noun
definition
A bishop of the early Church; now specifically, the Pope.
definition
Any chief figure or leader of a religion.
definition
A pontifex.
Examples of pontiff in a Sentence
Here are Pinturicchio's famous frescoes of scenes from the life of the latter pontiff, and the collection of choir books (supported on sculptured desks) with splendid illuminations by Sienese and other artists.
These negotiations ended when the pontiff grossly insulted the envoys of the king of Bohemia.
The progress of heresy, the reported troubles in Germany, the war which had lately broken out between the dukes of Austria and Burgundy, and finally, the small number of fathers who had responded to the summons of Martin V., caused that pontiff's successor, Eugenius IV., to think that the synod of Basel was doomed to certain failure.
Trustworthy evidence, they said, proved to them that this pontiff accepted the dogma of the superiority of the council as it had been defined at Constance and at Basel.
Fesch ventured to write to the aged pontiff a letter which came into the hands of the emperor.
From this time onwards his life was one of incessant toil; he was continually engaged in the active service of his order, was frequently travelling upon long and tedious journeys, and was constantly consulted on affairs of state by the reigning pontiff.
Under the same pontiff, the Holy See absorbed the duchy of Urbino on the death of Francesco Maria II., the last representative of Montefeltro and Della Rovere.
See the contemporary life by Vitorelli, continuator of Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum pontiff.
See Panvinio, continuator of Platina, De vitis pontiff.
It was in vain that Sigismund journeyed to Perpignan, and that the kings of Aragon, Castile and Navarre ceased to obey the aged pontiff.
The abbe again declared "it is impossible for me honestly and sincerely to make the act of absolute retractation and submission exacted by the sovereign pontiff."
See Guarnacci, Vitae et res gestae Pontiff.
The pope condemned this marriage as adulterous; and Abbo of Fleury, who visited Rome shortly after Gregory V.'s accession, is said to have procured the restoration of Arnulf at the new pontiff's demand.
At the present day the canonization of saints is reserved in the Roman Church to the sovereign pontiff.
Contemporary lives are to be found in Panvinio, continuator of Platina, De vitis pontiff.
His work brought him into intercourse with this great pontiff, who soon saw what he could best do, and how his vast scholarship might be made of use to the church.
See the contemporary lives by Cicarella, continuator of Platina, De vitis pontiff.
The general ardour for the restoration of the arts and of learning created an aristocratic public, of which Erasmus was supreme pontiff.
That a sovereign like St Louis should be able to associate himself officially with the feudalism of his realm to repress abuses of church jurisdiction; that a contemporary of Philip the Fair, the lawyer Pierre Dubois, should dare to suggest the secularization of ecclesiastical property and the conversion of the clergy into a class of functionaries paid out of the royal treasury; and that Philip the Fair, the adversary of Boniface VIII., should be able to rely in his conflict with the leader of the Church on the popular consent obtained at a meeting of the Three Estates of France - all point to a singular demoralization of the sentiments and principles on which were based the whole power of the pontiff of Rome and the entire organization of medieval Catholicism.
The feud between Italian and Frenchman broke out in a violent form; and it was in vain that St Catherine of Siena proffered her mediation in the bloody strife betwixt the pope and the Florentine republic. The letters that she addressed to the pontiff, on this and other occasions, are documents, which are, perhaps, unique in their kind, and of great literary beauty.
But, though illuminated by the rays of art, and loaded with the exuberant panegyrics of humanists and poets, the reign of the first Medicean pontiff, by its unbounded devotion to purely secular tendencies and its comparative neglect of the Church herself proved disastrous for the See of St Peter.
The first noteworthy pontiff of the period was Clement VIII., who gained a vast advantage by allying the papacy with the rising power of France.
The relations of one pope became the enemies of the next; and each pontiff governed at the expense of his successors.
During republican agitation at Rome the French general Duphot was killed, a French army advanced on the city, and carried the aged pontiff a prisoner of war to Valence in Dauphine, where he died on the 29th of August 1799.
On the pontiff's death he retired, with impaired health, to Padua, and there lived for a number of years engaged in literary labours and amusements.
