Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 2, 2025
She was an intimate friend of Bernard of Clairvaux, who was himself, perhaps, the most influential man in Europe in this century. She was in correspondence with four Popes, and with the Emperors Conrad and Frederick I, and with many distinguished archbishops, abbots, and abbesses, and teachers and teaching bodies of various kinds.
The Abbesses are sometimes allowed to go out, but not unless they have a pass from one of the priests, and if, at any time, they have reason to suspect that some one is discontented, they will not allow any one to go out of the building without a careful attendant. My Superior here, as in the White Nunnery, was very kind to me.
The spot was the burial-place of a king and a queen, of abbots and abbesses, saints and bishops, knights and squires. The bones of King Edward "the Martyr," carefully removed hither for holy preservation, brought Shaston a renown which made it the resort of pilgrims from every part of Europe, and enabled it to maintain a reputation extending far beyond English shores.
Annetta glanced more keenly at the Scotchman's quiet face, and then laughed. "There is one, if you could see her! The abbess's niece. Oh, that one is beautiful. She seems to me a painted angel!" "The abbess's niece? What is she like? Let me see, the abbess is a princess, is she not?" "Yes, a great princess of the Princes of Gerano, of Casa Braccio, you know. They are always abbesses.
When I returned to my little garret, I was delighted to see again my modest furniture, my pretty pink chintz curtains, my thin blue carpet, my little ebony shelves, and then all the precious objects I had saved from the wreck; my father's old easy-chair, my mother's work-table, and all of our family portraits, concealed, like proud intruders, in one corner of the room, where haughty marshals, worthy prelates, coquettish marquises, venerable abbesses, sprightly pages and gloomy cavaliers all jostled together, and much astonished to find themselves in such a wretched little room, and what is worse, shamefully disowned by their unworthy descendant.
In truth, we find mediæval literature, if we try to estimate it reasonably, gives a quite pleasing impression of womankind, whether we turn to some of the royal ladies who presided over brilliant Courts, where learning was encouraged and poets made welcome, or to the lady of lesser degree, who reigned supreme in her castle, at any rate when her lord was away, as was often the case in time of war or during attendance at Court, or to the abbesses who governed the religious houses they were set over, to their material and mental well-being, proving thus their genius for administration, and, in many instances, their rare intellectual attainments.
If we allow ten years for the duration of the rule of the last two, we still have the names of the abbesses for only thirty-six years out of the one hundred and ninety-seven years that the institution lasted.
He represented to the king the true state of affairs in what way the Isle of Ely had become the property of the monastery, how all had been lost after the Danish invasion, and in what a lamentable condition the place was at the time, although the remains of the sainted abbesses were still on the spot. The king immediately saw here a new opportunity of furthering his religious work.
'Gottlieb! do you remember what happened at the siege of Mainz? and poor Marthe Herbstblum, who had hoped to die as she was; and Dame Altknopfchen, and Frau Kaltblut, and the old baker, Hans Topf's sister, all of them as holy as abbesses, and that did not save them! and nothing will from such godless devourers.
A long account is given by Bentham of the trickery by which her body was purloined and brought to Ely, where it was interred near the bodies of the three abbesses. Brithnoth is said to have been murdered at the instigation of Queen Elfrida, having grievously offended her in many ways, especially by reproving her infamous and abandoned life.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking