One who carries a torch. Also fig.
1538. Elyot, Facularii, torche bearers.
1596. Shaks., Merch. V., II. vi. 40. Descend, for you must be my torch-bearer.
1624. Bedell, Lett., xi. 140. As if all that are made Priests among you were Psalmists, Sextons, Readers, Exorcists, Torch-bearers, Subdeacons, and Deacons before.
1814. Scott, Ld. of Isles, II. xxii. Twelve sandall’d monks, who reliques bore, With many a torch-bearer before.
1847. Grote, Greece, II. xxxii. IV. 272. The enterprising mariners who inhabited it had been the torch-bearers of Grecian geographical discovery in the west.
1853. Dale, trans. Baldeschi’s Ceremonial, 189. The Torch-bearers having genuflected, consign their torches to the first they meet in choir.
So Torch-bearing sb. and a.
1721. Strype, Eccl. Mem., III. xxi. 175. There he saw torch-bearing in day-light, at mass.
1881. Ruskin, Bible of Amiens, ii. 88. No torch-bearing maid of battle, like Clotilde.
