still employs the medieval and Renaissance analogy of the correspondence between the human body and the social organism (An Essay upon the ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill

... imposed by God as a measure of vengeance for our sins. It still rejects protection, when without it these plagues will continue to exact death and suffering on a scale which probably exceeds that of any one of the medieval plagues. Those who today look upon Syphilis and Gonorrhea as punishment for sin have not progressed beyond the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... keep themselves aloof from life. If they are indifferent, or discouraged because they feel or think that they know that the situation is hopeless, it may be proved that undue pessimism is as dangerous a "religion" as any other blind creed. Indeed there is very little difference in kind between the medieval fanaticism of the "holy inquisition," and modern intolerance toward new ideas. All kinds of intellect must get together, for as long as we presuppose the situation to be hopeless, the situation will indeed be hopeless. The spirit of Human Engineering ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... pole, having an iron or steel point, used in medieval warfare, now replaced by the bayonet. A half-pike was a similar weapon having a staff about half ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter

... revolutionary among them are perhaps those who most closely cling, though they may not know it, to the most ancient traditions. Among the syndicates and the most striking of the young writers I have found purely medieval souls. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... in which Greek MSS. were produced in the medieval period was (with negligible exceptions) confined to Greece proper, "Turkey in Europe," the Levant, and South Italy. In the monastic centres, particularly Mount Athos, there were and are large stores ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... corporations and guilds excluded the Jew, the enterprise of industry laughs at the obstinacy of the medieval institution." (Bauer, "The ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... of modern sanitation and the war on the White Plague. The efforts of Parliament to fix wages can be illustrated by some of the minimum wage laws passed by recent legislatures. John Ball's teachings suggest a brief discussion of modern socialism, daily becoming more active in its influence. The medieval trade guilds and modern labor unions; the monopolies of Elizabeth's time and the anti-trust law of to-day; George the Third's two hundred capital crimes and modern methods of penology; the jealousy of Athens in guarding the privilege ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell

... an interest in people. The scholar today is not a being who dwells apart in his cloister, the monk's successor; he is a leader of the thoughts and conduct of men. So the new subjects which stand beside the classics and mathematics of medieval culture are history, economics, ethics, and sociology. Although these subjects are as yet merely in the making, thousands of students are flocking to their investigation, and are going out to try their tentative knowledge in College Settlements ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer

... numbers, and the family ties which linked them into jealous and mutually distrustful groups, gave rise to personal rivalries among the leaders and bitter feuds among the adherents of each faction, resembling those which used to distract a city republic in ancient Greece or medieval Italy. The absence of any effective government had attracted many adventurers from various parts of South Africa, who wandered as traders or hunters through the wilder parts of the country and along its borders, men often violent and reckless, who ill-treated the natives, and ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... sea. Young, handsome, learned, exceedingly accomplished, gloriously strong in body and in mind, Henry mounted the throne in 1509 with the hearty good will of nearly all his subjects. Before England could become the mother country of an empire overseas, she had to shake off her medieval weaknesses, become a strongly unified modern state, and arm herself against any probable combination of hostile foreign states. Happily for herself and for her future colonists, Henry was richly endowed with ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... dream seriously enough to make children the heroes and heroines of their most searching fictions. There had been no "children's literature" to speak of before, except for the oral and "popular" tradition, including lullabies and Mother Goose, some of which go back as far as Tudor and even medieval times. ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare

... spirit, bold through those needs, was too strong for them. Abelard and Heloise write their letters—letters with a wonderful outpouring of soul—in medieval Latin; and Abelard, though he composes songs in the vulgar tongue, writes also in Latin those treatises in which he tries to find a ground of reality below the abstractions of philosophy, as one bent on trying all things by their congruity with human experience, who had felt the hand of ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... the warlike kind, after Germany began to struggle with its medieval restrictions, was composed after the Battle of Sempach, where Arnold Struthalm of Winkelried opened a passage for the Swiss peasants through the ranks of Austrian spears. It is written in the Middle-High-German, by Halbsuter, a native ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... like Francois I., called Chenonceaux a beautiful place, and he was right. It is all of that and more. Here one comes into direct contact with an atmosphere which, if not feudal, or even medieval, is at least that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... dignified but rich simplicity, arising from its plain large surfaces, mingled and edged here and there with fine-cut and elegant ornamentation. The court and buildings of the Wells Theological College have a thoroughly quaint, old-fashioned look, quiet, rigid, and medieval; as if the students reared there could not but be Churchmen of the "Brother Ignatius" stamp, gentlemen, scholars, and—priests. I can not leave Wells without speaking of the two splendid "cedars of Lebanon" standing in the environs of the church. They are not very tall, but they sweep ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... said Mr. Literal. "We are in a medieval castle in Northampton—the castle of King John of England. King John or his chamberlain is likely to enter at any moment. And goodness knows what they'd say at finding ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge

... with a steep-pitched roof, and sending out upon all hands (as it were chapter-houses, chapels, and transepts) one-storeyed and dwarfish projections. To add to this appearance, it was grotesquely decorated with crockets and gargoyles, ravished from some medieval church. The place seemed hidden away, being not only concealed in the trees of the garden, but, on the side on which I approached it, buried as high as the eaves by the rising of the ground. About the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... as a centre. The early medieval methods of industry. The beginnings of trade. Expansion of trade and transportation. Invention and discoveries. The change from handcraft to power manufacture. The industrial revolution. Modern industrial development. Scientific agriculture. The building ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... has been characterized as a relic of medieval times—the last remains of the old Miracle Play. This is true, in the sense of historical continuity, and in that sense alone. The spirit of the times has penetrated even to this isolated valley, and its Passion Play is as much a product of our century as the poetry of Tennyson. Miracle Plays ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... obviously the road to success that no other plans were long considered. Even the few variations attempted assimilated themselves more or less promptly to the regime of the older colony. The career of the manor system is typical. The introduction of that medieval regime was authorized by the charter for Maryland and was provided for in turn by the Lord Proprietor's instructions to the governor. Every grant of one thousand, later two thousand acres, was to be made a manor, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... hardly entered the city, when he was caught hold of by a party of the academic youth, who proceeded to practise on his awkwardness and his ignorance. At first sight one wonders at their childishness; but the like conduct obtained in the medieval Universities; and not many months have passed away since the journals have told us of sober Englishmen, given to matter-of-fact calculations, and to the anxieties of money-making, pelting each other with snowballs on ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... cloisters and chiming bells seemed so peaceful and so far removed from modern trouble. Sometimes indeed the whirr of a biplane would disturb the quiet as an airman flittered like a great dragon-fly over the city, reminding her that medieval times were past; while a bugle call from the neighboring barracks emphasized the fact that the world was at war. Not that Winona was likely to forget that! Every day in school the Peace Bell prayer was read at noon, and she might see regiments of recruits marching ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... looked somewhat uneasy. 'Of course there are very few old peerages now,' he went on; 'the old families have a way of dying out, somehow. But Carbis is one of the richest men in the country. I suppose he paid nearly a million for the Carbis estates. Carbis Castle is almost medieval, I suppose, and the oldest part of the building was commenced I don't know how many hundreds of years ago. Oh, Springfield will be in a magnificent position when ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... the modern age, the faith of Christians had attached itself to symbols and material objects little better than fetishes. The host, the relic, the wonder-working shrine, things endowed with a mysterious potency, evoked the yearning and the awe of medieval multitudes. To such concrete actualities the worshippers referred their sense of the invisible divinity. The earth of Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre, the House of Loreto, the Sudarium of Saint Veronica, aroused their deepest sentiments ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... ago, it came into the hands of M. Sommerard, a man devoted to antiquarian pursuits, and here he expended a large property in forming a vast collection of all sorts of relics he could gather belonging to the medieval ages. A few years ago, he died, and then the government wisely purchased the hotel and its unrivalled museum for half a million of francs; and additions are constantly made to it of every curiosity that can illustrate the habits and manners of the early history of France and Europe. The building ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... of this wonderful fame: it is one of those epidemic "suggestions" to which men constantly have been and are subject. Such "suggestion" always has existed and does exist in the most varied spheres of life. As glaring instances, considerable in scope and in deceitful influence, one may cite the medieval Crusades which afflicted, not only adults, but even children, and the individual "suggestions," startling in their senselessness, such as faith in witches, in the utility of torture for the discovery of the ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... rocking perceptibly on the uneven roadbed. It rounded the curve, the tail of the train flicked around, and it shot at full speed straight for the mouth of the pass. How could one man stop it? How could five men attack it after it was stopped? It was like trying to storm a medieval ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... perhaps been fishing for sponges off Sfax and may have returned with stories of the wonders of Tunis, and so she may have heard of a boulevard, but she is not affected by it. She makes her Nascita as the medieval painters made their pictures, and is not seeking to attract attention or to astonish or to advertise herself or to make money. Sicilians are all artists, and the Nascita is the girl's pretext for making as close a representation as she can of the life to which she and ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... German writer seems to insinuate) we are justified in dismissing from our minds all reasonable doubts as to the validity of the claims of the Hindu Chaturanga as the foundation of the Persian, Arabian, Medieval and Modern Chess, which it so essentially resembled in its main principles, in fact the ancient Hindu Chaturanga is the oldest game not only of chess but of anything ever shown to be at all like it, and we have the frank admissions of the Persians as ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

