United States or Jordan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


This prelate burned his ships, that his people might not return, laid off the largest island into seven bishoprics, and, impressing the natives into his service, built churches and convents, for there were women in his company whom he placed in nunneries. This island, which figures on early maps as Antillia and as Behaim, was known also as the Land of the Seven Cities, from its seven bishoprics.

Not that he would have accepted this preferment, "could the abbey have been annexed to any of the new bishoprics;" on the contrary, he assured the king that "to carry out so holy a work as the erection of those new sees, he would willingly have contributed even out of his own miserable pittance."

Cnut added Norway to his dominions, and was anxious to make his realm ecclesiastically independent. He established three bishoprics in Denmark, but did not get his own metropolitan, and his empire fell asunder at his death. Adalbert made a close alliance with Swein of Denmark, and thus kept the Danish Church dependent.

When bishoprics and benefices in the gift of the crown became vacant, the king ordered the profits to be lodged in the exchequer, and suffered the cures to be totally neglected. The revenues were chiefly employed in the maintenance of Romish bishops and priests, who grew so insolent under this indulgence, that in several places they forcibly seized the protestant churches.

Whilst the chaplain is preaching, the king is chattering in German and almost as loud as the preacher; so loud that the clergyman actually burst out crying in his pulpit, because the defender of the faith and the dispenser of bishoprics would not listen to him! Land and Livings And how is it in the twentieth century? Have conditions been much improved?

It has been already mentioned that in the last year of the preceding reign a bill had passed for creating, when opportunity offered by the sees affected becoming vacant, two new bishoprics at Ripon and Manchester, the incomes of which were to be provided by the union of some of the smaller existing bishoprics, Gloucester with Bristol, St. Asaph with Bangor.

The expectation had been disappointed. The pope had not condescended to reply to the communication which had been made to him, and the act had in consequence received the royal assent. An alteration had thus become necessary in the manner of presentation to vacant bishoprics. The anomalies of the existing practice have been already described.

They spoke of the King's early determination to govern the Netherlands, not by natives but by Spaniards; to treat them not as constitutional countries, but as conquered provinces; to regard the inhabitants not as liege subjects, but as enemies; above all, to supersede their ancient liberty by the Spanish Inquisition, and they alluded to the first great step in this scheme the creation of the new bishoprics, each with its staff of inquisitors.

The document stated that "Paul the Fourth, slave of slaves, wishing to provide for the welfare of the provinces and the eternal salvation of their inhabitants, had determined to plant in that fruitful field several new bishoprics.

Duke Bernhard forwarded the demands of the soldiers to Oxenstiern, sending at the same time a demand on his own account, first that the territory of the Franconian bishoprics should at once be erected into a principality in his favour, and secondly, that he should be nominated commander-in-chief of all the armies fighting in Germany for the Protestant cause with the title of generalissimo.