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More "Abbess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Crete; but that on the voyage we had been driven out of our course and wrecked at Aguamorta. And so I continued, as occasion required, observing their usages with much assiduity, lest worse should befall me; but being one day asked by their superior, whom they call abbess, whether I was minded to go back to Cyprus, I answered that, there was nought that I desired so much. However, so solicitous for my honour was the abbess, that there was none going to Cyprus to whom she would entrust me, until, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... undergoing a year's probation, during which time she would be instructed in every elegant accomplishment, she should take the veil. Her advancement would speedily follow, for, with such a face and figure, she would make a capital lady abbess, especially in Italy, to which country she would probably be sent; ladies of her hair and complexion—to say nothing of her height—being a curiosity in the south. With a little care and management she could soon obtain a vast reputation for sanctity; and who knows but after her death ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... pilgrims, who arrive in such crowds at some periods of the year, that the vault becomes so hot and close as to be unsafe to remain in long. These candles are kept constantly burning, and the devotion to the Saint also burns as brightly as ever. St. Agnes and St. Disciolus repose near their abbess. Pepin, King of Aquitaine, lies somewhere in their neighbourhood; but the exact spot is ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... by the rays of blue, yellow, red, and green light which darted from them. This cross was suspended on a chain of black beads resembling a rosary, and giving to the black-robed figure the appearance of an abbess. The Spanish lace mantilla which she had thrown over her beautiful hair served as the veil, and made the ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... madrigals; they praised each other in verse; they wrote long letters on the slightest pretext. As a specimen of the badinage so much in vogue, I quote from a letter written by Voiture to one of the daughters of Mme. de Rambouillet, who was an abbess, and had sent him a present ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... with the Discourse of Father Francis, that the very next Day she entered upon her Vow. As soon as the Solemnities of her Reception were over, she retired, as it is usual, with the Abbess ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... by Correggio. All heaven upsidedown; fat angels turning somersaults, saints like butchers, and martyrs simpering feebly. Like C.'s babies much better. Heaven can't be painted, and they'd better not try. Madonna, by Girolamo, was lovely. Room of the Abbess, with rosy children peeping through the lattice, very charming. Madonna della Scodella—the boy Christ very charming. The old Farnese Theatre most interesting; got a scrap of canvas from a mouldy scene. Dead old ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... Hlose, and at her death her body was deposited in the same tomb. Three centuries they reposed together; after which they were separated to different sides of the church, to calm the delicate scruples of the lady- abbess of the convent. More than a century afterward, they were again united in the same tomb; and when at length the Paraclet was destroyed, their moldering remains were transported to the church of Nogent-sur- Seine. They were next deposited in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... delightful to observe the Mother Abbess, or whatever she is, disguising the fact that she takes any interest in ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and with worthier ceremonial than the great and good Mukaukas George, who had made such a magnificent gift to the Church. Oh those Jacobites! They only were capable of such ingratitude, only their heretical prelate could commit such a crime. Every one in the Convent of St. Cecilia, from the abbess down to the youngest novice, knew that the Patriarch had sent word by a carrier pigeon forbidding the Bishop to allow the priests to take part in the ceremony. Plotinus was a worthy man, and he had been highly indignant ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... tells you and take a farmer's blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word: ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... recluse, bird of the cloister, Margot of the Nunnery, sable-frocked Abbess, Church fowl of the ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... them. In one of Pitre's versions the robbers are hidden in sacks of charcoal, and the cunning daughter pierces the bags with a red-hot spit. In another, they are hidden in oil-skins, and sold to the abbess of a certain convent for oil. One of the nuns has some suspicion of the trick, and invites her companions to tap the skins with red-hot irons. Another Sicilian version (Gonz. No. 79, "The Story of the Twelve Robbers") ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... Recalde was indeed loaded with treasure of Peru, which had been received by her via the Isthmus of Panama for transportation to Spain. On board her were several priests returning to Spain headed by one Fra Antonio de Las Casas, together with a band of nuns under the direction of an aged abbess, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... cemetery. It is the most beautiful monument in the cemetery. It consists of a chapel formed out of the ruins of the Abbey of Paraclete, which was founded by Abelard, and of which Heloise was the first abbess. It is fourteen feet in length, by eleven in breadth, and is twenty-four feet in height. A pinnacle rises out of the roof in a cruciform shape, and four smaller ones exquisitely sculptured stand between the gables. Fourteen columns, six feet ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... remained in touch, that my mother had died and had left her fortune to my children; and that my daughter Emilia, having attained her majority, was determined not to accept the money but to give it to me. My children were all married or independent, and the whole family was scattered. Lucia was an abbess ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... took possession of our rooms. Our parlour had been that of the lady abbess, and A—— had her bed-chamber. These were spacious rooms and well furnished. The girls were put into the cells, where girls ought never to be put. Jetty had another near them, and, these dispositions made, I sallied forth alone, in quest of ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... misconduct and thus broke off the marriage; and the unhappy girl, repudiated by her bridegroom, was at once despatched to a convent in Venice. Enraged at her fate, she had repeatedly appealed to the authorities to release her; but her father's wealth and influence prevailed against all her efforts. The abbess, however, felt such pity for her that she was allowed more freedom than the other nuns, with whom her wit and beauty made her a favourite in spite of her exceptional privileges. These, as Coeur-Volant hinted, included ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... is in reality no doubt or problem about this Saint Clair. She was born in 1275, and joined the Augustinian Sisterhood, dying young, in 1308, as Abbess of her convent. Continual and impassioned meditation on the Passion of our Lord impressed her heart with the signs of His suffering which have been described above. I owe this note to the kindness of an anonymous ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... this distracted state of mind she pursued her way to Chaillot,[J] and reached the convent of the Sisters of St. Mary, where she was detained some time in the parlor. At length the grating was opened and a portress appeared. On her request to be admitted to the abbess, she informed her that the community were all at their devotions, and could not see ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... later we were admitted to a convent on the Via Dolorosa. One of the gray-gowned nuns, after exhibiting and offering for sale laces and embroideries made by the sisters, led us to an excavation in the rear of the convent. There a courteous Abbess met us, and said: "The excavation made here uncovered a part of the original Via Dolorosa. The old way lies buried twenty feet below the level of the modern street known by that name, and at this place is one hundred feet to the right of the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... bawd. Mother abbess: the same. Mother midnight; a midwife. Mother in law's bit; a small piece, mothers in law being supposed not apt to overload the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Little John, hurriedly. "I bethought me to talk with Stuteley on the matter. The beggar told me that the Abbess of Kirklees had stayed him as he was travelling past her Priory: 'Go to Haddon, brother, and there you will find Robin Hood sick unto death. Say that in the woods near by there is one who is practising ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Richard. "But what else could come from the blood of Godfrey? HE despair of safety, because he hath in former days lived PAR AMOURS? I will have the Pope send him an ample remission, and I would not less willingly be intercessor had his BELLE AMIE been an abbess." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... which the monks performed the office of the dead with great solemnity. The canons were then compelled to bear the dead archbishop a second time from the abbey cross (now demolished) to the abbey of St. Amand[96], where the abbess took the pastoral ring from off his finger, replacing it by another of plain gold; and thence the bearers proceeded to the cathedral. These duties could not be very agreeable to portly, short-winded, well-fed dignitaries; and consequently the worthy canons were often inclined to shrink from ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Gallic neighbours. A cat in the habit of a nun, holding a platter in its paws to a mouse approaching to lick it; alluding to the allurements of the abbesses to draw young women into their convents; while sometimes I have seen a sow in an abbess's veil, mounted on stilts: the sex marked by the sow's dugs. A pope sometimes appears to be thrust by devils into a cauldron; and cardinals are seen roasting on spits! These ornaments must have been generally executed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Lady G——, and why could you not have got all this settled a fortnight ago, (you that can carry every point,) and have made poor me a lady abbess? ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... sisters embraced each other and mingled their tears together; and I hardly need say, that the Lady Abbess and I could not restrain our meed of pity at the affecting scene. As the evening closed, they separated, each to attend to the same mournful duty, of watching by the bodies of their husbands, and bedewing them with their tears. A few days after the interments took place, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... system of instruction, and the establishment of new schools throughout the kingdom of Charlemagne. At the court school the great king himself, as well as Liutgard the queen, became his pupil. Gisela, Abbess of Chelles, the sister of Charlemagne, came also to him for instruction, as did the Princes Charles, Pepin, and Louis, and the Princesses Rotrud and Gisela. On himself and the others, in accordance with the fashion of the time, Alcuin bestowed fanciful names. He was Flaccus or Albinus, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... defined in the first pages: she perceived it to be a complete manual of convent life, a perfect compendium of a nun's soul. On its pages lay that shadowy, evanescent and hardly apprehensible thing—the soul of a nun, only the soul, not a word regarding her daily life: any mother-abbess could have written such a materialistic book: St. Teresa, with the instinct of her genius, addressed herself to the task which none but she could fulfil—the evolution of a nun's soul. And as Evelyn read she marked the passages ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... it again." Comte Jean began to laugh, and then seriously advised me to follow the plain counsel of the duc de Richelieu. I decided on doing so. I sent for Madame. She came with all the dignity of an abbess of a regally founded convent. But in spite of her pretensions, I only saw in her the rival of Gourdan and Paris, and treated her as such; that is, with some contempt, for with that feeling her office inspired me. She told me all I have described to you, and many other ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... The earliest church on this point is attributed to Vratislav, uncle of St. Wenceslaus, but this sounds rather doubtful. Boleslav II, however, is known to have founded a convent here, probably the oldest in Bohemia, and he installed his sister Milada as first abbess. St. Ludmilla was also buried here, so the Hrad[vs]any was increasing in sanctity. Boleslav II is also responsible for providing Prague with her first bishop. We have seen that Henry the Fowler had incorporated Bohemia ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... described by the matchless Abbess had been exactly repeated. In Durtal, the Chambers of the Soul were deserted as after a long mourning; but in the rooms that had remained open, phantoms of sins confessed, of buried evil-doing, wandered like the sister of the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... have thought of it, and until—until this morning, it seemed that a convent must be my ultimate refuge. I have spent most of my young life at Santa Sofia, and the little that I have seen of the world at my uncle's court scarce invites me to see more of it. The Mother Abbess loved me a little. She would ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... however, to play at this game for ever; she was at length discovered in a nunnery, and her retreat cut off. The viceroy made several representations to the superior to deliver her up, but without effect. The abbess, supported by the archbishop of the diocese, constantly refused. The public curiosity was in consequence so much excited at the additional importance thus thrust upon the criminal, that thousands of persons visited the nunnery in order to catch a ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... alabaster sheen, With sculptured lid of roses white, She slumbered in unbroken night, By mortal eyes unseen. Above her marble couch was reared A monumental shrine, Where cloistered sisters, gathering round, Made night and morn the aisle resound With choristry divine The abbess died: and in her pride Her parting mandate said, They should her final rest provide The alabaster couch beside, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... An abbess rises in haste and in the dark, with intent to surprise an accused nun abed with her lover: thinking to put on her veil, she puts on instead the breeches of a priest that she has with her: the nun, espying her headgear, and doing ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... beautifully. You may go back to la Gonore.—To go on: Jacqueline will arrange with Madame Nourrisson to purchase her business in the Rue Sainte-Barbe; and if you manage well, child, you may make a fortune out of it," he said to Prudence. "An Abbess at your age! It is worthy of a Daughter of France," he ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... These convents were at once a prison, a hospital, a sanitarium, a workshop, a school and a religious retreat. The day was divided up into periods for devotion, work and recreation, and the discipline was on a sliding scale matching the mood of the Abbess in charge, all modified by the prevailing spirit of the inmates. But the thought that life was good was rife, and this thought got over every convent-wall, stole through the garden-walks, crept softly in at every grated window, and filled each ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... of Boulogne, and praying that an order might be issued under the Privy Seal for the restoration of the said book. With much formality the petition was granted. But we might go back several hundred years prior to either of these dates, for the Abbess Eadburga not only transcribed books herself and kept several scholars for a similar purpose, but fed the bibliomaniacal zeal of Boniface, the Saxon missionary, by presenting him with a number ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... religious vestment, but appeared in the fashionable dress of the day. They received their friends in the convent, and could leave it themselves to reenter the secular life, and to marry if they pleased. Such a chapter was that of Remiremont in Lorraine, whose abbess was a princess of the Holy Roman Empire, by virtue of her office. Her crook was of gold. Six horses were harnessed to her carriage. Her dominion extended over two hundred villages, whose inhabitants paid her both feudal dues and ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... father of Valgerd, the mother of Herra Erlend the Stout, the father of Herra Hauk the Lawman. Another daughter of Flosi was Thordis, the mother of Fru Ingigerd the Mighty. Her daughter was Fru Hallbera, Abbess of Reyniness at Stad. Many other great people in Iceland are descended from Karlsefni and Thurid, who are not mentioned here. God be with ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... dissimulation, together with advancing age, had given the queen-mother that well-known abbess face, with its haughty and macerated mask, expressionless yet full of depth, inscrutable yet vigilant, remarked by all who have studied her portrait, the courtiers now observed some clouds on her icy countenance. No sovereign was ever so imposing as this woman from the day when she succeeded ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... year 967, Eadgar the Peaceable, King of the English, placed nuns in the monastery which his grandfather, Eadward the Elder, King of the English, had built, and appointed St. Meriwenna abbess over them. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... at Wherwell, she entered the Abbey, and albeit she took the veil herself she was not under the same strict rule as her sister nuns. The Abbess herself retired to Winchester and ruled the convent from that city, while Elfrida had the liberty she desired, to live and do as she liked in her own rooms and attend prayers and meals only when inclined to do so. There, as always, since Edward's death, her life was a ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... being drawn around them. In the autumn of 1607 the tempest broke upon their heads. Virginia was removed from Monza to the convent called Del Bocchetto at Milan; and on November 27 the depositions of the abbess, prioress, and other members of S. Margherita were taken regarding Osio's intrigues, the assassination of Soncini, and the disappearance ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... dais sat the stately Abbess Addula, daughter of King Dagobert, looking a princess indeed, in her purple tunic, with the hood and cuffs of her long white robe trimmed with ermine, and a snowy veil resting like a crown on her silver ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... take my charge to the abbess of her own order at Glastonbury, where they would be tended in all honour as here with herself, and she gave me a letter also to the abbess to tell her what was needed and why they came, and then she gave ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... lantern cross, of mediaeval date, in the form of an octagonal shaft. Under four niches at the summit are sculptured representations of: God the Father with the Dove bearing a crucifix; an Abbot; an Abbess; and a King and Queen. The height of the cross is 5 feet 2 inches, the breadth of the head being 1 foot ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... "gentle Mortimer" were of no avail, was made to disgorge much of the wealth she had acquired during her supremacy, and was put on an allowance. The rest of her life, a period of nearly thirty years, she spent in retirement. Before her death(459) she gave the sum of forty shillings to the Abbess and Minoresses of Aldgate of the Order of St. Clare, for the purpose of purchasing for themselves two pittances or doles on the anniversaries of the decease of her husband the late king and of Sir John de Eltham his son.(460) The removal of Mortimer corresponded very closely with the king's ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... embroideress, Christine, Prioress of Margate, who lived in the middle of the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century several names occur. Adam de Bazinge made, in 1241, by order of Henry III. of England, a cope for the Bishop of Hereford. Cunegonde, Abbess of Goss, in Styria, accomplished numerous important works in that period. Also, Henry III. employed Jean de Sumercote to make jewelled robes ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... while at Tordesillas had established his headquarters in the buildings outside the convent of Saint-Claire, and the abbess of this convent was presented to his Majesty. She was then more than sixty-five years old, and from the age of ten years back never left this place. Her intelligent and refined conversation made a most agreeable impression ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to religious matters, and gave great alms to the poor and gifts to churches. He also founded two monasteries; one was for nuns, at Shaftesbury in Dorsetshire, of which he made his own daughter, Aethelgifu, abbess. The other was for monks at Athelney; you can easily see why he should build it there. He also sent several embassies to Rome, where he got Pope Marinus to grant certain privileges to the English School at Rome; the Pope also sent him what was thought to be a piece of the wood of the True ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Her only longing was to do good and to make other people happy, and to grow good and wise herself, so that she could do this all the better. So she studied and studied, worked and worked; and she became a holy woman, an Abbess. And while she was still very young and beautiful, she was given charge of a whole convent of nuns and school-girls not much younger than herself, because she was so much wiser and better than any one else ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... marshes where he had fled for refuge when the Danes overran his country. He also founded a number of other monasteries and abbeys, among them the abbey of Shaftesbury, making his daughter, Ethelgeda, the abbess. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... before all things"—the prelate paused, and gathering up new energy, added in unfaltering accents, "I charge thee here, Sweyn the outlaw, that, moved by the fiend, thou didst bear off from God's house and violate a daughter of the Church—Algive, Abbess of Leominster!" ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... morning to the town-reeve, who was his aldorman, and told him of the gift he had received. And the reeve soon led him to the abbess, and made that known to her and told her. Then bade she assemble all the very learned men, and the learners, and bade him tell the dream in their presence, and sing the song, so that by the judgment of them all it might ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Abbey of Elstow without delay, and there dwell at her own cost till further order: "and from the hour of your entering you shall not come forth, nor make any assembly of people without our special leave." She was commanded to write and say whether she intended to obey! The Abbess of Elstow was at the same time ordered to give convenient lodging to her in the Abbey, but not to suffer her to go forth nor make gatherings of persons. (Close Roll, 19 Edward the Second.) Nothing further is known of her except that she was alive ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... not be the objects of temptation to the lawless ravisher. The nuns of a convent in France, fearing they should be violated by a ruffian army, which had taken by storm the town in which their convent was situated, at the recommendation of their abbess, mutually agreed to cut off all their noses, that they might save their chastity by becoming objects of disgust instead of desire. Were we to descend to particulars, we could give innumerable instances ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Augustinian^; Gilbertine; Austin Friars^, Black Friars, White Friars, Gray Friars, Crossed Friars, Crutched Friars; Bonhomme [Fr.], Carthusian, Benedictine^, Cistercian, Trappist, Cluniac, Premonstatensian, Maturine; Templar, Hospitaler; Bernardine^, Lorettine, pillarist^, stylite^. abbess, prioress, canoness^; religieuse [Fr.], nun, novice, postulant. [Under the Jewish dispensation] prophet, priest, high priest, Levite; Rabbi, Rabbin, Rebbe; scribe. [Mohammedan etc.] mullah, muezzin, ayatollah; ulema, imaum^, imam, sheik; sufi; kahin^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... about a week at the Castle, one afternoon she and Doucebelle were working alone in the wardrobe. The Countess and Margaret were away for the day, on a visit to the Abbess of Thetford; Eva and Marie were out on the leads; Hawise was busy in her own apartments. Belasez had been unusually silent that morning. She worked on in a hurried, nervous way, never speaking nor looking up, and a lovely arabesque ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... convent and lived as its abbess, and the great church of Santa Chiara is built on the site of this convent. She was born in Assisi in 1194, and died in 1253, surviving Francis by twenty-seven years. Her father was the Count Favorini ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Trautbach, hath already demanded to espouse the poor babe; he—a blood-stained, dicing, drunken rover, with whom I would not trust a dog that I loved! Yet my death would place her at the disposal of his father, who would give her at once to him. Nay, even his aunt, the abbess, will believe nothing against him, and hath even striven with me to have her betrothed at once. On the barest rumour of my death will they wed the poor little thing, and then woe to her, and woe to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... among the collectors, though he could carry but a modest supply of books through the German forests and the marshes of Friesland. As a missionary he found it useful to display a finely-painted volume. Writing to the Abbess Eadburga for a Missal, he asked that the parchment might be gay with colours,—'even as a glittering lamp and an illumination for the hearts of the Gentiles.' 'I entreat you,' he writes again, 'to send me St. Peters Epistle in letters of gold.' He begged all his friends to send him books ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... her in St. Ebba's fold,' returned the Prior. 'The Abbess herself could not yield her; and, as you have so often been told, my young Lord, your absence is a far greater protection to your sister than your presence. Moreover, were the Tutor's mind at rest, there would be far better ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... declared, in tense tones. "When Jim went to bed, everything was perfectly quiet. And then, when he woke up, all of a sudden, there beside him was a yawning abbess!" ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... history in the XIVth Century. They are followed by a concise history of the German marine by Bartholdy, twelve letters by John Voigt on the manners and social life of the princes at the German Diets, a picture from the XVIth Century, the sequel of a memoir by Guhrauer on Elizabeth, Abbess of Herford, a friend of William Penn, and a correspondent of Malebranche, Leibnitz ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... litter, beside which rode two or three veiled and hooded ladies and a priest. Save the captain of the guards, there was no thane with the party, and but a few pack horses followed them, and I thought it would be some abbess, perhaps, ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Rudolph Fleming, a Norman knight and a creature of the prince. The king has also, I hear, promised to him the hand of the young Lady Margaret, when she shall become of marriageable age. At present she is placed in a convent in Worcester. The abbess is, I believe, a friend of the late earl, and the girl had been with her for some time previously. Indeed she went there, I think, when her father left England. This lady was ordered to give up ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... wretched abbess is described as an alchemist as well as a sorceress, and she descends to the depths of the lowest and most revolting witchcraft. She practises shape-shifting and similar arts. She has power over natural forces, and knows the past, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... political powers unknown to women elsewhere. Before the Conquest, abbesses sat in councils of the Church and signed its decrees; while kings were even dependent upon their consent in granting certain charters. The synod of Whitby, in the ninth century, was held in the convent of the Abbess Hilda, she herself presiding over its deliberations. The famous prophetess of Kent at one period communicated the orders of Heaven to the Pope himself. Ladies of birth and quality sat in council with the Saxon Witas—i.e., wise men—taking part in the Witenagemot, the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... as buying or selling land—by any legal instrument is, "The Prior and Convent of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Norwich;" "the Abbot and Convent of the Monastery of St. Peter's, Westminster;" "the Abbess and Convent of the Monastery of St. Mary and St. Bernard at Lacock," ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... Norway that any man then living could remember; and also he behaved the best towards us Icelanders of any chief since King Eystein the Elder's death. Gregorius's body was carried to Hofund, and interred at Gimsey Isle, in a nunnery which is there, of which Gregorius's sister, Baugeid, was then the abbess. ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... will be plain with you. Mental suffering and trial supply, in some natures, the place of years, and I will be as plain with you as if I were a Lady Abbess. No. The suggestion is not appropriate to our Dora. Our dearest Dora is a favourite child of nature. She is a thing of light, and airiness, and joy. I am free to confess that if it could be done, it might be well, but—' And Miss Mills shook ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... on the left of the altar, was large, and well lighted from behind, so that even when the curtains were drawn it was possible to see the whole chapter drawn up in file in their oaken stalls surmounted at the end by a higher stall in which the abbess sat. A lighted taper stood in the middle of the hall, and before it a nun prayed day and night, a cord round her neck, to expiate the insults offered to Jesus under ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... November, the Maid was at Moulins in Bourbonnais.[1862] What was she doing there? No one knows. There was at that time in the town an abbess very holy and very greatly venerated. Her name was Colette Boilet. She had won the highest praise and incurred the grossest insults by attempting to reform the order of Saint Clare. Colette lived in the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... said he, "in the hands of the abbess a sum to be entirely at Lucilla's control, whether she stay in the convent or not, and which will always secure to her an independence. But I confess I should like now, once more to visit the convent, and learn on what fate ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her inevitable ruin, at last submitted, leaving me sufficient in jewels to satisfy for all that could happen, which were the value of a hundred thousand crowns. She is fled to Brussels, to a nunnery of Augustines, where the Lady Abbess is her aunt, and where for a little time she is secure, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Abbess of Fontevrault came to see him. The King's mother Eleanor, her guest, had been sent for in a hurry. The king had been hurt. A serf of Achard of Chalus had ploughed up a golden relic, an emperor with his family seated round a golden table. Ademar of Limoges had seized it. Richard demanded the ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... thinking of that; but if I could, say with Bull and Macwitty, suddenly attack him like three robbers, we might carry off something that would serve as a sort of passport to the lady abbess. For instance, he had a tremendously big ring on. I noticed it as he held up his hands, as if on purpose ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... Felicia, left Rochester in June for Romsey Abbey, where she solemnly assumed the veil of a black nun. She was now plain Sister Margaret, and in due course of time and promotion, she would become Mother Margaret, and then, perhaps, Prioress and Abbess. And then—her soul would ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... seamen laugh'd to see Their gallant ship so lustily Furrow the green sea-foam. Much joy'd they in their honor'd freight; For, on the deck, in chair of state, The Abbess of Saint Hilda placed, With five fair ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... various distressing sensations by which it was accompanied, had made incapable of travelling farther with safety to her health. The Count consigned her, in a state of great exhaustion, to the care of the Abbess of the Cistercian convent in Charleroi, a noble lady, to whom both the families of Crevecoeur and Croye were related, and in whose prudence and kindness he could ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... swiftness of movement, prompted by an intense desire, the dead woman was carried into the convent parlour, passed through the window, and lowered from the walls before the Abbess, followed by the nuns, returned to take up Sister Theresa's body. The sister left in charge had imprudently left her post; there were secrets that she longed to know; and so busy was she ransacking the inner room, that she heard nothing, and was ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... hours, one or two thousand rhymed lines, some of which he repeated in our hearing afterwards, and which were full of point and poetry. We cannot see that Caedmon's lines betray any weird inspiration; but when rehearsed the next day to the Abbess Hilda, to whom the town-bailiff of Whitby conducted him, she and a circle of learned men pronounced that he had received the gift of song direct from heaven! They, after one or two other trials of his powers, persuaded him to become a monk in the house of the Abbess, who ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... an unexpected mission to Florence, (for a loan of arms and money,) which thus gave her a safe and honoured escort.—Passively she submitted to what she herself deemed a relief; and it was agreed that she should for a while be the guest of a relation of Nina's, who was the abbess of one of the wealthiest of the Florentine convents: the idea of monastic seclusion was welcome to the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Cromwell, 'mine own foster-sister had the veil there; mine own mother's sister was there the abbess.' She stretched out a hand. 'Sir, they dwelled there simply and godly, withdrawn from the world; succouring the poor; weaving of fine linens, for much flax grew upon those lands by there; and praying God and the saints that ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... "of the saintly Margherita of thine house, the Abbess of San Lazzaro; why left she ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... convent where Madame Bonacieux was confined; it was at Bethune, and thither the musketeers hastened. Unfortunately, Milady reached Bethune first. She had come there to await the cardinal's orders, and having ingratiated herself with the abbess, learnt that D'Artagnan was on his way with an order from the queen to take Madame Bonacieux to Paris. Milady immediately dispatched a messenger to the cardinal, and at the very moment when the musketeers were at the front ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... came up to him and claimed him as her lunatic husband who had escaped from his keepers, and the men she brought with her were going to lay violent hands on Antipholus and Dromio; but they ran into the convent, and Antipholus begged the abbess to give him ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... having been started concerning Easter, the tonsure, and other ecclesiastical matters, it was agreed that a synod should be held in the monastery of Streaneshalch, which signifies the bay of the lighthouse, where the Abbess Hilda, a woman devoted to God, presided; and that there the controversy should be decided. The kings, both father and son, came hither. Bishop Colman, with his Scottish clerks, and Agilbert,(259) ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Among the non-ecclesiastical authors banned were Machiavelli, Guicciardini and Boccaccio. It is noteworthy that the Decameron was expurgated not chiefly for its indecency but for its satire of ecclesiastics. Thus, a tale of the seduction of an abbess is rendered acceptable by changing the abbess into a countess; the story of how a priest led a woman astray by impersonating the angel Gabriel is merely changed by making the priest a layman masquerading ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... and so she went to Almesbury, and made herself a nun, and ware white clothes and black, and took great penance as ever did sinful lady, and lived in fasting, prayers, and alms-deeds. And there she was abbess and ruler of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... behaviour in conventual establishments before. That hammer, which he always carries in action, has smashed many sacred images in religious houses. Pounds and pounds of convent plate is he known to have melted, the sacrilegious plunderer! No wonder the Abbess-Princess of St. Mary's, a lady of violent prejudices, free language, and noble birth, has a dislike to the lowborn heretic who lords it in her convent, and tells Carpezan a bit of her mind, as the phrase is. This scene, in which the lady gets somewhat better of the Colonel, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heart-breaking story of a poor little maiden in the middle ages, whom her father and brother shut up in a convent because she is in love with the right person and will not marry the wrong one—a common thing in all ages. The cruel abbess and wicked nuns, by the order of Ildegonda's family, try to force her to take the veil; but she, supported by her own repugnance to the cloister, and, by the secret counsels of one of the sisters, with whom force had succeeded, resists persuasion, reproach, starvation, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... husband and then because she did? Is her sudden harsh turn against her explicable not as personal inconsistency or womanly prejudice, but as due to a gleam of insight? What clew to the case does Adriana's meekness afford? Or else of the relationship of the Abbess to the twins? Why does she so peremptorily keep the man from his wife? Is not this conduct devised to mystify the ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... homosexual attractions of women. Diderot's famous novel, La Religieuse, which, when first published, was thought to have been actually written by a nun, deals with the torture to which a nun was put by the perverse lubricity of her abbess, for whom, it is said, Diderot found a model in the Abbess of Chelles, a daughter of the Regent and thus a member of a family which for several generations showed a marked tendency to inversion. Diderot's narrative has been described as a faithful description of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... he was absent, when this sad event took place: for you must know, my lord, that when after the departure of her parents he went to visit his betrothed at the convent-grate, the sour-faced old abbess would'nt suffer him to see the lady Josepha. Nay, what is the strangest circumstance of all, she produced a letter from the marchioness commanding positively, that during her absence no person whatever should have access to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... Archbishopric of Canterbury. Between Godwine and the Normans there was no goodwill, and though Godwine was himself of fair repute, his eldest son, Swegen, a young man of brutal nature, alienated the goodwill of his countrymen by seducing the Abbess of Leominster, and by murdering his cousin Beorn. Godwine, in his blind family affection, clung to his wicked son and insisted on his being ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... night on which he proposed to attempt to storm the nunnery of Saint Bride, and carry me from hence to freedom and the greenwood, of which Wallace was generally called the king. In an evil hour—an hour I think of infatuation and witchery—I suffered the abbess to wheedle the secret out of me, which I might have been sensible would appear more horribly flagitious to her than to any other woman that breathed; but I had not taken the vows, and I thought Wallace and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... tender affiliation. If they had wed, they would have caught each other's despondency, and died, like a pair of sick ravens, within a fortnight. What had become of her? Had she gone into a nunnery? He would make her abbess, if ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... between Mlle. de Cambray de Brestalou and M. Victor de Marmont, own nephew to Marshal the duc de Raguse; Madame la prefete, resplendent in the latest fashion from Paris, the Duc and Duchesse d'Embrun, cousins of the bride, the Vicomte de Genevois and his mother, who was Abbess of Pont Haut and godmother by proxy to Crystal de Cambray; whilst General Marchand, in command of the troops of the district, fresh from the Council of War which he had hastily convened, was trying to hide behind a debonnaire ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... kingdom lost, and then, fleeing from the cruelty of her husband, the bloodstained Chlotaire, took the veil in Poitiers and founded a convent, of which she made Agnes, a noble Franconian lady, the abbess. When Fortunatus visited the place, these ladies became his devoted friends, and he remained there as a priest until the death of Radegunde. His poems to them, which were often letters and notes written off-hand, are full ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... lip in charming confusion; while an abbess, with face serene in the frame of her snowy coif, caught up the ball ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Abbess cried, 'The veil and vow deriding That rescued thee, in baby days, From insolence of Norman gaze, In pure and holy hiding. —O royal child of South and North, Malcolm and Margaret, The promised bride of Heaven art thou, And Heaven ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... As for the Lady Abbess [a nickname for their only daughter], there shall be a conference held on Carl's affair to-night, viz., if things are to continue as ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... before appeared, returned in the evening to offer consolation to Emily, and brought a kind message from the lady abbess, inviting her to the convent. Emily, though she did not accept the offer, returned an answer expressive of her gratitude. The holy conversation of the friar, whose mild benevolence of manners bore some resemblance to those of St. Aubert, soothed ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... which sect there were; indeed, but few in the archiepiscopal city. Cardinal Granvelle's house was rifled. The pauper funds deposited in the convents were not respected. The beds were taken from beneath sick and dying women, whether lady abbess or hospital patient, that the sacking might be torn to pieces ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... regardless of all her lover's fears, To the Urs'line convent hastens, and long the Abbess hears, "O Blanch, my child, repent ye of the courtly life ye lead." Blanch look'd on a rose-bud and little seem'd to heed. She look'd on the rose-bud, she look'd round, and thought On all her heart had whisper'd, and all the Nun had taught. "I am worshipp'd by lovers, and brightly shines ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... mounted his horse, who carried him far away to a mountain which was hollow, for in its side was a great underground cavern. In the cavern sat an old woman spinning. This was the cloister of the nuns, and the old woman was the Abbess. They all spent their time in spinning, and that is why the convent has this name. All round the walls of the cavern there were beds cut out of the solid rock, upon which the nuns slept, and in the middle a light was burning. It was the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... "I thank the abbess," he wrote; "but we are used to choose for our gifts the most precious thing we have—not the most worthless. I will not lighten my house from a heavy burden, by offering it ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... this land, and never creature could make her merry; but lived in fasting, prayers, and alms-deeds, that all manner of people marvelled how virtuously she was changed. Now leave we Queen Guenever in Almesbury, a nun in white clothes and black, and there she was Abbess and ruler as reason would; and turn we from her, and speak we ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... to his own domain. A bishop, an abbe, a chapter of the clergy, an abbess, each has one like a lay seignior; for, in former times, the monastery and the church were small governments like the county and the duchy.—Intact on the other bank of the Rhine, almost ruined in France, the feudal structure everywhere discloses ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the "b" and "l" are so joined that the combined sound differs from the simple "l" of "less." "Less" does not rhyme with "best" because the "t" makes the concluding consonant sounds unlike. Nor does it rhyme with "abbess" because the accent in this word ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... time it had deepened to beet-root; and when Bargrave, the leech, at last sliced it off, the gangrene was too confirmed to admit of remedy. Dame Martin thought it high time to send for Miss Margaret, who, ever since her mother's death, had been living with her maternal aunt, the abbess, in the Ursuline convent at Greenwich. The young lady came, and with her came one Master Ingoldsby, her cousin-german by the mother's side; but the Baron was too far gone in the dead-thraw to recognize either. He died as he lived, unconquered and unconquerable. ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... attractiveness in addition to physical beauty. Her water-colour sketches were on her uncle's walls: the beautiful in nature claimed and absorbed her. She dressed with a pretty rigour, a lovely simplicity, picturesque of the nunnery. She looked indeed a high-born young lady-abbess. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that they were severe to agony at times—they were resolutely shut within her chamber door; and when she came out in the early morning, her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those impassive cheeks, she looked like a lady abbess—as cold, as unyielding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... told in this book were very different from each other in many ways. The child abbess, Mere Angelique, ruling her convent, and at war with naughty abbesses who hated being earnest, does not at once remind us of Hannibal. The great Montrose, with his poems and his scented love-locks, his devotion to his cause, his chivalry, his death, to which he went gaily ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... fortunes are not equal to their birth, was thinking to remove him from his studies, after having allowed him a competent maintenance for a year or two. He communicated these his thoughts to Magdalen. Jasso, his daughter, abbess of the convent of St Clare de Gandia, famous for the austerity of its rules, and established by some holy Frenchwomen of that order, whom the calamities of war had forced to forsake their native country, and to seek a sanctuary ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... of Drontheim, Alone in her chamber Knelt Astrid the Abbess, At midnight, adoring, Beseeching, entreating The Virgin ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... wall the arms of the Dymokes and the Hotchkin family. The reading desk was presented by the writer in memory of his father, the Rev. E. Walter. As a support to the Credence-table in the chancel is a stone with an effigy of a lady abbess of Stixwould Priory. This, with the stone for the church, was given by the late Mr. Christopher Turnor, owner of the Stixwould Estate, from the Priory ruins, and, as from the rude character of the carving it is evidently of very early date, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... by other weapons. In the convent of Drontheim, Astrid, the abbess, hears a voice in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... and mutterings. There was something morbid, something of a nun's exaltation, in my wife's expression and attitude; and her low-pitched, half-dark rooms with their old-fashioned furniture, with her birds asleep in their cages, and with a smell of geranium, reminded me of the rooms of some abbess ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... The abbess died; and in her pride Her parting mandate said They should her final rest provide, The alabaster couch beside, Where slept the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the daughter of the Duc de Verneuil,—but his natural daughter. My mother, a Demoiselle de Casteran, who became a nun to escape the reproaches of her family, expiated her fault by fifteen years of sorrow, and died at Seez, where she was abbess. On her death-bed she implored, for the first time and only for me, the help of the man who had betrayed her, for she knew she was leaving me without friends, without fortune, without a future. The duke accepted the charge, and took me from ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... forming up his men outside the gate, forbade their leaving their ranks. On Herrera's entrance, the terrified nuns thought that the guerillas were returning, and with cries of terror fled in all directions. He succeeded in calming their fears, and enquired for the abbess, although nearly certain that she it was to whose death he had been witness. None could tell him aught concerning her; nor was he able, either by threats or entreaties, to obtain any information with respect to Rita. Several of the nuns knew that she and her attendant had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... occupied it as a palace, and to have been buried there." "The two picturesque towers" (quoting Bevan again), "which form so conspicuous a land and sea mark, are called 'The Sisters,' and are in reality modern-built by the Trinity Board in place of two erected traditionally by an Abbess of Faversham, who was wrecked here with her sister on their way to Broadstairs." The sea is fast encroaching on the land here, notwithstanding the erection of ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... contentment with thy lot, has sent hither a holy friar, whom she deems more soothing in his counsels than our brother Tomas, whose ardent zeal often terrifies those whom his honest spirit only desires to purify and guide. I will leave him with thee. May the saints bless his ministry!" So saying the abbess retired from the threshold, making way for a form in the garb of a monk, with the hood drawn over the face. The monk bowed his head meekly, advanced into the cell, closed the door, and seated himself, on a stool—which, save the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... rules for the persons who wished to serve God, and to live apart from the world. They lived in buildings named monasteries, or convents; the men, who were called monks, under the rule of an abbot, the women, nuns, under an abbess. They took a vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience; lived and worked as hard as possible, and spent much time in prayer and doing good, teaching the young, giving medicine to the sick, and feeding the poor. They would ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... woman to dream that she sees an abbess, denotes that she will be compelled to perform distasteful tasks, and will submit to authority ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... Moliere's library, but the books, except a little Elzevir, have disappeared. {7} Madame de Maintenon was fond of bindings. Mr. Toovey possesses a copy of a devotional work in red morocco, tooled and gilt, which she presented to a friendly abbess. The books at Saint-Cyr were stamped with a crowned cross, besprent with fleurs-de-lys. The books of the later collectors—Longepierre, the translator of Bion and Moschus; D'Hoym the diplomatist; McCarthy, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... and take a farmer's blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... his three sons who survived him, five daughters, to wit, (1.) Cicely, a nun in the monastery of Feschamp, afterwards abbess in the Holy Trinity at Caen, where she died in 1127. (2.) Constantia, married to Alan Fergent, Earl of Britany. She died without issue. (3.) Alice, contracted to Harold. (4.) Adela, married to Stephen, Earl of Blois, by whom she had four sons, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... communicate to me a particular night on which he proposed to attempt to storm the nunnery of Saint Bride, and carry me from hence to freedom and the greenwood, of which Wallace was generally called the king. In an evil hour—an hour I think of infatuation and witchery—I suffered the abbess to wheedle the secret out of me, which I might have been sensible would appear more horribly flagitious to her than to any other woman that breathed; but I had not taken the vows, and I thought Wallace and Fleming had ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... My lord! you scarce know half his grace's goodness. 290 The wealthy heiress, high-born fair Sarolta, Bred in the convent of our noble ladies, Her relative, the venerable abbess, Hath, at his grace's urgence, wooed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... reformers. The Gordian knot was referred to him, and with characteristic abruptness he promised to cut it at once. He came alone to the gates of the convent, presented no credentials from pope or cardinal, and asked an interview with the abbess. He spoke of the holiness of an austere life, the reward of those that "follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth," the merit of obedience, the need of reform, the great work that his order was doing for God, and the call for more laborers in the field: he proposed to the nuns to be his helpers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... to play at this game for ever; she was at length discovered in a nunnery, and her retreat cut off. The viceroy made several representations to the superior to deliver her up, but without effect. The abbess, supported by the archbishop of the diocese, constantly refused. The public curiosity was in consequence so much excited at the additional importance thus thrust upon the criminal, that thousands of persons visited the nunnery in order to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... very unjust to speak ill of Lady Purbeck for not having lived in a convent "according to that strictness as was expected," because she left it. But this was done in the following letter:[97] "The Lady Purbeck is come forth of the English Nunnerie. For, the Lady Abbess being from home, somebody forgott to provide the Lady Purbeck her dinner, and to leave the roome open where she used to dine at night, expostulating with the Abbess, they agreed to part fairely, which the Abbess was the more willing unto in regard the Lady Purbeck did not live according to that ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... history Japanese Buddhism welcomed womanhood to its fraternity and order,[56] yet the Japanese ama, bikuni, or nun, never became a sister of mercy, or reached, even within a measurable distance, the dignity of the Christian lady in the nunnery. In European history the abbess is a notable figure. She is hardly heard of beyond the Japanese nunnery, even by the ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... of an unexpected mission to Florence, (for a loan of arms and money,) which thus gave her a safe and honoured escort.—Passively she submitted to what she herself deemed a relief; and it was agreed that she should for a while be the guest of a relation of Nina's, who was the abbess of one of the wealthiest of the Florentine convents: the idea of monastic seclusion was welcome to the bruised ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... round the abbess. They had been accustomed to look up to her as all-powerful, and they now implored her protection. The mother abbess looked with a rueful eye upon the treasures of beauty and vestal virtue exposed to such imminent peril. Alas! how was she to protect them from the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... because he pandered to the King's vanity or to his vices. No one was a better judge of conduct in the case of others, or a sterner champion of moral probity, when it did not conflict with his own desires or conscience. In 1528 Anne Boleyn and her friends were anxious to make a relative abbess of Wilton.[686] But she had been notoriously unchaste. "Wherefore," wrote Henry to Anne herself, "I would not, for all the gold in the world, cloak your conscience nor mine to make her ruler of a house which is of so ungodly demeanour; nor I trust you would ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... rifle the ice-box. Babbitt gloated, "If your mother caught us at this, we'd certainly get our come-uppance!" and Eunice became maternal, scrambled a terrifying number of eggs for them, kissed Babbitt on the ear, and in the voice of a brooding abbess marveled, "It beats the devil why feminists like me still ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... 735), 'what could his sister Artemis have been, from the very beginning, if not some goddess connected with the moon?' Very likely; quis negavit? Then our author, like myself (loc. cit.), dilates on Artemis as 'sister of Apollo.' 'Her chapels,' I say, 'are in the wild wood; she is the abbess of the forest nymphs,' 'chaste and fair, the maiden of the precise life.' How odd! The classical scholar and I both say the same things; and I add a sonnet to Artemis in this aspect, rendered by me from the Hippolytus of Euripides. Could a classical scholar do more? Our author ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... order: "and from the hour of your entering you shall not come forth, nor make any assembly of people without our special leave." She was commanded to write and say whether she intended to obey! The Abbess of Elstow was at the same time ordered to give convenient lodging to her in the Abbey, but not to suffer her to go forth nor make gatherings of persons. (Close Roll, 19 Edward the Second.) Nothing further is known of her except that ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... truth, madam, I stole it out of Hippolita's pocket, to take the print of it in wax; for I'll suppose you'll give my master leave to wait on you in the nunnery-garden, after your abbess ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... third oldest borough in England. Egbert, the Wessex King, had his palace here, and in the great contest with Mercia defeated Beornwulf in 821 at Ellendune. A religious house existed here in very early times. In the reign of Edward I it was recorded that Osborn de Giffard, a relative of the abbess, carried off two of the nuns, and was sentenced for that offence to be stripped naked and to be whipped in the churches of Wilton and Shaftesbury, and as an additional punishment to serve three years in Palestine. In the time of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn wished to give the post of abbess ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... were, however, agreeably disappointed in the performance, which was the "Segunda Dama Duende," nearly a translation from the "Domino Noir," and very amusing; full of excellent coups-de-theatre. Donna Inocencia in her various characters, as domino, servant-girl, abbess, etc., was very handsome, and acted with great spirit. Moreover, she and her sister, with two Spaniards, danced the Jota Aragonesa in perfection, so that we spent a pleasant evening, upon the whole, within the precincts of the city of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... (abbess) El actor (actor) La actriz (actress) El baron (baron) La baronesa (baroness) El canonigo (canon) La canonesa (canoness) El cantor (singer) La cantatriz (singer) El conde (count) La condesa (countess) El diacono (deacon) La diaconisa (deaconess) El duque (duke) La duquesa (duchess) El elector ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... its name. Then did that bell, which still rings out to-day, Bid all the country rise, or eat, or pray. Before that convent shrine, the haughty knight Passed the lone vigil of his perilous fight; For humbler cottage strife or village brawl, The Abbess listened, prayed, and settled all. Young hearts that came, weighed down by love or wrong, Left her kind presence comforted and strong. Each passing pilgrim, and each beggar's right Was food, and rest, and shelter for the night. But, ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... be plain with you. Mental suffering and trial supply, in some natures, the place of years, and I will be as plain with you as if I were a Lady Abbess. No. The suggestion is not appropriate to our Dora. Our dearest Dora is a favourite child of nature. She is a thing of light, and airiness, and joy. I am free to confess that if it could be done, it might be well, but—' And ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the Maid was at Moulins in Bourbonnais.[1862] What was she doing there? No one knows. There was at that time in the town an abbess very holy and very greatly venerated. Her name was Colette Boilet. She had won the highest praise and incurred the grossest insults by attempting to reform the order of Saint Clare. Colette lived in ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... the ten days, from the Ascension to Whitsuntide, at an abbey four leagues from Paris, the abbess of which had a particular friendship for me. Here my union with God seemed to be deeper and more continued, becoming always simple, at the same time ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... For be it known to the amorous beau, these things are not permitted to pollute the sanctity of the sainted Chelts; but in a snug convent, situate a full mile and a half from Cheltenham, at the extremity 267of a lane where four roads meet, and under the Cleigh Hills, the lady abbess and the fair sisters of Cytherea perform their midnight mysteries, secure from magisterial interference, or the rude hand of any pious parochial poacher. Start not, gentle reader; I shall not draw aside the curtain of delicacy, or expose "the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the other hand against the delivery of its rich church-ornaments, which were likewise demanded by the Council and at length taken. Their value went to cover a part of the expenses of the Canton, which were greatly increased by the commotions of the age. At the same time Catherine von Zimmern, abbess of Frauminster, gave up to the burgomaster and councils, under the assurance that she and the sisters would receive an adequate support, the convent along with its rights and revenues. The Chapter of Canons at ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... love them! Even at Bellaise, when first we came there, we used to sing them, but the Mother Abbess went out visiting, and when she came back she said they were heretical. And Soeur Monique would not let me say the texts he taught me, but I WOULD not forget them. I say ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the addition of ess, ix, or ine, or the changing of masculines to feminines so terminating: as, heir, heiress; prophet, prophetess; abbot, abbess; governor, governess; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that led to the principal entrance of the castle stood a tall, graceful lady, with her women behind her. She was robed in black, and the headdress of her snow-white hair gave her the appearance of a dignified abbess at her convent door. Her serene and placid face had undoubtedly once been beautiful; and age, which had left her form as straight and slender as one of her own forest pines, forgetting to place its customary burden upon ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... gate, forbade their leaving their ranks. On Herrera's entrance, the terrified nuns thought that the guerillas were returning, and with cries of terror fled in all directions. He succeeded in calming their fears, and enquired for the abbess, although nearly certain that she it was to whose death he had been witness. None could tell him aught concerning her; nor was he able, either by threats or entreaties, to obtain any information with respect to Rita. Several ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... would take no place, they left him to his own ways. At [5138]Berkley in Gloucestershire, there was in times past a nunnery (saith Gualterus Mapes, an old historiographer, that lived 400 years since), "of which there was a noble and a fair lady abbess: Godwin, that subtile Earl of Kent, travelling that way, (seeking not her but hers) leaves a nephew of his, a proper young gallant (as if he had been sick) with her, till he came back again, and gives the young man charge so long to counterfeit, till ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... back, and buried alive in the walls of a deep cell. In the mean time, Lord Marmion, being sent by Henry VIII. on an embassy to James IV. of Scotland, stopped at the hall of Sir Hugh de Heron, who sent a palmer as his guide. On his return, Lord Marmion commanded the abbess of St. Hilda to release the Lady Clare, and place her under the charge of her kinsman, Fitzclare of Tantallon Hall. Here she met the palmer, who was Ralph de Wilton, and as Lord Marmion was slain in the battle of Flodden Field, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... he, when Herrera paused, "of the convent you mention, and still more of its abbess. Carmen de Forcadell was long celebrated, both at Madrid and in her native Andalusia, for her beauty and intrigues. Her husband was assassinated by one of her lovers, as some said, and within three years of his death, repenting, it was believed, of her dissolute life, she took the veil. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... all her lovers' fears, To the Urseline Convent hastens, and long the Abbess hears: "O Blanch, my child, repent thee of the courtly life ye lead." Blanch looked on a rose-bud, and little seem'd to heed; She looked on the rose-bud, she looked round, and thought On all her heart had whisper'd, and all the Nun had taught. "I am worshipped ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... papal bull, dated in 1136, in favour of Heloise, giving her the rank and title of Abbess, accompanied by another giving to the Oratory of the Holy Trinity the rank and name of Monastery of the Paraclete, a novelty in Church tradition so extraordinary or so shocking that it still astounds churchmen. With this excessive ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... some circumstances render it probable that it was built by King Edgar. That it did not exist previously to the year 887, or 888, the time when the Nunnery at Shaftesbury was founded, is certain, from an inquisition taken in the fifty-fourth of Henry the Third; wherein the jurors returned, "that the Abbess and Nuns at Shaston (Shaftesbury) had without molestation, before the foundation of the Castle at Corfe, all wrecks within their manor of Kingston, in the Isle of Purbeck." Mr. Aubrey, in his Monumenta Britannica, observes, he was informed, "that mention was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... elsewhere. Before the Conquest, abbesses sat in councils of the Church and signed its decrees; while kings were even dependent upon their consent in granting certain charters. The synod of Whitby, in the ninth century, was held in the convent of the Abbess Hilda, she herself presiding over its deliberations. The famous prophetess of Kent at one period communicated the orders of Heaven to the Pope himself. Ladies of birth and quality sat in council with the Saxon Witas—i.e., wise men—taking part in the Witenagemot, the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... pointed out, has described the homosexual attractions of women. Diderot's famous novel, La Religieuse, which, when first published, was thought to have been actually written by a nun, deals with the torture to which a nun was put by the perverse lubricity of her abbess, for whom, it is said, Diderot found a model in the Abbess of Chelles, a daughter of the Regent and thus a member of a family which for several generations showed a marked tendency to inversion. Diderot's narrative has been described as a faithful description of the homosexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... maiden," he said. "I will send thee to a convent, where thou mayst live in peace." And calling to his side three trusty old knights, he bade them conduct Lorelei to the convent across the river, and charge the abbess to treat her with the greatest kindness. Having blessed the maid once more, he bade them go. On their way to the convent they must needs pass the rock since known as the Lorelei-berg, and the girl, who had maintained a pensive silence all the way, now observed that she would ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... pouring boiling oil over them. In one of Pitre's versions the robbers are hidden in sacks of charcoal, and the cunning daughter pierces the bags with a red-hot spit. In another, they are hidden in oil-skins, and sold to the abbess of a certain convent for oil. One of the nuns has some suspicion of the trick, and invites her companions to tap the skins with red-hot irons. Another Sicilian version (Gonz. No. 79, "The Story of the Twelve Robbers") contains the first part of the Arabian ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... Mortimer" were of no avail, was made to disgorge much of the wealth she had acquired during her supremacy, and was put on an allowance. The rest of her life, a period of nearly thirty years, she spent in retirement. Before her death(459) she gave the sum of forty shillings to the Abbess and Minoresses of Aldgate of the Order of St. Clare, for the purpose of purchasing for themselves two pittances or doles on the anniversaries of the decease of her husband the late king and of Sir John de Eltham his ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... head-dress the same, excepting a small veil of black crape that falls behind. They have a lower sort of serving Nuns, that wait on them as their chambermaids. They receive all visits of women, and play at ombre in their chambers, with permission of their abbess, which is very easy to be obtained. I never saw an old woman so good-natured; she is near fourscore, and yet shews very little sign of decay, being still lively and cheerful. She caressed me as if I had been her daughter, giving me some pretty things of her own work, and sweetmeats ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... Gaspar Trechsel fratres: 1538,"—the Trechsels being printers of German origin, who had long been established at Lyons. There is a verbose "Epistre" or Preface in French to the "moult reuerende Abbesse du religieux conuent S. Pierre de Lyon, Madame Iehanne de Touszele," otherwise the Abbess of Saint Pierre les Nonnains, a religious house containing many noble and wealthy ladies, and the words, "Salut d'un vray Zele," which conclude the dedicatory heading, are supposed to reveal indirectly the author of the "Epistre" itself, namely, ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... christen in function. And for it was in an ash y-found, She cleped it Frain in that stound. The name[56] of the ash is a frain, After the language of Bretayn; Forthy[57] Le Frain men clepeth this lay, More than ash, in each country. This Frain thriv'd from year to year; The abbess niece men ween'd it were. The abbess her gan teach, and beld.[58] By that she was twelve winter eld, In all England there was none A fairer maiden than she was one. And when she couthe ought of manhede,[59] She bade the abbesse her wisse[60] and rede, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... for a short time his pupil. Her monastery was famous for having educated five bishops, among them John of Beverley, and for giving birth, in Caedmon, to the father of English poetry. "Religious poetry, sung to the harp as it passed from hand to hand, must have flourished in the monastery of the abbess Hild, and the kernel of Bede's story concerning the birth of our earliest poet must be that the brethren and sisters on that bleak northern shore spoke to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.' "[1] of Melrose, an offshoot of Aidan's foundation, the sainted Cuthbert was an inmate. ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... bigots; perhaps the figure of the cock alluded to our Gallic neighbours. A cat in the habit of a nun, holding a platter in its paws to a mouse approaching to lick it; alluding to the allurements of the abbesses to draw young women into their convents; while sometimes I have seen a sow in an abbess's veil, mounted on stilts: the sex marked by the sow's dugs. A pope sometimes appears to be thrust by devils into a cauldron; and cardinals are seen roasting on spits! These ornaments must have been generally executed by the monks themselves; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... rays of blue, yellow, red, and green light which darted from them. This cross was suspended on a chain of black beads resembling a rosary, and giving to the black-robed figure the appearance of an abbess. The Spanish lace mantilla which she had thrown over her beautiful hair served as the veil, and made ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... till towards day, but had not slept above two hours before the peasant who had served him as a guide, and had also stayed at the inn, came into his room, and waked him abruptly, telling him the lady abbess desired to speak with him.—Natura was much vexed at this disturbance, and not sufficiently awaked to recollect himself, only cried peevishly, 'What have I to do with abbesses,' and ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... appeared, returned in the evening to offer consolation to Emily, and brought a kind message from the lady abbess, inviting her to the convent. Emily, though she did not accept the offer, returned an answer expressive of her gratitude. The holy conversation of the friar, whose mild benevolence of manners bore some resemblance to those of St. Aubert, soothed the violence of her grief, and lifted ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... a convent and lived as its abbess, and the great church of Santa Chiara is built on the site of this convent. She was born in Assisi in 1194, and died in 1253, surviving Francis by twenty-seven years. Her father was the Count Favorini Scifi, and he had destined his daughter—who had great beauty—to a rich and ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... queen, she stood on the threshold before I knew her, for the nuns of the place, taught by Elfric, had prayed her to take their dress for the journey, and she had done so, as also had her two maidens. They were as abbess and sisters therefore, and I thought that one trouble was over—that is if our queen would but take the part of a nun as well as the dress, and be guided ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... the year 967, Eadgar the Peaceable, King of the English, placed nuns in the monastery which his grandfather, Eadward the Elder, King of the English, had built, and appointed St. Meriwenna abbess over them. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... was divorced in 1621, and who subsequently became the wife of Claude de Lorraine, Duc de Chevreuse. The Duc de Montbazon had issue by his second marriage with Marie d'Avaugour of Brittany in 1628, Francois, a branch of the house of Soubise, which became extinct in 1787; Marie Eleonore, abbess of the convent of the Trinity at Caen; and Anne, who became the second wife of Louis Charles d'Albert, Duc de Luynes. M. de Montbazon died ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... account of her physiognomy, purchased by her late husband, then travelling in Turkey, from a merchant of Circassian slaves, when she was under seven years of age, and sent for her education to a relative of the Count, an Abbess of a convent in Languedoc. On his return from Turkey, some years afterwards, he took her under his own care, and she accompanied him all over Asia, and returned first to France in 1796, where her husband's name was upon the list of emigrants, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... be harsh with you, steps would long since have been taken to bring you to reason; but we can no longer permit this advocacy of rebellion, and the last unmaidenly step which you took of setting at defiance your friends and relatives, and even of sending messages hence, must be punished. The abbess bade me reason with you and try and turn your obstinate will. Your cousins of Badenoch here have appealed to you in vain. This can no longer be tolerated. The lady abbess bids me tell you that she gives you three days to renounce the rebel opinions you have ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... the Queen, 'Lo! they have set her on, Our simple-seeming Abbess and her nuns, To play upon me,' and bowed her head nor spake. Whereat the novice crying, with clasped hands, Shame on her own garrulity garrulously, Said the good nuns would check her gadding tongue Full often, 'and, sweet lady, if I seem To vex an ear too sad to listen to me, Unmannerly, with prattling ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... below," said Little John, hurriedly. "I bethought me to talk with Stuteley on the matter. The beggar told me that the Abbess of Kirklees had stayed him as he was travelling past her Priory: 'Go to Haddon, brother, and there you will find Robin Hood sick unto death. Say that in the woods near by there is one who is practising magic upon him, having made a little image of Robin Hood. At each change of ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... conscience' sake.'"—Kirkham's Gram., p. 49; Hamlin's, 16; Smith's New Gram., 47.[350] Of principles or inferences very much like these, is the whole system of "Inductive Grammar" essentially made up. But is it not plain that heiress's, abbess's, peeress's, countess's, and many other words of the same form, are as good English as witness's? Did not Jane West write justly, "She made an attempt to look in at the dear dutchess's?"—Letters to a Lady, p. 95. Does not the Bible ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... an appeal to the strong to break into the great convent, to hang the abbess, and say to the Countess, "Appear again, O splendor! Away with grief, ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... years earlier. Indeed, it was customary in the family of the Princes of Gerano that one of the women should be a Carmelite, and it was a tradition not unattended with worldly advantages to the sisterhood, that the Braccio nun, whenever there was one, should be the abbess of ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... of his tongue and very speedily lost weight. Van Helmont's own wife was cured of a marked edema of the leg. Similarly, a servant maid who had had severe attacks of erysipelas which were "badly cured," and the leg leaden colored and swollen, was cured almost immediately. An abbess, whose arm had been swollen for eighteen years, partly paralyzed, was also cured. Van Helmont, however, indicates that he himself, when he thought he was being poisoned by an enemy, did not secure any benefit from the use ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... excellent embroideress, Christine, Prioress of Margate, who lived in the middle of the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century several names occur. Adam de Bazinge made, in 1241, by order of Henry III. of England, a cope for the Bishop of Hereford. Cunegonde, Abbess of Goss, in Styria, accomplished numerous important works in that period. Also, Henry III. employed Jean de Sumercote to make jewelled ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... such a personality, with the wonderful tumult in the air that her large and enthusiastic following excited, fascinated the imagination. What had she originated? I mentally questioned this modern St. Catherine, who was dominating her followers like any abbess of old. She told me the story of her life, so far as outward events may translate those inner experiences which alone ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... towards the Vltava. The earliest church on this point is attributed to Vratislav, uncle of St. Wenceslaus, but this sounds rather doubtful. Boleslav II, however, is known to have founded a convent here, probably the oldest in Bohemia, and he installed his sister Milada as first abbess. St. Ludmilla was also buried here, so the Hrad[vs]any was increasing in sanctity. Boleslav II is also responsible for providing Prague with her first bishop. We have seen that Henry the Fowler had incorporated Bohemia into the bishopric of Ratisbon; ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... with "bless" because the "b" and "l" are so joined that the combined sound differs from the simple "l" of "less." "Less" does not rhyme with "best" because the "t" makes the concluding consonant sounds unlike. Nor does it rhyme with "abbess" because the accent in this word falls on ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... centre of the fore-cover there is a magnificent topaz,[15] with several imperial figures. Inside, the work is a handsome example of the early Carolingian.[16] It contains the four Gospels written by order of the "Mother and Lady Ada," sister of Charles the Great, Abbess of St. Mesmin. Next we have in the British Museum another grand example of the style as modified by English or Saxon influence. Also the Zurich Bible, of the same date, executed at Tours—and the ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... country set great examples of devotion to Christ and submission to the Roman pontiff. They date their charters from the "reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, reigning for ever."[72] The Princess Hilda founds, in the seventh century, the monastery of Streoneshalch, and becomes its abbess; Ceadwalla dies at Rome in 689, and is buried in St. Peter's, under the Porticus Pontificum, opposite the tomb of St. Gregory the Great.[73] AEthelwulf, king of the West Saxons, goes also on a pilgrimage to Rome "in great state, and remains twelve months, after which ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... back to la Gonore.—To go on: Jacqueline will arrange with Madame Nourrisson to purchase her business in the Rue Sainte-Barbe; and if you manage well, child, you may make a fortune out of it," he said to Prudence. "An Abbess at your age! It is worthy of a Daughter of France," he added in a ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... in fasting, prayers, and alms-deeds, that all manner of people marvelled how virtuously she was changed. Now leave we Queen Guenever in Almesbury, a nun in white clothes and black, and there she was Abbess and ruler as reason would; and turn we from her, and speak we of Sir Launcelot ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... be fulfilled. I must first tell your decision to the Abbess of a convent, so that when I take you away through the underground passage to the Madocsany Castle, a nun may be waiting for you there with a closed carriage. Great prudence and careful preparations are necessary. We must agree upon the day ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... a week at the Castle, one afternoon she and Doucebelle were working alone in the wardrobe. The Countess and Margaret were away for the day, on a visit to the Abbess of Thetford; Eva and Marie were out on the leads; Hawise was busy in her own apartments. Belasez had been unusually silent that morning. She worked on in a hurried, nervous way, never speaking nor looking up, and a lovely arabesque pattern grew into beauty under her deft fingers. ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Murray) sent the Town Major to the Mother Abbess of the Convent of Hotel Dieu, to acquaint her with the reasons that induced him to destroy their mills and tenements at Calvaire: namely, on account of her having transmitted intelligence to the French, of the last detachment's being ordered to be in readiness to march ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... the faces of the young nuns were violently flushed, and Sin, who never loses an opportunity of corrupting innocent hearts, shot into their blood, and hastily pictured the dangerous scene to their imaginations. Fury and consternation, in the mean time, deformed the features of the old ones. The abbess trembled and leaned on her staff, while the spectacles fell from her face. But when the porteress added, that it was the sister Clara whom the fiend had brought to the Dominican in his dream, a dreadful shriek filled the whole hall. Clara alone remained tranquil, and when the uproar had ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... "Oratory," properly a private chapel or closet for prayer; here a canting term for brothel: cf. abbess bawd; nun whore, and so forth. "Siccarly," certainly, surely "Thou art here, sykerlye, Thys churche to robb with felonye," MS. Cantab ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... a peal at the bell outside; the Abbess turned her head and waited till there was a noise ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... by her bridegroom, was at once despatched to a convent in Venice. Enraged at her fate, she had repeatedly appealed to the authorities to release her; but her father's wealth and influence prevailed against all her efforts. The abbess, however, felt such pity for her that she was allowed more freedom than the other nuns, with whom her wit and beauty made her a favourite in spite of her exceptional privileges. These, as Coeur-Volant hinted, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... all is true my fears could frame; A prisoner lies the noble Graeme, And fiery Roderick soon will feel The vengeance of the royal steel. I, only I, can ward their fate,— God grant the ransom come not late! The Abbess hath her promise given, My child shall be the bride of Heaven;— Be pardoned one repining tear! For He who gave her knows how dear, How excellent!—but that is by, And now my business is—to die.— Ye towers! within whose circuit dread A Douglas by his sovereign bled; And thou, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... gone in his own; a glimpse, almost awe-stricken in its gratitude, of the miracle her old governess had wrought. That functionary could not in this connexion have been more impressive, even at second-hand, if she had been a prophetess with an open scroll or some ardent abbess speaking with the lips of the Church. She had clung day by day to their plastic associate, plying him with her deep, narrow passion, doing her simple utmost to convert him, and so working on him that he had at last really embraced his fine chance. ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... of the Northumbrian coast, in his poem of Marmion may well be recalled here. It will be remembered that the Abbess of Whitby, with some of her nuns, was voyaging to Holy Island, and we take up the ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... some thought disappointed, as perhaps, in her foolish thought, she might a little be, was made Abbess of Quedlinburg, which opulent benefice had fallen vacant; and, there or at Berlin, lived a respectable Spinster-life, doubtless on easier terms than Ulrique's. Always much loved by her Brother, and loving him (and "taking care of his shirts," in the final times); noted in society, for her sharp ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... poor gentleman! he was absent, when this sad event took place: for you must know, my lord, that when after the departure of her parents he went to visit his betrothed at the convent-grate, the sour-faced old abbess would'nt suffer him to see the lady Josepha. Nay, what is the strangest circumstance of all, she produced a letter from the marchioness commanding positively, that during her absence no person whatever should ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... Duke of Suffolk. Her chamber still exists, and we saw it in high preservation. This marriage, you will remember, laid the foundation for the claim of Lady Jane Grey to the crown. Here, too, for a season, the excellent abbess and the nuns of Port Royal found a refuge. Some forty years 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 ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... of the moment, the Emir Othman. The fourth of the pillars, my Lord Ali dear, Inspector acute of the dark and the clear. Then the light of our eyes, the delectable twain, The Lovely Prince Hassan, the Emir Hoseyn. Nor unnoticed by men shall be suffered to pass Those excellent uncles, Hanozah and Abbess. Unto each of that band be a thousand salaams, An bless'd through all ages be each of ...
— The Song of Deirdra, King Byrge and his Brothers - and Other Ballads • Anonymous
... year later, by a performance of Cefalo, one of the oldest of Italian dramas, a pastoral play composed by Niccolo da Correggio, chiefly taken from Ovid's "Metamorphoses," and which is said to have suggested the subjects of Correggio's famous frescoes in the Abbess of San Paolo's parlour at Parma. Each Christmas and carnival these theatrical representations were repeated, and many were the distinguished visitors who came to Ferrara to witness these celebrated performances. The Amphitryon and Cassina ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... each other and mingled their tears together; and I hardly need say, that the lady abbess and I could not restrain our meed of pity at the affecting scene. As the evening closed, they separated, each to attend to the same mournful duty, of watching by the bodies of their husbands, and bedewing ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... complete manual of convent life, a perfect compendium of a nun's soul. On its pages lay that shadowy, evanescent and hardly apprehensible thing—the soul of a nun, only the soul, not a word regarding her daily life: any mother-abbess could have written such a materialistic book: St. Teresa, with the instinct of her genius, addressed herself to the task which none but she could fulfil—the evolution of a nun's soul. And as Evelyn read she marked the passages that specially caught ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... composition the wretched abbess is described as an alchemist as well as a sorceress, and she descends to the depths of the lowest and most revolting witchcraft. She practises shape-shifting and similar arts. She has power over natural forces, and knows ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... said to Cromwell, 'mine own foster-sister had the veil there; mine own mother's sister was there the abbess.' She stretched out a hand. 'Sir, they dwelled there simply and godly, withdrawn from the world; succouring the poor; weaving of fine linens, for much flax grew upon those lands by there; and praying God and the saints that blessings fall ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... man knew whither she had flown or what she did, until one morning she appeared at the convent of Marienfliess, driving a little one-horse waggon herself, and dressed no better than a fish-wife. On driving into the court, she desired to speak with the abbess, Magdalena von Petersdorf; and when she came, Sidonia ordered the cell of the deceased nun, Barbara Kleist, to be got ready for her reception, as his Highness of Stettin had presented her to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... nature is weak; and although they were nuns, they had their little imperfections. They found themselves barren in a certain particular, hence the evil. But the truth of the matter is, all these wickednesses were the deeds of an abbess who had fourteen children, all born alive, since they had been perfected at leisure. The fantastic amours and the wild conduct of this woman, who was of royal blood, caused the convent of Poissy to become fashionable; and thereafter no pleasant adventure happened in the abbeys of France ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... ask (probably in 1635) for certain favors from the royal treasury; and their agent avails himself of this opportunity to ask favors for his own order, the Franciscan Recollects. The nuns themselves write to the king (June 30, 1636), through their abbess, Ana de Christo, informing him of their progress and growth in the Philippines, and other matters. They have founded a convent of their order at Macao; and have built a house at Manila for their residence. They complain that Governor Corcuera has driven the Franciscans from ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... noble knights with him, she stole away, and five ladies with her; and so she went to Almesbury, and made herself a nun, and ware white clothes and black, and took great penance as ever did sinful lady, and lived in fasting, prayers, and alms-deeds. And there she was abbess and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... when we read the story of Caius Silanus, the Proconsul of Asia, who, accused of malversation and peculation, is first banished to the island of Gyarus, but when the Prince pleads for him, and he is backed by the intercession of a Vestal Virgin of sanctity,—corresponding to a Christian nun or abbess of exemplary piety,—Silanus is removed to the more bearable place of exile, the island of ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... went on to explain that the scroll was a letter to the Abbess of Soissons, who was aunt to Queen Mary, as was well known, since an open correspondence was kept up through the French ambassador. This letter said that "our trusty Alison Hepburn" would tell how in secrecy and distress Queen Mary had given birth to this poor child in Lochleven, and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more agreeable. We quitted the Court and a reigning mistress, for a dead one and a Cloister. In short, I had obtained leave from the Bishop of Chartres to enter into St. Cyr; and, as Madame du Deffand never leaves anything undone that can give me satisfaction, she had written to the abbess to desire I might see everything that could be seen there. The Bishop's order was to admit me, Monsieur de Grave, et les dames de ma compagnie: I begged the abbess to give me back the order, that I might deposit it in the archives ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... speaking, slow in operation, and there remained always Lady Isabel's twenty thousand golden sovereigns, as safe and secluded in the hands of trustees (who had a constitutional disbelief in Irishmen), as if they were twenty thousand nuns under the rule of a royal abbess. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... clerics came across Slieve Luachra in the territory of Kerry to the church of Ita, honoured [abbess] of Conall Gabhra. They had with them a child upon seeing whom Ita wept bitterly. The clerics demanded why she cried at seeing them. "Blessed," she answered, "is the hour in which that youth in your company ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... the servants heard him, and were entranced by his wonderful song. And one ran quickly and told the good abbess, or mistress of the abbey, what strange thing ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... church under which we partake our sacrament," she told me, "is called San Pietro's. It is here that, in times gone by, the Bishop of Pistoja went through the ceremony of a mystical marriage with the Abbess of the Benedictines, which has now been stopped by the Jesuits, because, more than once, it was not so mystical a business as it might have been. But I think the place very suitable for what you and ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... lead a much freer and gayer life now that she was a prioress; for the prioress of a convent had rooms of her own, instead of sharing the common dormitory and refectory; sometimes she even had a sort of little house with a private kitchen. The abbess of one great nunnery at Winchester in the sixteenth century had her own staff to look after her, a cook, and an under cook, and a housemaid and a gentlewoman to wait upon her, like any great lady in the world, and never dined with the nuns except on state occasions. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... tricked by a cunning Neapolitan abbess (1352), who sent them a spurious arm of the patroness of the Cathedral, Santa Reparata, made of wood and plaster, they began to get tired of relics. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that their aesthetic sense turned them away in disgust from dismembered corpses ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... misfortune. In the end Roque Guinart directed Don Vicente's servants to carry his body to his father's village, which was close by, for burial. Claudia told him she meant to go to a monastery of which an aunt of hers was abbess, where she intended to pass her life with a better and everlasting spouse. He applauded her pious resolution, and offered to accompany her whithersoever she wished, and to protect her father against the kinsmen of Don Vicente and all the world, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "The Abbess of the Ursulines seems to have been at the bottom of it," I explained, fretting with impatience. This wonder was misplaced, I thought; and time was passing. "Madame d'O found out where she was," I continued, "and took her home, and then sent me to fetch you, hearing you ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... enveloped this absence,—and suddenly the rumor had come that Gracieuse was a novice among the sisters of Saint Mary of the Rosary, in a convent of Gascony where the former Mother Superior of Etchezar was the abbess—! ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... last day at the island villa, she turned away her face, and entreated the questioner's forbearance. All else she told with a sad simplicity. Her religious conversion was the result of teaching she had received from the abbess, a Roman lady of great learning, who spoke of things till then unknown to her, and made so manifest the truth of the Catholic creed that her reason was constrained to accept it. Obeying the king's command, Athalfrida refrained from argument ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... impressed by his arguments. In his person the generous fervour and the massive piety of an age that could still believe felt the icy and disintegrating touch of a new and strange indifference. 'Mais qu'elle est jolie!' he murmured as he came away. The Abbess ran forward to ask what holy books he recommended. 'Give her a threepenny Catechism,' was Massillon's reply. He had seen that the ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... they threaten to set their houses on fire.—There is no asylum to be had, either in their own homes nor in the homes of others, nor in places along the roads, fugitives being stopped in all the small villages and market-towns. In Dauphiny[1342] "the Abbess of St. Pierre de Lyon, one of the nuns, M. de Perrotin, M. de Bellegarde, the Marquis de la Tour-du-Pin, and the Chevalier de Moidieu, are arrested at Champier by the armed population, led to the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... together with their principal barons. The sovereign, upon the same day, presented at the altar his infant daughter, Cecilia, devoting her to the service of God in this monastery, in which she was accordingly educated, and was its first nun and second abbess. History has recorded the name of the first abbess, Matilda, and relates that she was of one of the most noble families of the duchy; but no farther particulars are known respecting her. The foundation-charters of this convent, which bear date in the years 1066 and 1082, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... men and women living in two adjacent cloisters; but the monks were little more than the chaplains and the managers of the monastic revenues, and at the head of the whole house and Order the founder placed an Abbess as his successor. The rule of this Order imposed on the female members absolute silence except ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... time the phenomena described by the matchless Abbess had been exactly repeated. In Durtal, the Chambers of the Soul were deserted as after a long mourning; but in the rooms that had remained open, phantoms of sins confessed, of buried evil-doing, wandered like the sister of ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Bonaparte was that he had often beaten the Germans, and that on his account they had to pay more for sugar and coffee. To them the great comet of 1811 was the first announcement of coming great events. Let us see the reflections which the comet inspired in the abbess of the Devitchi convent and the nun Antonine, and this will give us an idea of the mental condition of the latter, one of the narrators. "One evening," she relates, "we were at service in St. John's church, ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... eve of the wedding day Kwan-yin slipped out of the palace, and, after a weary journey, arrived at a convent called, "The Cloister of the White Sparrow." She was dressed as a poor maiden. She said she wished to become a nun. The abbess, not knowing who she was, did not receive her kindly. Indeed, she told Kwan-yin that they could not receive her into the sisterhood, that the building was full. Finally, after Kwan-yin had shed many tears, the abbess let her ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... wrought by that reigning power, ambition! the love-sick girl, when first she heard of Temple's refusal, wept, raved, tore her hair, and vowed to found a protestant nunnery with her fortune; and by commencing abbess, shut herself up from the sight of cruel ungrateful man ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
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