... the town were guarded by double sentries night and day. Certain dark doorways also secreted a solitary sentry, and my own office boasted a corporal's guard—presumably because the Field-Cashier had his rooms on the first floor. The sanitation was truly medieval; on either side of the cobbled streets noisome gutters formed an open sewer into which housewives emptied their slop-pails every morning, while mongrel dogs nosed among the garbage. Yet the precincts were not without a certain beauty, and every side of the town was ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... of awarding prize money to naval officers, which makes of them a species of privateers, and pays them for capturing a helpless merchant ship, while an army officer gets nothing for taking the most powerful fort, may likewise be set aside as a relic of medieval warfare. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... wanted the rest of complete contrast. Being admired, being dogged, wasn't contrast, it was repetition; and as for originals, to find herself shut up with two on the top of a precipitous hill in a medieval castle built for the express purpose of preventing easy goings out and in, would not, she was afraid, be especially restful. Perhaps she had better be a little less encouraging. They had seemed such timid ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... in comparison with other contemporary sociologists, as a realist. This is a reference to the controversy of the medieval philosophers in regard to the nature of concepts. Those who thought a concept a mere class-name applied to a group of objects because of some common characteristics were called nominalists. Those who thought the concept was real, and not the name of a mere collection of individuals, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... and spreading sandbanks, and even the war-galleys of Venice and Spain were at a disadvantage when manoeuvring in its treacherous eddies against the Corsair who knew every inch of the coast. Passing westward, a famous medieval fortress, with the remains of a harbour, is seen at Mahd[i]ya, the "Africa" of the chroniclers. Next, Tunis presents the finest harbour on all the Barbary coast; within its Goletta (or "Throat") a vessel is safe from ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... speak of the fortifications of a city. A citadel is a fortification within a city, or the fortified inner part of a city or fortress, within which a garrison may be placed to overawe the citizens, or to which the defenders may retire if the outer works are captured; the medieval castle was the fortified residence of a king or baron. Fort is the common military term for a detached fortified building or enclosure of moderate size occupied or designed to be occupied by troops. The fortifications of a modern city usually consist of a chain of forts. Any ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... a military owned and operated 100 percent solution. Iridium telephones may not be jam-resistant or secure, but 80 percent of the time they will satisfy the need for 2 percent of the cost. Of course, this avoids the problem we have created for ourselves with our medieval acquisition system. ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... officers in this war deserves to be compared in many essential respects with that which is blazoned in the glorious "Chanson de Roland." It is interesting to remember that during the long years in which the direct influence of that greatest of medieval epics was obscured, it was chiefly known through the paraphrase of it executed in German by the monk Konrad in the twelfth century. Many years ago, Gaston Paris pointed out the curious fact that Konrad completely modified the character of the "Chanson de Roland" by omitting all expressions of ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... It is a truism that an accepted wit has only to say, 'Pass the butter,' and everyone will laugh. Professor McLeod, however, far from being an accepted wit, seems rather to be in the position of a medieval Court Fool, who was laughed at rather than with. As a consequence, all Earthmen ...
— A World by the Tale • Gordon Randall Garrett

... very hot and full of smells, nor did Mrs. Morton care for its quaint old medieval houses, but Ida's heart had begun to fail her when she came so near the crisis, and on looking over the visitors' book she gave a cry. 'Ah, if we had only known! It is all of ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... feature of the book that may commend it to present-day readers, and that is that our medieval medical colleagues, when medicine embraced most of science, faced the problems of medicine and surgery and the allied sciences that are now interesting us, in very much the same temper of mind as we do, and very often anticipated our solutions of them—much oftener, indeed, than ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... of a battle between Christians and Saracens, fought near the Damietta branch of the Nile in 1240. Mr. Saintsbury remarks that Joinville's work "is one of the most circumstantial records we have of medieval life and thought." It was translated by Thomas Johnes, of Hafod, and is now ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... spell Perchance a Horoscope as well. Or open wide at special rate That musty tome the Book of Fate; Or seek the Philtre's subtle aid To win the hand of some fair maid. We mus'nt miss the Troubadours Who went forth on their singing tours, Twanging harps and trilling lays To maids of medieval days. And Oh! the right good merry times With Maskers, Mummers and the Mimes, Hobby horses gaily prancing, Bats and Bowls and Maypole dancing. When folks would take a lengthy journey To see the Knights at Joust or Tourney: Or watch the early English ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison

... placed over the bladder and genitals, "et statim minget." The same effect may be produced by poultice mixed with levisticum (lovage) or leaves of parsley. Singularly enough the catheter is not mentioned, though this instrument, under the medieval name of argalia (cf. French algalie), is noticed frequently in the section devoted to ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... after the mother of Ptolemy Philadelpnus, was built by him as a place of transit for goods from India which were to be carried from the Red Sea to the Nile. [Footnote: Hunter, Hist. of British India, I., 40.] Roman roads followed ancient lines through Asia Minor and Syria, and medieval routes in turn, in many places, passed by the remains of Roman stations. Thus the East and the West had been drawn together by a mutual commercial attraction from the earliest times, an attraction based on the respective ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... That cabled messages all round the world, but filled its prisons to the doors! That named the metals in the sun, but could not cleanse its cities! An age, in fact, that was but one remove from the unmitigated barbarism of medieval times! How marvellous is the change wrought by a hundred years! We have not been shocked by a murder in Canada for more than fifty years, nor has a suicide been heard of for a very long period. Epidemic diseases ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius

... of Herrick's poems cannot be dated, and it is idle to enquire which were written before his ordination and which afterwards. His conception of religion was medieval in its sensuousness, and he probably repeated the stages of sin, repentance and renewed assurance with some facility. He lived with an old servant, Prudence Baldwin, the "Prew" of many of his poems; kept a spaniel named Tracy, and, so says tradition, a tame pig. When his parishioners ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... floor was with weeds o'ergrown, And crumbling and shaky its walls of stone; Its roof of tiles, in tiers and tiers, Had stood the storms of a hundred years. An olden, weird, medieval style Clung to the mouldering, gloomy pile, And the rhythmic voice of the breaking waves Sang a lonesome dirge in its land of graves. As I walked in the Mission old and gray— The Mission ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris

... from the car and spend every penny set apart for the tour; the Binnenhof—that sinister theater of Dutch history—with its strangely grouped towers and palaces, and its huge squares, made me feel an insignificant insect with no right to opinions of any kind; and as I gazed up at the dark, medieval buildings, vague visions of Cornelis and John de Witt in their torture, of van Oldenbarneveld, and fair Adelaide de Poelgust stabbed and bleeding, flitted fearfully through my brain. I wanted to get out and look for the stone where ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... relieve the State of the entire burden. Two results followed—first, all grievances vanished; and secondly, the whole pauper population of England within ten years was Catholic in sympathies. And yet all this is only a reversion to medieval times—a reversion made absolutely necessary by the failure of every attempt to supplant ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... at their own expense, and as long after as the King paid the necessary charges. The naming of so short a term of service shows that maritime operations were expected not to last long. It was, indeed, a difficult matter to keep a medieval fleet at sea, and the conditions that produced this state of things lasted far into the modern period. Small ships crowded with fighting-men had no room for any large store of provisions and water. When the first scanty supply was exhausted, unless they were ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... Albert a thousand times and left no sign—a fact that brings me to that part of my recital I most deplore. But a measure of delay was necessary that we might learn the market value of his books—otherwise Virgilio Poggi would doubtless have robbed us after the old man's death. There was a medieval history of the Borgia family I should myself have greatly treasured under ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... sitting erect in one of the motors the man for whom he had felt at first sight an invincible repulsion. Prince Karl of Auersperg. Young von Arnheim had represented the good prince to him, but here was the medieval type, the believer in divine right, and in his own superiority, decreed even before birth. John noted in the moonlight his air of ownership, his insolent eyes and his heavy, arrogant face. He hoped that the present war would sweep ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... of his own of the old Promethean myth. He maintained that Prometheus typified the universal allopathic patient, and that the vulture for ever gnawing his liver was Calomel. The clock was flanked on each side by a grotesque figure, also in bronze. Two medieval bullies had drawn their swords, and were preparing for a duel, which it was apparent that neither half liked. A very beautiful marble group, half life-size, stood in one corner, and gave an air of brightness to the whole room. And on a bracket, under a glass case, there was a common pewter ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... within my soul A passion burns from basement to the cope. Poesy, poesy! But one who imagines that this passion can exist in the soul wholly unrelated to any other, is confusing poetry with religion, or possibly with philosophy. The medieval saint was pure in proportion as he died to the life of the senses. This is likewise the state of the philosopher described in the Phaedo. But beauty, unlike wisdom and goodness, is not to be apprehended abstractly; ideal beauty is ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... awkward position indeed;—which any German Painter that there were, might make a Picture of, I have sometimes thought. Picture of some real meaning, more or less,—if for symbolic. Towers of Babel, medieval mythologies, and extensive smearings of that kind, he could find leisure!—Philip having knelt a reasonable time, and finding there was no help for it, rose in the dread silence (some say, with too sturdy an expression of countenance); ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... that this etymology is "preposterous," hachement being a good old French word which in 16th century English was ignorantly confused with achievement. Apart from these two etymologies,[4] the only essential alterations have been made in the chapter on Surnames (p. 170), further research in medieval records having convinced the author that most of what has been written about "corrupted" surnames is nonsense, and that no nickname is too fantastic to be genuine.[5] Two slight contemplated alterations have not ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... you were looking upon the orchestra as a company of actors, and trying to enjoy their performance as a drama and nothing more. Undisturbed by the idealising effect of the sound, you could never see enough of the stern, medieval, wood-cutting movement of this comical spectacle, this harmonious parody on the ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... Early and Medieval Times.—The dimness which shrouds the origin of chess naturally obscures also its early history. We have seen that chess crossed over from India into Persia, and became known in the latter country by the name of shatranj. Some have understood that word to mean ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... this type of building is not entirely clear. It is difficult to imagine it growing naturally in the political and social climate of the villages which grew up clustered around England's medieval castles and monasteries. At the time when town-and-market halls were common in the central squares of free towns in Italy, Germany and the Low Countries, they were absent in England. Their appearance in England dates from the seventeenth century when town government developed its own identity, ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton

... Governor. Meanwhile, the funeral ceremonies over Jesse James's remains drew a great concourse of people, and there were many indications of popular sympathy. Stories of his exploits have had an extensive sale, and his name has become a center of legend and ballad somewhat after the fashion of the medieval hero ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... There was a volume of Shakespeare's plays, an "Ivanhoe," a much-thumbed "Lady of the Lake," a book of miscellaneous poems, a coverless "Tennyson," a dilapidated "Little Lord Fauntleroy," and two or three books of ancient and medieval history. But, though Mrs. Carew looked carefully through every one, she found nowhere any written word. With a despairing sigh she turned back to the boy and to the woman, both of whom now were watching her with ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... the Seine divides into several branches, rises the city of Troyes, maintaining to some extent its medieval character, with its narrow, illpaved streets, which of old swarmed with geese and porkers, and with its houses of wooden gables and overhanging roofs. Manufactures prospered at Troyes. Many tanneries were established ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber



Words linked to "Medieval" :   nonmodern, Middle Ages, past



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