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Medieval  adj.  Same as Mediaeval.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Medieval" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the warlike kind, after Germany began to struggle with its medieval restrictions, was composed after the Battle of Sempach, where Arnold Struthalm of Winkelried opened a passage for the Swiss peasants through the ranks of Austrian spears. It is written in the Middle-High-German, by Halbsuter, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... desire of confession ... the wish to reveal herself? Upon this bed rock of human nature the confessional has been built. And Owen admired the humanity of Rome. Rome was terribly human. No Church, he reflected, was so human. Her doctrine may seem at times quaint, medieval, even gross, but when tested by the only test that can be applied, power to reach to human needs, and administer consolation to the greatest number, the most obtuse-minded cannot fail to see that Rome easily distances her rivals. Her dogma and ceremonial are alike conceived ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... time he sat on, listening to the still soft downpour on the fading leaves. 'They don't come to me,' he said softly again; with a tiny smile on his old face. 'It's that old medieval Craik: with a face like a last year's rookery!' And again he sat, with head a little sidelong, listening now to the infinitesimal sounds of life without, now to the thoughts within, and ever and again ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... consummate in the birth of a movement that would draw together and unify all the liberating forces which had slowly become available. The Humanists of the Renaissance, no less than Columbus, were finding a new world.[1] They had boldly travelled out beyond the {2} boundaries which the medieval mind had set to human interests, and had discovered that man was more than the abstract being whose "soul" had alone concerned ecclesiastics and schoolmen. Man, the Humanists saw, is possessed in his own right of great powers of reason. He is ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... traits of human nature, and Mr. Gryce would undoubtedly have expended a few cynical thoughts upon it if, upon entering the broad front corridor which he had hitherto avoided, he had not run upon Sweetwater pointing in a meaning way toward two huge cases which, stacked with medieval arms, occupied one of ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... of meadow-land, and wood, and dim toned buildings gathered about farms, and its dream of a small ancient city at its feet, it might—though it is to be doubted—seem something less a marvel of medieval picturesqueness. But out of the plain rises the low hill, and surrounding it at a stately distance stands guard the giant majesty of Alps, with shoulders in the clouds and god-like heads above them, looking on—always looking on—sometimes themselves ethereal clouds of snow-whiteness, ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the accepted tongue of the church. There was little general culture, there was little general acquaintance with the Bible except among the educated. During all that time there was no real room for a further translation. One of the writers[1] says: "Medieval England was quite unripe for a Bible in the mother tongue; while the illiterate majority were in no condition to feel the want of such a book, the educated minority would be averse to so great and revolutionary a change." When a man cannot read any writing it really does not matter to him whether ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... The medieval writer who declared women to be "capable of disturbing the air and exciting tempests" was not indulging a mere quip at the expense of that limited storm area, his own domestic circle. He expressed what in his day, and indeed for long after, was a cardinal article of belief—that ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... unable to make up a verse or two would almost be considered exceptional. Yet, this requires considerable skill as the Icelanders are the only nation that has preserved the ancient common Germanic alliteration (found in all Germanic poetry till late medieval times). We frequently find this device accompanied by highly complicated rhyme schemes. Despite this rather rigid form, restrictive perhaps, yet disciplinary in its effect, exquisite poetry has nevertheless been produced. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... portions of which are stored in some ancient vaults near the market-place, and in the Rue de Vesle behind the church of St. Jacques. This church, originally built at the close of the twelfth century, is hemmed in on all sides by old houses, above which rises its tapering steeple surmounted by a medieval weathercock in the form of an angel. A life-size statue of the patron saint decorates the Gothic gateway leading to the church, from which a troop of Remish urchins in the charge of some Frres de la Doctrine Chrtienne ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... All kings' sons. Paradise of pretenders then and now. He saved men from drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping. But the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or san Michele were in their own house. House of... We don't want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he did? A boat would be near, a lifebuoy. Natuerlich, put there for you. Would you or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock. They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Medieval herbalists usually recorded anything that "Plinie saieth" with profoundest respect; not always so, quaint old Parkinson. Speaking of the common (vulgaris) Wild Loosestrife of Europe, a rather stout, downy species with ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... Meanwhile, the funeral ceremonies over Jesse James's remains drew a great concourse of people, and there were many indications of popular sympathy. Stories of his exploits have had an extensive sale, and his name has become a center of legend and ballad somewhat after the fashion of the medieval hero ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... a lady leaning from an oriel window in a medieval tower, listening in the moonlight, with love in her eyes and attitude, to the music of a guitar, touched by a gallant knight below, who looked as Arthur Merlin would have looked had Arthur Merlin ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... asylums! That cabled messages all round the world, but filled its prisons to the doors! That named the metals in the sun, but could not cleanse its cities! An age, in fact, that was but one remove from the unmitigated barbarism of medieval times! How marvellous is the change wrought by a hundred years! We have not been shocked by a murder in Canada for more than fifty years, nor has a suicide been heard of for a very long period. Epidemic diseases belong to the past. The sewage question, that source of vexation to the municipalities ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius

... their founders. These abbots were sometimes bishops; but whether they were bishops or of lower rank in the ministry, their authority was inherent in their office of coarb. At this period bishops were numerous—more numerous than in later medieval or modern times; and certain functions were reserved for bishops, for example, ordination. No ecclesiastic, of whatever status, could perform such functions, unless he was of the episcopal order. But no bishop, as such, had jurisdiction. The bishops were often subordinate officers in monasteries, ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... correspond completely with that of Coplande's print. Hearne gives ae for e throughout, and expands contractions without notice. Had I had access to the original tract before Hearne's text was put into type, I should have retained the medieval spelling; but I did not think it worth while to make the change apres coup. The actual words of the text represent Blacman as faithfully as possible; and that ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman

... settlement is kept as small as possible to answer its immediate purpose, because it can be more easily defended.[319] Such were the colonies of the ancient Phoenicians and Greeks in the Mediterranean, of the Medieval Arabs and the Portuguese on the east coast of Africa and in India. This method reached its ultimate expression in point of small area, seclusion, and local autonomy, perhaps, in the Hanse factories in Norway and Russia.[320] But all these widespread nuclei of expansion remained barren ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... the only true origin of Realism. Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason. This is so not merely in the sense of insanity but of suicide. It has lost its reason; that is its reason for existing. The old Greeks summoned godlike things to worship their god. The medieval Christians summoned all things to worship theirs, dwarfs and pelicans, monkeys and madmen. The modern realists summon all these million creatures to worship their god; and then have no god for them to worship. Paganism ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... came the breakfast at the Constantine house. Though certain guests murmured that it was a trifle too ultra like the house itself, which was half a medieval castle and half the makings of a village fire department, it was generally considered a success. Nothing was left undone. The bride left the church amid the ringing of chimes; her health was drunk, and she slipped ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... into his own flesh to prevent himself from springing then and there at the throat of that wretch whose monstrous ingenuity had invented torture for the fallen enemy far worse than any that the cruelties of medieval Inquisitions had devised. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... back to its creator. The fact was that Waller couldn't or wouldn't work with others. So was conceived "Brother Francesco," an opera set in a monastery in Italy during the Seventeenth Century, and bringing up a vivid picture of monks, medieval chapels—dark, massive and severe—and the dank scent of deep tragedy. There were but four main characters, a quartette of voices, in "Brother Francesco," which was in one act of about an hour and ten minutes, the ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... the dial with the aid of a pocketlite, and made a notation. The scene and the martial music faded out, to be replaced by stock footage from medieval epics: Peter the Hermit exhorting knights to smite the Saracen, the clash of Mediterranean men o' war, chivalric pageantry featuring ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds

... homes of England for the whole strength of the company to take their meals together. The guests sat at the upper table, the ladies in a gallery above them, while the usual drove of men-at-arms, archers, malapert rogues, varlets, scurvy knaves, scullions, and plug-uglies attached to all medieval households, squashed in near the door, wherever ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... planet. A power she has, too, of continuous re-embodiment; every poet seeks to call her up afresh, that is, if he be a poet. It may be said that each age has some incarnation of Helen; the Greek myth for two thousand years, Medieval legend, even Teutonic folk-lore have caught up her spirit and incorporated it in new forms. The last great singer of the ages has in our own time, evoked her ghost once more in the shining palace of Menelaus ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... religious movements is not less than to the study of history. Does anybody pretend that we can understand Christianity without taking into account the Roman Empire; or that we can understand Catholicism without knowing something of the economic life of medieval Europe; or Methodism without knowing the social condition ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... of marjoram (Origanum maru); by others, the caper-bush (Capparis spinosa); and by the author of the 'History of Bible Plants,' to have been the name of any common article in the form of a brush or a broom." In ancient and medieval times hyssop was grown for its fancied medicinal qualities, for ornament and for cookery. Except for ornament, it is now very little cultivated. Occasionally it is found growing wild in ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... providing a succession of marvels and miracles for the careerist and his retinue. Not only is he to be entertained and served by them, but any commercial value will also be exploited by him. The natural wonders of the laboratories have taken the place of the supernatural absurdities of the medieval mind as a fillip for the imagination of the man in the street. Even spiritualism apes the technique of the physicist. The credulity of reporters alone concerning developments in surgery, for example, is incredible. There is enough ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... cut beauty, but an ugly headed monster with a savagely hooked Roman nose and small, keen eyes, always red at the corners. A medieval baron in full panoply of plate armor would have chosen such a charger among ten thousand steeds, yet the black stallion needed all his strength to uphold the unarmored giant who bestrode him, ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... amusement of the rich pew-holders of a fashionable congregation, and calculated to make it forget the truths which the preacher has declared; but more like the hymns and anthems of the son of Jesse, when sung by the whole synagogue, making the vaulted roof and lofty pillars of the Medieval church re-echo the paeans of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... for the most part, good men, but they did not dream at that time of controlling the counsels of kings and dictating affairs of State. Even the story of Pope Leo the Great overawing the King of the Huns, Attila, and turning his army away from Italy, is a mere legend of medieval writers, and is at variance with the nearer authorities. The northern tribes themselves were to a great extent, and for some centuries, of the Arian faith, and took no advice from Rome. In a word, ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... American homes derived their plans and their finish from medieval English tradition. They were forced to utilize such materials as they were able to obtain, and step by step they bettered the construction and ornamentation of their homes. As increasing means and added material allowed, they planned and executed more elaborately, not only in size ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various

... not without its picturesqueness. The low crockery shelves of polished mahogany running the length of the room and filled with rare porcelain, costly Italian glass, medieval silver, antique flagons, loving-cups of gold inlaid with amber and garnets; a dazzling array of candlesticks; a fireplace of shining mosaics; the mahogany table littered with broken glass, full and empty bottles, broken pipes, pools of overturned ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... of the organization comes the financial aspect. Out of the five milliards of francs, the war indemnity paid by France to Germany in 1871, 200,000,000 marks in gold coin, mostly French, were put away as the nucleus of a ready war chest. In a little medieval-looking watch tower, the Julius Thurm near Spandau, lies this ever-increasing driving force of the mightiest war engine the world has ever seen. Ever increasing, for quietly and unobtrusively 6,000,000 marks in newly minted gold coins are taken year by year and added to the ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... said, "we are not quite medieval enough to adopt the only really sensible method and remove Mr. Brott permanently from the face of the earth. We should stop a little short of that, but I can assure you that Mr. Brott's health for the next few months is a matter for grave uncertainty. It is a pity for ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... modern age, the faith of Christians had attached itself to symbols and material objects little better than fetishes. The host, the relic, the wonder-working shrine, things endowed with a mysterious potency, evoked the yearning and the awe of medieval multitudes. To such concrete actualities the worshippers referred their sense of the invisible divinity. The earth of Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre, the House of Loreto, the Sudarium of Saint Veronica, aroused their deepest sentiments of aweful adoration. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... figure on the walls and ceiling produces an effect of richness in spite of the modern whitewash with which, if I remember rightly, they have been endued. The little streets of Loches wander crookedly down the hill and are full of charming pictorial "bits:" an old town-gate, passing under a medieval tower, which is ornamented by Gothic windows and the empty niches of statues; a meagre but delicate hotel de ville of the Renaissance nestling close beside it; a curious chancellerie of the middle of the sixteenth ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... arbitrated. If we are ill-prepared for war, we arbitrate. If we are sure of a favorable award, we arbitrate. But we must have a loophole, an ever-ready escape from obligation. Posing as the most enlightened nation on the face of the globe, we refuse entirely to displace those medieval notions according to which personal honor found its best protection in the dueling pistol, and national honor its only vindication in slaughter and devastation. To unlimited ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... susceptible of some disgust or alarm at a species of burlesque which is likely to render their compositions no better than a dissolving view, where every noble form is seen melting into its preposterous caricature. It used to be imagined of the unhappy medieval Jews that they parodied Calvary by crucifying dogs; if they had been guilty they would at least have had the excuse of the hatred and rage begotten by persecution. Are we on the way to a parody which shall have ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... to exert themselves "naturally." In America the old abuses never had taken deep root, as the conditions of a new continent were not favorable to monopoly and privilege. Altho the movement for the repeal of medieval laws has continued in Europe from 1776 till the present time, yet custom still is stronger to-day in Europe than in America. Serfdom was not abolished until the first half of the nineteenth century in Austria and southeastern Europe, and not until the ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... about the 'M'lady', but she let it go. After all, she had not quite settled in her own mind what exactly she wished Albert's attitude towards herself to be. Broadly speaking, she wanted him to be as like as he could to a medieval page, one of those silk-and-satined little treasures she had read about in the Ingoldsby Legends. And, of course, they presumably said 'my lady'. And yet—she felt—not for the first time—that it is not easy, to revive the Middle Ages in these curious ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... ANGLICAN CHURCH ILLUSTRATED. With Brief Accounts of the Saints who have Churches dedicated in their Names, or whose Images are most frequently met with in England; the early Christian and Medieval Symbols; and an Index of Emblems. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various

... everyday wear, topped by a soiled collar. He appeared in a blue cotton jacket-length kimono and tight-fitting trousers of the same stuff, and both garments, which were washed at least once a week, were admirably fitted to their wearer's work. Almost the same rig was worn by our own medieval and pre-medieval workmen. The carpenter had on the back of his coat the name of his master or guild in decorative Chinese characters in white. There are nowadays in the cities many inferior workers, but all the men who came to my house worked with rapidity and concentration, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... dominion extended itself in both directions over widespread territories, has not maintained its rank. It was due to this tendency of things, combined with a certain geographical cause, that neither could the medieval Empire attain its full development, nor the Papacy continue to subsist with unimpaired authority. From age to age the political and intellectual life of the world transferred itself ever more and more ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... "aesthetic" poetry is neither a mere reproduction of Greek or medieval poetry, nor only an idealisation of modern life and sentiment. The atmosphere on which its effect depends belongs to no simple form of poetry, no actual form of life. Greek poetry, medieval or modern poetry, ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... full of these fantastic creatures, that, in some zoologies, we find a separate chapter or a supplement dedicated to what is denominated heraldic zoology. And why not? For these hideous creatures, however visionary[8], have a real traditionary ground in medieval belief—sincere and partly reasonable, though adulterating with mendacity, blundering, credulity, and intense superstition. But the dream-horror which I speak of is far more frightful. The dreamer finds housed within himself—occupying, as it were, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... been preserved at Bainbridge. It takes place at ten o'clock every night between Holy Rood (September 27) and Shrovetide, but somehow the reason for the observance has been forgotten. The medieval regulations as to the carrying of horns by foresters and those who passed through forests would undoubtedly associate the custom with early times, and this happy old village certainly gains our respect for having preserved anything from ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... and the job he filled were located in the medieval notion of the physical appearance of hell. By day the environment was heat and torment. By night—lunar night, of course, and lunar day—it was frigidity and horror. Once in two weeks Earth-time a rocketship ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... that, as Bjarki was about to attack the dragon, his sword stuck fast in the scabbard.[104] There is no reason, however, for regarding it as anything more than a melodramatic incident characteristic of medieval romances. It reminds one of the following statement by Wilbur L. Cross, which, with the omission of the reference to "giants" and "Merlin," characterizes the Hrlfssaga quite accurately and shows how it harmonizes with the spirit of medieval literature of its kind, ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson

... about 480 A.D.; died at Pavia, 524. Gibbon speaks of him as "the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman." His works on arithmetic, music, and geometry were classics in the medieval schools. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... perhaps the most painted of all Dutch towns, and with reason; for certainly no other town sits with more calm dignity among the waters, nor has any other town so quaintly medieval a canal as that which extends from end to end, far below the level of the streets, crossed by a series of little bridges. Seen from these bridges it is the nearest thing to Venice in all Holland—nearer than ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen, An attachment a la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not- too-French French bean! Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band, If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... accomplished scientifically what medieval alchemists had failed to do with "magic" experiments and other less sophisticated techniques. It wasn't gold (the goal of the alchemists) he found but something more valuable with even greater potential for good and evil: a method ...
— A Brief History of Element Discovery, Synthesis, and Analysis • Glen W. Watson

... on the pick system, a method which medieval conspirators favoured, and which the Italian workmen probably imported from the land of their birth; a land which has given the world the Borgias and ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... extraordinary penetration and prescience. They were the eyes of an experienced woman of thirty fixed in the face of a child. What else the Colonel saw there Heaven only knows! He felt his inmost secrets plucked from him—his whole soul laid bare—his vanity, belligerency, gallantry—even his medieval chivalry, penetrated, and yet illuminated, in that single glance. And when the eyelids fell again, he felt that a greater part of himself had ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... What she wanted of this holiday was complete escape from all she had had before, she wanted the rest of complete contrast. Being admired, being dogged, wasn't contrast, it was repetition; and as for originals, to find herself shut up with two on the top of a precipitous hill in a medieval castle built for the express purpose of preventing easy goings out and in, would not, she was afraid, be especially restful. Perhaps she had better be a little less encouraging. They had seemed such timid creatures, even the dark one—she ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... Canterbury, threw its majestic shade over the heathen wishing-well, and the worshippers of Odin and the Nornir were gradually converted into votaries of the Virgin Mary. Such practices form a subject of constant remonstrance and reproof in the treatises and penitential epistles of medieval divines, and in some few places and churches, even in England, such rites ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... potest.—LEIBNIZ, Opera, ed. Dutens, vi. 297. The study of Modern History is, next to Theology itself, and only next in so far as Theology rests on a divine revelation, the most thoroughly religious training that the mind can receive. It is no paradox to say that Modern History, including Medieval History in the term, is co-extensive in its field of view, in its habits of criticism, in the persons of its most famous students, with Ecclesiastical History.—STUBBS, Lectures, 9. Je regarde donc l'etude de l'histoire ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton

... eminence; such men will be hostile to those among the young who do not flatter them by agreeing with their theories. Under a bureaucratic State Socialism it is to be feared that science would soon cease to be progressive and acquired a medieval ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... and the other Channel Islands represent the last remnants of the medieval Dukedom of Normandy, which held sway in both France and England. The islands were the only British soil occupied by German troops in World ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the Gods we find the Norns spinning in the dark near Brunnhilda's cave; the rope they are at work on breaks, and they learn that the end is near. They disappear; day breaks, and Siegfried and Brunnhilda enter. She is sending him to do heroic deeds, quite in the spirit of medieval chivalry; he presents her with the ring and goes, wearing her armour and taking her horse. He arrives at the hall of Gibichungs, where he finds Gunther, his sister Gutruna and Hagen, a son of Alberich. They give Siegfried a draught which takes away his memory; he ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... the war on the White Plague. The efforts of Parliament to fix wages can be illustrated by some of the minimum wage laws passed by recent legislatures. John Ball's teachings suggest a brief discussion of modern socialism, daily becoming more active in its influence. The medieval trade guilds and modern labor unions; the monopolies of Elizabeth's time and the anti-trust law of to-day; George the Third's two hundred capital crimes and modern methods of penology; the jealousy of ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell

... majority of Herrick's poems cannot be dated, and it is idle to enquire which were written before his ordination and which afterwards. His conception of religion was medieval in its sensuousness, and he probably repeated the stages of sin, repentance and renewed assurance with some facility. He lived with an old servant, Prudence Baldwin, the "Prew" of many of his poems; kept a spaniel named Tracy, and, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... astronomy, is confused with the kings of the same name. Pliny and Seneca represent the more advanced study of physical and of moral science respectively, and the edifice is crowned by Theology, the long and arduous course for which followed that of the Arts. Its representative in a medieval treatise is naturally ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait

... reconsideration of the value of the reports of the travelers and adventurers on the West Coast from the fifteenth century on.[7] The combined result has been the bringing to light of objects and evidences of achievement which place the ancient and medieval African on a plane with, and in many cases above, his contemporaries in Europe ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... is the spelling in the medieval Latin of this and the preceding charters. (See the Constitutional Documents in the Appendix, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... unusual in an age when to provide for the strategy of retreat was common prudence—where the infant Hero strangled with chubby hands the twin serpents sent for his destruction, the story of his labours told itself with all the direct simplicity of medieval art. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... run along one side with a single turn near the top to the second-floor passageway directly above that to the rear of the house on the floor below. In a few of the earlier country houses there are, however, halls reminiscent of medieval times, for the influences of the mother country were very strong in Philadelphia, and its Colonial architecture displays marked Georgian tendencies, some of it the very earliest Georgian characteristics still somewhat influenced by the life and manners ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... returned to establish in a Williamsburg tavern that fantastic order of nobility which he called the Knights of The Golden Horseshoe, [Footnote: Their motto was Sic jurat transcendere montes.] and, with a worldly wisdom which was scarcely consistent with these medieval affectations, to press upon the attention of the British Government the building of a line of frontier forts to guard the Ohio River from the French. Many years after him the greatest of all Virginians ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... life of David Livingstone. The romance and wonder of it do not appear on the surface; the splendor of the heroic soul is lost in the dry chronology of dates; the marvelous achievement of self-sacrifice is not visible. Yet the wildest fantasies of medieval troubadours pale into insignificance when placed side by side with the ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... Collector said in a dejected tone that to err was human, that medieval weapons could not always be distinguished with certainty as to their age, that he himself was less of an expert in these than in Roman relics, and that there were after all many things about the sword which seemed to indicate a more remote age, before ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... * The medieval belief that there were only four elements—fire, earth, air, and water—was widely accepted until about 1500 AD when the current atomic theory ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt

... veils were used in the ancient Hebrew marriage ceremony. The veil as we use it may be a substitute for the flowing tresses which in old times fell like a mantle modestly concealing the bride's face and form; or it may be an amplification of the veil which medieval fashion ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... gold Up to the zenith, fierce within my soul A passion burns from basement to the cope. Poesy, poesy! But one who imagines that this passion can exist in the soul wholly unrelated to any other, is confusing poetry with religion, or possibly with philosophy. The medieval saint was pure in proportion as he died to the life of the senses. This is likewise the state of the philosopher described in the Phaedo. But beauty, unlike wisdom and goodness, is not to be apprehended abstractly; ideal beauty is super-sensual, to be sure, but the ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... explanation of the word, as formerly used in England, be desired, I would refer your querist to the pages of the Promptorium Parvulorum, where may be found—"Bruwyn ale or other drynke, Pandoxor. Browstar, or brewere, Pandoxator, Pandoxatrix", the medieval Bass or Guinness having been, most frequently, a female. And, having cited the primitive lexicographer of Norfolk, I would seize the occasion to offer a note, in response to the numerous queries regarding the too tardy advance of the work in question, and to assure your readers, ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various

... shall need a new Renaissance, ushered in by a new "humanistic" movement, in which we shall add our present minute, introspective study of ourselves, our jails, our slums, our nervecenters, our shifts to live, almost as morbid as medieval religion, a rediscovery of the round world, and of man's place in it, now that its face has changed. We study the world, but not yet with intent to school our hearts and tastes, broaden our natures, and know ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson

... overhanging turret with loop-holes and embrasures projecting from the parapet of a medieval building. ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... How would Madame act, now that she knew he possessed her secret? Into many channels he passed, but all these were blind, and led him to no end. Madame had a purpose; to discover what this purpose was Fitzgerald must remain in ignorance. What a woman! She resembled one of those fabulous creatures of medieval days. And why was the countess on the scene, and what was her part in this ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... and wet nurses are still recognized institutions. What is an orphan asylum? It is a place of sequestration, a dark and terrible prison, where only too often the prisoner finds death, as in those medieval dungeons whence the victim disappeared, leaving no trace. He never sees any who are dear to him. His family name is cancelled, his goods are confiscated. The greatest criminal may retain memories of his mother, knows that he has had a name, and may derive some consolation from ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... medieval Holland nor old Japan—had a garden been more formal, been better tended. Every plant had all the loam, light, water, air and nourishment it ...
— 2 B R 0 2 B • Kurt Vonnegut

... Heights Menorah Society for this year are extensive. It has arranged a program of lectures, among which may be mentioned the following: "The Talmud," by Dr. Clifton H. Levy; "The Jew in English Literature," by Dean Archibald L. Bouton; "The Jews in Medieval Spain," by Dr. D. de Sola Pool; "Conservative Judaism," by Dr. Jacob Kohn; "Historical Beginnings of Christianity," by Dr. A. H. Limouze; "Reform Judaism," by Dr. Isaac Moses. Besides these lectures, some meetings are devoted to discussions ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... the Way Thither being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China. New Edition. Vol. I. Preliminary Essay on the Intercourse between China and the Western Nations previous to the Discovery of the Cape Route. London, Hakluyt Society, 1915.—Vol. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... legendary histories from one generation of textbooks to the next. In what follows, I can only hope that the adding of a strong new trail and the eradication of several false and weaker ones will lead us nearer to a balanced and integrated understanding of medieval invention and ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price

... Friar Brackley's Sermon (Vol. i., p. 351.)—It seems vain to inquire who the persons were of whom stories were told in medieval books, as if they were really historical. See the Gesta Romanorum, for instance: or consider who the Greek king Aulix was, having dealings with the king of Syria, in the 7th Story of the Novelle Antiche. The passage in the sermon about a Greek king, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various

... "you see me for what I am. I shall not rob you, I shall not drug you, I shall not try to tear secrets out of your throat by any medieval methods. We are neither of us of the order of those who seek adventures in vulgar fashion and expect always a vulgar termination. Can't we be friends for a time—companions? Paris is an empty city for me just ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the memory of the dead. In England the tokens of remembrance pullulated hardly less. Not a day passed without some addition to the multifold assemblage—a gold statuette of Ross, the piper—a life-sized marble group of Victoria and Albert, in medieval costume, inscribed upon the base with the words: "Allured to brighter worlds and led the way-" a granite slab in the shrubbery at Osborne, informing the visitor of "Waldmann: the very favourite little dachshund ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... Philadelpnus, was built by him as a place of transit for goods from India which were to be carried from the Red Sea to the Nile. [Footnote: Hunter, Hist. of British India, I., 40.] Roman roads followed ancient lines through Asia Minor and Syria, and medieval routes in turn, in many places, passed by the remains of Roman stations. Thus the East and the West had been drawn together by a mutual commercial attraction from the earliest times, an attraction based on the respective natural productions of the two continents, and favored by ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... movement, preluded by Gray, Collins, Chatterton, Macpherson, and others, culminated in Walter Scott (1771-1832). His passion for the medieval was first excited by reading Percy's Reliques, when he was a boy; and in one of his school themes he maintained that Ariosto was a greater poet than Homer. He began early to collect manuscript ballads, suits of armor, pieces of old plate, border-horns, and similar relics. He learned Italian ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... Thus, it is a remarkable fact that the weather is generally rather warm in Egypt; and this cannot but throw a light on the sudden and mysterious impulse of the Israelites to escape from captivity. The English strikers used some barren republican formula (arid as the definitions of the medieval schoolmen), some academic shibboleth about being free men and not being forced to work except for a wage accepted by them. Just in the same way the Israelites in Egypt employed some dry scholastic quibble about the extreme difficulty of making bricks with nothing to make them of. But whatever fantastic ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... word as trust. In the old Gothic language it was one of the words used for a covenant or treaty. In medieval Latin it was a pledge given that an agreement would be kept. It is a fine turn of a word that uses the very spirit of confidence in one's heart in another as the name for the appointment made with him. The trust in the heart gives the ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... about which the world does know something, and show their coincidence with the laws of spirit—if indeed they know anything about the said laws. Loose conceits, fancies of the private judgment, were excusable enough in the Elizabethan poets. In their day, nature was still unconquered by science; medieval superstitions still lingered in the minds of men and the magical notions of nature which they had inherited from the Middle Age received a corroboration from those neoplatonist dreamers, whom they confounded with the true ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... maladroit, malfeasance, malignity, malleable, mandate, matutinal, medieval, mephitic, mercenary, mercurial, meretricious, metamorphose, meticulous, microcosm, misanthropic, misogyny, misprision, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... drawled Holmes lazily from his perch on the window-seat. "The most improbable things happen here. One finds secret passages under houses and medieval war swords stuck in drains. Then there are 'things that go boomp in the night,' too. It might be worth ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... as a centre. The early medieval methods of industry. The beginnings of trade. Expansion of trade and transportation. Invention and discoveries. The change from handcraft to power manufacture. The industrial revolution. Modern industrial development. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... pantoufles de verre. There is no doubt that in the medieval versions of this ancient tale Cinderilla was given pantoufles de vair—i.e., of a grey, or grey and white, fur, the exact nature of which has been a matter of controversy, but which was probably a grey squirrel. Long before the seventeenth century the word vair had ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault

... and the medieval period, medicine and religion had had a close relationship. The New Testament had numerous references to the healing of the sick by spiritual means, and a casual relationship between sin and physical ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... instincts and desires of the animal, when these are felt to be in opposition to the dictates of the peculiarly human, the moral nature. Men have said that the only Fall of Man was a fall upwards. They have given an entirely new meaning to the medieval description of the first transgression as the "felix culpa." But this would seem to involve confusion of thought. The first emergence of man as man, the appearance on this planet of a moral being, ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz

... "Medieval Wayfaring"—was originally spoken in Hebrew, in Jerusalem. It was published, in part, in English in the London Jewish Chronicle, and the author is indebted to the conductors of that periodical for permission to include this, and other material, in ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... it's so," said Nan, quickly. "Do you know, I think your mother, Walter, would have made a good chatelaine of a castle in medieval times. Then charitably inclined ladies were besieged by the poor and miserable at their castle gates. The good lady gave them largess as she stepped into her chariot. Their servants threw silver pennies at a distance so that the unfortunates would scramble for ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... is a world of ghosts,—ghosts incomparably more numerous than the acknowledged millions of the higher Shinto Kami and that the spectral population of one grain of brain-matter more than realizes the wildest fancies of the medieval schoolmen about the number of angels able to stand on the point of a needle. Scientifically we know that within one tiny living cell may be stored up the whole life of a race,—the sum of all the past sensation of millions of years; perhaps even (who knows?) ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... scene, it suddenly came home to him how strange was this occurrence in Park Lane. It was medieval, it belonged to some land unslaked of barbarism. He realized all at once how little these men around him represented the land in which they were living, and how much they were part of the far-off land which was now ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... growth of the great fortunes, this vital fact is constantly forced upon the investigator: that Law has been the most valuable asset possessed by the capitalist class. Without it, this class would have been as helpless as a babe. What would the medieval baron have been without armed force? But note how sinuously conditions have changed. The capitalist class, far shrewder than the feudalistic rulers, dispenses with personally equipped armed force. ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... which it helped to hasten. The princely privileges of the landed proprietors and cities were transformed into so many at-tributes of the Executive power; the feudal dignitaries into paid office-holders; and the confusing design of conflicting medieval seigniories, into the well regulated plan of a government, work is subdivided and centralized as in the factory. The first French revolution, having as a mission to sweep away all local, territorial, urban and provincial special ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... a gay and imposing sight that greeted the spectators in the grim old border fortress, the gaunt ruins of which may yet be seen, but which had at that date already rubbed off some of its medieval ruggedness as a place of defence. Though necessarily less elaborate and costly than the performances in London, no pains were spared to make the spectacle worthy of the occasion, and it must have appeared all the more splendid in contrast to its surroundings, presented as it ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... legends still current among the people." Of the seventy or eighty "hitherto unpublished legends" which he collected on the first of these trips only a few have ever appeared in print; the results of his second trip are unknown. Ibsen had great faith in the availability of this medieval material for dramatic purposes; he even wrote an essay, "The Heroic Ballad and Its Significance for Artistic Poetry," urging its superior claims in contrast to that of the saga material, to which he was himself shortly to turn. The original ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... ancient and medieval times believed, firmly believed, that men are not equal, that the only true men are Persians, or Greeks, or Romans, or Franks. But we cannot believe that now. And people who sacrifice themselves for the principles of aristocracy and of patriotism to-duty, don't believe and can't believe ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... infidelity, almost treachery in a prince, in any event weak and base, should he allow any portion of the trust received by him intact from his ancestors for transmission to his children, to pass into the hands of his subjects. Not only according to medieval traditions is he proprietor-commandant of the French and of France, but again, according to the theory of the jurists, he is, like Caesar, the sole and perpetual representative of the nation, and, according to the theological doctrine, like David, the sacred and special ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Lope had established was maintained in its essential characteristics by Calderon, and he produced abundant specimens of all its varieties. Of regular plays he has left a hundred and twenty; of "Autos Sacramentales," the peculiar Spanish allegorical development of the medieval mystery, we have seventy-three; besides a considerable number ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... like an empress in some medieval palace, Stood the third in her place, with glances of sun-lighted splendour; Stately her height and tall as a queen in some antique story, With sheaves about her feet, and the tribute which nations render To her as the ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... has been characterized as a relic of medieval times—the last remains of the old Miracle Play. This is true, in the sense of historical continuity, and in that sense alone. The spirit of the times has penetrated even to this isolated valley, and its Passion Play is as much a ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... heart-stirring Northern dialect without which the noblest of our British ballads would lose half their spirit. Indeed, we may safely say that some of Le Fanu's lines are finer than any in 'Young Lochinvar,' simply because they seem to speak straight from a people's heart, not to be the mere echoes of medieval romance. ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... an artist to her inmost heart. Bice I love as I love you, my Teresina, and I never expect to meet with one who can so interpret my ideas with so divine a voice. But this girl is more spiritual. Bice is classic, this one is medieval. Bice is a goddess, this one a saint. Bice is Artemis, or one of the Muses; this one is Holy Agnes or Saint Cecilia. There is in that sweet and holy face the same depth of devotion which our painters portray on the face of the Madonna. This little family group stand ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... where the Seine divides into several branches, rises the city of Troyes, maintaining to some extent its medieval character, with its narrow, illpaved streets, which of old swarmed with geese and porkers, and with its houses of wooden gables and overhanging roofs. Manufactures prospered at Troyes. Many tanneries were established there, and parchment was exported from all parts ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... one at last. You don't suppose I should have let these lunatics out of their cells without good reason. I have the best and fullest reason. They can be let out of their cell today, because today the whole world has become their cell. I will have no more medieval mummery of chains and doors. Let them wander about the earth as they wandered about this garden, and I shall still be their easy master. Let them take the wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... anointed David King over Israel." As a philosophical speculation to explain why people were governed or consented to be governed, this theory went back at least to the Greeks, and doubtless much earlier; and, though of some significance in medieval thought, it became of greater importance in British political philosophy, especially through the works of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. A very practical application of the compact theory was made in the English Revolution of ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... telephones may not be jam-resistant or secure, but 80 percent of the time they will satisfy the need for 2 percent of the cost. Of course, this avoids the problem we have created for ourselves with our medieval acquisition system. ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... the ancient beliefs and myths concerning subterranean fires grew up the enormously important beliefs in Hell and Purgatory, which attained such abnormal proportions in medieval times, and which are by no means yet extinct. The most vivid picture of Hell, founded largely on ancient material, though with a Biblical basis, is found in Milton. In language which recalls the Titanomachy, the poet tells of Satan and his ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... to, in comparison with other contemporary sociologists, as a realist. This is a reference to the controversy of the medieval philosophers in regard to the nature of concepts. Those who thought a concept a mere class-name applied to a group of objects because of some common characteristics were called nominalists. Those who thought the concept was real, and not the name of a mere collection ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... The conquest of space went on, from moon ship to planet ship to star ship. But Earth became increasingly rigid in its institutions. A civilization more inflexible than anything produced by medieval Europe punished any opposition to existing customs, habits, beliefs. These breaches of the social contract were considered major crimes as serious as murder or arson. They were punished similarly. The antique institutions of secret police, ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... thousand times and left no sign—a fact that brings me to that part of my recital I most deplore. But a measure of delay was necessary that we might learn the market value of his books—otherwise Virgilio Poggi would doubtless have robbed us after the old man's death. There was a medieval history of the Borgia family I should myself have greatly ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(d), here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... imaginary; and a little below we find that it was close to Jinn land. China was very convenient for this purpose: the medieval-Moslems, who settled in considerable numbers at Canton and elsewhere, knew just enough of it to know their own ignorance of the vast empire. Hence the Druzes of the Libanus still hold that part of their nation is in the depths ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... victim as well as she—caught in the same trap? Moreover, is woman never a tyrant? One of the first answers to her original revolt came from the most eminent woman of the day, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and it was called "Pink and White Tyranny!" "I have seen a collection of medieval English poems," says Chesterton, "in which the section headed 'Poems of Domestic Life' consisted entirely (literally entirely) of the complaints of husbands bullied ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... very well to talk of obeying when you aren't asked to obey—or, at least, when you aren't required to do anything difficult. But good Tim Finn, I'll warrant, tells his Mary when she may go and where, and he'd be in a fury if she went somewhere against his desire. Oh, she's playing the old medieval ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie



Words linked to "Medieval" :   nonmodern, gothic, mediaeval, chivalric, medieval mode, medieval Schoolman



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