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Basilica   Listen
noun
Basilica  n.  (pl. basilicas; sometimes basilicae)  
1.
Originally, the palace of a king; but afterward, an apartment provided in the houses of persons of importance, where assemblies were held for dispensing justice; and hence, any large hall used for this purpose.
2.
(Arch.)
(a)
A building used by the Romans as a place of public meeting, with court rooms, etc., attached.
(b)
A church building of the earlier centuries of Christianity, the plan of which was taken from the basilica of the Romans. The name is still applied to some churches by way of honorary distinction.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Basilica" Quotes from Famous Books



... week they scarcely showed themselves, though Stradella's return was known in Rome, and he received many invitations to rich men's houses and requests for new compositions, and pressing offers of money if he would but sing at mass or vespers in this basilica or that. If he had needed gold, he could have had it for an hour's trouble, or for an effort of a few minutes which was no effort at all. But for the moment he had enough, and nothing should disturb the first ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... haunted battlements of Sant' Angelo, where evil Theodora's ghost walked on autumn nights when the south wind blew, and through the long wreck of the fair portico that had once extended from the bridge to the basilica, till he came to the broad flight of steps leading to the walled garden-court of old Saint Peter's. There he loved to sit musing among the cypresses, wondering at the vast bronze pine- cone and the great brass peacocks which Symmachus had brought ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... pleasant, and cool, and there was a dim religious light that gave one an opportunity for reflection. I was so much engaged in reflection that I failed to notice the shape of the Duomo, but I have since learned that it was a basilica, in the form of a Latin cross, and was simply full of things which should have claimed my attention. Momma took copious notes from which I see that the Madonna and Child holy water basin was perfectly ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... Ne nimio opere sumat operam, si quis conventum velit Vel vitiosum vel sine vitio, vel probum vel inprobum. Qui perjurum convenire volt hominem, ito in comitium; Qui mendacem et gloriosum, apud Cloacinae sacrum. [Ditis damnosos maritos sub basilica quaerito. Ibidem erunt scorta exoleta quique stipulari solent.] Symbolarum conlatores apud forum piscarium. In foro infumo boni homines atque dites ambulant; In medio propter canalem ibi ostentatores meri. Confidentes garrulique et malevoli supra lacum, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... gift of divination; his foreknowledge overleapt the extinction of his own house, and foresaw, across a gap of fifty years, the brief reign of Galba. Caligula threw an arch of prodigious span over the Roman Forum, above the roofs of the basilica of Julius Caesar, that from his house on the Palatine he might cross more easily to sup with his brother, Jupiter Capitolinus. Nero's death was for years regarded over half the Empire as incredible; men waited in a frenzy of excited terror for the reappearance of the vanished Antichrist. ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... church, kirk, chapel, meetinghouse, bethel[obs3], tabernacle, conventicle, basilica, fane[obs3], holy place, chantry[obs3], oratory. synagogue; mosque; marabout[obs3]; pantheon; pagoda; joss house[obs3]; dogobah[obs3], tope; kiosk; kiack[obs3], masjid[obs3]. [clergymen's residence] parsonage, rectory, vicarage, manse, deanery, glebe; Vatican; bishop's palace; Lambeth. altar, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... is performed in Rome, is one of the most touching links with the past that it is possible to conceive. To pass along the street, so often trod by holy feet in former and in latter days, and seek the church appointed for that day's station; to approach some time-worn basilica, or ancient sanctuary, without the city walls may be, and pausing on the threshold, give one look at the glorious works of Almighty God in the natural world,—at the wide Campagna, that land-sea, so beautiful in its broad expanse and its desolate grandeur, at the purple hills ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... nights, working in his cabinet, he showed himself more frequently in public than heretofore, going out almost without escort. On the 2d of January, 1813, for instance, I remember he went, accompanied only by Marshal Duroc, to visit the basilica of Notre Dame, the works of the archbishopric, those of the central depot of wines, and then, crossing the bridge of Austerlitz, the granaries, the fountain of the elephant, and finally the palace of the Bourse, which his Majesty often said ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... Valhalla. It seemed to make a point of not mentioning Westminster Abbey by name, as though Westminster Abbey had been something not quite mentionable, such as a pair of trousers. The article ended with the word 'basilica,' and by the time you had reached this majestic substantive, you felt indeed, with the Sunday News, that a National Valhalla without the remains of a Priam Farll inside it, would be ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... where she studied law. She went to Rome and studied theology, earning so great a reputation that, at the death of Leo IV., she was chosen his successor. Her sex was discovered by the birth of a child, while she was going to the Lateran Basilica, between the Coliseum and the church of St. Clement. Pope Joan died, and was buried, without honors, after a pontificate of two years and five months (853-855).—Marianus Scotus ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... at all times, that the work shall be that of a school, that no individual caprice shall dispense with, or materially vary, accepted types and customary decorations; and that from the cottage to the palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from the garden fence to the fortress wall, every member and feature of the architecture of the nation shall be as commonly current, as frankly accepted, as its language ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... still look hundreds of years hence, for the Government owns it now and guards it and protects it from the hammer of the vandal and the greed of the casual collector. Here it is—all of it; the tragic theater and the comic theater; the basilica; the greater forum and the lesser one; the market place; the amphitheater for the games; the training school for the gladiators; the temples; the baths; the villas of the rich; the huts of the poor; the cubicles of the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... Buckingham's death, so caricatured by Pope in his Dunciad. It is remarkable on account of its church, which is a most interesting edifice to the antiquary, exhibiting a true specimen of Saxon architecture. The east end terminates in a semicircular recess for the altar, resembling the tribune of the Roman basilica. It was here that Cedd, bishop of the East Saxons, or London, founded a monastery for Benedictines, about the year 648, or, some say, 655. The church of Lestingham was the first which was built in this district, or the first of which we have any account. It was originally ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various

... before Maecenas' death (B.C. 8), and was probably born about B.C. 18. He is represented as 'senex' (ch. 27), i.e. at least sixty, but may have been over seventy. A.D. 57 is probably the later limit of date. Mommsen thinks that the words (ch. 57), 'puer capillatus in hanc coloniam veni: adhuc basilica non erat facta,' mean that when Trimalchio came to Cumae it was not a Roman colony. Now, Cumae became a colony between 43 and 27 B.C., and, on this supposition, the supper of Trimalchio would have to be placed between A.D. 7 and A.D. 23, as it is about fifty ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... in their origin; which is, I take it, sufficiently vague. The high hill is composed of the most solid marble; so the guidebooks say, at least. This is five hundred and seventy-five feet above the sea, and on its summit stands the cathedral, very old indeed, and built in the form of a basilica, like that of San Miniato. From this hill you look down upon the plain beneath, with the Arno winding through it, and upon Florence and the Apennine chain, above which rise the high mountains of Carrara. Here, on the highest available point of the rock, I used to sit ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... builders and donors, are not cut off from it, their works follow them, and their memory lives in the beauty which stands as a memorial to their great ideals. It is all theirs, it is all ours, it is all God's. And so of the great basilica of theology, built up and ever in course of building; it is for all—but for each according to his needs—-for their use, for their instruction, to surround and direct their worship, to be a security and defence to their souls, a great Church in which the spirit is raised heavenwards ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... places at the central window of the long sala on the third floor, looking out immediately upon the narrow street, which, opposite, fell back into a tiny square, and further up to the right, upon the enormous piazza of St. Peter's and the basilica itself behind. ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... the foundations of the new Basilica of St. Peter's, the bodies of Probus Anicius and his wife, Proba Faltonia, in a wrapping ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... judge by these biographies, such a course is not only customary but, to use a worldly expression, de rigueur. And so it happened after the decree relative to Saint Giangiuseppe had been pronounced in the Vatican basilica by His Holiness Pius VI, in the presence of the assembled cardinals. Innumerable celestial portents (their enumeration fills eleven pages of the "Life") confirmed and ratified the great event, and among them ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... as good as most, was a convert of St. Peter's, and was martyred, says his legend, in the Neronian persecution. The existing cathedral, its later representative, is still an early and very simple Tuscan basilica, with picturesque crypt and raised choir, of a very plain Romanesque type. It looks like a fitting church for the mother-town of Florence; it seems to recall in its own cold and austere fabric the more ancient claims of the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... indispensable to proper housekeeping. Mr. Perrowne thought he would call the place Cubbyholes; but Miss Du Plessis asked what it would really be, the rectory, the vicarage or the parsonage? Miss Halbert suggested the basilica, to which he replied that, while a good Catholic, he was neither Fannytic nor a Franciscan. He derided his intended bride's taste in architecture, and maintained that the income of a bishop would be insufficient ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... snow-white villas that stud the sides of the Sahel and face the bright bow of the sunlit bay; a villa with balconies, and awnings, and cool, silent chambers, and rich, glowing gardens, and a broad, low roof, half hidden in bay and orange and myrtle and basilica, and the liquid sound of waters bubbling beneath a riotous ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... heart of the Castello, was built by the Pisans with part of the remains of a basilica founded by Constantine. It is on a grand scale, having three naves, and a presbytery ascended by several ranges of steps. The church is embellished with fine marbles, and the ornaments being rich, with some good pictures and grand monuments, the effect, on the ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... It adapted, not merely its architecture, but its very buildings, to its worship. The Roman Basilica became the Christian church; a noble form of building enough, though one in which was neither darkness, solitude, nor silence, but crowded congregations, clapping—or otherwise—the popular preacher; or fighting about ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... between the Neckar and the Maine,[16] and is nowadays called the Odenwald by those who live in and about it. And here having built, according to my capacity and resources, not only houses and permanent dwellings, but also a basilica fitted for the performance of divine service and of no mean style of construction, I began to think to what saint or martyr I could best dedicate it. A good deal of time had passed while my thoughts fluctuated about this matter, when it happened that a certain deacon ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... was, so far as the Church could provide, in the Basilica of Limasol, with the Bishop of Salisbury to celebrate. Vassals of his, and allies, great lords of three realms, bishops and noble knights filled the church and saw the rites done. High above them afterwards, before ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... mind couched in a language Latin indeed but almost as remote from classical Latin as German itself: the tongue in truth of a new intellectual world. Open Aquinas and ask yourself how much is left of the language or the mind of Rome. The eye of the antiquary sees the Basilica in the Cathedral, but what essential resemblance does the Roman place of judicature and business bear to that marvellous and fantastic poetry of religion writing its hymns in stone? In the same manner the Roman castra are traceable in the form as well as the designation of the mediaeval castella. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... convenire vult hominem, mitto in Comitium; Qui mendacem et gloriosum, apud Cluasinae sacrum; Dites, damnosos maritos, sub basilica quaerito," &c. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... vigilante El conde Don Peranzules Al rey, que supo una tarde Fingir tan tenaz modorra, 10 Que, politico y constante, Tuvo siempre el brazo quedo Las palmas al horadarle. Alli esta el circo romano, Gran cifra de un pueblo grande, 15 Y aqui la antigua Basilica De bizantinos pilares, Que oyo en el primer concilio Las palabras de los Padres Que velaron por la Iglesia 20 Perseguida o vacilante. La sombra en este momento Tiende sus turbios cendales Por todas esas memorias De las pasadas edades, 25 Y del Cambron y Visagra Los caminos desiguales, ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various

... Siena, and 26 m. N.N.W. of Orvieto. Pop. (1901) 6011. It is situated on a hill 1305 ft. above sea-level, and is surrounded by medieval walls, in which, in places, fragments of the Etruscan wall are incorporated. The cathedral of S. Mustiola is a basilica with a nave and two aisles, with eighteen columns of different kinds of marble, from ancient buildings. It has been restored and decorated with frescoes in modern times. The campanile belongs to the 13th century. The place was devastated by malaria in the middle ages, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... confiscated. The palace and grounds thus became the property of the Roman emperors. In process of time, the emperor Constantine gave the place to the pope, and from that period it continued to be the residence of the successive pontiffs for a thousand years. A church was built upon the ground, called the Basilica of St. John of Lateran, where many ancient councils were held, known in ecclesiastical history as the councils of the Lateran. This church is still used for some of the ceremonies connected with the inauguration of the pope, but the palace is now uninhabited. It presents, however, in ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... is a close connexion," answered Campbell, "between the rise and nature of the basilica and of Gregorian unison. Both existed before Christianity; both are of Pagan origin; both were afterwards consecrated to ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... generation than modern liberty, provided so liberally for its victims, set forth to the Prefect's palace, and gave his message; but Orestes, who had been of late astonishing the Alexandrian public by an unwonted display of alacrity, was already in the adjoining Basilica. Thither the youth was conducted by an apparitor, and led up the centre of the enormous hall, gorgeous with frescoes and coloured marbles, and surrounded by aisles and galleries, in which the inferior magistrates were hearing causes, and doing such ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... together, fixing beforehand, the price they would offer. But he, quick to become exasperated by opposition, always went further, hurling numbers at his competitors as though they were blows. After such excursions, the senora would appear as majestic and dazzling as a basilica of Byzantium—ears and neck decorated with great pearls, her bosom a constellation of brilliants, her hands radiating points of light of ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... comprehensive terms, than has been done by Mr. Cohen in Mr. Turner's Tour,[46] from which work the following account is, therefore, extracted.—"Without doubt, the architect was conversant with Roman buildings, though he has Normanized their features, and adapted the lines of the basilica to a barbaric temple. The Coliseum furnished the elevation of the nave;—semi-circular arches surmounted by another tier of equal span, and springing at nearly an equal height from the basis of the supporting pillars. The ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... of all the defects formerly enumerate, except the last, and of the active part also of the last (which is the designation of writers), are opera basilica; towards which the endeavours of a private man may be but as an image in a crossway, that may point at the way, but cannot go it. But the inducing part of the latter (which is the survey of learning) may be set forward by private travail. Wherefore ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... — N. place of worship; house of God, house of prayer. temple, cathedral, minster^, church, kirk, chapel, meetinghouse, bethel^, tabernacle, conventicle, basilica, fane^, holy place, chantry^, oratory. synagogue; mosque; marabout^; pantheon; pagoda; joss house^; dogobah^, tope; kiosk; kiack^, masjid^. [clergymen's residence] parsonage, rectory, vicarage, manse, deanery, glebe; Vatican; bishop's palace; Lambeth. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... these temples, and their colonnades stood forth like mast heads of ships becalmed in a sea of verdure. The doctor, guide-book in hand, was pointing them out with masterly authority—that was Neptune's, that Ceres', and that was called the Basilica without ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... What makes his description especially valuable to the architectural historian is the fact that he compares it to St. Peter's at Rome, and he had been to Rome in company with Anselm. Now, although the old Basilica at Rome was destroyed in the sixteenth century, yet plans and drawings which were made before its demolition are preserved in the Vatican: and, with all these data before him, Professor Willis reconstructed the plan of the metropolitan ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... surrounds the holy city, then the circular church built over the Holy Sepulchre, the tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the stone that closed it, the church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the church built upon Calvary, and the basilica of Constantine on the site of the place where the real cross was found. These various churches are united in one building, which also encloses the Tomb of Christ, and Calvary, where our ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... from imitating the wisdom of his brother, Constantine, inclines to the errors of Arius and Marcus. Go! The bronze gates shall fly open before thee, and thy sandals shall resound on the golden floor of the basilica before the throne of the Caesars, and thy awe-inspiring voice shall change the heart of the son of Constantinus. Thou shalt reign over a peaceful and powerful Church. And, even as the soul directs the body, so shall the Church govern the empire. ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... art—which instructed its votaries to feel blindly for its new and all-sufficient life, as does the babe for its mother's breast—which consecrates even now the deepest workings of the heart and mind to the service of God. And Christ enters the Basilica, into which, after a momentary doubt, he himself ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... with pale saffron light. In the central vault of heaven a few large stars twinkled drowsily. The great city, still chiefly pagan, lay more than half-asleep. But multitudes of the Christians, dressed in white and carrying lighted torches in their hands, were hurrying toward the Basilica of Constantine to keep the new holy-day of the church, the festival of the birthday ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... to partake of the sacred Eucharist in the basilica of Mary," replied the Bishop. "It is just now the hour—but no, stop. You are a stranger here you say; you have run away from your master—and you are young, very young and very. . . . It is dark too. Where are you intending ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the English felt that there was now no longer any fear of their being drawn out of the capital. They promptly marched on and occupied Saint Denis, pillaging that town and carrying off as a trophy the arms which Joan of Arc had placed by the shrine of Saint Denis, in the ancient basilica ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... sees in front of him an immense basilica. The light projects itself from the lower end with the magical effect of a many-coloured sun. It lights up the innumerable heads of the multitude which fills the nave and surges between the columns towards the side-aisles, where one can distinguish ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... the minster is said to have been in ruins. At the latter date Bishop Lozing (Robert de Losinga) began to rebuild the cathedral, and there are vague accounts that it was in the form of a round church in imitation of a basilica of Charlemagne which had been built at Aix-la-Chapelle between 774 and 795. If such a form ever existed it must have been completely destroyed, as the work of the Norman period that remains is clearly English both in treatment and in detail. If this could be proved to be Lozing's work, then ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher



Words linked to "Basilica" :   narthex, basilican, church, Roman building, vena basilica, church building, Roman basilica



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