"Sacristan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heard their Mass, they were approached by the Sacristan, a little, shrunken, brown old man in a cassock, who offered to serve them as a guide. The church was very dim and very silent. Here and there a woman knelt at prayer; here and there a candle burned. The ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Milesian families. She announces good or ill fortune, and manifests a general interest in the family to which she is attached, but to others she acts with considerable caprice; thus she shows unmitigated malignity to the sacristan and the robber. Any truly virtuous mortal has commanding power ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... cradle-song.{55} According to a recent writer the "rocking" is still continued in the Upper Innthal.{56} In the Tyrolese cathedral city of Brixen it was once performed every day between Christmas and Candlemas by the sacristan or boy-acolytes. That the proceedings had a tendency to be disorderly is shown by an eighteenth-century instruction to the sacristan: "Be sure to take a stick or a thong of ox-hide, for the boys ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... of an hour later the sacristan showed us into this granite jewel-case which contains the three marble gems called the tombs of Marguerite of Austria, Marguerite or Bourbon, and of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... through with in the most formal, mechanical, business-like manner possible. Some palms, not in natural branches, but cut and wreathed in various strange, fantastic forms, lay on the altar. The Pope's chief sacristan took one of these, a deacon another, a sub-deacon a third, and knelt at the foot of the throne. His Holiness read prayers over them, sprinkled them with holy water, and incensed them three times. One of these is held beside the throne by the prince assistant ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... or tree lay claim with better right To all the adorning sympathies of shadow and of light; And, in that forest petrified, as forester there dwells Stout Herman, the old sacristan, sole ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... wanted builders more than carvers; and a change was passing through her life, of which external edifice was a necessary sign. I complained of you just now that you never looked at the Byzantine font in the temple of St. John. The sacristan generally will not let you. He takes you to a particular spot on the floor, and sings a musical chord. The chord returns in prolonged echo from the chapel roof, as if the building were all one ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... remained in bed, and made no noise. As for myself, I could not sleep, on account of the odor of a basin of savory porridge which an old woman had at the side of her bed, and which I longed for amazingly. Being, therefore, anxious to creep near it, I raised my head and saw the sacristan take the cakes and dried figs from the sacred table, and going the round of the altars, put all that he could find into a bag. It occurred to me that it would be meritorious in me to follow his example, so I arose to ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... even spell correctly, he himself wrote the articles of the "Gazette" with a humility and rancour that compensated for his lack of talent. The marquis, in entering on the campaign, had perceived immediately the advantage that might be derived from the co-operation of this insipid sacristan with the coarse, mercenary pen. After the February Revolution the articles in the "Gazette" contained fewer mistakes; ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... beautiful Day of Judgment. Summoned, next, to the Certosa, he painted for the Acciaiuoli, who built that place, the panel of the high-altar, which was consumed by fire in our day by reason of the inadvertence of a sacristan of that monastery, who left the thurible full of fire hanging from the altar, wherefore the panel was burnt, and afterwards the altar was made by those monks, as it stands to-day, entirely of marble. In that same place, also, the same ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... sunk in fat, were fixed upon the ikon stand. He saw the long familiar figures of the saints, the verger Matvey puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles, the darkened candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to the churchwarden.... All these things he had seen for years, and seen over and over again like the five fingers of his hand.... There was only one thing, however, that ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... found that as an office was about to be sung no one would be allowed in the ambulatory until after its completion. It was pouring live Belgian rain without; already the choristers in surplices were filing into the choir. Not a moment to be spared! The sacristan was a practical man. He hustled us into a side chapel, locked the heavy doors, and left us in company with the great picture of the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck. A monk knelt in prayer outside, the rain clouds made the lighting ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... carefully saw to his private affairs, arranged for the support of his wife and family, and entrusted the office of sacristan, which he held, to a young and worthy clerk ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... somewhat stricken in years. So presently he knew that this would be his father and mother; so he stood still and waited till the service should be over; and by then it was done the twilight was growing fast in the church, and the sacristan was lighting a lamp here and there in some of the chapels, and the aisles ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... who had not recognized in the girl dressed as a bonne-a-toute-faire her protegee of Le Bon Pasteur, was naturally somewhat startled at this unexpected demonstration, and called aloud for the sacristan. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... custom and law began That still at dawn the sacristan, Who duly pulls the heavy bell, 340 Five and forty beads must tell Between each stroke—a warning knell, Which not a soul can choose but hear From ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... inspecting the smear—a portrait of the old Sacristan on a bench in front of the main entrance—started back in surprise on seeing the Bostonian, and asked with an anxious tone ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... moon. These tricks of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. Can any biography shed light on the localities into which the Midsummer Night's Dream admits me? Did Shakspeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation? The forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone Castle, the moonlight of Portia's villa, "the antres vast and desarts idle" of Othello's captivity,—where is the third cousin, or grand-nephew, the chancellor's ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... all very good, useful, and profitable," rejoined the elder. "You will readily find the Sacristan of some church who will give your worship the offering-bread of All Saints' Day, for cutting him his paper flowers to decorate the Monument[8] on ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... The sacristan was quickly found, however, and lost no time in disclosing the youthful Archangel, setting his divine foot on the head of his fallen adversary. It was an image of that greatest of future events, which we hope for so ardently, at least, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... controlled its sale. For the matter of that, it still contained one of St. Lucy's knuckles, which in case of a regular transaction would have been transferred to a less precious reliquary. No, there must have been a pilfering sacristan, or worse, a faithless priest, to explain its translation from the Chianti hills to Novelli's shop in ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... shelters from the weather and being driven from each by unforeseen circumstances—a cloister or two, a church (where the sacristan surprised us asleep one morning and turned us out into the rain), an old family sepulchre, an empty palace, and a baker's oven which had fallen to be let (and had been occupied by cockroaches)—we finally discovered and took possession ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Capuchin, but in truth he is a prelate, and a prelate of great power; Bishop Nicodemus, to wit, prime councillor of the patriarch, and chief prompter of those measures that occasioned the civil war of 1841. A single sacristan walks behind him, his only retinue, and befitting his limited resources; but the Maronite prelate is recompensed by universal respect; his vanity is perpetually gratified, and, when he appears, Sheikh and peasant are alike proud to kiss the hand which ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... read the mass; Clery responded as sacristan; and even while the king was receiving the elements, the sound of the drums and trumpets was heard without, which awakened Paris that morning and told the city that the King of France was being led to his execution. Cannon were rattling through the streets, and National Guardsmen were ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... proceeded as far as the end of the first Gospel, when the Sacristan came to the priest's side and whispered a message. He was plainly excited, and trying hard to conceal it from the congregation. Father Collins leaned over to hear what he had ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... crisis their conversation was interrupted by the Sacristan, who, in a voice almost inarticulate with anger, accused the Bohemian of having practised the most abominable arts of delusion among the younger brethren. He had added to their nightly meal cups of a heady and intoxicating cordial, of ten times the strength of the most ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... interesting creations of Sir Walter Scott's genius. The abbey is situated in a valley, surrounded by the Eildon hills. Some ruins of the abbey mill, with the dam belonging to "Hob Miller," the father of the "lovely Mysinda," are still to be seen; and the ford across the Tweed, where the worthy Sacristan was played so scurvy a trick by the White Lady, is also pointed out. Some miles off, on a wild and romantic spot on the course of the river, Elwin, or Allan, is Fairy Dean, or Nameless Dean, which is at once identified to be that place above the tower and vale of Glendearg, which was the favourite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... Sacristan.—An old word derived from the Latin sacra, meaning sacred things, still retained to designate one who has charge of the Sacristy with all its contents, viz., the vestments and sacred vessels. The word has been corrupted into sexton which is now ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... met him near the high altar. Luna recognised him also: it was Eusebio, the sacristan of the chapel of the Sagrario, "Azul de la Virgen,"[1] as he was called by the Cathedral staff, on account of the celestial colour of the cloak ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... confraternity," we read, "called La Confraternita della Mercede, was wont to sleep in the damp recesses of the ancient chapel of Braccioforte." His name was Angelo Grillo ... This sacristan declared himself to have seen in a dream a shade issue from the spot where the body was found, clad in red, that it passed through the chapel into the adjoining cemetery. It approached him, and on being asked who it was, replied, 'I am Dante.' The sacristan died in ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... after the siege of Bologna had been raised by the Spaniards, there were distributed about at Rome little bits of paper having on them, "If anybody knows where the Spanish army happens to be, let him inform the sacristan of peace; he shall receive as reward a lump of cheese." Gaston de Foix arrived on the 8th of April, 1512, before Ravenna. He there learned that, on the 9th of March, the ambassador of France had been sent away from London by Henry VIII. Another hint ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the little town of Cap Franais, in 1701. The chapel was not much better than an ajoupa, that is, a four-posted square with a sloping roof of leaves or light boards. The aisle had half a foot of dust in the dry season, and the same depth of mud during rain. "I asked the sacristan, who also filled the office of chanter, if he should chant the Introit, or begin simply with the Kyrie Eleson; but he replied that it was not their custom to chant a great deal, they were content with low ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... loose suggestions. In girls' minds you will find little dust but what is carried there by gusts from without. They seldom want sweeping; when they do, the broom should be taken from behind the house door, and the master should be the sacristan. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... "there is always the risk of a mistake when we judge of people by appearances; but how startling is the truth of that commonplace remark when applied to the clergy! This Abbe Plomb looks like a scared sacristan; he goes about gaping at invisible crows, and he seems so ill at ease, so loutish, so awkward—and this is our learned man and devoted mystic, in love with his Cathedral! Certainly it is not safe to judge of an Abbe from appearances. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... This tale the sacristan of the church of St. Eulalie at Neuville d'Aumont told me, as we sat under the arbor of the White Horse, one fine summer evening, drinking a bottle of old wine to the health of the dead man, now very much at his ease, ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... there was a padre (now removed) who emulated the example of the shamans and was frequently in his cups. On one occasion he was unable to perform the marriage ceremonies, and the sacristan accompanying him had to take his place. All this man knew about the rite was to ask the man and the woman whether they would have each other. On hearing their "Yes" he would say, "Where is the dollar?" and pocketing it send the couple ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... answered White; "a sacristan in a cotta. Do you like the short cotta or the long?" he continued, turning to the ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... eyes modestly cast down, he entered the chamber of his master, opened the curtains, lit the fire, and made all the necessary preparations for the toilet with the discreet demeanor and respectful gestures of a sacristan placing the sacred vessels on the altar ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... Sacristan, acolyte, player, or preacher, Each to his office, but who holds the key? Death, only Death—thou, the ultimate teacher Wilt ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... heretofore, namely: that they and their curates shall not keep back the Holy Sacrament from us and ours for the sake of money. Still, it is our purpose that, whatever from ancient times has been assigned in each canon to the pastor or sacristan, it shall continue to him and yield him a fair support; but if any one in the collection thereof is dealt with severely and dangerously, it shall concern the civil authority, so that the common man be not overmatched. Item, the priests of every ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... here's my master, Victorian, yesterday a cow-keeper, and to-day a gentleman; yesterday a student, and to-day a lover; and I must be up later than the nightingale, for as the abbot sings so must the sacristan respond. God grant he may soon be married, for then shall all this serenading cease. Ay, marry! marry! marry! Mother, what does marry mean? It means to spin, to bear children, and to weep, my daughter! And, of a truth, there is something more in matrimony ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... little to the left from a line drawn across between the modern chapels. The floor of this basilica is about 2 ft. 9 in. below that of the present one. The mosaic pavement is well preserved nearly all over the surface; and the sacristan opens numerous trap-doors, and puts down tapers, to show the most interesting portions. The cills of two of the doors still remain 9 in. higher and much worn by traffic; the third was destroyed to place a sarcophagus ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... and De Cultu Feminarum are instructive from the present point of view. In the latter he remarks (Book II, Chapter I): "Salvation—and not of women only, but likewise of men—consists in the exhibition, principally, of modesty. Since we are all the temple of God, modesty is the sacristan and priestess of that temple, who is to suffer nothing unclean or profane to enter it, for fear that the God who inhabits it should be offended.... Most women, either from simple ignorance or from dissimulation, have the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... caused by sleep, and he grudged every moment given to it, because it shortened his time of prayer. He slept on the ground, or sometimes in his chair, and was the first to rise at the sound of the morning bell. While at Rheims he regularly spent Friday night in the Church of Saint Remi; he made the sacristan lock him in, and there poured out his soul in prayer for help, and guidance, and ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... to shoot, they would bring from Chile certain Jesuits who in the world had served as soldiers. One sees them brought from the frontiers of Araucania, and from the outposts of the trans-Andean towns, half sacristan, half sergeant, instant in prayer, and yet with a look about them like a serious bull terrier — a fitting kind of priest for a frontier town, and such as could alone be ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... the old monastic buildings were dilapidated; the rest were in good order, being frequented as a summer retreat by the inhabitants of Palma. Now, in December, the Chartreuse was entirely abandoned, except by a housekeeper, a sacristan and a lone monk, the last offshoot of the community—a kind of apothecary, whose stock-in-trade was limited to ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... "One day," continued the sacristan, "Louis the Gentle, the son of Charlemagne, went hunting with all his retinue in this forest. They had with them a ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the last few months. Notwithstanding the enlightened efforts of the doctor of the Pontifical 'family,' and of her parents, the young invalid was soon at the last extremity. The vice-cure of the palace (which, as is known, is a foundation), a member of the Augustin order (Monseigneur the Sacristan of the same order is the titular cure), had administered to her the sacrament of extreme unction, and had recited the prayer recommending her soul. Her last sigh was hourly expected. For the sake of enabling ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... were—for even the young and brave recoil in terror from death, when it assumes a form and hovers near in a detested shape. Having informed the youth that a messenger had been despatched to his father, the priest left Gilbert in charge of the sacristan, and proceeded on his daily errand of mercy through the neighborhood. By men like him, fervent, fearless, faithful, the rude Northern hordes were induced to abandon their idolatry, and embrace the faith of the Church of Rome. These ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... hunchback and the sacristan's cat stirred its rhythm in his mind. He was not a singer, but he could think the tune, trace it, naked of melody, in the dry realm of the brain. And it was a diversion to piece out the gait of the phantom ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... his ears a sentence running, chiming, striking upon the word "gold"— "Ding-a-ding-a-dong! 'Taty-patch a gold mine—'taty-patch a gold mine!" The prosaic Mr Latter had set the chime ringing, as a dull sacristan might unloose the music of a belfry; but like a chime of faery it rippled and trilled, closing ever upon the deep note "gold," and echoed back as from a veritable gong ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... apartment with a little grated window, where they locked him up and left him. At the expiration of three quarters of an hour, they again appeared, and conducted him to the house of the curate, where they sat down in conclave; the curate, who was a man stone blind, presiding, whilst the sacristan officiated as secretary. The surgeon having stated his accusation against the prisoner, namely, that he had detected him in the fact of selling a version of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, the curate proceeded to examine Victoriano, asking him his name and place of residence, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... amidst the general scramble. This, however, made him despair of reaching the street, and anxious to escape the crush of the general departure, it occurred to him to profit by a door which he saw open and which led him into a vestibule, whence ascended the steps conducting to the dome. A sacristan standing in the doorway, both bewildered and delighted at the demonstration, looked at him for a moment, hesitating whether he should stop him or not. However, the sight of the young priest's cassock combined with his own emotion rendered the man tolerant. Pierre ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... prior said, "the method, whatever it is, must be as open as possible; and though I cannot at this moment hit upon a plan, I will think it over to-night, and putting my ideas with those of Father Jerome here, and the sacristan, who has a shrewd head, it will be hard if we cannot between us contrive some plan to evade the watch of those robber ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... For centuries, Christians met and prayed in the little church, unconscious of the wonder-working relic hidden so near them; and it was only through a miracle, in Charlemagne's time and some say in his presence, that the holy body was discovered. This is the history which a sacristan recites to curious pilgrims as he ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... vaults in the Church. In the following Century a great many separate altarages were endowed; and in the year 1466, it was erected by James the Third, into a Collegiate Church, consisting of a provost, a curate, sixteen prebendaries, a sacristan, a minister of the choir, and four choristers. (Maitland's Hist. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... kneeling angels, whose lilac wings were folded over thin rose-coloured backs. Except these two figures, of which the execution was truly sinful, the rest was at least veiled by shadow, and was not too afflicting to the eyes. The chapel was dim, and always at the time of the offices, a young sacristan-sister, tall and pale, and rather bent, entered like a shadow, and each time that she passed before the altar she fell on one knee and ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... sacristy. Enormous chests lined the walls of several rooms, and in those were stored gorgeous vestments, wonderfully beautiful in color and material, and enriched with gold and precious stones. Costly presents from kings and Spanish grandees were shown to me by the brother sacristan, who took an honest pride in exhibiting those blessed things. Magnificent society banners, used during processions on great festivals, were subjects of intense interest to the good brother. I saw lace albs there, with crotchet work marvellously executed by hand, and ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... help her—she had sunk back at the dissolution, from those heights of sanctity towards whose summits she had set her face, down into the muddy torrent of the world that went roaring down to the abyss—and who was responsible? There was Dame Avice, the Sacristan, with her businesslike movements going about the garden, gathering flowers for the altar, with her queer pursed lips as she arranged them in her hands with her head a little on one side; how annoying she used to be sometimes; but how good and tender ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... of the king's court, and especially the princesses, pass before the king's bed they have to make an obeisance; the palace officials salute the nef on passing that.—A priest or sacristan does the same thing on passing ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Miguel)—founded in the month of April, 1565—in its very spacious wooden church, which is dedicated to the holy guardian angel (unless it be dedicated to the holy archangel, St. Michael, as is so fitting, as he was the first titular of that village). That church has its sacristy, with its cura and sacristan. There is a provisor, and some secular clergy with benefices are located in some of the islands of its jurisdiction. In that city the order of the great father St. Augustine has a convent, in which is venerated [an image of] the most miraculous child Jesus, found at the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... His faith was once more revived, and with unspeakable fervor he made his confession and received the Holy Supper. After the blessed Viaticum, penetrated by the heavenly consecration which the sacraments pour forth on pious souls, he asked for Extreme Unction. He wished to pay lavishly the sacristan who accompanied me, and when I remarked that the sum presented by him was twenty times too much he replied, "Oh, no, for what I have received is ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... side of the altar stood the priest, a reverend old man, with long flowing silver hair and beard. Near him the sacristan, not less reverend in appearance. No one else was present except Marianne, who, in tears, knelt behind her mistress, and with folded hands prayed for her beloved princess, who was ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... and thirteen bedesmen. In 1562 a warden and five inmates were the prescribed occupants. Now there are eight sets of rooms, each with its demure tenant, all of whom troop into the little chapel at fixed hours. Mrs. Evans, sacristan, who does the honours, would tell me nothing as to the process of selection by which she and the seven other occupants came to be living there; all that she could say was that she was very happy to be a Hospitaller, and that by ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... faithful of the Incarnation, and its daily thrice-repeated memorial” (F. G. Lee, “Pilgrimage of Grace”). The poor were never forgotten in these multiplied services. When mass was celebrated, it was a rule that the sacristan rang the “sanctus” bell (from its cherished sanctity often the only bell still preserved in our village churches), “so that the rustics who could not be present might everywhere, in field or home, be able to bow the knee to reverence” (Maskell’s “Ancient ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Paul, near to the place where the bronze pine-cone is, on a wall between the arches of the portico on the outer side; and in this he counterfeited the manner of Giotto very well, receiving so much praise, above all because he portrayed therein a sacristan of S. Pietro lighting some lamps before the said figures with much promptness, that he was summoned with very great insistence to the Court of the Pope at Avignon, where he wrought so many pictures, in fresco and on panels, that he made his works correspond to ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... look grand; and Gibbie knew that there was not any evil in the world, except wrong. But it had been the dreariest week he had ever passed. As they came from the public room, he lay in wait for him once more, but again in vain: he must have gone through the sacristan's ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Father Burnley, granger, and Father Haworth, cellarer," pursued the monk; "and after them Father Dinkley, sacristan, and Father Moore, porter." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of this prisoner seems to be particularly sad. He was a chorister or sacristan in a Roman Catholic church, with several others, and was arrested, with his companions, by the civil guard, charged with "sacrilege." The truth of the matter, however, seems to be as follows: The prisoner had ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... call the sacristan from the bell," the prior said, "and bid him lead you to the chancel, where I ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... Rzhanoff house I found the sacristan already reading prayers over the dead woman. They had taken her to the bunk which she had formerly occupied; and the lodgers, all miserable beings, had collected money for the masses for her soul, a coffin and a shroud, and the old women had dressed her and laid her out. The sacristan was reading ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... if you went into a foreign cathedral, or even into one of the Catholic churches in our large towns. The celebrant, deacon and sub-deacon, acolytes with lights, the incense and the chanting all combine to one end, one act of worship." White is much exercised by the question whether a sacristan should wear the short or the long cotta. But he finally marries and settles down ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... mentioned that the traveller's patience may undergo a trial here. When I arrived at Jouarre, M. le Cure and the sacristan were both absent, and as no one else possessed the key of the crypt, my chance of seeing it seemed small. However, some one obligingly set out on a voyage of discovery, and finally the sacristan's wife was found in a neighbouring harvest-field, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... of brick and stone sank bodily to the ground and not a human bruise resulted. Here its behaviour was better than that of the previous campanile of S. Giorgio Maggiore, which, when it fell in 1774, killed one monk and injured two others. Nor was S. Mark's harmed, although its sacristan confesses to have been dumb for three days from the shock. The falling golden angel from the top of the campanile was found in front of the central door as though to protect the church. Sansovino's Loggetta, it ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... for some time with all his family in Pisa; and since he belonged to the Company of the Misericordia, which in that city accompanies those condemned to death to the place of execution, there once came into his head, being sacristan at that time, the strangest caprice in the world. One night he took out of the grave the body of one who had been hanged the day before; and, after having dissected it for the purposes of his art, being a whimsical ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... at St. Nicodemus, sir. Or I should say sacristan. They call him sacristan instead of sexton because St. Nicodemus is High, as I daresay you know, sir, ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... phantasia. He did not know that only upon grand, solemn, world-wide occasions, such as a king's birthday or a ball at the Hotel de Ville, was such music on the card. When he flung the door to, it had closed with a spring lock, and for the last quarter of an hour three gens-d'arme, commanded by the sacristan of the tower, had been thundering thereat. He waited only to finish the last notes of the wild Orcadian chant, and opened the door. He was seized by the collar, dragged down the stair into the street, and through a crowd of wondering ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... like to tell you all about it; how Nino saw the sacristan of the Pantheon that evening, and ascertained from his little almanac—which has all kinds of wonderful astrological predictions, as well as the calendar—when it would be full moon. And perhaps what Nino said to the sacristan, and what the sacristan said to Nino, might be ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... service, and he must needs attend it, one would say, from his haste to reach the open Cathedral door. The choir are getting on their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service. Then, the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary from the chancel, and all of the procession having scuttled into their places, hide their faces; and then the intoned words, 'WHEN THE WICKED MAN—' rise among groins of arches and beams of roof, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... found, to their great disappointment, that the murderers had fled, and that hardly any of the inhabitants remained. They found, however, hidden in the church, the clothes of some of the murdered guardsmen. The sacristan of the church was alleged by the inhabitants, who were narrowly examined, to have taken an active part in the slaughter, and the earl ordered him to be hung up at once to the knocker of his own door. The troops then ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... both in itself and in its possessions—we pass, after distributing the necessary largesse to the sacristan, to a turnstile which admits, on payment of a lira, to the Chapel of the Princes and to Michelangelo's sacristy. Here is contrast, indeed: the sacristy, austere and classic, and the chapel a very exhibition building of floridity and coloured ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... sacristan, show us a light there! Down it dips, gone like a rocket. What, you want, do you, to come unawares, Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers, And find a poor devil has ended his cares At the foot of your rotten-runged rat-riddled stairs? Do I carry ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... as to most poodles. He had inherited his address at them from clever parents, and, as he had never been frightened or coerced, all his lessons and acquirements were but play to him. He acquitted himself admirably, and the crockery-venders came and looked on, and a sacristan came out of the church and smiled, and the barber left his customer's chin all in a lather while he laughed, for the good folk of the quarter were all proud of Moufflou and never tired of him, and the pleasant, easy-going, good-humored disposition of the Tuscan populace is so far removed ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the land. Henry II, an ardent sportsman, a ruler almost completely immersed in affairs of State, made time for private reading and for working out knotty questions,[1] and very probably he had a library to his hand. King John received from the sacristan of Reading a small collection of books of the Bible and severe theology, perhaps as a diplomatic gift, perhaps as a subtle reminder that a little food for the spirit would improve his morals and ameliorate the lot of his subjects. Edward II borrowed ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... the song of Demeter"—says the prize-poet, or the Interpreter, the Sacristan of the holy places—"the song of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, whom Aidoneus carried away by the consent of Zeus, as she played, apart from her mother, with the deep- bosomed daughters of the Ocean, gathering flowers in a meadow of soft grass—roses ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... I pushed past the leather hanging that covered the door, but the sacristan was lighting the candles for Benediction, so I went up to the bronze screen, the Cancello, that divides the public part from the part occupied by the Sisters, and knelt ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... The sacristan opened a tall and narrow little recess in the wall of the chancel, and showed it entirely filled with the crosier of William of Wickham. It appears to be made of silver gilt, and is a most rich and elaborate relic, at least six feet high. Modern art cannot, or does ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... held as sacred as a herald's tabard in many a foreign land, to unite myself to the little group, and address some casual inquiries to its frank and overjoyous members—old Philipp Stroer himself, the hero of the day, deigned to take the picture from the hands of the sacristan, and to ciceronize for my especial edification. I trust his restored vision was not yet sufficiently acute to admit of his noting the smile which, in spite of my better will, stole over my face, as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... which she had acquired in the ultra-religious environment in which she had lived since her conversion and her recent baptism, completed the resemblance. And you can imagine whether worldly curiosity was rampant around that ex-odalisque turned fervent Catholic, as she entered the room, escorted by a sacristan-like figure with a livid face and spectacles, Maitre Le Merquier, Deputy for Lyon, Hemerlingue's man of business, who attended the baroness when the baron was "slightly indisposed," ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... it rang as much as any one could desire. Sometimes even, it would start at night, and sound gently through the darkness, seized by strange joy, awakened, one could not tell why. All the peasants in the neighborhood declared that it was bewitched, and nobody, except the priest and the sacristan would now go near the church tower, and they went because a poor girl was living there in grief and solitude, and secretly nourished by ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Cathedral.—Being shown round by Sacristan, in company with two respectable young Britons. "You shee dot oltarbiece, gentlemens," says Sacristan, "paint by RUBENS, in seexteen day, for seexteen hondert florin." Whereupon both Britons make a kind of "cluck" with their tongues. "Dat vos von hondert florin efery day he vas paint," explains the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... Nerva, who succeeded him. In the war with Vitellius, he fled into the Capitol with his uncle Sabinus, and a part of the troops they had in the city [797]. But the enemy breaking in, and the temple being set on fire, he hid himself all night with the sacristan; and next morning, assuming the disguise of a worshipper of Isis, and mixing with the priests of that idle superstition, he got over the Tiber [798], with only one attendant, to the house of a woman who was the mother of one of his school-fellows, and lurked ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... adopted, as I am told, from being, as a boy, assistant to the sacristan of the church ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... Tiago? It is true his arrival was always heralded with music, he was given banquets by his debtors, and loaded with presents; but he was laughed at in secret, and called Sacristan Tiago. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... led forth in grand procession as the victim of the dragon. Pithyrian, in distraction, rushed into a Christian church, and fell before an image which attracted his attention, at the base of which was the real arm of a saint. The sacristan handed the holy relic to Pithyrian, who kissed it, and then restored it to the sacristan; but the servitor did not observe that a thumb was missing. Off ran Pithyrian with the thumb, and joined his daughter. On came the dragon, with tail erect, wings extended, and mouth ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... way to reach the rooms he occupied with his father, near the marquis's study. Hardly another door in either court was ever made fast except this one, which, merely in self-administered flattery of his own consequence, the conceited sacristan who assumed charge of the key, always locked at night. But there was no reason why Delaware should pay any respect to this, or hesitate to remove the bar securing one-half of the door, without which the lock retained ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... cloisters and the most beautiful architecture, a charming church, a cemetery with a palm-tree and a stone cross like the one in the third act of Robert le Diable. Then, too, there are beds of shrubs cut in form. All this we have to ourselves with an old woman to wait on us, and the sacristan who is warder, steward, majordomo and Jack-of-all-trades. I hope we shall have ghosts. The door of my cell leads into an enormous cloister, and when the wind slams the door it is like a cannon going off through all the monastery. I am delighted with everything, and fancy I shall ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... wonderful enough; but there seems to me something more extraordinary in the successful conquest of the difficulties which confront an artist of such ambition as this Dort carver. His triumph is even more striking than that of the sculptor in marble. The sacristan of Dort's Groote Kerk seems more eager to show a brass screen and a gold christening bowl than these astounding choir stalls; ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... austere and primitive, to make it the most fitting background for herself. But while her presence perfected it for him, it was her guardian's absence that preoccupied Karen. Again, and comically, she reminded Gregory of the sacristan explaining to the sight-seer that the famous altar-piece had been temporarily removed and that he could not really judge the chapel without its culminating and consecrating object. "If only Tante were here!" she said. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... friend of uncle Jacob's, was a Benedictine monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me, I was at that time my uncle's chorister, clerk, and sacristan; I swept the church, chanted the prayers with my shrill treble, and swung the great copper incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I toiled over the Fathers for the other days of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Christ as Christ was softer than the Father; who in becoming a goddess had increased her humanity; who put living roses for a sign into the mouths of fornicators when they died, if only they had been faithful to her; who told the amorous sacristan to kiss her face and not her feet; who questioned lovers about their mistresses: "Is she as pretty as I?"; who fell like a pestilence on the nuptial chambers of young men who, professing love for her, had taken another bride; who ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... pillar crowned with a conqueror's statue—a palace tragic in history—a modern Parthenon surrounded by columns, peopled with sculptured friezes, and approached by a flight of steps extending the whole width of the building. I went in, for the doors had just been opened, and a white-haired Sacristan was preparing the seats for matin service. There were acolytes decorating the altar with fresh flowers, and early devotees on their knees before the shrine of the Madonna. The gilded ornaments, the tapers winking in the morning light, the statues, the paintings, the faint clinging odors of incense, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... temple while he and all the brethren tarried without. Pauline had been to the Cafe des Exiles in some degree what the image of the Virgin was to their churches at home; and for her father to whisper her name to one and not to another was, it seemed to Mazaro, as if the old man, were he a sacristan, should say to some single worshiper, "Here, you may have this madonna; I make it a present to you." Or, if such was not the handsome young Cuban's feeling, such, at least, was the disguise his jealousy put ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... procures for me a dispensation from public authorities to be married here in the house of our dear parents. The law demands four witnesses, who will be represented by your parents, my servant Philip, and the sacristan whom the ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... Cardinal-Archbishop of Rheims presented an arm-bone of the saint to the Scots College in Rome. It was removed for safety to the Vatican Treasury when the college was closed during the French occupation of Rome. Through the good offices of the Right Rev. Bishop Pifferi, the Papal sacristan, the relic was restored to the college in 1893. A notable relic of this saint was obtained from Rheims by the Abbey of Fort-Augustus and is now honoured there. There is no other record of the saint's ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... set down, even as he had requested, in the church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro at Pavia, with all the jewels and ornaments aforesaid, and yet slept when, matins having sounded, the sacristan of the church entered, with a light in his hand, and chancing suddenly to espy the rich bed, not only marvelled, but, seized with a terrible fright, turned and fled. The abbot and the monks, seeing him flee, marvelled ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... his shadow, to have called him by his name, but the presence of his two unknown companions, and some diffidence in herself, restrained her until the opportunity was gone, and he disappeared, inveigled by the sacristan into making the regular tour of the building. She knew every word he would hear, every antiquity he would admire. She saw him in the choir turning over the splendid manuscript books of Holy Writ and of the Mass which were in use in the church when the kings of England were still dukes of ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... side of Brother Peter Herbort. In the same year, on the Feast day of St. Lambert, and after Prime, Brother Hermann Craen the Vestiarius died of the plague, being sixty-four years old. In the beginning he was Sacristan, but afterward, and for above fifteen years, Vestiarius. Then for thirteen years he held the office of Procurator, but being set aside from that office, he was for the second time appointed to be Vestiarius, in which vocation ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... that the sacristan had forgotten to wind up the great town clock. The agreement with the party first entering and making their way to the opposite end of the city, had been that at the striking of a certain hour after midnight they should attack ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cannot be yet," replied the officer; "the iron chest is under an official lock as yet, for the 'Maticza' has put in a claim to the inheritance. The Slav parish priest in Dumanyfalva, as well as his housekeeper and his sacristan, affirm that your deceased uncle, on the eve of his death, dined with them (in parentheses, the fat pork he partook of and the strong wine he drank brought on the fatal stroke), and there at the table he declared that, ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... same morning on which he had come out after matins. When he arrived he found the door, through which he had come, built up and a new one opened in another place. The porter asked who he was and what he wanted, and he answered, 'I am the sacristan who a few hours ago went out, and now returning find all changed.' He gave too the names of the Abbot and of the Prior, and wondered much that the porter still would not let him in, and seemed not to remember these names. ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us the five bells hanging in their loft. From above, the town was a tesselated pavement of roofs and gardens; the old line of rampart was plainly traceable; and the Sacristan pointed out to us, far across the plain, in a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. Can any biography shed light on the localities into which the Midsummer Night's Dream[626] admits me? Did Shakspeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation? The forest of Arden,[627] the nimble air of Scone Castle,[628] the moonlight of Portia's villa,[629] "the antres vast[630] and desarts idle," of Othello's captivity,—where is the third cousin, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... from the railway station at Florence, the Countess Martin-Belleme and Madame Marmet to her pink-tinted house at Fiesole, which, crowned with a long balustrade, overlooked the incomparable city. The maid followed with the luggage. Choulette, lodged, by Miss Bell's attention, in the house of a sacristan's widow, in the shadow of the cathedral of Fiesole, was not expected until dinner. Plain and gentle, wearing short hair, a waistcoat, a man's shirt on a chest like a boy's, almost graceful, with small hips, the poetess was doing for her ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... style which was in vogue in the years when the house of Hohenstaufen were masters of Southern Italy. We found little that was worth seeing inside the building, except the pretty black-eyed daughter of the toothless tottering old sacristan, who slunk off grumbling on his child's appearance, leaving her to do the honours of the place. Her merry face with its welcoming smile and her modest loquacity excited our interest, and in answer to our questions we gathered ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... a grander way for the Sous-Prefet, And a bow for Ma'am'selle Anne; And a mock "off-hat" to the Notary's cat, And a nod to the Sacristan:— ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... dei Servi was quite deserted. Children played there in the mornings, and old men and women lingered there and sat on the wooden benches in the sun, but they were all away now; the bells had rung for the Ave Maria, the church doors were closed, and the sacristan had gone ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... spirits are capable, that they scarcely fear them at all. It is especially in the night that all these worthies, grave-diggers, flaxdressers, and ghosts, exercise their industry. It is in the night also the flaxdresser relates his lamentable stories. But he is no more than the sacristan addicted exclusively to the pleasure of inspiring his auditors with fear; he delights in raising a laugh; and is jocose and sentimental by turns, when he comes to speak of love and Hymen. He is the man to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... the Vydts family) contains the famous altar piece of the Adoration of the Lamb, by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, to study which is the chief object of a visit to Ghent. See it more than once, and examine it carefully. Ask the sacristan to let you sit before it for some time in quiet or he will hurry you on. You must observe it in close detail. Taking it in its entirety, then, the altar-piece, when opened, is a great mystical poem of the Eucharist and the Sacrifice of the Lamb, with the Christian folk, both Church ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... was quite evening; there was a lantern held over his head; voices were muttering curiously and angrily; bending over him were two priests, a sacristan of the church, and his own father. His little wallet lay by him on the stones, ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... Communion, used to find me in this state, but as soon as he was come and had opened the church, I always recovered, and hastened to the holy table, there to receive my Lord and my God. When I was sacristan, I used all on a sudden to feel myself ravished in spirit, and ascend to the highest parts of the church, on to cornices, projecting parts of the building, and mouldings, where it seemed impossible for any being to get by human means. ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... While bathing in the river, suddenly a current came whose rapidity seized me and bore me beyond my depth. I was already lost and surrendered myself to the mercy of the water, for I could not swim. God inspired a sacristan who was there, who dived quickly into the water, followed me, and, catching hold of me, drew me ashore. The second was while prior of Ibahay, and when I was visiting the islands. While crossing to one, so fierce ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... a white-bearded sacristan in a three-cornered hat of blue and gold and a gold-embroidered coat. For all his brave apparel he was a small, mild-mannered person, with kindly brown eyes and a way of smiling sadly as if he had ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... as I spoke to him. I was sitting down for a few minutes on a low seat, between Minima's bed and one where a little boy of six years of age lay. Both were delirious. He was the little son of Jean, our driver, and the sacristan of the church; and his father had brought him into the ward the evening of the day after Minima had been taken ill. Jean had besought me with tears to be good to his child. The two had engrossed nearly all my time and thoughts, and I was losing ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... fixed and livid lineaments of death. Just at that moment the whole choir burst forth with a 'Requiescat in pace,' that shook the vaults of the cathedral. Don Manuel sank senseless on the pavement. He was found there early the next morning by the sacristan, and conveyed to his home. When sufficiently recovered, he sent for a friar and made a full confession of all ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... suspicion of 'possession' in order to exorcise the spirit with prayers and holy water. Aretino has made a witty scene about this in the 'Cortegiana,' where one of the Vatican servants cheats a poor fisherman, and then hands him over to the sacristan of Saint Peter's to be cured of an imaginary possession by a ceremonious exorcism. Such proceedings must have been common enough in those days when witchcraft and demonology were elements with which rulers and lawgivers had to ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... chaplain, curate; deacon, deaconess; preacher, reader, lecturer; capitular[obs3]; missionary, propagandist, Jesuit, revivalist, field preacher. churchwarden, sidesman[obs3]; clerk, precentor[obs3], choir; almoner, suisse[Fr], verger, beadle, sexton, sacristan; acolyth[obs3], acolothyst[obs3], acolyte, altar boy; chorister. [Roman Catholic priesthood] Pope, Papa, pontiff, high priest, cardinal; ancient flamen[obs3], flamen[obs3]; confessor, penitentiary; spiritual director. cenobite, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... The sacristan, in fact, advised me not to go up after he had taken my fee and obtained a view of my proportions over the tube of his key, which he pretended to whistle into. We sat down together as I recovered my breath, after ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... shall see.' So I waited, and at twelve o'clock out they came, dozens of them, and began to cross the meadow. 'And now,' sez I to myself, 'look out for larks.' But what happened? Why, when they came to the pole, the priest stood in front of it, and the sacristan rang the bell, and they all fell down on their knees. But they were saying their prayers, not doing obeisance to the hat. That's what they were doing. ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... day was gone, The night came on, The monks and the friars they searched till dawn; When the Sacristan saw, On crumpled claw, Come limping a poor little lame Jackdaw; No longer gay, As on yesterday; His feathers all seemed to be turned the wrong way; His pinions drooped, he could hardly stand, His head was as bald as the palm of your hand; His eye so dim, So wasted ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... quarter of it for his own table; if any of his debtors found a beautiful horse, within a half hour it would be in the Captain's stable. All of this is true, but still when the Captain had his back turned they made fun of him and referred to him as Sacristan Tiago. ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... set before them in the Scriptures. They represent her as the Merciful One whose patience no crime can exhaust, and whose goodwill is enlisted by the slightest act of homage. She is transformed and becomes in their hands an intermediate being between a saint, a goddess, and a fairy. The sacristan-nun of a convent, beautiful as may be believed, falls in love with a clerk, doubtless a charming one, and, unable to live without him, "throws her keys on the altar, and roves with her friend for five years ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... inconsistent part in the pages assigned to her in the narrative; manifesting interest and attachment to the family with whom her destinies are associated, but evincing whim, and even a species of malevolence, towards other mortals, as the Sacristan, and the Border robber, whose incorrect life subjected them to receive petty mortifications at her hand. The White Lady is scarcely supposed, however, to have possessed either the power or the inclination ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Antonio Savello officiated. It so happened that one of the monks of his order, Don Ippolito, who subsequently played a part in the history of the saint, and who had been now residing ten years in the convent, was about this time appointed to the office of sacristan, although he had previously filled with distinction divers important functions in the monastery. He had accepted this appointment out of obedience and humility of spirit; but after a while the devil sorely tempted ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... built in the Gothic style in 1128, by Inge II., one of the early kings of Sweden. While the steamer was slowly toiling through the locks, a party of the passengers, including myself, paid a visit to the church, and, aided by a venerable sacristan, saw all that was to be seen in it, chief among which are the tombs of the kings and the arms of the Douglas family, those warlike Scots who took such an active part in the military exploits of Sweden during the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... strict orders to all who accompanied him to give no hint to any person of his name and quality; and on his arrival at the town before day-break, he went directly to the church, the doors of which were just opened. The sacristan was alarmed at seeing so great a number of strangers going into the church, and immediately ran into the streets to call the civil power to his assistance. The alcaldes, with the alguazils, and some of the inhabitants repaired immediately to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... of adoration. But there was nothing yet to adore, except up there to the left, where a very pale glimmer shone on polished marble among the shadows before the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. There was one other exception; for overhead, against the half-lighted apse, where a belated sacristan still moved about, himself a shadow, busy with the last preparations of the High Altar—there burgeoned out the ominous silhouette of the vast hanging cross, but so dark that the tortured Christ upon it was invisible.... Yet surely ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... with a little grated window, where they locked him up and left him. At the expiration of three quarters of an hour they again appeared, and conducted him to the house of the curate, where they sat down in conclave, the curate who was a man stone-blind being president, whilst the sacristan officiated as secretary. The surgeon having stated his accusation against the prisoner, namely, that he had detected him in the fact of selling a version of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, the curate proceeded to examine Vitoriano, asking him his name and place ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... the altar. The Pope's chief Sacristan, who is a bishop chosen from the Augustinian order bears one, and kneels on the steps of the throne between the deacon and subdeacon, who bear two larger palms. His Holiness reads the usual prayers ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... out of the room to fetch the prelate, who was waiting in the viridarium with two deacons, an exorcist, and a sacristan ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... abstained some days from the celebration of the divine mysteries, condemning himself of a neglect in seeking the poor with sufficient care. He entertained great numbers of strangers both at Rome and in other countries, and had every day twelve at his own table whom his sacristan invited. He was most liberal in redeeming captives taken by the Lombards, for which he permitted the bishop of Fano to break and sell the sacred vessels,[20] and ordered the bishop of Messana to do the same.[21] He extended his charity to the heretics, whom he sought to gain by mildness. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... do this. Once he's alive, I shan't interfere with him. I shall just watch him. Won't it be interesting? He isn't alive yet. But there's plenty of time. You see, he doesn't come on at the rise of the curtain. A Friar and a Sacristan come on and talk about him. By the time they've finished, perhaps he'll be alive. But they won't have finished yet. Not that they're going to say very much. But ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... we must pay the sacristan for showing them to us. We can ask him about them when we ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... so christened from the little church which stood on its summit, was one of a subordinate range of hills, which traversed the country in the region where the army corps of the South were quartered. The little church lay desolate and lonely, half buried in the deep snow. Priest and sacristan were gone long since, and the house of God bore traces of demolition, for a deadly battle had been fought on this height. The walls were standing and part of the pointed roof; the rest had been carried away by shot and shell, and the wind whistled ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... we were there also received with cordiality. In the church a service was going on, gabbled over by a priest arrayed in white silk and gold, waving incense before the altar, his congregation consisting of one person, a sort of sacristan or beadle. There were some good pictures on the walls, but others together with them of degraded rank ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... could not and would not go without her remaining Tintoret, and the others yielded to her at once, with that indulgent tenderness one shows to the wilfulness of a sick child. She and Margaret followed the sacristan. Ashe lingered behind in a passage of the church, surreptitiously reading an Italian newspaper. He had the ordinary cultivated pleasure in pictures; but this ardor which Kitty was throwing into her pursuit of Tintoret—the Wagner of painting—left him cold. He did ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for their instruction in it, that polytheistic devotion was his most striking feature. Philosophers, indeed, had, for the most part, thought with Seneca, "that a man need not lift his hands to heaven, nor ask the sacristan's leave to put his mouth to the ear of an image, that his prayers might be heard the better."—Marcus Aurelius, "a master in Israel," knew all that well enough. Yet his outward devotion was much more than a concession to popular ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... the night came on, The monks and the friars they searched till dawn; When the sacristan saw, on crumpled claw, Come limping a poor little lame Jackdaw! No longer gay, as on yesterday; His feathers all seemed to be turned the wrong way; His pinions drooped, he could hardly stand,— His head was as bald as the palm of your hand; ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... undecayed in the cemetery, visited it alone in the dead of night for the purpose of prosecuting his inquiries on that fearful subject. As he opened the trap-door of the vault a light burst from below; but deeming it to be only the lamp of the sacristan, the monk drew back and awaited his departure concealed behind the high altar. The sacristan emerged not, however, from the opening; and the monk, tired of waiting, approached, and finally descended the rugged steps which led into ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... two hundred feet in breadth,—a grand and shadowy temple grove of marble and granite. At all times the light is of an unearthly softness and purity, toned by the exquisite windows and rosaces. But as evening draws on, you should linger till the sacristan grows peremptory, to watch the gorgeous glow of the western sunlight on the blazing roses of the portals, and the marvellous play of rich shadows and faint gray lights in the eastern chapels, where the grand aisles sweep in their perfect curves around the high altar. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... than I ever saw elsewhere, a phenomenon to be accounted for, perhaps, by their custom of wrapping the new-born infant in swaddling-clothes), this two-foot abortion hastened before us, as we drew nigh, to summon the sacristan to open the church door. It was a needless service, for which we rewarded him with two baiocchi. San Pietro is a simple and noble church, consisting of a nave divided from the side aisles by rows of columns, that once adorned some ancient temple; and its wide, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... loophole when our turnkey threw the door open. I heard the priest and his sacristan joking in the corridor before they entered carrying their sacred parcels. The priest was a doddering old fellow, almost deaf, for the turnkey shouted at his ear, and dim of sight, for he stooped close to look at the dying man, who was ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... gold. In this dress, the Condesa de ——- was laid in her coffin, thousands of dear friends crowding to view her beautiful costume de mort, and at length she was placed in her tomb, the key of which was intrusted to the sacristan. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... that Louis of France shields from justice the thieves and murderers whom the Vicar of Christ would punish. You know, sire, that these men had committed sacrilege. They had plundered the altar of St. Peter's of its golden pyx and candlesticks, and had poniarded the sacristan ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... lives, and in their deaths they were not divided." The latter monument, as well as others of inferior merit, owed its preservation from revolutionary fury to the conduct and firmness of Mons. Menestrier, an avocat, and mayor of Auxerre during the reign of terror. Ce brave homme (I like the old sacristan's term of brave homme, as it is one of the few untranslateable French words) flew to the cathedral at the moment that a horde of brigands had entered it to commence the work of mutilation; and, seconded by nothing but his known character for resolution, and an athletic person, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... college and entered the church contiguous to it. He asked for Father Miro; a sacristan with a long moustache and a worn blue overcoat, took him to another entrance, made him mount an old wooden staircase, and conducted him to the office of the man he was ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... art in the mountain towns where they were born, and where they are still to be seen in the faded frescos of Giotto and Cimabue, on the walls of many a church, or in the dark chapels, in which the sacristan draws aside the veil from a treasured picture of Perugino. Thence, the happy painter goes to walk the long, bright galleries of Florence, or to steal glowing colors from the miraculous works, which he finds in a score of Venetian palaces. Such summers as these, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
