Purgation

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Related to Purgation: disillusion, purgation therapy

PURGATION. The clearing one's self of an offence charged, by denying the guilt on oath or affirmation.
     2. There were two sorts of purgation, the vulgar, and the canonical.
     3. Vulgar purgation consisted in superstitious trials by hot and cold water, by fire, by hot irons, by batell, by corsned, &c., which modes of trial were adopted in times of ignorance and barbarity, and were impiously called judgments of God.
     4. Canonical purgation was the act of justifying one's self, when accused of some offence in the presence of a number of persons, worthy of credit, generally twelve, who would swear they believed the accused. See Compurgator; Wager of Law.
     5. In modern times, a man may purge himself of an offence, in some cases where the facts are within his own knowledge; for example, when a man is charged with a contempt of court, he may purge himself of such contempt, by swearing that in doing the act charged, he did not intend to commit a contempt.

A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States. By John Bouvier. Published 1856.

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The agony of purgation cycled again through Jane's soul when she had back surgery.

Deep Calls to Deep: Healing and Renewal at the Crossroads of Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Formation

As Hosbaum argues the concept behind those sermons is "one of suffering as well as purgation" as in the journey of ascension the human spirit is gradually stripped from its corporeal attributes, a similar process to the one that the poetic voice underwent in the previous episode.

Searching for the gift in T.S. Eliot's "Ash-Wednesday"

Consultants, too, diagnose this ailment by eyeballing the consistency and color of urine (i.e., looking at past performance) and prescribe remedies remarkably similar to those of their medieval counterparts: purgation or bloodletting (firing managers and making shifts in asset allocation).

Column: The Plague Is Upon Us

My own run-in with these nationalists -without-a-nation occurred in the very pages of Taki's Magazine, where Derbyshire's offending (and offensive) piece was published, and led in short order to his purgation from NR.

One of them

It starts with Guarini's theoretical pronouncements on the nascent genre of 'tragicomedy': that its 'end' is moral and should be understood as the purgation of melancholy.

Federico Schneider. Pastoral Drama and Healing in Early Modern Italy

She takes a dim view of the current state of public discourse in the United States, a Hobbesian "war of each against all" characterized by cynicism, paranoia, tribalism, rancor, and "rationalist purgation." Who's to blame?

Marilynne Robinson: When I Was a Child I Read Books

Moreira traces the evolution of postmortem purgation in preparation for heavenly bliss.

Heaven's Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity

In the purgation of that orgasmic catharsis she came to terms with the repressed memory of that fowl bleeding.

Why on earth does god have to paint? Centripetal Art

(2) This contemporary integration of the corporate character of hope and emerging ecumenical consensus did not, however, resolve the inherited division and condemnations inherited from the sixteenth-century polarization over individual hope, purgation, and our relationships to those who have gone before.

Hope for eternal life: the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue

This year's winner is Katherine Hill, for her funny, beautiful, and haunting story of grief, purgation, and conflagration, "Waste Management," selected by final judge Andrea Barrett.

Editors' page

Also implicit within discussions of menstruation was the belief that moderation and periodicity were essential for healthy menstruation, without which menstruation became a negative purgation than endangered the body.

Attitudes towards menstruation and menstrual blood in Elizabethan England

The five major signposts that guide the improvisational New Exodus journey are woundedness, wickedness, purgation, illumination, and union.