"Sacristan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... staying there a good long time, he began to study the behaviour of the pope, the cardinals and other prelates, and of the whole court. But much to his surprise he found out, partly by what passed under his eyes and partly by what he was told, that all from the pope downward to the lowest sacristan of St. Peter's were committing the sins of luxurious living in a most disgraceful and unbridled manner, with no remorse and no shame, so that pretty women and handsome youths could obtain any favours ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... down a narrow, crooked alley. After walking a few yards he found himself in the Cathedral Square, close to the left wing of the episcopal palace. The square was flooded with moonlight, and there was no one in sight; but he noticed that a side door of the Cathedral was ajar. The sacristan must have forgotten to shut it. Surely nothing could be going on there so late at night. He might as well go in and sleep on one of the benches instead of in the stifling barn; he could slip out in the morning ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... heard a drum beating, and then beheld a silver cross. After this appeared two torches borne by the chanters, then the cure, with stole, surplice, cope, and biretta. Four altar-boys escorted him, a fifth carried the holy-water basin, and in the rear came the sacristan. He got up on the raised edge of the hole in which stood the poplar tree, adorned with tri-coloured ribbons. On the opposite side could be seen the mayor and his two deputies, Beljambe and Marescot; then the principal personages of the district, M. de Faverges, Vaucorbeil, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... a pulpit to simulate a curtain, or wrought in figures on the steps of the high-altar to represent a carpet, it has no richness of effect, but a poverty, a coldness, a harshness indescribably table-clothy. I think all this has tended to chill the soul of the sacristan, who is the feeblest and thinnest sacristan conceivable, with a frost of white hair on his temples quite incapable of thawing. In this dreary sanctuary is one of Titian's great paintings, The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, to which (though ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... hounds might lead to her discovery. On one of these occasions Martin locked her up in the great hayloft of the convent, where she could actually hear the chants in the chapel, and distinguish the chatter of the lay-sisters in the yard. Another time, in conjunction with the sacristan, he bestowed her in the great seigneurial tribune (or squire's pew) in the village church, a tall carved box, where she was completely hidden; and the only time when she had failed to obtain warning beforehand, she stood ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Next morning the sacristan of the church, who was making his rounds and placing fresh candles on the altar, received a shock. The Virgin's diamond was gone! The priests, the bishop, the governor, the general, the police were notified, and there was a mighty coil. What sacrilegious wretch had ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... all very good, useful, and profitable," rejoined the elder. "You will readily find the Sacristan of some church who will give your worship the offering-bread of All Saints' Day, for cutting him his paper flowers to decorate the Monument[8] on ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... celebrated mass with the wildest and maddest words, full of obscenity and blasphemy. An oldish little fellow with a fat belly, active and nimble in spite of his weight, with a face like a skinned pumpkin was the sacristan and responded with the most frivolous refrains. He kneeled down and genuflected and turned his back to the altar and rang the bell as though it were a jester's and swung the censer round like a wheel. The others lay drunk on the steps at full length, bellowing ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... on tiptoe, with eyes modestly cast down, he entered the chamber of his master, opened the curtains, lit the fire, and made all the necessary preparations for the toilet with the discreet demeanor and respectful gestures of a sacristan placing the sacred vessels on the altar for ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... by Sacristan, in company with two respectable young Britons. "You shee dot oltarbiece, gentlemens," says Sacristan, "paint by RUBENS, in seexteen day, for seexteen hondert florin." Whereupon both Britons make a kind of "cluck" with their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... of free assembly. It had a president,[6] "elders,"[7] a hazzan, i.e., a recognized reader, or apparitor,[8] deputies,[9] who were secretaries or messengers, and conducted the correspondence between one synagogue and another, a shammash, or sacristan.[10] The synagogues were thus really little independent republics, having an extensive jurisdiction. Like all municipal corporations, up to an advanced period of the Roman empire, they issued honorary ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... historical painting. In it there is a portrait of a surly cardinal-bishop; and once, during an evening at Becker's house, having noticed a study for this bishop's head, I referred to it, when he said: "Yes, that bishop is simply the sacristan of an old church in Venice, and certainly the most dignified ecclesiastic I have ever seen.'' The musical soires at Becker's beautiful apartments were among the delights of my stay both then and during my more ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... church in a small cradle surrounded with lights, while the spectators below sang a cradle-song.{55} According to a recent writer the "rocking" is still continued in the Upper Innthal.{56} In the Tyrolese cathedral city of Brixen it was once performed every day between Christmas and Candlemas by the sacristan or boy-acolytes. That the proceedings had a tendency to be disorderly is shown by an eighteenth-century instruction to the sacristan: "Be sure to take a stick or a thong of ox-hide, for the boys are ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... primroses colouring all the brown earth. They went into the little chapel together. It smelt of incense after the ceremonies of the morning. The mournful black had been removed. There were flowers on a side-table, and the sacristan was setting the candlesticks on the fair white cloth which he had just laid along the altar. The scents in the woods at home had been thin and faint by these. Standing with his hat in his hand at the threshold of the little chapel, Robin Drummond had a memory ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... presence of Tabachetti {153b} is at Montrigone, a little-known sanctuary dedicated to St. Anne, about three-quarters of a mile south of Borgo-Sesia station. The situation is, of course, lovely, but the sanctuary does not offer any features of architectural interest. The sacristan told me it was founded in 1631; and in 1644 Giovanni d'Enrico, while engaged in superintending and completing the work undertaken here by himself and Giacomo Ferro, fell ill and died. I do not know whether or no there was an earlier ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... the son of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Tabaret kept his countenance as penitent as that of a sacristan caught eating meat on a Friday; but he was inwardly laughing and rejoicing all ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... seen him look grand; and Gibbie knew that there was not any evil in the world, except wrong. But it had been the dreariest week he had ever passed. As they came from the public room, he lay in wait for him once more, but again in vain: he must have gone through the sacristan's garden behind. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... went to the Church of St. Roch, to see a famous piece of mosaic-work there. It is a famous work of art, and was bought by I don't know what king for I don't know how much money. All this information may be perfectly relied on, though the fact is, we did not see the mosaic-work: the sacristan, who guards it, was yet in bed; and it was veiled from our eyes in a side-chapel by great dirty damask curtains, which could not be removed, except when the sacristan's toilette was done, and at the price of a dollar. So we were spared this mosaic exhibition; and I think I always feel ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the loophole when our turnkey threw the door open. I heard the priest and his sacristan joking in the corridor before they entered carrying their sacred parcels. The priest was a doddering old fellow, almost deaf, for the turnkey shouted at his ear, and dim of sight, for he stooped close to look at the dying man, who was ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... inspecting the smear—a portrait of the old Sacristan on a bench in front of the main entrance—started back in surprise on seeing the Bostonian, and asked with an anxious tone ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was interrupted by the Sacristan, who, in a voice almost inarticulate with anger, accused the Bohemian of having practised the most abominable arts of delusion among the younger brethren. He had added to their nightly meal cups of a heady and intoxicating cordial, of ten times the strength of ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... you go and call the sacristan from the bell," the prior said, "and bid him lead you to the chancel, where I ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... east, and that the lines of the walls bend a little to the left from a line drawn across between the modern chapels. The floor of this basilica is about 2 ft. 9 in. below that of the present one. The mosaic pavement is well preserved nearly all over the surface; and the sacristan opens numerous trap-doors, and puts down tapers, to show the most interesting portions. The cills of two of the doors still remain 9 in. higher and much worn by traffic; the third was destroyed to place a sarcophagus against the wall of the church. Between ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... of the church was wide open. The sacristan put out the candles, and the smoke from them rose like incense into the air. The tumbril rattled away in the dusk. My mind returned again to the phrases of the sermon,—original sin, death, life, of a ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... Sacristan, acolyte, player, or preacher, Each to his office, but who holds the key? Death, only Death—thou, the ultimate teacher Wilt ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... any conclusion, I asked the sacristan, and was told it was by a certain Dedomenici of Rossa, in the Val Sesia, and that it had been painted some forty or fifty years ago. I expressed my surprise, and the sacristan continued: "Yes, ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... Except these two figures, of which the execution was truly sinful, the rest was at least veiled by shadow, and was not too afflicting to the eyes. The chapel was dim, and always at the time of the offices, a young sacristan-sister, tall and pale, and rather bent, entered like a shadow, and each time that she passed before the altar she fell on one knee and bowed ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... would have liked to slip along the aisle in his shadow, to have called him by his name, but the presence of his two unknown companions, and some diffidence in herself, restrained her until the opportunity was gone, and he disappeared, inveigled by the sacristan into making the regular tour of the building. She knew every word he would hear, every antiquity he would admire. She saw him in the choir turning over the splendid manuscript books of Holy Writ and of the Mass which were in use in the church when ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... how to shoot, they would bring from Chile certain Jesuits who in the world had served as soldiers. One sees them brought from the frontiers of Araucania, and from the outposts of the trans-Andean towns, half sacristan, half sergeant, instant in prayer, and yet with a look about them like a serious bull terrier — a fitting kind of priest for a frontier town, and such as could alone be found ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... livid lineaments of death. Just at that moment the whole choir burst forth with a 'Requiescat in pace,' that shook the vaults of the cathedral. Don Manuel sank senseless on the pavement. He was found there early the next morning by the sacristan, and conveyed to his home. When sufficiently recovered, he sent for a friar and made a full confession of all ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... curate; deacon, deaconess; preacher, reader, lecturer; capitular[obs3]; missionary, propagandist, Jesuit, revivalist, field preacher. churchwarden, sidesman[obs3]; clerk, precentor[obs3], choir; almoner, suisse[Fr], verger, beadle, sexton, sacristan; acolyth[obs3], acolothyst[obs3], acolyte, altar boy; chorister. [Roman Catholic priesthood] Pope, Papa, pontiff, high priest, cardinal; ancient flamen[obs3], flamen[obs3]; confessor, penitentiary; spiritual director. cenobite, conventual, abbot, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have failed to be lucky in your collection, being so deserving and so beautiful." "Alas! Sir," replied Javotte in the most ingenuous fashion, "you must excuse me. I have just been counting it up with the Father Sacristan, and I have only made 65 livres 5 sous. Now, Mademoiselle Henriette made 90 livres a little time since; 'tis true she collected all through the forty hours'[265] service, and in a place where there was the finest Paradise ever seen." "When I spoke," said Nicodeme, "of the luck of your collection, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... be captured by a painter is wonderful enough; but there seems to me something more extraordinary in the successful conquest of the difficulties which confront an artist of such ambition as this Dort carver. His triumph is even more striking than that of the sculptor in marble. The sacristan of Dort's Groote Kerk seems more eager to show a brass screen and a gold christening bowl than these astounding choir stalls; but tastes ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... before, and the hour for the ceremony fixed. One of the women went forward towards the door of the vestry, where she was met by a National Guard, who told her with a superfluity of oaths that she must not go in, that the —— cure, the sacristan, and all the d—— fellows of the church were locked up, and that they would no longer have anything to do with patriots. Then the mother approached and said, "But who will bury my poor child if the cure is in prison?" and then she began ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... land. Henry II, an ardent sportsman, a ruler almost completely immersed in affairs of State, made time for private reading and for working out knotty questions,[1] and very probably he had a library to his hand. King John received from the sacristan of Reading a small collection of books of the Bible and severe theology, perhaps as a diplomatic gift, perhaps as a subtle reminder that a little food for the spirit would improve his morals and ameliorate the lot of his ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... to twelve I was knocking at the north door of the cathedral. A sacristan, who carried in his hand a long lighted taper, admitted me at once. Save for this taper and four candles which stood at the four corners of the bier, the vast interior ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... The sacristan lighted lamps in order to show me the Moorish chapels. Nothing but the precious materials of which these exquisite structures are composed could have saved them from the holy hands of the Inquisition, which intentionally ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... confraternity," we read, "called La Confraternita della Mercede, was wont to sleep in the damp recesses of the ancient chapel of Braccioforte." His name was Angelo Grillo ... This sacristan declared himself to have seen in a dream a shade issue from the spot where the body was found, clad in red, that it passed through the chapel into the adjoining cemetery. It approached him, and on being asked who ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... the pennies which attendants have to pay on taking them. Not one of these collectors has officiated less than 11 years; three of them have been at the work for 27; and what is still better they discharge their duties, as the sacristan once told us, "free gracious." That is a philanthropic wrinkle for chapel keepers and other compounders of business and piety which we commend to special notice. The singers at St. Augustine's are of more ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... last few months. Notwithstanding the enlightened efforts of the doctor of the Pontifical 'family,' and of her parents, the young invalid was soon at the last extremity. The vice-cure of the palace (which, as is known, is a foundation), a member of the Augustin order (Monseigneur the Sacristan of the same order is the titular cure), had administered to her the sacrament of extreme unction, and had recited the prayer recommending her soul. Her last sigh was hourly expected. For the sake of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... after this fracas, a personage of venerable appearance presented himself at Epinal, and applied for the post of sacristan and bell-ringer, at that time vacant. Though he squinted, his appearance was far from disagreeable, and he obtained the appointment without difficulty. His deportment in it was in all respects edifying; or if he evinced some little remissness ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... may be compared with the episode of Tappe-coue or Tickletoby in Pantagruel:—"Villon, to dress an old clownish father grey-beard, who was to represent God the Father [at the performance of a mystery], begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan Friars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole. Tickletoby refused him, alleging that by their provincial statutes it was rigorously forbidden to give or lend anything to players. Villon replied that the statute reached no further ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... suppliants. The church communicated through its crypt with some of the many catacombs that pierced the hills of Syracuse into a labyrinth; in one of these it was easy to conceal Perpetua with safety and with some degree of comfort. As for the fool, the church just needed a sacristan; a friar's robe was soon found and fitted; a brown hood concealed the ugly, haggard face, and the cripple Diogenes, who had been Robert the King, became the willing, patient servant of the little church by ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... cathedral was the early song-school of the church, which passed into the hands of the college of vicars choral, and was a hall for their business meetings and musical practice, the second storey being probably their reading-room, or the sleeping-place of the sacristan, who was required to ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... vocal mothers were Mother Sainte-Honorine; the treasurer, Mother Sainte-Gertrude, the chief mistress of the novices; Mother-Saint-Ange, the assistant mistress; Mother Annonciation, the sacristan; Mother Saint-Augustin, the nurse, the only one in the convent who was malicious; then Mother Sainte-Mechtilde (Mademoiselle Gauvain), very young and with a beautiful voice; Mother des Anges (Mademoiselle Drouet), who ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... continued the sacristan, "Louis the Gentle, the son of Charlemagne, went hunting with all his retinue in this forest. They had with them a box ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... he carefully saw to his private affairs, arranged for the support of his wife and family, and entrusted the office of sacristan, which he held, to a young and worthy clerk to hold ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... side of Brother Peter Herbort. In the same year, on the Feast day of St. Lambert, and after Prime, Brother Hermann Craen the Vestiarius died of the plague, being sixty-four years old. In the beginning he was Sacristan, but afterward, and for above fifteen years, Vestiarius. Then for thirteen years he held the office of Procurator, but being set aside from that office, he was for the second time appointed to be Vestiarius, in which ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... to the top of one of the towers, and showed us the five bells hanging in their loft. From above, the town was a tessellated pavement of roofs and gardens; the old line of rampart was plainly traceable; and the Sacristan pointed out to us, far across the plain, in a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the ground floor is Josef the barber and his wife, with three little ones. It cannot be them, I am sure, and it cannot be Monsieur Ducrot, who is their lodger, for he is seventy years old and a sacristan in the Church of the Sacred Heart. Then on the first floor there are three men, not a woman amongst them. One is a bill-sticker, another a fisherman, and the third a waiter in the Cafe du Midi. ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... suggestions. In girls' minds you will find little dust but what is carried there by gusts from without. They seldom want sweeping; when they do, the broom should be taken from behind the house door, and the master should be the sacristan. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... gone in who had never come out again. If the devotee persisted, he was ceremoniously conducted to the shaft. He was lowered down by means of a rope, with a loaf and a vessel of water to strengthen him in the combat against the fiend which he proposed to wage. On the following morning the sacristan offered the rope anew to the sufferer. If he mounted to the surface again, they brought him back to the church, bearing the cross and chanting psalms. If he were not to be found, the sacristan closed the door and departed. In more modern times pilgrims to the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... edges of the cut canvas began to bleed, and the blood remains there to this day, and may be seen by the curious in one of the parish churches of that city! They relate numerous cases in which the host when profaned has, when broken, sent forth blood. If a sacristan omits to light the lamp which burns at night before the eucharist, the lamp lights itself. There are innumerable persons in Spain who believe that he who is born on Good-Friday has a cross on the roof of his mouth, and the faculty ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... hand. This is a ceremony which is always gone through with in the most formal, mechanical, business-like manner possible. Some palms, not in natural branches, but cut and wreathed in various strange, fantastic forms, lay on the altar. The Pope's chief sacristan took one of these, a deacon another, a sub-deacon a third, and knelt at the foot of the throne. His Holiness read prayers over them, sprinkled them with holy water, and incensed them three times. One of these is held beside the throne by the prince assistant during the service; another is borne ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... Christians, fervent in their love to the Great Mother of God. Whence we may believe that to satisfy their ardent desires he was continually applying himself to this task of so much glory to Mary and her blessed Son." But the sacristan of the church at Caulonia, to whom I applied for information regarding these local treasures, knew nothing about them, and his comments gave me the impression that he has relapsed into a somewhat pagan way ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... campaniles To ring a wedding in. The seven bells Of Santo Pietro, from the nones to noon, Boomed with bronze throats the happy tidings out; Till the great tenor, overswelled with sound, Cracked itself dumb. Thereat the sacristan, Leading his swinked ringers down the stairs, Came blinking into sunlight—all his keys Jingling their little peal about his belt— Whom, as he tarried, locking up the porch, A foreign signor, browned with southern suns, Turbaned and slippered, as the Muslims use, Plucked ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... daintiest bit of architectural fancy. Whilst we were revelling in the contrast afforded by the intense glow of the stained glass and the pure white marble—the interior being one of the loveliest, if least spacious, in France—the sacristan's wife came up and said that if we waited a few minutes longer ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and also shows that the steady growth in wealth and influence of the clergy through his reign, was not unaccompanied by an immorality which was conspicuous under Archbishop Hugh II., and became flagrant during the office of Mauger later on. It appears that the Sacristan of St. Ouen fell most uncanonically in love with a lady who dwelt on the other side of the Robec. On his way to meet her one dark night, his foot slipped from the plank that crossed the rapid little stream, and he fell into the water. Whereon a ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... He had been sacristan and afterwards prior of the cell at Hertford. The Pope's bull confirming his election required him to present himself at Rome every three years. The church was again struck by lightning, notwithstanding the fact that the impression of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... and tower sounded the well-known chime, thrice a day, to remind the faithful of the Incarnation, and its daily thrice-repeated memorial” (F. G. Lee, “Pilgrimage of Grace”). The poor were never forgotten in these multiplied services. When mass was celebrated, it was a rule that the sacristan rang the “sanctus” bell (from its cherished sanctity often the only bell still preserved in our village churches), “so that the rustics who could not be present might everywhere, in field or home, be able to ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... he should pursue with respect to Francisco, when Hawkhurst made his appearance on deck, followed by his men, who dragged up six individuals who had escaped the massacre. These were the bishop; his niece; a Portuguese girl, her attendant; the supercargo of the vessel; a sacristan; and a servant of the ecclesiastic: they were hauled along the deck and placed in a row before the captain, who cast his eyes upon them in severe scrutiny. The bishop and his niece looked round, the one proudly meeting the eye of Cain, although he felt that his hour was come; the other carefully ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... aisle and came to the anteroom of the treasury. Its door was open. They entered what had once been a tower of the old palace. The door of the treasury was also open. They went in and found the sacristan and a woman. She held the turquoise cup in ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... forth in grand procession as the victim of the dragon. Pithyrian, in distraction, rushed into a Christian church, and fell before an image which attracted his attention, at the base of which was the real arm of a saint. The sacristan handed the holy relic to Pithyrian, who kissed it, and then restored it to the sacristan; but the servitor did not observe that a thumb was missing. Off ran Pithyrian with the thumb, and joined his daughter. On came the dragon, with tail ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the ridiculous—especially when the chance of the sublime may be the very excellent chance of five francs. The performance in question, of which the good San Carlo paid in the first instance the cost, was impressive certainly, but as a monstrous matter or a grim comedy may still be. The little sacristan, having secured his audience, whipped on a white tunic over his frock, lighted a couple of extra candles and proceeded to remove from above the altar, by means of a crank, a sort of sliding shutter, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... empire was begun by his widow Livia, and Tiberius, his adopted son, and completed by Caligula. An inscription discovered in 1726, in the Columbaria of Livia on the Appian Way, mentions a C. Julius Bathyllus, sacristan or keeper of the temple. Pliny (xii. 19, 42) describes, among the curiosities of the place, a root of a cinnamon-tree, of extraordinary size, placed by Livia on a golden tray. The relic was destroyed by fire in the reign of Titus. Domitian must have restored the building, ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... sacristan whispered to Father Gaspara that an Indian couple had just come in, wishing to be married, the Father frowned. His supper was waiting; he had been out all day, over at the old Mission olive-orchard, where ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... sacristan dusting the sacred properties with a feather brush, and giving each shrine a business-like nod as he passed, was as a long-lost brother; they had hearts of aggressive tenderness for the young girls and old women who stepped in for a half-hour's devotion, and for the men with bourgeois or peasant ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... town, enclosed in Rome. At Monte Giordano (Palazzo Gabbrielli) it becomes the walled Umbrian town, castellated. In this gloom, this sadness of icy evening sky between the high roofs, and after the appalling sadness of a church, squalid, dark, a few people kneeling, and the sacristan extinguishing the altars after a Benediction (every grief, one would think, laid down on that floor only to pick up a weight of the grief of others); after this there was something sweet and country-like in the splash of the fountains ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... looking in His face, and it was a ghastly contrast between her royal array and His naked body. She, too, wore the imperial crown, with its golden aureole, and her cloak was of damask embroidered with heavy gold. Her hair fell in curling abundance about her breast, and the sacristan told me it was the hair of a lady who had lost her husband and her only son. But the dead Christ was terrible, His face half hidden by the long straight hair, long as a woman's, and His body thin and all discoloured: from the wounds thick blood poured ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... presently he knew that this would be his father and mother; so he stood still and waited till the service should be over; and by then it was done the twilight was growing fast in the church, and the sacristan was lighting a lamp here and there in some of the chapels, and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... foreign cathedral, or even into one of the Catholic churches in our large towns. The celebrant, deacon and sub-deacon, acolytes with lights, the incense and the chanting all combine to one end, one act of worship." White is much exercised by the question whether a sacristan should wear the short or the long cotta. But he finally marries and settles down into ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Christians met and prayed in the little church, unconscious of the wonder-working relic hidden so near them; and it was only through a miracle, in Charlemagne's time and some say in his presence, that the holy body was discovered. This is the history which a sacristan recites to curious pilgrims as he leads them to ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... for some time with all his family in Pisa; and since he belonged to the Company of the Misericordia, which in that city accompanies those condemned to death to the place of execution, there once came into his head, being sacristan at that time, the strangest caprice in the world. One night he took out of the grave the body of one who had been hanged the day before; and, after having dissected it for the purposes of his art, being a whimsical fellow, and perhaps a wizard, and ready to believe in enchantments ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... notwithstanding, you find the place good, you are the master; and, besides, I must be just—speaking of the notary—if there's something against, there's also something for him. He is as miserly as a dog, hard as an ass, bigoted as a sacristan, it is true; but he is as honest as one can be. He gives small wages, but he pays like a man. The food is bad. In fine, it is a house where one must work like a horse, but where there is no risk of a young girl's reputation. Louise ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... the sacristan of the church of St. Eulalie at Neuville d'Aumont told me, as we sat under the arbor of the White Horse, one fine summer evening, drinking a bottle of old wine to the health of the dead man, now very much at his ease, whom that very morning he had ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... day for their sports. In the afternoon he would be with them to distribute the prizes and congratulate the winners, and to add to the general enjoyment by his presence; but this morning he was alone, except for his deaf old housekeeper, and Jim the sacristan, who was too dignified to be out on the Fair Hill with the others. The priest's look of perplexity deepened as he watched some one climbing the steep hill to his house. 'It looks like Cody's ghost carrying his wife's body,' he muttered to himself. The figure or figures came nearer. At last his ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... he had entered, but by the south door into the court, his readiest way to reach the rooms he occupied with his father, near the marquis's study. Hardly another door in either court was ever made fast except this one, which, merely in self-administered flattery of his own consequence, the conceited sacristan who assumed charge of the key, always locked at night. But there was no reason why Delaware should pay any respect to this, or hesitate to remove the bar securing one-half of the door, without which the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... visit to the Cathedral, whose massive tower frowns down upon the court-yard of the inn. Off we go; and very solemn and grand it is, in the dim light: so dim at last, that the polite, old, lanthorn-jawed Sacristan has a feeble little bit of candle in his hand, to grope among the tombs with—and looks among the grim columns, very like a lost ghost who ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... crowbars and pickaxes, and proceed immediately to the crypt, where no doubt could exist as to the noises at that moment, as the yellings, scamperings and scramblings were loud enough in all conscience. The sacristan came out from the body of the church and suggested another exorcism to the reverend father, who answered that he preferred the pickaxe, and, turning to beckon to his workmen, found they had fled. Nowise daunted, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... verger, beadle, chancel, clearstory, nave, transept, vestry, presbytery, prebend, prebendary, lectern, apse, irenicon, living, benefice, sinecure, glebe, see, prelacy, convocation, synod, conference, conclave, consistory, crypt, schism, orthodoxy, heterodoxy, unchurch, sacristan, sacristy, Dorcastry, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... vision weaving itself and flickering in the golden August weather, and in his ears a sentence running, chiming, striking upon the word "gold"— "Ding-a-ding-a-dong! 'Taty-patch a gold mine—'taty-patch a gold mine!" The prosaic Mr Latter had set the chime ringing, as a dull sacristan might unloose the music of a belfry; but like a chime of faery it rippled and trilled, closing ever upon the deep note "gold," and echoed back as from a ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... spending many hours before an altar-piece in the Church of Santa Cruz where was a picture of "The Descent from the Cross," by Pedro Campana. "Why do you always tarry before 'The Descent from the Cross?'" the sacristan once ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... was empty when I pushed past the leather hanging that covered the door, but the sacristan was lighting the candles for Benediction, so I went up to the bronze screen, the Cancello, that divides the public part from the part occupied by the Sisters, and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... words in a low voice, two or three dirty choristers, in soiled surplices, were charting the prayers for the dead, with an absent and sullen air, round a plain deal coffin, followed only by a sobbing old man and a child, miserably clad. The beadle and the sacristan, very much displeased at being disturbed for so wretched a funeral, had not deigned to put on their liveries, but, yawning with impatience, waited for the end of the ceremony, so useless to the interests of the establishment. At length, a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... conversion and her recent baptism, completed the resemblance. And you can imagine whether worldly curiosity was rampant around that ex-odalisque turned fervent Catholic, as she entered the room, escorted by a sacristan-like figure with a livid face and spectacles, Maitre Le Merquier, Deputy for Lyon, Hemerlingue's man of business, who attended the baroness when the baron was "slightly ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... church of S. Gaudenzio, behind the altar, there is an exceedingly fine Ancona by Gaudenzio, to which I have already referred. Over an altar in the north transept, but for the most part hidden behind a painted tela, is Tabachetti's very beautiful Madonna del Rosario, which the visitor should ask the Sacristan to show him; and last, but hardly least, there is a Madonna by Dedomenici of Rossa—a village higher up the Valsesia—painted on linen, in the chapel dedicated to ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... it was intended to despatch it to the journal was a very memorable one for him. Navagin remembers that on that never-to-be-forgotten day the secretary who had made a fair copy of his article and the sacristan of the parish who had been sent for on business were in his study. Nayagin's face was beaming. He looked lovingly at his creation, felt between his fingers how thick it was, and with a happy smile said ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... his address at them from clever parents, and, as he had never been frightened or coerced, all his lessons and acquirements were but play to him. He acquitted himself admirably, and the crockery-venders came and looked on, and a sacristan came out of the church and smiled, and the barber left his customer's chin all in a lather while he laughed, for the good folk of the quarter were all proud of Moufflou and never tired of him, and the pleasant, easy-going, good-humored disposition of the Tuscan populace is so far ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... in the sacristan; "they watch every door. Hark! hark! hark!" and as he spoke there came the sound of battering on the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the Cardinal-Archbishop of Rheims presented an arm-bone of the saint to the Scots College in Rome. It was removed for safety to the Vatican Treasury when the college was closed during the French occupation of Rome. Through the good offices of the Right Rev. Bishop Pifferi, the Papal sacristan, the relic was restored to the college in 1893. A notable relic of this saint was obtained from Rheims by the Abbey of Fort-Augustus and is now honoured there. There is no other record of the saint's ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... song of Demeter"—says the prize-poet, or the Interpreter, the Sacristan of the holy places—"the song of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, whom Aidoneus carried away by the consent of Zeus, as she played, apart from her mother, with the deep- bosomed daughters of the Ocean, gathering flowers in a meadow ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Paul, near to the place where the bronze pine-cone is, on a wall between the arches of the portico on the outer side; and in this he counterfeited the manner of Giotto very well, receiving so much praise, above all because he portrayed therein a sacristan of S. Pietro lighting some lamps before the said figures with much promptness, that he was summoned with very great insistence to the Court of the Pope at Avignon, where he wrought so many pictures, in fresco and on panels, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... Memling's portrait of her is a faithful one. I was glad to see here one of the jars from the marriage-supper in Cana. We can identify it by a piece which is broken out; and the piece is in Notre Dame in Paris. It has been in this church five hundred years. The sacristan, a very intelligent person, with a shaven crown and his hair cut straight across his forehead, who showed us the church, gave us much useful information about bones, teeth, and the remains of the garments that the virgins wore; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... day; it rang as much as anyone could desire. Sometimes even, it would start at night, and sound gently through the darkness, seized by strange joy, awakened, one could not tell why. All the peasants in the neighborhood declared that it was bewitched, and nobody, except the priest and the sacristan would now go near the church tower, and they went because a poor girl was living there in grief and solitude, secretly ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... right of the choir is an elaborate Roman doorway, and preserved in the Chapter Room are five paintings depicting the "Chaste Susanne." A remarkable collection of reliques is shown by the sacristan, in the Chapelle ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... OF BEVERLEY, was sacristan of the church of Beverley in the first half of the 12th century. He wrote, apparently about the year 1143, a chronicle entitled Annales sive Historia de gestis regum Britanniae, which begins with Brutus and carries the history of England down to 1129. This work was edited by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... capricious, and inconsistent part in the pages assigned to her in the narrative; manifesting interest and attachment to the family with whom her destinies are associated, but evincing whim, and even a species of malevolence, towards other mortals, as the Sacristan, and the Border robber, whose incorrect life subjected them to receive petty mortifications at her hand. The White Lady is scarcely supposed, however, to have possessed either the power or the inclination to do more than inflict terror or create ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... brought such a valet with him from Cadiz, as one often meets with on the coasts of Spain and in the American colonies. He was a quarter Spaniard, born of a mongrel in Tucuman; he had been singing-boy, sacristan, sailor, monk, pedlar, soldier, and lackey. His name was Cacambo, and he loved his master, because his master was a very good man. He quickly ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... by the Eildon hills. Some ruins of the abbey mill, with the dam belonging to "Hob Miller," the father of the "lovely Mysinda," are still to be seen; and the ford across the Tweed, where the worthy Sacristan was played so scurvy a trick by the White Lady, is also pointed out. Some miles off, on a wild and romantic spot on the course of the river, Elwin, or Allan, is Fairy Dean, or Nameless Dean, which is at once identified to be that place above the tower and vale of Glendearg, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... the church of San Bernardino da Siena. There was no difficulty in finding it, at the end of the Corso—the inevitable "Corso" of every Italian town. The old gentleman walked briskly along the broad, clean street, and reached the door of the church just as the sacristan was hoisting the heavy leathern curtain, preparatory to locking ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... month of April, 1565—in its very spacious wooden church, which is dedicated to the holy guardian angel (unless it be dedicated to the holy archangel, St. Michael, as is so fitting, as he was the first titular of that village). That church has its sacristy, with its cura and sacristan. There is a provisor, and some secular clergy with benefices are located in some of the islands of its jurisdiction. In that city the order of the great father St. Augustine has a convent, in which is venerated [an image of] the most miraculous child Jesus, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... holiday which we call Sementivae I came to the temple of Tellus at the invitation of the Sacristan (I was taught by my ancestors to call him Aeditumus but the modern purist tells me I must say Aedituus). There I found assembled C. Fundanius, my father-in-law, C. Agrius, a Roman Knight and a disciple ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... sunk in fat, were fixed upon the ikon stand. He saw the long familiar figures of the saints, the verger Matvey puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles, the darkened candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to the churchwarden.... All these things he had seen for years, and seen over and over again like the five fingers of his hand.... There was only one thing, however, that was somewhat strange and unusual. Father Grigory, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a quarter of it for his own table; if any of his debtors found a beautiful horse, within a half hour it would be in the Captain's stable. All of this is true, but still when the Captain had his back turned they made fun of him and referred to him as Sacristan Tiago. ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... humility and rancour that compensated for his lack of talent. The marquis, in entering on the campaign, had perceived immediately the advantage that might be derived from the co-operation of this insipid sacristan with the coarse, mercenary pen. After the February Revolution the articles in the "Gazette" contained fewer ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... it, one would say, from his haste to reach the open Cathedral door. The choir are getting on their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service. Then, the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary from the chancel, and all of the procession having scuttled into their places, hide their faces; and then the intoned words, 'WHEN THE WICKED MAN—' rise among groins of arches and beams of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... process of describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object of study. It was not in the personal appearance ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... The sacristan opened a tall and narrow little recess in the wall of the chancel, and showed it entirely filled with the crosier of William of Wickham. It appears to be made of silver gilt, and is a most rich and elaborate relic, at least six ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the library, haunting my thoughts as they wandered restlessly in search of occupation. I tried to recollect all the men with fluty voices that I had ever met in Bourges: a corn-factor from the Place St. Jean; Rollet, the sacristan; a fat manufacturer, who used to get my uncle to draw up petitions for him claiming relief from taxation. I hunted feverishly in my memory as the light died away from the windows, and the towers of St. Stephen's gradually lost the glowing aureole conferred ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... "but we must pay the sacristan for showing them to us. We can ask him about them when we come ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... into the river again. All was thenceforth wonderment and devotion. Masses were sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled; the monks of St. Romuald had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas a Becket in the centre; —Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water. The Rood of Gillingham was deserted; the chapel of Rainham forsaken; every one who had a ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... Presently a cassocked sacristan came and lit the vesper lights, for evensong was to be at seven, and the altar blazed out, an unearthly brilliance in the dim place. The low murmur of voices (a patient priest had been hearing confessions for ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... hence the custom and law began That still at dawn the sacristan, Who duly pulls the heavy bell, 340 Five and forty beads must tell Between each stroke—a warning knell, Which not a soul can choose but hear From Bratha ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... be mentioned that the traveller's patience may undergo a trial here. When I arrived at Jouarre, M. le Cure and the sacristan were both absent, and as no one else possessed the key of the crypt, my chance of seeing it seemed small. However, some one obligingly set out on a voyage of discovery, and finally the sacristan's wife ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards |
