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Recantation   Listen
noun
Recantation  n.  The act of recanting; a declaration that contradicts a former one; that which is thus asserted in contradiction; retraction. "The poor man was imprisoned for this discovery, and forced to make a public recantation."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Recantation" Quotes from Famous Books



... the mob might see the spectacle. He stood and prayed some time with Forster, who wept over him, exhorted and encouraged him. He delivered a long speech to the Sheriff, and with a noble manliness stuck to the recantation he had made at his trial; declaring he wished that all who embarked in the same cause might meet the same fate. he then took off his bag, coat and waistcoat with great composure, and after some trouble put on a napkin-cap, and then several ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... Great Ones of the Earth whom this may concern, being the Last Warning Peace at the Dreadful Day of Judgment. All discoverable copies of this book were to be burnt by the hangman at three different places (February 1st, 1650); and Coppe was imprisoned, but was released on his recantation of his opinions. His book was the cause of that curious ordinance of August 9th, 1650, for the "punishment of atheistical, blasphemous, and execrable opinions," which is the best summary and proof of the intense ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... recognise that as a Calvinist he could never hope for peaceful possession of the French throne. He determined, therefore, to yield to the entreaties of his most powerful supporters and to make his submission to the Catholic Church. In July 1593 he read a public recantation in the Church of St. Denis, and was absolved conditionally from the censures he had incurred. The following year he made his formal entrance into Paris, where he was welcomed by the people, and acknowledged ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... obscure, a man deals faithfully, but perhaps a little flippantly, with this or that person, thing, nation, subject, doctrine. Afterwards he is brought into a relation with the person or nation, into a position as regards the thing, subject, or doctrine, which necessitates, if not exactly a distinct recantation in the humiliating sense attached to the Latin, yet a more or less graceful and ingenious palinode in the more honourable one which we allow to the Greek equivalent and original. Mr Arnold could never be ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... Philemon. Then began to be considered there also what was to be done to libelous books and authors; for Naevius was quickly cast into prison for his unbridled pen, and released by the tribunes upon his recantation; we read also that libels were burnt, and the makers punished by Augustus. The like severity, no doubt, was used, if aught were impiously written against their esteemed gods. Except in these two points, how the world went in books, the magistrate ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... am going to commit suicide, all the same," it was clear that his words would carry very little force. Also, he saw with pain that they placed him in a somewhat ludicrous position. His end, as designed yesterday, had a large and simple grandeur. So had his recantation of it. But this new compromise between the two things had a fumbled, a feeble, an ignoble look. It seemed to combine all the disadvantages of both courses. It stained his honour without prolonging his life. Surely, this was a high price to pay for snubbing Zuleika... Yes, he must revert without ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... appease: but on the return of the bill to the House of Lords, where our amendments were to be read, the Chancellor in the most personal terms harangued against Fox, and concluded with saying that "he despised his scurrility as much as his adulation and recantation." As Christian charity is not one of the oaths taken by privy-counsellors, and as it is not the most eminent virtue in either of the champions, this quarrel is not likely to be soon reconciled. There are natures whose disposition it is to patch up political breaches, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... his past errors. He returned to Ciudad Real especially to preach a sermon of retraction and to read a paper prepared for him by Fray Tomas de la Torre, containing a full vindication of his Bishop's opinions. This recantation produced no small effect upon the colonists, some of whom were moved to express regret for their part in the maltreatment of Las Casas and the friars. This business terminated, the Canon rejoined Las Casas at Cinacatlan and accompanied ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... describe. The churches of the diocese held public prayers for this calamity, and every one expected to see the devil tumble into his house by the chimney. But the truth of it is that the good Master Hierome had a fever, and saw cows in his room, and then was this recantation obtained of him. The access passed, the poor saint wept copiously on learning this trick from me. In fact, he died in my arms, assisted by his physicians, heartbroken at this mummery, telling us that he was going to the feet of God to pray to prevent the consummation ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... utterances upon the occasion of his death was that in which 'Punch' made its magnanimous recantation of the spirit with which ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... had been looking on incredulously at her champion's unaccountable tardiness in coming to the point. But this public repudiation was too much for her. She gave a little low wail as she heard the shameless words of recantation, and then, without a word, jumped lightly down from her bench and ran away to hide ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... Luther was commanded to appear before it and recant. Presiding over this Diet was Charles V., Emperor of Germany; here were Electors, Princes and crowned heads, popish priests, bishops and cardinals, together with the principal nobility of Catholic Europe—these all came together to compel the recantation of Friar Martin Luther. But Luther said; "Unless I be convinced by Scripture and reason, I neither can nor dare retract anything for my conscience is a captive to God's Word, and it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience," and a great multitude ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... deeps!"[2] Thus spake the maid, and from her finger drew A golden ring, and broke it quick in two; One half she in her lovely bosom hides, The other, trembling, to her love confides. "This bind the vow," she said, "this mystic charm No future recantation can disarm, The right vindictive does the fates involve, No tears can move ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... Cicero's Recantation (palindia). The time for the struggle between the Senatorial party (the Optimates) and the Triumvirs, weakened by their mutual jealousy, seemed to have come. Accordingly Cicero proposed in a full house to reconsider Caesar's ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... years he reverted to this book, and wrote an apology, in which he answered his accusers, and confessed to some passages which he exhorted them to tear out. There was good ground for recantation. Writing to dazzle the democracy by means of a bright halo, with himself in the midst of it, he was sometimes weak in exposing crimes that had a popular motive. His republicanism was of the sort that allows no safeguard for minorities, no rights to men but those which their country gives them. He ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... territory, since measures of fatherly kindness had failed to make him acknowledge his error. Frederick, after waiting four weeks, returned a quiet answer, showing how the conduct of Luther quite agreed with his own view of the matter. He would have expected that no recantation would have been required of Luther till the matter in dispute had been satisfactorily examined and explained. There were a number of learned men, also, at foreign universities, from whom he could not yet have learned with certainty that Luther's doctrine was unchristian; while, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... the heart to rectify the errors of the understanding. The detailed examination of the consular Government and its pretended constitution, and the proof given by me, that it was a consummate despotism in masquerade, extorted a recantation even from the Morning Chronicle, which had previously extolled this constitution as the perfection of a wise and regulated liberty. On every great occurrence I endeavoured to discover in past history the event, that most nearly resembled it. I procured, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... as apparitor—one after another—of which the hemp had been a witness: how once a gentleman of Telsze, Dzindolet, whom he had summoned to court, had put a pistol against his breast, and bidden him crawl under the table and from there bark out a recantation of that summons with a dog's voice,111 so that the Apparitor had to run full speed for the hemp; how later Wolodkowicz,112 a haughty and insolent grandee, who used to break up district diets and violate courts of justice, receiving his official ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... this gentleman's advice to have been good, and his observations just, and in one respect my condition is worse than that of the Jew, for no recantation will save me. However it should seem by some late proceedings, that my state is not altogether deplorable. This I can impute to nothing but the steadiness of two impartial grand juries, which hath confirmed in me an opinion I have long entertained, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... return an answer of thanks to His Majesty for his gracious letter; and that the letter be kept among the records of the Parliament; and in all this not so much as one No. So that Luke Robinson himself stood up and made a recantation of what he had done, and promises to be a loyal subject to his Prince for the time to come. [Of Pickering Lyth, in Yorkshire, M.P. for Scarborough discharged from sitting in the House of Commons, July 21, 1660.] The City of London ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... theologians, and pseudo-philosophers that Galileo was forced to recant his statements. In 1632 he published at Florence his Dialogue on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems of the World. For this he was cited to Rome, his book ordered to be burned, and he was sentenced to be imprisoned, to make a recantation of his errors, and by way of penance to recite the seven ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... do that," cried Anne Askew, with flashing eyes, "believe me, queen, as soon as I came to my senses I would lay violent hands on myself, in order to give myself over to eternal damnation, as the punishment of my recantation! God has ordered that I shall be a sign of the true faith. ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... treatment stopped the bleeding, but, though she was soon rescued, she remained twenty-one days in great pain and danger. Her sister had previously escaped in time to give the alarm. Some months after they came to Dublin and read their recantation in Dr. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... through the Reformation, who had pronounced the divorce of the Queen's mother, possibly find mercy? He persuaded himself of it once; and, yielding as he was, allowed himself to be tempted into a recantation, in despite of which he was condemned to death. But then there awoke in him also the whole consciousness of the truth of his belief. The hand with which he had signed the recantation he held firm, and ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... was, still, a third class—which consisted of a set of thorough Irish wags, who looked upon the whole thing as an excellent joke—and who, while they had not a rag to their backs, nor a morsel for their mouths, enjoyed the whole ceremony of reading their recantation, renouncing Popery, and all that, as a capital spree while it lasted, and a thing that ought by all means to be ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... that time, for there were rumours of renewed persecutions of the Protestants by command of bishops and clergy. Not contented with refusing them the legal registration of marriage and the certificate of death, it was said that a general confiscation of property was ordered, and that recantation or death by fire and sword might once more be the doom of the sectaries. Anton Dormeur was frequently at Alais with Bartholde, and the people there whispered that it would go hard with the manufacturer when the dragoons came. He had already made some preparations, however. Always in communication ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... hunting crops. This crowning moment was approaching, Christian had but to reply suitably to the intimidating riddles of the hymn, and the final act would open in all its solemnity. For, as has been said, the spirit of revolt whispered to her, and ingeniously persuaded her that the required recantation ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... other Pursuits. I shall therefore take the Liberty to acquaint you, however harsh it may sound in a Lady's Ears, that tho your Love-Fit should happen to return, unless you could contrive a way to make your Recantation as well known to the Publick, as they are already apprised of the manner with which you have treated me, you shall never more ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... His wife was Elizabeth Rogers, daughter of the loyalist minister of Littleton. His name was affixed to the address to Governor Gage, June 21, 1774, and he was forced to sign, with the other justices, a recantation of the aspersions cast upon the people in that address. He has the distinction of being recorded by the leading statesman of the Revolution—John Adams—as his personal friend. So popular was Abel Willard and so well known his character as a peacemaker and well-wisher to his ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... His younger brother saw no practicable road to independence save that of relying upon his own exertions, and adopting a political creed more consonant both to reason and his own interest than the hereditary faith of Sir Everard in High-Church and in the house of Stuart. He therefore read his recantation at the beginning of his career, and entered life as an avowed Whig and friend of the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... however, she entirely revised this early translation, of which she wrote to Hugh Stuart Boyd that it was "as cold as Caucasus, and flat as the neighboring plain," and that "a palinodia, a recantation," was necessary to her. In her preface to the later translation she begged that her reader would forgive her English for not being Greek, and herself for ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... to quite a different conclusion, and who, after having passed a life in vain endeavours to reconcile an irreconcilable book, flings it at last down in despair, and declares, with tearful eyes, and hands up to heaven, his revolt and recantation. If the truth is with all these, why should I take side with any one of them? Some are called upon to preach: let them preach. Of these preachers there are somewhat too many, methinks, who fancy they have the gift. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... his knowledge of languages would be useful. He walked to London for the purpose in December, 1832. The Society was satisfied and sent him back to Norwich to learn the Manchu-Tartar language. There he wrote a letter, which, if we take Dr. Knapp's word for it, was "a sort of recantation of the Taylorism of 1824." Being now near thirty, and perhaps having his worst "horrors" behind him, or at least having reason to think so if he was already fond of Mrs. Clarke, whom he afterwards married, it was easy for him to fall into the same way of speaking as these good and ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... thousand armed men; rid France of the Huguenot chiefs and a formidable evil were averted. Her course was approved, but the leaders shrank from including the two princes of Navarre and Conde: they were to be given their choice—recantation or death. By order of the king 12,000 arquebusiers were placed along the river and the streets, and arms were carried into the Louvre. The admiral's friends, alarmed at the sinister preparations, protested to Charles but ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... jurisdiction of the prelates or more bound by them than their ancestors had been in times past." Heresy indeed was still a felony by the common law, and if as yet we meet with no instances of the punishment of heretics by the fire it was because the threat of such a death was commonly followed by the recantation of the Lollard. But the restriction of each bishop's jurisdiction within the limits of his own diocese made it impossible to arrest the wandering preachers of the new doctrine, and the civil punishment—even if it had been sanctioned by public ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... Whitehall by one door, she would leave it by another." By degrees she became less obstinate; and the propagator of the scandal found that his lies were likely to cost him dear. With the changed atmosphere, Berkeley learned that safety lay in recantation; and, with undiminished shamelessness, he now sought reconciliation with the new Duchess, the victim of his doubly loathsome lies. With craven hypocrisy he represented to the Duke that these lies had been the fruit only of over-eager solicitude ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... would take the religion of India as his guide is in danger of losing this world without gaining the other. No, our salvation, if it comes, must come from Greece rather than from India. Some day I shall write my recantation and point out the way of salvation according to the Gospel of Plato. Indeed, since love has become a reality to me, I have learned to read a new meaning in this philosophy of reconciliation instead of renunciation. Tell your father all this. Some way we must bring this uncertainty to an end. I must ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... climax of her suffering. Once she called out over their heads, "All that I did was done for good, and it was well to do it:"—her last cry. Then she would seem to have recovered in some measure her composure. Probably her agitated brain was unable to understand the formula of recantation which was read to her amid all the increasing noises of the crowd, but she had a vague faith in the condition she had herself stated, that the paper should be submitted to the Church, and that she should at once be transferred to an ecclesiastical prison. Other suggestions are ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... pleasure in the bridging of the chasm which had opened between him and his former party intimates. On neither side was there recantation, but they could unite again on the question of the War and America's duty towards it, which swallowed up partisan grievances. Many of the old time Republicans who had broken politically from Roosevelt in 1912, remained devoted ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... "I think you're the most wond—hum!" He broke off, catching himself just in time. "You say this slavery business is to last until I make my recantation?" he ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... None could say what might be the effect of a law enjoining all the members of a great, a powerful, a sacred profession to make, under the most solemn sanction of religion, a declaration which might be plausibly represented as a formal recantation of all that they had been writing and preaching during many years. The Primate and some of the most eminent Bishops had already absented themselves from Parliament, and would doubtless relinquish their palaces and revenues, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Lord Baringstoke's public recantation was the talk of London. In a speech of considerable eloquence he showed how the merciless logic of facts had convinced his intellect, and his conscience had compelled him to abandon the position he had previously taken up. Fortunately, you can prove absolutely anything about Ireland. It is merely ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... Cornelius's shoes and took the family estate. Besides the force of my mother's bright eyes, several persons, and of the genteelest society too, contributed to this happy change; and I have often heard my mother laughingly tell the story of my father's recantation, which was solemnly pronounced at the tavern in the company of Sir Dick Ringwood, Lord Bagwig, Captain Punter, and two or three other young sparks of the town. Roaring Harry won 300 pieces that very night at faro, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... such a state of mind in John Nicolls, who, in 1577 left England, made a recantation of his heresy, and was "received into the holy Catholic Church." Returning to England he recanted his Roman Catholic opinions, and even wrote "His Pilgrimage, wherein is displayed the lives of the proud Popes, ambitious Cardinals, leacherous Bishops, fat bellied Monks, ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... church in Fleet-street, Mr. Woolston,[2] (who writ against the miracles of our Saviour,) in the utmost terrors of conscience, made a public recantation. Dr. Mandeville[3] (who had been groundlessly reported formerly to have done the same,) did it now in good earnest at St James's gate; as did also at the Temple Church several gentlemen, who frequent coffeehouses near the bar. So great was the faith and fear of two of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... from the very element against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected is simply absurd. There must be a test by which to separate the opposing elements so as to build only from the sound, and that test is a sufficiently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation of his ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... had no reason or excuse for prolonging the conversation, and it ended here. Within three hours the oakum-headed apparition once more dived into the Leaving Shop, and that night Rogue Riderhood's recantation lay in the post office, addressed under cover to Lizzie ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... does not involve an opinion that the reasons for its decision are sound. Cranmer would fain have persuaded the King to accept the oath thus modified as sufficient—not realising that the primary object of Henry and Cromwell was to drive the opponents of the divorce into a public recantation of their opinion. More and Fisher were resolute, and were sent to the Tower, though in form an indictment ought first to have been brought against them in the courts. Cromwell expressed and no doubt felt a very genuine regret at the failure of the plan; but it was ever Cromwell's ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... advocate free-trade. At last, in 1846, Sir Robert Peel himself, after having been for nearly his whole career a protectionist, gave in his adhesion to the new principles. Cobden, among others, had convinced him that the prosperity of the country depended on free-trade, and he nobly made his recantation, to the intense disgust of many of his former followers,—especially of Disraeli, who now appears in Parliament as a leader of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... against it, the thick packet of bank-notes in the tramp's bundle, and all that it might stand for, were as air-blown bubbles to refined gold. Yet he would not go back; he could not go back. To restore the money would be more than a confession of failure; it would be an abject recantation—a flat denial of every article of his latest social creed, and a plunge into primordial chaos in the matter of theories, out of which he could emerge only as ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... up his stick and straw hat, bowed politely and seated himself opposite her. Indeed, as the train was now moving rapidly, no other course was open to him. But he wore no look of recantation. His calmness was more impudent than ever, and he even took out and reset ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... great in the light of the actor's previous history and training; and perhaps the atonement Teddy now contemplated was for him as heroic as that of the martyred bishop who held the hand that had signed the recantation steadily in the flame ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... exactly the same principles in her missionary efforts amongst the heathen hordes of Northern Europe. "Do you renounce the devils, and all their words and works; Thonar, Wodin, and Saxenote?" was part of the form of recantation administered to the Scandinavian converts;[1] and at the present day "Odin take you" is the Norse equivalent of "the devil take you." On the other hand, an attempt was made to identify Balda "the beautiful" with ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... Naples to Vienna, from Vienna back to Venice, and at length, at the prompting of the Holy See, lured across the Piedmontese frontier by Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, and imprisoned for life in the citadel of Turin. The memory of his tragic history—most of all, perhaps, of his recantation and the "devout ending" to which solitude and persecution had forced the freest spirit of his day—hovered like a warning on the horizon of thought and constrained political speculation to hide itself behind the study of fashionable ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... gladly, but by the horrors of a lonely and protracted imprisonment in a noxious dungeon. But his fortitude did not long abandon him; tortured by his own conscience, he solemnly announced at the next audience his recantation; and declared, that of all the sins he had committed, he repented of none more than his apostasy from the doctrines he had maintained. In consequence of this he was subjected to the same condemnation as his illustrious friend; and met his painful death with ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... opponent's argument, or upon better consideration of his own; for he shall never be preferred to the chair for a mere clatter of words and syllogisms, and is no further engaged to any argument whatever, than as he shall in his own judgment approve it: nor yet is arguing a trade, where the liberty of recantation and getting off upon better thoughts, are to be sold for ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... Gentleman called Robert Foster in Striuelyng, with other three or foure, with them of the towne of Striuelyng: who at the day of their appearaunce after their summonyng, were condemned to the death without any place of recantation, because (as was alleged) they were heresiarkes or chiefe heretikes and teachers of heresies, and especially because many of them were at the bridal and marriage of a Priest, who was vicar of Twybodye ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... conversions had been commenced; and Pellisson, himself originally a Protestant, had charge of the payments, a source of fraud and hypocrisies of every sort. A declaration of 1679 condemned the relapsed to honorable amends (public recantation, &c.), to confiscation and to banishment. The door's of all employments were closed against Huguenots; they could no longer sit in the courts or Parliaments, or administer the finances, or become medical practitioners, barristers, or notaries; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... our consideration of Sadrock's Homeric studies it is however necessary to point out that late in life he made a very curious recantation. In a book of memoirs, published in 1920, by one who was in a position to acquire special information, it is stated in his own words that Sadrock preferred Robert Elsmere to the Iliad; while during the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various

... mercy, and his bare arm hath been discovered therein from first to last, that all the churches may hear and fear. I do believe such a heap of hideous errors at once to be vented by such a self-deluding and deluded creature, no history can record; and yet, after recantation of all, to be cast out as unsavory salt, that she may not continue a pest to the place, that will be forever marvellous in the eyes of all ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... legate, being reduced to the necessity of politeness, received him civilly. He told him, however, simply and briefly, that the Pope insisted on his recantation, and would accept nothing else. Luther requested the cardinal to point out to him where he was wrong. The cardinal waived discussion. 'He was come to command,' he said, 'not to argue.' And Luther had to tell him that it could ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... This he affected to do, but the corrections were manifestly only colourable; his explanations of his legal heresies against the prerogative, as these heresies were formulated by the Chancellor and Bacon, and presented to him for recantation, were judged insufficient; and in a decree, prefaced by reasons drawn up by Bacon, in which, besides Coke's errors of law, his "deceit, contempt, and slander of the Government," his "perpetual turbulent carriage," and his affectation ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... and make no mention of merit which, could you think me capable of overlooking, might reasonably damn for ever in your judgment all pretensions in me to be critical. There, I will be judged by Lloyd, whether I have not made a very handsome recantation. I was in the case of a man whose friend has asked him his opinion of a certain young lady; the deluded wight gives judgment against her in toto—don't like her face, her walk, her manners—finds ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... requisition, from first to last, is base, dastardly—crime-confessing, too—if seen with discriminating eyes. Why, if innocent of fraud toward me and mine, should you ask a formal acknowledgment on my part as to your just administration of my affairs, and a recantation of all I have said to the contrary, both with regard to yourself and Evelyn Erle? Such are the contents of this first paper, the only one that I could, under any possible circumstances, be induced to sign as a compromise with your villainy; for, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... they agreed to say no word of the hopes they still cherished; but to talk of other matters, purely personal to themselves. Here, as hour after hour passed, they strengthened each other in their resolutions, by an agreement that no torture should wring from them a recantation of their faith, and by many prayers for strength ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... Robinson and his company may not goe over to our plantation, unless he and they will reconcile themselves to our church by a recantation under ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... Sebastia. In 359 he accompanied Basil of Ancyra from Seleucia to the conferences at Constantinople, and on his return home came forward as a resolute enemy of Arianism at Caesarea. The young deacon was soon recognised as a power in Asia. He received the dying recantation of Dianius, and guided the choice of his successor Eusebius in 362. Yet he still acted with the Semiarians, and helped them with his counsel at Lampsacus. Indeed it was from the Semiarian side that he approached the Nicene faith. In his own city ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... she exclaimed, passionately. 'Nelly is my hidden enemy. You witch! So you do seek elf-bolts to hurt us! Let me go, and I'll make her rue! I'll make her howl a recantation!' ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... lieutenant-general in the army of Henri IV. He persevered in Calvinism after the recantation ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... letter was sent to them from the office of the Lieutenant-Governor, requesting them to state the grounds of their complaints more specifically. The recipients responded by preparing and forwarding a stronger case than before. A recantation was then drawn up by a skilful hand, and presented to each individual member of the Jury, a reward being at the same time offered as an inducement to sign it. The jurymen, however, were not prepared to barter away ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... before I escaped from my teens, I said anything in favour of his lordship's paper-books, it was in the way of dutiful dedication, and more from the advice of others than my own judgment; and I seize the first opportunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation." As was frequently the case with him, he recanted again. In a letter of 1814 he expressed to Rogers his regret for his sarcasms; and in his reference to the death of the Hon. Frederick Howard, in the third ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... exhortations, the Jesuits, for the present, baptized but few. Indeed, during the first year or more, they baptized no adults except those apparently at the point of death; for, with excellent reason, they feared backsliding and recantation. They found especial pleasure in the baptism of dying infants, rescuing them from the flames of perdition, and changing them, to borrow Le Jeune's phrase, "from little Indians ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... Margaret read the recantation of her confession before the Court, and was, as she says, forthwith ordered by them into a dungeon. She obtained permission to visit Mr. Burroughs the day before his execution, acknowledged that she had belied him, and implored ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... and in France supported Navarre's claim to the throne; while, on the other hand, Philip and the Spaniards, strongly interested in preventing his succession, were ready to maintain, even against a fluctuating pope, that heresy was a permanent bar to succession, not to be removed even by recantation. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... and the Turks, was conquered, and annexed by the latter in 1465. The religious constancy of the Bosnian nobles was now sorely tried, for they found themselves compelled to choose between their religion and poverty, or recantation and wealth. Their decision was soon made, and the greater portion renounced Christianity and embraced Islamism, rather than relinquish those feudal privileges, for the attainment of which they had originally ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... This may have been a follower of Berengarius, who in his recantation in 1059 anathematized the heresy that the bread and wine "after consecration are merely a sacrament and not the true Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Mansi, ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... rudely deposed from office, and thrown into prison. Finding he could not be induced to sign a paper of recantation, drawn up for him by the Patriarch, he was hurried by the Patriarch's beadles, with great violence, into an open sail-boat, without opportunity to obtain even an outer garment from his house, although it was midwinter, and sent across the sea of Marmora ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... Dissent.— N. dissent; discordance &c. (disagreement) 24; difference diversity of opinion. nonconformity &c. (heterodoxy) 984; protestantism, recusancy, schism; disaffection; secession &c. 624; recantation &c. 607. dissension &c (discord) 713; discontent &c. 832; cavilling. protest; contradiction &c (denial) 536; noncompliance &c (rejection) 764. dissentient, dissenter; non-juror, non-content, nonconformist; sectary, separatist, recusant, schismatic, protestant, heretic. refusal &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... they were tied each to the stake. The flames kindled dully and heavily; the wood, hastily piled up, was green or wet; or in cruel mercy the tardiness was designed that the victims might have time, while the fire was still curling round their extremities, to recant their bold recantation. But there was no sign, no word of weakness. Du Molay implored that the image of the Mother of God might be held up before him, and his hands unchained, that he might clasp them in prayer. Both, as the smoke rose to their lips, as the fire crept up ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... that moment, nothing that made issue with the President, that threatened any limitation of his efficiency, had the slightest chance of Abolitionist support. The one dread that alarmed the whole Abolitionist group was a possible change in the President's mood, a possible recantation on January first. In order to hold him to his word, they were ready to humor him as one might cajole, or try to cajole, a monster that one was afraid of. No time, this, to talk to Abolitionists about strictly constitutional issues, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... became emperor he inaugurated a new system of persecution. Instead of at once consigning to death those who boldly made a profession of Christianity, as had heretofore been customary in times of trial, he employed various expedients to extort from them a recantation. He threw them into confinement, bound them with chains, kept them in lingering suspense, and subjected them to sufferings of different kinds, in the hope of overcoming their constancy. It would seem that Ignatius, Zosimus, Rufus, and their companions ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen

... tardy recantation, and I grieve at the disappointment it may occasion you: but I have yielded to the exhortations of an inward monitor, who is never to be neglected with impunity. Consult him yourself, and I shall need no other advocate. Adieu, and may all felicity attend you! if to hear of the almost total ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... lifted up his pen, and indited a short lamentation over his loss. After the Restoration, he was one of the first to read a poetical recantation of his errors in verses addressed to Charles II. In 1661 he was returned to parliament for Hastings, in Sussex, and sat afterwards at various times for Chipping-Wycombe, and Saltash. In parliament, he was rather famed for his lively sallies of wit, than for his logic, sense, or earnestness. In private, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... that ever these Islands brought forth"; and, with this renewed conviction, and remembering also their former confidence in himself, especially in the Salmasian controversy, he could now congratulate them and the country on their return to power. But is not the Address also a recantation of his Oliverianism? To some extent, it must be so interpreted. It seems utterly impossible, indeed, that the phrase "a short but scandalous night of interruption" was intended to apply to the entire six years of the Cromwellian Dictatorship ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... recantation of principle, without abatement even of declared party doctrine, honestly executing only the high mandate of the Constitution, he could turn from the old issues and take up the new. A single stride, and from the flying leader of a discomfited rout ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... who drove him to it, leaving him only a leper's life. In the Peninsula they had dissembled among Christians; he would dissemble among Jews, aping the ancient apes. He foresaw no difficulty in the recantation. And—famous idea!—his brother Joseph, poor, dear fool, should bring it about under the illusion that he was the instrument of Providence: for to employ Dom Diego as go-between were to risk the scenting of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... vain. A proof of her weakness lay in the very utterance of what calm strength would not have taken the trouble to formulate. Every sound of his voice beginning on the old subject stirred her with a terrifying bliss, and she coveted the recantation ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... often been pointed to as an example of almost primordial life, from which the evolutionary chain might have begun; and later controversialists, not acquainted with the precise limitations of the matter, seized upon the Bathybius recantation as a convenient stick with which to beat the Darwinian dog. To the most noteworthy case of this, eleven years later, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... and the direct successor of the spiritual Caesar who had thus humbled a former Emperor of Germany? It was in vain that Henry afterwards endeavoured, by making war upon his oppressor, to undo the evil effects of his public recantation at Canossa; the act of humiliation was too marked ever to be wiped out either by himself or by his descendants. For good or for bad, Gregory had succeeded in rendering the Papacy free from lay control; he had gained for ever for the Church one of her most cherished tenets, the absolute independence ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... in. She stood trembling, waist deep, not knowing what they meant to do. Then they held her head under the water till she made some sign to show she would give in. They released her then, rubbed ashes on her brow, sign of recantation, and they led her back sobbing—poor little girl. She is not made of martyr stuff; she was only miserable. For some months we saw nothing of her. We used to go to the next house and persuade the people to let ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... satire, the book would have brought its author nothing; in fact, its cost would have come out of his own pocket, since, as Harviss assured him, no publisher would have risked taking it. But as a profession of faith, as the recantation of an eminent biologist, whose leanings had hitherto been supposed to be toward a cold determinism, it would bring in a steady income to author and publisher. The offer found the Professor in a moment of financial perplexity. His illness, ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... immediate cognisance, why, we ask, did he not re-write the page? Why did he not cover well that said paragraph with crosses and arabesques? We do suspect him here of chicanery; for by this plausible recantation he would shift the responsibility to the shoulders of the Editor, if the secret is divulged. Be this as it may, no red crosses can conceal from us the astounding confession, which we now give out. For the two young Syrians, who were smuggled out of their country by the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... the senate should on the 15th of May discuss Caesar's distribution of the Campanian land. This brought about the conference of Luca (Lucca). Cicero was again deserted by his supporters and threatened with fresh exile. He was forced to publish a "recantation," probably the speech de Provinciis Consularibus, and in a private letter says frankly, "I know that I have been a regular ass." His conduct for the next three years teems with inconsistencies which we may deplore but cannot pass over. He was obliged to defend in 54 Publius Vatinius, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... author of the Seasons, having extravagantly praised a person of rank, who afterwards appeared to be undeserving of eulogiums, properly employed his pen in a solemn recantation of his error. A very different conduct from that of Dupleix, who always spoke highly of Queen Margaret of France for a little place he held in her household: but after her death, when the place became extinct, spoke of her with all the freedom of satire. Such is too often the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... or customs, or people, were flat against the word of God, are diametrically opposite to Christianity. If I have said amiss in this, convince me of my error, and I am ready here before you to make my recantation. ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... Prance confessed than he withdrew his confession. He prayed to be taken before the King, knelt, and denied all. Next day he did the same before the Council. He was restored to his pleasant quarters in Newgate, and recanted his recantation. He again withdrew, and maintained that his confession was false, before King and Council (December 30), 'He knows nothing in the world of all he has said.' The Lord Chancellor proposed 'to ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... this he fell a sacrifice, and accordingly prepared himself for the stake; while I, not at all ambitious of the crown of martyrdom, resolved to temporize; so that, when I was brought to the question the second time, I made a solemn recantation. As I had no worldly fortune to obstruct my salvation, I was received into the bosom of the church, and, by way of penance, enjoined to walk barefoot to Rome in the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... to a confession and a recantation of an illustrious sinner; the Coryphaeus of the amusing and new-found art, or artifice, of modern criticism. In the character of BURNS, the Edinburgh Reviewer, with his peculiar felicity of manner, attacked the character of the man of genius; but when Mr. Campbell ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... February, 1798, and first printed in the "Morning Post" for April 16 of that year, under the significant title of "Recantation." In the autumn it was printed with its present title in a pamphlet together with "Fears in Solitude," another political poem, and "Frost at Midnight," a poem on his infant child. In October, 1802, it was ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... at once all hope of having the truth touching his articles of faith tested fairly at Worms by the standard of God's word in Scripture. Spalatin indicated to him the points on which he would in any case be expected to make a public recantation. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... shrieks of women struggling with their murderers; while through all, and above all, boomed out the deep-toned bells of the metropolitan churches—one long burial-peal; and amid this ghastly diapason it was the pleasure of the tiger-hearted Charles to accept the reluctant and informal recantation of his two horror-stricken victims; after which he compelled them without remorse to the agony of seeing their friends and followers butchered before ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... least, to settle the 'affairs of State' in the pot-house over a mug of ale, Spencer had nothing but contempt; but to the parliamentary people who settle the same 'affairs' over champagne and prostitutes, he played the lick-spittle.... The recantation of his 'Social Statics' is the worst case of intellectual cowardice on record.... He went down with final contempt for the workers who served him, gave him his daily bread, made his ink, pen, and paper and bound ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... feeling, nor indeed the most appropriate one. As his thought expands and his rapture rises, he soon acknowledges that, so far from grieving for Keats who is dead, it were far more relevant to grieve for himself who is not dead. This paean of recantation and aspiration occupies the remainder of ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... that a young girl wonderfully similar in feature and voice to Jeanne d'Arc was palmed off upon the English by Duke Philip, and afterwards, on her trial, comported herself like the Maid, trusting in this recantation to effect her release. But we consider such an hypothesis extremely far-fetched, nor does it accord with the events which immediately followed. It seems hardly questionable that it was the real Jeanne who publicly recanted on the 24th of May. This was ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... request was complied with; and Borri, closely manacled, was sent under an escort of soldiers to the prison of the Inquisition at Rome. He was too much of an impostor to be deeply tinged with fanaticism, and was not unwilling to make a public recantation of his heresies if he could thereby save his life. When the proposition was made to him, he accepted it with eagerness. His punishment was to be commuted into the hardly less severe one of perpetual imprisonment; ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... that he approached her the next morning with the proofs of his great article on "Keith Rickman and the Modern Drama." There the author of the Prolegomena to AEsthetics, the apostle of the Absolute, the opponent of Individualism, had made his recantation. He touched with melancholy irony on the rise and fall of schools; and declared, as Rickman had declared before him, that "in modern art what we have to reckon with is the Man Himself." That utterance, he flattered himself, was not unbecoming in ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... his old age, from the liberal principles of his youth; and, no doubt, he was careful, in the later editions of the Essays, to expunge everything that savoured of democratic tendencies. But the passage just quoted shows that this was no recantation, but simply a confirmation, by his experience of one of the most debased periods of English history, of those evil tendencies attendant on popular government, of which, from the ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... shall be to reprimand the prisoner, and order him to repeat his recantation in the new temple before the Manager and Head Cashier, and to confirm his statement on oath by kissing the reliquary containing the ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... accomplished by the example of self devotion. So commencing with a weak and trembling woman, who was ready to sink into the ground with fear and shame merely at being thus had up before the eyes of the whole place, he easily obtained a solemn recantation and abjuration of every form of heresy; and in a tone of wonderful mildness, though of solemn warning, too, told her that since she was a woman and young, and had doubtless been led away by others, she should be pardoned ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... with his crack-brained religious and social notions; knew that in his becoming the writer of illogical tracts and pamphlets, Russia was losing a great artist. What would he have said if he had lived to read the sad recantation and artistic suicide of Tolstoy: "I consign my own artistic productions to the category of bad art, except the story, God Sees the Truth, which seeks a place in the first class, and The Prisoner of the Caucasus, which belongs to the second." Also sprach ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... wants to force me to marry the very girl I am plotting to run away with! He must not know of my connection with her yet awhile. He has too summary a method of proceeding in these matters. However, I'll read my recantation instantly. My conversion is something sudden, indeed—but I can assure him it is very sincere. So, so—here he comes. He looks plaguy ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... Proctor called him up and exhorted him to be witty but modest withal. Their speeches, especially after the Restoration, tended to be boisterous, and even scurrilous. "26 Martii 1669. Da Hollis, fellow of Clare Hall is to make a publick Recantation in the Bac. Schools for his Tripos speeche." The Tripos verses still come out, and are circulated on Ash Wednesday. The list of successful candidates for honours is printed on the same paper, hence the term "Tripos" ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... heard one word after his recantation. Dead, without recanting it! Dead, denying Christ at his end, after confessing Him in his life! This was worse than many martyrdoms, for it was martyrdom of the soul. Was there no hope? Must this death ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... and when Mr. Bernard, the lecturer of St. Sepulchre's, London, preached a "No Popery" sermon at St. Mary's, Cambridge, he was dragged into the High Commission Court, and, as the hateful practice then was, a practice dear to the soul of Laud, was bidden to subscribe a formal recantation. This Mr. Bernard refused to do, though professing his sincere sorrow and penitence for any oversights and hasty expressions in his sermon. Thereupon he was sent back to prison, where he died. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... to the cruel farce which Cauchon had prepared to be now enacted—a solemnity by which the Bishop hoped to degrade Joan of Arc in the eyes of the people. It was that of obliging the prisoner to make a public apology and recantation of all her deeds—a declaration in fact to be made by her in the eyes of the whole world that all she had undertaken and accomplished had been through and by the ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... eye of the possible effects of that policy. He wished the Northern Democrats and the Unionists of Border States to understand that his action was based upon considerations of military expediency and in no way upon his personal disapproval of Slavery, of which at the same time he made no recantation. On the military ground he had a strong case. If, as the South maintained, the slave was simply a piece of property, then the slave of a rebel was a piece of enemy property—and enemy property used or usable for purposes of war. To confiscate enemy ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... confessor of the misfortune which was bringing her to her death.[252] The night before she suffered she wrote a few sentences of advice to her sister on the blank leaf of a New Testament. To her father, knowing his weakness, and knowing, too, how he would be worked upon to imitate the recantation of Northumberland, {p.112} she sent a letter of exquisite beauty, in which the exhortations of a dying saint are tempered with the reverence of a daughter for ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... was utterly mastered; "he pulled his hands off the grates and laid them together and said, It is finished; the Lord's will be done." In two months he had written a letter of recantation, was released from durance, and is heard of ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... by the Council That you to-day should read your recantation Before the people in St. Mary's Church. And there be many heretics in the town, Who loathe you for your late return to Rome, And might assail you passing through the street, And tear you piecemeal: so you ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... movement in the provinces as well as in the capital. The reform edicts were cancelled, the reformers' associations were dissolved, their newspapers suppressed, and those who did not care to save themselves by a hasty recantation of their errors were imprisoned, proscribed or exiled. In October the reaction had already been accompanied by such a recrudescence of anti-foreign feeling that the foreign ministers at Peking had to bring up guards from the fleet for the protection of the legations, and to demand ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... in love than Desmond himself had ever been, notwithstanding the fact of his marriage. His theories had proved mere dust in the balance when weighed against his strong, simple-hearted love for Honor Meredith. Yet the passing of nine months found him no nearer to open recantation. If a man has learnt nothing else by the time he is thirty-eight, he has usually gained possession of his soul, and at no stage of his life had Paul shown the least talent for taking a situation by storm. In the attainment of Honor's friendship, this most modest of men felt himself ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... seems, therefore to have instructed his Governor General of the Netherlands to insist on compliance as far as could be insisted, without producing resistance by arms; but, at the same time, to have furnished him with a sufficiently complete recantation, to prevent the effects of insurrection. The Governor pressed; the people were firm; a small act of force was then attempted, which produced a decided resistance, in which the people killed several of the military: the last resource was then used, which was ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... of the accursed speech," while they styled themselves "the beloved of the Great Spirit." The Canadian and other northern nations, however, were less intolerant, and at any time easily induced to profess the recantation of their heathen errors for some small advantage. Among these latter, the hare was deemed to possess some mystic superiority over the rest of the animal creation; it was even raised to be an object of worship, and the Great Hare was confounded in their minds with the Great Spirit. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... The recantation was uttered with sufficient awkwardness. But Clarice was too engrossed in her own thoughts to notice his embarrassment. 'Do you remember when I first met you?' she asked. 'It was ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... same opinion expressed by other authorities, and I have no doubt it is true. You mean to tell me I should have extorted from him a written recantation ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... electrified." We are only sorry, at this distance of time, for one thing in these Lectures—the tone and spirit in which they seemed to have been composed and to be delivered. If all that body of opinions and principles of which the orator read his recantation was unfounded, and there was an end of all those views and hopes that pointed to future improvement, it was not a matter of triumph or exultation to the lecturer or any body else, to the young or the old, the wise or the foolish; on the contrary, it was a subject ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... renounce that heresy, on pain of being imprisoned. He was directed to desist from teaching and advocating the Copernican theory, and pledge himself that he would neither publish nor defend it for the future. Knowing well that Truth has no need of martyrs, he assented to the required recantation, and ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... mention for their religious and mystic subject-matter, for which Werner himself has attempted an explanation, though without adding to their understanding. Martin Luther, or the Consecration of Power (1807) is a pageant play of great interest. Its recantation, The Power of Weakness, was written after Werner's conversion. More important than these is his so-called "fate tragedy," The 24th of February (1810 per formed in Weimar; published 1815). This day was a day of terror to Werner, for on it he lost in the same year his mother ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... On November 7, 1853, Thomas Johnson, the nominee of the Atchison faction, was elected.[435] In the meantime Senator Atchison had again changed his mind: he was now opposed to the organization of Nebraska, unless the Missouri Compromise were repealed.[436] The motives which prompted this recantation can only be surmised. Presumably, for some reason, Atchison no longer believed the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... one Patrick Scot a landed gentleman near Falkland, having wasted his patrimony, had no other means to recover his state, but by some unlawful shift at court, and for that end in the year 1624, he set forth a recantation under the name of a banished minister, viz. Mr. David Calderwood, who, because of his long sickness before, was supposed by many to have been dead. The king (as he had alledged to some of his friends) ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... You have in the last year, sir, taught me the importance of business formality in all the relations of life. Following that idea, the conditions of my engagement with Jovita Castro were drawn up with your hand. Are you willing to make this recantation as formal, this new contract as businesslike ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte

... and skin of those ancestral non Angli sed angeli should crisp into wool and darken to the swarthy livery of servility. No Northern man can hold any office under the national government, however petty, without an open recantation of those principles which he drew in with his mother's milk,—those principles which, in the better days of the republic, even a slaveholder could write down in the great charter of our liberties,—those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... upon this principle she hoped to persuade her into going over to Linwood and telling Morris that when she said she was sorry he loved her she did not mean it. But this Katy would not do. Helen could tell him, if she liked, but she must not encourage him to hope for a recantation of all she had said to him. She meant the rest. She could not be ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... Professor Mivart sent him the proofs of an article on Darwin, asking for his criticism, and received the following reply, which describes better than almost any other document, the nature of the tie which united Darwin and his friends, and incidentally touches the question of Galileo's recantation:—] ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... fluids, and the whole nervous system, till, by favour of idiosyncrasy, he hoped to get out of his difficulty, and to allow Mr. Palmer to remain on British ground. Mrs. Beaumont's face, in spite of her powers of simulation, lengthened and lengthened, and darkened and darkened, as he proceeded in his recantation; but, when the exception to the general axiom was fairly made out, and a clear permit to remain in England granted, by such high medical authority, she forced a smile, and joined loudly in the general congratulations. Whilst her son was triumphing and shaking hands with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... whether Mannhardt, before a decease deeply regretted, recanted his heretical views about the philological method, and his expressed admiration of the study of the lower races as 'an invaluable instrument.' One would gladly read a recantation so important. But Mr. Max Muller does tell us that 'if I did not refer to his work in my previous contributions to the science of mythology the reason was simple enough. It was not, as has been suggested, my wish to suppress it (todtschweigen), but ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... Ceylon governed by queens Schisms in religion Buddhism tolerant of heresy but intolerant of schism Illustrations of Buddhist toleration Tolerance enjoined by Asoca The Wytulian heresy Corruption of Buddhism by the impurities of Brahnmanism A.D. 275. Recantation and repentance of King Maha Sen End of the Solar race State of Ceylon at that period Prosperity of the North Description of Anarajapoora in the fourth century Its municipal organisation Its palaces and temples Popular error ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... persecutions (p. 401) of Mary finally ruined in England the cause of the Roman Church. Henry's bishops themselves could scarcely be brought to agreement. Latimer and Shaxton lost their sees; but the submission of the rest did not extend to complete recantation, and the endeavour to stretch all his subjects on the Procrustean bed of Six Articles was one of Henry's least successful enterprises.[1112] It was easier to sacrifice a portion of his monastic spoils to found new bishoprics. This had been a project of ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... the same moment a more terrible proof of his loyalty to the Church in personally assisting at the burning of a layman, Thomas Badby, for a denial of transubstantiation. The prayers of the sufferer were taken for a recantation, and the Prince ordered the fire to be plucked away. But when the offer of life and a pension failed to break the spirit of the Lollard Henry pitilessly bade him be hurled back to his doom. The Prince was now the virtual ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... her natural ally. Two clerics, the court-chaplain Andreas, and the prolific rhymester Matfre Ermengau, actually elaborated the theory of spiritual love contrary to the spirit of the Church, but both men hastened to utter a timely recantation and recommendation of orthodoxy as the only means of salvation. After establishing all the desirable details of love according to substance and accidents, Andreas deduced that every love not dedicated to God was bound to offend Him, and advanced eighteen points against the love of woman, starting ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... I took my old ideas derived from books and thoughts based on imperfect knowledge and weighed them against the real life around me, and found them either worthless or wanting. The greatest recantation I had to make I made humbly before I had been three months on the Coast in 1893. It was of my idea of the traders. What I had expected to find them was a very different thing to what I did find them; and of their kindness to me I can never sufficiently ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... great intimacy with the leading Protestants of London, gave rise to a rumor that he, like Lord Dunboyne and Mr. Kirwin, had read his recantation. He contradicts ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... meeting and passed an ironical resolution thanking the board for their liberal allowance. The board then required them to sign a paper saying they did not intend an insult, and those who did not make such recantation were discharged. The speaker then referred to the power of the ballot. No politician dared oppose the eight-hour agitation, because the workingman held the franchise. Give the workingwoman a vote and she, too, can ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... was dim, and the Emperor's face in shadow; it was well the posture of the petitioners helped hide him from close study; a feeling mixed of pity, contempt, and unutterable indignation seized him, distorting his features, and shaking his whole person. Recantation and repentance!—Pledge of loyalty!—Offer of service at the gates and on the shattered walls!—Heaven help him! There was no word of apology for their errors and remissness—not a syllable in acknowledgment of his labors and ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... beyond his Tetrachordon and Colasterion. His wife having been for some months back with him, for better or worse, in the house at Barbican, he had dropped the Divorce argument, or at least its public prosecution. That he did so with a certain reluctance, and in no spirit of recantation, appears from two of his Sonnets, which must have been written about the time of the publication of his volume of Poems (Oct. 1645—Jan. 1645-6), but which are not included in that volume, either because ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... in humble wise Have made a recantation, From your low bended knees arise; I hate ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... trifling minutiae; and yet, like a hair in a watch, which utterly destroys its progress, these little ineptiae obliged writers to have recourse to foreign presses; compelled a Montesquieu to write with concealed ambiguity, and many to sign a recantation of principles which they could never change. The recantation of Selden, extorted from his hand on his suppressed "Historie of Tithes," humiliated a great mind; but it could not remove a particle from ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... While the nation overwhelmed with acclamation the king come to retake possession of England, while unanimity was recording its verdict, while the people were bowing their salutation to the monarchy, while the dynasty was rising anew amidst a glorious and triumphant recantation, at the moment when the past was becoming the future, and the future becoming the past, that nobleman remained refractory. He turned his head away from all that joy, and voluntarily exiled himself. While he could have been a peer, he preferred being an outlaw. Years had thus passed away. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... also you now owe this opportunity to abjure the writings which have caused us and yourself such great sorrow; to them you owe this privilege of confessing before us, who will receive your recantation, remit your unintentional sins, and restore you to honor and service in our ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... "Cautious inquiry saves recantation," replied Bias importantly. "Yet you may believe my experience, it is Myrtilus. Fame inspires love, and what the world will not grant my master, in spite of his great talent, it conceded to the other long ago. And, besides, we are not starving; but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Par. Recantation? My Lord? my Master? Laf. I: Is it not a Language I speake? Par. A most harsh one, and not to bee vnderstoode without bloudie succeeding. My Master? Laf. Are you Companion to the Count Rosillion? Par. To any Count, to all ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Now, in this difficult moment, every one who was sincerely ready to help the working masses of Russia in their struggle had the right to be given a place in the ranks of the fighters. The Social Revolutionaries should be allowed to prove in deeds the sincerity of their recantation. The resolution which was passed recapitulated the recantations, mentioned by name the members of the party with whom discussions had been carried on, withdrew the decision of June 14th (excluding the S.R.'s from the Executive Committee on the ground of their counter-revolutionary ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... with me to my palace, And I shall set down the form of recantation, Which you shall read on Sunday next in open place. This done, you shall satisfy our expectation, And shall be set free from all molestation: Into the bosom of the Church we will you take, And some high officer therein will ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... Villain covered with his Zeal? A Zeal, who for Convenience can dispense With Plays provided there's no Wit nor Sense. For Wit's profane, and Jesuitical, And Plotting's Popery, and the Devil and all. We then have fitted you with one to day, 'Tis writ as 'twere a Recantation Play; Renouncing all that has pretence to witty, T'oblige the Reverend Brumighams o'th' City: No smutty Scenes, no Jests to move your Laughter, Nor Love that so debauches all your Daughters. But ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... fare badly at the hands of the bishops of to-day, and the journalists threw them over as soon as the war began. But, unfortunately for us all, G.K.C. fell seriously ill in the early period of the war, and was in a critical state for many months. But not before he had published a magnificent recantation—for it is no less—of all those bitternesses which, in their sum, had very nearly caused him to hate the British. It is a poem, ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... was at his trial objected against him. He felt public opinion shaken. His faith in himself was not weakened. 'By and by,' says the reporter, 'he seemed to gather his spirits again.' Pulling out of his pocket the recantation, the second, which Cobham had addressed to him from the Tower, and attested by his hope of salvation and God's mercy on his soul, he insisted upon having it too read in court. Hereupon, says the reporter, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... his own clothes to make ready for the flames. And he stood before the people with a bald head and a white and flowing beard. He was so firm now when the worst was come, that he again declared against his recantation, and was so impressive and so undismayed, that a certain lord, who was one of the directors of the execution, called out to the men to make haste! When the fire was lighted, Cranmer, true to his latest word, stretched out his right hand, and crying out, 'This hand hath ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... paint the tempestuous fluctuation of my thoughts between grief and revenge, between rage and despair? Why should I repeat my vows of eternal implacability and persecution, and the speedy recantation of these vows? ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... parish church, by their minister; and they have compeired before the pulpit, after sermon, making confession openly of that sin, with deep sense on their knees; renounced any such gift or faculty which they had to God's dishonour, and earnestly desired the minister to pray for them; and this their recantation recorded; and after this, they were never troubled with such a sight ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... means, Gomez Arias confirmed Monteblanco's suspicions; for when once started, nothing tends more powerfully to strengthen them than a sort of recantation in their author. Accordingly, Don Manuel felt almost convinced of the treachery of his friend. Certainly there was ample room to doubt the justice of such an imputation, if he had chosen to reflect coolly on the subject; but in cases like the present, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... issued that all Christians were to receive this official paper whereby their safety would be ensured. Large numbers in the Church regarded the mandarin's action as the overruling of Providence on their behalf, and accepted tickets which involved no verbal recantation of their faith. Others, amongst whom was Mrs. Hsi (now a widow), with more sensitive spiritual perceptions, refused to take advantage of even the ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... Austrians in December, 1525, came to Zurich as a fugitive, and, having likewise held a conference with Zwingli, Leo Judae and Myconius, in presence of the Councils, declared himself overcome and ready for a recantation from the pulpit of the Frauminster Church. Instead of which, to the great surprise of the congregation, he began again to advocate rebaptism. Zwingli, who occupied the second pulpit, on the opposite side, interrupted him at once and brought him to silence.[8] He excused himself afterwards by ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... would be his death-bed, to "again declare the evil deeds of the friars." In 1381, he lectured openly at Oxford against the doctrine of transubstantiation; and for this, after a presentment by the Church—and a partial recantation, or explaining away—even the liberal king thought proper to command that he should retire from the university. Thus, during his latter years, he lived in retirement at his little parish of Lutterworth, escaping the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... impute to him such a motive, at this time, however strongly he might have been impelled towards it by discovering the injustice and cruelty of his own unforgiveness towards his young wife at some previous time—as, for instance, in America—when she herself was beyond his reach, and a recantation of his error impossible. Unless we accept his conduct as the result of a momentary dementia, produced by overstrain, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... yonder been found in Dr. Barnes's house, not books alone but the man himself would have been burnt upon the morrow. The cardinal plainly told him so; and as it is, he has signed a paper which they call a recantation of heresy. Let us not judge him harshly. His friends pleaded, and his foes threatened, and the flesh shrinks from the fiery trial. He will read this confession or recantation tomorrow at St. Paul's, and help to fling the precious books upon ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... I have high authority for my errors in that point, for even the AEneid was a political poem, and written for a political purpose; and as to my unlucky opinions on subjects of more importance, I am too sincere in them for recantation. On Spanish affairs I have said what I saw, and every day confirms me in that notion of the result formed on the spot; and I rather think honest John Bull is beginning to come round again to that sobriety ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... provincial administration like that of Scotland during the period, and who are what Cromwell called waiters upon Providence, or, in other words, uniform adherents to the party who are uppermost. Many of these hastened to read their recantation to the Marquis of A——; and, as it was easily seen that he took a deep interest in the affairs of his kinsman, the Master of Ravenswood, they were the first to suggest measures for retrieving at least a part ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... a story to tell you of his Grace the Duke of Richmond.(205) Lord Rawdon, I hear, came over from Ireland for no earthly reason but to oblige his Grace to a recantation of what he had said in the H(ouse) of L(ords) about Haines. He wrote to him here a very civil but a very peremptory letter, and at last Lord Ligonier(206) went to him, at Lord Rawdon's request, with the words wrote down which his Grace was to use, on his subject. At first the Duke hesitated, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue



Words linked to "Recantation" :   disclaimer, backdown, retraction, abjuration



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