"Simony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of simony was, therefore, explicable enough, and perhaps ineradicable under the circumstances. It was, nevertheless, very demoralizing, for it spread downward and infected the whole body of the clergy. A bishop who had made a large outlay in obtaining his office naturally expected something from the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... Go, take possession of the Church porch door, And ring thy bells; luck stroken in thy fist The parsonage is thine, or ere thou wist. Saint Fool's of Gotam[162] mought thy parish be For this thy base and servile Simony. ...
— English Satires • Various
... and great thought him proud. Moreover, he was a foe to idleness, and sent away from court to their distant sees a host of bishops who wished to bask in the sunshine of court favor, or revel in the excitements of a great city; and they became his enemies. He deposed others for simony, and they became still more hostile. Others again complained that he was inhospitable, since he would not give up his time to everybody, even while he scattered his revenues to the poor. And still others entertained towards him the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... archbishopric, sent missionaries to Finland, Greenland and the Orkney Islands, and aimed at making Bremen a patriarchal see for northern Europe, with twelve suffragan bishoprics. He consolidated and increased the estates of the church, exercised the powers of a count, denounced simony and initiated financial reforms. The presence of this powerful and active personality, who was moreover a close friend of the emperor, was greatly resented by the Saxon duke, Bernard II., who regarded him as a spy sent by Henry ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he affects your cause, And lies to every lord in every thing, Like a king's favourite—or like a king. These are the talents that adorn them all, From wicked waters even to godly * * Not more of simony beneath black gowns, Nor more of bastardy in heirs to crowns. In shillings and in pence at first they deal; And steal so little, few perceive they steal; Till, like the sea, they compass all the land, From Scots to Wight, from mount to Dover strand: And when rank widows purchase luscious nights, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... father, and went down to the hospital; but Mr Harding wouldn't listen at all to the Puddingdale scheme. To his eyes it had no attraction; it savoured of simony, and was likely to bring down upon him harder and more deserved strictures than any he had yet received: he positively declined to become vicar of Puddingdale ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... employ'd on one, whose trust He wins, or on another who withholds Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes. Whence in the second circle have their nest Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries, Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce To lust, or set their honesty at pawn, With such vile scum as these. The other way Forgets both Nature's general love, and that Which thereto added afterwards gives birth To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... control, the interference of lay patrons in the appointments to benefices, the absence of seminaries, and the failure of the universities to give a proper ecclesiastical training, produced their natural effect on a large body of the clergy. Grave charges of ignorance, indifference, concubinage, and simony were not wholly groundless, as the decrees of various ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... commentator concerning Pope Nicholas III. is deprived of its most telling points: "Nam fuit primus in cujus curia palam committeretur Simonia per suos attinentes. Quapropter multum ditavit eos possessionibus, pecuniis et castellis, super onmes Romanos": "For he was the first at whose court Simony was openly committed in favor of his adherents. Whereby he greatly enriched them with possessions, money, and strongholds, above all the Romans." "Sed quod Clerici capiunt raro dimittunt": "What the clergy have once laid hands on, they rarely give up." Nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... chance;" on yours "let every man stand in his place." Yes, indeed, let that be so, every man in his place, and every man fit for it. See that he holds that place from Heaven's Providence; and not from his family's Providence. Let the Lords Spiritual quit themselves of simony, we laymen will look after the heretics for them. Let the Lords Temporal quit themselves of nepotism, and we will take care of their authority for them. Publish for us, you soldiers, an army gazette, in which ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... indolent habit inherited from his father a depraved and vicious nature. After a regency of eight years he became king at the age of fifteen, and lived to defile his youth and dishonour his manhood by debauchery and adultery, simony and brigandage. Early in his career he followed the evil counsels of his provost Etienne, and purposed the spoliation of the treasury of St. Germain des Pres to pay for his dissolute pleasures. "As the sacrilegious pair," ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... in Dalaber's mind a sense of restless discontent with existing ordinances, and a longing after purer, clearer light, together with a distaste and ofttimes a disgust at what he saw of corruption and simony amongst those who should have been the salt ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... books which did the most to bring him to the stake. The first was his treatise "On Traffic in Holy Things"; the second his great, elaborate work, "The Church."1 In the first he denounced the sale of indulgences, and declared that even the Pope himself could be guilty of the sin of simony. In the second, following Wycliffe's lead, he criticised the whole orthodox conception of the day of the "Holy Catholic Church." What was, asked Hus, the true Church of Christ? According to the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... usury is no deadly sin. And they sell benefices of Holy Church. And so do men in other places: God amend it when his will is! And that is great sclaundre, for now is simony king crowned in Holy Church: God ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... representatives by an hereditary descent, considered all the more real because it was spiritual and not carnal, of the Roman Church; to prevent his being entangled, whether by marriage or otherwise, in the business of this life; out of which would flow nepotism, Simony, and Erastian submission to those sovereigns who ought to be the servants, not the lords of the Church. For this end no means were too costly. St. Dunstan, in order to expel the married secular priests, and replace them by Benedictine monks of the Italian order of ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... of St. Paul, walks were laid out for merchants, as in the Royal Exchange. Thus, "the south alley for usurye, and poperye; the north for simony and the horse fair; in the middest for all kinds of bargains, meetings, brawlings, murthers, conspiracies; and the font for ordinary paiements of money, are so well knowne to all menne as the beggar knows ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... greater contrast than that between the Hildebrandine programme and the measures by which it was incompletely realised. To enforce the celibacy of the clergy the mobs of Milan and the South-German cities were commissioned to rabble married priests. To make an end of simony the German princes were encouraged in a policy of provincial separatism, a premium was placed on perjured accusations, and a son was suborned to betray his father. That the tide of the Albigensian heresy might be stemmed, Innocent III launched against the brilliant ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Anthropological Society, but I see no signs of its being made a special organ of that Society. The Editor (and, I believe, proprietor) is a Mr. Bendyshe, the most talented man in the Society, and, judging from his speaking, which I have often heard, I should say the articles on "Simeon and Simony," "Metropolitan Sewage," and "France and Mexico," are his, and these are in my opinion superior to anything that has been in the Reader for a long time; they have the point and brilliancy which are wanted to make leading articles readable and popular. The articles on Mill's ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... minds and souls of the race on which it inflicts them. Is your Christianity, then, he would say, a respecter of persons, and does it condone the sin because the sinner can contribute to your coffers? Was there ever a simony like this,—that does not sell, but withholds, the gift of ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... breaches of the general ethical code, they were far from coming up to the special standard which the canon law imposed upon the clergy, and which the monastic reformation was making the inflexible law of the time. Married priests abounded; there were said to be even married bishops. Simony was not infrequent. Every churchman of high rank was likely to be a pluralist, holding bishoprics and abbacies together, like Stigand, who held with the primacy the bishopric of Winchester and many abbeys. That such a man as Stigand, holding every ecclesiastical ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... blazing-star; no sooner he comes into the cathedral, but a train of whispers runs buzzing round the congregation in a moment: Who is he? Whence comes he? Do you know him?Then I, sir, tips me the verger with half-a-crown; he pockets the simony, and inducts me into the best pew in the church; I pull out my snuff-box, turn myself round, bow to the bishop, or the dean, if he be the commanding-officer; single out a beauty, rivet both my eyes to hers, set my ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... before the King at Woodstock on Palm Sunday. The piece is now lost; but a copy was seen by Warton, who gave an account of it. As the matter is very curious, I must add a few of its points. The persons are a Conjurer, the Devil, a Notary Public, Simony, and Avarice. The plot is the trial of Simony and Avarice, the Devil being the judge, and the Notary serving as assessor. The Conjurer has little to do but open the subject, evoke the Devil, and summon the court. The prisoners ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... poor lot this year, uncommon. Consequently an expensive lot. The fact is, Mr. Bolton, that the price is raised so high on United States Senator now, that it affects the whole market; you can't get any public improvement through on reasonable terms. Simony is what I call it, Simony," repeated Mr. Bigler, as if he had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Pope was naturally short of money. He relied on two principal methods for replenishing his coffers. One was the public sale of places about the Court at Rome, each of which had its well-known price.[1] Benefices were disposed of with rather more reserve and privacy, for simony had not yet come to be considered venial. Yet it was notorious that Sixtus held no privilege within his pontifical control on which he was not willing to raise money: 'Our churches, priests, altars, sacred rites, our prayers, our heaven, our ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... nor power in this realm of England, that is but what the Church of England hath alway held: Bishop Grosteste did as fervently abhor the Pope's power—"Egyptian bondage" was his word for it. Much has this Father also to say against simony: and he would have no private confession to a priest (verily, this would I gladly see abolished), nor indulgences, nor letters of fraternity, nor pilgrimages, nor guilds: and he sets his face against the new fashion ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... abbeys, priories, and other valuable preferments: money in large quantities was carried out of the realm from the proceeds of these offices, and it was necessary to insist emphatically that the papal nominations should cease. They were made in violation of the law, and were conducted with simony so flagrant that English benefices were sold in the papal courts to any person who would pay for them, whether an Englishman or a stranger. It was therefore decreed that the elections to bishopricks should be ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... himself, his relations and friends, before it could be finished, sent for him from London to Chelsea,—where she then dwelt,—and at his coming, said, "George, I sent for you, to persuade you to commit Simony, by giving your patron as good a gift as he has given to you; namely, that you give him back his prebend; for, George, it is not for your weak body, and empty purse, to undertake to build Churches." Of which, he desired he might have a day's time to consider, and then make her ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... to which Wilkinson found it very difficult to give a direct answer. He hardly knew whether he would not be guilty of simony in making such a promise, and he felt that at any rate the arrangement would ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... of a wealthy merchant, Francesco Coppola, who had entire control of the anchorage on the coast, and shared the profits with the King. Deficits were made up by forced loans, by executions and confiscations, by open simony, and by contributions levied on the ecclesiastical corporations. Besides hunting, which he practiced regardless of all rights of property, his pleasures were of two kinds: he liked to have his opponents near him, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... kind soever, spiritualities no less than temporalities, they bought and sold for money; which traffic was greater and employed more brokers than the drapery trade and all the other trades of Paris put together; open simony and gluttonous excess being glosed under such specious terms as "arrangement" and "moderate use of creature comforts," as if God could not penetrate the thoughts of even the most corrupt hearts, to say nothing of the signification of ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... years of service, he was presented to a living sufficient to support him; but he often found it necessary to purchase his preferment by a species of Simony, which furnished an inexhaustible subject of pleasantry to three or four generations of scoffers. With his cure he was expected to take a wife. The wife had ordinarily been in the patron's service; and it was well if she was not suspected of standing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... will, he led a life of anguish, mourning for the lost peace of his cloister; but he fought none the less with incredible energy against the inroads of the Barbarians, the heresies of Africa, the intrigues of Byzantium, and the Simony of his own priests. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... play-house; connived at, or swore a profane oath; took a hand at cards; or ridiculed the mysteries, the experiences, the circumspect professor of the Christian faith, is almost certain to have the presentation: perhaps he covenanted for it as part of his wages. For what simony, sacrilege, and deceitful perjury, with respect to ordination vows, patronage opens a door, he that runs may read. Shocked with the view, let ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... drumhead law; coup d'etat[Fr]; le droit du plus fort[Fr]; argumentum baculinum[obs3][Lat]. illegality, informality, unlawfulness, illegitimacy, bar sinister. trover and conversion[Law]; smuggling, poaching; simony. [person who violates the law] outlaw, bad man &c. 949. v. offend against the law; violate the law, infringe the law, break the law; set the law at defiance, ride roughshod over, drive a coach and six through ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... himself; Peter's well-known answer was not without effect on him, but it was only temporary, for he afterwards appeared in Rome and continued to impose upon the people so as to persuade them to believe him as an incarnation of the Most High. Hence Simony, the sin of making gain by the buying or selling of spiritual privileges for one's ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Observe me, Sir Anthony—I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning; I don't think so much learning becomes a young woman; for instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or Algebra, or Simony, or Fluxions, or Paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning; nor will it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments; but, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... of Joseph and his brethren, of the birth of the Saviour, or of the temptations of St. Anthony. It was the half-allegorical, half-dramatic representation of the reigning Borgia pope and his children; it was the rude and hesitating moulding into dramatic shape of those terrible rumours of simony and poison, of lust and of violence, of mysterious death and abominable love, which had met the invaders as they had first set their feet in Italy; which had become louder and clearer with every onward step through the peninsula, and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... doings already attaches considerable importance. One of the last acts of the Senate which had any real meaning was to make a decree with regard to the election of this Bishop, forbidding his advance by the way of Simony. Theodoric, an Arian, interferes only with the Church of Rome in so far as public peace demands it. In one of his letters occurs a most remarkable dictum on the subject of toleration. "Religionem imperare non possumus, quia nemo cogitur ut credat invitus—we ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing |
