"Tonsure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there, each one who was rich makes himself poor. What he has, he gives to all. He who was what is called noble, a gentleman and a lord, is the equal of him who was a peasant. The cell is identical for all. All undergo the same tonsure, wear the same frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on the same straw, die on the same ashes. The same sack on their backs, the same rope around their loins. If the decision has been to go barefoot, all go barefoot. There may ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of the traditions of the Roman Church and diverged from its customs in some respects. They celebrated Easter upon a different date from that observed by the Roman Church and employed a different style of tonsure. Missionaries from this Irish church were busy converting the northern regions of Britain, when the Roman monks under Augustine began their work in the southern part ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... stirred by other desires than those for spiritual honors. He assumed the hated garb of the priest only on his father's command. Although he was an archbishop he had only the first tonsure. His life was wholly worldly. It was even said that the King of Naples wanted him to marry one of his natural daughters and that if he did so he would relinquish the priesthood. The Ferrarese ambassador called upon him March 17, 1493, in his house in Trastevere, ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... Catholic chapel of a fashionable district-chapel erected on pervert's legacies, down a small street at the corner of a grandee square, by tolerance or connivance of our constabulary,—entering it linked; and linked they issued, their heads bent; for the operation of the tonsure, you would say. Two English noblemen! But is there no legislation to stop the disease? Our female government asks it vixenly of our impotent male; which pretends, beneath an air of sympathy, that we should abstain from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this rule was observed by all the clergy of the Indies and of Cathay, who have to go to the pope or Catholicos of Armenia for consecration. Of their two patriarchs, one resides in the Indies, and the other in Cathay[31], their bishops residing in different cities as it may seem convenient. Their tonsure is made in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... monasteries and the recluses of both systems should be enumerated as Buddhists and Taoists; but I was in the end constrained to widen that judgment, and to admit a considerable following of both among the people, who have neither received the tonsure nor assumed the yellow top. Dr. Eitel, in concluding his discussion of this point in his "Lecture on Buddhism, an Event in History," says: "It is not too much to say that most Chinese are theoretically ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... both of my comrades were sent, But the Church, saving me for the tonsure, Hid me off in the wilds, and my dame, to her shame, To be Pere sold me out from a Monsieur; And now she is clad in the silk of the court, And I in the wool of confessor,— Hate me not, ere hence you go, Jean Victor Moreau! And with France be ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... legal age for receiving the tonsure and taking the solemn vow of religion is the age of puberty, when a man is able to make use of his own will; but before the age of puberty it is possible to have reached the lawful age to receive the tonsure and be educated ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... that it is a fashion, and nothing more, is unhappily fully established on ample and high authority within the medical prescriptive pale. And, in fact, even as "The Tonsure" or shaving of the crown, became by fashion and mendicity a feature of priesthood and monastic piety, so has the slaughter of the Tonsils come to be regarded by fashion and mendacity as a feature of childhood and medical ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... probably quickened by the action of the Protestant zealots. The failure of Wyatt's revolt was far from taming the enthusiasm of the wilder reformers. The restoration of the old worship was followed by outbreaks of bold defiance. A tailor of St. Giles in the Fields shaved a dog with the priestly tonsure. A cat was found hanging in the Cheap "with her head shorn, and the likeness of a vestment cast over her, with her forefeet tied together and a round piece of paper like a singing cake between them." Yet more galling were the ballads which were circulated in mockery of the ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... maddest sallies of Father Tom there was generally to be found a method. His exuberances when he was Prior of San Clemente, for instance, were attributed to his desire that his tonsure might not be made to bear the weight of a mitre: 'It got whispered among the cardinals' (writes Canon Brownlow), 'that their eminences were at times the objects of his jokes, and that he even presumed to mimic those exalted personages. Some of them spoke seriously about it, and ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... family of the Otrepievs, of the lower nobility of Galicia; in his youth he took the tonsure, no one knows where, lived at Suzdal, in the Ephimievsky monastery, departed from there, wandered to various convents, finally arrived at my Chudov fraternity; but I, seeing that he was still young and inexperienced, ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... lower lip hung and jutted forward; when he smiled, as now in advancing to the fire, it slightly overlapped the one above. His hair was very sparse; he looked, indeed, like one who has received the tonsure. The movement of his limbs betokened excessive indolence; he dragged his feet rather than walked. His attire was equally suggestive; not only had it fallen into the last degree of shabbiness (having originally ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... ornaments set in the choir by the hand of Paolo Sasono." He died in the 68th year of his age, and was buried in S. Maria in Organo. He is called "prior" in a chronicle of the monastery under date 1511, and in the list of dead. In his portrait in the sacristy, by Caroto, he is represented with the tonsure and with the hood and cowl of the form which was proper to monks who were constituted ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... turned to the time of the loosing of oxen the Town drave in the ranks of the Gown, and won the victory." They were strong, the townsmen, but not merciful. "The crowns of some chaplains, viz. all the skin so far as the tonsure went, these diabolical imps flayed off in scorn of their clergy," and "some poor innocents these confounded sons of Satan knocked down, beat, and most cruelly wounded." The result, in the long run, was that the University received from Edward III. "a most large charter, containing many liberties, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... than they imagined, on the other. Brains were held to be a prerogative of gentle blood, extra intelligence in the lower classes being almost an impertinence. The only exception to this rule lay with the Church. She was allowed to develop a brain in whom she would. The sacredness of her tonsure protected the man who wore it, permitting him to exhibit as much (or as little) of manners, intellect, and morals, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... to choose his way of life, instead of going into battle with his knighted brothers, he made them, as well as his uncle the count of Touillon, join a band of thirty companions, with whom he knelt in the rude chapel at Citeaux to beg the tonsure from Abbot Stephen Harding. To rise at two o'clock in the morning and chant the prayer-offices of the church until nine, to do hard manual labor until two, when the sole meal of the day—composed of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 264. Not by tonsure does an undisciplined man who speaks falsehood become a Samana; can a man be a Samana who is still held captive by ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... was being prepared for him. On learning that the barin was approaching the mansion, the muzhiks collected on the verandah in very variety of picturesque dress and tonsure; and when these good folk surrounded him, and there arose a resounding shout of "Here is our Foster Father! He has remembered us!" and, in spite of themselves, some of the older men and women began weeping as they recalled his grandfather and great-grandfather, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... illumination does; and Mr. Walpole replies to that doubt. Upon the same subject, Mr. Cole says, qu. how Lord Orford came to know the kneeling figure in a clerical habit, was Caxton the printer? He is certainly a priest, as is evident from his tonsure, but I do not think that Caxton was in orders. I should rather suppose that it was designed for Jehan de ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... capable, energetic Russian, so capable, indeed, that I found it hard to believe he could really be a Russian. He is a big man, with a mass of thick brown shaggy hair, so thick that the little bald patch on the top of his head seems like an artificial tonsure. Nogin sketched the lines on which the Russian textile industry was being reorganized, and gave orders that I should be supplied with all possible printed matter in which to find the ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... a miscellaneous assortment of ghosts. A monk with tonsure and cowl walks in at one window of the Priest's House, and out at another. There is also a little old man, dressed in the antique garb of a green cut-away coat, knee breeches, and buckled shoes: he is sometimes accompanied by an old lady in ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... the summer clouds float across the sun. And then she lay all white and still, and the doctor turned up one of her eyelids. She was quite unconscious. Raymond pressed hard on one of the levers and the chair instantly sank back. Clarke saw him cutting away a circle, like a tonsure, from her hair, and the lamp was moved nearer. Raymond took a small glittering instrument from a little case, and Clarke turned away shuddering. When he looked again the doctor was binding up the wound he ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... coming hither to France and England, what do we find? Those who have vowed themselves to the service of the Church walking gaily in the dress of soldiers, engaged in carnal matters, letting their hair hang down their shoulders curled and powdered, and thinking scorn of the tonsure, which is the mark of the Kingdom of Heaven. And does not God see? Will He not recompense to His people their sins? Yea, verily He will; and in an hour when they little think it, the wrath of God shall fall upon them. It is even now upon its way. I have ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... leave the convent without being perceived by the other monks. Therefore, fearing the great perils and inconveniences which might arise, they arranged between them that each should wear a monk's gown, and have a tonsure made on her head, as though they belonged to the convent. So finally one day that they were in the convent, and whilst their husbands suspected nothing of it, a barber,—that is to say a monk belonging ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... established; every one that could read (a mark of great learning in those days of ignorance and her sister superstition) being accounted a clerk or clericus, and allowed the benefit of clerkship, though neither initiated in holy orders, nor trimmed with the clerical tonsure."—Blackstone's "Com.," iv. b. iv, ch. 28. We have already seen that the king and nobles in this play called in the aid of Friar Tuck to read the inscription on the stag's collar, though the king could ascertain that it ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... several new passengers on board, and among others a monk, in a long brown frock of woollen cloth, with an immense cape, and a little black covering over his tonsure. He was a tall figure, with a gray beard, and might have walked, just as he stood, out of a picture by one of the old masters. This holy person addressed me very affably in Italian; but we found it ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tomato. Tomb tombo. Tom cat katviro. Tome volumo. To-morrow morgaux. To-morrow, the day after postmorgaux. Tone (music) tono. Tongs prenilo. Tongs, fire fajrprenilo. Tongue lango. Tonic fortigilo. Tonic accent tonakcento. Tonnage enhavebleco. Tonsure tonsuro. Too (much) tro. Tool ilo. Tooth dento. Toothless sendenta. Top (summit) supro. Top (peak) pinto. Top (of head) verto. Topaz topazo. Topic subjekto. Topmost plejsupra. Topography topografio. Topple fali. Topsy-turvy, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the ground round the stove, as close as they could get without scorching, and the atmosphere was quickly heavy with their presence. When they slipped back their hoods it was seen that two of the men wore the "tartar tonsure," after the fashion of ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... is, after all, only a form of reporting, and so are history, poetry and romance. What, he asks, were MOMMSEN and GIBBON, WORDSWORTH and KEATS but reporters, and I can only answer, What indeed? To have been found worthy of tonsure by Mr. MARCOSSON it is necessary to be very eminent, and to win his highest praise it is essential also to be a good "imparter," though he has a kind of sneaking admiration for the paleface who insists on handing him a written statement and declines to speak. Such a one was Sir EDWARD CARSON. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... to foot. A knotted cord bound his waist, the ends depending toward the pavement and swinging with his rosary. His feet were shod with sandals, and his head was bare, though an ample cowl was at hand to shelter it. His head needed no tonsure for age had made him nearly bald. His shaven face was kind and strong and he was in genial touch with the by-standers, to whom no doubt such a figure was not novel. Incongruously enough, the friar held over his ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... baked. This grain, called maize in the West-Indian Islands, is called Zara in the language of Peru[14]. The men wear a kind of shirts or jackets without sleeves, which only reach to the navel, and do not cover the parts of shame. They wear their hair short, having a kind of tonsure on their crowns, almost like monks. They have no other dress or covering, yet pride themselves on certain ornaments of gold hanging from their ears and nostrils, and are particularly fond of pendants made of emeralds, which are chiefly found in those parts of the country bordering ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... aqueduct, stood the seminary of St. Joseph, where the servants of the church received their education, adopting on their entrance the clerical habit and tonsure. The chapel to the seminary was neat, and we were conducted by a sensible well-informed father of the Benedictine Order to a small library ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... hat and put it on the seat; his dark smooth-shaven face reminded me of a Romish priest, but he had no tonsure; instead of that he had thick closely-cropped hair without a hint or suspicion of baldness, was strongly built and very broad, and looked like a man ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to all in proportion to their approaches towards absolute wisdom, and as the realisation of this perfection is regarded as almost hopeless in a life devoted to secular cares, the priests of Buddha, on assuming their robe and tonsure, forswear all earthly occupations; subsist on alms, not in money, but in food; devote themselves to meditation and self-denial; and, being thus proclaimed and recognised as the most successful aspirants to ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... object is attained if I can but show that when my friend took me under his wing at the Institute long years agone, when the innocent-looking lad with the fair hair, that might have had an incipient tonsure superimposed without incongruity, drifted away from text-books of mechanics, and sat down with Schiller, Ducoudray, and Carlyle, he little imagined how adventurous a spirit there boiled under that demure disguise of retiring scholarship—a spirit ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... century," says Masden, "or from the beginning of the sixth, the custom prevailed in Spain of the infirm, when so heavily afflicted as to be in danger of death, piously assuming the tonsure and the penitential habit, and engaging to continue both through life, if God raised them up. As the use of this penance became common enough to throw discredit on the piety of all who did not thus undertake it, if the sick or dying man was unable to demand ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... drilled, and finally the whole has to be filed up and smoothed off, and all by one man. The Japanese are but indifferent sewers, all their seams exhibiting numerous "holidays." Pretty children, with their hair clipped around their heads like a priest's tonsure, sport around us, but are not intrusive. Each child has a little pouch attached to his girdle, which, we are informed, contains the address of the child's parents, and also an invocation to the little one's protecting god, in case of his straying from home. ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... the Christian churches were accustomed to shave part of their head; but the form given to this tonsure was different in the former from what was practised in the latter. The Scots and Britons pleaded the antiquity of their usages; the Romans and their disciples, the Saxons, insisted on the universality of theirs. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... untrained in logic, might adopt the teaching, but he could not understand it. The "Congregation of the son of the C[a]kyas"—such was the earliest name for the Buddhistic brotherhood—were required only to renounce their family, put on the yellow robe, assume the tonsure and other outward signs, and be chaste and high-minded. But the teachers were instructed in the subtleties of the 'Path,' and it needed no little training to follow the leader's thought ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... footprint! not a trace that a blood-hound would nose at! But Stephen shall be acknowledged good dog and true. If I had him within stick-length—mind thy head, brother Julian! Thou hast not hair enough to protect it, and thy tonsure shall not. Neither shalt thou tarry at Jericho.—It is a poor man that leaves no trail; and if thou wert poor, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... who received the tonsure, wore a distinct costume, and pronounced the three greater vows; they led in fact a mitigated life, half layman, half monk. This rule, which still exists among the true Benedictines, has disappeared among the Trappists since the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... with the Roman. The changes were slight in themselves; all that we know of them is an alteration in the beginning of Lent, the proper observance of Easter and of Sunday, and a question, still disputed, about the tonsure. But, slight as they were, they stood for much. They involved the abandonment of the separate position held by the Scottish Church, and its acceptance of a place as an integral portion of Roman Christianity. The result was to make the Papacy, for ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... that thei wiste he was ago, It is a Pite forto hiere. They losten lust, they losten chiere, Thei toke upon hem such penaunce, Ther was no song, ther was no daunce, Bot every merthe and melodie To hem was thanne a maladie; 480 For unlust of that aventure Ther was noman which tok tonsure, In doelful clothes thei hem clothe, The bathes and the Stwes bothe Thei schetten in be every weie; There was no lif which leste pleie Ne take of eny joie kepe, Bot for here liege lord to wepe; And every wyht seide ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... A short time afterwards we met two more horsemen, one of whom asked us if he was going right for the house we had been at. As he was speaking a gust of wind blew off his hat. I fetched it and gave it to him, and as he stooped to put it on I saw that a tonsure was shaven on the top of his head. The matter had already seemed strange to us; but the fact that one of this number of men, all going to a lonely house, was a priest in disguise, seemed so suspicious that ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... of. Why, they have used me very much better than they did Father Jogues, Father Breboeuf, and a good many others whom I could mention. There were times, it is true, when I was quite hopeful of martyrdom, especially when they thought my tonsure was too small, which was their merry way of putting it. But I suppose I was not worthy of it; indeed I know that I was not, so it only ended in just ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "And if the tonsure disquiets you, for it is rather a delicate operation, the prettiest hands and the prettiest scissors—golden scissors, ma foi!—will give you this precious symbol, which would raise to three the number ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... great families devoted to God from early youth the younger members who showed inclination for the religious life. Francois was only nine years old when he received the tonsure, and fifteen when he was appointed canon of the cathedral of Evreux. Without the revenues which he drew from his prebend, he would not have been able to continue his literary studies; the death of his father, in fact, had left ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... unworthy though we be, should submit to insult and indignity at the hands of a pack of godless Lutheran dogs." And, so saying, he seated himself and proceeded to remove his own head-covering, disclosing lean, ascetic features, cold, cruel, and domineering, crowned by the monk's tonsure. At the same time the others did the same, and with very similar result, the dominant expression of the faces thus disclosed being that of cold, stern ruthlessness, tempered, it must be confessed, in some cases, with very evident ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... of the head in those days was no trifling matter. It formed what is known as the tonsure, then the mark of the monastic orders. A man condemned to the tonsure could not serve as king or chieftain, but must spend the remainder of his days in seclusion as a monk. So Paul was disposed ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... told him that he could never make a soldier of such a boy, he allowed me to enter a seminary. I was very happy, and my love of books and my earnest desire to be a priest continued to increase. I was made a deacon and received the tonsure. Then I fell ill. It was the will of Heaven, for I never was ill before that, nor have been since. It was a long illness, a dangerous fever. Just before that time, while I was in the seminary, my father had married a second time, a young and very beautiful woman, scarcely two ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... Church, since with them the Pope and Bishops are the Church, while they do according to their own pleasure whatever they choose, in virtue of the declaration, "The Church has forbidden it." Holiness is not that which consists in the estate of monks, priests and nuns,—the wearing of the tonsure and cowl; it is a spiritual word, meaning that there is an inward holiness in the spirit before God. And this is the reason specially why he said this, in order to show that there is nothing holy but that holiness which God produces ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... longer subject to the frailties of the flesh, and that the natural appetites are left behind. This is all right when on parade, but there is an esoteric doctrine as well as an exoteric, which all wise men know, namely, that men are men, and women are women—God made them so—and that the tonsure and the veil are vain when ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... from the rest and came forward. Dalaber found himself gazing at a small, wiry-looking man in the frock of a priest, whose head was slightly bald in addition to the tonsure, and whose face was thin and lined, as though with vigils and fasting and prayer. It was the face of an ascetic—thin featured and thin lipped, pale almost to cadaverousness, but lighted as though with a ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... means—each according to his own domestic rules—the twelve purificatory rites [Footnote: Of these only six are now generally performed, viz.:—1, the birth-ceremony, or touching the tongue of a new-born infant with clarified butter, etc.; 2, the name-giving ceremony on the tenth day; 3, tonsure; 4, induction into the privileges of the twice-born, by investiture with the sacred thread; 5, solemn return home from the house of a preceptor after completing the prescribed course of study; 6, marriage. See Indian Wisdom, p. ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... forty, had no thought of marrying. Not that there was anything austere or saturnine about Hugo. He made you think, somehow, of a cherubic, jovial monk. It may have been his rosy rotundity, or, perhaps, the way in which his thinning hair vanished altogether at the top of his head, so as to form a tonsure. Hugo Mandle, kindly, generous, shrewd, spoiled his old mother in the way in which women of seventy, whose middle life has been hard, like to be spoiled. First of all, of course, she reigned unchecked over the South Park Avenue ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... black soutane was seated at a table placed before the window. The only lamp in the room, which was long and narrow, stood on the table before him, so that the light of it was reflected from his sleek black head disfigured by a tiny tonsure. As Rene Drucquer advanced up the room, the occupant raised his head slightly, but made no attempt to turn round. With a quick, unobtrusive movement of his large white hand he moved the papers on the table before him, so that no written ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... the tall footmen, throwing open the drawing-room, and a tall, thin, ascetic looking man, with a shaved, dark face, and an incipient tonsure, entered ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... scissors and I received the 'tonsure' for the third time, which left only a circle of hair around my head, and no Pinkerton detective, or even Bertillion ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... authority' as well as of that 'of the University'. This authority is originally that of the Church, to which, in England at any rate, all mediaeval students ipso facto belonged; the new student was admitted into the 'bosom' (matricula) of the University by receiving some form of tonsure, and for the first two centuries of University existence, no other ceremony was needed. Matriculation examinations at any rate were in those happy days unknown. Hence the authority which the cathedral chancellor, representing the bishop, ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... marry Martha, a rich young lady of his neighbourhood. But he took her aside, and pressed upon her the claims of the ascetic life with such fervour that she instantly consented to renounce the world with him. She therefore went into a convent; and he received the tonsure, and was in due ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mormon, disillusioned hero of three matrimonial adventures, woman-soft where Sandy was woman-shy, he was high-stomached, too stout for saddle-ease to himself or mount, sun-rouged where his partners were burned brown. His pate was bald save for a tonsure-fringe of grizzle-red. ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... in my thoughts as I waited, breathless, for the outcome of this strange situation. My eyes wandered round the circle of barbarians, and I noted with some wonderment that numbers of the men wore their crowns shaven, after the manner of a priest's tonsure. ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... she pined from famine after the years of the great sickness; and my brother was slain in the French wars, and none thanked him for dying save he that stripped him of his gear; and my unwedded wife with whom I dwelt in love after I had taken the tonsure, and all men said she was good and fair, and true she was and lovely; she also is dead and gone from the earth; and why should I abide save for the deeds of the flesh which must be done? Truly, friend, this is but an old tale that men must die; and I will tell thee another, to wit, that they live: ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... important event in the life of a young Siamese and is celebrated by well-to-do parents with lavish expenditure. Those who are indigent often avail themselves of the royal bounty, for each year a public ceremony is performed in one of the temples of Bangkok at which poor children receive the tonsure gratis. An elaborate description of the tonsure rites has been published by Gerini.[231] They are of considerable interest as showing how closely Buddhist and Brahmanic rites are ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... various orders may differ in the colour of their cloaks or the shape of their tonsure, there is one point in which they all agree,—that is, dirt. They are indescribably filthy. Clean water and soap would seem to be banished the convents, as indulgences of the flesh which cannot be cherished without deadly peril to the soul, and which are to be shunned like heresy ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... accounted a judgment of heaven upon his sin. He determined to quit the world, and devote himself to religion and prayer. I was then nine years of age. He placed me in the Academy of Arts, wound up his affairs, and retired to a remote convent, where he shortly afterwards assumed the tonsure. There, by the severity of his life, and by the unwearied punctuality with which he fulfilled the rules of his order, he struck the whole brotherhood with surprise and admiration. The superior of the monastery, hearing of his skill as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Mucio, the Duchess of Montpensier, carried the scissors at her girdle, with which she threatened to provide Henry with a third crown, in addition to those of France and Poland, which he had disgraced—the coronal tonsure of a monk. The convent should be, it was intimated, the eventual fate of the modern Childeric, but meantime it was more important than ever to supersede the ultimate pretensions of Henry of Navarre. To prevent ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... like that!" the defeated, unsatisfied artist soul within her cried. "That free, arrested stride, how splendid! and the hat crumpled in his hand, and his bare head and strong brows in the sunlight, and the damp points of hair clinging to his temples! No, he is not bald,—that was only a tonsure of white light on the top of his head; still, he must be hard on forty. It is the end of summer with him, too; and here he comes for water, thirsting, to satisfy himself where water was plentiful in spring, and he finds ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... them the shackles which had been laid upon them. The curia, in fact, was not satisfied with Francis's vow of fidelity, it desired in addition to stamp the Penitents with the seal of the Church: the Cardinal of San Paolo was deputed to confer upon them the tonsure. From this time they were all under the spiritual ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... to explain why the legend grew up, above the name, why the name attached itself, in many instances, to the bravest work of other men. The Concert in the Pitti Palace, in which a monk, with cowl and tonsure, touches the keys of a harpsichord, while a clerk, placed behind him, grasps the handle of the viol, and a third, with hat and plume, seems to wait upon the true interval for beginning to sing, is ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... seen her every day; I might have been her lover, her spouse. Instead of being wrapped in this dismal shroud of mine I would have had garments of silk and velvet, golden chains, a sword, and fair plumes like other handsome young cavaliers. My hair, instead of being dishonoured by the tonsure, would flow down upon my neck in waving curls; I would have a fine waxed moustache; I would be a gallant.' But one hour passed before an altar, a few hastily articulated words, had for ever cut me off from the number of the living, and I had myself sealed down the stone of ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... at all, in the diffident syllables he uttered in answer to that question, on first coming there; but of names known to them it came nearest to a malignant one in Scripture, Apollyon. Apollyon had a just discernible tonsure, but probably no right ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... crossed the sea, and arrived in Normandy, an exile, as he describes himself, and "hearing, like Joseph in Egypt, a language which he understood not." In the eleventh year of his age, he received the tonsure from the hands of Mainerius, the abbot of St. Evroul. In the thirty-third year of his age, he was ordained a priest; and thenceforward his life wore away in study and tranquillity. Aged and infirm, he completed his Ecclesiastical History, in the sixty-seventh year of his age; and this great and ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... mood impelled I kiss and dally night and morn And do the things I feel compelled To do—or else, with tonsure ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... I was talking this day with Warbel. He has been about in the world. He has seen priests and monks accused of heresy the one by the other; and none are so fearfully persecuted as those who wear the tonsure, if men do but ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Dalmatian by birth, but all his culture and sympathies were Venetian. He had in his early youth been destined for the priesthood, but like many another had been driven by the feelings and sympathies engendered by Italy's political struggles to abandon the tonsure for the sake of joining the "patriot" cause. His muse was of the drawing-room school and calibre. But he wrote very many charming little poems breathing the warmest aspirations of the somewhat extreme gauche of that day, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... malediction, may be stripped from him again. The sacred vessels are placed in his hands, that from him, "accursed Judas that he is," they may be taken again. There is some difficulty in erasing his tonsure; but this difficulty with a little violence and cruelty is overcome. A tall paper cap, painted over with flames and devils, and inscribed "Heresiarch," is placed upon his head. This done, and his soul having been duly delivered to Satan, his body is surrendered to the secular arm. One last touch ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... for asking", said Hogarth, eyeing the face of the prelate—a man of very coarse feature; a small head, made to receive the tonsure, with a low brow; a stern bottom lip, and long upper; a fat neck held majestically erect; and up stuck his double chin. In profile, the part between the sharp edge of the bottom lip and the chin-tip was divided, down near the chin tip, by an angle and crease; ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... my thoughts. Then, after passing, still clinging to the walls, defaced rags of the bills of last year's Circus, I came to a back field near a timber-yard where the Circus itself had been, and where there was yet a sort of monkish tonsure on the grass, indicating the spot where the young lady had gone round upon her pet steed Firefly in her daring flight. Turning into the town again, I came among the shops, and they were emphatically out of the season. The chemist had no boxes of ginger-beer ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... who were wandering along the road to Brixen, was a monk of strikingly bold and martial appearance. His tall, broad- shouldered form was remarkable for its military bearing; his long, well-kept red whiskers and mustache did not correspond to the tonsure on his head, which was covered with thin reddish ringlets; and in striking contrast with it were likewise the broad red scar on his healthy sunburnt countenance, and the bright, defiant glance of his eyes, which indicated boldness ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... still sitting Julius died and a new pope was chosen. This was the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Medici Leo X. Having taken the tonsure at the age of seven, and received the red hat six years later, he donned the tiara at the early age of thirty-eight. His words, as reported by the Venetian ambassador at Rome, "Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... without difficulty. In Henry III.'s reign, when William de Bossy was charged in open court with corruption and dishonesty, he claimed the benefit of clerical orders, and endeavored to remove his coif in order that he might display his tonsure; but before he could effect his purpose, an officer of the court seized him by the throat and dragged him off to prison. "Voluit," says Matthew Paris, "ligamenta coifae suae solvere, ut, palam monstraret se tonsuram habere clericalem; sed non est permissus. Satelles vero eum arripiens, non ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... but oh! how changed. His plump, olive-coloured countenance had shrunk to that of a skeleton still covered by yellow skin, in which the dark eyes rolled bloodshot and unnaturally large. His tonsure and jaws showed a growth of stubbly grey hair, his frame had become weak and small, his soft and delicate hands resembled those of a woman dead of some wasting disease, and, like his garments, were clogged with dirt. The mail shirt he wore hung ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... hanging on his breast and an episcopal ring on his finger; and instead of the wreath of bay he might have worn, and which encircled his bust in the Capitol, the scanty hair on his finely-moulded head showed the marks of the tonsure. His brow was a grand and expansive one; his gray eyes were full of varied expression, keen humour, and sagacity; a lofty devotion sometimes changing his countenance in a wonderful manner, even in the present wreck of his former self, when the cheeks showed furrows ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tightly gathered in at the waist, set off to great advantage the elegance of his figure: his black cassimere pantaloons disguised his feet, exactly fitted with lace boots, brilliantly polished. And all traces of his tonsure disappeared in the midst of the slight baldness which whitened slightly the back part of his head. There was nothing in his entire costume, or aspect, that revealed the priest, except, perhaps, the entire ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the monks themselves were to take a journey into France, and if the travellers would habit themselves in the cowl and gown, and travel with them, they could do so in almost certain safety. Tom's shaven head lent itself excellently to the tonsure; and though Lord Claud objected to part with his golden tresses, he quickly manufactured himself a tonsured wig which almost defied detection. As the monks, too, were to travel on horseback for greater speed, they had but to teach their steeds to amble along at ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... set round with dahlias, and geraniums, and delicate tinted German stocks, which fill the air with fragrance; a place made only for young lovers:—certainly not for those black, petticoated worthies, each with that sham of a sham, the modern tonsure, pared down to a poor florin's breadth among their bushy, well-oiled curls, who sit at little tables, passing the lazy day "a muguetter les bourgeoises" of Sarrebruck and Treves, and sipping the fragrant Josephshofer—perhaps at the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... to the established confessor of the parish, and the joke of the ungodly. Some said he had been a dancing-master before he entered the cloister, and it was no wonder he turned out a renegade and took to trading. Others declared that he had no right to the gray capote, and his tonsure was a natural loss of hair; in fact, that he never had been a friar at all. But in Kaskaskia nobody took him seriously, and Father Olivier was not severe upon him. Custom made his harlequin antics a matter of course; though Indians still ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... toss In seas of doubt, of horror, and despair. Oh! Isidora, is thy virgin heart Thus mated to a wild apostate monk? The midnight reveller, and morning priest, At e'en the gay guitar, at noon the cowl; The holy mummer, tonsure and the missal, The world, our blessed Church, and Heav'n defied. To love this man, I surely have become That which a Guzman ought to scorn to be. Is he not, too, a Guzman, and my cousin? Yet must he be renounced. Here let me kneel, Nor rise till I ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... they were handling a relic; while the old Marquess, though he took his grandson seldomer on his rides, would sit staring at him with a frowning tenderness that once found vent in the growl—"Morbleu, but he's too good for the tonsure!" All this made it clear to Odo that he was indeed meant for the Church, and he learned without surprise that the following spring he was to be sent to the seminary ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... truly enable him to bear all. The true priest, such a one as the Abbe de Veze, lives like a child with its mother; for the Church, my dear Monsieur Godefroid, is a good mother. Well, a man can be a priest without the tonsure; all priests are not in orders. To vow one's self to good, that is imitating a true priest; it is obedience to God. I am not preaching to you; I am not trying to convert you; I am explaining our ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... was a type in external authority, vestments and state, why was he not a type in all other external and bodily matters? The Old Testament high priest was not permitted to have his head shorn. But why does the Pope have a tonsure? The Old Testament high priest was a subject. Why then does the Pope have men kiss his feet and aspire to be king, which Christ Himself did not? Wherein is ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... LOUIS ANNE MAGDELEINE LEFEBVRE DE (1768-1836), French ecclesiastic, was born on the 28th of January 1768, in Mayenne, France, where his father was general civil judge and lieutenant of police. He studied at the college of Mayenne, received the tonsure when twelve, became prior of Torbechet while still little more than a child, thence derived sufficient income for his education, entered the College of Louis le Grand in 1781, and after completing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... supported by a broad band which passes round the woman's forehead. When men carry them they hold them in their arms. The hair of very young children is shaven, and from about five to fifteen the boys wear either a large tonsure or tufts above the ears, while the girls are allowed to grow hair ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... answered the old man looking from him. "I could forgive this," he touched his battered tonsure, "and all thou hast done against me and mine. That is not little, for when I was a lad, a youth, before I took the priestly yoke upon me, I loved Maria Zerega—but that is nothing. What suffering comes upon me I can bear, but thou ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady |
