The Collaborative International Dictionary
Western \West"ern\, a.
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Of or pertaining to the west; situated in the west, or in the region nearly in the direction of west; being in that quarter where the sun sets; as, the western shore of France; the western ocean.
Far o'er the glowing western main.
--Keble. -
Moving toward the west; as, a ship makes a western course; coming from the west; as, a western breeze.
Western Church. See Latin Church, under Latin.
Western empire (Hist.), the western portion of the Roman empire, as divided, by the will of Theodosius the Great, between his sons Honorius and Arcadius, a. d. 395.
Usage examples of "western church".
As the representative of the Western church, Pope Martin and his Lateran synod anathematized the perfidious and guilty silence of the Greeks: one hundred and five bishops of Italy, for the most part the subjects of Constans, presumed to reprobate his wicked type, and the impious ecthesis of his grandfather.
In time, however, the Christians of Egypt came to regard the sixth of January as the date of the Nativity, and the custom of {190} commemorating the birth of the Saviour on that day gradually spread until by the fourth century the Western Church, which had never recognized the sixth of January as the day of the Nativity, adopted the twenty-fifth of December as the true date, and in time its decision was accepted also by the Eastern Church.
Rather than the customary rood screen, choir, and high altar that he would have expected in a Western church, a gilded and painted icon screen divided the nave from the sanctuary that lay beyond a pair of open gates in the center.
But not until the next day, when Killan was gone, when the building was nearly empty, still as a Western church.
Influenced by the Byzantines, the Western Church had become increasingly fond of the ritualistic burning of incense, ostensibly as an evocation of the sweet oxygens of heaven, but more likely a way of combating the concentrated funk of sweaty congregations.
And it was under Cosimo's roof that I saw, as a mortal boy of destiny and promiseyes, I myself sawthe great guests of the Council of Trent who had come from far Byzantium to heal the breach between the Eastern and Western church: Pope Eugenius IV of Rome, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Emperor of the East himself, John VIII Paleologus.
And it was under Cosimo's roof that I saw, as a mortal boy of destiny and promise-yes, I myself saw-the great guests of the Council of Trent who had come from far Byzantium to heal the breach between the Eastern and Western church: Pope Eugenius IV of Rome, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Emperor of the East himself, John VIII Paleologus.