pontifical

comparative more pontifical · superlative most pontifical

1. Of or pertaining to a pontiff.
   1. Of or pertaining to a bishop; episcopal.
   2. Of or pertaining to a pope; papal.
2. Pompous, dignified or dogmatic.
3. Splendid; magnificent.
4. Of or pertaining to the pontifices of Ancient Rome.
5. poeticOf or relating to the building or forming of bridges.

   Now had they brought the work by wondrous art / Pontifical, a ridge of pendent rock / Over the vexed abyss.

   1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC

plural pontificals

1. A book containing the offices, or formulas, used by a pontiff.

   If the editio princeps was an attempt to create an authoritative version of the pontifical, such was not yet attainable.

   2007, Terence Bailey, Alma Colk Santosuosso, editors, Music in Medieval Europe […] , Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., →ISBN, page 199

   2 more examples

   Both ordines are related to an ordo in a pontifical in Reims, the Ordo of 1200 (Ordo XIX). The latter was to be consulted again and again, and its formulas were to have a marked effect upon the French ceremony; […]

   1995, Richard A. Jackson, Ordines coronationis Franciae […] , page 30

   William Durandus, bishop of Mende in the south of France, compiled a pontifical in three books. William never intended his work to be a universal pontifical, but its clarity of arrangement and quality of substance, along with […]

   2001, Leon F. Strieder, The Promise of Obedience: A Ritual History, page 32