See Panvinio, continuator of Platina, De Vitis Pontiff.
Rom.; Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum Pontiff.
In 1245 the Roman pontiff sent two embassies - one, a party of four Dominicans, sought the commander-in-chief of the Mongol forces in Persia; the second, consisting of Franciscans, made their way into Tartary, and sought to convert the successor of Oktai-Khan.
See Guarnacci, Vitae et gestae Pontiff.
Rom.; Oldoin, continuator of Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum Pontiff.
For contemporary lives of Innocent see Oldoin, continuator of Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum Pontiff.
The pope might have said, like a later pontiff on another day, " remittimus irremissibile."
He was an enlightened pontiff and collaborated with Cassiodorus in founding at Rome a library of ecclesiastical authors.
Formerly all cases, civil and criminal, were referred to the clergy, and until the 17th century the clergy were subordinate to a kind of chief pontiff, named sadr-us-sodur, who possessed a very extended jurisdiction, nominated the judges, and managed all the religious endowments of the mosques, colleges, shrines, &c. Shah Safi (1629-1642), in order to diminish the influence of the clergy, appointed two such pontiffs, one for the court and nobility the other for the people.
The second division of the work was dedicated to Caesar as supreme pontiff.
I seq.; Palazzi, Gesta Pontiff.
Down to the time of the Gracchi (131 B.C.) the Pontifex Maximus inscribed the year's events upon annual tablets of wood which were preserved in the Regia, the official residence of the pontiff in the Forum.
See Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum Pontiff.
To his high connexions and his adroitness, as well as to the gross mistakes of his rival, Clement owed the immediate support of Queen Joanna of Naples and of several of the Italian barons; and the king of France, Charles V., who seems to have been sounded beforehand on the choice of the Roman pontiff, soon became his warmest protector.
See the contemporary life by Vitorelli, continuator of Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum Pontiff.
See Oldoin, continuator of Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum Pontiff.
On the 8th the festival of the Supreme Being was solemnized, Robespierre acting as pontiff amid the outward deference and secret jeers of his colleagues.
On returning to Rome, he was cordially received by the newly elected pontiff Nicolas IV., who gave him communion on Palm Sunday, 1288, allowed him to celebrate his own Eucharist in the capital of Latin Christendom, commissioned him to visit the Christians of the East, and entrusted to him the tiara which he presented to Mar Yaballaha.
According to that apocryphal document, the emperor after his baptism had ceded to the sovereign pontiff his imperial power and honors, the purple chlamys, the golden crown, the town of Rome, the districts and cities of Italy and of all the West.
The festival of the new doctrine, which turned the head of the new pontiff (June 8), the loi de Prairial, or code of legal murder (June 10), which gave the deputies themselves into his hand; and the multiplication of executions at a time when the victory of Fleurus (June 25) showed the uselessness and barbarity of this aggravation of the Reign of Terror provoked against him the victorious coalition of revenge, lassitude and fear.
Sigismund, king of the Romans, not only extorted, it is said, a sum of 50,000 florins from the pontiff in his extremity, but insisted upon his summoning the council at Constance (December 9).
Duke Frederick of Austria had hitherto sheltered John's flight; but, laid under the ban of the empire, attacked by powerful armies, and feeling that he was courting ruin, he preferred to give up the pontiff who had trusted to him.
However irregular this sentence may have been from the canonical point of view (for the accusers do not seem to have actually proved the crime of heresy, which was necessary, according to most scholars of the period, to justify the deposition of a sovereign pontiff), the condemned pope was not long in confirming it.
He died on the 22nd of December 1419, and all visitors to the Baptistery at Florence may admire, under its high baldacchino, the sombre figure sculptured by Donatello of the dethroned pontiff, who had at least the merit of bowing his head under his chastisement, and of contributing by his passive resignation to the extinction of the series of popes which sprang from the council of Pisa.
But this pontiff died soon after his election; and after a delay of eighteen months, during which Frederick marched against Rome on two occasions and devastated the lands of his opponents, one of his partisans, Sinibaldo Fiesco,was chosen pope, and took the name of Innocent IV.