"Simony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... served the parish fourteen years, for twelve pounds per annum. The present rector was in the annual receipt of forty-three pounds, out of which he had to pay me, but with the aid of a little simony, this was easily avoided, and as I took no fees, I can hardly call it a lucrative appointment, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... and the failure of the universities to give a proper ecclesiastical training, produced their natural effect on a large body of the clergy. Grave charges of ignorance, indifference, concubinage, and simony were not wholly groundless, as the decrees ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... them—great lubbers and long that were loth to work: friars glossing the Gospel for their own profit; pardoners cheating the people with relics and indulgences; parish priests who forsook their parishes—that had been poor since the pestilence time—and went to London to sing there for simony; bishops, archbishops, and deacons, who got themselves fat clerkships in the Exchequer, or King's Bench; in short, all manner of lazy and corrupt ecclesiastics. A lady, who represents holy Church, then ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... directed the Archbishop to visit all the larger monasteries in which he had reason to suspect that evil practices prevailed, and the Archbishop threatens to visit St. Albans because he has heard of cases of simony, usury, lavish expenditure, and immorality. He says unless within sixty days things are reduced to order, not only in the monastery but also in the nunneries of Pre and Sopwell and other cells, he will visit personally or by commission to inquire into matters ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... prayed, that whereas a great number both of regulars and seculars who were presumptuous and ignorant were ordained, a decree might be passed that all before ordination should be strictly examined; and that a remedy should be provided against simony.[61] They petitioned, also, that foreigners who could not speak English should have no cures in England; and they complained of the practice of patrons exacting from the priests whom they nominated to a benefice a pledge that ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... ordinaries very uncharitably handled, to their no little hindrance and impoverishment; which your said subjects suppose not only to be against all laws, right, and good conscience, but also to be simony, and contrary to ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... By means of another rocky bridge the travellers reach the third gulf, where are punished all who have been guilty of simony. These are sunk, head first, in a series of burning pits, whence emerge only the red-hot soles of their convulsively agitated feet. Seeing a ruddier flame hover over one pair of soles, Dante timidly inquires to whom they belong, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Watson was convicted. To tell you the truth, I am glad when such faults are found with Burnet; for it shows his enemies are not angry at his telling falsehoods, but the truth. Must not an historian say a bishop was convicted Of Simony, if he was? I will tell you what was said of Burnet's History, by one whose testimony you yourself would not dispute—at least you would not in any thing else. That confessor said, "Damn him, he has told a great deal of truth, but where the devil did he learn it?" ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... chapter to lease at a handsome price to seignorial families, and even to rich burghers, the right to be present at the services, themselves and their servants exclusively, in the various lateral chapels of the long side-aisles of the cathedral. This simony is in practice to the present day. A woman had her chapel as she now has her opera-box. The families who hired these privileged places were required to decorate the altar of the chapel thus conceded to them, and each made it their pride to adorn their own sumptuously,—a vanity which the Church ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... promises freely among the other members of the Sacred College, with the result that he was elected on the 11th of August, and proclaimed Pope under the title of Alexander VI. The secret Archives of the Vatican[28] give full particulars of this election, which was obtained by the most flagrant simony, and proved a prelude to the days of confusion and misery which Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican of Florence, daily prophesied were in store for the Church. Ascanio Sforza was the first to reap the reward of his base compliance. The new Pope loaded him with favours, and ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright |
