"Abbess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accepted, and the crew, headed by Captain Breakes, marched up to the nunnery unopposed, and were welcomed at the door by the lady abbess. Having entered the peaceful cloister, each pirate chose a nun and marched back to the ship with their spoils. Soon after this Breakes decided to retire from piracy, and returned to Amsterdam to claim Mrs. Snyde. But he found that she had but lately been hanged for poisoning her little son, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... young she was elected abbess of the convent. It was a day of triumph for her powerful family. Perhaps the Count Balbo may have sometimes regretted that solemn vow, but he never betrayed repentance. Perhaps he would have been more secretly satisfied by the triumphant worldly career of a woman like his daughter, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... night, and Messire Thibault went on the morrow into that house and heard mass, and thereafter spake to the abbess, and the convent, and prayed them that they would guard that Lady there till his coming back; and they granted it to him much willingly. Messire Thibault left of his meney there to serve the Lady, and went his ways, and did his ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... womanhood to its fraternity and order,[56] yet the Japanese ama, bikuni, or nun, never became a sister of mercy, or reached, even within a measurable distance, the dignity of the Christian lady in the nunnery. In European history the abbess is a notable figure. She is hardly heard of beyond the Japanese nunnery, even by the native scholar—except ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... said to Cromwell, 'mine own foster-sister had the veil there; mine own mother's sister was there the abbess.' She stretched out a hand. 'Sir, they dwelled there simply and godly, withdrawn from the world; succouring the poor; weaving of fine linens, for much flax grew upon those lands by there; and praying God and the saints that blessings ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... followed her first book, the success of which was immediate and very great, by a novel entitled "The Refugee in America," in which the plot is ill-constructed, and the characters are crudely drawn, but the writer's caustic humour lends animation to the page. "The Abbess," a novel, was her third effort; and then, in the following year, came another record of travel, "Belgium and Western Germany in 1833." Her Conservative instincts found less to offend them in Continental than in American society, and her ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Gronow (Reminiscences, 1889, i. 62), a practical joke of Dan Mackinnon's (vide ante, p. 69, footnote) gave Byron a hint for this scene in the harem: "Lord Wellington was curious about visiting a convent near Lisbon, and the lady abbess made no difficulty. Mackinnon hearing this contrived to get clandestinely within the sacred walls ... at all events, when Lord Wellington arrived Dan Mackinnon was to be seen among the nuns, dressed out in their sacred costume, with his whiskers shaved; and, as he possessed good features, he was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... landau and caleche at Lucerne, and proceeded in them to Zug, where there is a famous convent or Frauenkloster, which escaped being destroyed during the Revolution, because the abbess and nuns established a school for the female children of the neighbourhood, where they still continue to teach them to read and work: Madame Gautier had desired us to go and see it, and to it we walked: rang at the bell, were told that the nuns were all in ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... of abbas, abbot), the female superior of an abbey or convent of nuns. The mode of election, position, rights and authority of an abbess correspond generally with those of an abbot (q.v.). The office is elective, the choice being by the secret votes of the sisters from their own body. The abbess is solemnly admitted to her office ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... only longing was to do good and to make other people happy, and to grow good and wise herself, so that she could do this all the better. So she studied and studied, worked and worked; and she became a holy woman, an Abbess. And while she was still very young and beautiful, she was given charge of a whole convent of nuns and school-girls not much younger than herself, because she was so much wiser and better than any one else ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... till the sun was low, and the breezes blew cool from the ocean, on purpose that they might listen as long as possible to a harmony which seemed to issue, as the old abbess expressed herself, from the gates of paradise ajar. A thousand benedictions consecrated our departure; twilight came on just as we entered the bark and rowed out upon the waves, agitated by a fresh gale, but fearing nothing under the protection of St. Margherita, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... at Tordesillas had established his headquarters in the buildings outside the convent of Saint-Claire, and the abbess of this convent was presented to his Majesty. She was then more than sixty-five years old, and from the age of ten years back never left this place. Her intelligent and refined conversation made a most agreeable impression ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... great Ecclesiastical History, concluded in A.D. 731, and the incident alluded to in connection with the Roman town throws a clear ray of light upon the ancient site in those unsettled times. It tells how Sexburgh, the abbess of Ely, needing a more permanent coffin for the remains of AEtheldryth, her predecessor in office, sent some of the brothers from the monastery to find such a coffin. Ely being without stone, and surrounded by waterways and marshes, they took a vessel and came in time to an abandoned city, "which, ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... not help exciting admiration, and making illustrious proselytes. Among them was Arnauld D'Antilly, the intimate friend of Richelieu and Anne of Austria; Le Maitre, the most eloquent lawyer and advocate in France; and Angelique Arnauld, the abbess of Port Royal. This last was one of the most distinguished ladies of her age, noble by birth, and still more noble by her beautiful qualities of mind and heart. She had been made abbess of her Cistercian convent at the age of eleven years, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... and lived as its abbess, and the great church of Santa Chiara is built on the site of this convent. She was born in Assisi in 1194, and died in 1253, surviving Francis by twenty-seven years. Her father was the Count Favorini Scifi, and he had destined his daughter—who had great beauty—to a ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Gilbertine; Austin Friars^, Black Friars, White Friars, Gray Friars, Crossed Friars, Crutched Friars; Bonhomme [Fr.], Carthusian, Benedictine^, Cistercian, Trappist, Cluniac, Premonstatensian, Maturine; Templar, Hospitaler; Bernardine^, Lorettine, pillarist^, stylite^. abbess, prioress, canoness^; religieuse [Fr.], nun, novice, postulant. [Under the Jewish dispensation] prophet, priest, high priest, Levite; Rabbi, Rabbin, Rebbe; scribe. [Mohammedan etc.] mullah, muezzin, ayatollah; ulema, imaum^, imam, sheik; sufi; kahin^, kassis^; mufti, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... establishment, where, after undergoing a year's probation, during which time she would be instructed in every elegant accomplishment, she should take the veil. Her advancement would speedily follow, for, with such a face and figure, she would make a capital lady abbess, especially in Italy, to which country she would probably be sent; ladies of her hair and complexion—to say nothing of her height—being a curiosity in the south. With a little care and management she could soon obtain a vast reputation ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... in the first pages: she perceived it to be a complete manual of convent life, a perfect compendium of a nun's soul. On its pages lay that shadowy, evanescent and hardly apprehensible thing—the soul of a nun, only the soul, not a word regarding her daily life: any mother-abbess could have written such a materialistic book: St. Teresa, with the instinct of her genius, addressed herself to the task which none but she could fulfil—the evolution of a nun's soul. And as Evelyn read she marked the passages that ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... the Middle Ages to express herself publicly by any means whatever was almost impossible. A great lady, a great Saint or church-woman, might do so very occasionally. But the individuality of the ordinary wife was merged in that of her husband, and for one Abbess of Shrewsbury or Whitby, for one St. Clare or St. Hilda, there were how many thousand obscure sisters, who were buried in the daily routine of a life hidden with Christ in God! Doubtless the artistic ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... chimerical than it appears is such a resolution. To be patient under two disappointments now no longer recent;—to relinquish, without repining, frequent intercourse with those I love;—to settle myself in my monastery, without one idea of ever quitting it; to study for the approbation of my lady abbess, and make it a principal source of content, as well as spring of action; -and to associate more cheerily with my surrounding nuns and monks;—these were the articles which were to ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... have a vision of Louise de la Valliere, "like Niobe, all tears," flying to the arms of the abbess of the Visitandines for refuge from the anguish of beholding the insolent De Montespan enthroned in her place. It took all the eloquence and persuasive powers of Colbert to induce the fair weeper to return with him to Versailles. She yielded at last, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... attractions of women. Diderot's famous novel, La Religieuse, which, when first published, was thought to have been actually written by a nun, deals with the torture to which a nun was put by the perverse lubricity of her abbess, for whom, it is said, Diderot found a model in the Abbess of Chelles, a daughter of the Regent and thus a member of a family which for several generations showed a marked tendency to inversion. Diderot's narrative has been described as a faithful description of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... discovered further evidence of the great morality pervading in Mount de Sales. The Lady Abbess was a handsome, fine-looking woman of about forty years of age. She was very strict with all the boarders of the convent, except with two sisters named Emily and Fannie Dawson. These two girls were her pets and were always with her. They were both beautiful girls, with flashing ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... Theophrast, And with that book he laugh'd alway full fast. And eke there was a clerk sometime at Rome, A cardinal, that highte Saint Jerome, That made a book against Jovinian, Which book was there; and eke Tertullian, Chrysippus, Trotula, and Heloise, That was an abbess not far from Paris; And eke the Parables* of Solomon, *Proverbs Ovide's Art, and bourdes* many one; *jests And alle these were bound in one volume. And every night and day was his custume (When he had leisure and vacation From other ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Friars[obs3], Black Friars, White Friars, Gray Friars, Crossed Friars, Crutched Friars; Bonhomme[Fr], Carthusian, Benedictine[obs3], Cistercian, Trappist, Cluniac, Premonstatensian, Maturine; Templar, Hospitaler; Bernardine[obs3], Lorettine, pillarist[obs3], stylite[obs3]. abbess, prioress, canoness[obs3]; religieuse[Fr], nun, novice, postulant. [Under the Jewish dispensation] prophet, priest, high priest, Levite; Rabbi, Rabbin, Rebbe; scribe. [Mohammedan &c.] mullah, muezzin, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... litter, beside which rode two or three veiled and hooded ladies and a priest. Save the captain of the guards, there was no thane with the party, and but a few pack horses followed them, and I thought it would be some abbess, perhaps, who was ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... in the high, red-brick wall. She wore a white, lace scarf over her hair—turned up and back, dressed high, as of old, though now somewhat gray upon the temples. The lace was tied under her chin, framing her face. In her gray dress she looked as some stately, yet gracious lady abbess might—a lady abbess who had known love in all fulness, yet in all honour—a lady abbess painted, if such happy chance could be, by the debonair and clean-hearted Reynolds. She stood smiling, charmed—though a trifle unwillingly—by ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... married Philibert, Count of Grammont, the hero of these Memoirs, by whom she had two daughters: Claude Charlotte, married, 3rd April, 1694, to Henry, Earl of Stafford; and another, who became superior, or abbess, of ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Abbess is well, my Lord Atheling; but the King—William the Red—is gone to his account. He was found two eves ago pierced to the heart with an arrow beneath ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Northumbrian coast, in his poem of Marmion may well be recalled here. It will be remembered that the Abbess of Whitby, with some of her nuns, was voyaging to Holy Island, and we ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... to my frantic words! They would not credit our asserted union! They dragg'd me to a convent in their wrath, And left me to my widowhood and tears, Tore my sweet infant from my longing arms, And while I madly scream'd, and begg'd for pity, The abbess spoke of penitence and prayer. Reason, for weeks, forsook me: when again I was awaken'd to a cruel world, They would have forced me to ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... John, hurriedly. "I bethought me to talk with Stuteley on the matter. The beggar told me that the Abbess of Kirklees had stayed him as he was travelling past her Priory: 'Go to Haddon, brother, and there you will find Robin Hood sick unto death. Say that in the woods near by there is one who is practising magic upon him, having made a little image of Robin Hood. At each change of the moon this ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... this abbess [Hild] was a certain brother especially distinguished and gifted with the grace of God, because he was in the habit of making poems filled with piety and virtue. Whatever he learned 5 of holy writ through interpreters he gave forth in a very short time ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... women elsewhere. Before the Conquest, abbesses sat in councils of the Church and signed its decrees; while kings were even dependent upon their consent in granting certain charters. The synod of Whitby, in the ninth century, was held in the convent of the Abbess Hilda, she herself presiding over its deliberations. The famous prophetess of Kent at one period communicated the orders of Heaven to the Pope himself. Ladies of birth and quality sat in council with the Saxon Witas—i.e., wise men—taking part in the Witenagemot, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... invaders. The first one that he founded was at Athelney in Somersetshire, in the midst of the marshes where he had fled for refuge when the Danes overran his country. He also founded a number of other monasteries and abbeys, among them the abbey of Shaftesbury, making his daughter, Ethelgeda, the abbess. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... the comfortable houses, gain added to gain—to what end? I was beginning to give very short answers indeed to his questions, and was already meditating a foray through the rest of the house, when the door opened slowly and a lady-abbess entered. She was stiff and stately, with the most formal neckerchief folded precisely over her straitened bust, a clear-muslin cap concealing her hair, and her face, stony, blue-eyed and cold—a pale, frozen woman ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... Sister Maria Celeste obtained with much difficulty, a small quantity of a renowned liqueur, made by Abbess Ursula, an exceptionally saintly nun. This she sends to her father ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... left Rochester in June for Romsey Abbey, where she solemnly assumed the veil of a black nun. She was now plain Sister Margaret, and in due course of time and promotion, she would become Mother Margaret, and then, perhaps, Prioress and Abbess. And then—her soul would be ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... rabid, I see you are; I read Anglophobia in your looks, and hear it in your words. Why, mademoiselle, is it possible that anybody with a grain of rationality should feel enthusiasm about a mere name, and that name England? I thought you were a lady-abbess five minutes ago, and respected you accordingly; and now I see you are a sort of Swiss sibyl, with high Tory ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Church had excommunicated was buried in the cemetery of a German convent. The Archbishop of Mayence ordered the exhumation of the body, threatening to interdict divine service in the convent if his command were disobeyed. But the abbess, Hildegarde of Bingen (1098-1179), a woman of great mental power and an inspired seer, opposed him. Having received a direct message from God, she wrote to the bishop as follows: "Conforming to my custom, I looked up to the true light, and God commanded me to withhold my consent to the exhumation ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... brasses, circa 1375. The churchyard contains a beautifully sculptured fourteenth-century lantern cross, of mediaeval date, in the form of an octagonal shaft. Under four niches at the summit are sculptured representations of: God the Father with the Dove bearing a crucifix; an Abbot; an Abbess; and a King and Queen. The height of the cross is 5 feet 2 inches, the breadth of the head being 1 ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... agreeably disappointed in the performance, which was the "Segunda Dama Duende," nearly a translation from the "Domino Noir," and very amusing; full of excellent coups-de-theatre. Donna Inocencia in her various characters, as domino, servant-girl, abbess, etc., was very handsome, and acted with great spirit. Moreover, she and her sister, with two Spaniards, danced the Jota Aragonesa in perfection, so that we spent a pleasant evening, upon the whole, within the precincts of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... awe-stricken in its gratitude, of the miracle her old governess had wrought. That functionary could not in this connexion have been more impressive, even at second-hand, if she had been a prophetess with an open scroll or some ardent abbess speaking with the lips of the Church. She had clung day by day to their plastic associate, plying him with her deep, narrow passion, doing her simple utmost to convert him, and so working on him that he had at last really embraced his fine chance. That the ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... are told in this book were very different from each other in many ways. The child abbess, Mere Angelique, ruling her convent, and at war with naughty abbesses who hated being earnest, does not at once remind us of Hannibal. The great Montrose, with his poems and his scented love-locks, his devotion to his cause, his chivalry, his death, ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... She slumbered in unbroken night, By mortal eyes unseen. Above her marble couch was reared A monumental shrine, Where cloistered sisters, gathering round, Made night and morn the aisle resound With choristry divine The abbess died: and in her pride Her parting mandate said, They should her final rest provide The alabaster couch beside, Where ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... allowed, however, to play at this game for ever; she was at length discovered in a nunnery, and her retreat cut off. The viceroy made several representations to the superior to deliver her up, but without effect. The abbess, supported by the archbishop of the diocese, constantly refused. The public curiosity was in consequence so much excited at the additional importance thus thrust upon the criminal, that thousands of persons visited the nunnery in order to catch a ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... desiring a song, and on his asking "What shall I sing?" replied "Sing to me of the beginning of created things." Therefore he began to sing and, on awaking, remembered his song and added to it. Thereafter he told what had befallen him to the bailiff who was over him, who repeated the tale to the Abbess Hilda. She having called together certain learned and pious persons, C. was brought before them, told his story, and recited his verses. A part of Scripture was read to him, which he was asked to turn into ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... had before appeared, returned in the evening to offer consolation to Emily, and brought a kind message from the lady abbess, inviting her to the convent. Emily, though she did not accept the offer, returned an answer expressive of her gratitude. The holy conversation of the friar, whose mild benevolence of manners bore some resemblance to those of St. Aubert, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... dans le Bain, surprise par les Deux Vieillards'; the second, 'The White Witch of Worcester on her Way to the Stake at High Cross.' The unfortunate lady in the latter picture is attired in a white lawn wrapper with angel sleeves, and is followed by an abbess with prayer-book, and eight surpliced choir-boys with candles. I have been long enough in England to understand the significance of the candles. Doubtless the White Witch had paid four shillings a week for each of them in her prison lodging, and she naturally wished ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the crowd which he ought to have despised." And Mendelssohn wrote to his father in words of still more angry disgust: "When in 'Robert le Diable' nuns appear one after the other and endeavor to seduce the hero, till at length the lady abbess succeeds; when the hero, aided by a magic branch, gains access to the sleeping apartment of his lady, and throws her down, forming a tableau which is applauded here, and will perhaps be applauded in Germany; and when, after ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... to attempt to storm the nunnery of Saint Bride, and carry me from hence to freedom and the greenwood, of which Wallace was generally called the king. In an evil hour—an hour I think of infatuation and witchery—I suffered the abbess to wheedle the secret out of me, which I might have been sensible would appear more horribly flagitious to her than to any other woman that breathed; but I had not taken the vows, and I thought Wallace and Fleming had the same charms for every body as for me, and the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... on the 21st of April, 1142, in the abbey of St. Marcellus, near Chalon-sur-Saone, after having received the sacraments with much piety, and in presence of all the brethren of the monastery. "Thus," wrote Peter the Venerable to Heloise, abbess for eleven years past of the Paraclete, "the man who, by his singular authority in science, was known to nearly all the world, and was illustrious wherever he was known, learned, in the school of Him who said, 'Know that I am meek ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... stifled titter, I then inquired if there were any copies of the Holy Scriptures in the convent, but the friendly voice could give me no information on that point, and I scarcely believe that its possessor understood the purport of my question. It informed me, that the office of lady abbess of the house was an annual one, and that every year there was a fresh superior; on my inquiring whether the nuns did not frequently find the time exceedingly heavy on their hands, it stated that, when they had nothing better ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the site of an abbey founded by Ealhswith, King Alfred's queen, in which to spend the years of her widowhood. The general plan of the gardens has probably been but little altered since the days when the nuns paced their shady paths in pious meditation. An ancient manuscript of prayers, used by the abbess in the ninth century, is preserved in the British Museum. Ealhswith's son, Edward the Elder, levied a toll from all merchandise passing under the City Bridge by water, and beneath the East Gate by land, for the better support of the abbey ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... never felt any inclination for any other. I learned the violoncello at the convent to please my mother, who can play it pretty well, and without an order from my father, sanctioned by the bishop, the abbess would never have given me permission to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... things are not permitted to pollute the sanctity of the sainted Chelts; but in a snug convent, situate a full mile and a half from Cheltenham, at the extremity 267of a lane where four roads meet, and under the Cleigh Hills, the lady abbess and the fair sisters of Cytherea perform their midnight mysteries, secure from magisterial interference, or the rude hand of any pious parochial poacher. Start not, gentle reader; I shall not draw ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... or Greek, 'When all's said and done, far better it was for us, Tied back to back And sewn up in a sack, To be pitch'd neck-and-heels from a boat in the Bosphorus!' Oh! a saint 't would vex To think that the sex Should be no better treated than Combe's double X! Sure some one might run to the Abbess, and tell her A much better method of stocking ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... her; and so she went to Almesbury, and made herself a nun, and ware white clothes and black, and took great penance as ever did sinful lady, and lived in fasting, prayers, and alms-deeds. And there she was abbess and ruler ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... where Madame Bonacieux was confined; it was at Bethune, and thither the musketeers hastened. Unfortunately, Milady reached Bethune first. She had come there to await the cardinal's orders, and having ingratiated herself with the abbess, learnt that D'Artagnan was on his way with an order from the queen to take Madame Bonacieux to Paris. Milady immediately dispatched a messenger to the cardinal, and at the very moment when the musketeers were at the front entrance, she poured a powder into a glass of wine ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Correggio. All heaven upsidedown; fat angels turning somersaults, saints like butchers, and martyrs simpering feebly. Like C.'s babies much better. Heaven can't be painted, and they'd better not try. Madonna, by Girolamo, was lovely. Room of the Abbess, with rosy children peeping through the lattice, very charming. Madonna della Scodella—the boy Christ very charming. The old Farnese Theatre most interesting; got a scrap of canvas from a mouldy scene. Dead old place ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... plainly that men cannot work side by side with women because they get excited.... And yet, you know, women have had glimpses of a freedom that was not mischievous. I could have been happy as a Lady Abbess—I must have space and dignity, Stephen—and those women had things in their hands as no women have things in their hands to-day. They came to the House of Lords. But they lost all that. Was there some sort ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... The deaths or skeletons are very ill-drawn as to the anatomical structure, and were they better the work would be excellent. The Death lugging off the fat abbot is inimitable; and the gallant way he escorts the lady abbess out the convent door is very good. I have the engravings by Hollar, and have made some of the designs afresh, intending to lithograph them at some future day; but there being thirty subjects in all, the work would be a difficult task. Mr. J. B. Yates might, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... rude, high-spirited young men, who presumed on their connection with the King to hold him cheap, and laugh at him to his face. Sweyn, the eldest, was the worst, and at last caused himself to be banished from the realm by the crime of carrying off the Abbess from the Convent of Leominster. He then spent the life of a pirate, in the course of which he visited the coast, and, while pretending to attempt to be reconciled to his family, treacherously murdered his cousin Biorn. After six ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... sat the stately Abbess Addula, daughter of King Dagobert, looking a princess indeed, in her violet tunic, with the hood and cuffs of her long white robe trimmed with fur, and a snowy veil resting like a crown on her snowy hair. At her right hand was the honored guest, and at her left hand her ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... the forest, and built a house for the education and religious consecration (if they desired it) of the daughters of nobles, her daughter Gertrude becoming the abbess. No vow of celibacy was imposed. As long as they remained in the abbey they were to conform to the rules of the house, but if they desired to marry they were free to leave. The chanoinesses of Nivelle spent their morning in religious duties, but ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... own nephew to Marshal the duc de Raguse; Madame la prefete, resplendent in the latest fashion from Paris, the Duc and Duchesse d'Embrun, cousins of the bride, the Vicomte de Genevois and his mother, who was Abbess of Pont Haut and godmother by proxy to Crystal de Cambray; whilst General Marchand, in command of the troops of the district, fresh from the Council of War which he had hastily convened, was trying to hide behind a debonnaire manner all the anxiety which ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the Maid was at Moulins in Bourbonnais.[1862] What was she doing there? No one knows. There was at that time in the town an abbess very holy and very greatly venerated. Her name was Colette Boilet. She had won the highest praise and incurred the grossest insults by attempting to reform the order of Saint Clare. Colette lived in ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... must first tell your decision to the Abbess of a convent, so that when I take you away through the underground passage to the Madocsany Castle, a nun may be waiting for you there with a closed carriage. Great prudence and careful preparations are necessary. We must agree upon the ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... degree—nay, the mechanic with his tools, the peasant with his spade, even the beggar within his dish; old men, and children of every age; and women too of all grades—the tower-crowned queen, the beplumed dame, the lofty abbess, the veiled nun, the bourgeoise, the peasant, the beggar;—all were there, moving in a strange shadowy wild dance, sometimes slow, sometimes swift and mad with gaiety, to the music of an unseen band of clashing kettle-drums, cymbals, and other instruments, that played fast and furiously; ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they sailed into the harbour at Dearport, and walked up to St. Faith's. Captain Audley, who had not seen Sister Constance since her husband's death, had an access of shyness and would not encounter the 'Lady Abbess,' as he called her; but his last words to Felix were a promise that if Bernard went to Stoneborough, he would have him out now and then for a holiday with ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sharper the eye to mark, prevent, countermine. And this maid, so cold and icy, so full of good works and the abounding fame of saintliness, let her live for the healing of the people, for the love of God and man both, and it liketh her. She shall be abbess of our greatest convent. She shall indeed be the Saint Helena of the North. Even now I will save her from death and give her refuge. I promise it. I have the power in my hands. Only do you, Hugo Gottfried, give me ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Teresa of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Edited with a preface by the Archbishop of Westminster (Cardinal Manning), London, 1865. (By Miss Elizabeth Lockhart, afterwards first abbess of the Franciscan convent, Notting Hill.) ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... priest returned on board the ship, with the intelligence that he had obtained a reception for Amine in the Ursuline convent, the abbess of which establishment he was acquainted with; and, before Amine went on shore, he cautioned her that the lady-abbess was a strict woman, and would be pleased if she conformed, as much as possible, to the rules of the convent; ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... individual combustible body to which that soul shall be eternally reunited hereafter. And the spirit which makes virtue alone virtuous is the spirit of obedience: obedience theoretically to a god, but practically to a father of the Church, a Council, an abbot or abbess. In this manner right-doing is emptied of all rational significance, becomes dependent upon what itself, having no human, practical reason, is mere arbitrary command. Chastity, for instance, which is, together with mansuetude, the especial Christian virtue, becomes in this fashion that mere ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... to a crew, thus exposed, the appearance of half-drowned rats. Luckily the wind began to subside, and by degrees old ocean wore a face of undisturbed serenity. Our crew was a motley one; but among them, an Abbess, with a visage of parchment-like rigidity, and with her broad streaming bands, seemed to experience particular distress. She was surrounded by some hale, hearty market women, whose robust forms, and copper-tinted countenances, formed ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... (sic), and their head-dress the same, excepting a small veil of black crape that falls behind. They have a lower sort of serving Nuns, that wait on them as their chambermaids. They receive all visits of women, and play at ombre in their chambers, with permission of their abbess, which is very easy to be obtained. I never saw an old woman so good-natured; she is near fourscore, and yet shews very little sign of decay, being still lively and cheerful. She caressed me as if I had ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... gayer life now that she was a prioress; for the prioress of a convent had rooms of her own, instead of sharing the common dormitory and refectory; sometimes she even had a sort of little house with a private kitchen. The abbess of one great nunnery at Winchester in the sixteenth century had her own staff to look after her, a cook, and an under cook, and a housemaid and a gentlewoman to wait upon her, like any great lady in the ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... he, "in the hands of the abbess a sum to be entirely at Lucilla's control, whether she stay in the convent or not, and which will always secure to her an independence. But I confess I should like now, once more to visit the convent, and learn on what fate she ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... service of Heaven. She was the first woman who sat at the feet of St. Francis as his disciple, who humbly practised the self-mortification, and resolutely performed the vow of perpetual poverty, which her preceptor's harshest doctrines imposed on his followers. She soon became Abbess of the Benedictine Nuns with whom she was associated by the saint; and afterwards founded an order of her own—the order of "Poor Clares." The fame of her piety and humility, of her devotion to the cause of the sick, the afflicted, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... in, wasn't it? Her mother's simply an absurd worldly old woman. My Lebyadkin distinguished himself too. I kept looking at the ceiling to keep from laughing; the ceiling there is finely painted. His mother ought to be an abbess. I'm afraid of her, though she did give me a black shawl. Of course, they must all have come to strange conclusions about me. I wasn't vexed, but I sat there, thinking what relation am I to them? Of course, from a countess one doesn't expect any but spiritual qualities; for the domestic ones she's ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and antiquated religion, and, instead of getting credit for my devotion, as is due to all good girls beside, my kind friend, Justice Inglewood, may send me to the house of correction, merely for worshipping God in the way of my ancestors, and say, as old Pembroke did to the Abbess of Wilton,* when he usurped her convent and establishment, 'Go spin, you ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sketches were on her uncle's walls: the beautiful in nature claimed and absorbed her. She dressed with a pretty rigour, a lovely simplicity, picturesque of the nunnery. She looked indeed a high-born young lady-abbess. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... when Herrera paused, "of the convent you mention, and still more of its abbess. Carmen de Forcadell was long celebrated, both at Madrid and in her native Andalusia, for her beauty and intrigues. Her husband was assassinated by one of her lovers, as some said, and within three years of his death, repenting, it was believed, of her dissolute life, she took the veil. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... abbey with the boy, that he might keep his vigil there, and on the morrow's dawn he was made a knight. Sir Lancelot put on one of his spurs, and Bors, Lancelot's cousin, the other, and then Sir Lancelot said to the boy, "Fair son, attend me to the court of the king;" but the abbess said, "Sir, not now, but we will send him when ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... drawing nearer to the church of St. Clara, where the Neapolitan kings were buried, and where several princesses of the blood, exchanging the crown for the veil, have gone to bury themselves alive. The nuns, novices, and abbess, hidden behind shutters, were throwing flowers upon the procession. A bunch fell at the feet of the Prince ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the matron or Superior of the female part of the society of hermits. Every association of religious devotees seems to have included a certain number of women, presided over by an elderly and venerable matron, whose authority resembled that of an abbess in a ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... reality no doubt or problem about this Saint Clair. She was born in 1275, and joined the Augustinian Sisterhood, dying young, in 1308, as Abbess of her convent. Continual and impassioned meditation on the Passion of our Lord impressed her heart with the signs of His suffering which have been described above. I owe this note to the kindness of an anonymous ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... as to the manner in which such a book should be, and indeed actually was, completed. He set out to write a historical novel dealing with Guildford in the days of King John, weaving into it various local legends and a love-story of an abbess and an archbishop; he "began the book on November 26, 1857, and finished it in exactly eight weeks, on January 21, 1858, reading for the work included." The list of books which he consulted in Mr. Drummond's ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... parish priest. Of the daughters three remained in the world; one, Elizabeth, married; another, Cunigunde, died of plague caught in nursing some nuns. The fourth daughter, Barbara, at the age of nine entered the convent of Heppach, and lived there forty-one years, rising to be Prioress and then Abbess. We shall ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... the Expedition of Godfrey of Boulogne, and praying that an order might be issued under the Privy Seal for the restoration of the said book. With much formality the petition was granted. But we might go back several hundred years prior to either of these dates, for the Abbess Eadburga not only transcribed books herself and kept several scholars for a similar purpose, but fed the bibliomaniacal zeal of Boniface, the Saxon missionary, by presenting him with a number of books. Appropriately ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... mine in my noviciate, father. Thro' all closed doors a dreadful whisper crept That thou wouldst excommunicate the King. I could not eat, sleep, pray: I had with me The monk's disguise thou gavest me for my bower: I think our Abbess knew it and allow'd it. I fled, and found thy name a charm to get me Food, roof, and rest. I met a robber once, I told him I was bound to see the Archbishop; 'Pass on,' he said, and in thy name I pass'd From house to house. In one a son stone-blind ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the convent of Drontheim, Alone in her chamber Knelt Astrid the Abbess, At midnight, adoring, Beseeching, entreating ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... earliest church on this point is attributed to Vratislav, uncle of St. Wenceslaus, but this sounds rather doubtful. Boleslav II, however, is known to have founded a convent here, probably the oldest in Bohemia, and he installed his sister Milada as first abbess. St. Ludmilla was also buried here, so the Hrad[vs]any was increasing in sanctity. Boleslav II is also responsible for providing Prague with her first bishop. We have seen that Henry the Fowler had incorporated ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... the latter as one of the founders of the famous Shefford Kennel, kept by Mr. Fred Gresham, who probably contributed more to the perfecting of the St. Bernard than any other breeder. His Birnie, Monk, Abbess, Grosvenor Hector, and Shah are names which appear in the pedigrees of most of the best dogs of more recent times. When Mr. Gresham drew his long record of success to a close there came a lull in the popularity of the breed until ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... related how Thais had been brought to the House of Salvation, and asked that she should be at once confined in a cell. The abbess consented, and led the penitent to a hut, which had remained empty since the death of the virgin Laeta, who had sanctified it. In this narrow chamber there was but a bed, a table, and a pitcher, and Thais when she crossed the threshold, felt filled ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... with him the mass of his master's papers, and when he had set these out and prepared the bedroom that opened out of the guest-parlour, he asked leave to go across and fetch the Abbess. ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... demanded by the Council and at length taken. Their value went to cover a part of the expenses of the Canton, which were greatly increased by the commotions of the age. At the same time Catherine von Zimmern, abbess of Frauminster, gave up to the burgomaster and councils, under the assurance that she and the sisters would receive an adequate support, the convent along with its rights and revenues. The Chapter of Canons at Embrach, the Cistercians ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... it, and until—until this morning, it seemed that a convent must be my ultimate refuge. I have spent most of my young life at Santa Sofia, and the little that I have seen of the world at my uncle's court scarce invites me to see more of it. The Mother Abbess loved me a little. She would take ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... convent what had become of Miss St. Omar—I should say Mrs. Reynolds; and I was told that she had removed from the convent to private lodgings in the town, some time previous to the birth of her child. The abbess seemed much scandalized by the whole transaction; and I remember I relieved her mind by assuring her that there had been a regular marriage. For poor young Reynolds' sake, I made farther inquiries about the widow, intending, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... brother Bonaventure, a monk of the strict order of Saint-Francois, was made three times over the triennial Superior of his order, and confessor of Antoine and Francois, Dukes of Lorraine; and one of his sisters, Salmone, was appointed Abbess of ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... very ancient aristocracy of Normandy; related to William the Conqueror; allied with the Verneuils, the Esgrignons and the Troisvilles. The name is pronounced "Cateran." A Demoiselle Blanche de Casteran was the mother of Mlle. de Verneuil, and died Abbess of Notre-Dame de Seez. [The Chouans.] In 1807 Mme. de la Chanterie, then a widow, was hospitably received in Normandy by the Casterans. [The Seamy Side of History.] In 1822 a venerable couple, Marquis and Marquise de Casteran visited the drawing-room of Marquis d'Esgrignon at Alencon. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... is to be. She shall remain in the castle, where I will leave a few chosen veterans, with you, Dennis, to command them. In twenty-four hours the siege will be relieved, and we have defended it longer with a slighter garrison. Then to her aunt, the Abbess of the Benedictine sisters—thou, Dennis, wilt see her placed there in honour and safety, and my sister will care for her future provision as her wisdom shall determine." "I leave you at this pinch!" said Dennis Morolt, bursting into tears —"I shut myself up within ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... was placed under the care of an Abbess whom they called St. Bridget. There were many other Abbesses in the convent, but she was the principal one, and had the care of all the clothing. If the others wished for clean clothes, they were obliged to go to her for them. ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... English poetess was I cannot say. I believe it was the Abbess Juliana Berners, who lived in the fifteenth century; but I have no doubt that Mr. Freeman would be able at a moment's notice to produce some wonderful Saxon or Norman poetess, whose works cannot be read without a glossary, and even with its aid are completely unintelligible. ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... Burggraf Friedrich's daughter, she said nothing that we hear; silently became a Nun, an Abbess: and through a long life looked out, with her thoughts to herself, upon the loud whirlwind of things, where Sigismund (oftenest an imponderous rag of conspicuous color) was riding and tossing. Her two brothers also, joint Burggraves after their father's death, seemed to have reconciled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... lines, some of which he repeated in our hearing afterwards, and which were full of point and poetry. We cannot see that Caedmon's lines betray any weird inspiration; but when rehearsed the next day to the Abbess Hilda, to whom the town-bailiff of Whitby conducted him, she and a circle of learned men pronounced that he had received the gift of song direct from heaven! They, after one or two other trials of his powers, persuaded him to become a monk in the house ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... attended upon her as a happy looking young woman whose face was in strong contrast to most of those within the walls of the convent; but she had exchanged but few words with her, knowing that she would be but a short time about her. For the policy of the abbess was to change the attendants upon the ladies in their charge frequently, in order to prevent them from being tampered with, or persuaded into conveying ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... we ourselves have reached. Still, many pictures of high artistic merit are wanting in the real home charm. I believe most of those which hang on our walls and are always before our eyes should be cheerful in character. I sympathize with the old abbess who chose to have her rooms frescoed with Correggio's happy cherubs, and who liked to have constantly before her, though in a convent, his goddess Diana, whose smile some one has said is ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... the Abbess of Fontevrault came to see him. The King's mother Eleanor, her guest, had been sent for in a hurry. The king had been hurt. A serf of Achard of Chalus had ploughed up a golden relic, an emperor with his ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... monseigneur," replied the man in the cloak; "in two hours your highness will not have even broached the subject of your visit. Oh! the Abbess de Chelles is a ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... therefore, very unjust to speak ill of Lady Purbeck for not having lived in a convent "according to that strictness as was expected," because she left it. But this was done in the following letter:[97] "The Lady Purbeck is come forth of the English Nunnerie. For, the Lady Abbess being from home, somebody forgott to provide the Lady Purbeck her dinner, and to leave the roome open where she used to dine at night, expostulating with the Abbess, they agreed to part fairely, ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... author (ii. 735), 'what could his sister Artemis have been, from the very beginning, if not some goddess connected with the moon?' Very likely; quis negavit? Then our author, like myself (loc. cit.), dilates on Artemis as 'sister of Apollo.' 'Her chapels,' I say, 'are in the wild wood; she is the abbess of the forest nymphs,' 'chaste and fair, the maiden of the precise life.' How odd! The classical scholar and I both say the same things; and I add a sonnet to Artemis in this aspect, rendered by me from the Hippolytus of Euripides. Could a classical scholar do more? Our author then says ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... the gloom without, To ponder o'er a tale of old; A legend of the age of Faith, By dreaming monk or abbess told. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to him and claimed him as her lunatic husband, who had escaped from his keepers; and the men she brought with her were going to lay violent hands on Antipholus and Dromio; but they ran into the convent, and Antipholus begged the abbess to give him ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Mr W. H. Hart ("Chartulary," i. 3), the first mention of the abbey is in 681, when it was founded by Osric, viceroy of King Ethelred. It was dedicated to St. Peter, and Kyneburga (the sister of Osric) was the first Abbess of a double foundation for monks and ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... 1538,"—the Trechsels being printers of German origin, who had long been established at Lyons. There is a verbose "Epistre" or Preface in French to the "moult reuerende Abbesse du religieux conuent S. Pierre de Lyon, Madame Iehanne de Touszele," otherwise the Abbess of Saint Pierre les Nonnains, a religious house containing many noble and wealthy ladies, and the words, "Salut d'un vray Zele," which conclude the dedicatory heading, are supposed to reveal indirectly the ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... happy to see his mamma again. But, my dear, you must not scold me for having gone away. It was so dull at home without you, so lonesome, that I could bear it no longer, and I took a trip to Valki, to visit the Abbess of the ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... 2nd. A heavy ring enamelled in colours, and bearing a jacynth. 3rd. An amethystine sapphire. 4th. A polished ruby, surrounded by diamonds. 5th. The engraved ring of an abbess. 6th. A gloomy ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... upper hand; his Venus has, despite her forms studied from the antique and her gesture imitated from some earlier discovered copy of the Medicean Venus, the woe-begone prudery of a Madonna or of an abbess; she shivers physically and morally in her unaccustomed nakedness, and the goddess of Spring, who comes skipping up from beneath the laurel copse, does well to prepare her a mantle, for in the paled tempera colour, against the dismal background of rippled ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... one end of his handkerchief with the all deterging specific, he began to rub away on the planks, without heeding the remonstrances of Mrs. Policy. She, good soul, stood at first in astonishment, like the abbess of St. Bridget's, when a profane visitant drank up the vial of brandy which had long passed muster among the relics of the cloister for the tears of the blessed saint. The venerable guardian of St. Bridget ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... foreign parts, being of too hot temper, but will leave his Ministers to do it. [Dickens's Despatch, Berlin, 22d July (n.s.), 1730.] To Queen Sophie he says coldly, "Wilhelmina's marriage, then, is off; an end to IT. Abbess of Herford [good Protestant refuge for unprovided Females of Quality, which is in our gift], let her be Abbess there;"—and writes to the then extant Abbess to make Wilhelmina "Coadjutress," or Heir-Apparent to that Chief-Nunship! Nay what is still more mortifying, my Brother says, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... by them ourselves should easily judge their thoughts to have no excursion beyond the duffling academy. You know very well how at Brignoles, when the religious nun, Sister Fatbum, was made big with child by the young Stiffly-stand-to't, her pregnancy came to be known, and she cited by the abbess, and, in a full convention of the convent, accused of incest. Her excuse was that she did not consent thereto, but that it was done by the violence and impetuous force of the Friar Stiffly-stand-to't. Hereto the abbess very ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of the unhappy results of a marriage contracted under such circumstances, that on receiving the congratulations of those around him, he replied calmly: "Should my daughter not be one day eligible to become Queen of France, she will at least make a fitting Abbess of Remiremont." [167] ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... poverty. They wore no religious vestment, but appeared in the fashionable dress of the day. They received their friends in the convent, and could leave it themselves to reenter the secular life, and to marry if they pleased. Such a chapter was that of Remiremont in Lorraine, whose abbess was a princess of the Holy Roman Empire, by virtue of her office. Her crook was of gold. Six horses were harnessed to her carriage. Her dominion extended over two hundred villages, whose inhabitants paid her both feudal dues and ecclesiastical ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell |
