"Simony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him as a heretic, is viewed by Dr. Madden as a monk of Florence at the close of the fifteenth century, who was of opinion that the mortal enemy of Christ's gospel in all ages of the world had been mammon; that simony was the sin against the Holy Ghost; that the interests of religion were naturally allied with those of liberty; that the Arts were the handmaids of both, of a Divine origin, and were given to earth for purposes that tended to spiritualise humanity; and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... that the corrupt lives of Christians in the later centuries of the middle ages, the avarice of the Avignon popes, the selfishness shown in the great schism, the simony and nepotism of the Roman court of the fifteenth century, excited disgust and hatred toward Christianity in the hearts of the literary men of the Renaissance, which disqualified them for the reception of the Christian evidences; or that the social ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... country church draws as many gazers as a blazing-star; no sooner he comes into the cathedral, but a train of whispers runs buzzing round the congregation in a moment: Who is he? Whence comes he? Do you know him?Then I, sir, tips me the verger with half-a-crown; he pockets the simony, and inducts me into the best pew in the church; I pull out my snuff-box, turn myself round, bow to the bishop, or the dean, if he be the commanding-officer; single out a beauty, rivet both my eyes to hers, set ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... College, with the result that he was elected on the 11th of August, and proclaimed Pope under the title of Alexander VI. The secret Archives of the Vatican[28] give full particulars of this election, which was obtained by the most flagrant simony, and proved a prelude to the days of confusion and misery which Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican of Florence, daily prophesied were in store for the Church. Ascanio Sforza was the first to reap the reward of his base compliance. The new Pope loaded him with favours, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... that Edmund Spenser described the Irish Protestant clergy of the period as "bad, licentious, and most disordered." "Whatever disorders," he writes, "you see in the Church of England, you may find in Ireland, and many more, namely, gross simony, greedy covetousness, incontinence, careless sloth, and generally all disordered life in the common clergyman. And, besides all these, they have their particular enormities; for all Irish ministers that now enjoy church livings are in a manner mere ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... appeared intolerable. How could the Church keep itself unspotted from the world when its highest officers were chosen by laymen and were compelled to perform unpriestly duties? In the act of investiture the reformers also saw the sin of simony [35]—the sale of sacred powers—because there was such a temptation before the candidate for a bishopric or abbacy to buy the position ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... not with its flattering tears like they; For, when they cannot kill, they whine and weep. 110 Nor is it half so greedy of men's bodies As they of soul and all; nor does it wallow In slime as they in simony and lies And close lusts ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a third of the houses, including the bulk of the larger abbeys, were fairly and decently conducted. The rest were charged with drunkenness, with simony, and with the foulest and most revolting crimes. The character of the visitors, the sweeping nature of their report, and the long debate which followed on its reception leave little doubt that these charges were grossly exaggerated. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... of a hundred thousand, and a capital of two millions and a half in addition, it may be safely asserted that the prelate had at least made a good beginning. Besides his regular income, moreover, he had handsome receipts from that simony which was reduced to a system, and which gave him a liberal profit, generally in the shape of an annuity, upon every benefice which he conferred. He was, however, by no means satisfied. His appetite was as boundless as the sea; he was still a shameless mendicant of pecuniary ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... adultery, Of churche-reeves,* and of testaments, *churchwardens Of contracts, and of lack of sacraments, And eke of many another manner* crime, *sort of Which needeth not rehearsen at this time, Of usury, and simony also; But, certes, lechours did he greatest woe; They shoulde singen, if that they were hent;* *caught And smale tithers were foul y-shent,* *troubled, put to shame If any person would on them complain; There might astert them ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... after their institution—so as they, being once presented or promoted, as aforesaid, are by the said ordinaries very uncharitably handled, to their no little hindrance and impoverishment; which your said subjects suppose not only to be against all laws, right, and good conscience, but also to be simony, and contrary to the laws ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... rose in the early part of the reign of William Rufus, when his follower, Herbert de Losinga, who, not content with having purchased the bishopric for L1900, bought also the abbacy of Winchester for his father, for L1000, was cited before the Pope for this double act of simony, and, with difficulty, retained his mitre, upon the condition of building sundry churches and monasteries. Norwich has, indeed, a superiority in its tower, in regard to which, it may safely be put in competition with any edifice ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... it has come to our ears, being at once publicly notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot afore-mentioned, have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... pious divine. Yet to such a degree had his manners been corrupted by evil communications, and his understanding obscured by inordinate zeal for a single object, that he did not scruple to become a broker in simony of a peculiarly discreditable kind, and to use a bishopric as a bait to tempt a divine to perjury. Hough replied with civil contempt that he wanted nothing from the crown but common justice. "We stand," he said, "on our statutes and our oaths: but, even setting ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
