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Saracen

noun
1.
(historically) a member of the nomadic people of the Syrian and Arabian deserts at the time of the Roman Empire.
2.
(when used broadly) any Arab.
3.
(historically) a Muslim who opposed the Crusades.






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"Saracen" Quotes from Famous Books



... the goal he had set out to reach? Did his eye behold the land of his fathers? Or did death overtake the pilgrim singer before his journey's end? Legend which has beautified his life has transfigured his death. It is said, that struck by a Saracen's horse Yehuda Halevi sank down before the very gates of Jerusalem. With its towers and battlements in sight, and his inspired "Lay of Zion" on his lips, his pure soul winged ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... Saracen's head of Sir Bernard Brocas," quoth he. "I saw him last at the ruffle at Poictiers some ten years back, when he bore himself like a man. He is the master of the King's horse, and can sing a right jovial stave, though in that he ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Sebile's tent to kiss her in the sight of the Saxons, and bringing back her ring—which Baldwin contrives to fulfil by putting on the armour of a Saxon knight whom he kills. As in The Taking of Orange, it never seems to occur to the poet that there can be any moral wrong in making love to a "Saracen's" wife, or in promising her hand in her husband's lifetime; and, strange to say, so benignant are these much-wronged paynim that Guiteclin is not represented as offering or threatening the slightest ill-treatment to his faithless queen, however wroth he may be against her lover; nor, indeed, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... syl.), the sword of Sir Otuel, a presumptuous Saracen, nephew of Farracute (3 syl.). Otuel was in the end ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... t'ward the Christian west The fell invasion of the Saracen Headed its course with crimson scimitar; Supplanting the mild precepts of the Cross With those of ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... river, up to the surrounding nether heights of the Bernese Oberland. Walls twelve feet in thickness tell the history of its ancient construction, and chambers cut in the massive stone foundations recall the rude life of the early knights and vassals who defended this chateau-fort from the Saracen invasion. Noble halls, later superimposed upon the earlier foundations, with stone benches flanking the walls and recessed windows overlooking the jousting court, evoke the glittering days of chivalry and the vision of the sovereign race of counts who ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... had also something of a chivalric character, since much of every German's imagination is concerned with the Crusades, the Order of Knight Templars, and similar historical or legendary incidents and personalities in the early stages of the struggle between the Christian and the Saracen. The birthplace of Christ has special interest for a Hohenzollern who holds his kingship by divine grace, and in the Emperor's case because his father had made the journey to Jerusalem thirty years before. The Emperor, lastly, cannot ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... often content itself with occasional praise. Tamerlane has for a long time been acted only once a year, on the night when king William landed. Our quarrel with Lewis has been long over; and it now gratifies neither zeal nor malice to see him painted with aggravated features, like a Saracen upon a sign. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... handsome girl of about three-and-twenty. What was her reason for journeying unattended to Cairo we know not. Whether she ever reached her destination we are still in doubt, for a more complacently incapable damsel never went a-voyaging. The Saracen maiden who followed her English lover from the Holy Land by crying "London" and "A Becket" was scarce so impotent as Placidia; for any information the Saracen maiden had she retained, while Placidia naively admitted that she had already forgotten by which line of steamers ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... Taormina. Their hotel was outside the walls, but a brief walk took them to the Messina Gate, a quaint archway through which they passed into the narrow streets of one of the oldest towns in Sicily. Doorways and windows of Saracen or Norman construction faced them on every side, and every inch of the ancient ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... of the forest discuss their chances, and they were as truly knights as any that ever tilted lance for his lady, or, clothed in mail, fought the Saracen in the Holy Land, and, buried in the vast forest, their dangers were greater, they so ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... of Moorish origin, having been named after the famous Saracen chieftain, Tarik, who made this rock the starting point of his conquests in Spain. Hence it was called Gib-el-Tarik—the hill of Tarik—further Europeanized into the modern Gibraltar. This magnificent natural fortress rises perpendicularly ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... who live no one knows how, but who secure as much of the joy of life as any other human beings; the strange result of that endless combination of races which have come together in Naples—the Greek, the Italian, the Norman, the Saracen, and ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... remonstrated Bob Sawyer, looking in at the coach window, as they pulled up before the door of the Saracen's Head, Towcester, 'this won't do, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... with Saracen At length a truce was made, And every knight returned to dry The tears his ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... Eastern descent, and were noisome. The Cagots were noisome, and therefore must be of Eastern descent. What could be clearer? In addition, there was the proof to be derived from the name Cagot, which those maintaining the opinion of their Saracen descent held to be Chiens, or Chasseurs des Gots, because the Saracens chased the Goths out of Spain. Moreover, the Saracens were originally Mahometans, and as such obliged to bathe seven times a-day: whence the badge of the duck's foot. A duck was a water-bird: Mahometans ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Saracen's Head,' said the old man promptly. 'Though all forbid I should recommend any man where it's a question of horses, no more than I'd take anybody else's recommending if I was a-buying one. But if your pa's thinking of a turnout of any sort, there ain't a straighter man ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... better 'twould be to ride in mail A weary quest for the Holy Grail; Wield Saxon steel 'gainst Saracen sword Around the sepulcher of our Lord; See Cross and Crescent and mailed hand All plashed with blood in that sacred land, Than doubt that heaven e'er shed its light Deep into this world's long troublous night; That God hears our prayers, knows all our pains, That earthly sorrows are heavenly ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... that time had made an excursion to the island of Ceylon; a circumstance then deduced from finding green cloves in the bird's stomach, and credited at Aleppo. In the time of the holy wars, certain Saracen ambassadors who came to Godfrey of Antioch from a neighbouring prince, sent intelligence to their master of the success of their embassy, by means of pigeons, fixing the billet to the bird's tail. Hirtius and Brutus, at the siege of Modena, held a correspondence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various

... were high and prudence low, And every knight felt bound to "go The pace," and just like Richard do, By running his purse and a Paynim through. Yet do not suppose that Vidomar Was ever a knight in the Holy War: For Richard many a Saracen's head Had lopped before the old Count was dead; And Richard was home from Palestine, Home from the dungeon of Tiernstein, And many a Christian corpse had made, Ere the time in which the story ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... you.... Here, Snip, here's my dentist's bill—worry it, worry it! Good dog! Worry it!" (The dog growled now over a torn document beneath the table.) "Miss Taft, you might see that a communique goes out to the effect that I gave my first sitting to Mr. Saracen Givington, A.R.A., this morning. The activities of Mr. Saracen Givington are of interest to the world, and rightly so! You'd better come round to the other side for the right foot, Mr. Bootmaker. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... jeerers on the highway. To Moses, "travelling" meant straying forlornly in strange towns and villages, given over to the worship of an alien deity and ever ready to avenge his crucifixion; in a land of whose tongue he knew scarce more than the Saracen damsel married by legend to a Becket's father. It meant praying brazenly in crowded railway trains, winding the phylacteries sevenfold round his left arm and crowning his forehead with a huge leather bump of righteousness, to the bewilderment or irritation of unsympathetic fellow-passengers. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Heckleston Lea with any of those signs of negligence which, in his case, might easily be taken for poverty. All his appointments, therefore, were carefully looked after; and on the Monday following, he, followed by his groom, rode away for the Saracen's Head at Heckleston, where he was to put up, for the races that were to begin on the day following, and presented as handsome an appearance as a peer in those days need have cared ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... the Ottoman Empire, starting from a grain of mustard-seed in the year 1250 A.D., spread with marvellous energy and rapidity. The Saracen dominions now became Turkish dominions, and the unhappy Greeks had changed masters for the last time. That proud and gifted race was doomed to spend years of servitude ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... overthrew the Roman empire in the west, and the legends which grew up round the name of Charles the Great. They are stories of the gods and demigods, of the Burgundian and the Hun, of the English people possibly while still settled on the Baltic coasts, of the conflicts of the Frank and the Saracen, of the earliest settlers in Iceland; and they vary in ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... The fauns, the nymphs, the half-defaced antiques, The gods and men of mythologic fable, And legends of steel-casqued and mailed men, The old heroic tales of love and glory, Of knight, and palmer, and the Saracen, And the crusaders ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... Mediterranean, their corsairs insulted the coasts of Italy, and even threatened the destruction of the Eastern empire. While Alexis was occupied in a war with Patzinaces, on the banks of the Danube, Zachas, a Saracen pirate, scoured the Archipelago, having, with the assistance of an able Smyrniote, constructed a flotilla of forty brigantines, and some light fast-rowing boats, manned by adventurers like himself. After taking several of the surrounding islands, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... great father survives, in a state of almost effeminate degeneration. In despair of ever restoring the imperial power of the Hohenstaufen, he seeks to forget his sadness in romance and song. There now appears upon the scene a young Saracen lady, just arrived from the East, who, by appealing to the alliance between East and West concluded by Manfred's noble father, conjures the desponding son to maintain his imperial heritage. She acts the part of an inspired prophetess, and though the prince is quickly filled ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... access unto all foreigners that trade into his country for merchandise, and a place of liberty for them to remain in; as the Moors had, until such time as they had brought the Loutea or Lieutenant of that coast to be a circumcised Saracen: wherefore some of them were put to the sword, the rest were scattered abroad; at Fuquien, a great city in China, certain of them are yet this day to be seen. As for the Japanese, they be most desirous to be ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... tavern. "Near to the jail, and by consequence near to Smithfield, and on that particular part of Snow Hill where omnibuses going eastward seriously think of falling down on purpose, and where horses in hackney cabriolets going westward not unfrequently fall by accident, is the coachyard of the Saracen's Head Inn; its portals guarded by two Saracens' heads and shoulders frowning upon you from each side of the gateway. The Inn itself garnished with another Saracen's head, frowns upon you from the top of the yard. When you walk up this yard you will see the booking-office ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... why, also, a nation so civilized as the English can convert negroes to their faith with great ease, but cannot convert Mahometans or Jews. The negro finds in civilized Salvationism an unspeakably more comforting version of his crude creed; but neither Saracen nor Jew sees any advantage in it over his own version. The Crusader was surprised to find the Saracen quite as religious and moral as himself, and rather more than less civilized. The Latin Christian has nothing ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... had renewed the ring, and taken care to make it a Saxon. Now Ailie could get no one to believe her, but she is certain that the letter was sealed with the old Saracen not the new Saxon. But—but—if you had ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and guest, exchange presents. With this touching picture of the piety with which the laws of hospitality were observed even in war, may be compared a picture of chivalrous generosity in Ariosto. The knights, rivals in love, Ferragus and Rinaldo—the former a Saracen, the latter a Christian —after having fought to extremity, all covered with wounds, make peace together, and mount the same horse to go and seek the fugitive Angelica. These two examples, however different in other respects, are very similar with regard to the impression produced ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... become the point for the blow at the Saracen power. Where was I? Oh, the Mameluke justified the murder, and wanted St. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... passed before the hermit's grotto on Monte Sirach. Enter Captain Mucioalbano with two comic Saracen soldiers. They have searched all the mountain and this is the only grotto they have found; they hope it will prove to be the right one, for they are tired ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... not come home again, any more than Barbarossa. They were stronger than Turk or Saracen, but not than Hunger and Disease; Leaders did not know then, as our little Friend at Berlin came to know, that "an Army, like a serpent, goes upon its belly." After fine fighting and considerable victories, the end of this Crusade was, it took to "besieging Acre," ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... fight at close quarters to be her sole possessor. The above-mentioned wench, or demon, belonged at that time to the knight Geoffroy IV., Lord of Roche-Pozay, by whom she was said to have been brought from Touraine, although she was a Saracen; concerning which the knights of France marvelled much, as well as at her beauty, which made a great noise and a thousand scandalous ravages in the camp. During the voyage this wench was the cause of many deaths, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... would be at the charge[136] of it. Accordingly they got a painter by the Knight's directions to add a pair of whiskers to the face, and by a little aggravation[137] of the features to change it into the Saracen's Head. I should not have known this story had not the innkeeper, upon Sir Roger's alighting, told him in my hearing, "That his honour's head was brought back last night with the alterations that ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... by a flying Saracen who had wheeled round, hissed, and grazing the skin of the emperor's right hand, glanced over the ribs, and buried itself in his body. Julian thought the wound a slight one, and seizing the double-edged barb to withdraw it, cut his fingers. Blood gushed out, Julian uttered a cry, flung his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... his set teeth and his gauntleted hand, He stretched with one buffet that page on the sand. . . For down came the Templars like Cedron in flood, And dyed their long lances in Saracen blood." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... and the Saracen, likewise, have had their day of power and renown. Bagdad was the seat of science and learning at a time when the nations of Europe were sunk in darkness and superstition. The Turk and Saracen should have pointed to the Koran as ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... Arabic, acting as official translators, and naturally reporting directly or indirectly to Rome. There was indeed at this time a complaint that Christian youths cultivated too assiduously a love for the literature of the Saracen, and married too frequently the daughters of the infidel.[396] It is true that this happy state of affairs was not permanent, but while it lasted the learning and the customs of the East must have ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... jargon of Arians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Monothelites, Monophysites, Mariolatrists, and an anarchy of countless disputants, there sounded through the world, not the miserable voice of the intriguing majority of a council, but the dread battle-cry, "There is but one God," enforced by the tempest of Saracen armies, is it surprising that the hubbub was hushed? Is it surprising that all Asia and Africa fell away? In better times patriotism is too often made subordinate to religion; in those ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... no infidel, no Saracen, ever perpetrated such wanton and cold-blooded atrocities of cruelty as the wearers of the Cross of Christ (who, it is said, had fallen on their knees and burst into a pious hymn at the first view of the Holy City) on the capture of that city. Murder was mercy, ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... brazen feet towered superbly above port and town, and then it was partly destroyed by an earthquake. For nearly a thousand years the sacred image remained unmolested where it had fallen, by Greek and Roman, Pagan and Christian; but at last the Saracen owners of Rhodes, caring as little for its religious association as for its classic antiquity, sold the brass of it for the great sum of L36.000, to ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... been formed, and was still increasing, by the constant oozing of water holding in solution calcareous matter, and suspended from a projection of the upper part of the rock. But the light was sufficient to discover a gigantic image with a Saracen face, who "grinn'd horrible a ghastly smile." On his head was a sort of crown; in one hand he held a naked scymeter, and a firebrand in the other; but the history of this colossal divinity seemed to be imperfectly known, even to the votaries ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... it was caused by the approach of the Saracen chieftains, our allies, who had heard that the emperor was besieging Ctesiphon in great force: some again affirmed that the Persians were lying in wait for us ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... blossom, was a spring of sweet odors, which overflowed the whole land. We rode into some of these forests, for they were no less, and finally pitched our tent in one of them, belonging to the palace of the former Abdallah Pasha, within a mile of Acre. The old Saracen aqueduct, which still conveys water to the town, overhung our tent. For an hour before reaching our destination, we had seen it on the left, crossing the hollows on light stone arches. In one place ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... difficulty, at first, seems to have been in refining it. We encounter here, too, onions under the name borrowed from the French instead of the Anglo-Saxon form "ynne leac"; and the prescriptions for making messes of almonds, pork, peas, and beans are numerous. There is "Saracen sauce," moreover, possibly as old as the Crusades, and pig with sage stuffing (from which it was but one step to duck). More than one species of "galantine" was already known; and I observe the distinction, in one of the smaller collections ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... stranger. The king was really there, and at last was discovered by the eager searcher. Though in disguise, Roger suspected him. That mighty bulk, those muscular limbs, that imperious face, could belong to none but him who had swept through the Saracen hosts with a battle-axe which no other of the Crusaders could wield. Roger questioned him so closely that the king, after seeking to conceal his identity, was at length forced to reveal who he ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... never speaks in haste. At last he rose. Proudly he looked and spake Unto the messengers:—"Ye have well said That King Marsile e'er stood my greatest foe! On these fair-seeming words how far can I Rely?" The crafty Saracen replied: "Would you have hostages? you shall have ten, Fifteen, yea, twenty. Though his fate be death My son shall go, and others nobler still, I deem. When to your lordly palace, home Returned—when comes Saint Michael del Peril, His ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier

... the Saracen's Head Inn, at Glasgow, I was made happy by good accounts from home; and Dr Johnson, who had not received a single letter since we left Aberdeen, found here a great many, the perusal of which entertained him ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... the dialects of that section. But from what travellers have learned of portions of different tribes that have crossed the line, and made their way as far as the Cape of Good Hope, we infer, that, while there are many dialects in that region, they all belong to one common family. During the Saracen movement, in the second century of the Christian era, the Arab turned his face toward Central Africa. Everywhere traces of his language and religion are to be found. He transformed whole tribes of savages. He built cities, and planted fields; he tended flocks, and became trader. He poured new blood ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... wild swans, ducks, robins, and owls and oionoisi te pasi for dinner; and with three pauls' worth of wines and victuals the hungriest has enough, even Claypole the sculptor. Did you ever know him? He used to come to the Haunt. He looks like the Saracen's head with his beard now. There is a French table still more hairy than ours, a German table, an American table. After dinner we go and have coffee and mezzo-caldo at the Cafe Greco over the way. Mezzo-caldo is not ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... The Saracen looked at Ganelon out of the corner of his eye. He was a noble knight, but now that his face was dark with wrath and jealousy, he looked like ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... spire with which it is crowned suggest that in the inside the four plain arches of its lantern support as perfect a cupola as if we were on the other side of the Loire. But both the arches of the lantern and the barrelled vault of the choir keep the round arch. Maine was far off from the land of the Saracen, and the pointed arch would here be a sign that later forms were not far off. From Ambrieres either the railway or, if the traveller likes it better, a road leading up and down over a series of low hills, ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... over the fortunes of the fair Saracen; but who knoweth what gave rise to those sighs? Maybe there were some of them who sighed no less for envy of such frequent nuptials than for pity of Alatiel. But, leaving that be for the present, after they had laughed at Pamfilo's last words, the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... shores of the Baltic a young novitiate, amid the rigors of a monastic life, was tracing the course of the planets, and solving the problem in which Virgil delighted[47]—problems which had baffled Chaldean and Persian, Egyptian and Saracen. Columbus explained the earth, Copernicus explained the heavens. Neither of the great discoverers lived to see the result of his labors, for the Prussian astronomer died on the day that his work was published. But the centuries that ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... Having suffered a partial defeat on account of this device, Charlemagne had the horses' ears stopped with wax, and their eyes blindfolded, before he resumed the battle. Thanks to this precaution, he succeeded in conquering the Saracen army. The whole country had now been again subdued, and Charlemagne was preparing to return to France, when he remembered that Marsiglio (Marsilius), a Saracen king, was still ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... preparing for a sortie against the Saracen. The Chinese warrior equipping himself for battle. The Comanchee brave taking to the warpath were as nothing compared to Tartarin de Tarascon arming himself to go to the club at nine o'clock on a dark evening, an hour after the bugle had blown the retreat. ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... tradition, was personally present at some of the latter campaigns in Grenada: he saw the last of them. So that the discovery of America may be used as a convertible date with that of extinction for the Saracen power in western Europe. True that the overthrow of Constantinople had forerun this event by nearly half a century. But then we insist upon the different proportions of the struggle. Whilst in Spain a province had fought against a province, all Asia militant had fought against the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... brings not from Carthage, but Salonica, with a fleet laden with vegetables for the relief of Constantinople, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 223, 224.) The other Christians of the East, Barhebraeus, (apud Asseman, Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. iii. p. 412, 413,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 13—16,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 98, 99,) are more sincere and accurate. The years of the Persian war are disposed in the chronology ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... of all, the English Knight, announcing his determination to fight and vanquish the Turkish Knight, a vastly superior swordsman, who promptly made mincemeat of him. After the Saracen had celebrated his victory in verse, and proclaimed himself the world's champion, entered Snt George, who, after some preliminary patriotic flourishes, promptly made mincemeat of the Saracen—to the blank amazement of an audience which included several ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... to symbolize the Pagan Roman empire. The glorious body of God's reformers is set forth under the symbol of an angel from heaven, with his face as the sun, his feet as pillars of fire, and a rainbow upon his head; whereas the Saracen warriors of Mahomet are locusts upon the earth, with stings of scorpions. The department of human and angelic life is chosen to set forth the spiritual affairs of the church, while the department of nature and of animal life represents the political affairs of nations. To this general rule, there ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... barons, whom send we, then, To Saragossa, the Saracen den?" "I," said Roland, "will blithely go." "Nay," said Olivier; "nay, not so. All too fiery of mood thou art; Thou wouldst play, I fear me, a perilous part. I go myself, if the king but will." "I command," said Karl, "that ye both be still. ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... Palermo,—veritable enchanted bowers of Oriental gardens,—he had led the life both of pagan and savant, surrounded by poets and men of science (Jews, Mahometans and Christians), by Oriental dancers, alchemists, and ferocious Saracen Guards. He legislated as did the jurisconsults of ancient Rome, at the same time writing the first verses in Italian. His life was one continual combat with the Popes who hurled upon him excommunication ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... our own feeling was, when we met Hartley at times in solitary or desolate places of Westmoreland and Cumberland, that here was a son of Ishmael walking in the wilderness of Edom. The coruscating nimbus of his curling and profuse black hair, black as erebus, strengthened the Saracen impression of his features and complexion. He wanted only a turban on his head, and a spear in his right hand, to be perfect as a Bedouin. But it affected us as all things are affecting which record great changes, to hear that for a ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... patient for a long time; and he who had taken on himself the especial care of exhorting her, Master Nicolas Midy, a scholastic of Paris, closed the scene by saying bitterly to her, "If you don't obey the Church, you will be abandoned for a Saracen." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... what are you doing? Are you a Jew or a Saracen, that you do not keep Friday? By my faith, I am astonished at ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... though grievously sick, to issue his orders, when the boat was boarded by the Saracens. One friendly Turk counselled him to leap on board the enemy's galley and give himself up as a prisoner; and afterwards this Turk saved his life, when the Saracen daggers were at his throat, by passing him off as the King's cousin. He even secured for him the scarlet furred cloak which had been his mother's gift, and under which poor Joinville lay, shivering with fever, and, as he freely owned, with dread ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... had thought that their victory would have gained them immunity from the Saracen attacks, they were speedily undeceived. The host, indeed, which had barred their way had broken up; but its fragments were around them, and the harassing attacks began again with a violence and persistency even greater ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... suffering one, though it never aired its grievances. These, however, were the chief subjects of conversation during the visit, which, in spite of every failure in dramatic propriety, was always spoken of in after days as "the Crusade." It came to an end in due course, the Saracen host retiring to ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... and a Dwarf were friends, and kept together. They made a bargain that they would never forsake each other, but go seek adventures. The first battle they fought was with two Saracens, and the Dwarf, who was very courageous, dealt one of the champions a most angry blow. It did the Saracen but very little injury, who lifting up his sword, fairly struck off the poor Dwarf's arm. He was now in a woeful plight; but the Giant coming to his assistance, in a short time left the two Saracens ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... with Thomas-a-Becket; and Richard Coeur de Lion made all England resound with preparations for the crusade, to the great delight of many zealous adventurers, who eagerly flocked under his banner in the hope of enriching themselves with Saracen spoil, which they called fighting the battles of God. Richard, who was not remarkably scrupulous in his financial operations, was not likely to overlook the lands and castle of Locksley, which he appropriated immediately to his own purposes, and sold to the highest bidder. Now, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... just becoming too much tired to care to look any longer out of the window, when the coach rumbled over the pebbly street into the courtyard of the 'Saracen's Head.' ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... always fell without mercy, and who marched into battle reciting quotations from Scripture. Perhaps he might be more happily likened to one of the old Templars, careless of personal renown, kneeling to pray in front of the foe, and charging upon the Saracen to the accompaniment of that famous psalm, ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... of every merry company, an actor is necessary who feels pleasure when the others, to enliven many an indifferent moment, point the arrows of their wit at him. If he is not merely a stuffed Saracen, like those on whom the knights used to practise their lances in mock battles, but understands himself how to skirmish, to rally, and to challenge, how to wound lightly, and recover himself again, and, while he seems to expose himself, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... their growth and prolong their bright and fragrant lives. What fine old names they have, great with the blended dignities of literary and rural lore; archangel, tormentil, rosa solis or sun-dew, horehound, Saracen's wound-wort, melilot or king's clover, pellitory of Spain! I cannot coldly divide so fine a company into bare genera and species, but imagine for them high genealogies and alliances by an imaginative method of my own: to me the lily and the onion ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... said, "and how like unto a man he speaketh; if there were a brawl in the street, he would strike in and ask no word thereof, not even which were the better side: whereas here is my falcon-chick frighted at a little gold box and a pair of Saracen beads." ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... diversion with some Greek women, aboard his vessel, which lay in the Bosphorus, having put out too far to sea, he was captured by pirates and carried prisoner to Egypt, though, by rare good fortune, his gold and merchandise were in a safe place all the while. The pirates sold him to a Saracen lord, who putting him in fetters, sent him afield to till the wheat, which grows very finely in that country. Fabio offered his master to pay a heavy ransom, but the Paynim's daughter, who loved him and was fain to bring him to the end she desired, over-persuaded her father not to let ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... the Saracen Turks invading Western Europe were utterly overthrown by the Franks under Charles ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... orator called Vanderhulke they pickt out to present him with an oration, one that had a sulpherous big swolne large face, like a Saracen, eies lyke two kentish oysters, a mouth that opened as wide euerie time hee spake, as one of those olde knit trap doores, a beard as though it had bin made of a birds neast pluckt in peeces, which consisteth ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash

... strange groups of heads, which are represented on the old panel-work, in some of the chambers at Newstead. In one of these groups, consisting of three heads, strongly carved and projecting from the panel, the centre figure evidently represents a Saracen or Moor, with an European female on one side of him, and a Christian soldier on the other. In a second group, which is in one of the bed-rooms, the female occupies the centre, while on each side is the head of a Saracen, with the eyes fixed earnestly ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... replide the Saracen, But I will teach thee how to cousen it, An oath in loue may be vnsworne againe, Ioue markes not louers oathes euery whit, Thou wilt repent beside, when riper wit Shall make thee know the magicke of thine eies, How faire thou art, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... The Saracens devastated it in the 8th century, but were driven out, and the island returned to the rule of kings, until they fell in the 10th century, their place being taken by four "judges" of the four provinces, Cagliari, Torres, Arborea and Gallura. In the 12th century Musatto, a Saracen, established himself in Cagliari, but was driven out with the help of the Pisans and Genoese. The Pisans soon acquired the sovereignty over the whole island with the exception of Arborea, which continued to be independent. In 1297 Boniface VIII. invested the kings ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... with his swarthy skin, his hairy lips, his great hooked nose above a spreading moustache; in short, the head of an Algerine pirate before the conquest. These antitheses are frequent in Tarascon, where heads have too much character, Roman or Saracen, heads with the expression of models for a school of design, but quite out of place in bourgeois trades among the manners and customs ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... Virgil; the ostensible subject of the Lusiads glows with the truth of experience. But the real subject is behind these splendid voyagings, just as the real subject of Tasso is behind the battles of Christian and Saracen; and in both poets the inmost theme is broadly the same. It is the consciousness of modern Europe. Jerusalem Delivered and the Lusiads are drenched with the spirit of the Renaissance; and that is chiefly responsible for their lovely ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... Rome and Carthage, when Hannibal and his cavalry rode from one end of Italy to another, and encamped under the walls of Rome itself, left an indelible impression on the imagination of the Romans. The war with Carthage was to them all that the Arab invasion was to Spain, or the Saracen hordes to Eastern Europe. It was the first great struggle for empire in times of which history holds record, between the East and the West, between the Semitic and Aryan races, and Virgil, with consummate skill, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... added the grace of courtesy to its heroism. Evidently Roland had grown in importance before the "Chanson de Roland" took its present form, for we find the rearguard skirmish magnified into a great battle, which manifestly contains recollections of later Saracen invasions and Gascon revolts. As befits the hero of an epic, Roland is now of royal blood, the nephew of the great emperor, who has himself increased in age and splendour; this heroic Roland can obviously only be overcome ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... Fitz-Theobald de Helles, and his wife Agnes, sister to the turbulent Thomas Becket, who was born in the house of his father, Gilbert, situated on this spot. The mother of our meek saint was a fair Saracen, whom his father had married in the Holy Land. On the site of this house rose the hospital, built within twenty years after the murder of Thomas; yet such was the repute of his sanctity, that it was dedicated to him, in conjunction with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various

... clothes, stood up above the bulwarks waving for assistance, while the cutlassed ruffians crouched below ready to do their bloody work when the other ship came near enough. Nor have we forgotten The Saracen's Head, at Ware, whence we went exploring down the little river Lea on Izaak Walton's trail; nor The Swan at Bibury in Gloucestershire, hard by that clear green water the Colne; nor another Swan at Tetsworth in Oxfordshire, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... Paisley and dined, I well remember, we two alone, and, as I thought, magnificently, in a great apartment in "The Saracen's Head," at the end of which was the county ball-room. We had come across from Dunoon and landed in a small boat at the Water Neb along with Mrs. Dr. Hall, a character Sir Walter or Galt would have made immortal. My father with characteristic ardor took an oar, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... of Constantinople a home for literature was found in the eastern cities; and, as the boundaries of the empire were broken down by the Saracen advance, learning gradually retired to the colleges and basilicas of the capital, and to the Greek monasteries of stony Athos, and Patmos, and the 'green Erebinthus.' Among the Romans of the East we cannot discern many learned men, but we know that there was a multitude ready to assist ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... peep, Old Bell-the-Cat came from the keep, Wrapped in a gown of sables fair, As fearful of the morning air; Beneath, when that was blown aside, A rusty shirt of mail I spied, By Archibald won in bloody work Against the Saracen and Turk: Last night it hung not in the hall; I thought some marvel would befall. And next I saw them saddled lead Old Cheviot forth, the earl's best steed; A matchless horse, though something old, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... to. I went to the coach offices and asked what coaches started for Essex, and the reply was, 'Where did I want to go?' and, when I said Culverwood Hall, no one could tell me by which coach I was to go, or which town it was near. At last, I did find out from the porter of the Saracen's Head, who had taken in parcels with that address, and who went to the coachman, who said that his coach passed within a mile of Sir Alexander Moystyn's, who lived there. I never knew her ladyship's maiden name before. I took ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... perhaps in the great Indian peninsula, do not realise the dreams and glittering visions of the Arabian Nights, or indeed the authentic histories written in the flush and fullness of the success of the children of the desert, the Tartar and the Saracen. Commerce once followed in the train of the conquerors of Asia, and the vast buildings which they hastily threw up of slight and perishing materials, were filled, not only with the plunder of the East, but furnished with all the productions of art and curious luxury, which the adventurous ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... after the great Saracen invasion in the beginning of the eighth century, Spain was broken up into a number of small but independent states, divided in their interests, and often in deadly hostility with one another. It was inhabited by races, the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... experiences. In this he did not differ from most men of this age, and it only amounts to saying that Mr. Webster did not have a deeply religious temperament. He did not have the ardent proselyting spirit which is the surest indication of a profoundly religious nature; the spirit of the Saracen Emir crying, "Forward! Paradise is under the shadow of our swords." When, therefore, he turned his noble powers to a defence of religion, he did not speak with that impassioned fervor which, coming from the depths of a man's heart, savors of inspiration ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... an English Crusader, was taken prisoner and became a slave in the palace of a Saracen prince, where he not only gained the confidence of his master, but also the love of his master's fair daughter. By and by he escaped and returned to England, but the devoted girl determined to follow ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... Saracenic in character and recall similar structures erected by the Arabs in Spain, it will be remembered that the Normans brought no trained architects to the island, but employed the Arabs, Greeks, and Hebrews who had already been in the service of the Saracen emirs. But the Arab influence in architecture was dominant, and it survived ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... of knighthood; and so all the world saith, that betwixt three knights is departed clearly knighthood, that is Launcelot du Lake, Sir Tristram de Liones, and Sir Lamorak de Galis: these bear now the renown. There be many other knights, as Sir Palamides the Saracen and Sir Safere his brother; also Sir Bleoberis and Sir Blamore de Ganis his brother; also Sir Bors de Ganis and Sir Ector de Maris and Sir Percivale de Galis; these and many more be noble knights, but there be none that pass the ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... shows conclusively that the energy imparted by Mohammedanism to Oriental nations would have lasted but a short time, and encountered in the West a successful resistance, had not the Turks appeared on the scene, destroyed the Saracen dynasties, and, by infusing the blood of Central Asia into the veins of Eastern and Southern fanatics, prolonged for so many ages the sway of the Crescent over a large portion ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... and all the other barons of the rear guard, except Roland, who was left for dead by the Saracens when they fled on hearing the horns of Charlemagne's returning host. Roland came back to consciousness on feeling a Saracen marauder tugging at his sword Durendal. With a blow of his ivory horn—oliphant—he killed the pagan; then feeling death near, he prepared for it. His first thought was for Durendal, his sword, which he could not leave to infidels. In the singular triple ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... pact or conquest in the cause of Islem. There were those who had followed Muza from the fertile regions of Egypt, across the deserts of Barca, and those who had joined his standard from among the sun-burnt tribes of Mauritania. There were Saracen and Tartar, Syrian and Copt, and swarthy Moor; sumptuous warriors from the civilized cities of the east, and the gaunt and predatory rovers of the desert. The greater part of the army, however, was composed of Arabs; but differing greatly from the first rude ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... the race of Saracen Arabs who had brought the arts of life to such perfection in Southern Spain, but who had received the general appellation of Moors from those Africans who were continually reinforcing them, and, bringing a certain Puritan strictness of Mohammedanism with them, had ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... And as we know that the German and Anglo-Saxon race has the smallest tendency towards bloody crimes, the beneficial influence of this racial character in Benevent explains itself. On the other hand, there is much Saracen blood in the western and southern provinces of Sicily, and this explains the greater number of bloody crimes there. It is evident that the organic character of the inhabitants of that island, where you ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... very beginning of the reconquest of Spain from the Arab-Moors in 718, when the brave band of refugees who had not bowed to the Saracen yoke issued from the mountains of Asturias in the extreme northwest corner of Spain, under Pelayo, with vows resting upon them "to rid the land of its infidel invaders and to advance the standard of the cross until ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... looks like quartz crystals sticking up out of the dark hollow. We'll have our high tea at the Saracen's Head.' ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... therein. This kingdome in olde time was very large and vnder the dominion of king Porus, who fought a great battell with Alexander the great. The people of this countrey are idolaters worshipping fire, serpents and trees. And ouer all this land the Saracen do beare rule, who tooke it by maine force, and they themselues are in subjection unto King Daldilus. There be diuers kinds of beasts, as namely blacke lyouns in great abundance, and apes also, and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt

... heights above, at Rocco Bruna, is a Saracen-built little town with strange dark people who seldom come down from the heights. You go by shady steps between high white walls to a little chapel, and there on Sunday a beloved cure beguiles an innocent little flock with a murmuring, ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... cruiser brought us to and visited the "Galopsik." As her papers were in order, and the vessel altogether untainted, I took it for granted that Lieutenant Hill would make a short stay and be off to his "Saracen." Yet, a certain "slave deck," and an unusual quantity of water-casks, aroused the officer's suspicions, so that instead of heading for our port, we were unceremoniously favored with a prize crew, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... all took it much to heart that the engraver had made it a Saracen's head, and not a ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... The Saracen lady accepted the offer, and the next day followed the sultan my father, who found all his retinue upon the skirts of the wood, they having spent the night in searching for him, and being very uneasy because they could not find him. They were no less rejoiced to meet with, than amazed to see ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... barbarism to speak of the faith of Islam.] has often been called the religion of the sword, and Mahomet and his Arabic successors, under the first impulse, conquered Syria, Persia, Northern Africa, and Spain, and met their first check at Tours from Charles Martel. These, the Saracen Arabs, were a generous race, no persecutors, and almost friendly to the Christians, contenting themselves with placing them under restrictions, and exacting from them a small tribute. After the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... George had wandered far away, Still flying from his thoughts and jealous fear, Will was his guide, and grief led him astray; At last him chanced to meet upon the way A faithless Saracen all armed to point, In whose great shield was writ with letters gay SANSFOY: full large of limb, and every joint He was, and cared not for ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... great chimney-piece of panel-work, carved in high relief, with niches or compartments, each containing a human bust, that protruded almost entirely from the wall. Some of the figures were in ancient Gothic garb; the most striking among them was a female, who was earnestly regarded by a fierce Saracen from an ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... meaning of this emblem have been disputed with considerable heat, and many ingenious conjectures have been framed to account for its presence here. One theory regards it as an allusion to the tradition according to which Becket's mother was a Saracen. But this legend is believed to be comparatively modern, and, as Mr. George Austin points out, "even if the legend of Becket's mother had obtained credence at that early period, it may be observed that in the painted windows around no reference is made ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... well-named Cyclopean walls, for some of the stones are 12 feet long by 5 feet wide, firmly as if centuries on centuries had not sent a myriad of storms to try their strength. There are several gates in these walls, noted among which is one called the Saracen's Gate; it is known in architecture from its indicating by its form one of the first attempts toward ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... services to the thirsty soldiers engaged in the siege of the city.[337] In keeping with these stories is the tradition that the cemetery in the area between the Walls of Heraclius and Leo V. the Armenian, is the resting-place of Saracen warriors who fell in the siege of 673. But have we not here the fancy-bred tales which Oriental imagination weaves to veil its ignorance of real facts? When etymology or history fails, romance is substituted. We may as well believe the tradition that the body of Eyoub, the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... XVIII, ottava 114-115. The Giant Morgante meets the villain Margutte and asks him if he be a Christian or a Saracen. Margutte answers that he cares not, but only believes in boiled or in ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... the disjointed relics of the great warrior were hurried through France; France, which the romantic Saracen slave had traversed but two short years before, filled with high hopes, and pursuing extravagant visions. It has been recorded by classic historians, that the different fragments, after their arrival in Spain, were re-united, and fastened ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... your interests are not all alike you blame the saints for not doing what is obviously impossible. Now, I know that he whom you call St. Vincent loved the tongue of a woman no better than the scimitar of the Saracen, and for this reason did he probably prefer to spare the life of D. Barbara than be importuned by her ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others

... rearguard, fell into an ambuscade at Roncezvalles, in the Pyrenees (778), and perished, with the flower of French chivalry. He is the hero of Ariosto's poem, "Orlando Furioso." In this same poem Cant. xii. is also mentioned Ferragus, or Ferrau in Italian, a Saracen giant, who dropped his helmet into the river, and vowed he would never wear another till he had won that worn by Orlando; the latter slew him in the only part where ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere

... their camp the torrent's bed. But none of all who owned the Chief's command Rushed to that battle-field with bolder hand Or sterner hate than IRAN'S outlawed men, Her Worshippers of Fire—all panting then[106] For vengeance on the accursed Saracen; Vengeance at last for their dear country spurned, Her throne usurpt, and her bright ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... And now the Saracen King Marsilas began to gather his army. He laid a strict command on all his nobles and chiefs that they should bring with them to Saragossa as many men as they could gather together. And when they were come to the city, it being the third day ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... that Joseph came to Sarras there was a King that hight Evelake, that had great war against the Saracens, and in especial against one Saracen, the which was King Evelake's cousin, a rich king and a mighty, which marched nigh this land. So on a day these two met to do battle. Then Joseph, the son of Joseph of Arimathie, went to King Evelake and told him he should be discomfit and slain, but if he left his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... was charged with denying transubstantiation, with questioning the value of the confessional, and the power of the keys; and the absence of authoritative Protestant dogma had left his mind free to expand to a yet larger belief. He had ventured to assert, that "if a Turk, a Jew, or a Saracen do trust in God and keep his law, he is a good Christian man,"[102]—a conception of Christianity, a conception of Protestantism, which we but feebly dare to whisper even at the present day. The proceedings against him commenced with a demand that he should give up his books, and also the names ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... the victor knights whose swords, Are sharpened to slay the dark hosts of sin; Still marching on through Saracen hordes, Till the King's Encampment at ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins

... rings through their noses, and there is a worthy field for the labours of the pious. In like manner, poor Spain, which really might be allowed to set its temporal house a little in order, before being expected to a depart from the faith that has been universal in it since the expulsion of the Saracen, was deemed sufficiently distant and dangerous to be interesting, and "the great London Caloro" girded up his loins and departed thither. Of the peril he encountered, the acquaintances he made, of how he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... accomplished in diplomacy—could have acquitted himself better under the same circumstances. Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a business without surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as those of a Saracen's head. ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... of very unpromising material. Nearly a thousand years ago Peter the Hermit passed like a flame of fire across the provinces of Europe calling upon men to wrest the Holy places from the hands of the Saracen. In countless thousands they responded to his call, even little children arising and pressing eastward on the great emprise. Surely there is need enough for crusading to-day. Surely, too, there are multitudes who, for their own souls' sake, and for the sake of ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... a talisman," she said, "Gnostic, I should think, for there is the cock upon it, and a lot that I can't read, probably a magic formula. No doubt the old Crusader got it in the East, perhaps as a gift from some Saracen in whose family it had descended. Oh! my dear boy, I do thank you. You could not have made me a present ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... been forced to snatch everything that I have, as it were, out of the fire, our Saracen history should have been ushered into the world after a different manner." He is fearful that something would be ascribed to his indolence or negligence, that "ought more justly to be attributed to the influence ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... alone in it—and she had meekly obeyed. She had wandered out of the station and across a bridge and had eventually found herself in the Embankment Gardens. Then she had asked me how to find Harry. Really she was ridiculously like Thomas a Becket's Saracen mother crying in London for Gilbert. And the most ludicrous part of the resemblance was that she did not know the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... strength and symmetry of his person, while it bore a strong contrast to the flowing robes which disguised the thin frame of the Eastern monarch. It was Richard's two-handed sword that chiefly attracted the attention of the Saracen—a broad straight blade, the seemingly unwieldy length of which extended wellnigh from the shoulder to the ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... star of thy day-spring, regenerate Greek! Dimmed the Saracen's moon, and struck pallid his cheek: In its fast flushing morning thy Muses shall speak, When their love and their lutes they reclaim; And the first of their songs from Parnassus's peak Shall be "Glory ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... another cousin, it appeared, the son of her mother's sister. He was all Spanish. There was not a drop of Arab blood in his veins, unless it came through Saracen ancestors in the days when ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... disappearance of the house which had been inhabited by the Holy Family at Nazareth in Galilee. This took place in 1291. As this sacred relic was about to be exposed to the danger of being destroyed by the Saracen infidels, it was miraculously raised from its foundations and transported by angels to Dalmatia, where, early in the morning, some peasants discovered on a small hill, a house without foundations, half converted into a shrine, and with ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... glorious Loch Linnhe and the Murray frith; some made their way through the blue Mediterranean to "Micklegard," the Great City of the Byzantine Emperor, and in his service wielded their stout axes against Magyar and Saracen;[172] some found their amphibious natures better satisfied upon the islands of the Atlantic ridge,—the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Faeroes, and especially noble Iceland. There an aristocratic republic soon grew up, owning slight and indefinite allegiance to the kings ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... now, Villiers?" he demanded mirthfully.. "You are a regular fire-eater—a would-be Crusader against a modern Saracen host! Why are you choked with such seemingly unutterable wrath! ... what of the Press? ... it is at any ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... or to explain the position of that great Roman power which had its centre on the Bosphorus, which in the code of Justinian left us our grandest monument of Roman law, and which for a thousand years was the staunch bulwark of Europe against the successive aggressions of Persian, Saracen, and Turk. It was equally impossible to understand the rise of the Papal power, the all-important politics of the great Saxon and Swabian emperors, the relations of mediaeval England to the Continental powers, or the marvellously interesting growth of the modern European system ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... greater part of them planted by the hands of Colonel Warrington himself. The villa is on the site of an ancient haunted house—for what country does not boast of its haunted house? The spot which once was visited nightly by some Saracen's-head ghost, in the midst of a waste, is now the fairest, loveliest garden of Tripoli! Amongst its rich fruit-trees is an immense peach-tree—the largest in all this part of Africa. It is a round, squatting, wide-spreading tree, not nailed ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... so great that he not only became from an insignificant man Sultan of Babylon, but also gained many victories over the Saracen and Christian kings, having in many wars and in his great magnificence spent all his treasure, and on account of some trouble having need of a great quantity of money, nor seeing where he should get it quickly as he had need to, was reminded of a rich ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... approaching sunset. Whilst passing La Tricherie I halted for a moment to show mademoiselle the ruins of Baudimont, and pointed out to her, in the distance on our right, the field of Moussaisla-Bataille, where Charles the Hammer broke the Saracen advance ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... house of Clare, he took her to France, and confided his only son to be brought up under the renowned St. Louis. This young Robert took the cross while quite a youth; and carrying the banner of the holy King of France to the plains of Palestine, covered himself with glory. In storming a Saracen fortress, he rescued the person of Prince Edward of England. The horrible tyrant, who now tramples on all laws, human and divine, was then in the bloom of youth, defending the cause of Christianity! Think on that, sweet lady, and marvel at ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... above the cleft where tradition points to the last exploit of the valorous nephew of Charlemagne, whose type the imperial bird might well be deemed. It was here, according to the veracious chronicle of Archbishop Turpin, that, after defeating the Saracen king, Marsires, in the pass of Roncesvalles, Roland, grievously wounded, laid himself down to die, the shrill notes of his horn having failed to bring him the succour he expected from his uncle. It is in Roncesvalles that poets have ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... hope."—"How are you, Yamfu, my dear fellow?" their horses fretting and jumping all the time—and if the Jack Spaniards or gadflies be rife, they have, even when denuded for the shake, to spur at each other, more like a Knight Templar and a Saracen charging in mortal combat, than two men merely struggling to be civil; an after all they have often to get their black servants alongside to hold their horses, for shake they must, were they to break their necks in the attempt. Why they won't shake hands with ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... In the midst of this anarchy, over-rapid industrial development had moreover begotten the tendencies to promiscuity, to mystical communism, always expressive of deep popular misery. The Holy Land had become a freebooter's Eldorado; the defenders of Christ's sepulchre were turned half-Saracen, infected with unclean mixtures of creeds. Theology was divided between neo-Aristotelean logic, abstract and arid, and Alexandrian esoteric mysticism, quietistic, nay, nihilistic; and the Church had ceased to answer to any spiritual wants of the people. Meanwhile, on all sides ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... Lion's heart will 'gainst the Saracen rise, And purchase from him many a glorious prize; The rose and lily shall at first unite, But, parting of the prey prove opposite. * * * But while abroad these great acts shall be done, All things at home shall to disorder run. Cooped up and caged then shall the Lion be, But, after ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the greater part of Natolia; then beaten; a fugitive; and at last murdered by his own son; we are unable to conceive of a story more interesting, or more worthy of our attention. But in contemplating the rife of the Saracen khalifate, and the religion of Mahomet, which immediately succeeded these events, we are compelled to acknowledge a ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... for which Man will die will be a Catholic idea. When the Spaniard learns at last that he is no better than the Saracen, and his prophet no better than Mahomet, he will arise, more Catholic than ever, and die on a barricade across the filthy slum he starves in, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... hand")—to the havoc he makes among the game in his neighbourhood—to his speech from the bench, to shew the Spectator what is thought of him in the country—to his unwillingness to be put up as a sign-post, and his having his own likeness turned into the Saracen's head—to his gentle reproof of the baggage of a gipsy that tells him "he has a widow in his line of life"—to his doubts as to the existence of witchcraft, and protection of reputed witches—to his account of the family pictures, and his choice of a chaplain—to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... the desert was of first-rate importance, since the assistance which they could render as friends was considerable, and the injury which they could inflict as enemies was almost beyond calculation. It is among the faults of Julian in this campaign that he did not set more store by the Saracen alliance, and make greater efforts to maintain it; we shall find that after a while he allowed the brave nomads to become disaffected, and to exchange their friendship with him for hostility. Had he taken ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... went to the Saracen's Head, where Mr. Squeers stopped when in London. The odd old place looked as if it hadn't changed a particle. There was the wooden gallery outside, where the chamber-maids stood to see the coach off; ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott



Words linked to "Saracen" :   nomad, history, Arabian, Moslem, Muslim, Arab



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