"Monastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rapid progress of Christianity in this island. Other causes undoubtedly concurred; and it will be more to our purpose to consider some of the human and politic ways by which religion was advanced in this nation, and those more particularly by which the monastic institution, then interwoven with Christianity, and making an equal progress with it, attained to so high a pitch, of property and power, so as, in a time extremely short, to form a kind of order, and that not the least considerable, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... beautiful church so like a palace, Or San Michele, built by the merchants, the Church of the Guilds of the city. Passing thence into Piazza Signoria, and so into Via de' Gondi, in the Proconsolo you find the Church of the great monastic Order the Badia of the Benedictines, having passed on your way Palazza Vecchio, the Palace of the Republic, afterwards of the Medici; and the Bargello, the Palace of the Podesta, afterwards a prison; coming later through Borgo de' ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... age of strife between old ways and new. It saw the granting of Magna Charta, but it saw also the establishment of the Inquisition, and the creation of the two great monastic orders, whose opposing methods, the Dominicans ruling by fear and the Franciscans by love, are typical of the contrasting spirits of the time. It was the age which in the next century under Dante's influence was to burst into blossom ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... industry; the work of his hands helped rather than hindered the impassioned meditation of his heart. Hating mere bodily austerities, he was no ascetic, but a married man, the father of a family—a circumstance which Hindu legends of the monastic type vainly attempt to conceal or explain—and it was from out of the heart of the common life that he sang his rapturous lyrics of divine love. Here his works corroborate the traditional story of his life. Again ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... with that style of features which is termed potato; and in figure she was a little too plump, and rather short. But she was impressible; and the handsome young English Lieutenant was too much for her monastic tendencies, ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... literary tastes are attested by his encouragement of the learned, by the foundation of schools, and by his patronage of the arts of music and painting, gave a great impulse to the practice of illumination: and the Benedictines, whose influence extended throughout Europe, assigned an eminent rank among monastic virtues to the guardianship and reproduction of valuable manuscripts. In each Benedictine monastery a chamber was set apart for this sacred purpose, and Charlemagne assigned to Alcuin, a member of their order, the important office ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... Rasselas Johnson had lately considered monastic life. Imlac says of the monks:—'Their time is regularly distributed; one duty succeeds another, so that they are not left open to the distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of listless inactivity.... He that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... being 'The agency for supplying Brothers to brotherless girls, or those with unobliging brothers.' I resolved to call it shortly 'The Brothers' Agency.' It is a good name, and gives to the undertaking a kind of monastic flavour that I find ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... most powerful of the great Benedictine abbeys of this region in the year 655. Around this celebrated religious house has grown the town of Peterborough, now one of the chief railway-junctions in Midland England. The remains of the monastic buildings, and especially of the cathedral, are magnificent, the great feature of the latter being its western front, which was completed in the thirteenth century, and has three great open arches, making probably the finest church-portico in Europe. ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... therefore to inquire, whether the existence of an ancient MS. volume of Chronicles, which I have recently noticed in the little library adjoining Reigate Church, is already known to those who investigate out monastic annals? This volume may probably not have escaped their research, especially since the republication and extension of Wharton's Collection, have been recently proposed. A chronological series of chronicles relativing to the see of Canterbury ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... he made his monastic novitiate, and like all the individuals of that Order, changed his name, being called from then on, Father ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... evening, Mlle. Virginie Sambucco said it was time to think of going home: the ladies lived with monastic regularity. Leon protested; but Clementine obeyed, though not without pouting a little. Already the parlor door was open, and the old lady had taken her hood in the hall, when the engineer, suddenly struck with an ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... as sacred and more mystic, is the "Parajika," read in the temples with closed doors by the chief priests exclusively, and only to such devotees as have entered the monastic schools for life. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Amenhotepsase, the Second Prophet of Amen in the time of Thutmosis IV., are represented as feasting with their friends, or driving through Thebes in richly-decorated chariots drawn by prancing horses, and attended by an array of servants. A monastic life, or the life of an anchorite, was held by the Egyptians in scorn; and indeed the state of mind which produces the monk and the hermit was almost entirely unknown to the nation in dynastic times. It was only in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods that asceticism came to be practised; and ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... with the spirit of some mediaeval monastic painter, an enthusiastic servant of art in its purest, severest form, a combination of poet and anchorite, is also there; for he loves the gentle musician, who seems to be a visitor from the world of spirits. ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... westward-bending river that he recognises; not only the dark sides of Mount Morello opposite to him, and the long valley of the Arno that seems to stretch its grey low-tufted luxuriance to the far-off ridges of Carrara; and the steep height of Fiesole, with its crown of monastic walls and cypresses; and all the green and grey slopes sprinkled with villas which he can name as he looks at them. He sees other familiar objects much closer to his daily walks. For though he misses the seventy ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... enjoining a search into the depths of the heart, it encouraged the growth of a self-consciousness hitherto unknown. It was not always a panic of contrition, sweeping the joyous out of the sunlight into a monastic shade, which brought the troubled into a new way of peace, but sometimes a quiet joy in renunciation, congruous with a timid mood, leading by gradual allurement to cloisters of shadowy lanes and cells ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy land—into a palace of imagination—into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition—it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye—that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it is singular that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to hear what Mr. Drummond has to say," said Dino, with all the courtesy which his monastic training had instilled; "but I fear that he will have his labour thrown away. And I have one or two things to tell you, mother, now that those gentlemen have gone. If I am to disappoint you, let me do it at once, so that ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... officers, and an emissary from the Duke of Lorraine. The result of their arrival demands another chapter, for it seriously affected the fortunes of several persons concerned in the events which our history relates. Our scene changes to the ancient monastic chapel of the castle, in which the commissioners were brought ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... this personage resembled that of his companion in shape, being a long monastic mantle; but the colour, being scarlet, showed that he did not belong to any of the four regular orders of monks. On the right shoulder of the mantle there was cut, in white cloth, a cross of a peculiar form. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Royal, and the other its great theological centre. The abbey of St Cyran was the only preferment which D’Hauranne ever accepted, notwithstanding Richelieu’s repeated offers of a bishopric. He was content to exercise from his monastic seclusion an influence far more powerful than that of any bishop of his day. And so penetrating and dangerous did this influence seem to the great Minister whose efforts to bind him to his side had so often failed, that he at length shut him up in Vincennes (May 1638). Here he ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... preyed so deeply on Belzoni, that, renouncing at the same time love and the razor, the world and the brazen bowl of suds, he entered a convent, and became a Capuchin. The leisure of the cloister was employed by him in the study of hydraulics; and he was busy in constructing an Artesian well within the monastic precincts when the French army under Napoleon took possession of Rome. The monks of every order were expelled and dispersed; and our poor Capuchin, obliged to cut his own beard, purchased once more the implements of his despised calling, and traveled into Holland, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... to the robing-rooms, and made us put on monastic and priestly garments over our several apparels. Never, Got wot, had I expected that I should be transformed into a rope-girt praying clerk. But so it was. I was given a square black cap and a brown robe, and sent to join the lay brethren. For my hair grew thick as a mat on top and there ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Moslem prison. Long he languished there without hope, till, at last, his patron saint appeared in vision and announced his release, but only on condition of his joining the monastic order for the service of ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... and it must out, before thou canst depart. On this very spot where we now sit, sate in early youth, Edward thy King, and William thy host. Soothed by the loneliness of the place, and the music of the bell from the church tower, rising pale through yonder glade, Edward spoke of his desire for the monastic life, and of his content with his exile in the Norman land. Few then were the hopes that he should ever attain the throne of Alfred. I, more martial, and ardent for him as myself, combated the thought of the convent, and promised, that, if ever occasion meet arrived, and he needed ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which threatens civilisation, have suggested the formation of a society for mutual encouragement in the higher life. Mr. Wells developed this idea in his 'Modern Utopia.' He contemplated a brotherhood, like the Japanese Samurai, living by a Rule, a kind of lay monastic order, who should endeavour to live in a perfectly rational and wholesome manner, so as to be the nucleus of whatever was best in the society of the time. The scheme is interesting to a Platonist, because of its resemblance to the Order of Guardians in the 'Republic.' A very ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... merit in the resolution thus piously and generously formed by Father Eustace. To men of any rank the esteem of their order is naturally most dear; but in the monastic establishment, cut off, as the brethren are, from other objects of ambition, as well as from all exterior friendship and relationship, the place which they hold in the opinion of each other is all ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... guise than thine own," she retorted, eyeing his semi-monastic garb with scant favour. "Can a poor maid not practise her steps in the heart of a forest, but a cloister-bred ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... Longueville, once a political chief, sacrificed her ambition on the altar of Port-Royal, enlarged the monastic inclosure with spacious gardens and orchards, built a noble house, and often retreated to its seclusion. The learned D'Andilly, the translator of Josephus, after his studious hours, resorted to the cultivation of fruit-trees; and the fruit of Port-Royal became celebrated for its size ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... case of neglect and indolent oversight. But the gravamen of that reproach does not press exclusively upon Oxford; all the ancient institutions of Europe are tainted in the same way, more especially the monastic orders of the Romish church.] Meantime, to show that, even under every obstacle presented by this difference of age, the Oxford authorities do, nevertheless, administer their discipline with fidelity, with intrepidity, and with indifference as respects the high and the low, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... at meeting my Brethren in the Evening! After passing many a long hour in solitude, if I could express to you the joy which I feel at once more beholding a fellow-Creature! 'Tis in this particular that I place the principal merit of a Monastic Institution. It secludes Man from the temptations of Vice; It procures that leisure necessary for the proper service of the Supreme; It spares him the mortification of witnessing the crimes of the ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... an ordinary villager, a sister of charity in a coarse style, who had entered the service of God as one enters any other service. She was a nun as other women are cooks. This type is not so very rare. The monastic orders gladly accept this heavy peasant earthenware, which is easily fashioned into a Capuchin or an Ursuline. These rustics are utilized for the rough work of devotion. The transition from a drover to a Carmelite is not in the least violent; the one turns into the other ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... ceremony resembling the Eucharist, in which cakes marked with the Tau (an Egyptian form of cross) were eaten, the people calling them the flesh of their God. These exactly resemble the sacred cakes of Egypt and other eastern nations. Like these nations too, the people of the new world had monastic orders, male and female, in which broken vows were punished with death. Like the Egyptians they embalmed their dead, they worshipped sun, moon, and planets, but over and above these adored a Deity "omnipresent, who knoweth all things ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... not die, but he owed his life to habits of monastic strictness; to the economy of action which Fontenelle preached as the religion of the invalid; and, above all, to the air of Sancerre and the influence of its fine elevation, whence a panorama over the valley of the Loire may be seen ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... old, his father died; and an uncle, considering the widowed solitariness and helplessness of the mother, urged him to renounce the monastic life, and return to her, but the boy replied, "I did not quit the family in compliance with my father's wishes, but because I wished to be far from the dust and vulgar ways of life. This is why I choose monkhood." The uncle approved of his words and ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... he hath, he cannot be My disciple." We read in the Fioretti (perhaps the oldest popular collection of poems in existence) that he expressly prohibited asceticism as a principle; an idea too foreign to the spirit of the age to have been an invention. He also disapproved of the secluded monastic life, then the universal ideal of the vita contemplativa, and insisted on his followers living in the world, radiating love and sustaining life by the charity ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... profoundly the generation of which Philip was a member, had gone forth from its gates to achieve fame; it had produced one or two eminent lawyers, but eminent lawyers are common, and one or two soldiers of distinction; but during the three centuries since its separation from the monastic order it had trained especially men of the church, bishops, deans, canons, and above all country clergymen: there were boys in the school whose fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, had been educated there and had all been rectors of ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... impatient for my altar, and so far from mistrusting its goodness, I only fear it will be too good to expose to the weather, as I intend it must be, in a recess in the garden. I was going to tell you that my house is so monastic, that I have a little hall decked with long saints in lean arched windows, and with taper columns, which we call the Paraclete, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... trout." Still ascending the steep mountain-paths, while the scenery became wilder and wilder, they at length reached the convent of Studenitza, one of the most ancient foundations in Servia, having been built by Neman, the first monarch of the dynasty bearing his name, who died in 1195. Like most monastic edifices in Servia, it is a castellated building, with walls whose massive strength is well calculated to resist an attack not supported by artillery; and, on entering the wicket, Mr Paton was received "by a fat, feeble-voiced, lymphatic-faced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... in detail[48] an idea of the continual accumulation of riches which were derived from the exposure of these relics to the sick and infirm and the consequent growth in wealth of the monasteries and cathedrals. The monastic system was probably most responsible for the change from the simple adoration of the early Christians to the use of relics as a miraculous means of healing. Those which were transported with elaborate ceremonies, enclosed in a magnificent stone sarcophagus, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... appearance of a dwelling house—no cottage roof, no white canvas shed, to point out the tents of the wandering tribe whose abode they were seeking. The only circumstance betokening that it had once been the haunt of man were a few gray monastic ruins, scarce distinguishable from the stony barrier by which they were surrounded; and the sole evidence that it was still frequented by human beings was a thin column of pale blue smoke, that arose in curling wreaths from out the brake, the light-colored ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... there collected a library as interesting for the number as for the beauty of its volumes, and prudence had caused him to build into the walls one of those curious inventions suggested by solitude or by monastic fears. A silver chain set in motion, by means of invisible wires, a bell placed at the bed's head of a faithful servitor. The count now pulled the chain, and the boots and spurs of the man on duty sounded on the stone steps ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... and art, except where preserved as memorials of antiquity; but the civil importance which from the dawn of civilization attached to the bridge is as patent to-day as when a Roman emperor, a feudal lord, or a monastic procession went forth to celebrate or consecrate its advent or completion; in evidence whereof, we have the appropriate function which made permanently memorable the late visit of Victoria's son to her American realms, in his inauguration of the magnificent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... hope. When we compare education now with what it was even forty years ago, much more with the stupid brutality of the monastic system, we may hail for children, as well as for grown people, the advent of the ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... possessed by the Church proves, again, that the power of certain illusions is sufficiently great to create, at least momentarily, sentiments as contrary to the interests of the individual as they are to that of society—such as the love of the monastic life, the desire for martyrdom, the crusades, the religious ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... morning I met so many others of the same type, that I began to think I must have made a mistake. The cowl-like habit turned out to be the coarse native blanket, used for so many purposes by rustic Indians, and which they wear in this monastic fashion in the, sometimes chill, early mornings, or when it is wet. Their walking in single file was not in order to assist them in the preservation of perpetual silence, but because jungle footpaths make this mode of progression ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... people of Brittany as to end always in bloodshed, often in mutilation, sometimes even in loss of life. On the same bench with Gabriel sat his betrothed wife—a girl of eighteen—clothed in the plain, almost monastic black-and-white costume of her native district. She was the daughter of a small farmer living at some little distance from the coast. Between the groups formed on either side of the fire-place, the vacant space was occupied by the foot ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... episcopate of Eborard's successor, Bishop William de Turbe, the cathedral appears neither to have gained or suffered until, about 1169 or 1170, a fire broke out in the monastic buildings; the fire-extinguishing appliances in those days, if indeed there were any at all, could not prevent it spreading to the cathedral. It is generally believed that the original Norman Lady Chapel was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... in the habit of a monk, and carries him, assisted by her lover, to the entrance of a convent. When he awakes and sees himself thus transformed he imagines that God by a miraculous exercise of His grace had called him to the monastic life. He presents himself before the abbot and requests to be received among the brethren. The lady hastens to the convent in well-feigned despair, and is exhorted to be resigned and to congratulate her husband on the saintly vow he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... doubt about what is not great, no race of men have such obvious littlenesses. They live in a narrow world so far as their human intercourse goes; their researches involve infinite attention and an almost monastic seclusion; and what is left over is not very much. To witness some queer, shy, misshapen, greyheaded, self-important, little discoverer of great discoveries, ridiculously adorned with the wide ribbon of some order of chivalry and holding a reception ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... and of the highest value as a contribution to the social history of the thirteenth century, is the next work; and for which the Camden Members are indebted to the learned Vicar of Holbeach, The Rev. James Morton. The Ancren Riwle; a Treatise on the Rules and Duties of Monastic Life, which he has edited and translated from a Semi-Saxon MS. of the thirteenth century, is a work which many of our best scholars have long desired to see in print,—we believe we may add, that many ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... expedition from Famaugusta were the remains—I was taken to visit them—not entirely ruinous, of the country residence of one of the crusading nobles. I found my way into monasteries still peopled by devotees, and saw in the eyes of many of them monastic faith still shining. In strange churches I studied, behind gilded screens and icons, magnificent copies of the Gospels, and read aloud to a sacristan this passage and that, asking him to read them also, so that I might adjust my pronunciation ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... tenets of this Brotherhood: how the Universe, and Man, and Man's Life, picture themselves to the mind of an Irish Poor-Slave; with what feelings and opinions he looks forward on the Future, round on the Present, back on the Past, it were extremely difficult to specify. Something Monastic there appears to be in their Constitution: we find them bound by the two Monastic Vows, of Poverty and Obedience; which Vows, especially the former, it is said, they observe with great strictness; nay, as I have understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn Nazarene ordination or not, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... women. Her features had the delicacy of an aristocratic and well cared for nun, the pale texture of milk and roses, lightened by the luminous reflection of her teeth and the timid glow of her eyes, under a kerchief resembling a monastic head-dress. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was to store all the provisions in a common magazine; and these were served out every morning in rations to each soldier and each head of a family among the citizens. He also established a code of discipline, almost monastic in its severity; which discipline, from the first hour of the siege, in the midst of its most sanguinary episodes, during the long period of nearly four months, he managed to maintain without the slightest infraction. The energy of his character, combined with ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... left, and the game had disappeared as the forest grew smaller and the district around became more populous. A Lambert of the Georgian period—the family name of Lord Garvington was Lambert—had acquired what was left of the monastic wood by winning it at a game of cards from the nobleman who had then owned it. Now it was simply a large patch of green in the middle of a somewhat naked county, for Hengishire is not remarkable for woodlands. There were rabbits and birds, badgers, stoats, and such-like ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... in the dawn of a religious enthusiasm—different from her mystical dream of Corambe, which however poetical was out of harmony with the spirit and ritual of a Catholic convent. But monastic life had its poetical aspects also; and through these it was that its significance first successfully appealed to her. An evening in the chapel, a Titian picture representing Christ on the Mount ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... man are incurable, that all the remedies proposed are as bad as the disease, that it is almost a waste of time to bother about humanity in general. This agnostic attitude, of course, is very far from merely academic, monastic. Baroja, though his career has not been as dramatic as Blasco's, has at all events taken a hand in the life of his time and country and served his day in the trenches of the new enlightenment. He is anything but a theorist. But there is surely no little significance in ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... light and transparent yellow waterproof, made of the intestines of the walrus, is worn. Men and boys wear a close-fitting cap covering the ears, like a baby's bonnet, and have the crown and base of the skull partly shaved, which gives them a quaint monastic appearance, while every man carries a long sharp knife in a leather sheath thrust through his belt. The women are undersized creatures, some pretty, but most have hard weather-beaten faces, as they work in the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... so human, and a youth of all but monastic seclusion had prepared her to love the man who aimed with frank energy at the joys of life. A taint of pedantry would have repelled her. She did not ask for high intellect or great attainments; but vivacity, courage, determination to succeed, were delightful ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... supernatural minded Celt with religion for his theme. Did the scribe believe what he wrote when he recounted the multiplied marvels of his holy patron's life? Doubtless he did—and why not! To the unsophisticated monastic and mediaeval mind, as to the mind of primitive man, the marvellous and supernatural is almost as real and near as the commonplace and natural. If anyone doubts this let him study the mind of the modern Irish peasant; ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... natural form which in our age didactic composition ought to take. As in ancient Greece the dialogue reflected most truly the intellectual life of the people, and as in the Middle Ages learned literature naturally assumed with the recluse in his monastic cell the form of a long monologue, so with us the lecture places the writer most readily in that position in which he is accustomed to deal with his fellow-men, and to communicate his knowledge to others. It has no doubt certain ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... and the luscious black cherries. The chestnuts and the walnuts may have yielded to the axe, and the fig trees and vines died away;—but sometimes the mulberry is left, and the strawberry and the raspberry struggle among the ruins. There is a moral lesson in these memorials of the monastic ages. The monks, with all their faults, were generally men of peace and study; and these monuments show that they were improving the world, while the warriors were spending their lives to spoil it. In many parts of Italy and France, ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... had spiritualized the dulness of Protestant pew and pulpit for him. Another fit of it, in the Roman Catholic direction, had proposed, during his latest dilemma, to relieve him of the burden of his pledged word. He had plunged for a short space into the rapturous contemplation of a monastic life—'the clean soul for the macerated flesh,' as that fellow Woodseer said once: and such as his friend, the Roman Catholic Lord Feltre, moodily talked of getting in his intervals. He had gone down to a young and novel trial establishment ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... moral philosophy of Kant the idea of duty is proposed with a harshness enough to ruffle the Graces, and one which could easily tempt a feeble mind to seek for moral perfection in the sombre paths of an ascetic and monastic life. Whatever precautions the great philosopher has been able to take in order to shelter himself against this false interpretation, which must be repugnant more than all else to the serenity of the free mind, he has lent it a strong impulse, it seems ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... will be an excellent seaman: is worthy to enter the School at Paris." To the military school at Paris he was accordingly sent in due course, entering there in October, 1784. The change from the semi-monastic life at Brienne to the splendid edifice which fronts the Champ de Mars had less effect than might have been expected in a youth of fifteen years. Not yet did he become French in sympathy. His love of Corsica and hatred of the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... estimate the merit of the sacrifice by its apparent difficulty; and it was in the praise of these chaste spouses of Christ that the fathers have poured forth the troubled stream of their eloquence. [98] Such are the early traces of monastic principles and institutions, which, in a subsequent age, have counterbalanced all the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... the Christian formulary and the old Christian life in spite of himself. He is almost fanatical in his attachment to the mediaeval times,—to the ancient worship, its ceremonial, music, and architecture, its monastic government, its saints and martyrs. And the reason, as he shows in the "Past and Present," is, that all this array of devotion, this pomp and ceremony, this music and painting, this gorgeous and sublime architecture, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... below! How gladly should learned men have laid aside for a few hours Pindar's "Odes" and Aristotle's "Ethics," to escort the author of "Cecilia" from college to college! What neat little banquets would she have found set out in their monastic cells! With what eagerness would pictures, medals, and illuminated missals have been brought forth from the most mysterious cabinets for her amusement! How much she would have had to hear and to tell about ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... brought with him from Rome, together with those of Theodore, formed the nucleus of the well-known monastic library at Canterbury. In the library at Peterborough there were no fewer than 1700 MSS. That of the Grey Friars in London was 129 feet long by 31 feet broad, and was well filled with books. That the Abbey of Leicester ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... monks had been converted into a sheepfold by a neighboring farmer. Yet at one time it was one of the richest and most extensive monasteries in England. On our return to Shrewsbury, we passed through Much Wenlock, a very ancient town, which also has its ruined abbey. It is remarkable how thickly these monastic institutions were at one time scattered over the Kingdom, and when one considers what such elaborate establishments must have cost to build and to maintain, it is easy to understand why, in the ages of church supremacy, the common ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... scenes which are there described, the highest representation of struggles which graduated variously according to character and temper, and, without the tragical result, may have been witnessed in very many of the monastic houses. The writer was a certain Maurice Channey, probably an Irishman. He went through the same sufferings with the rest of the brethren, and was one of the small fraction who finally gave way under the trial. He was ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... having been given to St. Elizabeth's College, and apparently some rights over Merdon, the Chancellor Wriothesley obtained that, on the confiscation of monastic property, the manor should be granted to him. Stephen Gardiner had been bishop since 1531, a man who, though he had consented to the king's assumption of the royal supremacy, grieved over the fact as an error all his life. He appeared at the bar of the House of Commons and ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... think, as he stepped across the threshold of that quiet monastic home, that the two next years of his own life were to be spent beneath that friendly and hospitable roof. And yet so it was, and to the training and teaching he received during his residence there he attributed much of the strength ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Holy See, the authority of tradition, purgatory, transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, the adoration of the host, the denial of the cup to the laity, confession, penance, indulgences, extreme unction, the invocation of saints, the adoration of images, the celibacy of the clergy, the monastic vows, the practice of celebrating public worship in a tongue unknown to the multitude, the corruptions of the court of Rome, the history of the Reformation, the characters of the chief reformers, were copiously discussed. Great ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pale with fasting and his knees stiff with praying, he seemed so stern a satire on it and on the crazy thousands who were preferring it to his way, that I half expected to see some heavenly portent out of a monastic legend come down and confirm his choice. Yet I confess that though I wasn't enamoured of the Carnival myself, his seemed a grim preference and this forswearing of the world a terrible game—a gaining one only if your zeal never falters; a hard fight when it does. In such ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Greek and Hebrew he gave me to add to the languages I was beginning to own; and he unlocked all his accumulations of learning. It was a monk's life that I lived; austere and without incident, but bracing as the air of the hills. The whole system was monastic, though abomination alighted on that word in Longmeadow. I took the discipline into my blood. It will go ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Moses says that Enoch "walked with God," we must beware of taking the monastic view in the premises, as if he had kept himself secluded in some private corner, and there lived a monastic life. No, so eminent a patriarch must be placed on a candlestick, or, as our Saviour Christ expresses it, set as ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... creeds. He wishes every man to have the reading of his own scriptures, and whilst reserving his most lavish gifts for Buddhist shrines and monasteries, he does not deny his benefactions to Brahmans and ascetics of other sects. Nor is he content merely to preach and issue orders. His monastic vows, though they lead him to forswear the amusements and even the field sports which had been his youthful pastimes, do not involve the severance of all worldly ties. He is the indefatigable and supreme head of the Church; he visits in solemn pilgrimage all the holy places hallowed ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... shall always think that the merry one has the most eligible fate; and I cannot well form a notion of that spiritual and ecstatic joy, that is mixed with sighs, groans, hunger and thirst, and the other complicated miseries of monastic discipline. It is a strange way of going to work for happiness, to excite an enmity between soul and body, which nature and providence have designed to live together in an union and friendship, and which we cannot separate like man and wife, when they ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... possible to remain there, for it had room for little more than kirschwasser. The night came on dark and menacing, and for near two hours we crawled up and down the sharp ascents and descents, and, to make the matter worse, it began to rain. This was a suitable approach to the abodes of monastic votaries, and I had just made the remark, when the carriage stopped before the door of my old inn, the Ox, at Einsiedeln. It was near ten, and we ordered a cup of ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to come together at stated times for general assemblies or chapters, and these general assemblies were the supreme governing body in the Order. Thus unity was established; the organisation was close, but not monarchical; the Order was a great federation. This is the highest point reached in monastic development. ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... made in the time of danger. No one else was aware of it, but John Lucas Brownlow was not of a character to treat a promise or a resolution lightly. If he could have got out of his head the continual echo of the two lines about the monastic intentions of a certain personage when sick, he would ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... professions. When the question of personal gain and advancement comes in, the frail human being succumbs to selfishness, and then to error. Like the artist, the doctor, the lawyer, the clergyman, the teacher should be content to minister to human needs. The professions should be great monastic orders, reserved for those who have the strength to renounce ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... way in which she flung her proverb in the faces of the eight conspirators against the house of d'Esgrignon, caused them inward perturbation, which they dissembled as provincials can dissemble, by dint of lifelong practice in the shifts of a monastic existence. Little Mme. Camusot saw their change of countenance and subsequent composure when they scented opposition on the part of the examining magistrate. When her husband unveiled the thoughts ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... for adequate summary in a preliminary survey of this sort. With the fall of Rome and the wholesale destruction that accompanied the barbarian invasions a new chapter begins in the history of the dissemination of literature. This chapter opens with the founding of the scriptorium, or monastic copying system, by Cassiodorus and Saint Benedict early in the sixth century. To these two men, Cassiodorus, the ex-chancellor of the Gothic king Theodoric, and Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine order, is ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... often examined that room myself, and I am sure that there is no chance for anything to be concealed. In fact, I had the floor taken up once, soon after I came here, knowing the room was that of the mysterious Sister, and thinking that there, if anywhere, the monastic crime would have taken place; still, we will go in, if ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... sleeping peacefully. His features—refined by the mental anxiety, and the almost monastic seclusion to which he has been lately subjected—are extremely pleasing, and even handsome, set-off as they are by the clean collar which he has put on in anticipation of his approaching doom. Before sinking into childlike slumber, he listened with evident pleasure to a banjo which ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... to me was fitted up with every luxury, yet the captain's own apartment was as simply furnished as a monastic cell, but in it were contained all the ingenious instruments that controlled the movements of the Nautilus, as his submarine was named. The electricity was manufactured by a process of extracting chloride of sodium from the sea-water, but the fresh air necessary ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... three other letters followed; and at length it was arranged that Mr. Maximilian Wyndham should take up his residence at my monastic abode for one year. He was to keep a table, and an establishment of servants, at his own cost; was to have an apartment of some dozen or so of rooms; the unrestricted use of the library; with some other public privileges ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... passed by the gate of the Convent of Carmelite Nuns—one of the wealthiest, most strictly disciplined, and celebrated monastic establishments in ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... with the rough work. In 1583 young Kepler was sent to the school at Elmendingen, and in 1584 had another narrow escape from death by a violent illness. In 1586 he was sent, at the charges of the Duke, to the monastic school of Maulbronn; from whence, in accordance with the school regulations, he passed at the end of his first year the examination for the bachelor's degree at Tuebingen, returning for two more years as a "veteran" to Maulbronn before being admitted as ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... 1727 to 1730" was this latter removal. A hunting-lodge, of Eberhard Ludwig's building, and named by him LUGWIGSBURG, stood here since 1705; nucleus of the subsequent palace, with its "Pheasantries," its "Favoritas," &c. &c. The place had originally been monastic (Busching, Erdbeschreibung, vi. 1519).] Founding, in fact, a second Capital for Wurtemberg, with what distress, sulky misery and disarrangement, to Stuttgard and the old Capital, readers can fancy. There it stands, that Ludwigsburg, the second Capital ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... not know whether it is perverseness of state, or old associations, but an excellent and very handsome modern house, which Mr. Howard has lately built at Corby, does not, in my mind, assimilate so well with the scenery as the old irregular monastic hall, with its weather-beaten and antique appearance, which I remember ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... All the walls of this room, or rather cell, were hung to the ceiling with portraits of musicians, among them some very rare names and faces. Mr. Elsner has continued this collection down to the present time; also the portraits of Liszt, Thalberg, Chopin, and Clara Wieck shine down from the old monastic walls. I had scarcely looked about me in this large company for a few minutes, when the door of the adjoining room opened, and a man of medium height (not to say little), somewhat stout, with a round, friendly ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Established Church of Russia. The priests are as a class illiterate, and but little removed above the mujicks in their habits of life. A priest is expected to marry, but can only marry one wife. When she dies, he enters the monastic order. His sons enter the clerical seminaries, and his daughters marry priests, while another takes his vicarage. When a priest dies, or becomes a widower, and leaves a grown-up daughter, the living is generally given to some candidate for holy orders who ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... thanks are especially due not only for permission to make use of the series of articles, founded on the monastic chronicles, which appeared some years ago in the Evesham Journal, most of them under the title of "Evesham Episodes," but also for ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... putting the past history of England into dramatic form may possibly have suggested to him to put more recent history on the stage by means of this Comedy. Light as it is, the point of it is to satirize the monastic and exclusive element in current educational schemes. Fictitious as the story is, it touches upon names and incidents belonging to actual history. So familiar were these actual happenings of the day to his audience that it could especially enjoy ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... monstrous. The history of philosophy is the broad demonstration of this. The Church philosophers, (with exceptions, of course,) receiving the traditions of the common faith, partaking in the superstitions of their age, banished from the bosoms of men by their monastic position, and inflamed with hierarchic pride, with but a faint connection or intercourse between conscience and intellect or between heart and fancy, strove to spin out theories which would explain ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... mosques. The Latin churches did not greatly favour this style and their use of it was confined, with few exceptions, to baptisteries, monumental chapels and the like, but for parochial, cathedral and monastic churches, the oblong plan was retained and ultimately developed into the Gothic church with ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... plan proposed by Knox would have called for a large expenditure of money, and this the thrifty Scotch were not ready for. Knox and his followers then proposed to endow the new schools from the old church and monastic foundations, but the Scottish nobles hoped to share in these, as had the English nobility under Henry VIII, and Knox's plan was not approved. This delayed the establishment of a real national system of education for Scotland until the nineteenth century. The new Church, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... souls, as he expressed himself, and enticing them to the truth; but the Vicar of Christ had to right and to steer the vessel, when it was in rough waters, and among breakers. A Protestant historian on this point does justice to him. "When Pope," he says, "he lived in all the austerity of his monastic life, fasted with the utmost rigour and punctuality, would wear no finer garments than before ... arose at an extremely early hour in the morning, and took no siesta. If we doubted the depth of his religious earnestness, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... eagerness—a sharpness in the subtilties of school-divinity and disputation: this is at least the effect it had in its prime. If it makes the senses keen and liable to temptation, certainly it does not soften the heart. Our terrorists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were monks. Monastic prisons were always the most cruel. A life systematically negative—a life without its functions—developes in man instincts that are hostile to life; he who suffers is willing to make others suffer. The harmonious and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... consulted her confessor, and was advised to withdraw entirely from the society of the Baron and his wife, unless she was willing to sacrifice all her hopes of heaven, and to plunge headlong down to hell. Her natural good sense and love of her friends struggled with her monastic education and reverence for the priests. The conflict rendered her miserable; and unable to enjoy happiness, she brooded over her wishes and her terrors. In this state of mind she at length wrote a touching letter to the Baron, and laid open her situation, ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... faith by Erkenwald, Bishop of London, in the year of Christ 677. A man much devoted to God, greatly occupied in religious acts, frequent prayers, and pious fruits of almsgiving, preferring a private and monastic life to all the riches and honours of the kingdom, who, when he had reigned 30 years, received the religious habit at the hands of Walther, Bishop of London, who succeeded the aforesaid Erkenwald, of whom the Venerable Bede makes ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... us as household words, it seems impossible that he who had tried them once should have need of them no more. Instances—all with initial m—are as follows: mechanics, machine, maxim, mission, mode, monastic, marsh, magnify, malcontent, majority, manly, malleable, malignancy, maritime, manna, manslaughter, masterly, market-day-folks, maid-price, mealy, meekly, mercifully, merchant-like, memorial, mercenary, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... first glance these petitions seem scarcely worthy of serious consideration; but a closer study of their contents shows us that we possess in them documents of the greatest value in the history of manners. They prove that the great Monastic Idea—which under the influence of Christianity grew to be of such vast moral and historical significance—first struck root in one of the centres of heathen religious practices; besides affording us a quite unexpected insight into the internal life of the temple of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Lady, and that we always had to go a roundabout way by the /Hasengasse/ or the Catherine Gate. But what chiefly attracted the child's attention, were the many little towns within the town, the fortresses within the fortress; viz., the walled monastic enclosures, and several other precincts, remaining from earlier times, and more or less like castles,—as the Nuremberg Court, the Compostella, the Braunfels, the ancestral house of the family of Stallburg, and ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... of the monasteries that Christianity became a great civilising and teaching agency in England. Those who judge monastic institutions only by their later and worst days, when they had, perhaps, ceased to perform any useful function, are apt to forget the benefits which they conferred upon the people in the earlier stages of ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... founded convents in Manila. They were the ones who accomplished most in the spiritual and temporal conquest, as is attested uniformly by writers, native and foreign, even the least devout. Some years later, bishoprics were erected; and from that moment began a struggle between the bishops and the monastic orders as to whether or no the friar curas should be subject to the diocesan visit. Innumerable are the treatises, opinions, superior decrees, and scandalous disputes, which took place on this account, as we have already seen in the chapter called "History." ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... turn, called and knocked. He scolded; he entreated. Then, one after the other, they began all over again. Still there was no answer. A deathlike silence reigned in the little room. And he pictured it to himself, this little room, religiously clean, with its walnut bureau, and its monastic bed furnished with white hangings. No doubt the servant had thrown herself across this bed, in which she had slept alone all her woman's life, and was burying her face in the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... Buddha, gives an account of the Buddhist monasteries which is worthy perusal. From Egypt the contagion of asceticism spread over Christendom. "From Philo also we learn that a large body of Egyptian Jews had embraced the monastic rules and the life of self-denial, which we have already noted among the Egyptian priests. They bore the name of Therapeuts. They spent their time in solitary meditation and prayer, and only saw ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... dead Brevity is the soul of wit Bridge of Sighs Briers, this working-day world is full of Brightest and best of the sons of the morning Britannia rules the waves —needs no bulwarks Britons never will be slaves Brook, noise like a hidden Brooks, hooks in the funning Brotherhood, monastic Brow, when pain and anguish wring the Braised reed Brutus is an honorable man Bubbles, the earth hath Bucket, as a drop of a —, the old oaken Bucks had dined Bug, snug as a Build, he lives to Burden, the grasshopper a —, bear his own Burning, one fire burns out another's ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... Laeghaire's oath] may not be considered an absolute proof of the king's paganism. To swear by the sun and moon was apparently, no doubt, paganism. But is it not also paganism to represent the rain and wind as taking vengeance? ... for this is the language copied by all the monastic annalists, and even by the Four Masters, Franciscan friars, writing in the seventeenth century." The passage is improved by a "note," in which the author mentions this as a proof that such superstitions ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... converted world. It could only last on condition of the fairly complete isolation of the Christian group from the rest of society, pending the conversion of society as a whole. But it proved impossible to secure the isolation. The only real isolation was in monastic groups which naturally could contain only such men and women as God called to a special sort of life: the whole of society could not be so organised. As the Church grew and took in the various social constituents ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... power and fashion met and mingled. Its halls rustled with the spread silks of pride and glittered with the jewels of spendthrift vanity, and yet few knew that high in the building one of the most admired women of the city lived in almost monastic seclusion. The few men who recognized her in the elevator or in the hall bowed with deferential admiration. She was never seen in the dining-rooms, and it was known that she denied herself to all callers except ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... allowed me every indulgence, with the hopes of my being persuaded to remain. The money which I retained for my own exigencies enabled me to make friends with the porter, and I obtained egress or ingress at any hour. I was a proficient on the guitar; and incongruous as it may appear with my monastic vows, I often hastened from the service at vespers to perform in a serenade to some fair senhora, whose inamorata required the powers of my voice to soften her to ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Lutheran, or the new syncratistic church, manufactured by the present government of Prussia. But in Popish countries, the same tendency is seen on a larger scale: the whole ecclesiastical body, parochial or monastic, retires from the contests of life; and fails, therefore, to contribute any part of the civil resistance needed for making head against the military profession. On the other hand, in England, through the great schools of Eton, Harrow, &c., children even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... was born in Barcelona, but spent most of his life in Valencia. In 1821, when sixteen years old, Arolas, much against the wishes of his parents, joined a monastic order. Arolas wrote in all the literary genres of his time, but he distinguished himself most as a poet by his romantic "oriental" and ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... in a cover of gold and silver, adorning it with jewels; and, later, a priest of Lindisfarne, Aldred, wrote between the lines a translation into the vernacular, and added marginal notes. This precious manuscript, a wonderful example of the beautiful work done in monastic houses in the north so many centuries ago, is now in the British Museum, where it is known as ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... fully a hundred acres in extent; while the character of the ruins made it clear that not only had the island been chosen, for some inexplicable reason, as the site upon which to erect a vast and very magnificent temple dedicated to the worship of the Sun, but that a monastic establishment of corresponding importance had also been founded there. Now, however, the whole of the buildings were roofless and in ruins; yet, even so, they were sufficiently imposing to imbue Dick at least with several new and ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... emerged from your day-dream, Hyzlo! I thought, as our bark clove the water, that you were enjoying visions." And it seemed to Hyzlo that he had just awakened from a bizarre dream of a monastic cell, to more beautiful sights and shapes and sounds. The pair now traversed the quay, past the signal masts, the fortified towers, pushing through the throng of sailors, courtesans, philosophers, fruitsellers, soldiers, beggars, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Christianity is predominantly eschatological, Protestantism predominantly ethical, and Catholicism is a compromise between the two, although with the eschatological element preponderating. The most authentic Catholic ethic, monastic asceticism, is an ethic of eschatology, directed to the salvation of the individual soul rather than to the maintenance of society. And in the cult of virginity may there not perhaps be a certain obscure idea that to perpetuate ourselves in others hinders our own personal perpetuation? ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... In "The Troublesome Raigne of King John," an old play upon the basis of which Shakspere constructed his own "King John," we find this question dealt with in some detail. In the elder play, the Bastard does "the shaking of bags of hoarding abbots," coram populo, and thereby discloses a phase of monastic life judiciously suppressed by Shakspere. Philip sets at liberty much more than "imprisoned angels"—according to one account, and that a monk's, imprisoned beings of quite another sort. "Faire Alice, the nonne," having been discovered in the chest where the abbot's wealth was supposed to be ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... venerable tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. We are only in the very beginning of a great Roman Catholic revival. The diversified countryside of the coming time will show many a splendid cathedral, many an elaborate monastic palace, towering amidst the abounding colleges and technical schools. Along the moving platforms of the urban centre, and athwart the shining advertisements that will adorn them, will go the ceremonial procession, all glorious ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... have attendance and equipage according to their rank, and have nothing of the inconveniencies and slovenliness of some of the Religious, but served in as good order as can be, and they have nothing of the monastic,—but the name, the vow of chastity, and the opportunity of gaining heaven, by the sweetest retreat in the world, fine house, excellent air, and delicate gardens, grottoes and groves. It was this Order that Octavio ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... beautiful book lately published in London, Legends of the Monastic Orders, has the following account of the only American woman ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... which these Universities work may be a sound and logical one so far as it goes, and more up-to-date than the English residential system, which its enemies deride as mediaeval and monastic; but it is a cast iron system, designed with the object of preparing men for examinations, and one which does nothing to discover promising scholars or to encourage original work and research among those who have taken their degrees, or, according to the Dutch phrase, have gained their 'promotion'. ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... was the motive, the monks and church-builders altering the existing structure to meet a pressing necessity. In fact, there is excellent reason for believing that the round towers were not built by the monks at all, the monastic writers being very fond of recording, with great particularity, what they built and how they built it, and in no passage do they mention the construction of a round tower. Whenever allusion is made to these structures, their existence is taken for granted, and several ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... self-confidence." With the reign of Charlemagne began the development of the architecture of France, but not until the tenth and eleventh centuries did the "movement reach its full force; and its development was due mainly to the great monastic community, which, founded by St. Benedict early in the sixth century, had poured from the heights of Monte Cassino its beneficent ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... captain's stateroom. It had an austere, almost monastic appearance. An iron bedstead, a worktable, some washstand fixtures. Subdued lighting. No luxuries. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... of the old buildings remain, much modernised, but on the south side fronting the gardens they are still picturesque. Both Colleges were, originally, places of residence for the students, as at Oxford and Cambridge, and the discipline, especially at St. Leonard's, was rather monastic. The Reformation caused violent changes; all through these troubled ages the new doctrines, and then the violent Presbyterian pretensions to clerical influence in politics, and the Covenant and the Restoration and Revolution, kept busy the dwellers ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... princes of the blood, whom he still considered as rivals, and whose death alone could give him entire security in his possession of the throne. From this fatal cause, together with the admiration of the monastic life, and the opinion of merit attending the preservation of chastity even in a married state, the royal families had been entirely extinguished in all the kingdoms except that of Wessex, and the emulations, suspicions, and conspiracies, which had formerly ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... Misha, and suddenly burst out laughing, but immediately caught himself up, and making a straight, low, monastic obeisance, he added:—"Will not you contribute something for the journey? For I am going to the ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... period has very little permanent significance. Plenty of its other writing remains in the shape of religious prose—sermons, lives and legends of saints, biblical paraphrases, and similar work in which the monastic and priestly spirit took delight, but which is generally dull with the dulness of medieval commonplace didacticism and fantastic symbolism. The country, too, was still distracted with wars. Within fifty years after Alfred's ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... recall the pleasant face and manners of the young father mentioned, who shows the place to English-speaking travelers, and will care to know that Padre Giacomo was born at Smyrna, and dwelt there in the family of an English lady, till he came to Venice, and entered on his monastic life at ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... You know, I guess I'm fastidious, but I can't bear to use a plate for more than three meals without passing a wet rag over it. That's the worst of having refined ideas, they make life so complex. However, I mustn't complain. There's a monastic simplicity about this joint that endears it to me. And now, having immolated myself on the altar of cleanliness, I will solace my soul with ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... of our knowledge, it is probable that if the course of events were to establish any monastic order, the superiors would adopt some regimen better calculated ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... of rank, the Latin Quarter still retains many old buildings whose imposing architecture singularly contrasts with the unassuming habits of their present occupants. In some parts its general air is dreary and dim; monastic and theurgic. In those lonely narrow ways—long-drawn prospectives of desertion—lined with huge piles of silent, vaulted, old iron-grated buildings of dark gray stone, one almost expects to encounter Paracelsus or Friar Bacon turning the next corner, with some ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... to entertain the strangers. He led them to points on the mountain where the view was most enchanting; skilled in ancient monastic lore, he entertained them with anecdotes and histories from which he drew the most instructive morals. One cheerful afternoon, when seated on the rocks viewing a magnificent sunset, the aged monk told them his own history. He had ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... joined the Servites at the age of thirteen, and Campanella the Dominicans at that of fourteen. In each of these memorable cases it is probable that poverty had something to do with deciding a vocation so premature. But there were other inducements, which rendered the monastic life not unattractive, to a young man seeking knowledge at a period and in a district where instruction was both costly and difficult to obtain. Campanella himself informs us that he was drawn to the order of S. Dominic by its reputation for learning and by the great names of S. Thomas ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... monastery at Assisi, of which a relative was an inmate. Here he resumed his musical studies, but though he learned composition of Padre Boemo, the organist of the monastery, he was his own teacher on the violin. The influence of the quiet monastic life caused a complete change in his character, and he acquired the modesty of manner and serenity of mind for which he was noted ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... Brantme is not without beauty, but it is the tower that is the truly remarkable feature. It was raised in the eleventh century, and although the architect—probably a monastic one—observed the prevailing principle of Romanesque taste, he showed so much originality in the design that it served as a model, which was much imitated in the Middle Ages. It is not only one of the oldest church towers in France, but its position ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... subject of care to her. Such being her disposition, it was by no means matter of joy to her when she found that Madeline was laying out for herself little ways of life, tending in some slight degree to the monastic. Nothing was said about it, but she fancied that Madeline had doffed a ribbon or two in her usual evening attire. That she read during certain fixed hours in the morning was very manifest. As to that daily afternoon service at four o'clock—she had very often attended that, and it was hardly ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... long debate between the two birds, one representing the gay side of life, the other the sterner side of law and morals,—and "Land of Cockaygne," i.e. "Luxury Land," a keen satire on monks and monastic religion.[57] ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... of the tenth century a pope and an emperor of great ideas stand forth from the blackness of an age when, according to the evidence of councils and of monastic chronicles alike, vice was rampant—"the more powerful oppress the weaker, and men are like fishes in the sea, which everywhere in turn devour one another"—and the bishops and clergy alike neglected their duties. Otto III. (983-1002), the offspring of the German who sat on the imperial throne ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... confinement began to play havoc with my health, and I was in the fair way to the hospital, when a friendly doctor intervened and restored me to health once more. The rigid discipline and the stern regulations that were enforced can only be likened to what is experienced in monastic life. The "red-tape" curse ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... into a religious body of which he was the head. To these, as occasion required, others were from time to time added, so that the original number was always kept up. Their institution was called a monastery and the superior an abbot, but the system had little in common with the monastic institutions of later times. The name by which those who submitted to the rule were known was that of Culdees, probably from the Latin "cultores Dei"—worshippers of God. They were a body of religious persons associated together for the purpose of aiding each other in the common work ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... teaching has become both negative and positive, agnostic and gnostic. It passes from apparent atheism and materialism to theism, polytheism, and spiritualism. It is, under one aspect, mere pessimism; under another, pure philanthropy; under another, monastic communion; under another, high morality; under another, a variety of materialistic philosophy; under another, simple demonology; under another, a mere farrago of superstitions, including necromancy, witchcraft, idolatry, and fetishism. In some form or other it may be ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... Suggested Extension of Interesting Prospect Reflections on the Metropolis Criminal Neglect of Statesmen Removal of Misery Death and Character of Mr. Pitt Indifference of Statesmen Fruit Trees preferable to Lumber Trees Roehampton Monastic Dwellings Inhabitants of Cottages Humility of Pride Pilton's Invisible Fences House and Character of Mr. Goldsmid Destructive Electric Storm Nature of Electricity investigated Secondary Causes discussed Security against Lightning The District described Dundas and Tooke contrasted Barnes Its ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... brother Dmitri was twenty-seven. First of all, I must explain that this young man, Alyosha, was not a fanatic, and, in my opinion at least, was not even a mystic. I may as well give my full opinion from the beginning. He was simply an early lover of humanity, and that he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time it struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love. And the reason this life struck him in this way was that he found in it at that time, as he ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... like the feeling of an underground room where paper moulders and leaves the wall, a feeling of ineradicable contagion in the Gothic buildings, in the narrow ditch-like rivers, in those roads and roads of stuffy little villas. Those little villas have destroyed all the good of the old monastic system and none ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... maid if she likes; but of course she has no occasion to dress. She wears a little black frock; she looks so charming. I went afterwards to see Mother Catherine, who has a very good room too; I assure you I don't find the poor sisters at all monastic. Mother Catherine has a most coquettish little toilet-table, with something that looked uncommonly like a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. She speaks delightfully of Pansy; says it's a great happiness for them to have her. She's a little saint of heaven ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... is conjectured, were patrons of the priory of the hermit friars of St Augustine, founded before 1379, near the bridge. In 32 Henry VIII., this institution was dissolved, and its possessions were granted to the great monastic grantee, Thomas Holcroft.—Vide Tanner's Not. Mon. About forty years ago the remains of a gateway of the priory stood on Friar's Green, and some years after that period a stone coffin was dug up near the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... With brotherly rufts and beards, and a strange sight Of high, monumental hats, ta'en at the fight Of Eighty-eight; while every burgess foots The mortal pavement in eternal boots. Hadst thou been bachelor, I had soon divined Thy close retirements, and monastic mind; Perhaps some nymph had been to visit; or The beauteous churl was to be waited for, And, like the Greek, ere you the sport would miss, You stayed and stroked ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... and doctrines based upon such preposterous evidence were involved in the discredit that fell upon the evidence itself. As the thirteenth century is approached, we find unbelief in all directions setting in. First, it is plainly seen among the monastic orders, then it spreads rapidly among the common people. Books, such as "The Everlasting Gospel," appear among the former; sects, such as the Catharists, Waldenses, Petrobrussians, arise among the latter. They agreed in this, "that the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... though the works which they composed were mainly theological (as became their sacred profession and ascetic life). The Latin, however, being the almost universal language for so many centuries, the love of learning conspired to widen the field of monastic study. Many zealous ecclesiastics were found who revived the classic authors, and copies of the works of poets, historians, philosophers and rhetoricians were multiplied. Then were gradually formed those monastic libraries to which so many thousands of mediaeval ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... every affection and desire which nature had planted in their breasts had been plucked up by the roots." (Jesuitism, by the Reverend J.A. Wylie, Ll.D.) This statement is simply a shade less true of the other monastic orders. ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus I cured him; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of love ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... loss of his son, but still more the fact that he was cut off so suddenly in the full flush of careless and not altogether blameless youth. So poignant, indeed, were the old man's feelings that he cast off his knightly armour and joined one of the great monastic orders, vowing to devote all the remainder of his life to prayer, first for the soul of his son, and secondly that henceforward no descendant of his might ever again encounter what seemed to his simple and pious mind ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... performed on a great scale, in the interests of science. In nearly all countries, in fact, governments (through the medium of historical committees and commissions), academies, and learned societies have endeavoured in our day, much as monastic congregations did of old, to group professed scholars for the purposes of vast collective enterprises, and to co-ordinate their efforts. But this banding of specialists in external criticism for the service and under the supervision ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... should devote his life to meditation and study. Compared with this frame of mind the teaching of the Buddha is not unsocial, unpractical and mysterious but human, business-like and clear. We are inclined to see in the monastic life which he recommended little but a useless sacrifice but it is evident that in the opinion of his contemporaries his disciples had an easy time, and that he had no intention of prescribing any cramped or unnatural existence. He accepted the current conviction that those ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... keeps a School! She teaches nothing wrong, I'll answer for't. I have a Dutch print of a Schoolmistress; little old-fashioned Fleminglings, with only one face among them. She a Princess of Schoolmistress, wielding a rod for form more than use; the scene an old monastic chapel, with a Madonna over her head, looking just as serious, as thoughtful, as pure, as gentle, as herself. Tis ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... twenty, though well provided for in a worldly point of view, to retire to the cloister; he professed himself accordingly a brother of the monastery of S. Domenico at Fiesole in 1407, assuming his monastic name from the Apostle of love, S. John. He acquired from his residence there the distinguishing surname 'da Fiesole;' and a calmer retreat for one weary of earth and desirous of commerce with heaven would in vain be sought for;—the purity of the atmosphere, the freshness ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... usage abbesses presided over joint-houses of monks and nuns. This custom accompanied Celtic monastic missions to France and Spain, and even to Rome itself. At a later period, A.D. 1115, Robert, the founder of Fontevraud, committed the government of the whole order, men as well as women, to a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia |
