"Conventual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or venerate, and to whom they usually paid their devotions. Some of those benefactors, most generously, defrayed the expenses of a religious festival, from which resulted a considerable profit to the convent in which that festival was celebrated. Others repaired conventual edifices at their own expense, or enlarged them by making extensive wings or other additions, in which there was always a profuse display of marble, bronze, and other precious materials. But the principal ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... breathless, being tightly laced and unused to so many stairs, and she stumbled a little as she crossed the threshold. She was glad to sit down on one of the chairs by the open window. The bare room no longer seemed conventual now that its unaccustomed air was stirred by the movement of her fan and tainted by the faint scent of ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... the Abbey Mill, of the methods of bolting and the old-fashioned machinery, which he feared would not enlighten him greatly on modern improved methods, some of it seeming to have been in use ever since the days it ground for the monks in the adjoining conventual buildings—now a heap of ruins. He left the house again in the course of an hour, coming home at dusk, and occupying himself through the evening with his papers. She feared she was in the way and, when the old woman was gone, retired to the kitchen, where she made herself ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... talked of many things, chiefly connected with Valpre. There was so much to remember—Mademoiselle Gautier and her queer, conventual prejudices, Manon, the maid-of-all-work, and her funny stories ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... resolve it was impossible to move her. Whether she had really resolved before on the conventual life, or whether she feared to separate the two friends, no one knew. From that time neither O'Donnell nor Jim Rooney was seen at the white house, and in the harvest-time Ellen, as she said she would, entered St. Mary's Convent. Jim Rooney never ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... his poorer kinsmen who lived with him. There were no crimes which such malefactors had not committed, or were not ready to commit for a word, or even for a jest. The women, on the other hand, were in the first place the ladies and daughters of the house, and of kinsmen, brought up in almost conventual solitude, when they were not actually educated in convents; and, secondly, young girls from the Baron's estates who served for a certain length of time, and were then generally married to respectable retainers. The position of twenty or thirty women and girls ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... variously gifted artists, labouring rapidly at the many works on hand for the final embellishment of the cathedral of St. Etienne, made those conventual buildings just then cheerful enough to lighten a melancholy, heavy even as that of our friend Denys. He took his place among the workmen, a conventual novice; a novice also as to whatever concerns ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... de Favenches, or Faverches, her son, confirmed the endowments, made an additional foundation of a priory for Augustine canons, and erected a conventual church. The numerous gifts and grants to this famous religious house form one of those extensive and dull mazes of ecclesiastical record, through which the historic topographer is constrained to wade. At the Dissolution, the annual revenues of the monastery were valued, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... and mental well-being such as can be bought only by an early rising, an inconsiderable breakfast, a long ride in the warmth of Tuscan mid-May, an abundant and repairing repast, taken, amid sweet conventual coolness, in company which leaves nothing to wish for beyond it, they went forth to spend the time that must be granted the horses for rest before ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... be borne in mind that the subject had long been a familiar decoration of conventual refectories before the time when Lionardo brought his profound knowledge of external human nature, and his unsurpassed powers of executive art, to bear on a subject which had before been treated in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various
... take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Patriarch, Primate of Antioch and of all the East; and escorted by a priest and the shaykh we travelled by way of a short cut and terrible descent of three hours. It was no better than a goat-path. We at last arrived at Diman, the summer residence of the Patriarch, a conventual yet fortress-like building on an eminence commanding a view of the whole of his jurisdiction. We were charmed with the reception which his Beatitude gave us. We were received by two bishops and endless retainers. The Patriarch, dressed in purple, sat in a long, narrow room like a covered ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... seriously to reflect on the unpleasantness of her situation; the threat of a conventual seclusion sounded harshly to her ear. She fancied it would be more advantageous to society that her good offices should continue in requisition, than that they should be for ever lost by an untimely adoption of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... sung. The latter part is chanted, but without the usual ceremonies, by the deacon, after he has taken off his folded chasuble and put on the large band or stole. A short sermon is then preached by a conventual Friar, who afterwards according to custom publishes the indulgence or remission of temporal punishment of thirty years granted by the Pope to those who have confessed and sincerely repented of their sins. See p. 37. As Morinus has shewn (De Penitentia ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... and also an antagonism to common sense. The church authorities wanted to bring the order into practical use, and suspected it of the heresies of Florus. It therefore split into "conventuals," who conformed to the methods of conventual life, and the "spirituals," who clung to the doctrines and rules of the founder. The latter became "observantines" (1368) and "recollects" (1487).[453] The two branches hated each other and fought on all occasions. In 1275 the spirituals were treated as heretics, imprisoned ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... churches has also given rise to the production, in more than one semi-conventual establishment, of beautiful and effective works, such as the altar-cloth at Durham, and those at Canterbury and Worcester. Such works have revived the impulse of artistic and ecclesiastical taste, and in many small churches we have seen beautifully ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the account of her running away in her childhood, which seemed to her most worthy of imitation— only, thinks Madelon, she would have taken care not to have been caught, and brought back again. The subsequent history of the saint she found less edifying; nothing that savoured of conventual life found favour in Madelon's eyes in these days; and indeed her whole faith in saints and legends was rudely shaken one day by a broad and somewhat reckless assertion on the part of Soeur Lucie, that all the female saints had been nuns—an assertion ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... the fort of Quebec would have been astonished at its air of conventual decorum. Black Jesuits and scarfed officers mingled at Champlain's table. There was little conversation, but, in its place, histories and the lives of saints were read aloud, as in a monastic refectory. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... so much contributed to the completion of the cathedral at Quimper. The square is surrounded by an interlaced circular arcade, forming trefoiled pointed arches, all in excellent preservation. The access to the cloisters is through the conventual building, now a private house and garden, the ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... when their founder, Matteo di Bassi, of Urbino, Italy, obtained papal consent to live, with his companions, a hermit life, wear a habit with long pointed cowl (capuche, whence their name), and preach the gospel in all lands. At first they were subject to the general of the conventual Franciscans, not obtaining exemption from this obedience until 1617. Early in the eighteenth century the Capuchins numbered 25,000 friars, with 1,600 convents, besides their missions in Brazil and Africa; but ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... Rada, who, being a man of great imagination, in a short time laid up great riches, and made considerable gain among the natives. And, in fact, when I was in the island of Sugbu in the year 1612, as a conventual in the convent of the natives, called San Nicolas, I saw a lexicon there, compiled by father Fray Martin de Rada, which contained a great number of words. This must have been of no little aid to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... you may learn, sir, from the books which, I feel sure, my uncle will be pleased to lend you. I need not ask, perhaps, if in the course of your—ah—excavations you have come on any traces of the original pre-Augustine Oratory, or of the conventual buildings which existed here till, we are told, the middle ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... professional limitations; the domesticity of a home, with none of its fatiguing clutter; the freedom of an inn, with none of its stale sense of over-use. And above and through all this ran the note of almost ascetic cleanliness, a purity fairly conventual. Like most men, I have a concealed passion for perfect cleanliness—concealed, because to the sex so ironically intrusted with the duty of domestic lustration cleanliness appears to mean frightful ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... occasional neighbour or so for visiters, and used to sit up late in our friars' dresses, drinking burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not, out of the skull-cup, and all sorts of glasses, and buffooning all round the house, in our conventual garments. Matthews always denominated me 'the Abbot,' and never called me by any other name in his good humours, to the day of his death. The harmony of these our symposia was somewhat interrupted, a few days after our assembling, by Matthews's ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... Aymeric d'Hebrard, was the Bishop of a see in Spain, and he brought thence Moorish slaves to cultivate the land with which he had endowed his community of a hundred nuns. Down to the Revolution most of the daughters of the nobility in the Quercy were educated here. Little is now left of the conventual building; but the church contains architectural details of much interest, and the tombs of those irreconcilable enemies of the English, Bertrand de Cardaillac, Bishop of Cahors, and the Marquis de Cardaillac—the most famous warrior of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... common meals was hardly conceived of; and, indeed, if we trace back the history of college as they grew up at Paris, nothing is more of their essence than that students lived and ate together in a kind of conventual system. No doubt, also, when the town of New Haven was smaller, it was far more difficult to find desirable places for boarding than at present. But however necessary, the Steward's department was always beset with difficulties and exposed to complaints ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... never have provided. There is a little actual history in them—not the key-cryptograms of the "Heroics" or their adoption of ancient and distant historic frames. In a very large proportion, forced marriages, proposed and escaped from, supply the plot; in not a few, forced "vocations" to the conventual life. Elopements are as common as abductions in the next stage, and are generally conducted with as much propriety. Courtships of married women, and lapses by ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... charity-schools, such as San Michele and Santo Spirito,—all in white. Then follow the brown-cowled, long-bearded Franciscans, the white Carmelites, and the black Benedictines, bearing lighted candles and chanting hoarsely as they go. You may see pass before you now all the members of these different conventual orders that there are in Rome, and have an admirable opportunity to study their physiognomies in mass. If you are a convert to Romanism, you will perhaps find in their bald beads and shaven crowns and bearded faces a noble expression of reverence and humility; but, suffering as I do under the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... would have slept or maybe frolicked with him, he recounted to her the life of Christ and the preachments of Fra Nastagio or the Complaint of Mary Magdalene or the like. Meantime there returned home from Paris a monk hight Dom[164] Felice, Conventual[165] of San Pancrazio, who was young and comely enough of person, keen of wit and a profound scholar, and with him Fra Puccio contracted a strait friendship. And for that this Dom Felice right well ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... seemed to him that there were two men within him: the one turbulent, passionate, demented; the other vainly endeavoring by authority, reason, and conscience to bring the rebel to subjection. The discipline of conventual life, the extraordinary austerities to which he had condemned himself, the monotonous solitude of his existence, all tended to exalt the vivacity of the nervous system, which, in the Italian constitution, is at all times disproportionately developed; and when those weird harp-strings of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... corporations spread through France, England, and Germany, where they were employed almost exclusively by the religious Orders, in building their churches and conventual buildings." ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... Nothing remains of the conventual buildings but a few scanty patches of masonry. The history of the Abbey was not a very edifying one and, although every effort was made to save the house at the Dissolution, chiefly by the exhibition of the imposing royal charters of foundation and re-endowment, ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... Angelico, who was a brother of this Dominican house, has filled nearly the whole monastery with the works of his hand. Considering the date of his birth, 1387, and his conventual life, he was hardly less wonderful than his wonderful epoch. Here is the same convent, the same city; while instead merely of the works of Cimabue, Giotto, and Orgagna, there are masterpieces by all the painters who ever lived to study;—yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... life's rough way, sought peace in the ascetic life. He drifted in a boat to Crowland Isle, and there lived a hermit's life till his death in 817. On the spot where he died Ethelbald founded and endowed a monastery on the island, and it flourished exceedingly. The larger part of the conventual church is now destroyed, but the north aisle is used as the ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... other of these two fires the eastern arm and transepts of Gundulf's fabric, and Ernulf's conventual buildings, must have been much injured if not reduced to ruins, and to the date of the second the outer part of the north choir aisle possibly belongs. Probably about 1190, Gilbert de Glanvill, who was Bishop of Rochester ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... spent almost his whole life under its shadow, and knew the history of almost every stone or quarry of glass, was the best of lionisers, and gave her much attention when he perceived how intelligent and appreciative she was. He showed her the plan of the old conventual buildings, and she began to unravel the labyrinth through which she had been hurried. The Close and Deanery were modernised, but he valued the quaint old corner where he lived for its genuine age. The old house now divided between him and Mr. Shapcote had been the infirmary; and the long narrow ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at me like that, as if you would read my heart. There are hearts that must not be looked into. Mine is like a charnel-house. Monotonous, yes; my life has been monotonous. No conventual gloom was ever deeper than the gloom of Fellside. My boy did nothing to lighten it for me, and his son followed in his father's footsteps. You and Lesbia have been my only consolation. Lesbia! I was so proud of her beauty, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Enguerrand's death, spoken to Isaura with a touching candour as to his own predilection for a monastic life. "The worldly avocations that open useful and honourable careers for others have no charm for me. I care not for riches nor power, nor honours nor fame. The austerities of the conventual life have no terror for me; on the contrary, they have a charm, for with them are abstraction from earth and meditation on heaven. In earlier years I might, like other men, have cherished dreams of human love, and felicity in married life, but for the sort of veneration with which I regarded one ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... religious, monastic, cenobite, anchoret, friar, abbe, fakir. Associated Words: monkish, monastic, monastery, monasticism, conventual. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of the abbey church in which lay Stephen, his Queen, and their son. It stood on the northern side of the town, where indeed the Abbey Farm still remains. It is to the parish church of Our Lady of Charity that we must turn for any memory of the conventual house where many a pilgrim must often have knelt to venerate the relic ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... faith grew confirmed, Leila now inclined herself earnestly to those pictures of the sanctity and calm of the conventual life which Inez delighted to draw. In the reaction of her thoughts, and her despondency of all worldly happiness, there seemed, to the young maiden, an inexpressible charm in a solitude which was to release her for ever from human love, and render ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... find little help in the fashionable boarding-schools for finishing young ladies; and, in general, these schools only aggravate the evils to be cured. The best and the only respectable schools for daughters that we have in the country are the conventual schools taught by women consecrated to God, and specially devoted to the work of education. These schools, indeed, are not always all that might be wished. The religious cannot, certainly, supply the place of the mother in giving their pupils that practical home-training ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... Pisano painted a picture in S. Fermo Maggiore at Verona (a church of the Conventual Friars of S. Francis), in the Chapel of the Brenzoni, on the left as one enters by the principal door of the said church, over the tomb of the Resurrection of Our Lord, wrought in sculpture and very beautiful for those times; he painted, I say, as an ornament ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... grief. But as soon as I could get out of her sight I used to snatch it from my head, fling it on the ground, and trample it under foot. That was the way, and none other, in which I was veiled." Anselm at once declared her free from conventual bonds, and the shout of the English multitude when he set the crown on Matilda's brow drowned the murmur of Churchman or of baron. The mockery of the Norman nobles, who nicknamed the king and his ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... of this period in Rymer's Foedera,[269] about taking off the duty upon six barrels of books, sent by a Roman Cardinal to the prior of the Conventual church of St. Trinity, Norwich. These barrels, which lay at the custom-house, were imported duty free; and I suspect that Henry's third son, the celebrated John Duke of Bedford, who was then a lad, and just beginning to feed his bibliomaniacal appetite, had some ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to the Village of Virex, in Italy—a pleasing picture of what may be termed an architectural village; for some of the dwellings almost approach to palaces, and others have a conventual character, which harmonizes with the sublime beauties of nature which rise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... name, who is such an earnest champion of Protestantism as it is reflected in the Church of England, and who has made such earnest but as yet fruitless endeavors to have a bill passed for the periodical visitation and inspection of the monastic and conventual institutions of Great Britain. Her brother, Isaac P. Evans, still occupies that responsible position, and resides in the old homestead. The country around Mrs. Lewes's early home is rich in historic associations. Not far away is Bosworth Field, and in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... followed by confederacies of such communities under one organization. The monastic vows were poverty, or the renunciation of property; celibacy, or abstinence from marriage; and obedience to the conventual superior. Sometimes in the early centuries great evils and abuses sprang up in connection with monastic life. For example, monks might become fanatical and violent. But they furnished numerous examples of sincere piety, and of unselfish and intrepid ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... little to the right of these is a throned lady, with a crown of peculiar construction on her head, and a sceptre in her hand, before whom kneels a female figure, upon whose brows the throned lady is about to place a coronet. Behind the throne is what appears to be a conventual building of rather singular appearance, with round, square, and octagon towers, and surrounded by a battlemented wall. Considerably to the right of the throned lady is a figure clearly intended for some booted king wearing a crown and a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... the chill gloom of the place, something of the pietism which hung upon the very air of that apartment in which so much of my early youth was spent. And it had, too, an odour that is peculiarly full of character, the smell which is never absent from a sacristy and rarely from conventual chambers; a smell difficult to define, faint and yet tenuously pungent, and like no other smell in all the world that I have ever known. It is a musty odour, an odour of staleness which perhaps an open window and the fresh air of heaven might relieve but could ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... the curious to explore the working-rooms and eating-rooms which lay beyond. The door of the chapel stood open, and offered a vision of simpering angels crowding the canvas of the altar-piece, a justly-admired specimen of German religious art. Before it, dimly seen, two nuns knelt, types of conventual piety, absorbed in spiritual contemplation amid the tumult of the world's invasion of their sanctuary. Another door led to the garden. Here a fountain played into a great stone basin, and neat gravel walks intersected each other at sharp angles among flower-beds. The ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... In the conventual buildings attached to this church are the state archives of Venice. We did not see them, but they are said to number millions of documents. "They are the records of centuries of the most watchful, observant and suspicious government that ever existed—in which every thing was written ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... year, and that his fortune was encumbered not only with settlements for his, children by previous marriages, but by debts contracted in the cause of his oppressed country. A convention of doctors and bishops of France; summoned by the Duc de Montpensier, afterwards confirmed the opinion that the conventual vows of the Princess Charlotte had been conformable neither to the laws of France nor to the canons of the Trent Council. She was conducted to Brill by Saint Aldegonde, where she was received by her bridegroom, to whom she was united ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... DIOECESIS EXONIENSIS. Being a Collection of Records and Instruments further illustrating the Ancient Conventual, Collegiate, and Eleemosynary Foundations in the Counties of Devon and Cornwall. By GEORGE OLIVER, D.D. To correspond exactly in size, paper, and type with the original work, and to contain a large folding ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... she laughed outright, having caught sight of some part of her dejection. As she hooked on her skirt she reflected on the necessity of not leaving bottles of scent nor too many sponges for the observation of the nuns; and the nightgown she had brought was certainly not a conventual garment. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Gilbert, first Abbot after the status of the Priory was raised (1510). The small north tower, an uncommon feature, is a relic of the older portion of the Priory, originally founded by William de Mohun in 1142. All that remains of the conventual buildings are a columbarium or stone dove-cote on a hillock just outside the town and the Abbey Court-house on the south side of High Street. On the front will be seen the arms of de Mohun and ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... girl he could not govern, Castiglione sent her to this convent, then one of the few houses of barefoot Carmelite nuns in Italy. He stipulated that she should take the name of Maddelena, that he should never hear of her again, and that she should be held an absolute prisoner in this conventual castle. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... private schools for both sexes were numerous. These were probably expensive, so that the poorer classes were virtually debarred from the advantages of learning. The instruction of Catholic children was in the hands of the clergy, and it may be that in some of the conventual schools a certain number were admitted free of expense or at reduced rates. It would appear that some of the young ladies were sent to English boarding-schools, if we may judge by advertisements in which the advantages of these ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... gave fetes of great magnificence. His niece, Mme. de Cambalet, was made Duchesse D'Aiguillon that she might adorn the sphere in which the Cardinal moved so royally. She was a beautiful woman of simple tastes, and yearned for a life of conventual seclusion as she received the homage of Corneille or visited the salon of the brilliant wit, Julie ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... Bishop Don Bernardo de Valbuena, poet and author of a pastoral novel entitled the Golden Age, and other works of literary merit. This library, together with that of the Dominicans, and the respective episcopal and conventual archives were burned by the Hollanders during the siege of ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... nave, aisles, choir, unaisled transepts, western tower, and Lady Chapel. The cloisters and the domestic buildings have disappeared. It is highly probable that there was once a central tower, an almost invariable accompaniment of a Norman conventual church. There is no documentary evidence relating to a central tower, but the massive piers and arches at the corners of the transepts seem to indicate that provision was made for one, and the representation of a tower of two stages ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... perspective of clustered columns built in the Early English Period with a fine Decorated triforium on the north side. Both transepts and the chancel appear to have been destroyed with the conventual buildings, and the present chancel is merely a portion of the ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... this took place with prodigious rapidity. The dimensions of the Basilica of Assisi, the plans of which were made in 1228, no more permits it to be considered as a conventual chapel than Santa-Croce in Florence, San Francesco in Sienna, or the Basilica San Antonio at Padua, monuments commenced between 1230 and 1240. Already before 1245 one party of the episcopate utters a cry of alarm, in which he speaks of nothing less than ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... spirituality of life, fitly crowned and perfected her intellectual force and brilliant gifts. Although from the customs of the time the Marchesa lived much in convents, she never, in any sense, save that of her fervent piety, lived the conventual life. Her noble gifts linked her always to the larger activities, and her gifts and rank invested her with certain demands and responsibilities that she could not evade. She was one of the messengers of life, and her place as a brilliant ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... and conventual buildings having been swept away by the Danes, whether AElfred restored it or not is uncertain, but it is certain that a house of secular canons was established at Wimborne by a king of the name of Eadward; but again there is some uncertainty as ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... Terence Comerford's part in the story. She could have told that: she could not write it. Mary Benedicta would think that Stella's trouble came from the fictitious French father. There was little or no communication between the nun and Mrs. Comerford, who had quarrelled with her over her choice of a conventual life long ago. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... was lost, for Father Arnold, muttering some word belonging to his "centurion" days, dived into the kitchen, to reappear presently dragging a little withered old woman after him who was dressed in a robe of conventual make. ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... sleeve and underskirt that were obtrusively incongruous. Her voice, which had, however, a ring of honest intention in it, was somewhat over-strained, and evidently had not yet adjusted itself to the low-ceilinged, conventual-like building. ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... appropriated. The temples were turned into stables; the royal residences into barracks for the troops. The sanctity of the religious houses was violated. Thousands of matrons and maidens, who, however erroneous their faith, lived in chaste seclusion in the conventual establishments, were now turned inroad, and became the prey of a licentious soldiery.1 A favorite wife of the young Inca was debauched by the Castilian officers. The Inca, himself treated with contemptuous indifference, found that he was a poor dependant, if ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... places, they ever remained in the convents, celebrating the divine office according to the custom of religious, their preachers preaching to the people and performing their other functions, training up novices and preserving the conventual buildings, holding it sinful to lay aside, or even hide, their religious habit, though for an hour, through any human fear. And, every three years, they held their regular provincial chapters in the woods of the neighborhood, and observed the rule as it is kept ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... excellent work, Bishop de Rupibus built a chapel for the parishioners, the conventual church being reserved for the Prior and monks. This chapel stood in the angle between the walls of the choir and south transept, and was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... priest ushered Redclyffe into an austere-looking yet exceedingly neat study, as it seemed, on one side of which was an oratory, with a crucifix and other accommodations for Catholic devotion. Behind a white curtain there were glimpses of a bed, which seemed arranged on a principle of conventual austerity in respect to limits and lack of softness; but still there was in the whole austerity of the premises a certain character of restraint, poise, principle, which Redclyffe liked. A table was covered with books, many of them folios in an antique ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with probability. It may, I believe, be explained in the circumstance that "ten" and "four," in horary reckoning, were convertible terms. The old Roman method of naming the hours, wherein noon was the sixth, was long preserved, especially in conventual establishments: and I have no doubt that the English idiomatic phrase "o'clock" originated in the necessity for some distinguishing mark between hours "of the clock" reckoned from midnight, and hours of the day reckoned from sunrise, or more frequently from six A.M. With ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... William the Conqueror. At the dissolution of religious houses under Henry VIII., Peterborough was one of the most magnificent abbeys, and, having been selected as the seat of one of the new bishoprics, the buildings were preserved entire. In the civil wars, the Lady Chapel and several conventual buildings were pulled down and the materials sold. At present the cathedral is a regular cruciform structure of Norman character, remarkable for ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... Monks' dresses from a masquerade warehouse. We were a company of some seven or eight, ... and used to sit up late in our friars' dresses, drinking burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not, out of the skull-cup, and all sorts of glasses, and buffooning all round the house, in our conventual garments" (letter to Murray, November 19, 1820. See, too, the account of this visit which Matthews wrote to his sister in a letter dated May 22, 1809 [Letters, 1898, i. 150-160, and 153, note]). Moore (Life, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... is a monk, vowed to the Rule of St. Francis. As you know, since the promulgation of the Laws of the Reform, monks are not permitted in our country to live in communities; but, with only a few exceptions, the conventual churches which have not be secularized still are administered by members of the religious orders to which they formerly belonged. Fray Antonio has the charge of the church of San Francisco—over by the market-place, you know—and virtually is a parish priest. He is ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... when that is done, we shall return to Tilly. I felt sure I should meet you, and thought I should know you again easily, which I hardly do. How you are changed—for the better, I should say, since you left off conventual cap and costume!" Amelie could not but look admiringly on the beauty of the radiant girl. "How handsome you have grown! but you were always that. We both took the crown of honor together, but you would alone take the crown of beauty, Angelique." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... treated in the previous chapter is the custom that prevailed in the Middle Ages for widows to assume vows of chastity. The present topic might possibly have been reserved for the pages devoted to domestic customs, but the recognition accorded by the Church to a state which was neither conventual nor lay, but partook of both conditions in equal measure, decides its position in the economy of the work. We must ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... two of her oldest ladies, make their appearance before the conqueror. Conqueror as he is, they heard him in their sacred halls. They have heard of his violent 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, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all, there was still much to be done by means of educational processes before men and women could lead a life together which might be of mutual advantage to all parties concerned. Still, it must not be supposed that this tendency on the part of women to affiliate themselves with conventual orders was ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Licentiates, or Bachelors, there are seven with the title of Master, and three with F. or Frater prefixed to their names. Of the Preaching Friars, there were four, all designed F. or Frater. The Conventual and other Orders, included Provosts of Collegiate churches, Deans, Archdeacons, Subdeacons, Rectors, Canons, and Subpriors; of whom there are fifteen with the title of M. or Magister, and only six with D. or Dominus, so usual was it to ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... are kept in great seclusion: religion and oeconomy form a principal part of conventual acquirements, and the natural vanity of the sex is left to develope itself without the aid of authority, or instillation by precept—yet, when released from this sober tuition, manners take the ascendant here as in England, and ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... little nun yourself," said Ebbo, for she wore a little conventual dress, "but we must take each other for such as we are;" and, as she hid her face and clung to his mother, he added in a more cheerful, coaxing tone, "You once said you would ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... displeasure in those days did not confine itself merely to lack of court favor. Reduced to great poverty, the composer who had been the favorite of the rich and great for so many years knew often the actual pangs of hunger, and eked out his subsistence by writing conventual psalms, as payment for the broken food doled out by ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... triforium and the choir aisles; but judging from fragments discovered from time to time, such as the capital to a nook shaft shown in fig. 1, which clearly belong to this period, he had completed other works which have now been destroyed. Perhaps during his life-time the conventual buildings, as was the case at Merton, were mainly of wood, and of a merely temporary character; but it may be assumed that these, together with the cloisters, had been built when the great arch, which formed the entrance ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... conveniently be given the rough draft of the settlement of the see by King Henry VIII. at the Reformation. Although departed from in many instances, it throws a curious light on the king's intentions to keep up some semblance of a conventual institution ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... evidently constructed on no definite plan. They are of one, two, and, in rare instances, of three stories, and now and then consist of a series of parallel galleries communicating with each other, lined with masonry, and with their stone walls and vaulted roofs resembling the crypt of some conventual building. Others of ancient date are less regular in their form, being merely so many narrow low winding corridors, varied, perhaps, by recesses hewn roughly out of the chalk, and resembling the brigands' cave of the melodrama, while a certain number ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... vein from that of 'Manon,' or indeed any of his earlier works. The voluptuous passion of his accustomed style is exchanged for the mystic raptures of monasticism. Cupid has doffed his bow and arrows and donned the conventual cowl. 'Le Jongleur' is an operatic version of one of the prettiest stories in Anatole France's 'Etui de Nacre.' Jean the juggler is persuaded by the Prior of the Abbey of Cluny to give up his godless life and turn monk. He enters the monastery, but ere long ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... of his feelings; but he mastered them, and entered. There was a long interval. I pictured to myself the scene passing within: the poor novice despoiled of her transient finery, and clothed in the conventual garb; the bridal chaplet taken from her brow, and her beautiful head shorn of its long silken tresses. I heard her murmur the irrevocable vow. I saw her extended on a bier; the death-pall spread over her; the funeral service performed that proclaimed her dead to the world; her ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in Scotland as elsewhere the great church-building period, and the number of churches in the south and east that reflect the Norman movement is very large. All the large ones were conventual. Parish churches of the period are generally small and aisleless—the most of them being single oblong chambers, with an eastern chancel, sometimes with an eastern apse, and occasionally with a western tower.[12] Towards the close of the period, the ornament became ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... death! how eagerly she watched for tidings from the neighbourhood of the Siebenburgs! what hours of trouble were caused by the prior of the Dominicans and his envoys, who strove to convince her that her intention of renouncing her conventual life was treason to God, and that the boldness with which she had released herself from the former guides of her spiritual life and sought her own way would lead her to heresy and perdition! How painful, too, was the feeling that she was being examined to discover whether the Abbess Kunigunde ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not be clearer; I kissed the hand which was giving me the key of that mysterious temple, and I enquired from the charming woman whether I should see her in her conventual garb. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... lovers were parted, and Giulia was confined in the conventual fortress, and carefully guarded. Pope Paul, it appears, did not relax the imprisonment of the unfortunate girl, as he surely ought to have done, in recognition of the Cardinal's successful advocacy of ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... "the lofty tower, with the grated door, and porter's lodge beneath it; the retired ambulatory; the separate cells; the common refectory; the venerable church; the black flowing dress and the silver cross worn by the members; the conventual appellation of brother, with which they salute each other; in short, the silence, the order, and the neatness, that here reign, seem to recall the idea of a monastery to those who have seen one, and will give no imperfect idea of such an establishment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... Wright says that "it was a common practice to grant under the conventual seal to benefactors and others a brotherly participation in the spiritual good works of the convent, and in their ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... felt not a little surprised; but the idea immediately occurred to her that it was some conventual memorial appealing to her charity. She took the paper from the monk, who immediately moved away; but what was the agitation of Lady Annabel when she recognised the handwriting of her husband! Her first thought was to save Venetia from sharing that agitation. She rose quickly; she ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... the authority of general councils, and of the time and manner of convening and celebrating them. The second relates to ecclesiastical elections, which are enjoined to be made hereafter in strict accordance with the canons, by the cathedral, collegiate, and conventual chapters. Reserves, annates, and "expective graces" are abolished; the rights of patrons are to be respected, provided their nominees be graduates of the universities and otherwise well qualified. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... kind of prison was inspected by her; this was a conventual institution and refuge for female penitents, under the control of the nuns of the order of St. Charles, who to the three ordinary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, added that of converting souls. Superintending ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... The outer court of the convent was indeed for the time opened for the reception of the male sex; but the younger sisters and novices of the house being carefully secluded in the more inner apartments of the extensive building, under the immediate eye of a grim old nun, or, as the conventual rule designed her, an ancient, sad, and virtuous person, termed Mistress of the Novices, were not permitted to pollute their eyes by looking on waving plumes and rustling mantles. A few sisters, indeed, of the Abbess's own standing, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... however, consciousness returned; and he one day became aware that he was stretched on a bed in a chamber somewhat luxuriously furnished, and tended by a woman advanced in years, who wore a gown of russet, and a wimple which gave her a conventual appearance. ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... With something of a conventual hush in her voice, she said to the butler, "Please tell my maid that we are leaving by a very early train to-morrow, and that she must ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... it, without that she, in shaken branch, passing shade, unwonted footfall, or stilly murmur (and though Dr. John had spoken very low in the few words he dropped me, yet the hum of his man's voice pervaded, I thought, the whole conventual ground)—without, I say, that she should have caught intimation of things extraordinary transpiring on her premises. What things, she might by no means see, or at that time be able to discover; but a delicious little ravelled plot lay tempting her ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... former school friends, girls belonging to fine Florentine families, some now noble matrons, mothers of families, one or two great conventual superioresses, still resided in the city, and these welcomed their beloved Marcia delightedly. There were, too, the American and English colonies, and a coterie of well-known artists. Marcia Vandervelde was a born hostess, a center around which ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... time of the French Revolution, and the entire property, convent, mountain and prospect, remained in the hands of private possessors till 1853, when the prelate of that day repurchased the whole, restored the conventual building, put in some lay brethren to cultivate the soil, and some lay sisters, who wear the garb of nuns, but have taken no vows upon them except of piety, to keep the little inn and make tourists comfortable. No arrangement could be better, and I advise any one in want of pure air, superb ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... with Moldini, and put the Lucia Rivi system into force in all its more than conventual rigors. And for about a month she worked like a devouring flame. Never had there been such energy, such enthusiasm. Mrs. Belloc was alarmed for her health, but the Rivi system took care of that; and presently Mrs. Belloc was moved to say, "Well, ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... eminently perilous to his spiritual purity that an unbeliever like Mrs. Ginx should bring unconsecrated milk into the convent to be administered to this suckling of the Church! In her uneasiness she appealed to Father Certificatus, the conventual confessor. He gave his opinion ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... was blended with the political enthusiasm of the people,—the religious feeling of a premature and crude reformation, the legacy of Arnold of Brescia. It was not, however, one excited against the priests, but favoured by them. The principal conventual orders declared for the Revolution.) The sun had long risen, and the crowd had long been assembled before the church door, and in vast streams along every street that led to it,—when the bell of the church tolled out long and merrily; and as it ceased, the voices ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ignoring any classifications but his own, created an element in which the first condition of existence was the immediate adoption of his standpoint; so that his niece, as she listened, seemed to feel Mrs. Gollinger's Mechlin cap spreading its conventual shadow over her rebellious brow and the "Revue de Paris" at her elbow turning into a copy of the "Reredos." She had meant to assure her uncle that she was quite aware of the significance of the title she had chosen, that it had been deliberately ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... in their disguises before the gate of the convent of White Nuns. The portress ran as fast as she could in order to inform the abbess of the unexpected visitors. The abbess received them with conventual greetings, to which the Devil answered in a similar tone. Sweetmeats and wines were then brought in, and while partaking of them the two abbesses talked together, of cloister affairs, and of the wicked world; and the Devil, with ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... of the Greeks, on the 15th of October, that a monk of the Desert of Sheti, having been excommunicated by him who had the care of his conduct, for some act of disobedience, he left the desert, and came to Alexandria, where he was arrested by the governor of the city, despoiled of his conventual habit, and ardently solicited to sacrifice to false gods. The solitary resisted nobly, and was tormented in various ways, until at last they cut off his head, and threw his body outside of the city, to be devoured by dogs. The Christians took it away in the night, and having embalmed ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... all directions. The friends of the buried were bidden to exhume their dead, and all unclaimed bodies were flung into a neighbouring cemetery, where dogs fought for them as for carrion. The church was profaned, all the conventual buildings were razed and sold in lots, not one stone being left on another; the very ground was ploughed up and sown, "not, it is true with salt," adds St. Simon, and that was the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... with their feet on braziers, reminded Odo of the narrow elongated saints squeezed into the niches of a church-door. The old Marchioness wore the high coif and veil of the previous century; the aunts, who, as Odo afterwards learned, were canonesses of a noble order, were habited in a semi-conventual dress, with crosses hanging on their bosoms; and none spoke but when the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... from Syr. abba, father), a monastery, or conventual establishment, under the government of an ABBOT or an ABBESS. A priory only differed from an abbey in that the superior bore the name of prior instead of abbot. This was the case in all the English conventual cathedrals, e.g. Canterbury, Ely, Norwich, &c., where the archbishop ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Lady Walwyn, but her knowledge in all needlework and confectionery was consummate, so that half the ladies in Dorset and Wilts longed to send their daughters to be educated at Hurst Walwyn. Her small figure and soft cheeks had the gentle contour of a dove's form, nor had she lost the conventual serenity of expression; indeed it was curious that, let Lady Walwyn array her as she would, whatever she wore bore a nunlike air. Her silken farthingales hung like serge robes, her ruffs looked like mufflers, her coifs like hoods, even necklaces seemed rosaries, and her scrupulous neatness ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... use it? I ask you as one who, I am sure, has learned to love Adele, and who, I hope, has not wholly given over a friendly feeling toward me. Consider well, however, that the mother is now one of the most rigid of Catholics; I learn that she is even thinking of conventual life. I know her spirit and temper well enough to be sure that, if she were to meet the child again which she believes lost, it would be with an impetuosity of feeling and a devotion that would absorb every aim of her life. This disclosure is the only one by which I could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... conventual life of the severer orders there was an approximation to a punctual observance of the hours as they successively arrived. Possibly the modern mind fails to do full justice to the conception of worship on which this system was based. Those principles of devotion of which the rosary is ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... religious speculation, but soon descended to occupy himself with the exactitudes of science. Jeremy Taylor, who half a century earlier would have been Fletcher's rival, compels his clipped fancy to the conventual discipline of prose, (Maid Marian turned nun,) and waters his poetic wine with doctrinal eloquence. Milton is saved from making total shipwreck of his large-utteranced genius on the desolate Noman's Land of a religious epic only by the lucky help of Satan and his colleagues, with whom, as foiled ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... a better solution than that proposed in the November 1913, Educational Supplement to the Times. The suggestion is there made that the "conventual system" prevailing in some girls' boarding-schools should be changed by having Headmasters instead of Headmistresses. The writer apparently fails to realise that one of the greatest difficulties in co-educational ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... a white horse,[101] which was being submitted to her inspection as on former occasions. When he entered, he noticed that all the hangings of the room and the dresses of the inmates were of the dark hues of conventual life. The only things that there seemed to herald spring, were the melting of the thin ice on the surface of the lake, and the budding of the willows on its banks. The scene suggested many reflections to his mind; and, after the usual greetings of the season, and a short conversation, he quitted ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... altered to a degree involving the destruction of the paintings. He was the principal assistant of Fra Filippo in the grand frescoes which may still be seen at the east end of the cathedral of Prato. In the midst of the work he was recalled to Florence by his conventual superior, and a minute of proceedings of the commune of Prato is still extant, in which it is determined to petition the metropolitan of Florence to obtain his return to Prato,—a proof that his share in the work was so ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... asserts her predominance, protecting while she conceals, and throwing her mantle over the martyrs' graves to keep them from sacrilege,—but she is driven away by the builders of the papal court, and all precious old associations are incongruous with those of modern Roman architecture and Roman conventual discipline. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... validity, and feelings which had a stronger hold of the national mind than at any former period. Roman Catholic chapels rose all over the country. Cowls, girdles of ropes, and strings of beads constantly appeared in the streets, and astonished a population, the oldest of whom had never seen a conventual garb except on the stage. A convent rose at Clerkenwell on the site of the ancient cloister of Saint John. The Franciscans occupied a mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Carmelites were quartered in the City. A society of Benedictine monks was lodged in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... results achieved. Never, I really believe, have so many tribulations and hindrances, or so much ill-fortune attended the founding of a new Order. Jeanne spent her days on the high roads, running from one monastery to another, and toil as she would to dig up the conventual soil, nothing would grow. She could not even assume the habit of her Institution, or at any rate only a few minutes before her death, for, in order to travel with greater ease all over France, she wore the livery of a ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Psalms and Lessons from the New Testament, which make up a considerable part of the Breviary used in cloisters, he was first led into Protestant views. He had been for seventeen years resident in different cloisters of his order, as sick-nurse, alms gatherer, student, and physician, and knew the conventual life out and out. As he testifies: "There was little of the fear of God, so far as I could see, little of true piety; but abundance of hypocrisy, eye-service, deception, abuse of the poor sick people in the hospitals, such love and hatred as are common among ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... looked very bare. It almost looked like the parlour of a convent; with a little more austerity, whitened walls and a few thick velvet and gilt lives of the saints on the tables, the likeness would have been complete. The house itself was conventual in aspect, and Lady Channice, as she stood there in the quiet light at the window, looked not unlike a nun, were it not for her crown of pale gold hair that shone in the dark room and seemed, like the roses, to bring into it the brightness of ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... her spiritual testament. She points out the mischievous foibles, the little meannesses, the spirit of cantankerousness and strife, which long experience of the cloister had shown her were the besetting sins of the conventual life. She places before them the loftier standard of the Cross. Her words, direct and simple, ring out true and clear, producing somewhat the solemn effect of a Commination Service.' Strong as that estimate is, The Perfection deserves every word ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... and subjected to irreparable mutilation. He tells the story with perfect frankness and with hardly more than formal expressions of compunction, and thereafter follows the narrative of their separation, he to a monastery, she to a convent, and of his care for her during her conventual life, or at least for that part of it that had passed before the "History" was written. Through the whole story it is Heloise who shines brightly as a curiously beautiful personality, unselfish, self sacrificing, and almost virginal in her purity in spite of her fault. One has for her only sympathy ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... lips.) Hold your little tongues, children; it's very late, and you'll make me forget what I've to say. Fancy yourselves in pews, for five minutes. There's one point of possible good in the conventual system, which is always attractive to young girls; and the idea is a very dangerous one;— 0the notion of a merit, or exalting virtue, consisting in a habit of meditation on the "things above," or things of the next world. Now it is quite true, that a person of ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... delicacy, kept carefully isolated and intact from his military household, and accessible only to the family servants. The room he had selected for himself was nearest it,—a small, plainly furnished apartment, with an almost conventual simplicity in its cold, white walls and draperies, and the narrow, nun-like bed. It struck him that it might have belonged to some prim elder daughter or maiden aunt, who had acted as housekeeper, as it commanded the wing and servants' offices, with easy access ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Calyste slept till mid-day, for his mother would not have him wakened. Mariotte served the spoiled child's breakfast in his bed. The inflexible and semi-conventual rules which regulated the hours for meals yielded to the caprices of the chevalier. If it became desirable to extract from Mademoiselle du Guenic her array of keys in order to obtain some necessary article of food outside of the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... man, who had raised a large fortune by very indirect means, confess his life had been contrary to every precept of the Gospel; but that he hoped the pardon of Heaven for all his sins, as he intended to devote one of his daughters to a conventual life as an expiation. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... Mrs. Minne, charming and a widow, stood with her pretty nun-like face inclined to the tall, black Mr. Biterolf, the basso of the opera. She had been sonnetted until her perfectly arched eyebrows were famous. Her air of well-bred and conventual calm never had been known to desert her; and her high, light, colorless soprano had something in it of the sexless timbre of the boy chorister. With her blond hair pressed meekly to her shapely head she was the delight and despair of poets, painters and musicians, for she turned an impassable cheek ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... cell by Sister Alba, the nun who had received her at the bottom of the pit or well into which she descended by means of the chair; and that recluse gradually prepared her to fix her mind upon the necessity of embracing a conventual life. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... prehistoric implements have been found in great quantities in the neighbourhood, and there are traces of a prehistoric lake bed, to the S.E. The Priory, immediately S. (R. H. J. Delme-Radcliffe, Esq., J.P.), occupies the site of a Carmelite monastery and Conventual church founded in the reign of Edward II.; and the Biggin Almshouses, close to the church, still preserve some of the old fabric of the Gilbertine Nunnery, founded in the reign of Edward III. The Church of St. Mary (formerly ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... standing high and lonely on its hill, begirt with the vine-clad, crumbling walls of Michel Angelo,—the repose of the dome-crowned city in the vale below,—seemed to have wrought their impression with peculiar force upon her mind that afternoon. On their way home, they had entered the conventual church that stands half way up the hill, just as the vesper service was beginning, and she spoke of the simple spirit of devotion that filled the place, and of the gentle wonder with which, to use her own ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... sincerely in love as I was, the silence and simplicity of the life, the almost conventual regularity with which the same things are done daily at the same hours, only deepened and strengthened love. In that profound calm the interest attaching to the least action, word, or gesture became immense. I learned to know that, in the interchange ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... scene of this ancient drama acted by the clerks of London, but some traces of the association of the fraternity with the neighbourhood can still be found. The two famous conventual houses, for which Clerkenwell was famous, the nunnery of St. Mary and the priory of St. John of Jerusalem, founded in 1100, have long since disappeared. Clerks' Close is mentioned in numerous documents, and formed part of the estate belonging to the Skinners' ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield |
