Also 7 viccaris. [f. VICAR + -ESS1.]
1. The sister ranking immediately beneath the Abbess or Mother Superior in a nunnery or convent.
c. 1613. in Cath. Rec. Soc. Publ. (1914), XIV. 34. 2 years before her death [she] was chosen first Vicaress of ye Monastery.
a. 1700. Diary Blue Nuns, Ibid., VIII. 11. Sister Margarite Bruno alias Floyd was again chosen Viccaris. Ibid. (1721), 291. The Office of Vicaresse is nearest the Abbesse in Authority…. The Vicaresse represents in every place, the Abbesse when she is absent.
1804. in Archaeologia (1840), XXVIII. 198. Mother Austin was afterwards Vicaress [of the Blue Nuns’ convent] several years.
1857. G. Oliver, Coll. Cath. Relig. Cornwall, etc., 136. The vicaress, the Rev. Mother Eyston, was sent to Bruges.
1892. J. M. Stone, Faithful unto Death, 244. To govern the new community as abbess and vicaress respectively.
2. A (female) representative. In quot. fig.
1662. J. Chandler, Van Helmont’s Oriat., 125. The sensitive Soul, the vicaresse of the minde, doth surely rejoyce in a greater liberty than the souls of bruit Beasts.
3. The wife of the vicar of a parish.
1770. W. Huddesford, in J. Granger, Lett. (1805), 146. I am under the greatest obligation to the vicaress, for her forgiveness of my impertinence.
1849. Ld. Coleridge, in Life & Corr. (1904), I. viii. 190. Nothing could be kinder than the Vicar and Vicaress.
1862. Mrs. Houstoun, Recommended to Mercy, xii. The encroachments of the Vicaress in the government of the parish.
