"Pontifex" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or Pontifex Maximus, is an interpreter and prophet or rather expounder of the will of Heaven. He not only sees that the public sacrifices are properly conducted, but even watches those who offer private sacrifices, opposes all departure from established custom, and points ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Publicus, Publius, Puer. P.C. Pactum conventum, Patres conscripti, Pecunia constituta, Ponendum curavit, Post consulatum, Potestate censoria. P.F. Pia fidelis, Pius felix, Promissa fides, Publii filius. P.M. Piae memoriae, Pius minus, Pontifex maximus. P.P. Pater patratus, Pater patriae, Pecunia publica, Praepositus, Primipilus, Propraetor. PR. Praeses, Praetor, Pridie, Princeps. P.R. Permissu reipublicae, Populus Romanus. P.R.C. Post Romam conditam. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Pontifex Maximus, of which he could (95) not decently deprive Lepidus as long as he lived [161], he assumed as soon as he was dead. He then caused all prophetical books, both in Latin and Greek, the authors of which were either unknown, or of no great authority, to be ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... of his zeal he became hateful to the Jews; by whom slain, he fell here a martyr in the year 1485. The most serene Ferdinand and Isabella reared a marble mausoleum, where he became famous for miracles. Alexander VII, Pontifex Maximus, wrote him into the number of holy and blessed martyrs on the 17th day of April in the year 1664. The tomb having been opened, the sacred ashes were translated, and placed under the altar of the chapel (built by the chapter, with the material of the tomb, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Pope, the famous Vasari painted in the Sala Regia of the Vatican palace several pictures representing different scenes in the Parisian massacre. Upon one an inscription was placed which tersely expressed the true state of the case: "Pontifex Colinii necem probat."[1156] The paintings may still be seen in the magnificent room which serves as antechamber to ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... study, and upon the table before me lies a denarius of Maximin, as fresh as when the triumvir of the Temple of Juno Moneta sent it from the mint. Around it are recorded his resounding titles— Imperator Maximinus, Pontifex Maximus, Tribunitia potestate, and the rest. In the centre is the impress of a great craggy head, a massive jaw, a rude fighting face, a contracted forehead. For all the pompous roll of titles it is a peasant's face, and I see him not as the Emperor of Rome, but as the great Thracian boor ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fluently. "All their law is founded upon the Koran, and they are most ingenious in making the Koran answer the purpose of our more learned and therefore more efficacious codes. The Supreme Court really exists in the person of the Sheik ul Islam, who may be called the High Pontiff, a sort of Pontifex Maximus with judicial powers. All important cases are ultimately referred to him, and as most of these important cases are connected with the Vakuf, the real estate held by the mosques, like our glebe ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... fuerat, ne dilaberentur, scripto mandavit." Noster anachoreta Telesphorus,[119] "qui ieiunium quadragesimale, sancitum ab Apostolis, observari severius iussit." Noster Irenaeus,[120] "qui a successione Cathedraque Romana fidem Apostolicam declaravit." Noster etiam Victor Pontifex, "qui[121] Asiam edicto coercuit universam:" quod quum aliquibus, atque etiam huic Irenaeo, viro sacratissimo, videretur asperius, nemo tamen attenuavit, ut exoticam potestatem. Noster Polycarpus,[122] qui super quaestione ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... an account of his education in Brut. 306 sqq. In civil law he was a pupil, in B.C. 89, of Q. Scaevola the Augur, and afterwards of the pontifex of the same name (de Am. 1). In B.C. 88 he studied philosophy under Philo the Academic, and rhetoric under Molo of Rhodes. Dialectic he practised with the Stoic Diodotus, who lived and died in Cicero's house (B.C. 87-5). Other teachers of Cicero were the poet ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... display all the best qualities which are fostered by a military education—frankness, simplicity, and brevity. His earliest literary triumph was as an orator, and, according to Quintilian, he was a worthy rival of Cicero. When he obtained the office of Pontifex Maximus, he diligently examined the history and nature of the Roman belief in augury, and published his investigations. When his career as a military commander began, whatever leisure his duties permitted him to enjoy ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... a bridge-builder led his friend Southey to designate him "Pontifex Maximus." Besides the numerous bridges erected by him in the West of England, we have found him furnishing designs for about twelve hundred in the Highlands, of various dimensions, some of stone and others of iron. His practice in bridge-building had, therefore, been of an unusually extensive ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... Pontifex, however, we do not care to respond to the challenge at all. The experiment is faked and proves nothing. It is mere humbug to declare that a man has been thrown into the waters of life to sink or swim, when there is an anxious but cool-headed friend on the bank ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Roman Heathen, that the Popes have received the name, and power of PONTIFEX MAXIMUS. This was the name of him that in the ancient Common-wealth of Rome, had the Supreme Authority under the Senate and People, of regulating all Ceremonies, and Doctrines concerning their Religion: And when Augustus Caesar changed the ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... the form, like the rest, of an imaginary conversation. This is supposed to have taken place at the house of Aurelius Cotta, then Pontifex Maximus—an office which answered nearly to that of Minister of religion. The other speakers are Balbus, Velleius, and Cicero himself,—who acts, however, rather in the character of moderator than of disputant. The debate is still, as in the more strictly philosophical dialogues, ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... spoken of a future life for men; and he has now risen from the grave, after his torture on a cross, to prove his doctrine true. I now believe in him, as the interpreter of the future life. Forevermore he is my High Priest, and not the great pontifex in the ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... instance of a priest holding a high political office is in the year B.C. 242 when the Flamen Martialis or special priest of Mars was chosen Consul; but when the gentleman in question started to go to the war, he was forbidden by the Pontifex Maximus. In B.C. 200 the Flamen Dialis, or special priest of Juppiter, was allowed to be made aedile, but his brother had to be especially authorised to take the oath of office in his stead, since the priest of Juppiter, the god of oaths, was himself not allowed to take an oath. In the course ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... that no part of them is older than the second half of the third century. The eighty-five so-called Apostolic Canons have prefixed to them the spurious title: "Ecclesiastical Rules of the Holy Apostles promulgated by Clement High Priest (Pontifex) of the Church of Rome." The origin of these canons is uncertain. They first appear as a collection with the above title in the latter part of the fifth century. How much older some of them may be cannot be ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... friend and guest, and would have got orders to lead him back into his kingdom at the head of a Roman army had not the tribunes of the people, fearing any addition to Pompey's great power, had recourse to their usual state-engine, the Sibylline books; and the pontifex, at their bidding, publicly declared that it was written in those sacred pages that the King of Egypt should have the friendship of Rome, but should not ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... contributed to its making. From the historical point of view it is a religious and social method that developed with the later development of the world empire of Rome and as the expression of its moral and spiritual side. Its head was, and so far as its main body is concerned still is, the pontifex maximus of the Roman world empire, an official who was performing sacrifices centuries before Christ was born. It is easy to assert that the Empire was converted to Christianity and submitted to its terrestrial leader, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... The office of Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest, was to declare and interpret the divine law, or, rather, to preside over sacred rites; he not only prescribed rules for public ceremony, but regulated the sacrifices of private ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... treasures which he brought from Spain. He evidently wished for a triumph, but the senate paid no attention to his wishes, for no one had ever triumphed at Rome before he had held the consulship. In the year B.C. 205, Scipio was made consul with P. Licinius Crassus, who was at the same time pontifex maximus, and was consequently not allowed to leave Italy. If, therefore, a war was to be carried on abroad, the command necessarily devolved upon Scipio. His wish was immediately to sail with an army to Africa, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... up and was more amazed than when I had caught sight of Capito. Approaching me, but a few paces from me, was one of the most detestable bores in Rome, a man whom I sedulously avoided, Faltonius Bambilio. His father, the Pontifex of Vesta, was an offensively and absurdly unctuous and pompous man. His son, who had already held several minor offices in the City Government, had been one of the quaestors the year before, and so was now a senator. But he was, as he always had been, as ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... principle of unification in the resuscitation of the old national religion, in which the people believed, whether he himself did or not. Religion in Rome was largely an affair of the state; the leaders of the public religion were great state officials. Augustus was made pontifex maximus, and it was only one step farther to elevate the chief magistrate to the rank of a god. The good sense of the time generally forbade the bestowment of this honor during the imperator's lifetime, ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... with his own desires, caused Tom much sly mirth. For might it not be counted among the satisfactory results of his deposition of heavy baggage at Radley's that, for the first time in his life, he was at liberty to regard even his father, Thomas Pontifex Verity, Archdeacon of Harchester and Rector of Canton Magna, in a true perspective? And he laughed again, though this time softly, indulgently, able in the plenitude of youthful superiority to extend a kindly tolerance towards ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Emperor was called Pontifex Maximus, because he presided over civil and ecclesiastical affairs; which, is the first beast that persecuted the Christians that separated from the Established religion, which they call the holy ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... elevated to the position of more or less sovereign lords of the communities and were regarded as successors of the Apostles. The first who acted up to this idea was Calixtus. The sarcastic titles of "pontifex maximus," "episcopus episcoporum," "benedictus papa" and "apostolicus," applied to him by Tertullian in "de pudicitia" I. 13, are so many references to the fact that Calixtus already claimed for himself a position of primacy, in other words, that he associated with his own personal ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... expressions throughout, several Latin words should still be preserved; because they contained, as he pretended, such peculiar energy and significance, that they had no correspondent terms in the vulgar tongue.[**] Among these were "ecclesia, poenitentia, pontifex, contritus, holocausta, sacramentum, elementa, ceremonia, mysterium, presbyter, sacrificium, humilitas, satisfactio, peccatum, gratia, hostia, charitos," etc. But as this mixture would have appeared extremely barbarous, and was plainly calculated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... good humor, surveyed the dark, handsome face and lithe, athletic figure of Jumonville de Villiers. He again raised his cane with the gravity of a Roman pontifex, marking off his templum in the heavens. Suddenly he stopped. He repeated more carefully his survey, and then turned his earnest eyes upon ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... infuriated by the fact that the head of the intended victim, a skull furnished from medical sources, was crowned by a mortar-board, the sophomore class insignia. A formal trial followed, presided over by a Pontifex Maximus, in which a Judex, an Advocatus Pro, and an Advocatus Con participated, with the foregone result that the culprit was sentenced to be hanged, shot, and burned; a decree carried out on a gallows and bonfire previously prepared in spite of the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... the senate having been passed, Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, pontifex maximus, the college of praetors consulting with him, gives his opinion that, first of all, the people should be consulted respecting a sacred spring: that it could not be without the order of the ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... the sense of "builder of bridges" the thought is true, but pointless; consequently, for there to be a point the word Pontifex must be taken in the sense of "Bishop", and in this sense it will be false that the Pontifex is happy. Similarly, in another epigram of ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... Church is a more close copy of this ancient costume than any now worn in the Roman church. The rich cope, cape, or cloak was the dress of the Roman senator and of the Pagan priests; it was probably adopted by the Bishop of Rome when he assumed the title and office of Pontifex Maximus, and after a time the custom was followed by other bishops and priests of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... was the work of the evil spirit; that Terence was excommunicated ipso facto; and added that doubtless Brutus, who was a very severe Jansenist, assassinated Julius Caesar for no other reason but because he, who was Pontifex Maximus, presumed to write a tragedy the subject of which was "Oepidus." Lastly, he declared that all who frequented the theater were excommunicated, as they thereby renounced their baptism. This was casting the highest insult on the king and all the royal family; and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... ecclesiastics; several famous ecclesiastics with whom circumstances have brought me into contact have not been priestly persons at all; they have been vigorous, wise, energetic, statesmanlike men, such as I suppose the Pontifex Maximus at Rome might have been, with a kind of formal, almost hereditary, priesthood. And, on the other hand, I have known more than one layman of distinctly priestly character, priestly after the order of Melchizedek, ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the stream, you—Individual you; but Man (from whence you come) has found out an art for crossing it. This art is the building of bridges. And hence man in the general may properly be called Pontifex, or "The Bridge Builder"; and his symbolic summits of office ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... ceremony of the consecration of the High Priest of Cybele, which many learned men have mistaken for the consecration of the Roman Pontifex Maximus; which dignity, from the very earliest infancy of the Roman Empire, was always annexed to that of the ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... Butler's remarkable story The Way of All Flesh will probably recall his description of the Simeonites (chap. xlvii), who still flourished at Cambridge when Ernest Pontifex was up at Emmanuel. Ernest went down in 1858; so did Butler. Throughout the book the spiritual and intellectual life and development of Ernest are drawn from Butler's ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... Roman is proud of. As to the imperial city itself, there's hardly one of their high priests that has not died under the hands of the executioner, as a convict. The precious fellows take the title of Pontifex Maximus; bless their impudence! Well, my boy, this is what I say; be, if you will, so preternaturally sour and morose as to misconceive and mislike the innocent, graceful, humanising, time-honoured usages of society; be so, for what I care, if this is all; ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... together. While a still bloodier hate severed the nations apart. 'Gainst the army of Frederick Louis now went, and behind him Left the foe he had fought, over Bavaria to watch. "Ay, it is true! 'Tis really true! I have it in writing!" Thus did the Pontifex cry, when he first heard of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Through the absurd extravagances of poets and augurs, and through the growth of critical thought, this unbelief went on increasing from the days of Anaxagoras, when it was death to call the sun a ball of fire, to the days of Catiline, when Julius Casar could be chosen Pontifex Maximus, almost before the Senate had ceased to reverberate his voice openly asserting that death was the utter end of man. Plutarch dilates upon the wide skepticism of the Greeks as to the infernal world, at the close of his essay on the maxim, "Live concealed." The portentous growth of irreverent ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... separated is not known. In the time of Abraham they were still united. Melchisedech, king of Salem, was both priest and king, and the earliest historical records of kings present them as offering sacrifices. Even the Roman emperor was Pontifex Maximus as well as Imperator, but that was so not because the two offices were held to be inseparable, but because they were both conferred on the same person by the republic. In Egypt, in the time of Moses, the royal authority and the ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... Lar, or ancestral family divinity, in each house. There were Vestal virgins to guard the most sacred places. There was a college of pontiffs to regulate worship and perform the higher ceremonies, which were complicated and minute. The pontiffs were presided over by one called Pontifex Maximus,—a title shrewdly assumed by Caesar to gain control of the popular worship, and still surviving in the title of the Pope of Rome with his college of cardinals. There were augurs and haruspices ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... religion or the state should prosper, while he, who is not only Vicegerent of the gods, Universal Monarch, but what is more, their sworn Pontifex Maximus, connives at the existence and dissemination of the ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... Viae Salaria and Nomentana. That pontifex maximus of the Christians, of whom I spoke to thee, and whom they expected somewhat later, has come, and to-night he will teach and baptize in that cemetery. They hide their religion, for, though there are no edicts to prohibit it as yet, the people hate them, so they must ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... were still fluctuations in his fortune, and the tide sometimes, for a short period, went strongly against him. He was at one time, when greatly involved in debt, and embarrassed in all his affairs, a candidate for a very high office, that of Pontifex Maximus, or sovereign pontiff. The office of the pontifex was originally that of building and keeping custody of the bridges of the city, the name being derived from the Latin word pons, which signifies bridge. To this, however, had afterward been added the care of the temples, and ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... Adrian IV. (Nicholas Breakspeare) delivered the famous bull "Laudabiliter," which gave Ireland to Henry II. Adrian had great friendship for John: "Fatebatur etiam," John wrote somewhat conceitedly, "publice et secreto quod me prae omnibus mortalibus diligebat.... Et quum Romanus pontifex esset, me in propria mensa gaudebat habere convivum, et eundem scyphum et discum sibi et mihi volebat, et faciebat, me renitente, esse communem" ("Metalogicus," in the "Opera Omnia," ed. Giles, vol. v. p. 205). ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Christian professors to lecture in the public schools of science and literature: and probably he at last imposed a tax on those who did not perform sacrifice. At the same time he saw the necessity of a total reformation in paganism, if it was to revive as the rival of Christianity; and planned, as Pontifex Maximus, a scheme for effecting it, which involved the concealment of the absurdity of its origin by allegorical interpretation, together with the establishment of a discipline and organisation similar to the Christian, and special attention on the part of the priesthood to morality ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... people, and the original character of the gods of Latium was modified after the new mythology. Notwithstanding this, however, the worship of the Romans retained its political and practical character. The priests (sacerdotes) Flamines, Salii, Feciales, the Pontifices with the Pontifex Maximus at their head, the Augurs, were likewise officers of the state, and did not form a hierarchy apart from the state ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... Protestant Church to the German State has survived to this generation; whereas the Roman Catholic Church made a brave stand against Bismarck in the Kulturkampf, the Lutheran Church has remained a docile State Church. This Erastianism is illustrated by no one more signally than by the Pontifex Maximus of Prussian Protestantism, His Excellency Wirklicher Geheimrath Adolf von Harnack. Harnack has earned world-wide fame as a bold interpreter of the Scriptures, but he has refused to countenance those ministers who were discharged ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea |
