_________________________________________________________________ Title: The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 6: Fathers of the Church-Gregory XI Creator(s): Herbermann, Charles George (1840-1916) Print Basis: 1907-1913 Rights: From online edition Copyright 2003 by K. Knight, used by permission CCEL Subjects: All; Reference LC Call no: BX841.C286 LC Subjects: Christian Denominations Roman Catholic Church Dictionaries. Encyclopedias _________________________________________________________________ THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA AN INTERNATIONAL WORK OF REFERENCE ON THE CONSTITUTION, DOCTRINE, DISCIPLINE, AND HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH EDITED BY CHARLES G. HERBERMANN, Ph.D., LL.D. EDWARD A. PACE, Ph.D., D.D. CONDE B PALLEN, Ph.D., LL.D. THOMAS J. SHAHAN, D.D. JOHN J. WYNNE, S.J. ASSISTED BY NUMEROUS COLLABORATORS IN FIFTEEN VOLUMES VOLUME 6 Fathers of the Church to Gregory XI New York: ROBERT APPLETON COMPANY Imprimatur JOHN M. FARLEY ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK _________________________________________________________________ Fathers of the Church Fathers of the Church + The Appeal to the Fathers + Classification of Patristic Writings o Apostolic Fathers and the Second Century o Third Century o Fourth Century o Fifth Century o Sixth Century + Characteristics of Patristic Writings o Commentaries o Preachers o Writers o East and West o Theology o Discipline, Liturgy, Ascetics o Historical Materials + Patristic Study The word Father is used in the New Testament to mean a teacher of spiritual things, by whose means the soul of man is born again into the likeness of Christ: "For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ" (I Cor., iv, 15, 16; cf. Gal., iv, 19). The first teachers of Christianity seem to be collectively spoken of as "the Fathers" (II Peter, iii, 4). Thus St. Irenaeus defines that a teacher is a father, and a disciple is a son (iv, 41,2), and so says Clement of Alexandria (Strom., I, i, 1). A bishop is emphatically a "father in Christ", both because it was he, in early times, who baptized all his flock, and because he is the chief teacher of his church. But he is also regarded by the early Fathers, such as Hegesippus, Irenaeus, and Tertullian as the recipient of the tradition of his predecessors in the see, and consequently as the witness and representative of the faith of his Church before Catholicity and the world. Hence the expression "the Fathers" comes naturally to be applied to the holy bishops of a preceding age, whether of the last generation or further back, since they are the parents at whose knee the Church of today was taught her belief. It is also applicable in an eminent way to bishops sitting in council, "the Fathers of Nicaea", "the Fathers of Trent". Thus Fathers have learnt from Fathers, and in the last resort from the Apostles, who are sometimes called Fathers in this sense: "They are your Fathers", says St. Leo, of the Princes of the Apostles, speaking to the Romans; St. Hilary of Arles calls them sancti patres; Clement of Alexandria says that his teachers, from Greece, Ionia, Coele-Syria, Egypt, the Orient, Assyria, Palestine, respectively, had handed on to him the tradition of blessed teaching from Peter, and James, and John, and Paul, receiving it "as son from father". It follows that, as our own Fathers are the predecessors who have taught us, so the Fathers of the whole Church are especially the earlier teachers, who instructed her in the teaching of the Apostles, during her infancy and first growth. It is difficult to define the first age of the Church, or the age of the Fathers. It is a common habit to stop the study of the early Church at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. "The Fathers" must undoubtedly include, in the West, St. Gregory the Great (d. 604), and in the East, St. John Damascene (d. about 754). It is frequently said that St. Bernard (d. 1153) was the last of the Fathers, and Migne's "Patrologia Latina" extends to Innocent III, halting only on the verge of the thirteenth century, while his "Patrologia Graeca" goes as far as the Council of Florence (1438-9). These limits are evidently too wide, It will be best to consider that the great merit of St. Bernard as a writer lies in his resemblance in style and matter to the greatest among the Fathers, in spite of the difference of period. St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636) and the Venerable Bede (d. 735) are to be classed among the Fathers, but they may be said to have been born out of due time, as St. Theodore the Studite was in the East. I. THE APPEAL TO THE FATHERS Thus the use of the term Fathers has been continuous, yet it could not at first he employed in precisely the modern sense of Fathers of the Church. In early days the expression referred to writers who were then quite recent. It is still applied to those writers who are to us the ancients, but no longer in the same way to writers who are now recent. Appeals to the Fathers are a subdivision of appeals to tradition. In the first half of the second century begin the appeals to the sub-Apostolic age: Papias appeals to the presbyters, and through them to the Apostles. Half a century later St. Irenaeus supplements this method by an appeal to the tradition handed down in every Church by the succession of its bishops (Adv. Haer., III, i-iii), and Tertullian clinches this argument by the observation that as all the Churches agree, their tradition is secure, for they could not all have strayed by chance into the same error (Praescr., xxviii). The appeal is thus to Churches and their bishops, none but bishops being the authoritative exponents of the doctrine of their Churches. As late as 341 the bishops of the Dedication Council at Antioch declared: "We are not followers of Arius; for how could we, who are bishops, be disciples of a priest?" Yet slowly, as the appeals to the presbyters died out, there was arising by the side of appeals to the Churches a third method: the custom of appealing to Christian teachers who were not necessarily bishops. While, without the Church, Gnostic schools were substituted for churches, within the Church, Catholic schools were growing up. Philosophers like Justin and most of the numerous second-century apologists were reasoning about religion, and the great catechetical school of Alexandria was gathering renown. Great bishops and saints like Dionysius of Alexandria, Gregory Thaumaturgus of Pontus, Firmilian of Cappadocia, and Alexander of Jerusalem were proud to be disciples of the priest Origen. The Bishop Cyprian called daily for the works of the priest Tertullian with the words "Give me the master". The Patriarch Athanasius refers for the ancient use of the word homoousios, not merely to the two Dionysii, but to the priest Theognostus. Yet these priest-teachers are not yet called Fathers, and the greatest among them, Tertullian, Clement, Origen, Hippolytus, Novatian, Lucian, happen to be tinged with heresy; two became antipopes; one is the father of Arianism; another was condemned by a general council. In each case we might apply the words used by St. Hilary of Tertullian: "Sequenti errore detraxit scriptis probabilibus auctoritatem" (Comm. in Matt., v, 1, cited by Vincent of Lérins, 2.4). A fourth form of appeal was better founded and of enduring value. Eventually it appeared that bishops as well as priests were fallible. In the second century the bishops were orthodox. In the third they were often found wanting. in the fourth they were the leaders of schisms, and heresies, in the Meletian and Donatist troubles and in the long Arian struggle, in which few were found to stand firm against the insidious persecution of Constantius. It came to be seen that the true Fathers of the Church are those Catholic teachers who have persevered in her communion, and whose teaching has been recognized as orthodox. So it came to pass that out of the four "Latin Doctors" one is not a bishop. Two other Fathers who were not bishops have been declared to be Doctors of the Church, Bede and John Damascene, while among the Doctors outside the patristic period we find two more priests, the incomparable St. Bernard and the greatest of all theologians, St. Thomas Aquinas. Nay, few writers had such great authority in the Schools of the Middle Ages as the layman Boethius, many of whose definitions are still commonplaces of theology. Similarly (we may notice in passing) the name "Father", which originally belonged to bishops, has been as it were delegated to priests, especially as ministers of the Sacrament of Penance. it is now a form of address to all priests in Spain, in Ireland, and, of recent years, in England and the United States. Papas or Pappas, Pope, was a term of respect for eminent bishops (e.g. in letters to St. Cyprian and to St. Augustine -- neither of these writers seems to use it in addressing other bishops, except when St. Augustine writes to Rome). Eventually the term was reserved to the bishops of Rome and Alexandria; yet in the East to-day every priest is a "pope". The Aramaic abbe was used from early times for the superiors of religious houses. But through the abuse of granting abbeys in commendam to seculars, it has become a polite title for all secular clerics, even seminarists in Italy, and especially in France, whereas all religious who are priests are addressed as "Father". We receive only, says St. Basil, what we have been taught by the holy Fathers; and he adds that in his Church of Caesarea the faith of the holy Fathers of Nicaea has long been implanted (Ep. cxl, 2). St. Gregory Nazianzen declares that he holds fast the teaching which he heard from the holy Oracles, and was taught by the holy Fathers. These Cappadocian saints seem to be the first to appeal to a real catena of Fathers. The appeal to one or two was already common enough; but not even the learned Eusebius had thought of a long string of authorities. St. Basil, for example (De Spir. S., ii, 29), cites for the formula "with the Holy Ghost" in the doxology, the example of Irenaeus, Clement and Dionysius of Alexandria, Dionysius of Rome, Eusebius of Caesarea, Origen, Africanus, the preces lucerariae said at the lighting of lamps, Athenagoras, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Firmilian, Meletius. In the fifth century this method became a stereotyped custom. St. Jerome is perhaps the first writer to try to establish his interpretation of a text by a string of exegetes (Ep. cxii, ad Aug.). Paulinus, the deacon and biographer of St. Ambrose, in the libellus he presented against the Pelagians to Pope Zosimus in 417, quotes Cyprian, Ambrose, Gregory Nazianzen, and the decrees of the late Pope Innocent. In 420 St. Augustine quotes Cyprian and Ambrose against the same heretics (C. duas Epp. Pel., iv). Julian of Eclanum quoted Chrysostom and Basil; St. Augustine replies to him in 421 (Contra Julianum, i) with Irenaeus, Cyprian, Reticius, Olympius, Hilary, Ambrose, the decrees of African councils, and above all Popes Innocent and Zosimus. In a celebrated passage he argues that these Western writers are more than sufficient, but as Julian had appealed to the East, to the East, he shall go, and the saint adds Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Synod of Diospolis, Chrysostom. To these he adds Jerome (c. xxxiv): "Nor should you think Jerome, because he was a priest, is to be despised", and adds a eulogy. This is amusing, when we remember that Jerome in a fit of irritation, fifteen before, had written to Augustine (Ep. cxlii) "Do not excite against me the silly crowd of the ignorant, who venerate you as a bishop, and receive you with the honour due to a prelate when you declaim in the Church, whereas they think little of me, an old man, nearly decrepit, in my monastery in the solitude of the country." In the second book "Contra Julianum", St. Augustine again cites Ambrose frequently, and Cyprian, Gregory Nazianzen, Hilary, Chrysostom; in ii, 37, he recapitulates the nine names (omitting councils and popes), adding (iii, 32) Innocent and Jerome. A few years later the Semipelagians of Southern Gaul, who were led by St. Hilary of Arles, St. Vincent of Lérins, and Bl. Cassian, refuse to accept St. Augustine's severe view of predestination because "contrarium putant patrum opinioni et ecclesiastico sensui". Their opponent St. Prosper, who was trying to convert them to Augustinianism, complains: "Obstinationem suam vetustate defendunt" (Ep. inter Atig. ccxxv, 2), and they said that no ecclesiastical writer had ever before interpreted Romans quite as St. Augustine did -- which was probably true enough. The interest of this attitude lies in the fact that it was, if not new at least more definite than any earlier appeal to antiquity. Through most of the fourth century, the controversy with the Arians had turned upon Scripture, and appeals to past authority were few. But the appeal to the Fathers was never the most imposing locus theologicus, for they could not easily be assembled so as to form an absolutely conclusive test. On the other hand up to the end of the fourth century, there were practically no infallible definitions available, except condemnations of heresies, chiefly by popes. By the time that the Arian reaction under Valens caused the Eastern conservatives to draw towards the orthodox, and prepared the restoration of orthodoxy to power by Theodosius, the Nicene decisions were beginning to be looked upon as sacrosanct, and that council to be preferred to a unique position above all others. By 430, the date we have reached, the Creed we now say at Mass was revered in the East, whether rightly or wrongly, as the work of the 150 Fathers of Constantinople in 381, and there were also new papal decisions, especially the tractoria of Pope Zosimus, which in 418 had been sent to all the bishops of the world to be signed. It is to living authority, the idea of which had thus come to the fore, that St. Prosper was appealing in his controversy with the Lerinese school. When he went to Gaul, in 431, as papal envoy, just after St. Augustine's death, he replied to their difficulties, not by reiterating that saint's hardest arguments, but by taking with him a letter from Pope St. Celestine, in which St. Augustine is extolled as having been held by the pope's predecessors to be "inter magistros optimos". No one is to be allowed to depreciate him, but it is not said that every word of his is to be followed. The disturbers had appealed to the Holy See, and the reply is "Desinat incessere novitas vetustatem" (Let novelty cease to attack antiquity!). An appendix is added, not of the opinions of ancient Fathers, but of recent popes, since the very same monks who thought St. Augustine went too far, professed (says the appendix) "that they followed and approved only what the most holy See of the Blessed Apostle Peter sanctioned and taught by the ministry of its prelates". A list therefore follows of "the judgments of the rulers of the Roman Church", to which are added some sentences of African councils, "which indeed the Apostolic bishops made their own when they approved them". To these inviolabiles sanctiones (we might roughly render "infallible utterances") prayers used in the sacraments are appended "ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi" -- a frequently misquoted phrase -- and in conclusion, it is declared that these testimonies of the Apostolic See are sufficient, "so that we consider not to be Catholic at all whatever shall appear to be contrary to the decisions we have cited". Thus the decisions of the Apostolic See are put on a very different level from the views of St. Augustine, just as that saint always drew a sharp distinction between the resolutions of African councils or the extracts from the Fathers, on the one hand, and the decrees of Popes Innocent and Zosimus on the other. Three years later a famous document on tradition and its use emanated from the Lerinese school, the "Commonitorium" of St. Vincent. He whole-heartedly accepted the letter of Pope Celestine, and he quoted it as an authoritative and irresistible witness to his own doctrine that where quod ubique, or universitas, is uncertain, we must turn to quod semper, or antiquitas. Nothing could be more to his purpose than the pope's: "Desinat incessere novitas vetustatem" The oecumenical Council of Ephesus had been held in the same year that Celestine wrote. Its Acts were before St. Vincent, and it is clear that he looked upon both pope and council as decisive authorities. It was necessary to establish this, before turning to his famous canon, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus otherwise universitas, antiquitas, consensio. It was not a new criterion, else it would have committed suicide by its very expression. But never had the doctrine been so admirably phrased, so limpidly explained, so adequately exemplified. Even the law of the evolution of dogma is defined by Vincent in language which can hardly be surpassed for exactness and vigour. St. Vincent's triple test is wholly misunderstood if it is taken to be the ordinary rule of faith. Like all Catholics he took the ordinary rule to be the living magisterium of the Church, and he assumes that the formal decision in cases of doubt lies with the Apostolic See, or with a general council. But cases of doubt arise when no such decision is forthcoming. Then it is that the three tests are to be applied, not simultaneously, but, if necessary, in succession. When an error is found in one corner of the Church, then the first test, universitas, quod ubique, is an unanswerable refutation, nor is there any need to examine further (iii, 7, 8). But if an error attacks the whole Church, then antiquitas, quod semper is to be appealed to, that is, a consensus existing before the novelty arose. Still, in the previous period one or two teachers, even men of great fame, may have erred. Then we betake ourselves to quod ab omnibus, consensio, to the many against the few (if possible to a general council; if not, to an examination of writings). Those few are a trial of faith "ut tentet vos Dominus Deus vester" (Deut., xiii, 1 sqq.). So Tertullian was a magna tentatio; so was Origen -- indeed the greatest temptation of all. We must know that whenever what is new or unheard before is introduced by one man beyond or against all the saints, it pertains not to religion but to temptation (xx, 49). Who are the "Saints" to whom we appeal? The reply is a definition of "Fathers of the Church" given with all St. Vincent's inimitable accuracy: "Inter se majorem consulat interrogetque sententias, eorum dumtaxat qui, diversis licet temporibus et locis, in unius tamen ecclesiae Catholicae communione et fide permanentes, magistri probabiles exstiterunt; et quicquid non unus aut duo tantum, sed omnes pariter uno eodemque consensu aperte, frequenter, perseveranter tenuisse, scripsisse, docuisse cognoverit, id sibi quoque intelligat absque ulla dubitatione credendum" (iii, 8). This unambiguous sentence defines for us what is the right way of appealing to the Fathers, and the italicized words perfectly explain what is a "Father": "Those alone who, though in diverse times and places, yet persevering in time communion and faith of the one Catholic Church, have been approved teachers." The same result is obtained by modern theologians, in their definitions; e.g. Fessler thus defines what constitutes a "Father": 1. orthodox doctrine and learning; 2. holiness of life; 3. (at the present day) a certain antiquity. The criteria by which we judge whether a writer is a "Father" or not are: 1. citation by a general council, or 2. in public Acts of popes addressed to the Church or concerning Faith; 3. encomium in the Roman Martyrology as "sanctitate et doctrina insignis"; 4. public reading in Churches in early centuries; 5. citations, with praise, as an authority as to the Faith by some of the more celebrated Fathers. Early authors, though belonging to the Church, who fail to reach this standard are simply ecclesiastical writers ("Patrologia", ed. Jungmann, ch. i, #11). On the other hand, where the appeal is not to the authority of the writer, but his testimony is merely required to the belief of his time, one writer is as good as another, and if a Father is cited for this purpose, it is not as a Father that he is cited, but merely as a witness to facts well known to him. For the history of dogma, therefore, the works of ecclesiastical writers who are not only not approved, but even heretical, are often just as valuable as those of the Fathers. On the other hand, the witness of one Father is occasionally of great weight for doctrine when taken singly, if he is teaching a subject on which he is recognized by the Church as an especial authority, e.g., St. Athanasius on the Divinity of the Son, St. Augustine on the Holy Trinity, etc. There are a few cases in which a general council has given approbation to the work of a Father, the most important being the two letters of St. Cyril of Alexandria which were read at the Council of Ephesus. But the authority of single Fathers considered in itself, says Franzelin (De traditione, thesis xv), "is not infallible or peremptory; though piety and sound reason agree that the theological opinions of such individuals should not be treated lightly, and should not without great caution be interpreted in a sense which clashes with the common doctrine of other Fathers." The reason is plain enough; they were holy men, who are not to be presumed to have intended to stray from the doctrine of the Church, and their doubtful utterances are therefore to be taken in the best sense of which they are capable. If they cannot be explained in an orthodox sense, we have to admit that not the greatest is immune from ignorance or accidental error or obscurity. But on the use of the Fathers in theological questions, the article Tradition and the ordinary dogmatic treatises on that subject must be consulted, as it is proper here only to deal with the historical development of their use. The subject was never treated as a part of dogmatic theology until the rise of what is now commonly called "Theologia fundamentalis", in the sixteenth century, the founders of which are Melchior Canus and Bellarmine. The former has a discussion of the use of the Fathers in deciding questions of faith (De locis theologicis, vii). The Protestant Reformers attacked the authority of the Fathers. The most famous of these opponents is Dalbeus (Jean Daillé, 1594-1670, "Traité de l'emploi des saints Pères", 1632; in Latin "De usu Patrum", 1656). But their objections are long since forgotten. Having traced the development of the use of the Fathers up to the period of its frequent employment, and of its formal statement by St. Vincent of Lérins, it will be well to give a glance at the continuation of the practice. We saw that, in 431, it was possible for St. Vincent (in a book which has been most unreasonably taken to be a mere polemic against St. Augustine -- a notion which is amply refuted by the use made in it of St. Celestine's letter) to define the meaning and method of patristic appeals. From that time onward they are very common. in the Council of Ephesus, 431, as St. Vincent points out, St. Cyril presented a series of quotations from the Fathers, tôn hagiôtatôn kai hosiôtatôn paterôn kai episkopôn diaphorôn marturôn, which were read on the motion of Flavian, Bishop of Philippi. They were from Peter I of Alexandria, Martyr, Athanasius, Popes Julius and Felix (forgeries), Theophilus, Cyprian, Ambrose, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Atticus, Amphilochius. On the other hand Eutyches, when tried at Constantinople by St. Flavian, in 449, refused to accept either Fathers or councils as authorities, confining himself to Holy Scripture, a position which horrified his judges (see Eutyches). In the following year St. Leo sent his legates, Abundius and Asterius. to Constantinople with a list of testimonies from Hilary, Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, Theophilus, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Cyril of Alexandria. They were signed in that city, but were not produced at the Council of Chalcedon in the following year. Thenceforward the custom is fixed, and it is unnecessary to give examples. However, that of the sixth council in 680 is important: Pope St. Agatho sent a long series of extracts from Rome, and the leader of the Monothelites, Macarius of Antioch, presented another. Both sets were carefully verified from the library of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and sealed. It should be noted that it was never in such cases thought necessary to trace a doctrine back to the earliest times; St. Vincent demanded the proof of the Church's belief before a doubt arose -- this is his notion of antiquitas; and in conformity with this view, the Fathers quoted by councils and popes and Fathers are for the most part recent (Petavius, De Incarn., XIV, 15, 2-5). In the last years of the fifth century a famous document, attributed to Popes Gelasius and Hormisdas, adds to decrees of St. Damasus of 382 a list of books which are approved, and another of those disapproved. In its present form the list of approved Fathers comprises Cyprian, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Theophilus, Hilary, Cyril of Alexandria (wanting in one MS.), Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Prosper, Leo ("every iota" of the tome to Flavian is to be accepted under anathema), and "also the treatises of all orthodox Fathers, who deviated in nothing from the fellowship of the holy Roman Church, and were not separated from her faith and preaching, but were participators through the grace of God until the end of their life in her communion; also the decretal letters, which most blessed popes have given at various times when consulted by various Fathers, are to be received with veneration". Orosius, Sedulius, and Juvencus are praised. Rufinus and Origen are rejected. Eusebius's "History" and "Chronicle" are not to be condemned altogether, though in another part of the list they appear as "apocrypha" with Tertullian, Lactantius, Africanus, Commodian, Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, Cassian, Victorinus of Pettau, Faustus, and the works of heretics, and forged Scriptural documents. The later Fathers constantly used the writings of the earlier. For instance, St. Caesarius of Arles drew freely on St. Augustine's sermons, and embodied them in collections of his own; St. Gregory the Great has largely founded himself on St. Augustine; St. Isidore rests upon all his predecessors; St. John Damascene's great work is a synthesis of patristic theology. St. Bede's sermons are a cento from the greater Fathers. Eugippius made a selection from St. Augustine's writings, which had an immense vogue. Cassiodorus made a collection of select commentaries by various writers on all the books of Holy Scripture. St. Benedict especially recommended patristic study, and his sons have observed his advice: "Ad perfectionem conversationis qui festinat, sunt doctrinae sanctorum Patrum, quarum observatio perducat hominem ad celsitudinem perfectionis . . . quis liber sanctorum catholicorum Patrum hoc non resonat, ut recto cursu perveniamus ad creatorem nostrum?" (Sanet Regula, lxxiii). Florilegia and catenae became common from the fifth century onwards. They are mostly anonymous, but those in the East which go under the name OEcumenius are well known. Most famous of all throughout the Middle Ages was the "Glossa ordinaria" attributed to Walafrid Strabo. The "Catena aurea" of St. Thomas Aquinas is still in use. (See Catenae, and the valuable matter collected by Turner in Hastings, Dict. of the Bible, V, 521.) St. Augustine was early recognized as the first of the Western Fathers, with St. Ambrose and St. Jerome by his side. St. Gregory the Great was added, and these four became "the Latin Doctors". St. Leo, in some ways the greatest of theologians, was excluded, both on account of the paucity of his writings, and by the fact that his letters had a far higher authority as papal utterances. In the East St. John Chrysostom has always been the most popular, as he is the most voluminous, of the Fathers. With the great St. Basil, the father of monachism, and St. Gregory Nazianzen, famous for the purity of his faith, he made up the triumvirate called "the three hierarchs", familiar up to the present day in Eastern art. St. Athanasius was added to these by the Westerns, so that four might answer to four. (See Doctors of the Church.) It will be observed that many of the writers rejected in the Gelasian list lived and died in Catholic communion, but incorrectness in some part of their writings, e.g. the Semipelagian error attributed to Cassian and Faustus, the chiliasm of the conclusion of Victoninus's commentary on the Apocalypse (St. Jerome issued an expurgated edition, the only one in print as yet), the unsoundness of the lost "Hypotyposes" of Clement, and so forth, prevented such writers from being spoken of, as Hilary was by Jerome, "inoffenso pede percurritur". As all the more important doctrines of the Church (except that of the Canon and the inspiration of Scripture) may be proved, or at least illustrated, from Scripture, the widest office of tradition is the interpretation of Scripture, and the authority of the Fathers is here of very great importance. Nevertheless it is only then necessarily to be followed when all are of one mind: "Nemo . . . contra unanimum consensum Patrum ipsam Scripturam sacram interpretari audeat", says the Council of Trent; and the Creed of Pius IV has similarly: ". . . nec eam unquam nisi juxta unanimum consensum Patrum accipiam et interpretabor". The Vatican Council echoes Trent: "nemini licere . . . contra unanimum sensum Patrum ipsam Scripturam sacram interpretari." A consensus of the Fathers is not, of course, to be expected in very small matters: "Quae tamen antiqua sanctorum patrum consensio non in omnibus divinae legis quaestiunculis, sed solum certe praecipue in fidei regula magno nobis studio et investiganda est et sequenda" (Vincent, xxviii, 72). This is not the method, adds St. Vincent, against widespread and inveterate heresies, but rather against novelties, to be applied directly they appear. A better instance could hardly be given than the way in which Adoptionism was met by the Council of Frankfort in 794, nor could the principle be better expressed than by the Fathers of the Council: "Tenete vos intra terminos Patrum, et nolite novas versare quaestiunculas; ad nihilum enim valent nisi ad subversionem audientium. Sufficit enim vobis sanctorum Patrum vestigia sequi, et illorum dicta firma tenere fide. Illi enim in Domino nostri exstiterunt doctores in fide et ductores ad vitam; quorum et sapientia Spiritu Dei plena libris legitur inscripta, et vita meritorum miraculis clara et sanctissima; quorum animae apud Deum Dei Filium, D.N.J.C. pro magno pietatis labore regnant in caelis. Hos ergo tota animi virtute, toto caritatis affectu sequimini, beatissimi fratres, ut horum inconcussa firmitate doctrinis adhaerentes, consortium aeternae beatitudinis . . . cum illis habere mereamini in caelis" ("Synodica ad Episc." in Mansi, XIII, 897-8). And an excellent act of faith in the tradition of the Church is that of Charlemagne (ibid., 902) made on the same occasion: "Apostolicae sedi et antiquis ab initio nascentis ecclesiae et catholicis traditionibus tota mentis intentione, tota cordis alacritate, me conjungo. Quicquid in illorum legitur libris, qui divino Spiritu afflati, toti orbi a Deo Christo dati sunt doctores, indubitanter teneo; hoc ad salutem animae meae sufficere credens, quod sacratissimae evangelicae veritatis pandit historia, quod apostolica in suis epistolis confirmat auctoritas, quod eximii Sacrae Scripturae tractatores et praecipui Christianae fidei doctores ad perpetuam posteris scriptum reliquerunt memoriam." II. CLASSIFICATION OF PATRISTIC WRITINGS In order to get a good view of the patristic period, the Fathers may be divided in various ways. One favourite method is by periods; the Ante-Nicene Fathers till 325; the Great Fathers of the fourth century and half the fifth (325-451); and the later Fathers. A more obvious division is into Easterns and Westerns, and the Easterns will comprise writers in Greek, Syriac, Armenian, and Coptic. A convenient division into smaller groups will be by periods, nationalities and character of writings; for in the East and West there were many races, and some of the ecclesiastical writers are apologists, some preachers, some historians, some commentators, and so forth. A. After (1) the Apostolic Fathers come in the second century (2) the Greek apologists, followed by (3) the Western apologists somewhat later, (4) the Gnostic and Marcionite heretics with their apocryphal Scriptures, and (5) the Catholic replies to them. B. The third century gives us (1) the Alexandrian writers of the catechetical school, (2) the writers of Asia Minor and (3) Palestine, and the first Western writers, (4) at Rome, Hippolytus (in Greek), and Novatian, (5) the great African writers, and a few others. C. The fourth century opens with (1) the apologetic and the historical works of Eusebius of Caesarea, with whom we may class St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Epiphanius, (2) the Alexandrian writers Athanasius, Didymus, and others, (3) the Cappadocians, (4) the Antiochenes, (5) the Syriac writers. In the West we have (6) the opponents of Arianism, (7) the Italians, including Jerome, (8) the Africans, and (9) the Spanish and Gallic writers. D. The fifth century gives us (1) the Nestorian controversy, (2) the Eutychian controversy, including the Western St. Leo; (3) the historians. In the West (4) the school of Lérins, (5) the letters of the popes. E. The sixth century and the seventh give us less important names and they must be grouped in a more mechanical way. A. (1) If we now take these groups in detail we find the letters of the chief Apostolic Fathers, St. Clement, St. Ignatius, and St. Polycarp, venerable not merely for their antiquity, but for a certain simplicity and nobility of thought and style which is very moving to the reader. Their quotations from the New Testament are quite free. They offer most important information to the historian, though in somewhat homoeopathic quantities. To these we add the Didache, probably the earliest of all; the curious allegorizing anti-Jewish epistle which goes under the name of Barnabas; the Shepherd of Hermas, a rather dull series of visions chiefly connected with penance and pardon, composed by the brother of Pope Pius I, and long appended to the New Testament as of almost canonical importance. The works of Papias, the disciple of St. John and Aristion, are lost, all but a few precious fragments. (2) The apologists are most of them philosophic in their treatment of Christianity. Some of their works were presented to emperors in order to disarm persecutions. We must not always accept the view given to outsiders by the apologists, as representing the whole of the Christianity they knew and practised. The apologies of Quadratus to Hadrian, of Aristo of Pella to the Jews, of Miltiades, of Apollinaris of Hierapolis, and of Melito of Sardis are lost to us. But we still possess several of greater importance. That of Aristides of Athens was presented to Antoninus Pius, and deals principally with the knowledge of the true God. The fine apology of St. Justin with its appendix is above all interesting for its description of the liturgy at Rome c. 150. his arguments against the Jews are found in the well-composed "Dialogue with Trypho", where he speaks of the Apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse in a manner which is of first-rate importance in the mouth of a man who was converted at Ephesus some time before the year 132. The "Apology" of Justin's Syrian disciple Tatian is a less conciliatory work, and its author fell into heresy. Athenagoras, an Athenian (c. 177), addressed to Marcus Aurelius and Commodus an eloquent refutation of the absurd calumnies against Christians. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, about the same date, wrote three books of apology addressed to a certain Autolycus. (3) All these works are of considerable literary ability. This is not the case with the great Latin apology which closely follows them in date, the "Apologeticus" of Tertullian, which is in the uncouth and untranslatable language affected by its author. Nevertheless it is a work of extraordinary genius, in interest and value far above all the rest, and for energy and boldness it is incomparable. His fierce "Ad Scapulam" is a warning addressed to a persecuting proconsul. "Adversus Judaeos" is a title which explains itself. The other Latin apologists are later. The "Octavios" of Minucius Felix is as polished and gentle as Tertullian is rough. Its date is uncertain. If the "Apologeticus "was well calculated to infuse courage into the persecuted Christian, the "Octavius" was more likely to impress the inquiring pagan, if so be that more flies are caught with honey than with vinegar. With these works we may mention the much later Lactantius, the most perfect of all in literary form ("Divinae Institutiones", c. 305-10, and "De Mortibus persecutorum", c. 314). Greek apologies probably later than the second century are the "Irrisiones" of Hermias, and the very beautiful "Epistle" to Diognetus. (4) The heretical writings of the second century are mostly lost. The Gnostics had schools and philosophized; their writers were numerous. Some curious works have come down to us in Coptic. The letter of Ptolemeus to Flora in Epiphanius is almost the only Greek fragment of real importance. Marcion founded not a school but a Church, and his New Testament, consisting of St. Luke and St. Paul, is preserved to some extent in the works written against him by Tertullian and Epiphanius. Of the writings of Greek Montanists and of other early heretics, almost nothing remains. The Gnostics composed a quantity of apocryphal Gospels amid Acts of individual Apostles, large portions of which are preserved, mostly in fragments, in Latin revisions, or in Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, or Slavonic versions. To these are to be added such well-known forgeries as the letters of Paul to Seneca, and the Apocalypse of Peter, of which a fragment was recently found in the Fayûm. (5) Replies to the attacks of heretics form, next to the apologetic against heathen persecutors on the one hand and Jews on the other, the characteristic Catholic literature of the second century. The "Syntagma" of St. Justin against all heresies is lost. Earlier yet, St. Papias (already mentioned) had directed his efforts to the refutation of the rising errors, and the same preoccupation is seen in St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp. Hegesippus, a converted Jew of Palestine, journeyed to Corinth and Rome, where he stayed from the episcopate of Anicetus till that of Eleutherius (c. 160-180), with the intention of refuting the novelties of the Gnostics and Marcionites by an appeal to tradition. His work is lost. But the great work of St. Irenaeus (c. 180) against heresies is founded on Papias, Hegesippus, and Justin, and gives from careful investigation an account of many Gnostic systems, together with their refutation. His appeal is less to Scripture than to the tradition which the whole Catholic Church has received and handed down from the Apostles, through the ministry of successive bishops, and particularly to the tradition of the Roman Church founded by Peter and Paul. By the side of Irenaeus must be put the Latin Tertullian, whose book "Of the Prescriptions Against Heretics" is not only a masterpiece of argument, but is almost as effective against modern heresies as against those of the early Church. It is a witness of extraordinary importance to the principles of unvarying tradition which the Catholic Church has always professed, and to the primitive belief that Holy Scripture must be interpreted by the Church and not by private industry. He uses Irenaeus in this work, and his polemical books against the Valentinians and the Marcionites borrow freely from that saint. He is the less persuasive of the two, because he is too abrupt, too clever, too anxious for the slightest controversial advantage, without thought of the easy replies that might be made. He sometimes prefers wit or hard hitting to solid argument. At this period controversies were beginning within the Church, the most important being the question whether Easter could be celebrated on a weekday. Another burning question at Rome, at the turn of the century, was the doubt whether the prophesying of the Montanists could be approved, and yet another, in the first years of the third century, was the controversy with a group of opponents of Montanism (so it seems), who denied the authenticity of the writings of St. John, an error then quite new. B. (1) The Church of Alexandria already in the second century showed the note of learning, together with a habit borrowed from the Alexandrian Jews, especially Philo, of an allegorizing interpretation of Scripture. The latter characteristic is already found in the "Epistle of Barnabas", which may be of Alexandrian origin. Pantamus was the first to make the Catechetical school of the city famous. No writings of his are extant, but his pupil Clement, who taught in the school with Pantamus, c. 180, and as its head, c. 180-202 (died c. 214), has left a considerable amount of rather lengthy disquisitions dealing with mythology, mystical theology, education, social observances, and all other things in heaven and on earth. He was followed by the great Origen, whose fame spread far and wide even among the heathen. The remains of his works, though they fill several volumes, are to a great extent only in free Latin translations, and bear but a small ratio to the vast amount that has perished. The Alexandrians held as firmly as any Catholics to tradition as the rule of faith, at least in theory, but beyond tradition they allowed themselves to speculate, so that the "Hypotyposes" of Clement have been almost entirely lost on account of the errors which found a place in them, and Origen's works fell under the ban of the Church, though their author lived the life of a saint, and died, shortly after the Decian persecution, of the sufferings he had undergone in it. The disciples of Origen were many and eminent. The library founded by one of them, St. Alexander of Jerusalem, was precious later on to Eusebius. The most celebrated of the school were St. Dionysius "the Great" of Alexandria and St. Gregory of Neocaesarea in Pontus, known as the Wonder-Worker, who, like St. Nonnosus in the West, was said to have moved a mountain for short distance by his prayers. Of the writings of these two saints not very much is extant. (2) Montanism and the paschal question brought Asia Minor down from the leading position it held in the second century into a very inferior rank in the third. Besides St. Gregory, St. Methodius at the end of that century was a polished writer and an opponent of Origenism -- his name is consequently passed over without mention by the Origenist historian Eusebius. We have his "Banquet" in Greek, and some smaller works in Old Slavonic. (3) Antioch was the head see over the "Orient" including Syria and Mesopotamia as well as Palestine and Phoenicia, but at no time did this form a compact patriarchate like that of Alexandria. We must group here writers who have no connection with one another in matter or style. Julius Africanus lived at Emmaus and composed a chronography, out of which the episcopal lists of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, and a great deal of other matter, have been preserved for us in St. Jerome's version of the Chronicle of Eusebius, and in Byzantine chronographers. Two letters of his are of interest, but the fragments of his "Kestoi" or "Girdles" are of no ecclesiastical value; they contain much curious matter and much that is objectionable. In the second half of the third century, perhaps towards the end of it, a great school was established at Antioch by Lucian, who was martyred at Nicomedia in 312. He is said to have been excommunicated under three bishops, but if this is true he had been long restored at the time of his martyrdom. It is quite uncertain whether he shared the errors of Paul of Samosata (Bishop of Antioch, deposed for heresy in 268-9). At all events he was -- however unintentionally -- the father of Arianism, and his pupils were the leaders of that heresy: Eusebius of Nicomedia, Arius himself, with Menophantus of Ephesus, Athanasius of Anazarbus, and the only two bishops who refused to sign the new creed at the Council of Nicaea, Theognis of Nicaea and Maris of Chalcedon, besides the scandalous bishop Leontius of Antioch and the Sophist Asterius. At Caesarea, an Origenist centre, flourished under another martyr, St. Pamphilus, who with his friend Eusebius, a certain Ammonius, and others, collected the works of Origen in a long-famous library, corrected Origen's "Hexapla", and did much editing of the text both of the Old and the New Testaments. (4) We hear of no writings at Rome except in Greek, until the mention of some small works in Latin, by Pope St. Victor, which still existed in Jerome's day. Hippolytus, a Roman priest, wrote from c. 200 to 235, and always in Greek, though at Carthage Tertullian had been writing before this in Latin. If Hippolytus is the author of the "Philosophumena" he was an antipope, and full of unreasoning enmity to his rival St. Callistus; his theology makes the Word proceed from God by His Will, distinct from Him in substance, and becoming Son by becoming man. There is nothing Roman in the theology of this work; it rather connects itself with the Greek apologists. A great part of a large commentary on Daniel and a work against Noetus are the only other important remains of this writer, who was soon forgotten in the West, though fragments of his works turn up in all the Eastern languages. Parts of his chronography, perhaps his last work, have survived. Another Roman antipope, Novatian, wrote in ponderous and studied prose with metrical endings. Some of his works have come down to us under the name of St. Cyprian. Like Hippolytus, he made his rigorist views the pretext for his schism. Unlike Hippolytus, he is quite orthodox in his principal work, "De Trinitate". (5) The apologetic works of Tertullian have been mentioned. The earlier were written by him when a priest of the Church of Carthage, but about the year 200 he was led to believe in the Montanist prophets of Phrygia, and he headed a Montanist schism at Carthage. Many of his treatises are written to defend his position and his rigorist doctrines, and he does so with considerable violence and with the clever and hasty argumentation which is natural to him. The placid flow of St. Cyprian's eloquence (Bishop of Carthage, 249-58) is a great contrast to that of his "master". The short treatises and large correspondence of this saint are all concerned with local questions and needs, and he eschews all speculative theology. From this we gain the more light on the state of the Church, on its government, and on a number of interesting ecclesiastical and social matters. In all the patristic period there is nothing, with the exception of Eusebius's history, which tells us so much about the early Church as the small volume which contains St. Cyprian's works. At the end of the century Arnobius, like Cyprian a convert in middle age, and like other Africans, Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, and Augustine, a former rhetorician, composed a dull apology. Lactantius carries us into the fourth century. He was an elegant and eloquent writer, but like Arnobius was not a well-instructed Christian. C. (1) The fourth century is the great age of the Fathers. It was twelve years old when Constantine published his edict of toleration, and a new era for the Christian religion began. It is ushered in by Eusebius of Caesarea, with his great apologetic works "Praeparatio Evangelica"'and "Demonstratio Evangelica", which show the transcendent merit of Christianity, and his still greater historical works, the "Chronicle" (the Greek original is lost) and the "History", which has gathered up the fragments of the age of persecutions, and has preserved to us more than half of all we know about the heroic ages of the Faith. In theology Eusebius was a follower of Origen, but he rejected the eternity of Creation and of the Logos, so that he was able to regard the Arians with considerable cordiality. The original form of the pseudo-Clementine romance, with its long and tiresome dialogues, seems to be a work of the very beginning of the century against the new developments of heathenism, and it was written either on the Phoenician coast or not far inland in the Syrian neighbourhood. Replies to the greatest of the pagan attacks, that of Porphyry, become more frequent after the pagan revival under Julian (361-3), and they occupied the labours of many celebrated writers. St. Cyril of Jerusalem has left us a complete series of instructions to catechumens and the baptized, thus supplying us with an exact knowledge of the religious teaching imparted to the people in an important Church of the East in the middle of the fourth century. A Palestinian of the second half of the century, St. Epiphanius, became Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, and wrote a learned history of all the heresies. He is unfortunately inaccurate, and has further made great difficulties for us by not naming his authorities. He was a friend of St. Jerome, and an uncompromising opponent of Origenism. (2) The Alexandrian priest Arius was not a product of the catechetical school of that city, but of the Lucianic school of Antioch. The Alexandrian tendency was quite opposite to the Antiochene, and the Alexandrian bishop, Alexander, condemned Arius in letters still extant, in which we gather the tradition of the Alexandrian Church. There is no trace in them of Origenism, the head-quarters of which had long been at Caesarea in Palestine, in the succession Theoctistus, Pamphilus, Eusebius. The tradition of Alexandria was rather that which Dionysius the Great had received from Pope Dionysius. Three years after the Nicene Council (325), St. Athanasius began his long episcopate of forty-five years. His writings are not very voluminous, being either controversial theology or apologetic memoirs of his own troubles, but their theological and historical value is enormous, on account of the leading part taken by this truly great man in the fifty years of fight with Arianism. The head of the catechetical school during this half-century was Didymus the Blind, an Athanasian in his doctrine of the Son, and rather clearer even than his patriarch in his doctrine of the Trinity, but in many other points carrying on the Origenistic tradition. Here may be also mentioned by the way a rather later writer, Synesius of Cyrene, a man of philosophical and literary habits, who showed energy and sincere piety as a bishop, in spite of the rather pagan character of his culture. His letters are of great interest. (3) The second half of the century is illustrated by an illustrious triad in Cappadocia, St. Basil, his friend St. Gregory Nazianzen, and his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa. They were the main workers in the return of the East to orthodoxy. Their doctrine of the Trinity is an advance even upon that of Didymus, and is very near indeed to the Roman doctrine which was later embodied in the Athanasian creed. But it had taken a long while for the East to assimilate the entire meaning of the orthodox view. St. Basil showed great patience with those who had advanced less far on the right road than himself, and he even tempered his language so as to conciliate them. For fame of sanctity scarcely any of the Fathers, save St. Gregory the Wonder-Worker, or St. Augustine, has ever equalled him. He practised extraordinary asceticism, and his family were all saints. He composed a rule for monks which has remained practically the only one in the East. St. Gregory had far less character, but equal abilities and learning, with greater eloquence. The love of Origen which persuaded the friends in their youth to publish a book of extracts from his writings had little influence on their later theology; that of St. Gregory in particular is renowned for its accuracy or even inerrancy. St. Gregory of Nyssa is, on the other hand, full of Origenism. The classical culture and literary form of the Cappadocians, united to sanctity and orthodoxy, makes them a unique group in the history of the Church. (4) The Antiochene school of the fourth century seemed given over to Arianism, until the time when the great Alexandrians, Athanasius and Didymus, were dying, when it was just reviving not merely into orthodoxy, but into an efflorescence by which the recent glory of Alexandria and even of Cappadocia was to be surpassed. Diodorus, a monk at Antioch and then Bishop of Tarsus, was a noble supporter of Nicene doctrine and a great writer, though the larger part of his works has perished. His friend Theodore of Mopsuestia was a learned and judicious commentator in the literal Antiochene style, but unfortunately his opposition to the heresy of Apollinarius of Laodicea carried him into the opposite extreme of Nestorianism -- indeed the pupil Nestorius scarcely went so far as the master Theodore. But then Nestorius resisted the judgment of the Church, whereas Theodore died in Catholic communion, and was the friend of saints, including that crowning glory of the Antiochene school, St. John Chrysostom, whose greatest sermons were preached at Antioch, before he became Bishop of Constantinople. Chrysostom is of course the chief of the Greek Fathers, the first of all commentators, and the first of all orators whether in East or West. He was for a time a hermit, and remained ascetic in his life; he was also a fervent social reformer. His grandeur of character makes him worthy of a place beside St. Basil and St. Athanasius. As Basil and Gregory were formed to oratory by the Christian Prohaeresius, so was Chrysostom by the heathen orator Libanius. In the classical Gregory we may sometimes find the rhetorician; in Chrysostom never; his amazing natural talent prevents his needing the assistance of art, and though training had preceded, it has been lost in the flow of energetic thought and the torrent of words. He is not afraid of repeating himself and of neglecting the rules, for he never wishes to be admired, but only to instruct or to persuade. But even so great a man has his limitations. He has no speculative interest in philosophy or theology, though he is learned enough to be absolutely orthodox. He is a holy man and a practical man, so that his thoughts are full of piety and beauty and wisdom; but he is not a thinker. None of the Fathers has been more imitated or more read; but there is little in his writings which can be said to have moulded his own or future times, and he cannot come for an instant into competition with Origen or Augustine for the first place among ecclesiastical writers. (5) Syria in the fourth century produced one great writer, St. Ephraem, deacon of Edessa (306-73). Most of his writings are poetry; his commentaries are in prose, but the remains of these are scantier. His homilies and hymns are all in metre, and are of very great beauty. Such tender and loving piety is hardly found elsewhere in the Fathers. The twenty-three homilies of Aphraates (326-7), a Mesopotamian bishop, are of great interest. (6) St. Hilary of Poitiers is the most famous of the earlier opponents of Arianism in the West. He wrote commentaries and polemical works, including the great treatise "De Trinitate" and a lost historical work. His style is affectedly involved and obscure, but he is nevertheless a theologian of considerable merit. The very name of his treatise on the Trinity shows that he approached the dogma from the Western point of view of a Trinity in Unity, but he has largely employed the works of Origen, Athanasius, and other Easterns. His exegesis is of the allegorical type. Until his day, the only great Latin Father was St. Cyprian, and Hilary had no rival in his own generation. Lucifer, Bishop of Calaris in Sardinia, was a very rude controversialist, who wrote in a popular and almost uneducated manner. The Spaniard Gregory of Illiberis, in Southern Spain, is only now beginning to receive his due, since Dom A. Wilmart restored to him in 1908 the important so-called "Tractatus Origenis de libris SS. Scripturae", which he and Batiffol had published in 1900, as genuine works of Origen translated by Victorinus of Pettau. The commentaries and anti-Arian works of the converted rhetorician, Marius Victorinus, were not successful. St. Eusebius of Vercellae has left us only a few letters. The date of the short discourses of Zeno of Verona is uncertain. The fine letter of Pope Julius I to the Arians and a few letters of Liberius and Damasus are of great interest. The greatest of the opponents of Arianism in the West is St. Ambrose (d. 397). His sanctity and his great actions make him one of the most imposing figures in the patristic period. Unfortunately the style of his writings is often unpleasant, being affected and intricate, without being correct or artistic. His exegesis is not merely of the most extreme allegorical kind, but so fanciful as to be sometimes positively absurd. And yet, when off his guard, he speaks with genuine and touching eloquence; he produces apophthegms of admirable brevity, and without being a deep theologian, he shows a wonderful profundity of thought on ascetical, moral, and devotional matters. Just as his character demands our enthusiastic admiration, so his writings gain our affectionate respect, in spite of their very irritating defects. It is easy to see that he is very well read in the classics and in Christian writers of East and West, but his best thoughts are all his own. (7) At Rome an original, odd, and learned writer composed a commentary on St. Paul's Epistles and a series of questions on the Old and New Testaments. He is usually spoken of as Ambrosiaster, and may perhaps be a converted Jew named Isaac, who later apostatized. St. Damasus wrote verses which are poor poetry but interesting where they give us information about the martyrs and the catacombs. His secretary for a time was St. Jerome, a Pannonian by birth, a Roman by baptism. This learned Father, "Doctor maximus in Sacris Scripturis", is very well known to us, for almost all that he wrote is a revelation of himself. He tells the reader of his inclinations and his antipathies, his enthusiasms and his irritations, his friendships and his enmities. If he is often out of temper, he is most human, most affectionate, most ascetic, most devoted to orthodoxy, and in many ways a very lovable character; for if he is quick to take offence, he is easily appeased, he is laborious beyond ordinary endurance, and it is against heresy that his anger is usually kindled. He lived all the latter part of his life in a retreat at Bethlehem, surrounded by loving disciples, whose untiring devotion shows that the saint was by no means such a rough diamond, one might say such an ogre, as he is often represented. He had no taste for philosophy, and seldom gave himself time to think, but he read and wrote ceaselessly. His many commentaries are brief and to the point, full of information, and the product of wide reading. His greatest work was the translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew into Latin. He carried on the textual labours of Origen, Pamphilus, and Eusebius, and his revision of the Latin Gospels shows the use of admirably pure Greek MSS., though he seems to have expended less pains on the rest of the New Testament. He attacked heretics with much of the cleverness, all the vivacity, and much more than the eloquence and effectiveness of Tertullian. He used the like weapons against any who attacked him, and especially against his friend Rufinus during their passing period of hostility. If he is only "perhaps" the most learned of the Fathers, he is beyond doubt the greatest of prose writers among them all. We cannot compare his energy and wit with the originality and polish of Cicero, or with the delicate perfection of Plato, but neither can they or any other writer be compared with Jerome in his own sphere. He does not attempt flights of imagination, musical intonation, word-painting; he has no flow of honeyed language like Cyprian, no torrent of phrases like Chrysostom; he is a writer, not an orator, and a learned and classical writer. But such letters as his, for astonishing force and liveliness, for point, and wit, and terse expression, were never written before or since. There is no sense of effort, and though we feel that the language must have been studied, we are rarely tempted to call it studied language, for Jerome knows the strange secret of polishing his steel weapons while they are still at a white heat, and of hurling them before they cool. He was a dangerous adversary, and had few scruples in taking every possible advantage. He has the unfortunate defect of his extraordinary swiftness, that he is extremely inaccurate, and his historical statements need careful control. His biographies of the hermits, his words about monastic life, virginity, Roman faith, our Blessed Lady, relics of saints, have exercised great influence. It has only been known of late years that Jerome was a preacher; the little extempore discourses published by Dom Mona are full of his irrepressible personality and his careless learning. (8) Africa was a stranger to the Arian struggle, being occupied with a battle of its own. Donatism (311-411) was for a long time paramount in Numidia, and sometimes in other parts. The writings of the Donatists have mostly perished. About 370 St. Optatus published an effective controversial work against them. The attack was carried on by a yet greater controversialist, St. Augustine, with a marvellous success, so that the inveterate schism was practically at an end twenty years before that saint's death. So happy an event turned the eyes of all Christendom to the brilliant protagonist of the African Catholics, who had already dealt crushing blows at the Latin Manichaean writers. From 417 till his death in 431, he was engaged in an even greater conflict with the philosophical and naturalistic heresy of Pelagius and Caelestius. In this he was at first assisted by the aged Jerome; the popes condemned the innovators and the emperor legislated against them. If St. Augustine has the unique fame of having prostrated three heresies, it is because he was as anxious to persuade as to refute. He was perhaps the greatest controversialist the world has ever seen. Besides this he was not merely the greatest philosopher among the Fathers, but he was the only great philosopher. His purely theological works, especially his "De Trinitate", are unsurpassed for depth, grasp, and clearness, among early ecclesiastical writers, whether Eastern or Western. As a philosophical theologian he has no superior, except his own son and disciple, St. Thomas Aquinas. It is probably correct to say that no one, except Aristotle, has exercised so vast, so profound, and so beneficial an influence on European thought. Augustine was himself a Platonist through and through. As a commentator he cared little for the letter, and everything for the spirit, but his harmony of the Gospels shows that he could attend to history and detail. The allegorizing tendencies he inherited from his spiritual father, Ambrose, carry him now and then into extravagances, but more often he rather soars than commentates, and his "In Genesim ad litteram", and his treatises on the Psalms and on St. John, are works of extraordinary power and interest, and quite worthy, in a totally different style, to rank with Chrysostom on Matthew. St. Augustine was a professor of rhetoric before his wonderful conversion; but like St. Cyprian, and even more than St. Cyprian, he put aside, as a Christian, all the artifices of oratory which he knew so well. He retained correctness of grammar and perfect good taste, together with the power of speaking and writing with ease in a style of masterly simplicity and of dignified though almost colloquial plainness. Nothing could be more individual than this style of St. Augustine's, in which he talks to the reader or to God with perfect openness and with an astonishing, often almost exasperating, subtlety of thought. He had the power of seeing all round a subject and through and through it, and he was too conscientious not to use this gift to the uttermost. Large-minded and far-seeing, he was also very learned. He mastered Greek only in later life, in order to make himself familiar with the works of the Eastern Fathers. His "De Civitate Dei" shows vast stores of reading; still more, it puts him in the first place among apologists. Before his death (431) he was the object of extraordinary veneration. He had founded a monastery at Tagaste, which supplied Africa with bishops, and he lived at Hippo with his clergy in a common life, to which the Regular Canons of later days have always looked as their model. The great Dominican Order, the Augustinians, and numberless congregations of nuns still look to him as their father and legislator. His devotional works have had a vogue second only to that of another of his spiritual sons, Thomas à Kempis. He had in his lifetime a reputation for miracles, and his sanctity is felt in all his writings, and breathes in the story of his life. It has been remarked that there is about this many-sided bishop a certain symmetry which makes him an almost faultless model of a holy, wise, and active man. It is well to remember that he was essentially a penitent. (9) In Spain, the great poet Prudentius surpassed all his predecessors, of whom the best had been Juvencus and the almost pagan rhetorician Ausonius. The curious treatises of the Spanish heretic Priscillian were discovered only in 1889. In Gaul Rufinus of Aquileia must be mentioned as the very free translator of Origen, etc., and of Eusebius's "History", which he continued up to his own date. In South Italy his friend Paulinus of Nola has left us pious poems and elaborate letters. D. (1) The fragments of Nestorius's writings have been collected by Loofs. Some of them were preserved by a disciple of St. Augustine, Marius Mercator, who made two collections of documents, concerning Nestorianism and Pelagianism respectively. The great adversary of Nestorius, St. Cyril of Alexandria, was opposed by a yet greater writer, Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus. Cyril is a very voluminous writer, and his long commentaries in the mystical Alexandrian vein do not much interest modern readers. But his principal letters and treatises on the Nestorian question show him as a theologian who has a deep spiritual insight into the meaning of the Incarnation and its effect upon the human race -- the lifting up of man to union with God. We see here the influence of Egyptian asceticism, from Anthony the Great (whose life St. Athanasius wrote), and the Macarii (one of whom left some valuable works in Greek), and Pachomius, to his own time. In their ascetical systems, the union with God by contemplation was naturally the end in view, but one is surprised how little is made by them of meditation on the life and Passion of Christ. It is not omitted, but the tendency as with St. Cyril and with the Monophysites who believed they followed him, is to think rather of the Godhead than of the Manhood. The Antiochene school had exaggerated the contrary tendency, out of opposition to Apollinarianism, which made Christ's Manhood incomplete, and they thought more of man united to God than of God made man. Theodoret undoubtedly avoided the excesses of Theodore and Nestorius, and his doctrine was accepted at last by St. Leo as orthodox, in spite of his earlier persistent defence of Nestorius. His history of the monks is less valuable than the earlier writings of eyewitnesses -- Palladius in the East, and Rufinus and afterwards Cassian in the West. But Theodoret's "History" in continuation of Eusebius contains valuable information. His apologetic and controversial writings are the works of a good theologian. His masterpieces are his exegetical works, which are neither oratory like those of Chrysostom, nor exaggeratedly literal like those of Theodore. With him the great Antiochene school worthily closes, as the Alexandrian does with St Cyril. Together with these great men may be mentioned St. Cyril's spiritual adviser, St. Isidore of Pelusium, whose 2000 letters deal chiefly with allegorical exegesis, the commentary on St. Mark by Victor of Antioch, and the introduction to the interpretation of Scripture by the monk Hadrian, a manual of the Antiochene method. (2) The Eutychian controversy produced no great works in the East. Such works of the Monophysites as have survived are in Syriac or Coptic versions. (3) The two Constantinopolitan historians, Socrates and Sozomen, in spite of errors, contain some data which are precious, since many of the sources which they used are lost to us. With Theodoret, their contemporary, they form a triad just in the middle of the century. St. Nilus of Sinai is the chief among many ascetical writers. (4) St. Sulpicius Severus, a Gallic noble, disciple and biographer of the great St. Martin of Tours, was a classical scholar, and showed himself an elegant writer in his "Ecclesiastical History". The school of Lérins produced many writers besides St. Vincent. We may mention Eucherius, Faustus, and the great St. Caesarius of Arles (543). Other Gallic writers are Salvian, St. Sidonius Apollinaris, Gennadius, St. Avitus of Vienne, and Julianus Pomerius. (5) In the West, the series of papal decretals begins with Pope Siricius (384-98). Of the more important popes large numbers of letters have been preserved. Those of the wise St. Innocent I (401-17), the hot-headed St. Zosimus (417-8), and the severe St. Celestine are perhaps the most important in the first half of the century; in the second half those of Hilarus, Simplicius, and above all the learned St. Gelasius (492-6). Midway in the century stands St. Leo, the greatest of the early popes, whose steadfastness and sanctity saved Rome from Attila, and the Romans from Genseric. He could be unbending in the enunciation of principle; he was condescending in the condoning of breaches of discipline for the sake of peace, and he was a skilful diplomatist. His sermons and the dogmatic letters in his large correspondence show him to us as the most lucid of all theologians. He is clear in his expression, not because he is superficial, but because he has thought clearly and deeply. He steers between Nestorianism and Eutychianism, not by using subtle distinctions or elaborate arguments, but by stating plain definitions in accurate words. He condemned Monothelitism by anticipation. His style is careful, with metrical cadences. Its majestic rhythms and its sonorous closes have invested the Latin language with a new splendour and dignity. E. (1) In the sixth century the large correspondence of Pope Hormisdas is of the highest interest. That century closes with St. Gregory the Great, whose celebrated "Registrum" exceeds in volume many times over the collections of the letters of other early popes. The Epistles are of great variety and throw light on the varied interests of the great pope's life and the varied events in the East and West of his time. His "Morals on the Book of Job" is not a literal commentary, but pretends only to illustrate the moral sense underlying the text. With all the strangeness it presents to modern notions, it is a work full of wisdom and instruction. The remarks of St. Gregory on the spiritual life and on contemplation are of special interest. As a theologian he is original only in that he combines all the traditional theology of the West without adding to it. He commonly follows Augustine as a theologian, a commentator and a preacher. His sermons are admirably practical; they are models of what a good sermon should be. After St. Gregory there are some great popes whose letters are worthy of study, such as Nicholas I and John VIII; but these and the many other late writers of the West belong properly to the medieval period. St. Gregory of Tours is certainly medieval, but the learned Bede is quite patristic. His great history is the most faithful and perfect history to be found in the early centuries. (2) In the East, the latter half of the fifth century is very barren. The sixth century is not much better. The importance of Leontius of Byzantium (died c. 543) for the history of dogma has only lately been realized. Poets and hagiographers, chroniclers, canonists, and ascetical writers succeed each other. Catenas by way of commentaries are the order of the day. St. Maximus Confessor, Anastasius of Mount Sinai, and Andrew of Caesarea must be named. The first of these commented on the works of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, which had probably first seen the light towards the end of the fifth century. St. John of Damascus (c. 750) closes the patristic period with his polemics against heresies, his exegetical and ascetical writings, his beautiful hymns, and above all his "Fountain of Wisdom", which is a compendium of patristic theology and a kind of anticipation of scholasticism. Indeed, the "Summae Theologicae" of the Middle Ages were founded on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard, who had taken the skeleton of his work from this last of the Greek Fathers. III. CHARACTERISTICS OF PATRISTIC WRITINGS A. Commentaries. It has been seen that the literal school of exegesis had its home at Antioch, while the allegorical school was Alexandrian, and the entire West, on the whole, followed the allegorical method, mingling literalism with it in various degrees. The suspicion of Arianism has lost to us the fourth-century writers of the Antiochene school, such as Theodore of Heraclea and Eusebius of Emesa, and the charge of Nestorianism has caused the commentaries of Diodorus and Theodore of Mopsuestia (for the most part) to disappear. The Alexandrian school has lost yet more heavily, for little of the great Origen remains except in fragments and in unreliable versions. The great Antiochenes, Chrysostom and Theodoret, have a real grasp of the sense of the sacred text. They treat it with reverence and love, and their explanations are of deep value, because the language of the New Testament was their own tongue, so that we moderns cannot afford to neglect their comments. On the contrary, Origen, the moulder of the allegorizing type of commentary, who had inherited the Philonic tradition of the Alexandrian Jews, was essentially irreverent to the inspired authors. The Old Testament was to him full of errors, lies, and blasphemies, so far as the letter was concerned, and his defence of it against the pagans, the Gnostics, and especially the Marcionites, was to point only to the spiritual meaning. Theoretically he distinguished a triple sense, the somatic, the psychic, and the pneumatic, following St. Paul's trichotomy; but in practice he mainly gives the spiritual, as opposed to the corporal or literal. St. Augustine sometimes defends the Old Testament against the Manichaeans in the same style, and occasionally in a most unconvincing manner, but with great moderation and restraint. In his "De Genesi ad litteram" he has evolved a far more effective method, with his usual brilliant originality, and he shows that the objections brought against the truth of the first chapters of the book invariably rest upon the baseless assumption that the objector has found the true meaning of the text. But Origen applied his method, though partially, even to the New Testament, and regarded the Evangelists as sometimes false in the letter, but as saving the truth in the hidden spiritual meaning. In this point the good feeling of Christians prevented his being followed. But the brilliant example he gave, of running riot in the fantastic exegesis which his method encouraged, had an unfortunate influence. He is fond of giving a variety of applications to a single text, and his promise to hold nothing but what can be proved from Scripture becomes illusory when he shows by example that any part of Scripture may mean anything he pleases. The reverent temper of later writers, and especially of the Westerns, preferred to represent as the true meaning of the sacred writer the allegory which appeared to them to be the most obvious. St. Ambrose and St. Augustine in their beautiful works on the Psalms rather spiritualize, or moralize, than allegorize, and their imaginative interpretations are chiefly of events, actions, numbers, etc. But almost all allegorical interpretation is so arbitrary and depends so much on the caprice of the exegete that it is difficult to conciliate it with reverence, however one may he dazzled by the beauty of much of it. An alternative way of defending the Old Testament was excogitated by the ingenious author of the pseudo-Clementines; he asserts that it has been depraved and interpolated. St. Jerome's learning has made his exegesis unique; he frequently gives alternative explanations and refers to the authors who have adopted them. From the middle of the fifth century onwards, second-hand commentaries are universal in East and West, and originality almost entirely disappears. Andrew of Caesarea is perhaps an exception, for he commented on a book which was scarcely at all read in the East, the Apocalypse. Discussions of method are not wanting. Clement of Alexandria gives "traditional methods", the literal, typical, moral, and prophetical. The tradition is obviously from Rabbinism. We must admit that it has in its favour the practice of St. Matthew and St. Paul. Even more than Origen, St. Augustine theorized on this subject. In his "De Doctrina Christiana" he gives elaborate rules of exegesis. Elsewhere he distinguishes four senses of Scripture: historical, aetiological (economic), analogical (where N.T. explains 0.T.), and allegorical ("De Util. Cred.", 3; cf. "De Vera Rel.", 50). The book of rules composed by the Donatist Tichonius has an analogy in the smaller "canons" of St. Paul's Epistles by Priscillian. Hadrian of Antioch was mentioned above. St. Gregory the Great compares Scripture to a river so shallow that a lamb can walk in it, so deep that an elephant can float. (Pref. to "Morals on Job"). He distinguishes the historical or literal sense, the moral, and the allegorical or typical. If the Western Fathers are fanciful, yet this is better than the extreme literalism of Theodore of Mopsuestia, who refused to allegorize even the Canticle of Canticles. B. Preachers. We have sermons from the Greek Church much earlier than from the Latin. Indeed, Sozomen tells us that, up to his time (c. 450), there were no public sermons in the churches at Rome. This seems almost incredible. St. Leo's sermons are, however, the first sermons certainly preached at Rome which have reached us, for those of Hippolytus were all in Greek; unless the homily "Adversus Alcatores" be a sermon by a Novatian antipope. The series of Latin preachers begins in the middle of the fourth century. The so-called "Second Epistle of St. Clement" is a homily belonging possibly to the second century. Many of the commentaries of Origen are a series of sermons, as is the case later with all Chrysostom's commentaries and most of Augustine's. In many cases treatises are composed of a course of sermons, as, for instance, is the case for some of those of Ambrose, who seems to have rewritten his sermons after delivery. The "De Sacramentis" may possibly be the version by a shorthand-writer of the course which the saint himself edited under the title "De Mysteriis". In any case the "De Sacramentis" (whether by Ambrose or not) has a freshness and naiveté which is wanting in the certainly authentic "De Mysteriis". Similarly the great courses of sermons preached by St. Chrysostom at Antioch were evidently written or corrected by his own hand, but those he delivered at Constantinople were either hurriedly corrected, or not at all. His sermons on Acts, which have come down to us in two quite distinct texts in the MSS., are probably known to us only in the forms in which they were taken down by two different tachygraphers. St. Gregory Nazianzen complains of the importunity of these shorthand-writers (Orat. xxxii), as St. Jerome does of their incapacity (Ep. lxxi, 5). Their art was evidently highly perfected, and specimens of it have come down to us. They were officially employed at councils (e.g. at the great conference with the Donatists at Carthage, in 411, we hear of them). It appears that many or most of the bishops at the Council of Ephesus, in 449, had their own shorthand-writers with them. The method of taking notes and of amplifying receives illustration from the Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 27 April, 449, at which the minutes were examined which had been taken down by tachygraphers at the council held a few weeks earlier. Many of St. Augustine's sermons are certainly from shorthand notes. As to others we are uncertain, for the style of the written ones is often so colloquial that it is difficult to get a criterion. The sermons of St. Jerome at Bethlehem, published by Dom Morin, are from shorthand reports, and the discourses themselves were unprepared conferences on those portions of the Psalms or of the Gospels which had been sung in the liturgy. The speaker has clearly often been preceded by another priest, and on the Western Christmas Day, which his community alone is keeping, the bishop is present and will speak last. In fact the pilgrim Ætheria tells us that at Jerusalem, in the fourth century, all the priests present spoke in turn, if they chose, and the bishop last of all. Such improvised comments are far indeed from the oratorical discourses of St. Gregory Nazianzen, from the lofty flights of Chrysostom, from the torrent of iteration that characterizes the short sermons of Peter Chrysologus, from the neat phrases of Maximus of Turin, and the ponderous rhythms of Leo the Great. The eloquence of these Fathers need not be here described. In the West we may add in the fourth century Gaudentius of Brescia; several small collections of interesting sermons appear in the fifth century; the sixth opens with the numerous collections made by St. Caesarius for the use of preachers. There is practically no edition of the works of this eminent and practical bishop. St. Gregory (apart from some fanciful exegesis) is the most practical preacher of the West. Nothing could be more admirable for imitation than St. Chrysostom. The more ornate writers are less safe to copy. St. Augustine's style is too personal to be an example, and few are so learned, so great, and so ready, that they can venture to speak as simply as he often does. C. Writers. The Fathers do not belong to the strictly classical period of either the Greek or the Latin language; but this does not imply that they wrote bad Latin or Greek. The conversational form of the Koiné or common dialect of Greek, which is found in the New Testament and in many papyri, is not the language of the Fathers, except of the very earliest. For the Greek Fathers write in a more classicizing style than most of the New Testament writers; none of them uses quite a vulgar or ungrammatical Greek, while some Atticize, e.g. the Cappadocians and Synesius. The Latin Fathers are often less classical. Tertullian is a Latin Carlyle; he knew Greek, and wrote books in that language, and tried to introduce ecclesiastical terms into Latin. St. Cyprian's "Ad Donatum", probably his first Christian writing, shows an Apuleian preciosity which he eschewed in all his other works, but which his biographer Pontius has imitated and exaggerated. Men like Jerome and Augustine, who had a thorough knowledge of classical literature, would not employ tricks of style, and cultivated a manner which should be correct, but simple and straightforward; yet their style could not have been what it was but for their previous study. For the spoken Latin of all the patristic centuries was very different from the written. We get examples of the vulgar tongue here and there in the letters of Pope Cornelius as edited by Mercati, for the third century, or in the Rule of St. Benedict in Wölfflin's or Dom Mona's editions, for the sixth. In the latter we get such modernisms as cor murmurantem, post quibus, cum responsoria sua, which show how the confusing genders and cases of the classics were disappearing into the more reasonable simplicity of Italian. Some of the Fathers use the rhythmical endings of the "cursus" in their prose; some have the later accented endings which were corruptions of the correct prosodical ones. Familiar examples of the former are in the older Collects of the Mass; of the latter the Te Deum is an obvious instance. D. East and West. Before speaking of the theological characteristics of the Fathers, we have to take into account the great division of the Roman Empire into two languages. Language is the great separator. When two emperors divided the Empire, it was not quite according to language; nor were the ecclesiastical divisions more exact, since the great province of Illyricum, including Macedonia and all Greece, was attached to the West through at least a large part of the patristic period, and was governed by the archbishop of Thessalonica, not as its exarch or patriarch, but as papal legate. But in considering the literary productions of the age, we must class them as Latin or Greek, and this is what will be meant here by Western and Eastern. The understanding of the relations between Greeks and Latins is often obscured by certain prepossessions. We talk of the "unchanging East", of the philosophical Greeks as opposed to the practical Romans, of the reposeful thought of the Oriental mind over against the rapidity and orderly classification which characterizes Western intelligence. All this is very misleading, and it is important to go back to the facts. In the first place, the East was converted far more rapidly than the West. When Constantine made Christianity the established religion of both empires from 323 onwards, there was a striking contrast between the two. In the West paganism had everywhere a very large majority, except possibly in Africa. But in the Greek world Christianity was quite the equal of the old religions in influence and numbers; in the great cities it might even be predominant, and some towns were practically Christian. The story told of St. Gregory the Wonder-Worker, that he found but seventeen Christians in Neocaesarea when he became bishop, and that he left but seventeen pagans in the same city when he died (c. 270-5), must be substantially true. Such a story in the West would be absurd. The villages of the Latin countries held out for long, and the pagani retained the worship of the old gods even after they were all nominally Christianized. In Phrygia, on the contrary, entire villages were Christian long before Constantine, though it is true that elsewhere some towns were still heathen in Julian's day -- Gaza in Palestine is an example; but then Maiouma, the port of Gaza, was Christian. Two consequences, amongst others, of this swift evangelization of the East must be noticed. In the first place, while the slow progress of the West was favourable to the preservation of the unchanged tradition, the quick conversion of the East was accompanied by a rapid development which, in the sphere of dogma, was hasty, unequal, and fruitful of error. Secondly, the Eastern religion partook, even during the heroic age of persecution, of the evil which the West felt so deeply after Constantine, that is to say, of the crowding into the Church of multitudes who were only half Christianized, because it was the fashionable thing to do, or because a part of the beauties of the new religion and of the absurdities of the old were seen. We have actually Christian writers, in East and West, such as Arnobius, and to some extent Lactantius and Julius Africanus, who show that they are only half instructed in the Faith. This must have been largely the case among the people in the East. Tradition in the East was less regarded, and faith was less deep than in the smaller Western communities. Again, the Latin writers begin in Africa with Tertullian, just before the third century, at Rome with Novatian, just in the middle of the third century, and in Spain and Gaul not till the fourth. But the East had writers in the first century, and numbers in the second; there were Gnostic and Christian schools in the second and third. There had been, indeed, Greek writers at Rome in the first and second centuries and part of the third. But when the Roman Church became Latin they were forgotten; the Latin writers did not cite Clement and Hermas; they totally forgot Hippolytus, except his chronicle, and his name became merely a theme for legend. Though Rome was powerful and venerated in the second century, and though her tradition remained unbroken, the break in her literature is complete. Latin literature is thus a century and a half younger than the Greek; indeed it is practically two centuries and a half younger. Tertullian stands alone, and he became a heretic. Until the middle of the fourth century there had appeared but one Latin Father for the spiritual reading of the educated Latin Christian, and it is natural that the stichometry, edited (perhaps semi-officially) under Pope Liberius for the control of booksellers' prices, gives the works of St. Cyprian as well as the books of the Latin Bible. This unique position of St. Cyprian was still recognized at the beginning of the fifth century. From Cyprian (d. 258) to Hilary there was scarcely a Latin book that could be recommended for popular reading except Lactantius's "De mortibus persecutorum", and there was no theology at all. Even a little later, the commentaries of Victorinus the Rhetorician were valueless, and those of Isaac the Jew (?) were odd. The one vigorous period of Latin literature is the bare century which ends with Leo (d. 461). During that century Rome had been repeatedly captured or threatened by barbarians; Arian Vandals, besides devastating Italy and Gaul, had almost destroyed the Catholicism of Spain and Africa; the Christian British had been murdered in the English invasion. Yet the West had been able to rival the East in output and in eloquence and even to surpass it in learning, depth, and variety. The elder sister knew little of these productions, but the West was supplied with a considerable body of translations from the Greek, even in the fourth century. In the sixth, Cassiodorus took care that the amount should be increased. This gave the Latins a larger outlook, and even the decay of learning which Cassiodorus and Agapetus could not remedy, and which Pope Agatho deplored so humbly in his letter to the Greek council of 680, was resisted with a certain persistent vigour. At Constantinople the means of learning were abundant, and there were many authors; yet there is a gradual decline till the fifteenth century. The more notable writers are like flickers amid dying embers. There were chroniclers and chronographers, but with little originality. Even the monastery of Studium is hardly a literary revival. There is in the East no enthusiasm like that of Cassiodorus, of Isidore, of Alcuin, amid a barbarian world. Photius had wonderful libraries at his disposal, yet Bede had wider learning, and probably knew more of the East than Photius did of the West. The industrious Irish schools which propagated learning in every part of Europe had no parallel in the Oriental world. It was after the fifth century that the East began to be "unchanging". And as the bond with the West grew less and less continuous, her theology and literature became more and more mummified; whereas the Latin world blossomed anew with an Anselm, subtle as Augustine, a Bernard, rival to Chrysostom, an Aquinas, prince of theologians. Hence we observe in the early centuries a twofold movement, which must be spoken of separately: an Eastward movement of theology, by which the West imposed her dogmas on the reluctant East, and a Westward movement in most practical things -- organization, liturgy, ascetics, devotion -- by which the West assimilated the swifter evolution of the Greeks. We take first the theological movement. E. Theology. Throughout the second century the Greek portion of Christendom bred heresies. The multitude of Gnostic schools tried to introduce all kinds of foreign elements into Christianity. Those who taught and believed them did not start from a belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation such as we are accustomed to. Marcion formed not a school, but a Church; his Christology was very far removed from tradition. The Montanists made a schism which retained the traditional beliefs and practices, but asserted a new revelation. The leaders of all the new views came to Rome, and tried to gain a footing there; all were condemned and excommunicated. At the end of the century, Rome got all the East to agree with her traditional rule that Easter should be kept on Sunday. The Churches of Asia Minor had a different custom. One of their bishops protested. But they seem to have submitted almost at once. In the first decades of the third century, Rome impartially repelled opposing heresies, those which identified the three Persons of the Holy Trinity with only a modal distinction (Monarchians, Sabellians, "Patripassians"), and those who, on the contrary, made Christ a mere man, or seemed to ascribe to the Word of God a distinct being from that of the Father. This last conception, to our amazement, is assumed, it would appear, by the early Greek apologists, though in varying language; Athenagoras (who as an Athenian may have been in relation with the West) is the only one who asserts the Unity of the Trinity. Hippolytus (somewhat diversely in the "Contra Noetum" and in the "Philosophumena," if they are both his) taught the same division of the Son from the Father as traditional, and he records that Pope Callistus condemned him as a Ditheist. Origen, like many of the others, makes the procession of the Word depend upon His office of Creator; and if he is orthodox enough to make the procession an eternal and necessary one, this is only because he regards Creation itself as necessary and eternal. His pupil, Dionysius of Alexandria, in combating the Sabellians, who admitted no real distinctions in the Godhead, manifested the characteristic weakness of the Greek theology, but some of his own Egyptians were more correct than their patriarch, and appealed to Rome. The Alexandrian listened to the Roman Dionysius, for all respected the unchanging tradition and unblemished orthodoxy of the See of Peter; his apology accepts the word "consubstantial", and he explains, no doubt sincerely, that he had never meant anything else; but he had learnt to see more clearly, without recognizing how unfortunately worded were his earlier arguments. He was not present when a council, mainly of Origenists, justly condemned Paul of Samosata (268); and these bishops, holding the traditional Eastern view, refused to use the word "consubstantial" as being too like Sabellianism. The Arians, disciples of Lucian, rejected (as did the more moderate Eusebius of Caesarea) the eternity of Creation, and they were logical enough to argue that consequently "there was (before time was) when the Word was not", and that He was a creature. All Christendom was horrified; but the East was soon appeased by vague explanations, and after Nicaea, real, undisguised Arianism hardly showed its head for nearly forty years. The highest point of orthodoxy that the East could reach is shown in the admirable lectures of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. There is one God, he teaches, that is the Father, and His Son is equal to Him in all things, and the Holy Ghost is adored with Them; we cannot separate Them in our worship. But he does not ask himself how there are not three Gods; he will not use the Nicene word "consubstantial", and he never suggests that there is one Godhead common to the three Persons. If we turn to the Latins all is different. The essential Monotheism of Christianity is not saved in the West by saying there is "one God the Father", as in all the Eastern creeds, but the theologians teach the unity of the Divine essence, in which subsist three Persons. If Tertullian and Novatian use subordinationist language of the Son (perhaps borrowed from the East), it is of little consequence in comparison with their main doctrine, that there is one substance of the Father and of the Son. Callistus excommunicates equally those who deny the distinction of Persons, and those who refuse to assert the unity of substance. Pope Dionysius is shocked that his namesake did not use the word "consubstantial" -- this is more than sixty years before Nicaea. At that great council a Western bishop has the first place, with two Roman priests, and the result of the discussion is that the Roman word "consubstantial" is imposed up on all. In the East the council is succeeded by a conspiracy of silence; the Orientals will not use the word. Even Alexandria, which had kept to the doctrine of Dionysius of Rome, is not convinced that the policy was good, and Athanasius spends his life in fighting for Nicaea, yet rarely uses the crucial word. It takes half a century for the Easterns to digest it; and when they do so, they do not make the most of its meaning. It is curious how little interest even Athanasius shows in the Unity of the Trinity, which he scarcely mentions except when quoting the Dionysii; it is Didymus and the Cappadocians who word Trinitarian doctrine in the manner since consecrated by the centuries -- three hypostases, one usia; but this is merely the conventional translation of the ancient Latin formula, though it was new to the East. If we look back at the three centuries, second, third, and fourth of which we have been speaking, we shall see that the Greek-speaking Church taught the Divinity of the Son, and Three inseparable Persons, and one God the Father, without being able philosophically to harmonize these conceptions. The attempts which were made were sometimes condemned as heresy in the one direction or the other, or at best arrived at unsatisfactory and erroneous explanations, such as the distinction of the logos endiathetos and the logos prophorikos or the assertion of the eternity of Creation. The Latin Church preserved always the simple tradition of three distinct Persons and one divine Essence. We must judge the Easterns to have started from a less perfect tradition, for it would be too harsh to accuse them of wilfully perverting it. But they show their love of subtle distinctions at the same time that they lay bare their want of philosophical grasp. The common people talked theology in the streets; but the professional theologians did not see that the root of religion is the unity of God, and that, so far, it is better to be a Sabellian than a Semi-Arian. There is something mythological about their conceptions, even in the case of Origen, however important a thinker he may be in comparison with other ancients. His conceptions of Christianity dominated the East for some time, but an Origenist Christianity would never have influenced the modern world. The Latin conception of theological doctrine, on the other hand, was by no means a mere adherence to an uncomprehended tradition. The Latins in each controversy of these early centuries seized the main point, and preserved it at all hazards. Never for an instant did they allow the unity of God to be obscured. The equality of the Son and his consubstantiality were seen to be necessary to that unity. The Platonist idea of the need of a mediator between the transcendent God and Creation does not entangle them, for they were too clear-headed to suppose that there could be anything half-way between the finite and the infinite. In a word, the Latins are philosophers, and the Easterns are not. The East can speculate and wrangle about theology, but it cannot grasp a large view. It is in accordance with this that it was in the West, after all the struggle was over, that the Trinitarian doctrine was completely systematized by Augustine; in the West, that the Athanasian creed was formulated. The same story repeats itself in the fifth century. The philosophical heresy of Pelagius arose in the West, and in the West only could it have been exorcized. The schools of Antioch and Alexandria each insisted on one side of the question as to the union of the two Natures in the Incarnation; the one School fell into Nestorianism, the other into Eutychianism, though the leaders were orthodox. But neither Cyril nor the great Theodoret was able to rise above the controversy, and express the two complementary truths in one consistent doctrine. They held what St. Leo held; but, omitting their interminable arguments and proofs, the Latin writer words the true doctrine once for all, because he sees it philosophically. No wonder that the most popular of the Eastern Fathers has always been untheological Chrysostom, whereas the most popular of the Western Fathers is the philosopher Augustine. Whenever the East was severed from the West, it contributed nothing to the elucidation and development of dogma, and when united, its contribution was mostly to make difficulties for the West to unravel. But the West has continued without ceasing its work of exposition and evolution. After the fifth century there is not much development or definition in the patristic period; the dogmas defined needed only a reference to antiquity. But again and again Rome had to impose her dogmas on Byzantium -- 519, 680, and 786 are famous dates, when the whole Eastern Church had to accept a papal document for the sake of reunion, and the intervals between these dates supply lesser instances. The Eastern Church had always possessed a traditional belief in Roman tradition and in the duty of recourse to the See of Peter; the Arians expressed it when they wrote to Pope Julius to deprecate interference -- Rome, they said, was "the metropolis of the faith from the beginning". In the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries the lesson had been learnt thoroughly, and the East proclaimed the papal prerogatives, and appealed to them with a fervour which experience had taught to be in place. In such a sketch as this, all elements cannot be taken into consideration. It is obvious that Eastern theology had a great and varied influence on Latin Christendom. But the essential truth remains that the West thought more clearly than the East, while preserving with greater faithfulness a more explicit tradition as to cardinal dogmas, and that the West imposed her doctrines and her definitions on the East, and repeatedly, if necessary, reasserted and reimposed them. F. Discipline, Liturgy, Ascetics. According to tradition, the multiplication of bishoprics, so that each city had its own bishop, began in the province of Asia, under the direction of St. John. The development was uneven. There may have been but one see in Egypt at the end of the second century, though there were large numbers in all the provinces of Asia Minor, and a great many in Phoenicia and Palestine. Groupings under metropolitan sees began in that century in the East, and in the third century this organization was recognized as a matter of course. Over metropolitans are the patriarchs. This method of grouping spread to the West. At first Africa had the most numerous sees; in the middle of the third century there were about a hundred, and they quickly increased to more than four times that number. But each province of Africa had not a metropolitan see; only a presidency was accorded to the senior bishop, except in Proconsularis, where Carthage was the metropolis of the province and her bishop was the first of all Africa. His rights are undefined, though his influence was great. But Rome was near, and the pope had certainly far more actual power, as well as more recognized right, than the primate; we see this in Tertullian's time, and it remains true in spite of the resistance of Cyprian. The other countries, Italy, Spain, Gaul, were gradually organized according to the Greek model, and the Greek metropolis, patriarch, were adapted. Councils were held early in the West. But disciplinary canons were first enacted in the East. St. Cyprian's large councils passed no canons, and that saint considered that each bishop is answerable to God alone for the government of his diocese; in other words, he knows no canon law. The foundation of Latin canon law is in the canons of Eastern councils, which open the Western collections. in spite of this, we need not suppose the East was more regular, or better governed, than the West, where the popes guarded order and justice. But the East had larger communities, and they had developed more fully, and therefore the need arose earlier there to commit definite rules to writing. The florid taste of the East soon decorated the liturgy with beautiful excrescences. Many such excellent practices moved Westward; the Latin rites borrowed prayers and songs, antiphons, antiphonal singing, the use of the alleluia, of the doxology, etc. If the East adopted the Latin Christmas Day, the West imported not merely the Greek Epiphany, but feast after feast, in the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. The West joined in devotion to Eastern martyrs. The special honour and love of Our Lady is at first characteristic of the East (except Antioch), and then conquers the West. The parcelling of the bodies of the saints as relics for devotional purposes, spread all over the West from the East; only Rome held out, until the time of St. Gregory the Great, against what might be thought an irreverence rather than an honour to the saints. If the first three centuries are full of pilgrimages to Rome from the East, yet from the fourth century onward West joins with East in making Jerusalem the principal goal of such pious journeys; and these voyagers brought back much knowledge of the East to the most distant parts of the West. Monasticism began in Egypt with Paul and Anthony, and spread from Egypt to Syria; St. Athanasius brought the knowledge of it to the West, and the Western monachism of Jerome and Augustine, of Honoratus and Martin, of Benedict and Columba, always looked to the East, to Anthony and Pachomius and Hilarion, and above all to Basil, for its most perfect models. Edifying literature in the form of the lives of the saints began with Athanasius, and was imitated by Jerome. But the Latin writers, Rufinus and Cassian, gave accounts of Eastern monachism, and Palladius and the later Greek writers were early translated into Latin. Soon indeed there were lives of Latin saints, of which that of St. Martin was the most famous, but the year 600 had almost come when St. Gregory the Great felt it still necessary to protest that as good might be found in Italy as in Egypt and Syria, and published his dialogues to prove his point, by supplying edifying stories of his own country to put beside the older histories of the monks. It would be out of place here to go more into detail in these subjects. Enough has been said to show that the West borrowed, with open-minded simplicity and humility, from the elder East all kinds of practical and useful ways in ecclesiastical affairs and in the Christian life. The converse influence in practical matters of West on East was naturally very small. G. Historical Materials. The principal ancient historians of the patristic period were mentioned above. They cannot always be completely trusted. The continuators of Eusebius, that is, Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, are not to be compared to Eusebius himself, for that industrious prelate has fortunately bequeathed to us rather a collection of invaluable materials than a history. His "Life" or rather "Panegyric of Constantine" is less remarkable for its contents than for its politic omissions. Eusebius found his materials in the library of Pamphilus at Caesarea, and still more in that left by Bishop Alexander at Jerusalem. He cites earlier collections of documents, the letters of Dionysius of Corinth, Dionysius of Alexandria, Serapion of Antioch, some of the epistles sent to Pope Victor by councils throughout the Church, besides employing earlier writers of history or memoirs such as Papias, Hegesippus, Apollonius, an anonymous opponent of the Montanists, the "Little Labyrinth "of Hippolytus (?), etc. The principal additions we can still make to these precious remnants are, first, St. Irenaeus on the heresies; then the works of Tertullian, full of valuable information about the controversies of his own time and place and the customs of the Western Church, and containing also some less valuable information about earlier matters -- less valuable, because Tertullian is singularly careless and deficient in historical sense. Next, we possess the correspondence of St. Cyprian, comprising letters of African councils, of St. Cornelius and others, besides those of the saint himself. To all this fragmentary information we can add much from St. Epiphanius, something from St. Jerome and also from Photius and Byzantine chronographers. The whole Ante-Nicene evidence has been catalogued with wonderful industry by Harnack, with the help of Preuschen and others, in a book of 1021 pages, the first volume of his invaluable "History of Early Christian Literature". In the middle of the fourth century, St. Epiphanius's book on heresies is learned but confused; it is most annoying to think how useful it would have been had its pious author quoted his authorities by name, as Eusebius did. As it is, we can with difficulty, if at all, discover whether his sources are to be depended on or not. St. Jerome's lives of illustrious men are carelessly put together, mainly from Eusebius, but with additional information of great value, where we can trust its accuracy. Gennadius of Marseilles continued this work with great profit to us. The Western cataloguers of heresies, such as Philastrius, Praedestinatus, and St. Augustine, are less useful. Collections of documents are the most important matter of all. In the Arian controversy the collections published by St. Athanasius in his apologetic works are first-rate authorities. Of those put together by St. Hilary only fragments survive. Another dossier by the Homoiousian Sabinus, Bishop of Heraclea, was known to Socrates, and we can trace its use by him. A collection of documents connected with the origins of Donatism was made towards the beginning of the fourth century, and was appended by St. Optatus to his great work. Unfortunately only a part is preserved; but much of the lost matter is quoted by Optatus and Augustine. A pupil of St. Augustine, Marius Mercator, happened to be at Constantinople during the Nestorian controversy, and he formed an interesting collection of pièces justificatives. He put together a corresponding set of papers bearing on the Pelagian controversy. Irenaeus, Bishop of Tyre, amassed documents bearing on Nestonianism, as a brief in his own defence. These have been preserved to us in the reply of an opponent, who has added a great number. Another kind of collection is that of letters. St. Isidore's and St. Augustine's are immensely numerous, but bear little upon history. There is far more historical matter in those (for instance) of Ambrose and Jerome, Basil and Chrysostom. Those of the popes are numerous, and of first-rate value; and the large collections of them also contain letters addressed to the popes. The correspondence of Leo and of Hormisdas is very complete. Besides these collections of papal letters and the decretals, we have separate collections, of which two are important, the Collectio Avellana, and that of Stephen of Larissa. Councils supply another great historical source. Those of Nicaea, Sardica, Constantinople, have left us no Acts, only some letters and canons. Of the later oecumenical councils we have not only the detailed Acts, but also numbers of letters connected with them. Many smaller councils have also been preserved in the later collections; those made by Ferrandus of Carthage and Dionysius the Little deserve special mention. In many cases the Acts of one council are preserved by another at which they were read. For example, in 418, a Council of Carthage recited all the canons of former African plenary councils in the presence of a papal legate; the Council of Chalcedon embodies all the Acts of the first session of the Robber Council of Ephesus, and the Acts of that session contained the Acts of two synods of Constantinople. The later sessions of the Robber Council (preserved only in Syriac) contain a number of documents concerning inquiries and trials of prelates. Much information of various kinds has been derived of late years from Syriac and Coptic sources, and even from the Arabic, Armenian, Persian, Ethiopia and Slavonic. It is not necessary to speak here of the patristic writings as sources for our knowledge of Church organization, ecclesiastical geography, liturgies. canon law and procedure, archaeology, etc. The sources are, however, much the same for all these branches as for history proper. IV. PATRISTIC STUDY A. Editors of the Fathers. The earliest histories of patristic literature are those contained in Eusebius and in Jerome's "De viris illustribus". They were followed by Gennadius, who continued Eusebius, by St. Isidore of Seville, and by St. Ildephonsus of Toledo. In the Middle Ages the best known are Sigebert of the monastery of Gembloux (d. 1112), and Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim and of Würzburg (d. 1516). Between these come an anonymous monk of Melk (Mellicensis, c. 1135) and Honorius of Autun (1122-5). Ancient editors are not wanting; for instance, many anonymous works, like the Pseudo-Clementines and Apostolic Constitutions, have been remodelled more than once; the translators of Origen (Jerome, Rufinus, and unknown persons) cut out, altered, added; St. Jerome published an expurgated edition of Victoninus "On the Apocalypse". Pamphilus made a list of Origen's writings, and Possidius did the same for those of Augustine. The great editions of the Fathers began when printing had become common. One of the earliest editors was Faber Stapulensis (Lefèvre d'Estaples), whose edition of Dionysius the Areopagite was published in 1498. The Belgian Pamèle (1536-87) published much. The controversialist Feuardent, a Franciscan (1539-1610) did some good editing. The sixteenth century produced gigantic works of history. The Protestant "Centuriators" of Magdeburg described thirteen centuries in as many volumes (1559-74). Cardinal Baronius (1538-1607) replied with his famous "Annales Ecclesiastici", reaching to the year 1198 (12 vols., 1588-1607). Marguerin de la Bigne, a doctor of the Sorbonne (1546-89), published his "Bibliotheca veterum Patrum" (9 vols., 1577-9) to assist in refuting the Centuriators. The great Jesuit editors were almost in the seventeenth century; Gretserus (1562-1625), Fronto Ducaeus (Fronton du Duc, 1558-1624), Andreas Schott (1552-1629), were diligent editors of the Greek Fathers. The celebrated Sirmond (1559-1651) continued to publish Greek Fathers and councils and much else, from the age of 51 to 92. Denis Petau (Petavius, 1583-1652) edited Greek Fathers, wrote on chronology, and produced an incomparable book of historical theology, "De theologicis dogmatibus" (1044). To these may be added the ascetic Halloix (1572-1656), the uncritical Chifflet (1592-1682), and Jean Garnier, the historian of the Pelagians (d. 1681). The greatest work of the Society of Jesus is the publication of the "Acta Sanctorum", which has now reached the beginning of November, in 64 volumes. It was planned by Rosweyde (1570-1629) as a large collection of lives of saints; but the founder of the work as we have it is the famous John van Bolland (1596-1665). He was joined in 1643 by Henschenius and Papebrochius (1628-1714), and thus the Society of Bollandists began, and continued, in spite of the suppression of the Jesuits, until the French Revolution, 1794. It was happily revived in 1836 (see Bollandists). Other Catholic editors were Gerhard Voss (d. 1609), Albaspinaeus (De l'Aubespine, Bishop of Orléans, 1579-1630), Rigault (1577-1654), and the Sorbonne doctor Cotelier (1629-86). The Dominican Combéfis (1605-79) edited Greek Fathers, added two volumes to de la Bigne's collection, and made collections of patristic sermons. The layman Valesius (de Valois, 1603-70) was of great eminence. Among Protestants may be mentioned the controversialist Clericus (Le Clerc, 1657-1736); Bishop Fell of Oxford (1625-86), the editor of Cyprian, with whom must be classed Bishop Pearson and Dodwell; Grabe (1666-1711), a Prussian who settled in England; the Calvinist Basnage (1653-1723). The famous Gallican Etienne Baluze (1630-1718), was an editor of great industry. The Provençal Franciscan, Pagi, published an invaluable commentary on Baronius in 1689-1705. But the greatest historical achievement was that of a secular priest, Louis Le Nain de Tillemont, whose "Histoire des Empereurs" (6 vols., 1690) and "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles" (16 vols., 1693) have never been superseded or equalled. Other historians are Cardinal H. Noris (1631-1704); Natalis Alexander (1639-1725), a Dominican; Fleury (in French, 1690-1719). To these must be added the Protestant Archbishop Ussher of Dublin (1580-1656), and many canonists, such as Van Espen, Du Pin, La Marca, and Christianus Lupus. The Oratorian Thomassin wrote on Christian antiquities (1619-95); the English Bingham composed a great work on the same subject (1708-22). Holstein (1596-1661), a convert from Protestantism, was librarian at the Vatican, and published collections of documents. The Oratorian J. Morin (1597-1659) published a famous work on the history of Holy orders, and a confused one on that of penance. The chief patristic theologian among English Protestants is Bishop Bull, who wrote a reply to Petavius's views on the development of dogma, entitled "Defensio fidei Nicaenae" (1685). The Greek Leo Allatius (1586-1669), custos of the Vatican Library, was almost a second Bessarion. He wrote on dogma and on the ecclesiastical books of the Greeks. A century later the Maronite J. S. Assemani (1687-1768) published amongst other works a "Bibliotheca Orientalis" and an edition of Ephrem Syrus. His nephew edited an immense collection of liturgies. The chief liturgiologist of the seventeenth century is the Blessed Cardinal Tommasi, a Theatine (1649-1713, beatified 1803), the type of a saintly savant. The great Benedictines form a group by themselves, for (apart from Dom Calmet, a Biblical scholar, and Dom Ceillier, who belonged to the Congregation of St-Vannes) all were of the Congregation of St-Maur, the learned men of which were drafted into the Abbey of St-Germain-des-Prés at Paris. Dom Luc d'Achéry (1605-85) is the founder ("Spicilegium", 13 vols.); Dom Mabillon (1632-1707) is the greatest name, but he was mainly occupied with the early Middle Ages. Bernard de Montfaucon (1655-1741) has almost equal fame (Athanasius, Hexapla of Origen, Chrysostom, Antiquities, Palaeography). Dom Coustant (1654-1721) was the principal collaborator, it seems, in the great edition of St. Augustine (1679-1700; also letters of the Popes, Hilary). Dom Garet (Cassiodorus, 1679), Du Friche (St Ambrose, 1686-90), Martianay (St. Jerome, 1693-1706, less successful), Delarue (Origen, 1733-59), Maran (with Toutée, Cyril of Jerusalem, 1720; alone, the Apologists, 1742; Gregory Nazianzen, unfinished), Massuet (Irenaeus, 1710), Ste-Marthe (Gregory the Great, 1705), Julien Garnier (St. Basil, 1721-2), Ruinart (Acta Martyrum sincera, 1689, Victor Vitensis, 1694, and Gregory of Tours and Fredegar, 1699), are all well-known names. The works of Martène (1654-1739) on ecclesiastical and monastic rites (1690 and 1700-2) and his collections of anecdota (1700, 1717, and 1724-33) are most voluminous; he was assisted by Durand. The great historical works of the Benedictines of St-Maur need not be mentioned here, but Dom Sabatier's edition of the Old Latin Bible, and the new editions of Du Cange's glossaries must be noted. For the great editors of collections of councils see under the names mentioned in the bibliography of the article on Councils. In the eighteenth century may be noted Archbishop Potter (1674-1747, Clement of Alexandria). At Rome Arevalo (Isidore of Seville, 1797-1803); Gallandi, a Venetian Oratorian (Bibliotheca veterum Patrum, 1765-81). The Veronese scholars form a remarkable group. The historian Maffei (for our purpose his "anecdota of Cassiodorus" are to be noted, 1702), Vallarsi (St. Jerome, 1734-42, a great work, and Rufinus, 1745), the brothers Ballerini (St. Zeno, 1739; St. Leo, 1753-7, a most remarkable production), not to speak of Bianchini, who published codices of the Old Latin Gospels, and the Dominican Mansi, Archbishop of Lucca, who re-edited Baronius, Fabricius, Thomassinus, Baluze, etc., as well as the "Collectio Amplissima" of councils. A general conspectus shows us the Jesuits taking the lead c. 1590-1650, and the Benedictines working about 1680-1750. The French are always in the first place. There are some sparse names of eminence in Protestant England; a few in Germany; Italy takes the lead in the second half of the eighteenth century. The great literary histories of Bellarmine, Fabricius, Du Pin, Cave, Oudin, Schram, Lumper, Ziegelbauer, and Schoenemann will be found below in the bibliography. The first half of the nineteenth century was singularly barren of patristic study; nevertheless there were marks of the commencement of the new era in which Germany takes the head. The second half of the nineteenth was exceptionally and increasingly prolific. It is impossible to enumerate the chief editors and critics. New matter was poured forth by Cardinal Mai (1782-1854) and Cardinal Pitra (1812- 89), both prefects of the Vatican Library. Inedita in such quantities seem to be found no more, but isolated discoveries have come frequently and still come; Eastern libraries, such as those of Mount Athos and Patmos, Constantinople, and Jerusalem, and Mount Sinai, have yielded unknown treasures, while the Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, etc., have supplied many losses supposed to be irrecoverable. The sands of Egypt have given something, but not much, to patrology. The greatest boon in the way of editing has been the two great patrologies of the Abbé Migne (1800-75). This energetic man put the works of all the Greek and Latin Fathers within easy reach by the "Patrologia Latina" (222 vols., including 4 vols. of indexes) and the "Patrologia Graeca" (161 vols). The Ateliers Catholiques which he founded produced wood-carving, pictures, organs, etc., but printing was the special work. The workshops were destroyed by a disastrous fire in 1868, and the recommencement of the work was made impossible by the Franco-German war. The "Monumenta Germaniae", begun by the Berlin librarian Pertz, was continued with vigour under the most celebrated scholar of the century, Theodor Mommsen. Small collections of patristic works are catalogued below. A new edition of the Latin Fathers was undertaken in the sixties by the Academy of Vienna. The volumes published up till now have been uniformly creditable works which call up no particular enthusiasm. At the present rate of progress some centuries will be needed for the great work. The Berlin Academy has commenced a more modest task, the re-editing of the Greek Ante-Nicene writers, and the energy of Adolf Harnack is ensuring rapid publication and real success. The same indefatigable student, with von Gebhardt, edits a series of "Texte und Untersuchungen", which have for a part of their object to be the organ of the Berlin editors of the Fathers. The series contains many valuable studies, with much that would hardly have been published in other countries. The Cambridge series of "Texts and Studies" is younger and proceeds more slowly, but keeps at a rather higher level. There should be mentioned also the Italian "Studii e Testi", in which Mercati and Pio Franchi de' Cavalieri collaborate. In England, in spite of the slight revival of interest in patristic studies caused by the Oxford Movement, the amount of work has not been great. For learning perhaps Newman is really first in the theological questions. As critics the Cambridge School, Westcott, Hort, and above all Lightfoot, are second to none. But the amount edited has been very small, and the excellent "Dictionary of Christian Biography" is the only great work published. Until 1898 there was absolutely no organ for patristic studies, and the "Journal of Theological Studies" founded in that year would have found it difficult to survive financially without the help of the Oxford University Press. But there has been an increase of interest in these subjects of late years, both among Protestants and Catholics, in England and in the United States. Catholic France has lately been coming once more to the fore, and is very nearly level with Germany even in output. In the last fifty years, archaeology has added much to patristic studies; in this sphere the greatest name is that of De Rossi. B. The Study of the Fathers. The helps to study, such as Patrologies, lexical information, literary histories, are mentioned below. COLLECTIONS:-- The chief collections of the Fathers are the following: DE LA BIGNE, Bibliotheca SS. PP. (5 vols. fol., Paris, 1575, and App., 1579; 4th ed., 10 vols., 1624, with Auctarium, 2 vols., 1624, and Suppl., 1639, 5th and 6th edd., 17 vols. fol., 1644 and 1654); this great work is a supplement of over 200 writings to the editions till then published of the Fathers; enlarged ed. hy UNIV. OF COLOGNE (Cologne, 1618, 14 vols., and App., 1622); the Cologne ed. enlarged by 100 writings, in 27 folio vols. (Lyons, 1677). COMBEFIS, Graeco-Latinae Patrum Bibliothecae novum Auctarium (2 vols., Paris, 1648), and Auctarium novissimum (2 vols., Paris, 1672); D'Achéry, Veterum aliquot scriptorum Spicilegium (13 vols. 4to, Paris, 1655-77, and 3 vols. fol., 1723), mostly of writings later than patristic period, as is also the case with BALUZE, Miscellanea (7 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1678-1715); re-ed. by MANSI (4 vols. fol., Lucca, 1761-4); SIRMOND, Opera varia nunc primum collecta (5 vols. fol., Paris, 1696, and Venice, 1728); MURATORI, Anecdota from the Ambrosian Libr. at Milan (4 vols. 4to, Milan, 1697-8; Padua, 1713); IDEM, Anecdota graeca (Padua, 1709); GRABE, Spicilegium of Fathers of the first and second centuries (Oxford, 1698-9, 1700, and enlarged, 1714); GALLANDI, Bibl. vet. PP., an enlarged edition of the Lyons ed. of de la Bigne (14 vols. fol., Venice, 1765-88, and index puhl. at Bologna, 1863) -- nearly all the contents are reprinted in MIGNE; OBERTHÜR, SS. Patrum opera polemica de veriate religionis christ. c. Gent. et Jud. (21 vols. 8vo, Würzburg, 1777-94); IDEM, Opera omnia SS. Patrum Latinorum (13 vols., Würzburg, 1789-91); ROUTH, Reliquiae sacrae, second and third centuries (4 vols., Oxford, 1814-18; in 5 vols., 1846-8); IDEM, Scriptorum eccl. opuscula praeipua (2 vols., Oxford, 1832, 3rd vol., 1858); MAT, Scriptorum veterum nova collectio (unpubl. matter from Vatican MSS., 10 vols. 4to, 1825-38); IDEM, Spicileqium Romanum (10 vols. Svo, Rome, 1839-44); IDEM, Nova Patrum Bibtiotheca (7 vols. 4to, Rome, 1844-54; vol. 8 completed by COZZA-LUZI, 1871, vol. 9 by COZZA-LUZI, 1888, App. ad opera ed. ab A. Maio, Rome, 1871, App. altera, 1871). A few eccl. writings in MAI's Classici auctores (10 vols., Rome, 1828-38); CAILLAU, Collectio selecta SS. Ecclesia Patrum (133 vols. em. 8vo, Paris, 1829-42); GERSDORF, Bibl. Patrum eccl. lat. selecta (13 vols., Leipzig, 1838-47); the Oxford Bibliotheca Patrum reached 10 vols. (Oxford, 1838-55); PITRA, Spicilegium Solesmense (4 vols. 4to, Paris, 1852-8). The number of these various collections, in addition to the works of the great Fathers, made it difficult to obtain a complete set of patristic writings. MIGNE supplied the want by collecting almost all the foregoing (except the end of the last mentioned work, and Mais later volumes) into his complete editions: Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latine (to Innocent III, A.D. 1300, 221 vols. 4to, including four vols. of indexes, 1844-55), Series graeco-latine (to the Council of Florence, A.D. 1438-9, 161 vols. 4to, 1857-66, and another rare vol. of additions, 1866); the Series graece was also published, in Latin only, in 81 vols.; there is no index in the Series grace; an alphabetical list of contents by SCHOLAREOS (Athens, 1879, useful); other publications, not included in Migne, by PITRA, are Juris ecclesiastici Graecarum hist. et monum. (2 vols., Rome, 1864-8); Analecta sacra (6 vols., numbered I, II, III, IV, VI, VIII, Paris, 1876-84); Analecta sacra et classica (Paris, 1888); Analecta novissima, medieval (2 vols., 1885-8); the new edition of Latin Fathers is called Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, editum consilio et impensis Academiae litterarum Caesarea Vindobonensis (Vienna, 1866, 8vo, in progress); and of the Greek Fathers: Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderten, herausgegeben von der Kirchenvätter-Kommission den Königl. preussiechen Akad. den Wise. (Berlin, 1897, large 8vo, in progress). Of the Monumenta Germaniae historica, one portion, the Auctores antiquissimi (Berlin, 1877-98), contains works of the sixth century which connect themselves with patrology. Small modern collections are HURTER, SS. Patrum opuscula selecta, with a few good notes (Innebruck, 1st series, 48 vols., 1868-85, 2nd series, 6 vols.. 1884-92) -- these little books have been deservedly popular; KRÜGER, Semmlung ausgewählter kirchen- und dogmengeschichtlicher Quellenechriften (Freiburg, 1891-); RAUSCHEN, Florilegium patristicum, of first and second centuries (3 fasc., Bonn, 1904-5); Cambridge patristic texts (I, The Five Theol. Orat. of Greg. Naz., ed. MASON, 1899; II, The Catech. Or. of Greg. Nyssen., ed. SRAWLEY, 1903; Dionysius Alex., ed. FELTRE, 1904, in progress); VIZZINI, Bibl. SS. PP. Theologiae tironibus et universo clero accomodata (Rome, 1901- in progress); LIETZMANN, Kleine Texte, für theol. Vorlesungen und Uebungen (twenty-five numbers have appeared of about 16 pp. each, Bonn, 1902- in progress); an English ed. of the same (Cambridge, 1903-); Textes et documents pour l'étude historique du chrietienisme, ed. HEMMER AND LEJAY (texts, French tr., and notes, Paris, in progress -- an admirable series). INITIA:-- For Greek and Latin writers up to Eusebius, the index to HARNACK, Gesch. der altchr. Litt., I; for the Latin writers of first six centuries, AUMERS, Initia libronum PP. lat. (Vienna, 1865); and up to 1200, VATASSO, Initia PP. aliorumque scriptorum sect, lat. (2 vols., Vatican press, 1906-8). LITERARY HISTORIES:-- The first is BELLARMINE, De Scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (Rome, 1613, often reprinted; with additions by LABBE, Paris, 1660, and by OUDEN, Paris, 1686); DE PIN, Bibliothèque universelle des auteurs eccles. (61 vols. 8vo, or 19 vols. 4to, Paris, 1686, etc.); this was severely criticized by the Benedictine PETITDIDIER and by the Oratorian SIMON (Critique de la Bibl. des auteurs eccl. publ. pen ill. E. Dupin, Paris, 1730), and Du Pin's work was put on the Index in 1757; FABACCEUS, Bibliotheca Graece, sive edititia Scriptorum veterum Graecorum (Hamburg, 1705-28, 14 vols.; new ed. by HARLES, Hamburg, 1790-1809, 12 vols., embraces not quite 11 vole, of the original ed.; index to this ed., Leipzig, 1838) -- this great work is really a vast collection of materials; Fabricius was a Protestant (d. 1736); he made a smaller collection of the Latin lit. hist., Bibl. Latina, sive non. scr. vett, latt. (1697, 1708, 1712, etc., ed. by ERNESTI, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1773-4), and a continuation for the Middle Ages (1734-6, 5 vols.); the whole was re-edited by MANSI (6 vols., Padua, 1754, and Florence, 1858-9); LE NOURRY, Apparatus ad Biblioth. Max. vett. Patr. (2 vols. fol., Paris, 1703-15), deals with Greek Fathers of the second century and with Latin apologists; CEILLIER, Hist. générale des auteurs sacrés et ecclés. (from Moses to 1248, 23 vols., Paris, 1729-63; Table gén. des Met., by RONDET, Paris, 1782; new ed. 16 vols., Paris, 1858-69); SCHRAM, Analysis Operum SS. PP. et Scriptorum eccles. (Vienna, 1780-96, 18 vols., a valuable work); LUMPER, Hist. Theologico-critica de vitâ scriptis atque doctrina SS. PP. at scr. eccl. trium primorum saec. (Vienna, 1783-99, 13 vols.; a compilation, but good); the Anglican CAVE published a fine work, Scriptorum eccl. historia literaria (London, 1688; best ed., Oxford, 1740-3); OUDIN, a Premonstratensian, who became a Protestant, Commentarius de Scriptoribus eccl. (founded on Bellarmine, 3 vols. fol., Leipzig, 1722). On the editions of the Latin Fathers, SCHOENEMANN, Bibliotheca historico-litteraria Patrum Latinorum a Tert, ad Greg. M. at Isid. Hisp. (2 vols., Leipzig, 1792-4). PATROLOGIES (smaller works):-- GERHARD, Patrologia (Jena, 1653); HÜLSEMANN, Patrologia (Leipzig, 1670); OLEARIUS, Abacus Patrologicus (Jena, 1673); these are old-fashioned Protestant books. German Catholic works are: GOLDWITZER, Bibliographie der Kirchenväter und Kirchenlehrer (Landshut, 1828); IDEM, Patrologie verbunden mi Patristik (Nuremberg, 1833-4); the older distinction in Germany between patrology, the knowledge of the Fathers and their use, and patristic, the science of the theology of the Fathers, is now somewhat antiquated; BUSSE, Grundriss der chr. Lit. (Münster, 1828-9); MÖHLER, Patrologie, an important posthumous work of this great man, giving the first three centuries (Ratisbon, 1840); PERMANEDER, Bibliotheca patristica (2 vols., Landshut, 1841-4); FESSLER, Institutiones Patrologiae (Innsbruck, 1851), a new ed. by JUNGMANN is most valuable (Innsbruck, 1890-6); ALZOG, Grundriss der Patrologie (Freiburg im Br., 1866 and 1888); same in French by BELET (Paris, 1867); NIRSCHL, Handbuch der Patrologie und Patristik (Mainz, 1881-5); RESBÁNYAY, Compendium Patrologiae et Patristicae (Funfkirchen in Hungary, 1894); CARVAJAL, Institutiones Patrologiae (Oviedo, 1906); BARDENHEWER, Patrologie (Freiburg im Br., 1894; new ed. 1901) -- this is at present by far the best handbook; the author is a professor in the Cath. theo. faculty of the Univ. of Munich; a French tr. by GODET AND VERSCHAFFEL, Les Pères de l'Église (3 vols., Paris, 1899); an Italian tr. by A. MERCATI (Rome, 1903); and an English tr. with the bibliography brought up to date, by SHAHAN (Freiburg im Br. and St. Louis, 1908); smaller works, insufficient for advanced students, but excellent for ordinary purposes, are: SCHMID, Grundlinien der Patrologie (1879; 4th ed., Freiburg im Br., 1895); an Engl. tr. revised by SCHOBEL (Freiburg, 1900); SWETE of Cambridge, Patristic Study (London, 1902). HISTORIES OF THE FATHERS:-- It is unnecessary to catalogue here all the general histories of the Church, large and small, from Baronius onwards; it will be sufficient to give some of those which deal specially with the Fathers and with ecclesiastical literature. The first and chief is the incomparable work of TILLEMONT, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire eccl. des six premiers siècles (Paris, 1693-1712, 16 vols., and other editions); MARÉCHAL, Concordance des SS. Pères de l'Eglise, Grecs at Latins, a harmony of their theology (2 vols., Paris, 1739); BÄHR, Die christlich-römische Litteratur (4th vol. of Gesch. der römischen Litt., Karlsruhe, 1837; a new ed. of the first portion, 1872); SCHANZ, Gesch. der röm. Litt., Part III (Munich, 1896), 117-324; EBERT, Gech. der christlich-lateinischen Litt. (Leipzig, 1874; 2nd ed., 1889); Anciennes littératunes chrétiennes (in Bibliothèque de l'enseignement de l'hist. eccl., Paris): I; BATIFFOL, La littérature grecque, a useful sketch (4th ed., 1908), II; DUVAL, La littérature syriaque (3rd ed., 1908); LECLERCQ, L'Afrique chrétienne (in same Bibl. de l'ens. da l'h. eccl., 2nd ed., Paris, 1904); IDEM, L'Espagne chrétienne (2nd ed., 1906); BATIFFOL, L'église naissante et le Catholicisme, a fine apologetic account of the development of the Church, from the witness of the Fathers of the first three centuries (Paris, 1909); of general histories the best is Ducesesrese, Hist. ancienne eta tEglisa (2 vols. have appeared, Paris, 1906-7); finally, the first place is being taken among histories of the Fathers by a work to be completed in six volumes, BARDENHEWER, Geschichte der altkirchlichen Litteratur (I, to A.D. 200, Freiburg im Br., 1902; II, to A.D. 300, 1903). The following are Protestant: NEWMAN, The Church of the Fathers (London, 1840, etc.); DONALDSON, A critical history of Christian lit. . . . to the Nicene Council: I; The Apostolic Fathers, II and III; The Apologists (London, 1864-6 -- unsympathetic); BRICHY, The Age of the Fathers (2 vols., London, 1903); ZÖCKLER, Gesch. der theologischen Litt. (Patristik) (Nördlingen, 1889); CRUTTWELL, A Literary History of Early Christianity . . . Nicene Period (2 vols., London, 1893); KRÜGER, Gesch. der altchristlichen Litt, in den ersten 3 Jahrh. (Freiburg im Br. and Leipzig, 1895-7); tr. GILLET (New York, 1897) -- this is the beet modern German Prot. history. The following consists of materials: A. HARNACK, Gechichte der altchr. Litt, bis Eusebius, I, Die Ueberlieferung (Leipzig, 1893; this vol. enumerates all the known works of each writer, and all ancient references to them, and notices the MSS.); II, 1 (1897), and II, 2 (1904), Die Chronologie, discussing the date of each writing; the latter Greek period is dealt with by KRUMBACHER, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litt. 527-1453 (2nd ed. with assistance from EHRHARD, Munich, 1897). The following collected series of studies must be added: Textd und Untersuschungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Litt., ed. VON GEBHARDT AND A. HARNAcK (1st series, 15 vols., Leipzig, 1883-97, 2nd series, Neue Folge, 14 vols., 1897-1907, in progress) -- the editors are now HARNACK AND SCHMIDT; ROBINSON, Texts and Studies (Cambridge, 1891 -- in progress); EHRHARD AND MÜLLER, Strassburger theologische Studien (12 vols., Freiburg im Br., 1894 -- in progress); EHRHARD AND KIRSCH, Forschungen zur christl. Litt. und Dogmengeschichte (7 vols., Paderborn, in progress); La Pensée chrétienne (Paris, in progress); Studii e Testi (Vatican press, in progress). Of histories of development of dogma, HARNACK, Dogmengeschichte (3 vols., 3rd ed., 1894-7, a new ed. is in the press; French tr., Paris, 1898; Engl. tr., 7 vols., Edinburgh, 1894-9), a very clever and rather "viewy" work; LOOFS, Leitfaden zum Studium der D. G. (Halle, 1889; 3rd ed., 1893); SEEBERG, Lehrb. der D. G. (2 vols., Erlangen, 1895), conservative Protestant; IDEM, Grundriss der D. G. (1900; 2nd ed., 1905), a smaller work: SCHWANE, Dogmengeschichte, Catholic (2nd ed., 1892, etc.; French tr., Paris, 1903-4); BETHUNE-BAKER, Introduction to early History of Doctrine (London, 1903); TIXERONT, Histoire des Dogmas: I, La théologie anti-nicéenne (Paris, 1905 -- excellent); and others. PHILOLOGICAL:-- On the common Greek of the early period see MOULTON, Grammar of N. T. Greek: I, Prolegomena (3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1909), and references; on the literary Greek, A.D. 1-250, SCHMIDT, Den Atticismus von Dion. Hal. bis auf den zweiten Philostratus (4 vols., Stuttgart, 1887-9); THUMB, Die griechieche Sprache im Zeitalter des Hellenismus (Strasburg, 1901). Besides the Thesaurus of STEPHANUS (latest ed., 8 vols., fol., Paris, 1831-65) and lexicons of classical and Biblical Greek, special dictionaries of later Greek are DU CANGE, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae graecitatis (2 vols., Lyons, 1688, and new ed., Breslan, 1890-1); SOPHOCLES, Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods, 146-1100 (3rd ed., New York, 1888); words wanting in Stephanus and in Sophocles are collected by KUMANUDES (S. A. Koumanoudes), Sunagôgê lexeôn athêsauristôn en tois heggênikois lexikois (Athens, 1883); general remarks on Byzantine Greek in KNUMBACHER, op. cit. On patristic Latin, KOFFMANE, Gesch. des Kinchenlateins: I, Entstehung . . . bis auf Augustinus-Hieronymus (Breslau, 1879-81); NORDEN, Die antika Kunstprosa (Leipzig, 1898), II; there is an immense number of studies of the language of particular Fathers [e.g. HOPPE on Tertullian (1897); WATSON (1896) and BAYARD (1902) on Cyprian; GOELTZER on Jerome (1884); REGNER on Augustine (1886), etc.], and indices latinitatis to the volumes of the Vienna Corpus PP. latt.; TRAUBE, Quellen and Untensuchungen zur lat. Phil. des Mittelalters, I (Munich, 1906); much will be found in Archiv für lat. Lexicographie, ed. WÖLFFLIN (Munich, began 1884). TRANSLATIONS:-- Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, translated by members of the English Ch. (by PUSEY, NEWMAN, etc.), (45 vols., Oxford, 1832-). ROBERTS AND DONALDSON, The Ante-Nicene Christian Library (24 vols., Edinburgh, 1866-72; new ed. by COXE, Buffalo, 1884-6, with RICHARDSON's excellent Bibliographical Synopsis as a Suppl., 1887); SCHAFF AND WAGE, A Select Library of Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers of the Chr. Ch., with good notes (14 vols., Buffalo and New York, 1886-90, and 2nd series, 1900, in progress). ENCYCLOPEDIAS AND DICTIONARIES:-- SUICER, Thesaurus ecclesiasticus, a patribus graecis ordine alphabetico exhibens quaecumqua phrases, ritus, dogmata, haereses et hujusmodi alia spectant (2 vols., Amsterdam, 1682; again 1728; and Utrecht, 1746); HOFFMANNS, Bibliographisches Lexicon der gesammten Litt. der Griechen (3 vols., 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1838-45); the articles on early Fathers and heresies in the Encyclopadia Britannica (8th ed.) are, many of them, by Harnack and still worth reading; WETZER AND WELTE, Kirchenlex., ed. HERGENRÖTHER, and then by KAULEN and others, 12 vols., one vol. of index (Freiburg im Br., 1882-1903); HERZOG, Realencylopädie für prot. Theol. und Kirche, 3rd ed. by HAUCK (21 vols., 1896-1908); VACANT AND MANGENOT, Dict. de Théol. cath. (Paris, in progress); CABROL, Dict. d'archéologie chr. et de liturgie (Paris, in progress); BAUDRILLART, Dict. d'hist. at de géogr. ecclésiastiques (Paris, in progress); SMITH AND WACE, A Dictionary of Christian Biography, is very full and valuable (4 vols., London, 1877-87). GENERAL BOOKS OF REFERENCE:-- ITTIG, De Bibliothecis et Catenis Patrum, gives the contents of the older collections of Fathers which were enumerated above (Leipzig, 1707); IDEM, Schediasma de auctoribus qui de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis egerunt (Leipzig, 1711); DOWLING, Notitia scriptorum SS. PP. . . . quae in collectionibus Anecdotorum post annum MDCC in lucem editis continentur (a continuation of ITTIG's De Bibl. et Cat., Oxford, 1839); an admirable modern work is EHRHARD, Die alt christliche Litt, und ihre Erforschung seit 1880: I, Allgemeine Uebersicht, 1880-4 (Freiburg im Br., 1894); II, Ante-Nicene lit., 1884-1900 (1900); the bibliographies in the works of HARNACK and of BARDENHEWER (see above) are excellent; for Ante-Nicene period, RICHARDSON, Bibliographical Synopsis (in extra vol. of Ante-Nicene. Fathers, Buffalo, 1887); for the whole period. CHEVALIER, Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen-âge: Bio-bibliographie, gives names of persons (2nd ed., Paris, 1905-07); Topo-bibliographie gives names of places and subjects (2nd ed., Paris, 1894-1903); progress each year is recorded in HOLTZMANN AND KRÜGER's Theologischer Jahresbericht from 1881; KROLL AND GURLITT, Jahresbericht für kleseische Alterthumewissenschaft (both Protestant); BIHLMEYER, Hagiagraphischer Jahresbericht for 1904-6 (Kempten and Munich, 1908). A very complete bibliography appears quarterly in the Revue d'hist. eccl. (Louvain, since 1900), with index at end of year; in this publ. the names of all Reviews dealing with patristic matters will be found. JOHN CHAPMAN Lawrence Arthur Faunt Lawrence Arthur Faunt A Jesuit theologian, b. 1554, d. at Wilna, Poland, 28 February, 1590-91. After two years at Merton College, Oxford (1568-70) under the tuition of John Potts, a well-known Philosopher, he went to the Jesuit college at Louvain where he took his B.A. After some time spent in Paris he entered the University of Munich under the patronage of Duke William of Bavaria, proceeding M.A. The date of his entrance into the Society of Jesus is disputed, some authorities giving 1570, others 1575, the year in which he went to the English College, Rome, to pursue his studies in theology. lt is certain, however, that on the latter occasion he added Lawrence to his baptisal name, Arthur. He was soon made professor of divinity and attracted the favourable attention of Gregory XIII, who on the establishment of the Jesuit college at Posen in 1581, appointed him rector. He was also professor of Greek there for three years of moral theology and controversy for nine more, are was held in highest repute among both ecclesiastical and secular authorities. His chief theological works are: "De Christi in terris Ecclesia, quaenam et penes quos existat" (Posen, 1584.), "Coenae Lutheranorum et Calvinistarum oppugnatio ac catholicae Eucharitiae defensio" (Posen, 1586); "Apologia libri sui de invocatione ac veneratione Sanctorum" (Cologne, 1589). F.M. RUDGE Charles-Claude Fauriel Charles-Claude Fauriel A historian, b. at St-Etienne, France, 27 October, 1772; d. at Paris,15 July, 1844. He studied first at the Oratorian College of Tournon, then at Lyons. He served in the army of the Pyrénées-Orientales. Under the Directory Fouche, an ex-Oratorian, attached him to his cabinet as private secret secretary. Under the Empire, he refused office in order to devote all his time to study. Fauriel adopted the new ideas of the Philosophers and the principles of the Revolution, but repudiated them in part in the later years of his life. He was an intense worker and knew Greek, Latin, Italian, German, English, Sanskrit, and Arabic. It was he who made the merits of Ossian and Shakespeare known to the French public and spread in France the knowledge of German literature, which had been previously looked upon as unimportant. He was one of the first to investigate Romance literature, and the originality of his views in this direction soon popularized this new study. He also gathered the remnants of the ancient Basque and Celtic languages. The first works he published were a translation of "La Parthénéide" (Paris, 1811), an idyllic epic by the Danish poet, Baggesen, and of the tragedy of his friend Manzoni, "ll Conte di Carmagnola" (Paris, 1823). The numerous linguistic and archaeological contributions which he wrote for various magazines won for him a great reputation among scholars; it was said of him that "he was the man of the nineteenth century who put in circulation the most ideas, inaugurated the greatest number of branches of study, and gathered the greatest number of new results in historical science" (Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Dec., 1853). The publication of the "Chants populaires de la Grece moderne", text and translation (Paris, 1824-25), at a moment when Greece was struggling for her independence, made him known to the general public. In 1880 a chair of foreign literature was created for him at the University of Paris. He studied specially the Southern literatures and Provencal poetry. His lectures were published after his death under the title of "Histoire de la poésie provençale" (3 vols, Paris, 1846). In order to study more deeply the origins of French civilization he wrote "Histoire de la Gaule méridionale sous la domination des conquérants germains" (4 vols., Paris, 1836), only a part of a vaster work conceived by him. The merit of these works caused him to be elected (1836), the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres. He contributed also to the "Histoire Littéraire de la France", commenced by the Benedictines and taken after the Revolution by the Institute of France. Having been named assistant curator of the manuscript of Royal Library he published an historical poem in Provencal verse (with a translation and introduction), dealing with the crusade against the Albigenses. LOUIS N. DELAMARRE Sts. Faustinus and Jovita Sts. Faustinus and Jovita Martyrs, members of a noble family of Brescia; the elder brother, Faustinus, being a priest, the younger, a deacon. For their fearless preaching of the Gospel, they were arraigned before the Emperor Hadrian, who, first at Brescia, later at Rome and Naples, subjected them to frightful torments, after which they were beheaded at Bescia in the year 120, according to the Bollandists, though Allard (Histoire des Persécutions pendant les Deux Premiers Siècles, Paris, 1885) places the date as early as 118. The many "Acts" of these saints are chiefly of a legendary character. Fedele Savio, S.J. the most recent writer on the subject, calls in question nearly every fact related of them except their existince and martyrdom, which are too well attested by their inclusion in so many of the early martyrologies and their extraordinary cult in their native city, of which from time immemorial they have been the chief patrons. Rome, Bologna and Verona share with Brescia the possession of their relics. Their feast is celebrated on 15 February, the traditional date of their martyrdom. JOHN F.X. MURPHY Faustus of Riez Faustus of Riez Bishop of Riez (Rhegium) in Southern Gaul (Provence), the best known and most distinguished defender of Semipelagianism, b. between 405 and 410, and according to his contemporaries, Avitus of Vienne and Sidonius Apollinaris, in the island of Britain; d. between 490 and 495. Nothing, however, is known about his early life or his education. He is thought by some to have been a lawyer but owing to the influence of his mother, famed for her sanctity, he abandoned secular pursuits while still a young man and entered the monastery of Lérins. Here he was soon ordained to the priesthood and because of his extraordinary piety was chosen (432) to be head of the monastery, in succession to Maximus who had become Bishop of Riez. His career as abbot lasted about twenty or twenty-five years during which he attained a high reputation for his wonderful gifts as an extempore preacher and for his stern asceticism. After the death of Maximus he became Bishop of Riez. This elevation did not make any change in his manner of life; he continued his ascetic practices, and frequently returned to the monastery of Lérins to renew his fervour. He was a zealous advocate of monasticism and established many monasteries in his diocese. In spite of his activity in the discharge of his duties as bishop, he participated in all the theological discussions of his time and became known as a stern opponent of Arianism in all its forms. For this, and also, it is said, for his view, stated below, of the corporeity of the human soul, he incurred the enmity of Euric, King of the Visigoths, who had gained possession of a large portion of Southern Gaul, and was banished from his see. His exile lasted eight years, during which time he was aided by loyal friends. On the death of Euric he resumed his labours at the head of his diocese and continued there until his death. Throughout his life Faustus was an uncompromising adversary of Pelagius, whom he styled Pestifer, and equally decided in his opposition to the doctrine of Predestination which he styled "erroneous, blasphemous, heathen, fatalistic, and conducive to immorality". This doctrine in its most repulsive form had been expounded by a presbyter named Lucidus and was condemned by two synods, Arles and Lyons (475). At the request of the bishops who composed these synods, and especially Leontius of Arles, Faustus wrote a work, "Libri duo de Gratiâ Dei et humanae mentis libero arbitrio", in which he refuted not only the doctrines of the Predestinarians but also those of Pelagius (P.L., LVIII, 783). The work was marred, however, by its decided Semipelagianism, for several years was bitterly attacked, and was condemned by the Synod of Orange in 529 (Denzinger, Enchiridion, Freiburg, 1908, no. 174 sqq. - old no. 144; PL.L., XLV, 1785; Mansi, VIII, 712). Besides this error, Faustus maintained that the human soul is in a certain sense corporeal, God alone being a pure spirit. The opposition to Faustus was not fully developed in his lifetime and he died with a well-merited reputation for sanctity. His own flock considered him a saint and erected a basilica in his honour. Faustus wrote also: "Libri duo de Spiritu Sancto" (P.L., LXII, 9), wrongly ascribed to the Roman deacon Paschasius. His "Libellus parvus adversus Arianos et Macedonianos", mentioned by Genadius, seems to have perished. His correspondence (epistulae) and sermons are best found in the new and excellent edition of the works of Faustus by Engelbrecht, "Fausti Reiensis praeter sermones pseudo-Eusebianos opera. Accedunt Ruricii Epistulae" in "Corpus Scrip. eccles. lat.", vol. XXI (Vienna, 1891). PATRICK J. HEALY Faversham Abbey Faversham Abbey A former Benedictine monastery of the Cluniac Congregation situated in the County of Kent about nine miles west of Canterbury. It was founded about 1147 by King Stephen and his Queen Matilda. Clarimbald, the prior of Bermondsey, and twelve other monks of the same abbey were transferred to Faversham to form the new community; Clarimbald was appointed abbot. It was dedicated to Our Saviour and endowed with the manor of Faversham. In the church, which was completed about 1251, Stephen and Matilda, the founders, were buried and also their eldest son Eustace Earl of Boulogne. We read of chapels in the church dedicated to Our Lady and St. Anne. Henry II confirmed all grants and privileges conferred by Stephen, adding others to them, and all these were again confirmed to the monks by Kings John and Henry III. The abbots had their seat in Parliament and we find them in attendance at thirteen several parliaments during the reigns of Edward and Edward II, but on account of their reduced state and poverty, they ceased to attend after the 18th, Edward II. It appears that some bitterness existed for a considerable time between the monks and the people of Faversham, who complained of the abbey's imposts and exactions. Among these grievances were claims, by way of composition, for allowing the inhabitants to send their swine to pannage, for exposing their goods for sale in the market, and for the liberty of brewing beer. Twenty-two abbots are known to us; the last was John Shepey, alias Castelocke, who, on 10 December, 1534, along with the sacristan and four monks, is said to have signed the Act of Supremacy. On 8 July, 1538, the abbey was surrendered to the king, at which time the annual revenue was about £350. Henry VIII gave the house and site to John Wheler for twenty-one years at an annual rent of £3 18s. 8d. Afterwards the property came into the possession of Sir Thomas Cheney, warden of the Cinque Ports. Later it was owned by Thomas Ardern and subsequently came to belong to the family of Sondes. The two entrance gates where standing a century ago, but had to be taken down on account of their ruinous condition. At the present day there is nothing left except some portions of the outer walls. G.E. HIND Herve-Auguste-Etienne-Albans Faye Hervé-Auguste-Etienne-Albans Faye An astronomer, b. at Saint-Benoît-du-Sault (Indre, France), Oct., 1814; d. at Paris, 4 July, 1902. The son of a civil engineer he entered the Ecole Polytechnique in 1832 to prepare for a similar career. He left the school before the end of the second year and went to Holland. In 1836 he entered the Paris Observatory as a pupil. There, in 1843, he discovered the periodic comet bearing his name. This discovery gained for him the Prix Lalande. As early as 1847 he was elected member of the Academy of Sciences. From 1848 to 1854 he taught geodesy at the Ecole Polytechnique and then went to Nancy as rector of the academy and professor of astronomy. In 1873 he was called to succeed Delaunay in the chair of astronomy at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he worked and lectured until 1893. He held other official positions: inspector-general of secondary education (1857); member (1862) and later (1876) president of the Bureau des Longitudes; for a few weeks only, the minister of public instruction (1877); and member of the superior council of public instruction (1892). Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1843, he became officer in 1855 and commander in 1870. He was honoured with other decorations and by election to the membership of the principal European academies and societies. Faye's fame rests both on his practical and on his theoretical work. He improved the methods of astronomical measurement, invented the zenithal collimator, suggested and applied photography and electricity to astronomy, and dealt with problems of physical astronomy, the shape of comets, the spots of the sun, meteors, etc. Credit is given by him as well as by his friends to the great influence of his wife, whom he met on his early trip to Holland. His religious nature finds corroboration in his knowledge of the wonders of the Universe. Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei, he quotes in "Sur l'origine du Monde" and goes on to say: "We run no risk of deceiving ourselves in considering it [Superior Intelligence] the author of all things, in refering to it those splendours of the heavens which aroused our thoughts: and finally we are ready to understand and accept the traditional formula: God, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth". He contributed over 400 mémoires and notes to the "Comptes rendus, the Bulletin de la société astronomique", "Monthly Notices of the R.A.S." and "Astronomische Nachrichen". His larger works are: "Cours d'astronomie de l'école polytechnique" (Paris, 1883); Humbolt's "Cosmos", tr. by Faye and Galusky (Paris, 1848-59); "Cours d'astronomie nautique". (Paris, 1880); "Sur l'origine du monde" (Paris, 1885). WILLIAM FOX Fear (In Canon Law) Fear (IN CANON LAW.) A mental disturbance caused by the perception of instant or future danger. Since fear, in greater or less degree, diminishes freedom of action, contracts entered into through fear may be judged invalid; similarly fear sometimes excuses from the application of the law in a particular case; it also excuses from the penalty attached to an act contrary to the law. The cause of fear is found in oneself or in a natural cause (intrinsic fear) or it is found in another person (extrinsic fear). Fear may be grave, such for instance as would influence a steadfast man, or it may be slight, such as would affect a person of weak will. In order that fear may be considered grave certain conditions are requisite: the fear must be grave in itself, and not merely in the estimation of the person fearing; it must be based on a reasonable foundation; the threats must be possible of execution; the execution of the threats must be inevitable. Fear, again, is either just or unjust, according to the justness or otherwise of the reasons which lead to the use of fear as a compelling force. Reverential fear is that which may exist between Superiors and their subjects. Grave fear diminishes willpower but cannot be said to totally take it away, except in some very exceptional cases. Slight fear (metus levis) is not considered even to diminish the will power, hence the legal expression "Foolish fear is not a just excuse". The following cases may be taken as examples to illustrate the manner in which fear affects contracts, marriage, vows, etc., made under its influence. Grave fear excuses from the law and the censure attached thereto, if the law is ecclesiastical and if its non-observance will not militate against the public good, the Faith, or the authority of the Church; but if there is question of the natural law, fear excuses only from the censure (Commentators on Decretals, tit. "De his quae vi metusve causâ fiunt"; Schmalzgrueber tit. "De sent. excomm." n. 79). Fear that is grave extrinsic, unjust, and inflicted with a view to forcing consent is nullifies a marriage contract, but not if the fear be only intrinsic. The burden of proof lies with the person who claims to have acted through fear. Reverential fear, if it be also extrinsic, i.e., accompanied by blows, threats, or strong entreaty, and aimed at extorting consent, will also invalidate marriage. Qualified as just stated, fear is a diriment impediment of marriage when coupled with violence or threats (vis et metus). For further details see any manual of Canon Law e.g. Santi-Leitner, "Praelect. Jur. Can." (Ratisbon, 1905) IV, 56-59; Heiner "Kathol. Eherecht" (Muster, 1905), 82-46; also Ploch, "De Matr. vi ac metu contracto" (1853). For the history of this impediment see Esmein "Le mariage en droit canonique" (Paris, 1891), I, 309; II, 252; also Freisen, "Gesch. des kanon. Eherechts etc." (Tübingen, 1888). Resignation of office extorted by unjust fear is generally considered to be valid, but may be rescinded unless the resignation has been confirmed by oath. On the other hand, if fear has been justly brought to bear upon a person, the resignation holds good (S. Cong. Conc. 24 April, 1880). Ordination received under grave and unjust fear is valid, but the obligations of the order are not contracted unless there is subsequent spontaneous acceptance of the obligation (Sanchez, De matrim.", VII, Disp. xxix, n. 5). In each cases if freedom is desired the Holy See should be petitioned for a dispensation (S. Cong. Conc. 13 Aug., 1870). The same holds good with regard to the vows of religious profession, and all other vows made under the influence of fear which is grave, extrinsic, unjust or reverential (see Vow). In English law, on proof of force and fear, the law restores the parties to the contract to the position in which they were before it was entered into, and will find the constraining party able to damages as reparation for any injury done to the party constrained. The maxim of the common law that "What otherwise would be good and just, if sought by force or fraud becomes bad and unjust." See CONSENT; CONTRACT; VIOLENCE. DAVID DUNFORD Fear (From a Moral Standpoint) Fear (CONSIDERED FROM A MORAL STANDPOINT.) Fear is an unsettlement of soul consequent upon the apprehension of some present or future danger. It is here viewed from the moral standpoint, that is, in so far as it is a factor to be reckoned with in pronouncing upon the freedom of human acts, as well as offering an adequate excuse for failing to comply with positive law, particularly if the law be of human origin. Lastly, it is here considered in so far as it impugns or leaves intact, in the court of conscience, and without regard to explicit enactment, the validity of certain deliberate engagements or contracts. The division of fear most commonly in vogue among theologians is that by which they distinguish serious fear (metus gravis) and trifling fear (fetus levis). The first is such as grows out of the discernment of some formidable impending peril: if this be really, and without qualification, of large proportions, then the fear is said to be absolutely great; otherwise it is only relatively so, as for instance, when account is taken of the greater susceptibility of certain classes of persons, such as old men, women, and children. Trifling fear is that which arises from being confronted with harm of inconsiderable dimensions, or, at any rate of whose happening there is only a slender likelihood. It is customary also to note a fear in which the element of reverence is uppermost (metus reverensalis), which has its source in the desire not to offend one's parents and superiors. In itself this is reputed to be but trifling, although from circumstances it may easily rise to the dignity of a serious dread. A criterion rather uniformly employed by moralists, to determine what really and apart from subjective conditions is, a serious fear, is that contained in this assertion. It is the feeling which is calculated to influence a solidly balanced man (cadere in virum constantem). Another important classification is that of fear which comes from some source within the person, for example, that which is created by the knowledge that one has contracted a fatal disease fear which comes from without, or is produced namely, by some cause extrinsic to the terror-stricken subject. In the last named instance the cause may be either natural, such as probable volcanic eruptions, or recognizable in the attitude of some free agent. Finally it may be observed that one may have been submitted to the spell of fear either justly or unjustly, according as the one who provokes this passion remains within his rights, or exceeds them, in so doing. Actions done under stress of fear, unless of course it be so intense as to have dethroned reason, are accounted the legitimate progeny of the human will, or are, as the theologians say, simply voluntary, and therefore imputable. The reason is obvious, such acts lack neither adequate advertence nor sufficient consent, even though the latter be elicited only to avoid a greater evil or one conceived to be greater. In asmuch, however, as they are accompanied by a more or less vehement repugnance, they are said to be in a limited and partial sense involuntary. The practical inference from this teaching is that an evil act having otherwise the bad eminence of grievous sin remains such, even though done out of serious fear. This is true when the transgression in question is against the natural law. In the case of obligations emerging from positive precepts, whether Divine or human, a serious and well-founded dread may often operate as an excuse, so that the failure to comply with the law under such circumstances is not regarded as sinful. The lawgiver is not presumed to have it in mind to impose an heroic act. This, however, does not hold good when the catering to such a fear would involve considerable damage to the common weal. Thus, for instance, a parish priest, in a parish visited by a pestilence, is bound by the law of residence to stay at his post, no matter what his apprehensions may be. It ought to be added here that attrition, or sorrow for sin even though it be the fruit of dread inspired by the thought of eternal punishment, is not in any sense involuntary. At least it must not be so, if it is to avail in the Sacrament of Penance for the justification of the sinner. The end aimed at by this imperfect sort of sorrow is precisely a change of will, and the giving up of sinful attachment is an unreservedly good and reasonable thing. Hence there is no room for that concomitant regret, or dislike, with which other things are done through fear. It is, of course, needless to observe that in what has been said hitherto we have been referring always to what is done as a result of fear, not to what takes place merely in, or with fear. A vow taken out of fear produced by natural causes, such as a threatened shipwreck, is valid; but one extorted as the effect of fear unjustly applied by another is invalid; and this last is probably true even when the fear is trifling, if it be the sufficient motive for making the vow. The reason is that it is difficult to conceive such a promise being acceptable to Almighty God. So far as natural law is concerned, fear does not invalidate contracts. Nevertheless, when one of the parties has suffered duress at the hands of the other; the contract is voidable within the choosing of the one so injured. As to marriage, unless the fear prompting its solemnization is so extreme as to take away the use of reason, the common teaching is that such consent, having regard for the moment only to the natural law, would be binding. Its standing in ecclesiastical law is discussed in another article. It is worthy of note that mere insensibility to fear having its root whether in stolidity, or pride, or want of a proper rating of even temporal things, is not a valuable character asset. On the contrary, it represents a vicious temper of soul, and upon occasion its product may be notably sinful. JOSEPH F. DELANY Ecclesiastical Feasts Ecclesiastical Feasts (Lat. Festum; Gr. heorte). Feast Days, or Holy Days, are days which are celebrated in commemoration of the sacred mysteries and events recorded in the history of our redemption, in memory of the Virgin Mother of Christ, or of His apostles, martyrs, and saints, by special services and rest from work. A feast not only commemorates an event or person, but also serves to excite the spiritual life by reminding us of the event it commemorates. At certain hours Jesus Christ invites us to His vineyard (Matt., xx, 1-15); He is born in our hearts at Christmas; on Good Friday we nail ourselves to the cross with Him; at Easter we rise from the tomb of sin; and at Pentecost we receive the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Every religion has its feasts, but none has such a rich and judiciously constructed system of festive seasons as the Catholic Church. The succession of these seasons form the ecclesiastical year, in which the feasts of Our Lord form the ground and framework, the feasts of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints the ornamental tracery. Prototypes and starting-points for the oldest ecclesiastical feasts are the Jewish solemnities of Easter and Pentecost. Together with the weekly Lord's Day, they remained the only universal Christian feasts down to the third century (Tertullian, "De Bapt." 19: Origen, "Contra Celsum", VIII, 22). Two feasts of Our Lord (Epiphany, Christmas) were added in the fourth century; then came the feasts of the Apostles and martyrs, in particular provinces; later on also those of some confessors (St. Martin, St. Gregory); in the sixth and seventh centuries feasts of the Blessed Virgin were added. After the triumph of Christianity, in the fourth and fifth centuries, the sessions of the civil courts were prohibited on all feasts, also the games in the circus and theatrical performances, in order to give an opportunity to all to hear Mass. In the course of centuries the ecclesiastical calendar expanded considerably, because in earlier ages every bishop had a right to establish new feasts. Later on a reduction of feasts took place, partly by regular ecclesiastical legislation, partly in consequence of revolutions in State and church. The Statutes of Bishop Sonnatius of Reims (see CALENDAR, III, 163), in 620, mention eleven feasts; the Statutes of St. Boniface ("Statuta", Mansi XII, 383), nineteen days, "in quibus sabbatizandum", i.e. days of rest. In England (ninth century) the feasts were confined to Christmas, Epiphany, three days of Easter, Assumption, Sts. Peter and Paul, St. Gregory, and All Saints. Before the reign of King Edgar (959-75), three festivals of the B.V. Mary, and the days kept in honour of the Apostles were added; in the tenth year of Ethelred (989), the feast of St. Edward the Martyr (18 March), and in the reign of Canute, or Cnut (1017-35), that of St. Dunstan (19 May), were added. The feasts in the Statutes of Lanfrane (d. 1089) are quite numerous, and are divided into three classes (Migne, P.L., CL, 472-78) The Decree of Gratian (about 1150) mentions forty-one feasts besides the diocesan patronal celebrations; the Decretals of Gregory IX (about 1233) mention forty-five public feasts and Holy Days, which means eighty-five days when no work could be done and ninety-five days when no court sessions could be held. In many provinces eight days after Easter, in some also the week after Pentecost (or at least four days), had the sabbath rest. From the thirteenth to the eighteenth century there were dioceses in which the Holy Days and Sundays amounted to over one hundred, not counting the feasts of particular monasteries and churches. In the Byzantine empire there were sixty-six entire Holy Days (Constitution of Manuel Comnenus, in 1166), exclusive of Sundays, and twenty-seven half Holy Days. In the fifteenth century, Gerson, Nicolas de Clémanges and others protested against the multiplication of feasts, as an oppression of the poor, and proximate occasions of excesses. The long needed reduction of feast days was made by Urban VIII (Universa per orbem, 13 Sept., 1642). There remained thirty-six feasts or eighty-five days free from labour. Pope Urban limited the right of the bishops to establish new Holy Days; this right is now not abrograted, but antiquated. A reduction for Spain by Benedict XIII (1727) retained only seventeen feasts; and on the nineteen abrogated Holy Days only the hearing of Mass was obligatory. This reduction was extended (1748) to Sicily. For Austria (1745) the number had been reduced to fifteen full Holy Days; but since the hearing of Mass on the abrogated feasts, or half Holy Days, the fast on the vigils of the Apostles were poorly observed, Clement XIV ordered that sixteen full feasts should be observed; he did away with the half Holy Days, which however continued to be observed in the rural districts (peasant Holy Days, Bauernfeiertage). The parish priests have to say Mass for the people on all the abrogated feasts. The same reduction was introduced into Bavaria in 1775, and into Spain in 1791; finally Pius VI extended this provision to other countries and provinces. By the French revolution the ecclesiastical calendar had been radically abolished, and at the reorganization of the French Church, in 1806, only four feasts were retained: Christmas, the Ascension, the Assumption, and All Saints; the other feasts were transferred to Sunday. This reduction was valid also in Belgium and in Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. For the Catholics in England Pius VI (19 March, 1777) established the following lists of feasts: Easter and Pentecost two days each, Christmas, New Year's Day, Epiphany, Ascension, Corpus Christi, Annunciation, Assumption, Sts. Peter and Paul, St. George, and All Saints. After the restoration of the hierarchy (1850), the Annunciation, St. George, and the Monday after Easter and Pentecost were abolished. Scotland keeps also the feast of St. Andrew, Ireland the feasts of St. Patrick and the Annunciation. In the United States, the number of feasts was not everywhere the same; the Council of Baltimore wanted only four feasts, but the decree was not approved by Rome; the third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884), by a general law, retained six feasts: Christmas, New Year's Day, Ascension, Assumption, the Immaculate Conception, and All Saints. Sts. Peter and Paul and Corpus Christi were transferred to the next following Sunday. In the city of Rome the following feasts are of double precept (i.e. hearing Mass, and rest from work): Christmas, New Year's Day, Epiphany, Purification, St. Joseph, Annunciation, Ascension, St. Philip Neri (26 May), Corpus Christi, Nativity of the B.V.M., All Saints, Conception of the B.V.M., St. John the Evangelist. The civil law in Italy acknowledges: Epiphany, Ascension, Sts. Peter and Paul, Assumption, Nativity, Conception, Christmas, and the patronal feasts. The Greek Church at present observes the following Holy Days: Nativity of Mary, Exaltation of the Cross (14 Sept.), St. Demetrius (26 Oct.), St. Michael (8 Nov.), Entrance of Mary into the Temple (21 Nov.), St. Nicholas (6 Dec.), Conception of St. Anne (9 Dec.), Nativity of Christ, Commemoration of Mary (26 Dec.), St. Stephen (27 Dec.), Circumcision (1 Jan.), Epiphany, the Doctors St. Basil, St. Gregory, St. John Chrysostom (30 Jan.), the Meeting of Christ and Simeon (2 Febr.), Annunciation, St. George (23 Apr.), Nativity of St. John, Sts. Peter and Paul, St. Elias (20 July), Transfiguration (6 Aug.), Assumption, Beheading of St. John (29 Aug.), the Monday after Easter and Pentecost, Ascension of Christ, and the patronal feasts. The Russians have only nine ecclesiastical Holy Days which do not fall on a Sunday, viz.: Nativity, Epiphany, Ascension, Transfiguration, Purification, Annunciation, Assumption, Presentation of Mary (21 Nov.), and the Exaltation of the Cross. But they have fifty festivals (birthdays, etc.) of the imperial family, on which days not even a funeral can be held. DIVISION OF FEASTS Feasts are divided: + According to external celebration (feriatio): festa fori, or feasts of precept, with double obligation, to rest from work and to hear Mass; festa chori, which are kept only in the liturgy, by the celebration of Mass, and the recitation of the Divine Office. Besides these there were, and still are, in some dioceses (e.g. in Holland), the Half Holy Days, on which the people after having heard Mass can do servile work (Candlemas, Nativity of Mary, and the Immaculate Conception in the Diocese of Utrecht). + According to extension: Universal feasts, celebrated everywhere, at least in the Latin Church; particular feasts, celebrated only by certain religious orders, countries, provinces, dioceses or towns. These latter are either prescribed by the general rubrics, like the patronal feasts, or are specially approved by the Apostolic See, and prescribed by bishops or synods, for particular countries or dioceses (festa pro aliquibus locis in the Breviary). The universal feasts are contained in the Roman Calendar. + According to their position in the calendar: movable feasts, which always fall on a certain day of the week, depending on the date of Easter, or the position of the Sunday, e.g. Ascension of Christ (forty days after Easter), or the feast of the Holy Rosary, the first Sunday of October; immovable feasts, which are fixed to a certain date of the month, e.g. Christmas, 25 December. In the Armenian Church all the feasts of the year are moveable, except six: Epiphany, Purification (14 Febr.), Annunciation (7 April), Nativity (8 Sept.), Presentation (21 Nov.), and (8 Dec. Conception of Mary (Tondini, "Calendrier liturgique de la Nation Arménienne", Rome, 1906). + According to the solemnity of the office or rite (see CALENDAR and DUPLEX). Since the thirteenth century there are three kinds of feasts: festum simplex, semiduplex, and duplex, all three regulated by the recitation of the Divine Office or Breviary. The simple feast commences with the chapter (capitulum) of First Vespers, and ends with None. It has three lessons and takes the psalms of Matins from the ferial office; the rest of the office is like the semidouble. The semidouble feast has two Vespers, nine lessons in Matins, and ends with Compline. The antiphons before the psalms are only intoned. In the Mass, the semidouble has always at least three "orationes" or prayers. On a double feast the antiphons are sung in their entirety, before and after the psalms. In Lauds and Vespers there are no suffragia of the saints, and the Mass has only one "oratio" (if there be no commemoration prescribed). The ordinary double feasts are called duplicia minora; occurring with feasts of a higher rank, they can be simplified, except the octave days of some feasts and the feasts of the Doctors of the Church, which are transferred. The feasts of a higher rank are the duplicia majora (introduced by Clement VIII), the duplicia secundae classis and the duplicia primae classis. Some of the latter two classes are kept with octaves. Before the reformation of the Breviary by Pius V (1566-72), the terms by which the solemnity of a feast could be known were, in many churches, very different from the terms we use now. We give a few examples from Grotefend, "Zeitrechnung", etc. (Hanover, 1891-98, II-III): Chur: "Festum summum, plenum officium trium lectionum, commemoratio." Havelberg: "Festum summum, semisummum, secundum, tertium, novem majus, novem minus, compulsation 3 lect., antiphona." Halle: "Festum praepositi, apostolicum, dominicale, 9 lect., compulsation 3 lect., antiphona." Breslau: "Festum Triplex, duplex, 9 lectionum, 3 lect., commemoratio." Carthusians: "Festum Candelarum, capituli, 12 lect., missa, commemoratio." Lund: "Fest Praelatorum, canonicorum, vicariorum, duplex, simplex, 9 lect., 3 lect., memoria." Some of the religious orders which have their own breviary, did not adopt the terms now used in the Roman Breviary. For example, the Cistercians have the following terminology: "Festum sermonis majus, sermonis minus, duarum missarum majus, 2 miss. minus, 12 lectionum, 3 lect., commemoratio." The Dominicans: "Totum duplex, duplex, simplex, 3 lect., memoria." The Carmelites: "Duplex majus I. classis solemnis, dupl, maj. I. cl. duplex majus 2. classis, duplex minus I, classis, duplex minus 2, classis, semiduplex, simplex, simplicissimum." Among the feasts of the same rite there is a difference in dignity. There are + primary feasts which commemorate the principal mysteries of our religion, or celebrate the death of a saint; + secondary feasts, the object of which is a particular feature of a mystery, e.g. the feast of the Crown of Thorns, of the relics of a saint or of some miracle worked by him, e.g. the feast of the translation of St. Stephen, the Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The list of primary and secondary feasts has been determined by a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites (22 Aug., 1893), and is found in the introduction to the Roman Breviary. + Within the two classes mentioned the feasts of Christ take the first place, especially those with privileged vigils and octaves (Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost, and Corpus Christi); then follow the feasts of the Blessed Virgin, the Holy Angels, St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph, the Apostles and Evangelists, and the other saints. DUCHESNE, Origines du Culte Chrétien (Paris, 1889); tr. McCLURE (London, 1904); KELLNER, Heortology (tr. London, 1909), PROBST, Liturgie des vierten Jahrh. (Münster, 1893); BÄUMER, Geschichte des Breviers (Freiburg, 1895); BENTRIUM, Denkwürdigen (Mainz, 1829); LINGARD, Antiquities of the Anglo Saxon Church (London, 1858); MAXIMILIAN, PRINCE OF SAXONY, Praelect. de Liturgiis Orientalibus (Freiburg, 1908); Kirchliches Handlexicom (Münster 1907); Kirchenlexicon(Freiburg, 1886), IV; NILLES, Kalendarium, manuele, etc. (Innsbruck,1897); MORISOT, Instructions sur les fêtes de l'année (Paris, 1908). F.G. HOLWECK Febronianism Febronianism The politico-ecclesiastical system outlined by Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim, Auxiliary Bishop of Trier, under the pseudonym Justinus Febronius, in his work entitled "Justini Febronii Juris consulti de Stata Ecclesiæ et legitimâ potestate Romani Pontificis Liber singularis ad reuniendos dissidentes in religione christianos compositus" (Bullioni apud Guillelmum Evrardi, 1763; in reality the work was published by Esslinger at Frankfort-on-the-Main). Taking as a basis the Gallican principles which he had imbibed from the canonist Van Espen while pursuing his studies in Louvain, Hontheim advanced along the same lines, in spite of many inconsistencies, to a radicalism far outstripping traditional Gallicanism. He develops in this work a theory of ecclesiastical organization founded on a denial of the monarchical constitution of the Church. The ostensible purpose was to facilitate the reconciliation of the Protestant bodies with the Church by diminishing the power of the Holy See. According to Febronius (cap. i), the power of the keys was entrusted by Christ to the whole body of the Church, which holds it principaliter et radicaliter, but exercises it through her prelates, to whom only the administration of this power is committed. Among these the pope comes first, though even he is subordinate to the Church as a whole. The Divine institution of the primacy in the church is acknowledged (cap. ii), but Febronius holds that its connexion with the Roman See does not rest on the authority of Christ, but on that of Peter and the Church, so that the Church has the power to attach it to another see. The power of the pope, therefore, should be confined to those essential rights inherent in the primacy which were exercised by the Holy See during the first eight centuries. The pope is the centre with which the individual Churches must be united. He must be kept informed of what is taking place everywhere throughout the Church, that he may exercise the care demanded by his office for the preservation of unity. It is his duty to enforce the observance of the canons in the whole Church; he has the authority to promulgate laws in the name of the Church, and to depute legates to exercise his authority as primate. His power, as head of the whole Church, however, is of an administrative and unifying character, rather than a power of jurisdiction. But since the ninth century, chiefly through the influence of the False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore, the constitution of the Church has undergone a complete transformation, in that the papal authority has been extended beyond proper bounds (cap. iii). By a violation of justice, questions which at one time were left to the decision of provincial synods and metropolitans gradually came to be reserved to the Holy See (cap. iv), as, for instance, the condemnation of heresies, the confirmation of episcopal elections, the naming of coadjutors with the right of succession, the transfer and removal of bishops, the establishment of new dioceses, and the erection of metropolitan and primatial sees. The pope, whose infallibility is expressly denied (cap. v), cannot, on his own authority, without a council or the assent of the entire episcopate, give forth any decisions on matters of faith of universal obligation. Likewise in matters of discipline, he can issue no decrees affecting the whole body of the faithful; the decrees of a general council have binding power only after their acceptance by the individual churches. Laws once promulgated cannot be altered at the pope's will or pleasure. It is also denied that the pope, by the nature and authority of the primacy, can receive appeals from the whole Church. According to Febronius, the final court of appeal in the Church is the ecumenical council (cap. vi), the fights of which exclude the pretended monarchical constitution of the Church. The pope is subordinate to the general council; he has neither the exclusive authority to summon one, nor the right to preside at its sessions, and the conciliar decrees do not need his ratification. Ecumenical councils are of absolute necessity, as even the assent of a majority of bishops to a papal decree, if given by the individuals, outside a council, does not constitute a final, irrevocable decision. Appeal from the pope to a general council is justified by the superiority of the council over the pope. According to the Divine institution of the episcopate (cap. vii), all bishops have equal rights; they do not receive their power of jurisdiction from the Holy See. It is not within the province of the pope to exercise ordinary episcopal functions in dioceses other than that of Rome. The papal reservations regarding the granting of benefices, annates, and the exemption of religious orders are thus in conflict with the primitive law of the Church, and must be abolished. Having shown, as he believes, that the existing ecclesiastical law with reference to papal power is a distortion of the original constitution of the Church, due chiefly to the False Decretals, Febronius demands that the primitive discipline, as outlined by him, be everywhere restored (cap. viii). He then suggests as means for bringing about this reformation (cap. ix), that the people shall be properly enlightened on this subject, that a general council with full freedom be held, that national synods be convened, but especially that Catholic rulers take concerted action, with the cooperation and advice of the bishops, that secular princes avail themselves of the Regium Placet to resist decrees, that obedience be openly refused to a legitimate extent, and finally that secular authority be appealed to through the Appellatio ab abusu. The last measures reveal the real trend of Febronian principles; Febronius, while ostensibly contending for a larger independence and greater authority for the bishops, seeks only to render the Churches of the different countries less dependent on the Holy See, in order to facilitate the establishment of national Churches in these states, and reduce the bishops to a condition in which they would be merely servile creatures of the civil power. Wherever an attempt was made to put his ideas into execution, it proceeded along these lines. The book was formally condemned, 27 February, 1764, by Clement XIII. By a Brief of 21 May, 1764, the pope required the German episcopate to suppress the work. Ten prelates, among them the Elector of Trier, complied. Meanwhile no steps had been taken against the author personally, who was well known in Rome. Despite the ban of the Church, the book, harmonizing as it did with the spirit of the times, had a tremendous success. A second edition, revised and enlarged, was issued as early as 1765; it was reprinted at Venice and Zurich, and translations appeared in German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. In the three later volumes, which Hontheim issued as supplementary to the original work, and numbered II to IV (Vol. II, Frankfort and Leipzig, 1770; Vol. III, 1772; Vol. IV, Parts 1 and 2, 1773-74), he defended it, under the name of Febronius and various other pseudonyms, against a series of attacks. Later he published an abridgment under the title: "Justinus Febronius abbreviatus et emendatus" (Cologne and Frankfort, 1777). In addition to the "Judicium academicum" of the University of Cologne (1765), refutations appeared from a large number of Catholic authors, the most important being: Ballerini, "De vi ac ratione primatus Romanorum Pontificum et de ipsorum infallibilitate in definiendis controversiis fidei" (Verona, 1766); Idem, "De potestate ecclesiasticâ Summorum Pontifleum et Conciliorum generalium liber, una cum vindiciis auctoritatis pontificiæ contra opus Just. Febronii (Verona, 1768; Augsburg, 1770; new ed. of both works, Münster in W., 1845, 1847); Zaccaria, "Antifebronio, ossia apologia polemicostorica del primato del Papa, contra la dannata opera di Giust. Febronio" (2 vols., Pesaro, 1767; 2nd ed., 4 vols., Cesena, 1768-70; tr. German, Reichenberger, Augsburg, 1768); Idem, "Antifebronius vindicatus" (4 vols., Cesena, 1771-2); Idem, "In tertium Justini Febronii tomum animadversiones Romano-catholicæ" (Rome, 1774); Mamachi, "Epistolæ ad Just. Febronium de ratione regendæ christianæ reipublicæ deque legitimâ Romani Pontificis potestate" (3 vols., Rome, 1776-78). There were, besides, refutations written from the Protestant standpoint, to repudiate the idea that a diminution of the papal power was all that was necessary to bring the Protestants back into union with the Church, for instance Karl Friedrich Bahrdt, "Dissertatio de eo, an fieri possit, ut sublato Pontificio imperio reconcilientur Dissidentes in religione Christiani" (Leipzig, 1763), and Johann Friedrich Bahrdt, "Do Romanâ Ecclesiâ irreconciliabili" (Leipzig, 1767); Karl Gottl. Hofmann, "Programma continens examen regulæ exegeticæ ex Vincentio Lerinensi in Febronio repetitæ" (Wittenberg, 1768). The first measures against the author were taken by Pius VI, who urged Clemens Wenzeslaus, Elector of Trier, to prevail on Hontheim to recall the work. Only after prolonged exertions, and after a retractation, couched in general terms, had been adjudged unsatisfactory in Rome, the elector forwarded to Rome Hontheim's emended recantation (15 November, 1778). This was communicated to the cardinals in consistory by Pius VI on Christmas Day. That this retractation was not sincere on Hontheim's part is evident from his subsequent movements. That he had by no means relinguished his ideas appears from his "Justini Febronii Jcti. Commentarius in suam Retractationem Pio VI. Pont. Max. Kalendis Nov. anni 1778 submissam" (Frankfort, 1781; German ed., Augsburg, 1781), written for the purpose of justifying his position before the public. Meanwhile; notwithstanding the prohibition, the "Febronius" had produced its pernicious effects, which were not checked by the retractation. The ideas advanced in the work, being in thorough accord with the absolutistic tendencies of civil rulers, were eagerly accepted by the Catholic courts and governments of France, the Austrian Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, Venice, Austria, and Tuscany; and they received further development at the hands of court theologians and canonists who favoured the scheme of a national Church. Among the advocates of the theory of Febronianism in Germany, mention should be made of the Trier professor, Franz Anton Haubs, "Themata ex historiâ ecclesiasticâ de hierarchiâ sacrâ primorum V sæculorum" (Trier, 1786); "Systema primævum de potestate episcopali ejusque applicatio ad episcopalia quædam jura in specie punctationibus I. II. et IV. congressus Emsani exposita" (Trier, 1788); and Wilhelm Joseph Castello, "Dissertatio historica de variis causis, queis accidentalis Romani Pontificis potestas successive ampliata fuit" (Trier, 1788). It was the Austrian canonists, however, who contributed most towards the compilation of a new law code regulating the relations of Church and State, which was reduced to practice under Joseph II. Especially noteworthy as being conceived in this spirit were the textbooks on canon law prescribed for the Austrian universities, and compiled by Paul Joseph von Riegger, "Institutiones juris ecclesiastici" (4 vols., Vienna, 1768-72; frequently reprinted), and Pehem, "Prælectiones in jus ecclesiasticum universum", also, in a more pronounced way, the work of Johann Valentin Eybel, "Introductia in jus ecclesiasticum Catholicorum" (4 vols., Vienna, 1777; placed on the Index, 1784). The first attempt to give Febronian principles a practical application was made in Germany at the Coblenz Conference of 1769, where the three ecclesiastical Electors of Mains, Cologne, and Trier, through their delegates, and under the directions of Hontheim, compiled a list of thirty grievances against the Roman See, in consonance with the principles of the "Febronius" (Gravamina trium Archiepiscoporum Electorum, Moguntinensis, Trevirensis et Coloniensis contra Curiam Apostolicam anno 1769 ad Cæsarem delata; printed in Le Bret, "Magazin zum Gebrauch der Staaten- und Kirchengeschichte", Pt. VIII, Ulm, 1783, pp. 1-21). More significant was the Ems Congress of 1786, at which the three ecclesiastical electors and the Prince-Bishop of Salzburg, in imitation of the Coblenz Congress, and in conformity with the basic principles of the "Febronius", made a fresh attempt to readjust the relations of the German Church with Rome, with a view to securing for the former a greater measure of independence; they also had their representatives draw up the Ems Punctation in twenty-three articles; they achieved, however, no practical results. An attempt was made to realize the principles of the "Febronius" on a large scale in Austria, where under Joseph II a national Church was established according to the plan outlined. Efforts in the same direction were made by Joseph's brother Leopold in his Grand-Duchy of Tuscany. The resolutions adopted at the Synod of Pistoia, under Bishop Scipio Ricci, along these lines, were repudiated by the majority of the bishops of the country. MEJER, Febronius, Weihbischof Johann Nicolaus von Hontheim und sein Widerruf (Tübingen, 1880, 2nd ad., 1885), anti-Roman; KÜNTZIGER, Fébronius et le Fébronianisme in Mémoires couronnés et autres mémoires publiés par l'Académie Royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique, Vol. XLIV (Brussels, 1891). also anti-Roman; STÜMPER. Die kirchenrechtlichen Ideen des Febronius, inaugural dissertation presented to the faculty of jurisprudence and political economy of the University of Würzburg (Aschaffenburg, 1908), Catholic; RÖSCH, Das Kirchenrecht im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, I: Der Febronianismus in Archiv f. kath. Kirchenrecht, LXXXIII (Mainz, 1903), 446-82, 620-52. Also WALCH, Neueste Religions-Geschichte, Pt. I (Lemgo, 1771), 145-98; Pt. VI (1777), 175-208; Pt. VII (1779), 193-240, 453-64; Pt. VIII (1781), 529-42; Briefwechsel zwischen weiland ihrer Durchlaucht dam Herrn Kurfürsten von Trier, Clemens Wenzeslaus und dem Herrn Weihbischof Nik. von Hontheim über das Buch, Just. Febronii de statu Ecclesiæ (Frankfort, 1813); PHILLIPS, Kirchenrecht (Ratisbon, 1848), III, 365-74; MARX, Gesch. des Erzstifts Trier (Trier, 1864), V, 90-129; BRÜCK, Die rationalistischen Bestrebungen im katholischen Deutschland (Mainz, 1865); da SCHULTE, Die Gesch. der Quellen und Lit. des canonischen Rechts (Stuttgart, 1880), Vol. III, Pt. 1, 193-205; BELLESHEIM in Historisch-politische Blätter, LXXXVI (1880), 529-44; KRAUS in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, s. v. Hontheim; BRÜCK in Kirchenlex., s. v. Hontheim; ANON., Netler, Hontheim und Clemens Wenzeslaus (Die Anfänge der febronianischen Häresie) in Katholik, I (1891), 537-57; II, 19-39; ZILLICH, Febronius in Hallesche Abhandlungen zur neueren Geschichte, XLIV (Halle, 1906). FRIEDRICH LAUCHERT. John de Feckenham John de Feckenham Last Abbot of Westminster, and confessor of the Faith; b. in Feckenham Forest, Worcestershire, in 1515(?), of poor parents named Howman; d. at Wisbech Castle, 16 Oct., 1585. He became a Benedictine monk at Evesham, and studied at Gloucester Hall, Oxford (B. D., 11 June, 1539), returned to Evesham to teach junior monks till the dissolution, 27 Jan., 1540, when he received a pension of 15 marks. Rector of Solihull, Worcestershire (1544?-1554), he became known as an orator and controversialist. He was domestic chaplain to Bishop Bell of Worcester till 1543, and then to Bonner of London till 1549. He was sent to the Tower by Cranmer for defending the Faith, but in 1551 was "borrowed out of prison" to hold public disputations with the new men, e. g. with Jewel and Hooper. Again relegated to the Tower, he was released by Queen Mary, 5 Sept., 1553, and was much employed as a preacher in London; he was advanced to benefices, and in March, 1554, made dean of St. Paul's. He showed great mildness to the heretics, many of whom he converted, and saved others from the stake. He prepared Lady Jane Grey for death, though he could not convince her of her errors, as he did Sir John Cheke, the king's tutor. Feckenham interceded for Elizabeth after Wyatt's rebellion, obtaining her life and subsequent release. He took the degree of D. D. at Oxford, May, 1556, and on 7 Sept., 1556, was appointed abbot of the royal Abbey of Westminster, restored to the order by the queen. The Benedictines took possession on 21 November (since known as dies memorabilis), and the abbot was installed on 29 November, beginning his rule over a community of about twenty- eight, gathered from the dissolved abbeys. He successfully defended in Parliament, 11 Feb., 1557, the threatened privileges of sanctuary, and restored the shrine of the Confessor in his abbey church. Elizabeth at her accession offered (November, 1558) to preserve the monastery if he and his monks would accept the new religion, but Feckenham steadily refused, bravely and eloquently defending the old Faith in Parliament and denouncing the sacrilegious innovations of the Anglicans. He gave sanctuary to Bishop Bonner, and quietly went on planting trees while awaiting the expulsion, which took place 12 July, 1559. He generously resigned a large part of the money due him to the dean who succeeded him. Nevertheless, in May, 1560, he was sent to the Tower "for railing against the changes that had been made". Three years later he was given into the custody of Horne, the intruded Bishop of Winchester, but in 1564 he was sent back to the Tower, his episcopal jailer having failed to pervert him. Feckenham himself said that he preferred the prison to the pseudo-bishop's palace. In 1571 he prepared his fellow-prisoner, Blessed John Storey, for death, and a little later was sent to the Marshalsea. In the Tower he and his fellow-confessors had been "haled by the arms to Church in violent measure, against our wills, there to hear a sermon, not of persuading us but of railing upon us." He was released on bail, 17 July, 1574, after fourteen years' confinement, and lived in Holborn, where he devoted himself to works of charity. He encouraged boys in manly sports on Sundays, preferring that they should practise archery rather than attend the heretical services. But falling ill, he was permitted to go to Bath, where in 1576 he built a hospice for poor patients and did much good. But his zeal for the Faith excited fresh rancour, and in 1577 he was committed to the custody of Cox, Bishop of Ely, who was requested to bring him to conformity. Feckenham's so-called "Confession" (British Museum, Lansdowne MSS., No. 30, fol. 199) shows how egregiously Cox failed, and in 1580 he petitioned the council to remove the abbot, who was accordingly sent to Wisbech Castle, a dismal prison belonging to the Bishops of Ely, which he shared with Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, and other confessors. Here he died a holy death, fortified by the Sacred Viaticum, and was buried in Wisbech Church. He was worn out by an imprisonment of twenty- three years for conscience' sake; a striking example of Elizabeth's ingratitude. Protestant writers unite in praising his virtues, especially his kindness of heart, gentleness, and charity to the poor. Even Burnet calls him "a charitable and generous man". His best-known work is against Herne, "The Declaration of such Scruples and Stays of Conscience touching the Oath of Supremacy", etc. He also wrote "Caveat Emptor", a caution against buying abbey lands, and a commentary on the Psalms, but these are lost. Most complete life in Taunton, English Black Monks of St. Benedict (London, 1897); Bradley in Dict. Nat. Biog., s. v., with good bibliography; Wood, Athenæ Oxon., II, 222; Weldon, Chronological Notes on English Congregation O. S. B. (Stanbrook Abbey, 1883); Gillow, Bibl. Dict. Eng. Cath., II; Gasquet, Last Abbot of Glastonbury and other Essays (London, 1908), s. v. Feckenham at Bath; Stapleton (vere Harpsfield), Counterblast to Mr. Hornes vayne blaste against Mr. Feckenham (London, 1567); Reyner, Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Angliâ (Douai, 1626); State Papers, Elizabeth, Domestic, XXII, XXXVI, CXIV, CXXXI, CXXXII, CXLIII, etc.; Dixon, History of the Church of England (London, 1891), IV, V. Bede Camm Johann Michael Feder Johann Michael Feder A German theologian, b. 25 May, 1753, at Oellingen in Bavaria; d. 26 July, 1824, at Würzburg. He studied in the episcopal seminary of Würzburg from 1772-1777; in the latter year he was ordained priest and promoted to the licentiate in theology. For several years Feder was chaplain of the Julius hospital; in 1785 he was appointed extraordinary professor of theology and Oriental languages at the University of Würzburg; was created a Doctor of Divinity in 1786; director of the university library 1791, ordinary professor of theology and censor of theological publications, 1795. After the reorganization of the University of Würzburg, 1803-4, he was appointed chief librarian, resigning the professorship of theology in 1805. Shortly after his removal from office as librarian, November, 1811, he suffered a stroke of apoplexy, from which he never fully recovered. Feder was a prolific writer, editor, and translator, but was imbued with the liberal views of his time. His most meritorious work is a revision of Dr. Heinrich Braun's German translation of the Bible (1803), 2 vols. This revision served as the basis for Dr. Allioli's well-known translation. He also translated the writings of St. Cyril of Jerusalem (1786); the sermons of St. Chrysostom on Matthew and John, in conjunction with the unfortunate Eulogius Sehneider (1786-88); Theodoret's ten discourses on Divine Providence (1788); Gerard's lectures on pastoral duties (1803); de Bausset's life of Fénelon (1800-12), 3 vols., and the same author's life of Bossuet (1820); Fabert's "Meditations" (1786). He was editor of the "Magazin zur Beförderung des Schulwesens" (1791-97), 3 vols., of the "Prakt.-theol. Magazin für katholische Geistliche" (1798-1800), and of the "Würzburger Gelehrten Anzeigen" (1788-92). He also wrote several volumes of sermons. ALEXIUS HOFFMANN Rudolph William Basil Feilding Rudolph William Basil Feilding The eighth Earl of Denbigh, and ninth Earl of Desmond, b. 9 April, 1823; d. 1892. He was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of Master of Arts. He was received into the Church in 1850, and took an active part in many Catholic works of charity under Cardinal Wiseman. As Viscount Feilding he was appointed honorary treasurer, jointly with Viscount Campden and Mr. Archibald J. Dunn, of the Peter's Pence Association. He was a man of great courage and independence of character, qualities needed in the middle of the nineteenth century when the English Protestant mind was much inflamed in consequence of the establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England. As a thanksgiving for his conversion, he built the Franciscan monastery at Pentasaph, North Wales. ARCHIBALD J. DUNN Andreas Benedict Feilmoser Andreas Benedict Feilmoser A theologian and Biblical scholar, b. 8 April, 1777, at Hopfgarten, Tyrol; d. at Tübingen, 20 July, 1831, studied at Salzburg from 1789 to 1794, took a two years' course in philosophy at the University of Innsbruck (1794-96), and entered the Benedictine Order at Fiecht, Tyrol, in September, 1796. At this abbey he studied the Oriental languages under Dom Georg Maurer, a monk of St. George's Abbey, Villingen. For his theological studies he was sent to Villingen, where he again heard Dom Maurer and Dom Gottfried Lumper, both eminent scholars. Returning to Fiecht in 1800, he taught Biblical exegesis and was ordained priest in 1801; late in the same year he was appointed master of novices, in 1802 professor of Christian ethics and in 1803 of ecclesiastical history. A number of theses which he published in 1803 aroused the suspicions of the ecclesiastical authorities of the Diocese of Brixen. The Abbot of Fiecht was sharply rebuked for permitting Feilmoser to teach unsound doctrine. In 1804 appeared Feilmoser's "Animadversiones in historiam ecclesiasticam", which did not meet the approval of the diocesan authorities, who threatened, in case Feilmoser did not desist from advancing dangerous opinions, to institute proceedings against the abbot. To Feilmoser's request for a specification of the objectionable passages in his writings no reply was made, but the entire matter was reported to the emperor at Vienna. An investigation instituted by order of the emperor resulted favourably for Feilmoser. He was, nevertheless, removed from the office of master of novices and in 1806 was made assistant in the parish of Achenthal. By the Treaty of Presburg (26 Dec.,1805) Tyrol was cut off from Austria and became a part of Bavaria. The new Government, in November, 1806, appointed him professor of Oriental languages and of introduction to the Old Testament at the University of Innsbruck. The monastery of Fiecht having been suppressed in 1807, he left the order. At lnnsbruck he received the degree of Doctor of Theology in 1808 and was appointed to the chair of New Testament exegesis. During the Tyrolese insurrection, August, 1809, he, with a number of other professors, was taken prisoner and carried to Pusterthal by order of Andreas Hofer. In 1810 he returned to Innsbruck, in 1811 he was made professor of catechetics, in 1812 of Latin and Greek philology, and in 1817 was reappointed professor of New-Testament exegesis in the face of much opposition. About this time the old charges against him were revived, and in 1818 he was bitterly attacked in an anonymous work published at Augsburg. He was denied the opportunity of publicly defending himself, inasmuch as the imperial censor at Vienna, on 17 July, 1819, decided that since the anonymous work was published, a foreign country, it was under Austrian censure and must be regarded as non-existent. On 25 April, 1820, he was formally appointed a professor at the University of Tübingen, where he continued to teach New -Testament exegesis until his death. He wrote: "Sätze aus der christlichen Sittenlehre für die öffentliche Prüfung in dem Benedictinerstifte zu Fiecht" (Innsbruck, 1803); "Sätze aus der Einleitung in die Bücher des alten Bundes und den hebraischen Alterhumern" (Innsbruch, 1803); "Animaversiones in historiam ecclesiasticam" (Innsbruck, 1803); "Sätze aus der Einleitung in die Bücher des neuen Bundes und der bibli. Hermeneutik" (Innsbruck, 1804); "Einleitung in die Bücher des des neuen Bundes" (Innsbruck, 1810); "Auszug des hebr. Sprachlehre nach Jahn" (Innsburck 1812); "Die Verketzerrungssucht" (Rottweil, 1820). His principal work, "Einleitung in die Bucher des neuen Bundes", published in a revised edition (Tübingen, 1830), is inaccurate and was praised far beyond its due. He also contributed papers and criticisms to the "Annalen der osterreichischen Litteratur und Kunst" and the "Theologische Quartal-schrift" of Tübingen. His exegetical writings are influenced by the rationalistic spirit of his day. He denied the genuineness of the Comma Johanneum and maintained that the Books of Job, Jonas, Tobias, and Judith are merely didactic poems. ALEXIUS HOFFMANN Johann Ignaz von Felbiger Johann Ignaz von Felbiger A German educational reformer, pedagogical writer, and canon regular of the Order of St. Augustine, b. 6 January, 1724, at Gross-Glogau in Silesia; d. 17 May, 1788, at Presburg in Hungary. He was the son of a postmaster, who had been ennobled by Emperor Charles VI. The death of his parents constrained him, after studying theology at the University of Breslau, to accept (1744) the position of teacher in a private family. In 1746 he joined the Order of Canons Regular of St. Augustine at Sagan in Silesia, was ordained a priest in 1748, and ten years later became abbot of the monastery of Sagan. Noting the sad condition of the local Catholic schools, he strove to remedy the evil by publishing his first school-ordinance in 1761. During the private journey to Berlin, in 1762, he was favourably impressed with Hecker's Realschule and Hähn's method of instructing by initials and tables (Literal- or Tabellen-methode), and became an enthusiastic propagator of this method. A school-ordinance for the dependencies of the monastery of Sagan was issued in 1763, teachers' college was established, and Felbiger's school reforms soon attracted the attention of Catholics and Protestants alike. He was supported by the Silesian minister von Schlabrendorff, and at the latter's request, after a second journey to Berlin he elaborated general school-ordinance for the Catholic elementary schools in Silesia (1765). Three graded catechisms, the joint work of the prior and the abbot of Sagan, appeared in 1766 under the title, "Silesian Catechism", and enjoyed a wide circulation. The death of von Schlabrendorff in 1769 marked the end of the Silesian government's educational efforts. Felbiger's suggetions were heeded, however, by King Frederick II in regulations issued (1774) for Silesian higher schools. At the request of the empress, Maria Theresa, he repaired to Vienna in 1774, and was appointed General Commissioner of Education for all the German lands of her dominions. The same year he published general school-ordinance, and in 1775 his most important pedagogical production: "Methodenbuch für Lehrer der deutschen Schulen". His school-reform was copied by Bavaria and other German lands and was not without influence on Russia. Considerable opposition, aroused by Felbiger's arbitrariness, developed in Austria against his plan of founding special schools for the neglected instruction of soldiers. Maria Theresa, however, always remained his faithful protectress. Put his strictly religious principles education displeased Joseph II, who depraved him his position, assigned him to his provostship at Presburg, and advised him to look after educational intests in Hungary (1782). The chief peculiarity of Felbiger's too mechanical method was the use of tables containing the initials of the words which expressed the lesson to be imparted. Other features were the substitution of class-instruction for individual instruction and the practice of questioning the pupils. He aimed at raising the social standing, financial condition, and professional qualification of the teaching body, at giving a friendly character to the mutual relations between teacher and pupil. For a list of his 78 publications, which are mainly of a pedagogical character, see Panholzer's "Methodenbuch" (46-66). N.A. WEBER Felician Sisters, O.S.F. Felician Sisters, 0.S.F. Founded 21 November, 1855, at Warsaw, Poland, by Mother Mary Angela, under the direction of Father Honorat, O.F.M. Cap. On their suppression, in 1864, by the Russian Government they transferred the mother-house to Cracow, Austria. In the province of Cracow there are forty-four houses of this congregation, and in the United States, where the first foundation was made in 1874, there are two provinces, 820 choir and lay sisters, 100 novices, 168 postulants, in charge of 87 schools with 36,700 pupils, 5 orphanages with 416 inmates, 2 homes for the aged, an emigrant home, working girls' home, and a day nursery. MOTHER MARY JEROME Felicissimus Felicissimus A deacon of Carthage who, in the middle of the third century, headed a short-lived but dangerous schism, to which undue doctrinal importance has been given by a certain class of writers, Neander, Ritschl, Harnack, and others, who see in it "a presbyterial reaction against episcopal autocracy". Of the chief figure in the revolt, Felicissimus, not much can be said. The movement of which he was afterwards the leader originated in the opposition of five presbyters of the church in Carthage to St. Cyprian's election as bishop of that see. One of these presbyters, Novatus, selected Felicissimus as deacon of his church in the district called Mons, and because of the importance of the office of deacon in the African Church, Felicissimus became the leader of the malcontents. The opposition of this faction, however, led to no open rupture until after the outbreak of the Decian persecution in 250, when St. Cyprian was compelled to flee from the city. His absence created a situation favourable to his adversaries, who took advantage of a division already existing in regard to the methods to be followed in dealing with those who had apostatized (lapsi) during persecution and who afterwards sought to be readmitted to Christian fellowship. It was easy under the circumstances to arouse much hostility to Cyprian, because he had followed an extremely rigorous policy in dealing with those lapsi. The crisis was reached when St. Cyprian sent from his place of hiding a commission consisting of two bishops and two priests to distribute alms to those who had been ruined during the persecution. Felicissimus, regarding the activities of these men as an encroachment on the prerogatives of his office, attempted to frustrate their mission. This was reported to St. Cyprian, who at once excommunicate him. Felicissimus immediately gathered around him all those who were dissatisfied with the bishop's treatment of the lapsi and proclaimed an open revolt. The situation was still further complicated by the fact that the thirty years' peace preceding the Decian persecution had caused much laxity in the Church, and that on the first outbreak of hostilities multitudes of Christians had openly apostatized or resorted to the expedient of purchasing certificates from the venal officials, attesting their compliance with the emperor's edict. Besides this the custom of readmitting apostates to Christian fellowship, if they could show tickets from confessors or martyrs in their behalf, had resulted in widespread scandals. While St. Cyprian was in exile he did not succeed in checking the revolt even though he wisely refrained from excommunicating those who differed from in regard to the treatment of the lapsi. After his return to Carthage (251) he convoked a synod of bishops, priests ansd deacons, in which the sentence of excommunication against Felicissimus and the heads of faction was reaffirmed, and in which definite rules were laid down regarding the manner of readmitting the lapsi. The sentence against Felicissimus and his followers did not deter them from appearing before another council, which was held in Carthage the following year, and demanding that the case be reopend. Their demand was refused, and they sought to profit by the division in the Roman Church which had arisen from similar causes, except that in this case the charge of laxity was levelled against the orthodox party. This proceding and the fact that the Council of Carthage had decided with so much moderation in regard to the lapsi, modifying as it did the rigoristic policy of Cyprian by a judicious compromise, soon detached from Felicissimus all his followers, and the schism disappeared. PATRICK J. HEALY St. Felicitas St. Felicitas MARTYR. The earliest list of the Roman feasts of martyrs, known as the "Depositio Martyrum" and dating from the time of Pope Liberius, i.e. about the middle of the fourth century (Ruinart, Acta sincera, Ratisbon, p. 631), mentions seven martyrs whose feast was kept on 10 July. Their remains had been deposited in four different catacombs, viz. in three cemeteries on the Via Salaria and in one on the Via Appia. Two of the martyrs, Felix and Philip, reposed in the catacomb of Priscilla; Martial, Vitalis and Alexander, in the Coemeterium Jordanorum; Silanus (or Silvanus) in the catacomb of Maximus, and Januarius in that of Prætextatus. To the name of Silanus is added the statement that his body was stolen by the Novatians (hunc Silanum martyrem Novatiani furati sunt). In the Acts of these martyrs, that certainly existed in the sixth century, since Gregory the Great refers to them in his "Homiliæ super Evangelia" (Lib. I, hom. iii, in P.L., LXXVI, 1087), it is stated that all seven were sons of Felicitas, a noble Roman lady. According to these Acts Felicitas and her seven sons were imprisoned because of their Christian Faith, at the instigation of pagan priests, during the reign of Emperor Antoninus. Before the prefect Publius they adhered firmly to their religion, and were delivered over to four judges, who condemned them to various modes of death. The division of the martyrs among four judges corresponds to the four places of their burial. St. Felicitas herself was buried in the catacomb of Maximus on the Via Salaria, beside Silanus. These Acts were regarded as genuine by Ruinart (op. cit., 72-74), and even distinguished modern archæologists have considered them, though not in their present form corresponding entirely to the original, yet in substance based on genuine contemporary records. Recent investigations of Führer, however (see below), have shown this opinion to be hardly tenable. The earliest recension of these Acts, edited by Ruinart, does not antedate the sixth century, and appears to be based not on a Roman, but on a Greek original. Moreover, apart from the present form of the Acts, various details have been called in question. Thus, if Felicitas were really the mother of the seven martyrs honoured on 10 July, it is strange that her name does not appear in the well-known fourth-century Roman calendar. Her feast is first mentioned in the "Martyrologium Hieronymianum", but on a different day (23 Nov.). It is, however, historically certain that she, as well as the seven martyrs called her sons in the Acts suffered for the Christian Faith. From a very early date her feast was solemnly celebrated in the Roman Church on 23 November, for on that day Gregory the Great delivered a homily in the basilica that rose above her tomb. Her body then rested in the catacomb of Maximus; in that cemetery on the Via Salaria all Roman itineraries, or guides to the burial-places of martyrs, locate her burial-place, specifying that her tomb was in a church above this catacomb (De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, I, 176-77), and that the body of her son Silanus was also there. The crypt where Felicitas was laid to rest was later enlarged into a subterranean chapel, and was rediscovered in 1885. A seventh-century fresco is yet visible on the rear wall of this chapel, representing in a group Felicitas and her seven sons, and overhead the figure of Christ bestowing upon them the eternal crown. Certain historical references to St. Felicitas and her sons antedate the aforesaid Acts, e.g. a fifth-century sermon of St. Peter Chrysologus (Sermo cxxxiv, in P.L., LII, 565) and a metrical epitaph either written by Pope Damasus (d. 384) or composed shortly after his time and suggested by his poem in praise of the martyr: Discite quid meriti præstet pro rege feriri; Femina non timuit gladium, cum natis obivit, Confessa Christum meruit per sæcula nomen. [Learn how meritorious it is to die for the King (Christ). This woman feared not the sword, but perished with her sons. She confessed Christ and merited an eternal renown.--Ihm, Damasi Epigrammata (Leipzig, 1895), p. 45.] We possess, therefore, confirmation for an ancient Roman tradition, independent of the Acts, to the effect that the Felicitas who reposed in the catacomb of Maximus, and whose feast the Roman Church commemorated 23 Nov., suffered martyrdom with her sons; it does not record, however, any details concerning these sons. It may be recalled that the tomb of St. Silanus, one of the seven martyrs (10 July), adjoined that of St. Felicitas and was likewise honoured; it is quite possible, therefore, that tradition soon identified the sons of St. Felicitas with the seven martyrs, and that this formed the basis for the extant Acts. The tomb of St. Januarius in the catacomb of Prætextatus belongs to the end of the second century, to which period, therefore, the martyrdoms must belong, probably under Marcus Aurelius. If St. Felicitas did not suffer martyrdom on the same occasion we have no means of determining the time of her death. In an ancient Roman edifice near the ruins of the Baths of Titus there stood in early medieval times a chapel in honour of St. Felicitas. A faded painting in this chapel represents her with her sons just as in the above-mentioned fresco in her crypt. Her feast is celebrated 23 Nov. RUINART, Acta sincera martyrum (Ratisbon, 1859), 72-74; Acta SS., July, III, 5-18; Bibliotheca hagiographica latina, I, 429-30; ALLARD, Histoire des persécutions (2nd ed., Paris, 1892), I, 345- 68; AUBÉ, Histoire des persécutions de l'Eglise jusqu'=85 la fin des Antonins (Paris, 1845), 345 sq., 439 sqq.; DOULCET, Essai sur les rapports de l'Eglise chrétienne avec l'Etat romain pendant les trois premiers siècles (Paris, 1883), 187-217; DUFOURCQ, Gesta Martyrum romains (Paris, 1900), I, 223-24; DE ROSSI, Bullettino di archeol. crist. (1884-85), 149-84; FöHRER, Ein Beitrag zur Lösung der Felicitasfrage (Freising, 1890); IDEM, Zur Felicitasfrage (Leipzig, 1894); KöNSTLE, Hagiographische Studien über die Passio Felicitatis cum VII filiis (Paderborn, 1894); MARUCCHI, La catacombe romane (Rome, 1903), 388-400. J.P. KIRSCH Sts. Felicitas and Perpetua Sts. Felicitas and Perpetua Martyrs, suffered at Carthage, 7 March 203, together with three companions, Revocatus, Saturus, and Saturninus. The details of the martyrdom of these five confessors in the North African Church have reached us through a genuine, contemporary description, one of the most affecting accounts of the glorious warfare of Christian martyrdom in ancient times. By a rescript of Septimus Severus (193-211) all imperial subjects were forbidden under severe penalties to become Christians. In consequence of this decree, five catechumens at Carthage were seized and cast into prison, viz. Vibia Perpetua, a young married lady of noble birth; the slave Felicitas, and her fellow-slave Revocatus, also Saturninus and Secundulus. Soon one Saturus, who deliberately declared himself a Christian before the judge, was also incarcerated. Perpetua's father was a pagan; her mother, however,and two brothers were Christians, one being still a catechumen; a third brother, the child Dinocrates, had died a pagan. After their arrest, and before they were led away to prison, the five catechumens were baptized. The sufferings of the prison life, the attempts of Perpetua's father to induce her to apostatize, the vicissitudes of the martyrs before their execution, the visions of Saturus and Perpetua in their dungeons, were all faithfully committed to writing by the last two. Shortly after the death of the martyrs a zealous Christian added to this document an account of their execution. The darkness of their prison and the oppressive atmosphere seemed frightful to Perpetua, whose terror was increased by anxiety for her young child. Two deacons succeeded, by sufficiently bribing the jailer, in gaining admittance to the imprisoned Christians and alleviated somewhat their sufferings. Perpetua's mother also, and her brother, yet a catechumen, visited them. Her mother brought in her arms to Perpetua her little son, whom she was permitted to nurse and retain in prison with her. A vision, in which she saw herself ascending a ladder leading to green meadows, where a flock of sheep was browsing, assured her of her approaching martyrdom. A few days later Perpetua's father, hearing a rumour that the trial of the imprisoned Christians would soon take place, again visited their dungeon and besought her by everything dear to her not to put this disgrace on her name; but Perpetua remained steadfast to her Faith. The next day the trial of the six confessors took place, before the Procurator Hilarianus. All six resolutely confessed their Christian Faith. Perpetua's father, carrying her child in his arms, approached her again and attempted, for the last time, to induce her to apostatize; the procurator also remonstrated with her but in vain. She refused to sacrifice to the gods for the safety of the emperor. The procurator thereupon had the father removed by force, on which occasion he was struck with a whip. The Christians were then condemned to be torn to pieces by wild beasts, for which they gave thanks to God. In a vision Perpetua saw her brother Dinocrates, who had did at the early age of seven, at first seeming to be sorrowful and in pain, but shortly thereafter happy and healthy. Another apparition, in which she saw herself fighting with a savage Ethiopian, whom she conquered, made it clear to her that she would not have to do battle with wild beasts but with the Devil. Saturus, who also wrote down his visions, saw himself and Perpetua transported by four angels, towards the East to a beautiful garden, where they met four other North African Christians who had suffered martyrdom during the same persecution, viz. Jocundus, Saturninus, Artaius, and Quintus. He also saw in this vision Bishop Optatus of Carthage and the priest Aspasius, who prayed the martyrs to arrange a reconciliation between them. In the meanwhile the birthday festival of the Emperor Geta approached, on which occasion the condemned Christians were to fight with wild beasts in the military games; they were therefore transferred to the prison in the camp. The jailer Pudens had learnt to respect the confessors, and he permitted other Christians to visit them. Perpetua's father was also admitted and made another fruitless attempt to pervert her. Secundulus, one of the confessors, died in prison. Felicitas, who at the time of her incarceration was with child (in the eighth month), was apprehensive that she would not be permitted to suffer martyrdom at the same time as the others, since the law forbade the execution of pregnant women. Happily, two days before the games she gave birth to a daughter, who was adopted by a Christian woman. On 7 March, the five confessors were led into the amphitheatre. At the demand of the pagan mob they were first scourged; then a boar, a bear, and a leopard, were set at the men, and a wild cow at the women. Wounded by the wild animals, they gave each other the kiss of peace and were then put to the sword. Their bodies were interred at Carthage. Their feast day was solemnly commemorated even outside Africa. Thus under 7 March the names of Felicitas and Perpetua are entered in the Philocalian calendar, i.e. the calendar of martyrs venerated publicly in the fourth century at Rome. A magnificent basilica was afterwards erected over their tomb, the Basilica Majorum; that the tomb was indeed in this basilica has lately been proved by Pere Delattre, who discovered there an ancient inscription bearing the names of the martyrs. The feast of these saints is still celebrated on 7 March. The Latin description of their martyrdom was discovered by Holstenius and published by Poussines. Chapters iii-x contain the narrative and the visions of Perpetua; chapters xi-ciii the vision of Saturus; chapters i, ii and xiv-xxi were written by an eyewitness soon after the death of the martyrs. In 1890 Rendel Harris discovered a similar narrative written in Greek, which he published in collaboration with Seth K. Gifford (London, 1890). Several historians maintain that this Greek text is the original, others that both the Greek and the Latin texts are contemporary; but there is no doubt that the Latin text is the original and that the Greek is merely a translation. That Tertullian is the author of these Acts is an unproved assertion. The statement that these martyrs were all or in part Montanists also lacks proof; at least there is no intimations of it in the Acts. HOLSTENIUS, Passio SS. MM. Perpetuae et Felicitatis, ed. POSSINUS (Rome, 1663); RUINART, Acta sincera martyrum (Ratisbon, 1859), 137 sqq.; Acta SS., March, I, 633-38; HARRIS and GIFFORD, The Acts of Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas (London, 1890); ROBINSON, The Passion of S. perpetua in Texts and Studies, I (Cambridge, 1891),2; FRANCHI DE'CAVALIERI, La Passio SS. Perpetuæ et Felicitatis in Röm. Quartalschr., supplement V (Rome, 1896); Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, ed. BOLLANDISTS, II, 964; Analecta Bollandiana (1892), 100-02; 369-72; ORSI, Dissertatio apologetica pro SS. Perpetuae, Felicitatis et sociorum martyrum orthodoxiâ (Florence, 1728); PILLET, Les martyrs d'Afrique, Histoire de Ste Perpetua et de ses compagnons (Paris, 1885); AUBÉ, Les actes des SS. Felicite, Perpétue et de luers compagnons in Les chretiens dans l'Empire Romain (Paris, 1881), 509-25; NEUMANN, Der ramische Staat und die allgemeine Kirche, I (Leipzig, 1890), 170-76, 299-300; ALLARD, Histoire des persecutions, II (Paris, 1886), 96 sqq.; MONCEAUX, Histoire litteraire de l'Afrique chrétienne, I (Paris, 1901), 7 0-96; DELATTRE, La Basilica Maiorum, tombeau des SS. Perpetue et Félicité in Comples-rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1907), 516-31. J.P. KIRSCH Pope St. Felix I Pope St. Felix I Date of birth unknown; d. 274. Early in 269 he succeeded Saint Dionysius as head of the Roman Church. About this time there arrived at Rome, directed to Pope Dionysius, the report of the Synod of Antioch which in that very year had deposed the local bishop, Paul of Samosata, for his heretical teachings concerning the doctrine of the Trinity (see Antioch). A letter, probably sent by Felix to the East in response to the synodal report, containing an exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity, was at a later date interpolated in the interest of his sect by a follower of Apollinaris (see Apollinarianism). This spurious document was submitted to the Council of Ephesus in 431 (Mansi, "Coll. conc.", IV, 1188; cf. Harnack, "Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur", I, 659 sqq.; Bardenhewer, "Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur", II, 582 sq.). The fragment preserved in the Acts of the council lays special emphasis on the unity and identity of the Son of God and the Son of Man in Christ. The same fragment gives Pope Felix as a martyr; but this detail, which occurs again in the biography of the pope in the "Liber Pontificalis" (Ed. Duchesne, I, 58), is unsupported by any authentic earlier evidence and is manifestly due to a confusion of names. According to the notice in the "Liber Pontificalis", Felix erected a basilica on the Via Aurelia; the same source also adds that he was buried there ("Hic fecit basilicam in Via Aurelia, ubi et sepultus est"). The latter detail is evidently an error, for the fourth century Roman calendar of feasts says that Pope Felix was interred in the Catacomb of St. Callistus on the Via Appia ("III Kal. Januarii, Felicis in Callisti", it reads in the "Depositio episcoporum"). The statement of the "Liber Pontificalis" concerning the pope's martyrdom results obviously from a confusion with a Roman martyr of the same name buried on the Via Aurelia, and over whose grave a church was built. In the Roman "Feriale" or calendar of feasts, referred to above, the name of Felix occurs in the list of Roman bishops (Depositio episcoporum), and not in that of the martyrs. The notice in the "Liber Pontificalis" ascribes to this pope a decree that Masses should be celebrated on the tombs of martyrs ("Hic constituit supra memorias martyrum missas celebrare"). The author of this entry was evidently alluding to the custom of celebrating the Holy Sacrifice privately, at the altars near or over the tombs of the martyrs in the crypts of the catacombs (missa ad corpus), while the solemn celebration of the Sacred Mysteries always took place in the basilicas built over the catacombs. This practice, still in force at the end of the fourth century (Prudentius, "Peristephanon", XI, vv. 171 sqq.), dates apparently from the period when the great cemeterial basilicas were built in Rome, and owes its origin to the solemn commemoration services of martyrs, held at their tombs on the anniversary of their burial, as early as the third century. Felix probably issued no such decree, but the compiler of the "Liber Pontificalis" attributed it to him because he made no departure from the custom in force in his time. According to the above-mentioned detail of the "Depositio episcoporum", Felix was interred in the catacomb of St. Callistus, 30 December. In the present Roman Martyrology his name occurs 30 May, the date given in the "Liber Pontificalis" as that of his death (III Kal. Jun.); it is probably an error which could easily occur through a transcriber writing Jun. for Jan. Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, I, introd. cxxv; text, 158, with the notes; De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, II, 98-104; Acta SS., May, VII, 236-37; Langen, Geschichte der römischen Kirche (Bonn, 1881), I, 365-69; Allard, Histoire des persécutions, III, 243 sqq. J.P. KIRSH Felix II Felix II Pope (more properly Antipope), 355-358; d. 22 Nov., 365. In 355 Pope Liberius was banished to Beraea in Thrace by the Emperor Constantius because he upheld tenaciously the Nicene definition of faith and refused to condemn St. Athanasius of Alexandria. The Roman clergy pledged itself in solemn conclave not to acknowledge any other Bishop of Rome while Liberius was alive. ("Marcellini et Fausti Libellus precum", no.1 : "Quae gesta sunt inter Liberium et Felicem episcopos" in "Collectio Avellana", ed. Gunter; Hieronymus, "Chronicon", ad an. Abr. 2365). The emperor, however, who was supplanting the exiled Catholic bishops with the bishops of Arian tendencies, exerted himself to install a new Bishop of Rome in place of the banished Liberius. He invited to Milan Felix, archdeacon of the Roman Church; on the latter's arrival, Acacius of Caesarea succeeded in inducing him to accept the office from which Liberius had been forcibly expelled, and to be consecrated by Acacius and two other Arian bishops. The majority of the Roman clergy acknowledged the validity of his consecration but the laity would have nothing to do with him and remained true to the banished but lawful pope. When Constantius visited Rome in May, 357, the people demanded the recall of their rightful bishop Liberius who, in fact, returned soon after signing the third formula of Sirmium. The bishops, assembled in that city of Lower Pannonia, wrote to Felix and the Roman clergy advising there to receive Liberius in all charity and to put aside their dissensions; it was added that L.iberius and Felix should together govern the Church of Rome. The people received their legitimate pope with great enthusiasm, but a great commotion rose against Felix, who was finally driven from the city. Soon after, he attempted, with the help of his adherents to occupy the Basilica Julii (Santa Maria in Trastevere), but was finally banished in perpetuity by unanimous vote of the Senate and the people. He retired to the neighbouring Porto, where he lived quietly till his death. Liberius permitted the members of the Roman clergy, including the adherents of Felix, to retain their positions. Later legend confound the relative positions of Felix and Liberius. In the apocryphal "Acta Felicis" and "Acta Liberii", as well as in the "Liber pontificalis", Felix was portrayed as a saint and confessor of the true Faith. This distortion of the true facts originated most probably through confusion of this Felix with another Felix, a Roman martyr of an earler date. According to the "Liber Pontificalis", which may be registering here a reliable tradition, Felix built a church on the via Aurelia. It is well known that on this road was buried a Roman martyr, Felix; hence it seems not improbable that apropos of both there arose a confusion (see FELIX I) through which the real story of the antipope was lost and he obtained in local Roman history the status of a saint and a confessor. As such he appears in the Roman Martyrology on 29 July. J.P. KIRSCH Pope St. Felix III Pope St. Felix III (Reigned 483-492). Born of a Roman senatorial family and said to have been an ancestor of Saint Gregory the Great. Nothing certain is known of Felix, till he succeeded St. Simplicitus in the Chair of Peter (483). At that time the Church was still in the midst of her long conflict with the Eutychian heresy. In the preceding year, the Emperor Zeno, at the suggestion of Acacius, the perfidious Patriarch of Constantinoble, had issued an edict known as the Hereticon or Act of Union, in which he declared that no symbol of faith, other than that of Nice, with the additions of 381, should be received. The edict was intended as a bond of reconciliation between Catholics and Eutychians, but it caused greater conflicts than ever, and split the Church of the East into three or four parties. As the Catholics everywhere spurned the edict, the emperor had driven the Patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria from their sees. Peter the Tanner, a notorious heretic, had again intruded himself into the See of Antioch, and Peter Mongus, who was to be the real source of trouble during the pontificate of Felix, had seized that of Alexandria. In his first synod Felix excommunicated Peter the Tanner, who was likewise condemned by Acacius in a synod of Constantinoble. In 484, Felix also excommunicated Peter Mongus -- an act, which brought about a schism between East and West, that was not healed for thirty-five years. This Peter, being a time-server and of a crafty deposition, ingratiated himself with the emperor and Acacius by subscribing to the Henoticon, and was thereupon, to the displeasure of many of the bishops, admitted to communion by Acacius. Felix, having convened a synod, sent legates to the emperor and Acacius, with the request that they should expel Peter Mongus from Alexandria and that Acacius himself should come to Rome to explain his conduct. The legates were detained and imprisoned; then urged by threats and promises, they held communion with the heretics by distinctly uttering the name of Peter in the readings of the sacred diptychs. When their treason was made known at Rome by Simeon, one of the "Acaemeti" monks, Felix convened a synod of seventy-seven bishops in the Lateran Basilica, in which Acacius as well as the papal legates were also excommunicated. Supported by the emperor Acacius disregarded the excommunication, removed the pope's name from the sacred diptychs, and remained in the see till his death, which took place one or two years later. His successor Phravitas, sent messengers to Fe!ix, assuring him that he would not hold communion with Peter, but, the pope learning that this was a deception, the schism continued. Peter, having died in the meantime Ethymus who succeeded Phravitas, also sought communion with Rome, but the pope refused, as Euthymius would not remove the names of his two predecessors from the sacred diptychs. The schism, known as the Acacian Schism was not finally healed till 518 in the reign of Justinian. In Africa the Arian Vandals, Genseric and his son Huneric had been persecuting the Church for more than 50 years and had driven many Catholics into exile. When peace was restored, numbers of those who through fear had fallen into heresy and had been rebaptized by the Arians desired to return to the Church. On being repulsed by those who had remained firm, they appealed to Felix who convened a synod in 487, and sent a letter to the bishops of Africa, expounding the conditions under which they were to be received back. Felix died in 492, having reigned eight years, eleven months and twenty-three days. AMBROSE COLEMAN Pope Felix IV Pope St. Felix IV (Reigned 526-530). On 18 May, 526, Pope John I (q.v.) died in prison at Ravenna, a victim of the angry suspicions of Theodoric, the Arian king of the Goths. When, through the powerful influence of this ruler, the cardinal-priest, Felix of Samnium, son of Castorius, was brought forward in Rome as John's successor, the clergy and laity yielded to the wish of the Gothic king and chose Felix pope. He was consecrated Bishop of Rome 12 July, 526, and took advantage of the favor he enjoyed at the court of Theodoric to further the interests of the Roman Church, discharging the duties of his office in a most worthy manner. On 30 August, 526, Theodoric died, and, his grandson Athalaric being a minor, the government was conducted by Athalaric's mother Amalasuntha, daughter of Theodoric and favorably disposed towards the Catholics. To the new ruler the Roman clergy addressed a complaint on the usurpation of their privileges by the civil power. A royal edict, drawn up by Cassiodorus in terms of the deepest respect for the papal authority, confirmed the ancient custom that every civil or criminal charge of a layman against a cleric should be submitted to the pope, or to an ecclesiastical court appointed by him. A fine of ten pounds of gold was imposed as a punishment for the violation of this order, and the money thus obtained was to be distributed amongst the poor by the pope (Cassiodorus, "Variae", VIII, n. 24, ed. Mommsen, "Mon. Germ. Hist.: Auctores antiquiss.", XII, 255) The pope received as a gift from Amalasuntha two ancient edifices in the Roman Forem, the Temple of Romulus, son of the Emperor Maxentius, and the adjoining Templum sacroe urbis, the Roman land registry office. The pope converted the buildings into the Church of SS. Cosmas and Damian, which still exists and in the apse of which is preserved the large and magnificent mosaic executed by order of Felix, the figure of the pope, however, being a later restoration (see COSMAS AND DAMIAN). Felix also took part in the so-called Semipelagian conflict in Southern Gaul concerning the nature and efficiency of grace. He sent to the bishops of those parts a ser5ies of "Capitula", regarding grace and free will, compiled from Scripture and the Fathers. These capitula were published as canons at the Synod of Orange (529). In addition Felix approved the work of Caesarius of Arles against Faustus of Riez on grace and free will (De gratia et libero arbitrio). Rendered anxious by the political dissensions of the Romans, many of whom stood for the interests of Byzantium, while others supported Gothic Rule, Felix IV, when he fell seriously ill in the year 530, wished to ensure the peace of the Roman Church by naming his successor. Having given over to Archdeacon Boniface his pallium, he made it known publicly that he had chosen Boniface to succeed him, and that he had apprised the court of Ravenna of his action ("Neues Archiv", XI, 1886, 367; Duchesne, "Liber Pontificalis", I, 282, note 4). Felix IV died soon afterwards, but in the papal election which followed his wishes were disregarded (see BONIFACE II). The feast of Felix IV is celebrated on 30 January. The day of his death is uncertain, but it was probably towards the end of September, 530. J.P. KIRSCH Felix V Felix V Regnal name of Amadeus of Savoy, Antipope (1440-1449). Born 4 December, 1383, died at Ripaille, 7 January, 1451. The schismatic Council of Basle, having declared the rightful pope, Eugene IV, deposed, proceeded immediately with the election of an antipope. Wishing to secure additional influence and increased financial support, they turned their attention towards the rich and powerful prince, Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy. Amadeus had exercised over his dependencies a mild and equitable sway, and had evinced a great zeal for the interests of the Church, especially in connection with the Western Schism regarding the papal succession, brought to a close by the Council of Constance. Emperor Sigismund had shown his appreciation of this ruler's services by raising, in 1416, the former counts of Savoy to the status of a duchy, and in 1422 conferred on Arnadeus the county of Geneva. On the death of his wife, Maria of Burgundy, Duke Amadeus resolved to lead henceforth a life of contemplation, without however entirely resigning the government of his territories. He appointed his son Ludwig regent of the duchy, and retired to Ripaille on the Lake of Geneva, where in company with five knights whom he had formed into an Order of St. Maurice, he led a semi-monastic life in accordance with a rule drawn up by himself. Amadeus had been in close relations with the schismatic council of Basle; and was elected pope, 30 October, 1439, by the electoral college of that council, including one cardinal (d'Allamand of Aries), eleven bishops, seven abbots, five theologians, and nine canonists. After long negotiations with a deputation from the council, Amadeus acquiesced in the election, 5 Feb., 1440, completely renouncing at the same time all further participation in the government of his duchy. Ambition and a certain fantastic turn of character induced him to take this step. He took the name of Felix V, and was solemnly consecrated and crowned by the Cardinal d'Allamand, 24 July, 1440. Eugene IV had already excommunicated him, 23 March, at the council of Florence. Until 1442, the famous Aeneas Sylvinus Piccolomini, later Pius II, was the antipope's secretary. This renewal of the schism ruined any success of Basle assembly, just closed at Constance. Subsequently, Amadeus took up his residence in Savoy and Switzerland; his efforts to surround himself with a curia met with little success; many of those whom he named cardinals declined the dignity. He found general recognition only in Savoy and Switzerland, but his claims were also recognized by the Dukes of Austria, Tyrol, and Bayern-München, the Count-Palatine of Simmern, the Teutonic Order, some orders in Germany and some universities hitherto adherents of Basle. He was soon embroiled in a quarrel with the Council of Basle concerning his rights and the distribution of revenues. The rightful pope, Eugene IV, and his successor Nicolas V (1447), who were universally recognized from the first in Spain and Poland, found their claims even more widely admitted in France and Germany. In 1442, Felix left Basle, and on 16 May, 1443, occurred the last session of the Baste assembly. Felix, who had for the sake of its revenue assumed the administration of the Diocese of Geneva, clung for six years more to his usurped dignity but finally submtted (1449) to Nicolas V, received the title of Cardinal of St. Sabina, and was appointed permanent Apostolic vicar-general for all the states of the House of Savoy and for several dioceses (Basle, Strasburg, Chur, etc.). Thus ended the last papal schism. J.P. KIRSCH Celestin Joseph Felix Célestin Joseph Félix French Jesuit, b. at Neuville-sur-l' Escaut (Nord), 28 June 1810; d. at Lille, 7 July, 1891. He began his studies under the Brothers of Christian Doctrine, going later to the preparatory seminary at Cambrai, where he completed his secondary studies. In 1833 he was named professor of rhetoric, received minor orders and the diaconate, and in 1837 entered the Society of Jesus. He began his noviceship at Tronchiennes in Belgium, continued it at Saint-Acheul, and ended it at Brugelettes, where he studied philosophy and the sciences. Having completed his theological studies at Louvain, he was ordained in 1842 and returned to Brugelettes to teach rhetoric and philosophy. His earliest Lenten discourses, preached at Ath, and especially one on true patriotism, soon won him a brilliant reputations for eloquence. Called to Amiens in 1850, he introduced the teaching of rhetoric at the College de la Providence and preaching during Advent and Lent at the cathedral. His oratorical qualities becoming more and more evident, he was called to Paris. He first preached at St. Thomas d'Aquin in 1851, and in 1852 preached Lenten sermons at Saint-Germain-des-Pres, and those of Advent at Saint-Sulpice. It was then that Mgr. Sibour named him to succeed the Dominican, Father Lacordaire, and the Jesuit, Father de Ravignan in the pulpit of Notre-Dame (1853 to 1870). He became one of its brilliant orators. The conferences of the first three years have not been published in full. In 1856 Père Félix began the subject which he made the master-work of his life: "Progrès par le Christianisme". This formed the matter of a series of Lenten conferences which are preserved for us in fifteen voIumes, and which have lost none of their reality. True progress in all its forms, whether of the individual or of the family, in science, art, morals, or government, is herein treated with great doctrinal exactness and breadth of view. The practical conclusions of these conferences Père Félix summed up every year in his preaching of the Easter retreat, which had been inaugurated by Père de Ravignan. This was the side of his ministry which lay nearest his heart. While he was in Paris, and especially during his stay at Nancy (1867-1883), and at Lille (1883-1891), the illustrious Jesuit spoke in nearly all the great cathedrals of France and Belgium. In 1881 he even went to Copenhagen to conduct the Advent exercises, and there he held a celebrated conference on authority. Félix founded the Society of St. Michael for the distribution of good books and employed the leisure moments of his last years in the composition of several works and in the revision of his "Retraites a Notre-Dame", which he published in six volumes. The eloquence of Père Félix was charaeterised by clearness, vigorous logic, unction, and pathos, even in his reasoning. He lacked imagination and the enthusiasm of Lacordaire, but he was more skilled in dialectic and surer in doctrine. His diction was richer than that of de Ravignan, and while he was less didactic than Monsabré he was more original. A list of his works is given by Sommervozgel. LOUIS LALANDE Sts. Felix and Adauctus Sts. Felix and Adauctus Martyrs at Rome, 303, under Diocletian and Maximian. The Acts, first published in Ado's Martyrology, relate as follows: Felix, a Roman priest, and brother of another priest, also named Felix, being ordered to offer sacrifice to the gods, was brought by the prefect Dracus to the temples of Serapis, Mercury, and Diana. But at the prayer of the saint the idols fell shattered to the ground. He was then led to execution. On the way an unknown person joined him, professed himself a Christian, and also received the crown of martyrdom. The Christians gave him the name Adauctus (added). These Acts are considered a legendary embellishment of a misunderstood inscription by Pope Damasus. A Dracus cannot be found among the prefects of Rome; the other Felix of the legend is St. Felix of Nola; and Felix of Monte Pincio is the same Felix honoured on the Garden Hill. The brother is imaginary (Anal. Boll., XVI, 19-29). Their veneration, however, is very old; they are commemorated in the Sacramentary of Gregory the Great and in the ancient martyrologies. Their church in Rome, built over their graves, in the cemetery of Commodilla, on the Via Ostiensis, near the basilica of St. Paul, and restored by Leo III, was discovered about three hundred years ago and again unearthed in 1905 (Civiltà Catt., 1905, II, 608). Leo IV, about 850, is said to have given their relics to Irmengard, wife of Lothair I; she placed them in the abbey of canonesses at Eschau in Alsace. They were brought to the church of St. Stephen in Vienna in 1361. The heads are claimed by Anjou and Cologne. According to the "Chronicle of Andechs" (Donauwörth, 1877, p. 69), Henry, the last count, received the relics from Honorius III and brought them to the Abbey of Andechs. Their feast is kept on 30 August. Stokes in Dict. Christ. Biog., s. v. Felix (217); Acta SS., Aug., VI, 545; Stadler, Heiligenlexicon, s.v. FRANCIS MERSHMAN St. Felix of Cantalice St. Felix of Cantalice A Capuchin friar, b. at Cantalice, on the north-western border of the Abruzzi; d. at Rome, 18 May, 1587. His feast is celebrated among the Franciscans and in certain Italian dioceses on 18 May. He is usually represented in art as holding in his arms the Infant Jesus, because of a vision he once had, when the Blessed Virgin appeared to him and placed the Divine Child in his arms. His parents were peasant folk, and very early he was set to tend sheep. When nine years of age he was hired out to a farmer at Cotta Ducale with whom he remained for over twenty years, first as a shepherd-boy and afterwards as a farm labourer. But from his earliest years Felix evinced signs of great holiness, spending all his leisure time in prayer, either in the harsh or in some solitary place. A friend of his having read to him the lives ot the Fathers of the Desert, Felix conceived a great desire for the eremitical life, but at the same time feared to live otherwise than under the obedience of a superior. After seeking light in prayer, he determined to ask admittance amongst the Capuchins. At first the friars hesitated to accept him, but he eventually received the habit, in 1543, at Anticoli in the Roman Province. It was not without the severest temptations that he persevered and made his profession. These temptations were so severe as injure his bodily health. In 1547 he was sent to Rome and appointed questor for the community. Here he remained for the rest of his life, and in fulfilling his lowly office became a veritable apostle of Rome. The influence which he speedily gained with the Roman people is an evidence of the inherent power of personal holiness over the consciences of men. He had no learning he could not even read; yet learned theologians came to consult him upon the.science of the spiritual life and the Scriptures. Whenever he appeared in the streets of Rome vicious persons grew abased and withdrew from his sight. Sometimes Felix would stop them and earnestly exhort them to live a better life; especially did he endeavour to restrain young men. But judges and dignitaries also at times incurred his rebuke, he was no respecter of persons when it was a matter of preventing sin. On one occasion, during a Carnival, he and St. Philip Neri organized a procession with their crucifix; then came the Capuchin friars; last came Felix leading Fra Lupo, a well-known Capuchin preacher, by a rope round his neck, to represent Our Lord led to judgment by his executioners. Arrived in the middle of the revels, the procession halted and Fra Lupo preached to the people. The Carnival, with its open vice, was broken up for that year. But Felix's special apostolate was amongst the children of the city, with whom his childlike simplicity made him a special favourite. His method with these was to gather them together in bands and, forming circle, set them to sing canticles of his own composing, by which he taught them the beauty of a good life and the ugliness of sin. These canticles became popular and frequently, when on his rounds in quest of alms, Felix would be invited into the houses of his benefactors and asked to sing. He would seize the opportunity to bring home some spiritual truth in extemporized verse. During the famine of 1580 the directors of the city's charities asked his superiors to place Felix at their disposal to collect alms for the starving, and he was untiring in his quest. St. Philip Neri had a deep affection for the Capuchin lay brother, whom he once proclaimed the greatest saint then living in the Church. When St. Charles Borromeo sought St. Philip's aid in drawing up the constitutions of his Oblates, St. Philip took him to St. Felix as the most competent adviser in such matters. But through all, Felix kept his wonderful humility and simplicity. He was accustomed to style himself "Ass of the Capuchins". Acclaimed a Saint by the people of Rome, immediately after his death, he was beatified by Urban VIII in 1625, and canonized by Clement Xl in 1712. His body rests under an altar dedicated to him in the church of the Immaculate Conception to Rome. FATHER CUTHBERT St. Felix of Nola St. Felix of Nola Born at Nola, near Naples, and lived in the third century. After his father's death he distributed almost all his goods amongst the poor, and was ordained priest by Maximum Bishop of Nola. In the year 250, when the Decian persecution broke out, Maximus was forced to flee. The persecutors seized on Felix and he was cruelly scourged, loaded with chains, and cast into prison. One night an angel appeared to him and bade him go to help Maximus. His chains fell off, the doors opened, and the saint was enabled to bring relief to the bishop, who was then speechless from cold and hunger. On the persecutors making a second attempt to secure Felix, his escape was miraculously effected by a spider weaving her web over the opening of a hole into which he had just crept. Thus deceived, they sought their prey elsewhere. The persecution ceased the following year, and Felix, who had lain hidden in a dry well for six months, returned to his duties. On the death of Maximus he was earnestly desired as bishop, but he persuaded the people to choose another, his senior in the priesthood. The remnant of his estate having been confiscated in the persecution, he refused to take it back,and for his subsistence rented three acres of land, which he tilled with his own hands. Whatever remained over he gave to the poor, and if he had two coats at any time he invariably gave them the better. He lived to a ripe old age and died 14 January (on which day he is commemorated), but the year of his death is uncertain. Five churches were built in his honour, outside Nola, where his remains are kept, but some relics are also at Rome and Benevento. St. Paulinus, who acted as porter to one of these churches, testifies to numerous pilgrimages made in honour of Felix. The poems and letters of Paulinus on Felix are the source from which St. Gregory of Tours, Venerable Bede, and the priest Marcellus have drawn their biographies (see PAULINUS OF NOLA). There is another Felix of Nola, bishop and martyr under a Prefect Martianus. He is considered by some to be the same as the above. AMBROSE COLEMAN St. Felix of Valois St. Felix of Valois Born in 1127; d. at Cerfroi, 4 November, 1212. He is commemorated 20 November. He was surnamed Valois because, according to some, he was a member of the royal branch of Valois in France, according to others, because he was a native of the province of Valois. At an early age he renounced his possessions and retired to a dense forest in the Diocese of Meaux, where he gave himself to prayer and contemplation. He was joined in his retreat by St. John of Matha, who proposed to him the project of founding an order for the redemption of captives. After fervent prayer, Felix in company with John set out for Rome and arrived there in the beginning of the pontificate of Innocent III. They had letters of recommendation from the Bishop of Paris, and the new pope received them with the utmost kindness and lodged them in his palace. The project of founding the order was considered in several solemn conclaves of cardinals and prelates, and the pope after fervent prayer decided that these holy men were inspired by God, and raised up for the good of the Church. He solemnly confirmed their order, which he named the Order of the Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives. The pope commissioned the Bishop of Paris and the Abbot of St. Victor to draw up for the institute a rule, which was confirmed by the pope, 17 December, 1198. Felix returned to France to establish the order. He was received with great enthusiasm, and King Philip Augustus authorized the institute France and fostered it by signal benefactions. Margaret of Blois granted the order twenty acres of the wood where Felix had built his first hermitage, and on almost the same spot he erected the famous monastery of Cerfroi, the mother-house of the institute. Within forty years the order possessed six hundred monasteries in almost every part of the world. St. Felix and St. John of Matha were forced to part, the latter went to Rome to found a house of the order, the church of which, Santa Maria in Navicella, still stands on the Caeclian Hill. St. Felix remained in France to look after the interests of the congregation. He founded a house in Paris attached to the church of St. Maturinus, which afterwards became famous under Robert Guguin, master general of the order. Though the Bull of his canonization is no longer extant, it is the constant tradition of his institute that he was canonized by Urban IV in 1262. Du Plessis tells us that his feast was kept in the Diocese of Meaux in 1215. In 1666 Alexander VII declared him a saint because of immemorial cult. His feast was transferred to 20 November by Innocent XI in 1679. MICHAEL M. O'KANE Francois Xavier de Feller François-Xavier de Feller An author and apologist, b at Brussels 18 August, 1735; d. at Ratisbon 22 May, 1802. He received his primary scientific education in the Jesuit College at Luxemburg, studied philosophy and the exact sciences at Reims, 1752-54, after which he joined the Society of Jesus at Tournai. Appointed professor of humanities soon after, he edited the "Musae Leodienses" (Liège, 1761), a collection of Latin poems in two volumes composed lay his pulpils. Later he taught theology in various institutions of the order in Luxemburg and Tyrnau (Hungary). After the suppression of the order he was active as preacher in Liège and Luxemburg until, at the approach of the French army in 1794, he emigrated to Paderborn and joined the local college of the ex-Jesuits. After staying there two years, he accepted the invitation of the Prince of Hohenlohe to come to Bavaria and join the court of the Prince-Bishop of Freising and Ratisbon, Joseph Konrad von Schroffenburg, with whom he remained, dividing his time between Freising, Ratisbon, and Berchtesgaden. Feller was very amiable and talented, gifted with a prodigious memory, and combined diligent study with these abilities. His superiors had given him every opportunity during his travels of cultivating all the branches of science then known, and the wealth and diversity of his writings prove that he made good use of his advantages. All his writings attest his allegiance to the Jesuit Order and his untiring zeal for the Catholic religion and the Holy See. Although he became prominent as a literary man only after the suppression of his order, he had previously contributed articles of note to the periodical "La clef du cabinet des princes de l'Europe, ou recucil historique et politique sur les matières du temps" (Luxemburg, 1760). During the years 1773-1794 he was the sole contributor to this journal, which comprised in all sixty volumes and was, from the first mentioned date (1773), published under the title "Journal historique et litteraire". Because he publicly denounced the illegal and despotic attempts at reform on the part of Joseph II, the journal was suppressed in Austrian territory and was, consequently, transplanted first to Liège and then to Maastricht. Its principal articles were published separately as "Melanges de politique, de morale chrétienne et de littérature" (Louvain, 1822), and as "Cours de morale chrétienne et de littérature religieuse" (Paris, 1826). His next work of importance is entitled "Dictionnaire historique, ou histoire abrégée de tous les hommes qui se sont fait un nom par le genie, les talents, les vertus, les erreurs, etc., depuis le commencement du monde jusqu'a nos jours" (Augsburg, 1781-1784), 6 vols. He shaped this work on the model of a simular one by Chaudon without giving the latter due credit; he also showed a certain amount of prejudice, for the most part lauding the Jesuits as masters of science and underrating others, especially those suspected of Jansenistic tendencies. This work was frequently revised and republished, e.g. by Ecury, Ganith, Henrion, Pérennès, Simonin, Weiss, etc.; from 1837 it appeared under the title of "Biographie universelle". His principal work, which first appreared under the pen-name "Flexier de Reval", is "Catéchisme philosophique ou recueil d'observations propres à défendre la religion chrétienne contre ses ennemis" (Liège, 1772). In his treatise, "Jugement d'un écrivain protestant touchant le livre de Justinus Febronius" (Leipzig, 1770), he attacked the tenets of that anti-papal writer. Many of his works are only of contemporary interest. Biographie Universelle, XIII. 505; Hunter, Nomenclator. PATRICIUS SCHLAGER Johann Michael Nathanael Feneberg Johann Michael Nathanael Feneberg Born in Oberdorf, Allgau, Bavaria, 9 Feb., 1751; died 12 Oct., 1812. He studied at Kaufbeuren and in the Jesuit gymnasium at Augsburg, and in 1770 entered the Society of Jesus, at Landsberg, Bavaria. When the Society was suppressed in 1773, he left the town, but continued his studies, was ordained in 1775 and appointed professor in the gymnasium of St. Paul at Ratisbon. From 1778-85 he held a modest benefice at Oberdorf and taught a private school, in 1785 he was appointed professor of rhetoric and poetry at the gymnasium of Dillingen, but was removed in 1793, together with several other professors suspected of leanings towards Illuminism. A plan of studies drawn up by him for the gymnasium brought him many enemies also. He was next given the parish of Seeg comprising some two thousand five hundred and received as assistants the celebrated author Christoph Schmid, and X. Bayer. He was a model pastor in every respect. Within a short time he executed a chart of the eighty-five villages in his parish, and took a census of the entire district. In the first year of his pastoral service he sustained severe injuries by a fall from his horse, which necessitated the amputation of one leg just below the knee. He bore the operation without an anasthetic, and consoled himself for the loss of the limb by saying: Non pedibus, sed corde diligimus Deum (We love God notwith our feet but with our hearts). Shortly after, his relations with the priest Martin Boos led him to be suspected of false mysticism. Boos had created such a sensation by his sermons that he was compelled to flee for safety. He took at Seeg with Feneberg, who was a relation and assisted him in parochial for nearly a year. In the meantime he strove to convert or "awaken" Feneberg life, the life of faith and to the exclusion of good works. Boos's followers were called the Erweckten Brüder (Awakened Brethren). Among these brethren, many of whom were priests, Feneberg was called Nathanael and his two assistants Markus and Silas. Boos's preaching and conduct at Seeg was reported to the ordinary of Augsburg, and Feneberg, with his assistants, Bayer and Siller, were also involved. In February, 1797, an episcopal commissioner arrived in Seeg, and in Feneberg's absence seized all his papers, private correspondence and manuscripts, and carried them to Augsburg. Feneberg, with his assistants, appeared before an ecclesiastical tribunal at Augsburg in August, 1797; they were required to subscribe to the condemnation of ten erroneous propositions and then permitted to return to their parish. They all protested that they had never held any of the propositions in the sense implied. It does not appear that Feneberg was subsequently molested in this connection, nor did he ever fail to show due respect and obedience to the ecclesiastical authorities. In 1805 he resigned the parish of Seeg and accepted that of Vohringen, which was smaller but returned slightly better revenues. This appointment and the assistance of generous friends enabled him to pay the debts he had incurred on account of his trouble and the political disturbances of the time. For a month before his death he suffered great bodily pain but he prayed unceasingly, and devoutedly receiving the sacraments expired. He remained friendly to Boos even after the latter's condemnation, and regretted that his friend, Bishop Sailer, was not more sympathetic to mysticism. Feneberg was a man of singular piety, candour, and zeal but failed to see the dangers lurking in Boos pietism. Numbers of the disciples of Boos--as many as four hundred at one time--became Protestants, although he himself remained nominally in the Church. Feneberg is the author of a translation of the New Testament, which was published by Bishop Wittmann of Ratishon. ALEXIS HOFFMANN Francois Fenelon François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon A celebrated French bishop and author, b. in the Château de Fénelon in Périgord (Dordogne), 6 August, 1651; d. at Cambrai, 7 January, 1715. He came of ancient family of noble birth but small means, the most famous of his ancestors being Bertrand de Salignac (d. 1599), who fought at Metz under the Duke Guise and became ambassador to England; also François de Salignac I, Louis de Salignac I, Louis de Saligac II, and François de Salignac II, bishops of Sarlat between 1567 and 1688. Fénelon was the second of the three children of Pons de Salignac, Count de La Mothe-Fénelon, by his second wife, Louise de La Cropte. Owing to his delicate health Fénelon's childhood was passed in his father's château under a tutor, who succeeded in giving him a keen taste for the classics and a considerable knowledge of Greek literature, which influenced the development of his mind in marked degree. At the age of twelve he was sent to the neighbouring University of Cahors, where he studied rhetoric and philosophy, and obtained his first degrees. As he had already expressed his intention of entering the Church, one of his uncles, Marquis Antoine de Fénelon, a friend of Monsieur Olier and St. Vincent de Paul, sent him to Paris and placed him in the Collège du Plessis, whose students followed the course of theology at the Sorbonne. There Fénelon became a friend of Antoine de Noailles, afterwards, Cardinal and Archbishop of Paris, and showed such decided talent that at the age of fifteen he was chosen to preach a public sermon, in which he acquitted admirably. To facilitate his preparation for the priesthood, the marquis sent his nephew to the Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice (about 1672), then under the direction of Monsieur Tronson, but the young man was placed in the small community reserved for ecclesiastics whose health did not permit them to follow the excessive exercises of the seminary. In this famous school, of which he always retained affectionate memories. Fénelon was grounded not only in the practice of piety and priestly virtue, but above all in solid Catholic doctrine, which saved him later from Jansenism and Gallicanism. Thirty years later, in a letter to Clement XI, he congratulates himself on his training by M. Tronson in the knowledge of his Faith and the duties of the ecclesiastical life. About 1675 he was ordained priest and for a while thought of devoting himself to the Eastern missions. This was, however, only a passing inclination. Instead he joined the commuity of Saint Sulpice and gave himself up to the works of the priesthood especially preaching and catechizing. In 1678 Harlay de Champvallon, Archbishop of Paris, entrusted Fénelon with the direction of the house of "Nouvelles-Catholiques", a community founded in 1634 by Archbishop Jean-François de Gondi for Protestant young women about to enter the Church or converts who needed to be strengthened in the Faith. It was a new and delicate form of apostolate which thus offered itself to Fénelon's zeal and required all the resources of his theological knowledge, persuasive eloquence, and magnetic personality. Within late years his conduct has been severely criticized, and he has been even called intolerant but these charges are without serious foundation and have not been accepted even by the Protestant authors of the "Encyclopédie des Sciences Religieuses"; their verdict on Fénelon is that in justice to him it must be said that in making converts he ever employed persuasion rather than severity". When Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, by which Henry IV had granted freedom of public worship to the Protestants, missionaries were chosen from among the greatest orators of the day, e.g. Bourdaloue, Fléchier, and others, and were sent to those parts of France where heretics were most numerous, to labour for their conversion. At the suggestion of his friend Bossuet, Fénelon was sent with five companions to Santonge, where he manifested great zeal, though his methods were always tempered by gentleness. According to Cardinal de Bausset, he induced Louis XIV to remove all troops and all evidences of compulsion from the places he visited, and it is certain that he proposed and insisted on many methods of which the king did not approve. "When hearts are to be moved", he wrote to Seignelay," force avails not. Conviction is the only real conversion". Instead of force he employed patience, established classes, and distributed New Testaments and catechisms in the vernacular. Above all, he laid especial emphasis on preaching provided the sermons were by gentle preachers who have a faculty not only for instructing but for winning the confidence of their hearers". It is doubtless true, as recently published documents prove, that he did not altogether repudiate measures of force, but he only allowed them as a last resource. Even then his severity was confined to exiling from their villages a few recalcitrants and to constraining others under the small penalty of five sous to attend the religious instructions in the churches. Nor did he think that preachers ought to advocate openly even these measures; similarly he was unwilling to have known the Catholic authorship of pamphlets against Protestant ministers which he proposed to have printed in Holland. This was certainly an excess of cleverness; but it proves at least that Fénelon was not in sympathy with that vague tolerance founded on scepticism which the eighteenth century rationalists charged him with. In such matters he shared the opinions of all the other great Catholics of his day. With Bossuet and St. Augustine he held that "to be obliged to do good is always an advantage and that heretics and schismatics, when forced to apply their minds to the consideration of truth, eventually lay aside their erroneous beliefs, whereas they would never have examined these matters had not authority constrained them." Before and after his mission at Saintonge, which lasted but a few months (1686-1687), Fénelon formed many dear friendships. Bossuet was already his friend, the great bishop was at the summit of his fame, and was everywhere looked up to as the oracle of the Church of France. Fénelon showed him the utmost deference, visited him at his country-house at Germany, and assisted at his spiritual conferences and his lectures on the Scriptures at Versailles. It was under his inspiration, perhaps even at his request, that Fénelon wrote about this time his "Réfutation du système de Malebranche sur la nature et sur la grâce". In this he attacks with great velour and at length the theories of the famous Oratorian on optimism, the Creation, and the Incarnation. This treatise, though annoted by Bousset, Fénelon considered it unwise to publish; it saw the light only in 1820. First among the friends of Fénelon at this period were the Duc de Bauvilliers and the Duc de Chevreuse, two influential courtiers, eminent for their piety, who had married two daughters of Colbert, minister of Louis XIV. One of these, the Duchesse de Beauvilliers, mother of eight daughters, asked Fénelon for advice concerning their education. His reply was the "Traité de l'education des filles", in which he insists on education begining at an early age and on the instruction of girls in all the duties of their future condition of life. The religious teaching he recommends is one solid enough to enable them to refute heresies if necessary. He also advises a more serious course of studies than was then customary. Girls ought to be learned without pedantry; the form of instruction should be concrete, sensible, agreeable, and prudent, in a manner to aid their natural abilities. In many ways his pedagogy was ahead of his time, and we may yet learn much from him. The Duc de Beauvilliers, who had been the first to test in his own family the value of the "Traité de l'education des filles", was in 1689 named governor of the grandchildren of Louis XIV. He hastened to secure Fénelon as tutor to the eldest of these princes, the Duke of Burgundy. It was a most important post, seeing that the formation of the future King of France lay in his hands; but it was not without great difficulties, owing to the violent, haughty, and character of the pupil. Fénelon brought to his task a whole-hearted zeal and devotion. Everything down to, the Latin themes and versions, was made to serve in the taming of this impetuous spirit. Fénelon prepared them the better to his plans. With the same object in view, he wrote his "Fables" and his "Dialogues des Morts", but especially his "Télémaque", in which work, under the guise of pleasant fiction, he taught the young prince lessons of self-control, and all the duties required by his exalted position. The results of this training were wonderful. The historian Saint-Simon, as a rule hostile to Fénelon, says: "De cet abîme sortit un prince, affable, doux, modéré, humain, patient, humble, tout appliqué à ses devoirs." It has been asked in our day if Fénelon did not succeed too well. When the prince grew to man's estate, his piety seemed often too refined; he was continually examining himself, reasoning for and against, till he was unable to reach a definite decision, his will being paralysed by fear of doing the wrong thing. However, these defects of character, against which Fénelon in his letters was the first to protest, did not show themselves in youth. About 1695 every one who came in contact with the prince was in admiration at the change in him. To reward the tutor, Louis XIV gave him, in 1694, the Abbey of Saint-Valéry, with its annual revenue of fourteen thousand livres. The Académie had opened its doors to him and Madame de Maintenon, the morganatic wife of the king, began to consult him on matters of conscience, and on the regulation of the house of Saint-Cyr, which she had just established for the training of young girls. Soon afterwards the archiepiscopal See of Cambrai, one of the best in France, fell vacant, and the king offered it to Fénelon, at the same time expressing a wish that he would continue to instruct the Duke of Burgundy. Nominated in February, 1696, Fénelon was consecrated in August of the same year by Bossuet in the chapel of Saint-Cyr. The future of the young prelate looked brilliant, when he fell into deep disgrace. The cause of Fénelon's trouble was his connection with Madame Guyon, whom he had met in the society of his friends, the Beauvilliers and the Chevreuses. She was a native of Orléans, which she left when about twenty-eight years old, a widowed mother of three children, to carry on a sort of apostolate of mysticism, under the direction of Père Lacombe, a Barnabite. After many journeys to Geneva, and through Provence and Italy, she set forth her ideas in two works, "Le moyen court et facile de faire oraison" and "Les torrents spirituels". In exaggerated language characteristic of her visionary mind, she presented a system too evidently founded on the Quietism of Molinos, that had just been condemned by Innocent XI in 1687. There were, however, great divergencies between the two systems. Whereas Molinos made man's earthly perfection consist in a state of uninterrupted contemplation and love, which would dispense the soul from all active virtue and reduce it to absolute inaction, Madame Guyon rejected with horror the dangerous conclusions of Molinos as to the cessation of the necessity of offering positive resistance to temptation. Indeed, in all her relations with Père Lacombe, as well as with Fénelon, her virtuous life was never called in doubt. Soon after her arrival in Paris she became acquainted with many pious persons of the court and in the city, among them Madame de Maintenon and the Ducs de Beauvilliers and Chevreuse, who introduced her to Fénelon. In turn, he was attracted by her piety, her lofty spirituality, the charm of her personality, and of her books. It was not long, however, before the Bishop of Chartres, in whose diocese Saint-Cyr was, began to unsettle the mind of Madame de Maintenon by questioning the orthodoxy of Madame Guyon's theories. The latter, thereupon, begged to have her works submitted to an ecclesiastical commission composed of Bossuet, de Noailles, who was then Bishop of Châlons, later Archbishop of Paris, and M. Tronson; superior of-Saint-Sulpice. After an examination which lasted six months, the commission delivered its verdict in thirty-four articles known as the "Articles d' Issy", from the place near Paris where the commission sat. These articles, which were signed by Fénelon and the Bishop of Chartres, also by the members of the commission, condemned very briefly Madame Guyon's ideas, and gave a short exposition of the Catholic teaching on prayer. Madame Guyon submitted to the condemnation, but her teaching spread in England, and Protestants, who have had her books reprinted have always expressed sympathy with her views. Cowper translated some of her hymns into English verse; and her autobiography was translated into English by Thomas Digby (London, 1805) and Thomas Upam (New York, 1848). Her books have been long forgotten in France. In accordance with the decisions taken at Issy, Bossuet now wrote his instruction on the "Etats d' oraison", as an explanation of the thirty-four articles. Fénelon refused to sign it, on the plea that his honour forbade him to condemn a woman who had already been condemned. To explain his own views of the "Articles d'Issy", he hastened to publish the "Explication des Maximes des Saints", a rather arid treatise in forty-five articles. Each article was divided into two paragraphs, one laying down the true, the other the false, teaching concerning the love of God. In this work he undertakes to distinguish clearly every step in the upward way of the spiritual life. The final end of the Christian soul is pure love of God, without any admixture of self-interest, a love in which neither fear of punishment nor desire of reward has any part. The means to this end, Fénelon points out, are those Iong since indicated by the Catholic mystics, i.e. holy indifference, detachment, self-abandonment, passiveness, through all of which states the soul is led by contemplation. Fénelon's book was scarcely published when it aroused much opposition. The king, in particular, was angry. He distrusted all religious novelties, and he reproached Bossuet with not having warned him of the ideas of his grandsons' tutor. He appointed the Bishops of Meaux, Chartes, and Paris to examine Fénelon's work and select passages for condemnation, but Fénelon himself submitted the book to the judgement of Holy See (27 April, 1697). A vigorous conflict broke out at once, particularly between Bossuet and Fénelon. Attack and reply followed too fast for analysis here. The works of Fénelon on the subject fill six volumes, not to speak of the 646 letters relating to Quietism, the writer proving himself a skillful polemical writer, deeply versed in spiritual things, endowed with quick intelligence and a mental suppleness not always to be clearly distinguished from quibbling and a straining of the sense. After a long and detailed examination by the consultors and cardinals of the Holy Office, lasting over two years and occupyng 132 sessions, "Les Maxims des Saints" was finally condemned (12 March, 1699) as containing propositions which, in the obvious meaning of the words, or else because of the sequence of the thoughts, were "temerarious, scandalous, ill-sounding, offensive to pious ears, pernicious in practice, and false in fact". Twenty-three propositions were selected as having incurred this censure, but the pope by no means intended to imply that he approved the rest of the book. Fénelon submitted at once. "We adhere to this brief", he wrote in a pastoral letter in which he made known Rome's decision to the flock, "and we accept it not only for the twenty three propositions but for the whole book, simply, absolutely, and without a shadow of reservation." Most of his contemporaries found his submission adequate, edifying and admirable. In recent times, however, scattered letters have enabled a few critics to doubt its sincerity. In our opinion a few words written impulsively, and contradicted by the whole tenor of the writers's life, cannot justify so grave a charge. It must be remembered, too, that at the meeting of the bishops held to receive the Brief of condemnation, Fénelon declared that he laid aside his own opinion and accepted the judgement of Rome, and that if this act of submission seemed lacking in any way, he was ready to do whatever Rome would suggest. The Holy See never required anything more than the above-mentioned spontaneous act. Louis XIV, who had done all he could to bring the condemnation of the "Maximes des Saints", had already punished its author by ordering him to remain within the limits of his diocese. Vexed later at the publication of "Télémaque", in which he saw his person and his government subjected to criticism, the king could never be prevailed upon to revoke this command. Fénelon submitted without complaint or regret, and gave himself up entirely to the care of his flock. With a revenue of two hundred thousand livres and eight hundred parishes, some of which were on Spanish territory, Cambrai, which had been regained by France only in 1678, was one of the most important sees in the kingdom. Fénelon gave up several months of each year to a visitation of his archdiocese, which was not even interrupted by the War of the Spanish Succession, when opposing armies were camped in various parts of his territory. The captains of these armies, full of veneration for his Fénelon, left him free to come and go as he would. The remainder of the year he spent in his episcopal palace at Cambrai, where with his relatives and his friends, the Abbés de Langeron, de Chanterac, and de Beaumont, he led an uneventful life, monastic in its regularity. Every year he gave a Lenten course in one or other important parish of his diocese, and on the principal feasts he preached in his own cathedral. His sermons were short and simple composed after a brief meditation, and never committed to writing; with the exception of some few preached on more important occasions, they have not been preserved. His dealings with his clergy were always marked by condescension and cordiality. "His priests", says Saint-Simon, "to whom he made himself both father and brother, bore him in their hearts." He took a deep interest in their seminary training, assisted at the examination of those who were to be ordained, and gave them conferences during their retreat. He presided over the concursus for benefices and made inquiries among the pastors concerning the qualifications of each candidate. Fénelon was always approachable, and on his walks often conversed with those he chanced to meet. He loved to visit the peasants in their houses, interested himself in their joys and sorrows, and, to avoid paining them, accepted the simple gifts of their hospitality. During the War of the Spanish Succession the doors of his palace were open to all the poor who took refuge in Cambrai. The rooms and stairways were filled with them, and his gardens and vestibules sheltered their live stock. He is yet remembered in the vicinity of Cambrai and the peasants still give their children the name Fénelon, as that of a saint. Engrossed as Fénelon was with the administration of his diocese, he never lost sight of the general interests of the Church. This became evident when Jansenism, quiescent for nearly thirty years, again raised its head on the occasion of the famous Cas de Conscience, by which an anonymous writer endeavoured to put new life into the old distinction between the "question of law" and "question of fact" (question de droit et question de fait), acknowledging that the Church could legally condemn the famous five propositions attributed to Jansenius, but denying that she could oblige any one to believe that they were really to be found in the "Augustinus" of that writer. Fénelon multiplied publications of every kind against the reviving heresy; he wrote letters, pastoral instruction, memoirs, in French and in Latin, which fill seven volumes of his works. He set himself to combat the errors of the Cas de Conscience, to refute the theory known as "respectful silence", and to enlighten Clement XI on public opinion in France Père Quesnel brought fresh fuel to the strife by his "Reflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament", which was solemnly condemned by the Bull "Unigenitus" (1713). Fénelon defended this famous pontifical constitution in a series of dialogues intended to influence men of the world. Great as was his zeal against error, he was always gentle with the erring so that Saint-Simon could say "The Low Countries swarmed with Jansenists, and his Diocese of Cambrai, in particular, was full of them. In both places they found an ever-peaceful refuge, and were glad and content to here peaceably under one who was their enemy with his pen. They had no fears of their archbishop, who, though opposed to their beliefs, did not disturb their tranquillity." In spite of the multiplicity of his labours, Fénelon found time to carry on an absorbing correspondence with his relatives, friends, priests, and in fact every one who sought his advice. It is in this mass of correspondence, ten volumes of which have reached us, that we may see Fénelon as a director of souls. People of every sphere of life, men and women of the work, religious, soldiers, courtiers, servants, are here met with, among them Mesdames de Maintenon, de Gramont, de la Maisonfort, de Montebron, de Noailles, members of the Colbert family, the Marquis de Seignelay, the Duc de Chaulnes, above all the Ducs de Chevreuse and de Beauvilliers, not forgetting the Duke of Burgundy. Fénelon shows how well he possessed all the qualities he required from directors, patience, knowledge of the human heart and the spiritual life, equanimity of disposition, firmness, and straightforwardness, "together with a quiet gaiety" altogether removed from any stern or affected austerity". In return he required docility of mind and entire submission of will. He aimed at leading souls to the pure love of God, as far as such a thing is humanly possible, for though the errors of the "Maximes des Saints" do not reappear in the letters of direction, it is still the same Fénelon, with the same tendencies, the same aiming at self-abandonment and detachment from all personal interests, all kept, however, within due limits; for as he says "this love of God does not require all Christians to practice austerities like those of the ancient solitaries, but merely that they be sober, just, and moderate in the use of all things expedient"; nor does piety, "like temporal affairs, exact a long and continuous application"; "the practice of devotion is in no way incompatible with the duties of one's state in life". The desire to teach his disciples the secret of harmonizing the duties of religion with those of everyday life suggests to Fénelon all sorts of advice, sometimes most unexpected from the pen of a director, especially when he happens to be dealing with his friends at court. This has given occasion to some of his critics to accuse him of ambition, and of being as anxious to control the state as to guide souls. It is especially in the writings intended for the Duke of Burgundy that his political ideas are apparent. Besides a great number of letters, he sent him through his friends, the Ducs de Beauvilliers and de Chevreuse, an "Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de la Royauté", nine memoirs on the war of the Spanish Succession, and "Plans de Gouvernement, concretes avec le Duc de Chevreuse". If we add to this the "Télémaque", the "Lettre à Louis XIV", the "Essai sur le Gouvernement civil", and the "Mémoires sur les precautions à prendre après la mort du Duc de Bourgogne", we have a complete exposition of Fénelon's political ideas. We shall indicate only the points in which they are original for the period when they were written. Fénelon's ideal government was a monarchy limited by an aristocracy. The king was not to have absolute power; he was to obey the laws, which he was to draw up with the co-operation of the nobility; extraordinary subsidies were to be levied only with the consent of the people. At other times he was to be assisted by the States-General, which was to meet every three years, and by provincial assemblies, all to be advisory bodies to the king rather than representative assemblies. The state was to have charge of education; it was to control public manners by sumptuary legislation and to forbid both sexes unsuit able marriages (mésalliances). The temporal arm and the spiritual arm were to be independent of each other, but to afford mutual support. His ideal state is outlined with much wisdom in his political writings are to be found many ohservations remarkably judicious but also not a little Utopianism. Fénelon also took much interest in literature and philosophy. Monsieur Dacier, perpetual secretary to the Académie Française, having requested him, in the name of that body, to furnish him with his views on the works it ought to undertake when the "Dictionnaire" was finished, Fénelon replied in his "Lettre sur les occupations de l'Académie Française", a work still much admired in France. This letter, which treats of the French tongue, of rhetoric, poetry, history, and ancient and modern writers, exhibits a well-balanced mind acquainted with all the masterpieces of antiquity, alive to the charm of simplicity, attached to classical traditions yet discreetly open to new ideas (especially in history), also, however, to some chimerical theories, at least concerning things poetical. At this very time the Duc d'Orléans, the future regent was consulting him on quite different subjects. This prince, a sceptic through circumstances rather than by any force of reasoning, profited by the appearance of Fénelon's "Traité de l'existence de Dieu" to ask its author some questions on the worship due to God, the immortality of the soul, and free will. Fénelon replied in a series of letters, only the first three of which are answers to the difficulties proposed by the prince. Together they form a continuation of the "Traité de l'existence de Dieu", the first part of which had been published in 1712 without Fénelon's knowledge. The second part appeared only in 1718, after its author's death. Though an almost forgotten work of his youth, it was received with much approval, and was soon translated into English and German. It is from his letters and this treatise that we learn something about the philosophy of Fénelon. It borrows from both St. Augustine and Descartes. For Fénelon the strongest arguments for the existence of God were those based on final causes and on the idea of the infinite, both developed along broad lines and with much literary charm, rather than with precision or originality. Fénelon's last years were saddened by the death of his best friends. Towards the end of 1710 he lost Abbe de Langeron, his lifelong companion; in February, 1712, his pupil, the Duke of Burgundy, died. A few months later the Duc de Chevreuse was taken away, and the Duc de Beauvilliers followed in August, 1714. Fénelon survived him only a few months, making a last request to Louis XIV to appoint a successor firm against Jansenism, and to favour the introduction of Sulpicians into his seminary. With him disappeared one of the most illustrious members of the French episcopate, certainly one of the most attractive men of his age. He owed his success solely to his great talents and admirable virtues. The renown he enjoyed during life increased after his death. Unfortunately, however, his fame among Protestants was largely due to his opposition to Bossuet, and among the philosophers to the fact that he opposed and was punished by Louis XIV. Fénelon is therefore for them a precursor of their own tolerant scepticism and their infidel philosophy, a forerunner of Rousseau, beside whom they placed him on the facade of the Pantheon. In our days a reaction has set in, due to the cult of Bossuet and the publication of Fénelon's correspondence, which has brought into bolder relief the contrasts of his character, showing him at once an ancient and a modern, Christian and profane, a mystic and a statesman, democrat and aristocrat, gentle and obstinate, frank and subtle. He would perhaps have seemed more human in our eyes were he a lesser rnan; nevertheless he remains one of the most attractive, brilliant, and puzzling figures that the Catholic Church has ever produced. The most convenient and best edition of Fénelon's works is that begun by Lebel at Versailles in 1820 and completed at Paris by Leclere in 1830. It comprises twenty-two volumes, besides eleven volumes of letters, in all thirty-three volumes, not including an index volume. The various works are grouped under five five headings: (I) Theological and controversial works (Vols. I-XVI), of which the principal are: "Traité de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu", letters on various metaphysical and religious subjects; "Traité du ministère des pasteurs"; "De Summi Pontificis auctoritate", "Réfutation du système du P. Malebranche sur la nature et la grâce"; "Lettre à l'Evêque d'Arras sur la lecture de l'Ecriture Sainte en langue vulgaire", works on Quietisin and Jansenism. (2) Works on moral and spiritual subjects (Vols. XVII and XVIII): "Traité de l'éducation des filles"; sermons and works on piety. (3) Twenty-four pastoral charges (XVIII). (4) Literary works (Vols. XIX-XXII): "Dialogues des Morts"; "Télémaque"; "Dialogues sur l'éloquence". (5) Political writings (Vol. XXII): "Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de la Royauté"; various memoirs on the War of the Spanish Succession; "Plans du Gouvernement concertes avec le Duc de Chevreuse". The correspondence includes letters to friends at court, as Beauvilliers, Chevreuse, and the Duke of Burgundy; letters of direction, and letters on Quietism. To these must be added the "Explication des rnaximes des Saints sur la vie lnterieure" (Paris, 1697). DE RAMSAY, Histoire de vie et des ouvrages de Fénelon (London, 1723), De BAUSSET, Histoire de Fénelon (Paris. 1808); TABARAND, Supplement aux histoires de Bossuet et de Fénelon (Paris, 1822), De BROGLIE, Feneton a Cambrai (Paris, 1884); JANET, Fénelon (Paris, 1892); CROUSLE, Fénelon et Bossuet (2 vols., Paris, 1894); DRUON, Fénelon archeveque de Cambrai (Paris, 1905); CAGNAC, Fénelon directeur de conscience (Paris, 1903); BRUNETIRE in La Grande Encyclopedie, s.v.; IDEM, Etudes critiques sur l'histoire de la Iitterature française (Paris, 1893); DOUEN, L'intolerance de Fénelon (2d ed., Paris,1875); VERLAQUE, Lettres inedites de Fénelon (Paris, 1874)); IDEM, Fénelon Missionnaire (Marseilles, 1884); GUERRIER, Madam Guion, sa vie, sa doctrine, et son influence (Orléans, 1881); MASSON, Fénelon et Madame Guyon (Paris, 1907): DELPHANQUE, Fénelon et la doctrine de l'amour pur (Lille, 1907): SCANNELL, François Fénelon in lrish Eccl. Record, XI, (1901) 1-15, 413-432. ANTOINE DEGERT John Fenn John Fenn Born at Montacute near Wells in Somersetshire; d. 27 Dec., 1615. He was the eldest brother of Ven. James Fenn, the martyr, and Robert Fenn, the confessor. After being a chorister at Wells Cathedral, he went to Winchester School in 1547, and in 1550 to New College, Oxford, of which he was elected fellow in 1552. Next year he became head master of the Bury St. Edmunds' grammar-school, but was deprived of this office and also of his fellowship for refusing to take the oath of supremacy under Elizabeth. He thereupon went to Rome where after four years' study he was ordained priest about 1566. Having for a time been chaplain to Sir William Stanley's regiment in Flanders he settled at Louvain, where he lived for forty years. A great and valuable work to which he contrituted was the publication, in 1583, by Father John Gibbons, S.J., of the various accounts of the persecution, under the Title "Concertatio Ecclesiae Catholicae in Angliâ", which was the groundwork of the invaluable larger collection published by Bridgewater under the same name in 1588. He also collected from old English sources some spiritual treatises for the Brigettine nuns of Syon. In 1609, when the English Augustinian Canonnesses founded St. Monica's Priory at Louvain, he became their first chaplain until in 1611 when his sight failed. Even then he continued to live in the priory and the nuns tended him till his death. Besides his "Vitae quorundam Martyrum in Angliâ", included in the "Concertatio", he translated into Latin Blessed John Fisher's "Treatise on the penitential Psalms" (1597) and two of his sermons; he also published English versions of the Catechism of the Council of Trent, Osorio's reply to Haddon's attack on his letter to Queen Elizabeth (1568), Guerra's "Treatise of Tribulation", an Italian life of St. Catherine of Sienna (1609; 1867), and Loarte's "Instructions How to Meditate the Misteries of the Rosarie". PITS, De Illustribus Angliae Scriptoribus (Paris, 1623); DODD, Church History (Brussels, 1737-42), I, 510; WOOD, ed. BLISS, Athenae Oxonienses, II,; GILLOW, Bibl. Dict. Eng. Cath., s.v.; COOPER in Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v.; HAMILTON, Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses of St. Monica's Louvain (London, 1904). EDWIN BURTON Ferber, Nicolaus Nicolaus Ferber A Friar Minor and controversialist, born at Herborn, Germany, in 1485; died at Toulouse, 15 April, 1534. He was made provincial of the Franciscan province of Cologne and was honoured by Clement VII with the office of vicar-general of that branch of the order known as the Cismontane Observance, in which capacity he visited the various provinces of the order in England, Germany, Spain, and Belgium. At the instance of the bishops of Denmark, he was called to Copenhagen to champion the Catholic cause against Danish Lutheranism, and there he composed, in 1530, the "Confutatio Lutheranismi Danici", first edited by L. Schmitt, S.J., and published at Quaracchi (1902), which earned for him the sobriquet of Stagefyr (fire-brand). Ferber's principal work is entitled: "Locorum communium adversus hujus temporis hæreses Enchiridion", published at Cologne in 1528, with additions in 1529. Besides this he wrote "Assertiones CCCXXV adversus Fr. Lamberti paradoxa impia" etc. (Cologne, 1526, and Paris, 1534); and "Enarrationes latinæ Evangeliorum quadragesimalium", preached in German and published in Latin (Antwerp, 1533). SCHMITT. Der Kölner Theolog Nicolaus Stagefyr und der Franziskaner Nicolaus Herborn (Freiburg, 1896); HURTER, Nomenclator (Innsbruck, 1906), II, 1255-56; SBARALEA, Supplementum ad scriptores Ordinis Menorum, 556. STEPHEN M. DONOVAN. Blessed Ferdinand Blessed Ferdinand Prince of Portugal, b. in Portugal, 29 September, 1402; d. at Fez, in Morocco, 5 June, 1443. He was one of five sons, his mother being Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and his father King John I, known in history for his victories over the Moors and in particular for his conquest of Ceuta, a powerful Moorish stronghold, and his establishment of an episcopal see within its walls. In early life Ferdinand suffered much from sickness, but bodily weakness did not hinder his growth in spirit, and even in his boyhood and youth he gave evidence of remarkable qualities of soul and intellect. With great strength of character and a keen sense of justice and order he combined an innocence, gentleness, and charity which excited the wonder of the royal court. He had a special predilection for prayer and for the ceremonies and devotions of the Church. After his fourteenth year he recited daily the canonical hours, rising at midnight for Matins. Always severe with himself, he was abstemious in his diet and fasted on Saturdays and on the eves of the feasts of the Church. He cared for the spiritual as well as the corporal necessities of his domestics, while his solicitude for the poor and oppressed was unbounded. His generosity towards the monasteries was impelled by his desire to share in their prayers and good works. He had himself enrolled for the same reason in all the pious congregations of the kingdom. Upon the death of his father in 1433, his brother Edward (Duarte) ascended the throne, while he himself received but a small inheritance. It was then that he was induced to accept the grand-mastership of Aviz, in order that he might be better able to help the poor. As he was not a cleric, his brother, the king, obtained for him the necessary papal dispensation. The fame of his charity went abroad, and Pope Eugene IV, through the papal legate, offered him the cardinal's hat. This he refused, not wishing, as he declared, to burden his conscience. Though living a life of great sanctity in the midst of the court, Ferdinand was not a mere recluse. He was also a man of action, and in his boyhood his soul was stirred by the heroic campaign against Ceuta. His mother, the queen, had nurtured the martial spirit of her sons, and it is even said that on her deathbed she gave them each a sword, charging them to use it in defence of widows, orphans, and their country, and in particular against unbelievers. An opportunity soon presented itself. In 1437 Edward planned an expedition against the Moors in Africa and placed his brothers Henry and Ferdinand in command. They set sail 22 Aug., 1437, and four days later arrived at Ceuta. During the voyage Ferdinand became dangerously ill, in consequence of an abcess and fever which he had concealed before the departure, in order not to delay the fleet. Through some mismanagement the Portuguese numbered only 6000 men, instead of 14,000, as ordered by the king. Though advised to wait for reinforcements, the two princes, impatient for the fray, advanced towards Tangiers, to which they lay siege. Ferdinand recovered slowly, but was not able to take part in the first battle. The Portuguese fought bravely against great odds, but were finally compelled to make terms with the enemy, agreeing to restore Ceuta in return for a safe passage to their vessels. The Moors likewise demanded that one of the princes be delivered into their hands as a hostage for the delivery of the city. Ferdinand offered himself for the dangerous post, and with a few faithful followers, including João Alvarez, his secretary and later his biographer, began a painful captivity which ended only with his death. He was first brought to Arsilla by Salà ben Salà, the Moorish ameer. In spite of sickness and bodily sufferings, he continued all his devotions and showed great charity towards his Christian fellow-captives. Henry at first repaired to Ceuta, where he was joined by his brother John. Realizing that it would be difficult to obtain the royal consent to the restoration of the fortress, they proposed to exchange their brother for the son of Salà ben Salà, whom Henry held as a hostage. The Moor scornfully rejected the proposal, and both returned to Portugal to devise means of setting the prince free. Though his position was perilous in the extreme, the Portuguese Cortes refused to surrender Ceuta, not only on account of the treachery of the Moors, but because the place had cost them so dearly and might serve as a point of departure for future conquests. It was resolved to ransom him if possible. Salà ben Salà refused all offers, his purpose being to recover his former seat of government. Various attempts were made to free the prince, but all proved futile and only served to make his lot more unbearable. On 25 May, 1438, he was sent to Fez and handed over to the cruel Lazurac, the king's vizier. He was first condemned to a dark dungeon and, after some months of imprisonment, was compelled to work like a slave in the royal gardens and stables. Amid insult and misery Ferdinand never lost patience. Though often urged to seek safety in flight, he refused to abandon his companions and grieved more for their sufferings, of which he considered himself the cause, than for his own. His treatment of his persecutors was respectful and dignified, but he would not descend to flattery to obtain any alleviation of his sufferings. During the last fifteen months of his life he was confined alone in a dark dungeon with a block of wood for his pillow and the stone floor for a bed. He spent most of his time in prayer and in preparation for death, which his rapidly failing health warned him was near at hand. In May, 1443, he was stricken with the fatal disease to which he finally succumbed. His persecutors refused to change his loathsome abode, although they allowed a physician and a few faithful friends to attend him. On the evening of 5 June, after making a general confession and a profession of faith, he peacefully gave up his soul to God. During the day he had confided to his confessor, who frequently visited him, that the Blessed Virgin with St. John and the Archangel Michael had appeared to him in a vision. Lazurac ordered the body of the prince to be opened and the vital organs removed, and then caused it to be suspended head downwards for four days on the walls of Fez. Nevertheless he was compelled to pay tribute to the constancy, innocence, and spirit of prayer of his royal victim. Of Ferdinand's companions, four shortly afterwards followed him to the grave, one joined the ranks of the Moors, and the others regained their liberty after Lazurac's death. One of the latter, João Alvarez, his secretary and biographer, carried his heart to Portugal in 1451, and in 1473 his body was brought to Portugal, and laid to rest in the royal vault at Batalha amid imposing ceremonies. Prince Ferdinand has ever been held in great veneration by the Portuguese on account of his saintly life and devotion to country. Miracles are said to have been wrought at his intercession, and in 1470 he was beatified by Paul II. Our chief authority for the details of his life is João Alvarez, already referred to. Calderon made him a hero of one of his most remarkable dramas, "El Principe Constante y Mártir de Portugal". Alvarez, in Acta SS., June, I; Olfers, Leben des standhaften Prinzen (Berlin, 1827); Dunham, History of Spain and Portugal (New York), III. Henry M. Brock Ferdinand II Ferdinand II Emperor, eldest son of Archduke Karl and the Bavarian Princess Maria, b. 1578; d. 15 February, 1637. In accordance with Ferdinand I's disposition of his possessions, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola fell to his son Karl. As Karl died in 1590, when his eldest son was only twelve years old, the government of these countries had to be entrusted to a regent during the minority of Ferdinand. The latter began his studies under the Jesuits at Graz, and continued them in company with Maximilian of Bavaria at the University of Ingolstadt, also in charge of the Jesuits. According to the testimony of his professors, he displayed remarkable diligence, made rapid progress in the mathematical sciences, and above all gave evidence of a deeply religious spirit. On the completion of his studies, he took up the reins of government, although not yet quite seventeen. During a subsequent visit to Italy he made a vow in the sanctuary of Loreto to banish all heresy from the territories which might fall under his rule. He was of middle height, compact build, with reddish-blonde hair and blue eyes. His dress and the cut of his hair suggested the Spaniard, but his easy bearing towards all with whom he came into contact was rather German than Spanish. Even in the heat of conflict, a sense of justice and equity never deserted him. On two occasions, when his tenure of power was imperilled, he was unflinching and showed a true greatness of mind. Ferdinand was a man of unspotted morals, but lacking in statesman-like qualities and independence of judgment. He was wont to lay the responsibility for important measures on his counsellors (Freiherr von Eggenberg, Graf von Harrach, the Bohemian Chancellor, Zdencko von Lobkowitz, Cardinal-Prince Dietrichstein, etc.). Liberal even to prodigality, his exchequer was always low. In pursuance of the principle laid down by the Diet of Augsburg, 1555 (cuius regio eius et religio), he established the Counter-Reformation in his three duchies, while his cousin Emperor Rudolf II reluctantly recognized the Reformation. As Ferdinand was the only archduke of his day with sufficient power and energy to take up the struggle against the estates then aiming at supreme power in the Austrian hereditary domains, the childless Emperor Matthias strove to secure for him the succession to the whole empire. During Matthias's life, Ferdinand was crowned King of Bohemia and of Hungary, but, when Matthias died during the heat of the religious war (20 March, 1619), Ferdinand's position was encompassed with perils. A united army of Bohemians and Silesians stood before the walls of Vienna; in the city itself Ferdinand was beset by the urgent demands of the Lower-Austrian estates, while the Bohemian estates chose as king in his place the head of the Protestant Union in Germany (the Palatine Frederick V), who could also count on the support of his father-in-law, James I of England. When the Austrian estates entered into an alliance with the Bohemians, and Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Transylvania, marched triumphantly through Hungary with the assistance of the Hungarian evangelical party, and was crowned king of that country, the end of the Hapsburg dynasty seemed at hand. Notwithstanding these troubles in his hereditary states, Ferdinand was chosen German Emperor by the votes of all the electors except Bohemia and the Palatinate. Spaniards from the Netherlands occupied the Palatinate, and the Catholic League (Bund der katholischen Fürsten Deutschlands) headed by Maximilian of Bavaria declared in his favour, although to procure this support Ferdinand was obliged to mortgage Austria to Maximilian. On 22 June, 1619, the Imperial General Buquoy repulsed from Vienna the besieging General Thurn; Mansfeld was crushed at Budweis, and on 8 November, 1620, the fate of Bohemia and of Frederick V was decided by the Battle of the White Mountain, near Prague. The firm re-establishment of the Hapsburg dynasty was the signal for the introduction of the Counter-Reformation into Bohemia. Ferdinand annulled the privileges of the estates, declared void the concessions granted to the Bohemian Protestants by the Majestätsbrief of Rudolf II, and punished the heads of the insurrection with death and confiscation of goods. Protestantism was exterminated in Bohemia, Moravia, and Lower Austria; in Silesia alone, on the intercession of the Lutheran Elector of Saxony, the Reformers were treated with less severity. The establishment of a general peace might perhaps now have been possible, if the emperor had been prepared to return his possessions to the outlawed and banished Palatine Elector Frederick. At first, Ferdinand seemed inclined to adopt this policy out of consideration for the Spanish, who did not wish to give mortal offence to James I, the father-in-law of the elector. However, the irritating conduct of Frederick and the Protestant Union, and the wish to recover Austria by indemnifying Maximilian in another way led Ferdinand to continue the war. Entrusted with the execution of the ban against the Elector Palatine, Maximilian assisted by the Spaniards took possession of the electoral lands, and in 1632 was himself raised to the electoral dignity. Uneasy at the rapidly increasing power of the emperor, the estates of the Lower Saxon circle (Kreis) had meanwhile formed a confederation, and resolved under the leadership of their head, King Christian IV of Denmark to oppose the emperor (1625). In face of this combination, the Catholic Union or League under Count Tilly proved too weak to hold in check both its internal and external enemies; thus the recruiting of an independent imperial army was indispensable, though the Austrian exchequer was unable to meet the charge. However, Albrecht von Waldstein (usually known as Wallenstein), a Bohemian nobleman whom Ferdinand had a short time previously raised to the dignity of prince, offered to raise an army of 40,000 men at his own expense. His offer was accepted, and soon Wallenstein and Tilly repeatedly vanquished the Danes, Ernst von Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick, the leaders of the Protestant forces. On the defeat of Christian at Lutter am Barenberge (27 August, 1626), the Danish Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein fell into the hands of the victorious Tilly, Christian was compelled to make the equitable peace of Lübeck on 12 May, 1629, and Wallenstein was invested with the lands of the Dukes of Mecklenburg, allies of Christian. Contemporaneously, an insurrection broke out among the Austrian peasants for the recovery of their ecclesiastical rights abrogated by the emperor. This rising was soon quelled, but, as Wallenstein did not conceal his intention to establish the emperor's rule in Germany on a more absolute basis, the princes of the empire were unceasing in their complaints, and demanded Wallenstein's dismissal. The excitement of the princes, especially those of the Protestant faith, ran still higher when Ferdinand published, in 1629, the "Edict of Restitution", which directed Protestants to restore all ecclesiastical property taken from the Catholics since the Convention of Passau, in 1552(2 archbishoprics, 12 bishoprics and many monastic seigniories, especially in North Germany). At the meeting of the princes in Ratisbon (1630), when Ferdinand wished to procure the election of his son as King of Rome, the princes headed by Maximilian succeeded in prevailing on the emperor to remove Wallenstein. The command of the now reduced imperial troops was entrusted to Tilly, who with these forces and those of the League marched against Magdeburg; this city, formerly the see of an archbishop, energetically opposed the execution of the Edict of Restitution. Even before Wallenstein's dismissal on 4 July, 1630, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, had landed at the mouth of the Oder, but, as the Protestant estates (notable Brandenburg and Saxony) hesitated to enter into an alliance with him, he was unable at first to accomplish anything decisive. When, however, in May, 1631, Tilly stormed and reduced to ashes the town of Magdeburg, the Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony openly espoused the cause of Gustavus Adolphus. After the utter defeat of Tilly at Breitenfeld (September, 1631), Gustavus Adolphus advanced through Thuringia and Franconia to the Rhine, while the Saxon army invaded Bohemia and occupied its capital, Prague. In 1632, the Swedish King invaded Bavaria. Tilly faced him on the Lech, but was defeated, and mortally wounded. Gustavus Adolphus was now master of Germany, the League was overthrown, and the emperor threatened in his hereditary domain. In this crisis Ferdinand induced Wallenstein to raise another army of 40,000 men, and entrusted him with unlimited authority. On 6 November, 1632, a battle was fought at Lützen near Leipzig, where Gustavus Adolphus was slain, though the Swedish troops remained masters of the battle-field. Wallenstein was now in a position to continue the war with energy, but after the second half of 1633 he displayed an incomprehensible inactivity. The explanation is that Wallenstein had formed the resolution to betray the emperor, and, with the help of France, to seize Bohemia. His plan miscarried, however, and led to his assassination at Eger on 25 February, 1634. The emperor had no hand in this murder. On 27 August of the same year, the imperial army under the emperor's eldest son, Ferdinand, inflicted so crushing a defeat on the Swedes at Nördlingen that the Protestants of south-western Germany turned for help to France. On 30 May, 1636, by the cession of both Upper and Lower Lausitz, Ferdinand became reconciled with Saxony, which became his ally. On 24 September, the combined imperial and Saxon armies were defeated at Wittstock by the Swedes under Baner. France now revealed its real policy, and dispatched a powerful army to join the ranks of the emperor's foes. Ferdinand lived to witness the election of his son as German Emperor (22 December, 1636), and his coronation as King of Bohemia and Hungary. He died, however, 15 February, 1637, without witnessing the end of this destructive conflict, known as the Thirty Years War. In his will, he expressly provided for the succession of the first-born of is house and the indivisibility of his hereditary states. HURTER, Geschichte Kaiser Ferdinands II und seiner Zeit (11 vols. Schaffhausen, 1850-1864); GINDELY, Geschichte de dreissigjährigen Krieges (3 vols., Prague, 1882); KLOPP, Tilly im dreissigjährigen Kriege (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1861); HUBER, Geschichte Oesterreichs (5 vols., Prague and Leipzig, 1894). KARL KLAAR St. Ferdinand III St. Ferdinand III King of Leon and Castile, member of the Third Order of St. Francis, born in 1198 near Salamanca; died at Seville, 30 May, 1252. He was the son of Alfonso IX, King of Leon, and of Berengeria, the daughter of Alfonso III, King of Castile, and sister of Blanche, the mother of St. Louis IX. In 1217 Ferdinand became King of Castile, which crown his mother renounced in his favour, and in 1230 he succeeded to the crown of Leon, though not without civil strife, since many were opposed to the union of the two kingdoms. He took as his counsellors the wisest men in the State, saw to the strict administration of justice, and took the greatest care not to overburden his subjects with taxation, fearing, as he said, the curse of one poor woman more than a whole army of Saracens. Following his mother's advice, Ferdinand, in 1219, married Beatrice, the daughter of Philip of Swabia, King of Germany, one of the most virtuous princesses of her time. God blessed this union with seven children: six princes and one princess. The highest aims of Ferdinand's life were the propagation of the Faith and the liberation of Spain from the Saracen yoke. Hence his continual wars against the Saracens. He took from them vast territories, Granada and Alicante alone remaining in their power at the time of his death. In the most important towns he founded bishoprics, reestablished Catholic worship everywhere, built churches, founded monasteries, and endowed hospitals. The greatest joys of his life were the conquests of Cordova (1236) and Seville (1248). He turned the great mosques of these places into cathedrals, dedicating them to the Blessed Virgin. He watched over the conduct of his soldiers, confiding more in their virtue than in their valour, fasted strictly himself, wore a rough hairshirt, and often spent his nights in prayer, especially before battles. Amid the tumult of the camp he lived like a religious in the cloister. The glory of the Church and the happiness of his people were the two guiding motives of his life. He founded the University of Salamanca, the Athens of Spain. Ferdinand was buried in the great cathedral of Seville before the image of the Blessed Virgin, clothed, at his own request, in the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis. His body, it is said, remains incorrupt. Many miracles took place at his tomb, and Clement X canonized him in 1671. His feast is kept by the Minorites on the 30th of May. FERDINAND HECKMANN Diocese of Ferentino Diocese of Ferentino (FERENTINUM) In the province of Rome, immediately subject to the Holy See. The town was in antiquity the chief place of the Hernici. Its ancient origin is borne out by the numerous remains of its cyclopean walls, especially near the site of the ancient fortress where the cathedral now stands. In the days of the kings there was strife between Rome and Ferentinum which then belonged to the Volscians. The Consul Furius gave it over to the Hernici, and in 487, A.U.C., it became a Roman town (municipium), and shared thenceforth the fortunes of Rome. Local legend attributes the first preaching of the Gospel in Ferentinum to Sts. Peter and Paul; they are said to have consecrated St. Leo as its first bishop. In the persecution of Diocletian the centurion Ambrose suffered martyrdom (304) at Ferentino; possibly also the martyrdom of St. Eutychius belongs to that period. In the time of Emperor Constantine the town had its own bishop; but the first known to us by the name is Bassus, present at Roman synods, 487 and 492-493. St. Redemptus (about 570) is mentioned in the "Dialogues" of St. Gregory the Great; and he also refers to a Bishop Boniface. Other known bishops are Trasmondo Sognino (1150), who died in prison; Ubaldo (1150), Iegate of Adrian IV to the princes of Christendom in favour of a crusade, later the consecrator of the antipope Victor IV; Giacomo (A.D. 1276), legate of John XXI to Emperor Michael Palaeologus; Landolfo Rosso (1297), who rendered good service to Boniface VIII; Francesco Filippesio (1799), legate of Julius II to the Emperor Maximilian. Ferentino has (1909) 19 parishes and 45,000 souls, 3 boys' and 2 girls' Schools; 6 monasteries for men; and 8 convents tor women. U. BENIGNI Sts. Fergus Sts. Fergus St. Fergus Cruithneach Died about 730, known in the Irish martyrologies as St. Fergus Cruithneach, or the Pict. The Breviary of Aberdeen states that he had been a bishop for many years in Ireland when he came on a mission to Alba with some chosen priests and other clerics. He settled first near Strageath, in the present parish of Upper Strathearn, in Upper Perth, erected three churches in that district. The churchs of Strageath, Blackford, and Dolpatrick are found there to-day dedicated to St. Patrick. He next evangelized Caithness and established there the churches of Wick and Halkirk. Thence he crossed to Buchan in Aberdeenshire and founded a church at Lungley, a village now called St. Fergus. Lastly, he established a church at Glammis in Forfarshire. He went to Rome in 721 and was present with Sedulius and twenty other bishops at a synod in the basilica of St. Peter, convened by Gregory II. His remains were deposited in the church of Glammis and were the object of much veneration in the Middle Ages. The Abbot of Scone transferred his head to Scone church, and encased it in a costly shrine there is an entry in the accounts of the treasurer of James IV, October, 1503, " An offerand of 13 shillings to Sanct Fergus' heide in Scone". The churches of Wick, Glammis, and Lungley had St. Fergus as their patron. His festival is recorded in the Martyrology of Tallaght for the 8th of September but seems to have been observed in Scotland on the 18th of November. St. Fergus, Bishop of Duleek Died 778, mentioned by Duald MacFirbis, Annals of the Four Masters, Annals of Ulster. St. Fergus, Bishop of Downpatrick Died 583. He was sixth in descent from Coelbad, King of Erin. He built a church or monastery called Killmbain, identified by some as Killyban, Co. Down, and afterwards was consecrated bishop and ruled the cathedral church of Druimleithglais (Down). He was probably the first bishop of that see. His feast is kept on the 30th of March. Ten saints of this name are mentioned in the martyology of Donegal. C. MULCAHY Feria Feria (Lat. for "free day"). A day on which the people, especially the slaves, were not obliged to work, and on which there were no court sessions. In ancient Roman times the feriae publicae, legal holidays, were either stativae, recurring regularly (e.g. the Saturnalia), conceptivae, i.e. movable, or imperativae, i.e. appointed for special occasions. When Christianity spread, the feriae were ordered for religious rest, to celebrate the feasts instituted for worship by the Church. The faithful were obliged on those days to attend Mass in their parish church; such assemblies gradually led to mercantile enterprise, partly from necessity and partly for the sake of convenience. This custom in time introduced those market gatherings which the Germans call Messen, and the English call fairs. They were fixed on saints' days (e.g. St. Barr's fair, St. Germanus's fair, St. Wenn's fair, etc.) Today the term feria is used to denote the days of the week with the exception of Sunday and Saturday. Various reasons are given for this terminology. The Roman Breviary, in the sixth lesson for 31 Dec., says that Pope St. Silvester ordered the continuance of the already existing custom "that the clergy, daily abstaining from earthly cares, would be free to serve God alone". Others believe that the Church simply Christianized a Jewish practice. The Jews frequently counted the days from their Sabbath, and so we find in the Gospels such expressions as una Sabbati and prima Sabbati, the first from the Sabbath. The early Christians reckoned the days after Easter in this fashion, but, since all the days of Easter week were holy days, they called Easter Monday, not the first day after Easter, but the second feria or feast day; and since every Sunday is the dies Dominica, a lesser Easter day, the custom prevailed to call each Monday a feria secunda, and so on for the rest of the week. The ecclesiastical style of naming the week days was adopted by no nation except the Portuguese who alone use the terms Segunda Feria etc. The old use of the word feria, for feast day, is lost, except in the derivative feriatio, which is equivalent to our of obligation. Today those days are called ferial upon which no feast is celebrated. Feriae are either major or minor. The major, which must have at least a commemoration, even on the highest feasts, are the feriae of Advent and Lent, the Ember days, and the Monday of Rogation week; the others are called minor. Of the major feriae Ash Wednesday and the days of Holy Week are privileged so that their office must be taken, no matter what feast may occur. FRANCIS MERSHMAN Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Ferland Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Ferland A French Canadian historian, b. at Montreal, 25 December, 1805; d. at Quebec, 11 January, 1865. He studied at the college of Nicolet and was ordained 1828. He ministered to country parishes until 1841, when he was made director of studies in the college of Nicolet. He became its superior in 1848. Being named a member of the council of the Bishop of Quebec, he took up his residence in that city, where he was also chaplain to the English garrison. From his college days he had devoted himself to the study of Canadian history; the numerous notes which he collected had made him one of the most learned men of the country. It was not, however, until he had reached the age of forty that he thought of writing a history of Canada. In 1853 he published his "Observations sur l' histoire ecclésiastique du Canada", a refutation and criticism of the work of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourburg; it was reprinted in France in 1854. In the latter year he published "Notes sur les régistres de Notre Dame de Québec", a second edition of which, revised and augmented appeared in the "Foyer canadien" for 1863. In 1855 he was appointed professor of Canadian history at the University of Laval (Quebec), and went at once to France to collect new documents to perfect him in his work. He returned in 1857, bringing with him valuable notes. The public courses which he delivered from 1858 to 1862 attracted large audiences, and his lectures, printed as "Cours d' Histoire du Canada", established Ferland's reputation. The first volume appeared in 1861; the second was not published till after the author's death in 1865. This work, written in a style at once simple and exact, is considered authoritative by competent judges. It is, however, incomplete, ending as it does with the conquest of Canada by the English (1759). Ferland aimed above all at establishing the actual facts of history. He desired also to make known the work of the Catholic missions. His judgments are correct and reliable. Ferland also published in the "Soirées Canadiennes" of 1863 the "Journal d'un voyage sur les côtes de la Gaspésie", and in "Littérature Canadienne" for 1863 an "Etude sur le Labrador", which had previously appeared in the "Annales de l'Association pour la Propagation de la Foi". For the "Foyer Canadien" of 1863 he wrote a "Vie de Mgr Plessis", Bishop of Quebec, translated later into English. J. EDMOND ROY Archdiocese of Fermo Archdiocese of Fermo (FIRMANA). In the province of Ascoli Piceno (Central Italy). The great antiquity of the episcopal city is attested by the remains of its cyclopean walls. It was the site of a Roman colony, established in 264 B.C., consisting of 6000 men. With the Pentapolis it passed in the eighth century under the authority of the Holy See and underwent thenceforth the vicissitudes of the March of Ancona. Under the predecessors of Honorius III the bishops of city became the counts, and later princes, of Fermo. In the contest between the Hohenstaufen and the papacy, Fermo was several times besieged and captured; in 1176 by Archbishop Christian of Mainz, in 1192 by Henry Vl, in 1208 by Marcuald, Duke of Ravenna, in 1241 by Frederick 11, in 1245 by Manfred. After this it was governed by different lords, who ruled as more or less legitimate vassals of the Holy See, e.g. the Monteverdi, Giovanni Visconti, and Francesco Storza (banished 1446), Oliverotto Uffreducci (murdered in 1503 by Caesar Borgia), who was succeeded by his son Ludovico, killed at the battle of Monto Giorgio in 1520, when Fermo became again directly subjected to the Holy See. Boniface VIII (1204-1303) established a university there. Fermo is the birth place of the celebrated poet, Annibale Caro. Local legend attributes the first preaching of the Gospel at Fermo to Sts. Apollinarius and Maro. The martyrdom of the bishop, St. Alexander, with seventy companions, is placed in the persecution of Decius (250), and the martyrdom of St. Philip under Aurelian (270-75). Among the noteworthy bishops are: Passinus, the recipient of four letters from Gregory III; Cardinal Domenico Caspranica (1426): Sigismondo Zanettini (1584), under whom Fermo was made the seat of an archdiocese; Giambattista Rinuccini, nuncio in Ireland; and Alessandro Borgia. The suffragans of Fermo are Macerata-Tolentino, Montalto, Ripatransone, and San Severino. The archdiocese has (1908) a population of 18,000; 117 parishes; 368 secular priests and 86 regular; 2 male and 5 female educational institutions; 6 religious houses of men and 50 of women; and a Catholic weekly, the "Voce delle Marche". U. BENIGNI Antonio Fernandez Antonio Fernández A Jesuit missionary; b. at Lisbon, c. 1569; d. at Goa, 12 November, 1642. About 1602 he was sent to India, whence two years later he went to Abyssinia, where he soon won favour with King Melek Seghed. This monarch, converted to the Faith in 1622, after the arrival of the Latin patriarch, for whom he had petitioned the Holy See, publcly acknowledged the primacy of the Roman See and constituted Catholicism the State religion (1626). For a time innumerable conversions were made, the monarch in his zeal resorting even to compulsory measures. The emperor's son, however, took sides with the schismatics, headed a rebellion, seized his father's throne, and reinstalled the former faith proscribing the Catholic religion under the penalty of death. The missionaries, on their expulsion, found a temporary protector in one of the petty princes of the country, by whom, however, they were soon abandoned. Those who reached the port of Massowah were held for a ransom. Father Fernández, then over eighty years of age, was one of those detained as hostage, but a younger companion persuaded the pasha to substitute him, and Father Fernández was allowed to return to India, where he ended his days. On his missions for the king, Father Fernández had traversed vast tracts of hitherto unexplored territory. He translated various liturgical books into Ethiopian, and was the author of ascetical and polemical works against the heresies prevalent in Ethiopia. F.M. RUDGE Juan Fernandez Juan Fernández A Jesuit lay brother and missionary; b. at Cordova; d. 12 June, 1567, in Japan. In a letter from Malacca, dated 20 June, 1549, St. Francis Xavier begs the prayers of the Goa brethren for those about to start on the Japanese mission mentioning among them Juan Fernández, a lay brother. On their arrival in Japan Juan rendered active service in the work of evangelizing. In September, 1550, he accompanied St. Francis to Firando (Hirado), thence to Amanguchi (Yamaguchi), and on to Miako (Saikio) a difficult journey, from which they returned to Amanguchi, where he was left with Father Cosmo Torres in charge of the Christians, when Francis started for China. There is still in the records of the Jesuit college at Coimbra a lengthy document professed to be the translation of an account rendered St. Francis by Ferndndez of a controversy with the Japanese on such questions as the nature of God, creation, the nature and immortality of the soul. The success of Brother Fernández on this occasion in refuting his Japanese adversaries resulted in the ill will of the bonzes, who stirred up a rebellion against the local prince, who had become a Christian. The missionaries were concealed by the wife of one of the nobles until they were able to resume their work of preaching. St. Francis says in one of his letters: "Joann Fernández though a simple layman, is most useful on account of the fluency of his acquaintance with the Japanese language and of the aptness and clearness with which he translates whatever Father Cosmo suggests to him." His humility under insults impressed all and on one occasion resulted in the conversion of a brilliant young Japanese doctor, who later became a Jesuit and one of the shining lights in the Japanese Church. Brother Fernández compiled the first Japanese grammar and lexicon. F.M. RUDGE Diego Fernandez de Palencia Diego Fernández de Palencia A Spanish conqueror and historian; b. at Palencia in the early part of the sixteenth century. He took up a military career, and went to Peru shortly after the conquest (about 1545). In 1553 and 1554 he took part in the civil struggle among the Spaniards, fighting under the banner of Alonso de Alvarado, Captain-General of Los Charcos, against the rebel Francisco Hernández de Giron. In 1555 Hurtado de Mendoza, Marquess of Canete, came to Peru as viceroy, and charged Fernández to write a history of the troubles in which he had just taken part. He then began his history of Peru, and later, when he had returned to Spain, upon the suggestion of Sandoval, President of the Council of the Indies, Fernández enlarged the scope of his work, and added to it a first part, dealing with the movements of Pizarro and his followers. The whole work was published under the title "Primera y segunda parte de la Historia del Peru (Seville, 1571). Having taken part in many of the events, and known the men who figured in most of the scenes which he describes, Fernández may be regarded as a historian whose testimony is worth consideration. Garcilaso de la Vega, the Peruvian, who quotes long passages from Fernández, fiercely attacks his story and accuses him of partiality and of animosity against certain personages. Whatever the reason may have been, however, possibly because of the truth of the story, the fact is, the Council of the Indies prohibited the printing and sale of the book in the provinces under its jurisdiction. A perusal of the book conveys the impression that Fernández was a man of sound judgment, who set down the fact only after a thorough investigation. The reproaches of the Inca historian may, therefore, be regarded as without foundation. VENTURA FUENTES Diocese of Ferns Ferns DIOCESE OF FERNS (FERNENSIS). Diocese in the province of Leinster (Ireland), suffragan of Dublin. It was founded by St. Aedan, whose name is popularly known as Moaedhog, or "My dear little Aedh", in 598. Subsequently, St. Aedan was given a quasi-supremacy over the other bishops of Leinster, with the title of Ard-Escop or chief bishop, on which account he and some of his successors have been regarded as having archiepiscopal powers. The old annalists style the see Fearna-mor Maedhog, that is "the great plain of the alder trees of St. Moedhog. Even yet Moedhog (Mogue) -- the Irish endearing form of Aedan -- is a familiar Christian name in the diocese, while it is also perpetuted Tubbermogue, Bovlavogue, Cromogue, Island (Breacc Maedoig) are seen in the National Museum, Dublin. Many of his successors find a place in Irish martyrologies, including St. Mochua, St. Moling and St. Cillene. Of these the most famous is St. Moling, who died 13 May, 697. His book-shrine is among the greatest art treasures of Ireland, and his "well" is still visited, but he is best known as patron of St. Mullins (Teach Moling) County Carlow. The ancient monastery of Ferns included a number of cells, or oratories, and the cathedral was built in the Irish style. At present the remains of the abbey (refounded for Austin Canons, in 1160, by Dermot MaeMurrough) include a round tower, about seventy-five feet high in two stories, the lower of which is quadrangular, and the upper polygonal. Close by is the Holy Well of St. Mogue. Ferns was raided by the Scandinavians in 834, 836, 839, 842, 917, 920, 928, and 930, and was burned in 937. St. Peter's Church, Ferns, dates from about the year 1060, and is of the Hiberno-Romanesque style, having been built by Bishop O'Lynam, who died in 1062. The bishops were indifferently styled as of Ferns, Hy Kinsellagh, or Wexford; thus, Maeleoin O'Donegan (d. 1125) is called "Bishop of Wexford", while Bishop O'Cathan (d. 1135) is named "Archbishop of Hy Kinsellagh". This was by reason of the fact that the boundaries of the diocese are coextensive with the territory of Hy Kinsellagh, on which account Ferns includes County Wexford with small portions of Wicklow and Carlow. Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster, burned the city of Ferns in 1166, "for fear that the Connacht men would destroy his castle and his house", and, three years later, he brought over a pioneer force of Welshmen. He died in 1171, and, at his own request, was buried "near the shrines of St. Maedhog and St. Moling". The same year Henry II of England landed in Ireland, where he remained for six months. Ailbe O'Molloy, a Cistercian, who ruled from 1185 to 1222, was the last Irish bishop in the pre-Reformation history of Ferns. He attended the Fourth General Council of Lateran (1215) and, on his return, formed a cathedral chapter. His successor, Bishop St. John, was granted by Henry III (6 July, 1226) a weekly market at Ferns and an annual fair, also a weekly market at Enniscorthy. This bishop (8 April, 1227) assigned the manor of Enniscorthy to Philip de Prendergast, who built a castle, still in excellent preservation. In exchange, he acquired six plough-lands forever for the See of Ferns. He held a synod at Selskar (St. Sepulchre) Priory, Wexford (8 September, 1240). The appointment of a dean was confirmed by Clement IV (23 August. 1265). Bishop St. John rebuilt the cathedral of Ferns, which from recent discoveries seems to have been 180 feet in length, with a crypt. A fine stone statue of St. Aedan, evidently early Norman work, is still preserved. In 1346 the castle of Ferns was made a royal appanage, and constables were appointed by the Crown, but it was recovered by Art MacMurrough in 1386. Patrick Barret, who ruled from 1400 to 1415, removed the episcopal chair of Ferns to New Ross, and made St. Mary's his catherdal. His successor, Robert Whitty, had an episcopate of forty years, dying in February, 1458. Under John Purcell (1459-1479), Franciscan friars acquired a foundation in Enniscorthy, which was dedicated 18 October, 1460. Lawrence Neville (1479-1503) attended a provincial council at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 5 March, 1495. His successor, Edmund Comerford, died in 1509, whereupon Nicholas Comyn was elected. Bishop Comyn resided at Fethard Castle, and assisted at the provincial councils of 1512 and 1518. He was transferred to Waterford and Lismore in 1519, and was replaced by John Purcell, whose troubled episcopate ended on 20 July, 1539. Though schismatically eonsecrated, Alexander Devereux was rehabilitated under Queen Mary as Bishop of Ferns, and died at Fethard Castle on 6 July, 1566 -- the last pre-Reformation bishop. Peter Power was appointed his successor in 1582, but the temporalities of the see were held by John Devereux. Bishop Power died a confessor, in exile, 15 December, 1588. Owing to the disturbed state of the diocese and the lack of revenue no bishop was provided till 19 April, 1624, but meantime Father Daniel O'Drohan, who had to adopt the alias of "James Walshe", acted as vicar Apostolic (1606-1624). John Roche was succeeded by another John Roche, 6 February, 1644, who never entered on possession, the see being administered by William Devereux from 1636 to 1644. Dr. Devereux was an able administrator at a trying period, and he wrote an English catechism, which was used in the diocese until a few years ago. Nicholas French was made Bishop of Ferns 15 September, 1644, and died in exile at Ghent, 23 August, 1679. His episcopate was a remarkable one, and he himself was a most distinguished prelate. Bishop Wadding (1678-1691) wrote some charming Christmas carols, which are still sung in Wexford. His successors, Michael Rossiter (1695-1709), John Verdon (1709-1729), and the Franciscan Ambrose O'Callaghan (1729-1744), experienced the full brunt of the penal laws. Nicholas Sweetman (1745-1786) was twice imprisoned on suspicion of "disloyalty", while James Caulfield (1786-1814) was destined to outlive the "rebellion" of '98. One of the Ferns priests Father James Dixon, who was transported as a "felon", was the first Prefect Apostolic of Australia. All the post-Reformation bishops lived mostly at Wexford until 1809, in which year Dr. Ryan, coadjutor bishop, commenced the building of a cathedral in Enniscorthy, which had been assigned him as a mensal parish. As Bishop Caulfield was an invalid from the year 1809 the diocese was administered by Dr. Ryan, who, with the permission of the Holy See, transferred the episcopal residence to Enniscorthy. Bishop Ryan died 9 March, 1819, and was buried in the cathedral. His successor, James Keating (1819-1849), ruled for thirty years, and commenced building the present cathedral, designed by Pugin. Myles Murphy (1850-1856) and Thomas Furlong (1857-1875) did much for the diocese, while Michael Warren (1875-1884) is still lovingly remembered. From an interesting Relatio forwarded to the Propaganda by Bishop Caulfield in 1796, the Diocese of Ferns is described as 38 miles in length and 20 in breadth, with eight borough towns, and a chapter of nineteen members. In pre-Reformation days it had 143 parishes; 17 monasteries of Canons Regular of St. Augustine; 3 priories of Knights Templars; 2 Cistercian abbeys; 3 Franciscan friaries; 2 Austin friaries; 1 Carmelite friary, and 1 Benedictine priory. It never had a nunnery nor a Dominican friary. (The Jesuits had a flourishing college in New Ross in 1675.) The population was 120,000, of which 114,000 were Catholics, and there were 80 priests, including regulars. There were 36 parishes, many of which had no curates. At present (1909), the population is 108,750, of which 99,000 are Catholics. There are 41 parishes, two of which (Wexford and Enniscorthy) are mensal. The parish priests are 39 and the curates are 66, while the churches number 92. The religious orders include Franciscans (one house), Augustinians (two houses), and Benedietines (one house). The total clergy are 140. In addition, there are 14 convents for religious women, and a House of Missions (Superior Father John Rossiter), as also 6 Christian Brothers schools, diocesan college, a Benedictine college, and several good schools for female pupils. Enniscorthy cathedral was not completed until 1875, and the interior not completely finished till 1908. Most Rev. Dr. James Browne was consecrated Bishop of Ferns 14 September, 1884. He was born at Mayglass, County Wexford in 1842, finished his studies at Maynooth College, where he was ordained in 1865, and served for nineteen years as curate and parish priest with conspicuous ability. COLGAN, Acta Sanct. Hib. (Louvain, 1648); BRENAN Eccl. Hist. of Ireland (Dublin, 1840); ROTHE, Analecta, ed. MORAN (Dublin. 1884); WARE, Bishops of Ireland, ed. HARRIS (Dublin, 1739); RENEHAN, Collections on Irish Church History, ed. MCCARTHY (Dublin, 1874), II; GRATTAN-FLOOD, Hist. of Enniscorthy (Enniscorthy, 1898); IDEM, The Episcopal City of Ferns in Irish Eccl. Record, II, no. 358, IV, no. 368, VI, no. 380, BASSET, Wexford (Dublin, 1885). W.H. GRATTAN-FLOOD Ferrara Ferrara Archdiocese of Ferrara (Ferrariensis). Archdiocese immediately subject to the Holy See. The city, which is the capital of the similarly named province, stands on the banks of the Po di Volano, where it branches off to form the Po di Primaro, in the heart of a rich agricultural district. The origin of Ferrara is doubtful. No mention is made of it before the eighth century. Until the tenth century it followed the fortunes of Ravenna. In 986 it was given as a papal fief to Tedaldo, Count of Canossa, the grandfather of Countess Matilda against whom it rebelled in 1101. From 1115 it was directly under the pope, though often claimed by the emperors. During this period arose the commune of Ferrara. Gradually the Salinguerra family became all-powerful in the city. They were expelled in 1208 for their fidelity to the emperor, whereupon the citizens offered the governorship to Azzo VI d'Este, whose successors kept it, as lieges of the pope, until 1598, with the exception of the brief period from 1313 to 1317, when it was leased to the King of Sicily for an annual tribute. Alfonso I d'Este, hoping to cast off the overlordship of the pope, kept up relations with Louis XII of France long after the League of Cambrai (1508) had been dissolved. In 1510 Julius II attempted in person to bring him back to a sense of duty, but was not successful. In 1519 Leo X tried to capture the town by surprise, but he too failed; in 1522, however, Alfonso of his own accord made his peace with Adrian VI. In 1597 Alfonso II died without issue and named his cousin Cesare as his heir. Clement VIII refused to recognize him and sent to Ferrara his own nephew, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, who in 1598 brought the town directly under papal rule. In 1796 it was occupied by the French, and became the chief town of the Bas-Po. In 1815 it was given back to the Holy See, which governed it by a legate with the aid of an Austrian garrison. In 1831 it proclaimed a provisional government, but the Austrian troops restored the previous civil conditions, which lasted until 1859, when the territory was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. The dukes of Ferrara, especially Alfonso I (1505-1534) and Alfonso II (1559-1597), were generous patrons of literature and the arts. At their court lived Tasso, Ariosto, Boiardo, V. Strozzi, G. B. Guarini, the historian Guido Bentivoglio, and others. It counted many artists of renown, whose works adorn even yet the churches and palaces of the city, e. g. the ducal palace, the Schifanoia, Diamanti, Rovella, Scrofa-Calcagnini, and other palaces. The more famous among the painters were Benvenuto Tisi (Garofalo), Ercole Grandi, Ippolito Scarsello, the brothers Dossi, and Girolamo da Carpi. Alfonso Cittadella, the sculptor, left immortal works in the duomo, or cathedral (Christ and the Apostles), and in San Giovanni (Madonna). Churches of note are the cathedral, SS. Benedetto and Francesco, San Domenico (with its beautiful carved choir stalls of the fourteenth century). The most famous work of ecclesiastical architecture is the magnificent Certosa. The university was founded in 1391 by Boniface IX. Ferrara was the birthplace of Savonarola and of the great theologian, Silvestro di Ferrara, both Dominicans. The earliest bishop of certain date is Constantine, present at Rome in 861; St. Maurelius (patron of the city) must have lived before this time. Some think that the bishops of Ferrara are the successors to those of Vigonza (the ancient Vicuhabentia). Other bishops of note are Filippo Fontana (1243), to whom Innocent IV entrusted the task of inducing the German princes to depose Frederick II; Blessed Alberto Pandoni (1261) and Blessed Giovanni di Tossignano (1431); the two Ippolito d'Este (1520 and 1550) and Luigi d'Este (1553), all three munificent patrons of learning and the arts; Alfonso Rossetti (1563), Paolo Leoni (1579), Giovanni Fontana (1590), and Lorenzo Magalotti (1628), all four of whom eagerly supported the reforms of the Council of Trent; finally, the saintly Cardinal Carlo Odescalchi (1823). Up to 1717 the Archbishop of Ravenna claimed metropolitan rights over Ferrara; in 1735 Clement XII raised the see to archiepiscopal rank, without suffragans. It has 89 parishes and numbers 130,752 souls; there are two educational institutions for boys and six for girls, nine religious houses of men and nineteen of women. COUNCIL OF FERRARA When Saloniki (Thessalonica) fell into the hands of the Turks (1429) the Emperor John Palæologus approached Martin V, Eugene IV, and the Council of Basle to secure help against the Turks and to convoke a council for the reunion of the two Churches, as the only means of efficaciously resisting Islam. At first it was proposed to hold the council in some seaport town of Italy; then Constantinople was suggested. The members of the Council of Basle held out for Basle or Avignon. Finally (18 September, 1437), Eugene IV decided that the council would be held at Ferrara, that city being acceptable to the Greeks. The council was opened 8 January, 1438, by Cardinal Nicolò Albergati, and the pope attended on 27 January. The synodal officers were divided into three classes: (1) the cardinals, archbishops, and bishops; (2) the abbots and prelates; (3) doctors of theology and canon law. Before the arrival of the Greeks, proclamation was made that all further action by the Council of Basle as such would be null and void. The Greeks, i. e. the emperor with a train of archbishops, bishops, and learned men (700 in all), landed at Venice 8 February and were cordially received and welcomed in the pope's name by Ambrogio Traversari, the General of the Camaldolese. On 4 March the emperor entered Ferrara. The Greek bishops came a little later. Questions of precedence and ceremonial caused no small difficulty. For preparatory discussions on all controverted points a committee of ten from either side was appointed. Among them were Marcus Eugenicus, Archbishop of Ephesus; Bessarion, Archbishop of Nicæa; Balsamon; Siropolos and others, for the Greeks; while Cardinals Giuliano Cesarini and Nicolò Albergati, Giovanni Turrecremata, and others represented the Latins. The Greek Emperor prevented a discussion on the Procession of the Holy Spirit and on the use of leavened bread. For months the only thing discussed or written about was the ecclesiastic teaching on purgatory. The uncertainty of the Greeks on this head was the cause of the delay. The emperor's object was to bring about a general union without any concessions on the part of the Greeks in matters of doctrine. Everybody deplored the delay, and a few of the Greeks, among them Marcus Eugenicus, attempted to depart secretly, but they were obliged to return. The sessions began 8 October, and from the opening of the third session the question of the Procession of the Holy Spirit was constantly before the council. Marcus Eugenicus blamed the Latins for having added the "Filioque" to the Nicene Creed despite the prohibition of the Council of Ephesus (431). The chief speakers on behalf of the Latins were Andrew, Bishop of Rhodes, and Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, who pointed out that the addition was dogmatically correct and not at all contrary to the prohibition of the Council of Ephesus, nor to the teaching of the Greek Fathers. Bessarion admitted the orthodoxy of the "Filioque" teaching, but maintained it ought not to have been added to the Creed. Twelve sessions were (III-XV) taken up with this controversy. On both sides many saw no hope of an agreement, and once more many Greeks were eager to return home. Finally the emperor permitted his followers to proceed to the discussion of the orthodoxy of the "Filioque". In the meantime the people of Florence had invited the pope to accept for himself and the council the hospitality of their city. They hoped in this way to reap great financial profit. The offer was accompanied by a large gift of money. Eugene IV, already at a loss for funds and obliged to furnish hospitality and money to the Greeks (who had come to Italy in the pope's own fleet), gladly accepted the offer of the Florentines. The Greeks on their part agreed to the change. The council thus quitted Ferrara without having accomplished anything, principally because the emperor and Marcus Eugenicus did not wish to reach an agreement in matters of doctrine. (See Council of Florence.) ARCHDIOCESE.--CAPPELLETTI, Le Chiese d'Italia (Venice, 1846), IV, 9-11, 24-226; FRIZZI, Memorie per la Storia di Ferrara (Ferrara, 1791); AGNELLI, Ferrara in Italia Artistica (Bergamo, 1902). COUNCIL.--MANSI, Coll. Conc., XXIX; HARDOUIN, Coll. Conc., IX; HEFELE, Konziliengeschichte (2nd ed.), VII; CECCONI, Studi storici sul concilio di Firenze (Florence, 1869). U. BENIGNI. Gaudenzio Ferrari Gaudenzio Ferrari An Italian painter and the greatest master of the Piedmontese School, b. at Valduggia, near Novara. Italy, c. 1470: d. at Milan, 31 January, 1546. His work is vast but poorly known. He seems never to have left his beloved Piedmont or Lombardy save perhaps on one occasion. He had seen Leonardo at work in Milan (1490-98), and learned from him lessons in expression and in modeling. But he owed more to his compatriots in the North: to Bramante and Bramantino in architectural details, above all to Mantegna, whose frescoes of the "Life of St. James" inspired more than one paintings at Varallo. Nothing is more uncertain than the history of this great man. His earliest known works belong to the years 1508 and 1511; at that time he was about forty years of age. He would seem to have been formed in the good old Milanese school of such men as Borgognone, Zenale, and Butinone, which kept aloof from the brilliant fashion in art favoured by the court of the Sforzas, and which prolonged the fifteenth century with its archaisms of expression. Gaudenzio, this youngest and frankest of this group, never fell under the influence of Leonardo, and hence it is that on one point he always held out against the new spirit; he would never daily with the paganism or rationalism of Renaissance art. He was as passionately naturalistic as any painter of his time, before all else, however, he was a Christian artist. He is the only truly religious master of the Italian Renaissance, and this trait it is which makes him stand out in any age where faith and single-mindedness were gradually disappearing, as a man of another country, almost of another time. When we consider the works of Gaudenzio, more especially his earlier ones, in the light of the fact that the district in which he was born was in the direct line of communication between North and South; and reflect that what might be termed the "art traffic" between Germany and Italy was very great in his time, we are forced to recognize that German influence played a considerable part in the development of his genius, in so far at least as his mind was amenable to external stimuli. He is, in fact, the most German of the Italian painters. In the heart of a school where art was becoming more and more aristocratic, he remained the people's painter. In this respect his personality stands out so boldly amongst the Itatian painters of the time that it seems natural to infer that Gaudenzio in his youth travelled to the banks of the Rhine, and bathed long and deep in its mystic atmosphere. Like the Gothic masters, he is perhaps the only sixteenth-century painter who worked exclusively for churches or convents. He is the only one in Italy who painted lengthy sacred dramas and legends from the lives of the saints: a "Passion" at Varallo; a "Life of the Virgin", and a "Life of St. Magdalen", at Vercelli; and at times, after the fashion of the cinquecento, he grouped many different episodes in one scene, at the expense of unity in composition, till they resembled the mysteries, and might be styled "sectional paintings". He was not aiming at art, but at edification. Hence arose a certain negligence of form and a carelessness of execution still more pronounced. The "Carrying of the Cross" at Cannobio, the "Calvary" at Vercelli, the "Deposition" at Turin, works of great power in many ways, and unequalled at the time in Italy for pathos and feeling, are somehow wanting in proportion, and give one the impression that the conventional grouping has been departed from. The soul, being filled as it were with its object, as overpowered by the emotions; and the intellect confesses its inability to synthesize the images which rise tumultuously from an over excited sensibility. Another consequence of this peculiarity of mental conformation is, perhaps, the abuse of the materials at his disposal Gaudenzio never refrained from using doubtful methods, such as ornaments in relief, the use of gilded stucco worked into harness, armour, into the aureolas, etc. And to heighten the effect he does not even hesitate to make certain figures stand out in real, palpable relief; is fact some of his frescoes are as much sculpture as they are painting, by reason of this practice. His history must always remain incomplete until we get further enlightenment concerning that strange movement of the Pietist preachers, which ended in establishing (1487-93) a great Franciscan centre on the Sacro Monte de Varallo. It was in this retreat that Gaudenzio spent the years which saw his genius come to full maturity; it was there he left his greatest works, his "Life of Christ" of 1513, in twenty-one frescoes at Santa Maria delle Grazie, and other works on the Sacro Monte dating between 1523 and 1528. It was there that the combined use of painting and sculpture produced a most curious result. Fresco is only used as an ornament, a sort of background to a scene presenting a tableau vivant of figures in terra-cotta. Some of the groups embrace no less than thirty figures. Forty chapels bring out in this way the principal scenes in the drama of the Incarnation, Gaudenzio is responsible for the chapels of the Magi, the Pietà, and the Calvary. In his subsequent works, at Vercelli (1530-34) and at Saronno (in the cupola of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, 1535), the influence of Correggio is furiously blended with the above-mentioned German leanings. The freshness and vigour of his inspiration remain untouched in all their homely yet stern grace. The "Assumption" at Vercelli is perhaps the greatest lyric in Italian art; this lyric quality in his painting is still more intense in the wonderful "Glory of Angels", in the cupola at Saronno, the most enthusiastic and jubilant symphony that any art has ever produced. In all Correggio's art there is nothing more charming than the exquisite sentiment and tender rusticity of "The Flight into Egypt", in the cathedral of Como. The artist's latest works were those he executed at Milan, whither he retired in 1536. In these paintings, the creations of a man already seventy years of age, the vehemence of feeling sometimes becomes almost savage, the presentation of his ideas abrupt and apocalyptic. His method becomes colossal and more and more careless, but still in the "Passion" at Santa Maria delle Grazie (1542) we cannot fail to trace the hand of a master. Gaudenzio was married at least twice. By his first marriage a son was born to him in 1509 and a daughter in 1512. He married, in 1528, Maria Mattia della Foppa who died about 1540, shortly after the death of his son. These sorrows doubtless affected the character of his later works. Gaudenzio's immediate influence was scarcely appreciable. His pupils Lanino and Della Cerva are extremely mediocre. Nevertheless when the day of Venice's triumph came with Tintoretto, and Bologna's with the Carraccis in the counter-reform movement, it was the art of Gaudenzio Ferrari that triumphed in them. The blend of Northern and Latin genius in his work, so characteristic of the artists of the Po valley, was carried into the ateliers of Bologna by Dionysius Calvaert. It became the fashion, displacing, as it was bound to do, the intellectual barrenness and artistic exoticism of the Florentine School. LOUIS GILLET Lucius Ferraris Lucius Ferraris An eighteenth-century canonist of the Franciscan Order. The exact dates of his birth and death are unknown, but he was born at Solero, near Alessandria in Northern Italy. He was also professor, provincial of his order, and consultor of the Holy Office. It would seem he died before 1763. He is the author of the "Prompta Bibliotheca canonica, juridica, moralis, theologica, necnon ascetica, polemica, rubricistica, historica", a veritable encyclopedia of religious knowledge. The first edition of this work appeared at Bologna, in 1746. A second edition, much enlarged, also a third, were published by the author himself. The fourth edition, dating from 1763 seems to have been published after his death. This, like those which followed it, contains the additions which the author had made to the second edition under the title of additiones auctoris, and also other enlargements (additiones ex aliena manu) inserted in their respective places in the body of the work (and no longer in the appendix as in the former editions) and supplements. The various editions thus differ from each of her. The most recent are: that of the Benedictines (Naples, 1844-55), reproduced by Migne (Paris, 1861-1863), and an edition published at Paris 1884. A new edition was published at Rome in 1899 at the press of the Propaganda in eight volumes, with a volume of supplements, edited by the Jesuit, Bucceroni, containing several dissertations and the recent and important documents of the Holy See. This supplement serves to keep up to date the work of Ferraris, which will ever remain a precious mine of information, although it is sometimes possible to reproach the author with laxism. A. VAN HOVE Vicente Ferre Vicente Ferre Theologian, b. at Valencia, Spain; d. at Salamanca in 1682. He entered the Dominican Order at Salamanca, where he pursued his studies in the Dominican College of St. Stephen. After teaching in several houses of study of his order in Spain, he was called from Burgos to Rome, where for eighteen years he was regens primarius of the Dominican College of St Thomas ad Minervam. From Rome he went to Salamanca, where he became prior of the convent and, after three years, regent of studies. In his own time he was recognized as one of the best Thomists of the seventeenth century, and posterity acknowledges that ha published works possess extraordinary fullness, clearness, and order. He died while publishing his commentaries on the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas. We have two folio volumes on the Secunda Secundae, covering the treatises of faith, hope, and charity, and the opposite vices. Published at Rome in 1669; three on the Prima, published at Salamanca, in 1675, 1676, and 1678 respectively; and three on the Prima Seeundae, down to Q. cxiii, published at Salamanca, 1679, 1681, and 1690. His confrère Pérez à Lerma added to Q. cxiv the treatise on merit. QUÉTIF AND ECHARD, Script. Ord. Praed., II, 696; ANTONIO, Bibliotheca Hisp. Nova (Madrid, 1783), II, 261. A.L. MCMAHON Antonio Ferreira Antonio Ferreira A poet, important both for his lyric and his dramatic compositions, b. at Lisbon, Portugal, in 1528; d. there of the plague in 1569. He studied law at Coimbra, where, however, he gave no less ateention to belles-letteres than to legal codes,ardently reading the poetry of classic antiquity. Successful in his chosen profession, he became a judge of the Supreme Court at Lisbon, and enjoyed close relations with eminent personages of the court of John III. Ferreira stands apart from the great majority of the Portuguese poets of his time in that he never used Spanish, but wrote constantly in his native language. Yet he is to be classed with the reformers of literary taste, for, like Sâ de Miranda, he abandoned the old native forms to further the movement of the Renaissance. He manifested a decided interest in the Italian lyric measures, already given some elaboration by Sâ de Miranda, and displayed some skill in the use of the hendecasyllable. The sonnet, the elegy, the idyll, the verse epistle, the ode, and kindred forms he cuitlvated with a certain felicity, revealing not only his study of the Italian Renaissance poets, but also a good acquaintance with the Greek and Latin masters. It is by his dramatic endeavours that he attained to greatest prominence, for his tragedy "Ines de Castro", in particular is regarded as one of the chief monuments of Portughese literature. He began his work on the drama while still a student at Coimbra, writing there for his own amusement his first comedy, "Bristo", dealing with the old classic theme of lost children and later agnitions, which was often utilized for the stage of the Renaissance and has been made familiar by Shakespeare. Much improvement in dramatic technique is evinced by his second comedy, "O. Cioso", which treats realistically the figure of a jealous husband. It is considered as the earliest character-comedy in modern Europe. Written in prose, it exhibits a clever use of dialogue and has really comical scenes. None of the compositions of Ferreira appeared in print during his lifetime and the first edition of his two comedies is that of 1622. On English translation of the "Cioso" made by Musgrave was published in 1825. His tragedy, "Inés de Casro", imitates in its form the models of ancient Greek literature, and shows ltalian influence in its use of blank verse, but it owes its suject-matter to native Portuguese history, concerning itself with the love of King Pedro for the beautiful for the Ines de Castro, an incident which has also been spendidly treated by Camões in his "Lusiades", and has furnished the theme for at least ten Portughese and four Spanish plays, and over a score of compositions in foreign languages. If tested by the requirements of the theatre, the play is doubtless far frorn perfect, but the purity of its style and diction ensures its popularity with its author's compatriots. It was rendered into English by Musgrave in 1826. The rather free Spanish version of 1577 was made on the basis of a manuscript copy of the Portughese original, for the first Portughese printed edition is of 1587. J.D.M. FORD Rafael Ferrer Rafael Ferrer A Spanish missionary and explorer; b. at Valencia, in 1570; d. at San José, Peru, in 1611. His father had destined him for a military career, but he entered the Society of Jesus, and in 1593 was sent to Quito, Ecuador. In 1601 he penetrated the territory of the Cofanis, a hostle tribe who had been a source of great trouble to the Spanish Government. Within three years the Indians of several villages were so civilized by the influence of religion that the surrounding country was open to colonists. In 1605, at the command of the viceroy of Quito, Ferrer went among the. uncivilized tribes of the River Napo. He was well received by the Indians, and on this journey which lasted two and a half years, he travelled 3600 miles into the interior, bringing back with him a chart of the basin of the Napo, a map of the country he had explored, and an herbarium which he presented to the viceroy. He was appointed governor and chief magistrate of the Cofanis, and received the title of "Chief of the Missions of the Cofanis". After a period of rest at the mission he next journeyed northward from Quito through unexplored forests, and discovered a large lake and the River Pilcomago. In 1610 he returned to his labours among the Indians, bending his energies to the civilization ot the few tribes of the Cofanis who were not yet within the range of his influence. He met his death at the hands of the chief of one of these tribes, whom he had compelled to abandon polygamy. The murderer was slain in turn by his tribesmen, who were enraged on learning of his deed. An extract from Father Ferrer's account of his explorations was published by Fr. Detré in the "Lettres Edifiantes", and the same extract was also published by Father Bernard de Bologne in the "Bibliotheca Societatis Jesu", but the original manuscript was lost and has never been published in its entirety. Besides compiling his "Arte de la Lengua Cofana", Father Ferrer translated the catechism and selections from the Gospels for every Sunday in the year into the language of the Cofanis. BLANCHE M. KELLY Abbey of Ferrieres Abbey of Ferrières Situated in the Diocese of Orléans, department of Loiret, and arrondissement of Montargis. The Benedictine Abbey of Ferrières-en-Gâtinais has been most unfortunate from the view of historical science, having lost its archives, its charters, and everything which would aid in the reconstruction of its history. Thus legend and the existence of the abbey about the credulity have had full play. But it is interesting to encounter in the work of an obscure Benedictine of the eighteenth century, Dom Philippe Mazoyer, information perhaps the most accurate and circumspect obtainable. According to Dom Mazoyer there was formerly at Ferrières a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin under the title Notre-Dame de Bethleem de Ferrières. With regard to the foundation of the abbey, he thinks it cannot be traced beyond the reign of Dagobert (628-38) and he rightly regards as false the Acts of St. Savinian and the charter of Clovis, dated 508, despite the favourable opinion of Dom Morin. Some have based conjectures on the antiquity of portions of the church of Saint-Pierre et Saint-Paul de Ferrières, which they profess to trace back the sixth century, but this is completely disproved by archeological testimony. On the other hand the existence of the abbey about the year 630 seems certain, and rare documents, such as the diploma of Charles the Bald preserved in the archives of Orléans, bear witness to its prosperity. This prosperity reached its height in the time of the celebrated Loup (Lupus) of Ferrières (c. 850), when the abbey became a rather active literary centre. The library must have benefited thereby, but it shared the fate of the monastery, and is represented to-day by rare fragments. One of these, preserved at the Vatican library (Reg.1573) recalls the memory of St. Aldric (d. 836), Abbot of Ferrières before he become Archbishop of Sens. There is here also loosely arranged catalogue of some of the abbots of Ferrières between 887 and 987, which, imperfect though it is, serves to rectify and complete that of the "Gallia Christiana". Among the last names in the list of the abbots of Ferrières is that of Louis de Blanchefort, who in the fifteenth century almost entirely restored the abbey. Grievously tried during the war of religion, Ferrières disappeared with all the ancient abbeys at the time of the French Revolution. Its treasures and library were wasted and scattered. Today there are only to be seen some ruins of the ancient monastic buildings. At the time of the Concordat of 1802 and the ecclesiastical reorganization of France, Ferrières passed from the Archdiocese of Sens to the Diocese of Orléans. H. LECLERCQ Heinrich, Freiherr von Ferstel Heinrich, Freiherr von Ferstel Architect; with Hansen and Schmidt, the creator of modern Vienna; b. 7 July, 1828, at Vienna; d. at Grinzing, near Vienna, 14 July, 1883. His father was a bank-clerk. After wavering for some time between the different arts, all of which possessed a strong attraction for him, the talented youth finally decided on architecture which he studied at the Academy under Van der Null, Siccardsburg, and Rösner. After several years during which he was in disrepute because of his part in the Revolution, he entered the atelier of his uncle, Stache, where he worked at the votive altar for the chapel of St. Barbara in the cathedral of St. Stephen and co-operated in the restoration and construction of many castles, chiefly in Bohennia. Journeys of some length into Germany, Belgium, Holland, and England confirmed him in his tendency towards Romanticism. It was in Italy, however, where he was sent as a bursar in 1854, that he was converted to the Renaissance style of architecture. This was thenceforth his ideal, not because of its titanic grandeur, but because of its beauty and symmetrical harmony of proportion, realized pre-eminently in Bramante, his favourite master. He turned from the simplicity and restraint of the Late Renaissance to the use of polychromy by means of graffito decoration and terra-cotta. This device, adapted from the Early Renaissance and intended to convey a fuller sense of life, he employed later with marked success in the Austrian Museum. While still in Italy he was awarded the prize in the competition for the votive church (Votivkirche) of Vienna (1855) over seventy-four contestants, for the most part celebrated architects. In the masterpiece of modern ecclesiastical architecture he produced a structure of marvellous symmetry designed along strong architectural principles, with a simple, well-defined ground plan, a harmonious correlation of details, and a sumptuous scheme of decoration (1856-79). After his death this edifice was proposed by Sykes as a model for the new Westminster cathedral in London. Another of Ferstel's monumental works belonging to the same period is the Austro-Hungarian bank in Vienna, in the style of the Early Italian Renaissance (1856-60). The expansion of the city of Vienna enabled Ferstel, with Eitelberger, to develop civic architecture along artistic lines (burgomaster's residence, stock exchange 1859). At the same time he had also the opportunity of putting his ideas into practice in a number of private dwellings and villas at Brunn and Vienna. The more important buildings designed during his later years, passing over the churches at Schonau near Teplitz, really products of his earlier activity are the palace of Archduke Ludwig Victor, his winter palace at Klessheim, the palace of Prince Johahn Liechtenstein in the Rossau near Vienna, the palace of the Austro-Hungarian Lloyd's, at Triest, but above all the Austrian Museum (completed in 1871), a masterpiece of interior economy of space with its impsosing arcaded court. Next to his civic and ecclesiastical masterpieces comes the Vienna University, of masterly construction with wonderfully effective stairways (1871-84). Through a technical error his design for the Berlin Reichstag building received no award. Ferstel is the most distinctively Viennese of all Viennese architects; able to give a structure beauty of design and harmony without prejudice to the purpose it was to subserve, and this because of his artistic versatility and inexhaustible imagination. These qualities also assured him success as a teacher, and were evident in his memoirs and numerous treatises, which are masterpieces of clearness. Special mention should be made those which appeared in Forster's architectural magazine. In 1866 Ferstel was appointed professor at the Polytechnic School, in 1871 chief goverment inspector of public works and in 1879 was raised to the rank of Freiherr. At the time of his death he was still in the full vigour of his strength. JOSEPH SAUER Joseph Fesch Joseph Fesch Cardinal, b. at Ajaccio, Corsica, 3 January, 1763; d. at Rome, 13 May, 1839. He was the son of a captain of a Swiss regiment in the service of Genoa, studied at the seminary of Aix, was made archdeacon and provost of the chapter of Ajaccio before 1789, but was obliged to leave Corsica when his family sided with France against the English, who came to the island in answer to Paoli's summons. The young priest was half-brother to Letizia Ramolino, the mother of Napoleon and upon arriving in France he entered the commissariat department of the army; later, in 1795, became commissary of war under Bonaparte, then in command of the Armée d'Italie. When religious peace was reestablished, Fesch made a month's retreat under the direction of Emery, the superior of Saint-Sulpice and re-entered ecclesiastical life. During the Consulate he became canon of Bastia and helped to negotiate the Concordat of 1801; on 15 August, 1802, Caprara consecrated him Archbishop of Lyons, and in 1803 Pius VII created him cardinal. On 4 April, 1803, Napoleon appointed Cardinal Fesch successor to Cacault as ambassador to Rome, giving him Chateaubriand for secretary. The early part of his sojourn in the Eternal City was noted for his differences with Chateaubriand and his efforts to have the Concordat extended to the Italian Republic. He prevailed upon Pius VII to go to Paris in person and crown Napoleon. This was Fesch's greatest achievement. He accompanied the pope to France and as grand almoner, blessed the marriage of Napoleon and Josephine before the coronation ceremony took place. By a decree issued in 1805, the missionary institutions of Saint-Lazare and Saint-Sulpice were placed under the direction of Cardinal Fesch, who, laden with this new responsibility, returned to Rome. In 1806, after the occupation of Ancona by French troops, and Napoleon's letter proclaiming himself Emperor of Rome, Alquier was named to succeed Fesch as ambassador to Rome. Returning to his archiepiscopal See of Lyons, the cardinal remained in close touch with his nephew's religious policy and strove, occasionally with success, to obviate certain irreparable mistakes. He accepted the coadjutorship to Dalberg, prince-primate, in the See of Ratisbon, but, in 1808, refused the emperor's offer of the Archbishopric of Paris, for which he could not have obtained canonical institution. Although powerless to prevent either the rupture between Napoleon and the pope in 1809 or the closing of the seminaries of Saint-Lazarre, Saint-Esprit, and the Missions Etrangeres, Fresch nevertheless managed to deter Napoleon from signing a decree relative to the Gallican Church. He consented to bless Napoleon's marriage with Marie-Louise, but, according the researches of Geoffrey de Grandmaison, he was not responsible to the same extent as the members of the diocesan officialité for the illegal annulment of the emperor's first marriage. In 1809 and 1810 Fresch presided over the two ecclesiastical commissions charged with the question of canonical institution of bishops, but the proceedings were so conducted that neither commission adopted any schismatic resolutions. As its president, he opened the National Council od 1811, but at the very outset he took and also administered the oath (forma juramenti professionis fidei) required by the Bull "Injunctum nobis" of Pius IV; it was decided by eight votes out of eleven that the method of canonical institution could not altered independently of the pope. A message containing the assurance of the cardinal's loyalty, and addressed to the supreme pontiff, then in exile at Fontainebleau, caused the Fesch to incur the emperor's disfavour and to forfeit the subsidy of 150,000 florins which he had received as Dalberg's coadjutor. Under the Restoration and the Monarchy of July, Fesch lived at Rome, his Archdiocese of Lyons being in charge of an administrator. He died without again returning to France and left a splendid collection of pictures, a part of which was bequeathed to his epicopal city. As a diplomat, Fesch sometimes employed questionable methods. His relationship to the emperor and his cardinalitical dignity often made his position a difficult one; at least he could never be accused of approving the violent measures resorted to by Napoleon. As Archbishop, he was largely instrumental in re-establishing the Brothers of Christian Doctrine and recalling the Jesuits, under the name of Pacanarists. The Archdiocese of Lyons is indebted to him for some eminently useful institutions. It must be admitted, moreover, that in his pastoral capacity Fesch took a genuine interest in the education of priests. GEORGES GOYAU Josef Fessler Josef Fessler Bishop of St. Polten in Austria and secretary of the Vatican Council; b. 2 December, 1813, at Lochau near Bregenz in the Vorarlberg; d. 25 April, 1872. His parents were peasants. He early showed great abilities. His classical studies were done at Feldkirch his philosophy at Innsbruck including a year of legal studies, and has theology at Brixen. He was ordained priest in 1837, and, after a year as master in a school at Innsbruck, studied for two more years in Vienna life then became professor of ecclesiastical history and canon law in the theological school at Brixen, 1841-52. He published at the quest of the Episcopal Conferenee of Wurzburg, in 1848, a useful little book "Ueber die Provincial-Concilien und Diöcesan-Synoden" (Innsbruck, 1849), and in 1850-1 the well-known "Institutiones Patrologiae quas ad frequentiorem utiliorem et faciliorem SS. Patrum lectionem promovendam concinnavit J. Fessler" (Innsbruck, 2 Vols. 8vo). This excellent work superseded the unfinished books of Möhler and Permaneder and was not surpassed by the subsequent works of Alzog and Nirschl. In its new edition by the late Prof. Jungmann of Louvain (Innsbruck, 1890-6), it is still of great value to the student, in spite of the newer information given by Bardenhewer. From 1856 to 1861 Fessler was professor of canon law in the University Of Vienna, after making special studies for six months at Rome. He was consecrated as assistant bishop to the bishop of Brixen, Dr. Gasser, on 31 March, 1862, and became his vicar-general for the Vorarlberg. On 23 Sept., 1864, he was named by the emperor Bishop of St. Polten, not far from Vienna. When at Rome in 1867 he was named assistant at the papal throne. In 1869 Pope Pius IX proposed Bishop Fessler to the Congregation for the direction of the coming Vatican Council as secretary to the council. The appointment was well received, the only objection being from Cardinal Caterini who thought the choice of an Austrian might make the other nations jealous. Bishop Fessler was informed of his appointment on 27 March, and as the pope wished him to come with all speed to Rome, he arrived there on 8 July, after hastily dispatching the business of his diocese. He had a pro-secretary and two assistants. It was certainly wise to choose a prelate whose vast and intimate acquaintance with the Fathers and with ecclesiastical history was equalled only by his thorough knowledge of canon law. He seems to have given universal satisfaction by his work as secretary, but the burden was a heavy one, and in spite of his excellent constitution his untiring labours were thought to have been the cause of his early death. Before the council he published an opportune work "Das letzte und das nächste allgemeine Konsil" (Freiburg, 1869) and after the council he replied in a masterly brochure to the attack on the council by Dr. Schulte, professor of canon law and German law at Prague. Dr. Schulte's pamphlet on the power of the Roman popes over princes, countries, peoples, and individuals, in the light of their acts since the reign of Gregory VII, was very similar in character to the Vaticanism pamphlet of Mr. Gladstone, and rested on just the same fundamental misunderstanding of the dogma of Papal Infallibility as defined by the Vatican Council. The Prussian Government promptly appointed Dr. Schute to a professorship at Bonn, while it imprisoned Catholic priests and bishops. Fessler's reply, "Die wahre und die falsche Unfehlbarkeit der Päpste" (Vienna, 1871), was translated into French by Cosquin editor of "Le Français", and into English by Father Ambrose St. John, of the Birmingham Oratory (The True and False Infallibility of the Popes, London, 1875). It is still an exceedingly valuable explanation of the true doctrine of Infallibility as taught by the great Italian "Ultramontane" theologians, such as Bellarmine in the sixteenth century, P. Ballerini in the eighteenth, and Perrone in the nineteenth. But it was difficult for those who had been fighting against the definition to realize that the Infallibilists "had wanted no more than this. Bishop Hefele of Rottenburg, who had strongly opposed the definition and afterwards loyally accepted it, said he entirely agree with the moderate view taken by bishop Fessler, but doubted whether such views would be accepted as sound in Rome. It was clear, one would have thought, that the secretary of the council was likely to know; and the hesitations of the pious and learned Hefele were removed by the warm Brief of approbation which Pius IX addressed to the author. ANTON ERDINGER, Dr. Joseph Fessler, Bischof v. St. Polten, ein Lebensbild (Brixen, 1874); MITTERRUTZNER in Kirchenlexikon; GRANDERATH AND KIRCH, Geschichte des Vatiannischen Konzils (Freiburg im Br., 2 vols., 1903). JOHN CHAPMAN Domenico Feti Domenico Feti Feti, Domenico, an Italian painter; born at Rome, 1589; died at Venice, 1624. He was a pupil of Cigoli (Ludovico Cardi, 1559-1613), or at least was much influenced by this master during his sojourn in Rome. >From the end of the sixteenth century Rome again became what she had ceased to be after the sack of 1527, the metropolis of the beautiful. The jubilee of the year 1600 marked the triumph of the papacy. Art, seeking its pole now at Parma, now at Venice, now at Bologna, turning towards Rome, concentrated itself there. Crowds of artists flocked thither. This was the period in which were produced the masterpieces of the Carracci, Caravaggio, Domenichino, Guido, not counting those of many cosmopolitan artists, such as the brothers Bril, Elsheimer, etc., and between 1600 and 1610 Rubens, the great master of the century, paid three visits to Rome. This exceptional period was that of Domenico's apprenticeship; the labour, the unique fermentation in the world of art, resulted, as is well known, in the creation of an art which in its essential characteristics became for more than a century that of all Europe. For the old local and provincial schools (Florentine, Umbrian, etc.) Rome had the privilege of substituting a new one which was characterized by its universality . Out of a mixture of so many idioms and dialects she evolved an international language, the style which is called baroque. The discredit thrown on this school should not lead us to ignore its grandeur. In reality, the reorganization of modern painting dates from it. Domenico is one of the most interesting types of this great evolution. Eclecticism, the fusion of divers characteristics of Correggio, Barrochi, Veronese, was already apparent in the work of Cigoli. To these Feti added much of the naturalism of Caravaggio. From him he borrowed his vulgar types, his powerful mobs, his Bohemians, his beggars in heroic rags. From him also he borrowed his violent illuminations, his novel and sometimes fantastic portrayal of the picturesque, his rare lights and strong shadows, his famous chiaroscuro, which, nevertheless, he endeavoured to develop into full daylight and the diffuse atmosphere of out-of-doors. He did not have time to succeed completely in this. His colouring is often dim, crude, and faded, though at times it assumes a golden patina and seems to solve the problem of conveying mysterious atmospheric effects. At an early age Domenico went to Mantua with Cardinal Gonzaga, later Duke of Mantua, to whom he became court painter (hence his surname of Mantovano), and he felt the transient influence of Giulio Romano. His frescoes in the cathedral, however, are the least characteristic and the feeblest of his works. Domenico was not a good frescoist. Like all modern painters he made use of oils too frequently. By degrees he abandoned his decorative ambitions. He painted few altar-pieces, preference leading him to execute easel pictures, For the most part these dealt with religious subjects, but conceived in an intimate manner for private devotion. Scarcely any of his themes were historical, and few taken from among those, such as the Nativity, Calvary, or the entombment, which had been presented so often by painters. He preferred subjects more human and less dogmatic, more in touch with daily life, romance, and poetry. He drew by preference from the parables, as in "The Labourers in the Vineyard", "The Lost Coin" (Pitti Palace, Florence), "The Good Samaritan", "The Return of the Prodigal Son" (and others at the Museum of Dresden). Again he chose picturesque scenes from the Bible, such as "Elias in the 'Wilderness" (Berlin) and the history of Tobias (Dresden and St. Petersburg). It is astonishing to find in the canvases of this Italian nearly the whole repertoire of Rembrandt's subjects. They had a common liking for the tenderest parts of the Gospel, for the scenes of every day, of the "eternal present", themes for genre pictures. But this is not all. Domenico was not above reproach. It was his excesses which shortened his life. May we not assume that his art is but a history of the sinful soul, a poem of repentance such as Rembrandt was to present? There is found in both painters the same confidence, the same sense of the divine Protection in spite of sin (cf. Feti's beautiful picture, "The Angel Guardian" at the Louvre), and also, occasionally, the same anguish, the same disgust of the world and the flesh as in that rare masterpiece, "Melancholy", in the same museum. Thus Domenico was in the way of becoming one of the first masters of lyric painting, and he was utilizing to the perfection of his art all that he could learn at Venice when he died in that city, worn out with pleasure, at the age of thirty-four. There is no good life of this curious artist. His principal works are to be found at Dresden (11 pictures), St. Petersburg, Vienna, Florence, and Paris. BAGLIONE, Le vite de' pittore (Rome, 1642), 155; LANZI, Storia pittorica dell' Italiana (Milan, 1809); tr. ROSCOE (London, 1847), I, 471; II, 339; CHARLES BLANC, Histoire des peintres: Ecole romaine (Paris, s. d.); BURCKHARDT, Cicerone, ed. BODE, Fr. tr. (Paris, 1897), 809, 816; WOERMANN, Malerei (Leipzig, 1888), III, 233. LOUIS GILLET Fetishism Fetishism Fetishism means the religion of the fetish. The word fetish is derived through the Portuguese feitiço from the Latin factitius (facere, to do, or to make), signifying made by art, artificial (cf. Old English fetys in Chaucer). From facio are derived many words signifying idol, idolatry, or witchcraft. Later Latin has facturari, to bewitch, and factura, witchcraft. Hence Portuguese feitiço, Italian fatatura, O. Fr. faiture, meaning witchcraft, magic. The word was probably first applied to idols and amulets made by hand and supposed to possess magic power. In the early part of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese, exploring the West Coast of Africa, found the natives using small material objects in their religious worship. These they called feitiço, but the use of the term has never extended beyond the natives on the coast. Other names are bohsum, the tutelary fetishes of the Gold Coast; suhman, a term for a private fetish; gree-gree on the Liberian coast; monda in the Gabun country; bian among the cannibal Fang; in the Niger Delta ju-ju -- possibly from the French joujou. i. e. a doll or toy (Kingsley) -- and grou-grou, according to some of the same origin, according to others a native term, but the natives say that it is "a white man's word". Every Congo leader has his m'kissi; and in other tribes a word equivalent to "medicine" is used. C. de Brosses first employed fetishism as a general descriptive term, and claimed for it a share in the early development of religious ideas (Du Culte des Dieux Fétiches, 1760). He compared the phenomena observed in the negro worship of West Africa with certain features of the old Egyptian religion. This comparison led Pietschmann to emphasize the elements of fetishism in the Egyptian religion by starting with its magic character. Basthold (1805) claimed as fetish "everything produced by nature or art, which receives divine honor, including sun, moon, earth, air, fire, water, mountains, rivers, trees, stones, images, animals, if considered as objects of divine worship". Thus the name became more general, until Comte employed it to designate only the lowest stage of religious development. In this sense the term is used from time to time, e.g. de la Rialle, Schultze, Menzies, Höffding. Taking the theory of evolution as a basis, Comte affirmed that the fundamental law of history was that of historic filiation, that is, the Law of the Three States. Thus the human race, like the human individual, passed through three successive stages: the theological or imaginative, illustrated by fetishism, polytheism, monotheism; the metaphysical or abstract, which differed from the former in explaining phenomena not by divine beings but by abstract powers or essences behind them; the positive or scientific, where man enlightened perceives that the only realities are not supernatural beings, e.g. God or angels, nor abstractions, e.g. substances or causes, but phenomena and their laws as discovered by science. Under fetishism, therefore, he classed worship of heavenly bodies, nature-worship, etc. This theory is a pure assumption, yet a long time passed before it was cast aside. The ease with which it explained everything recommended it to many. Spencer formally repudiated it (Principles of Sociology), and with Tylor made fetishism a subdivision of animism. While we may with Tylor consider the theory of Comte as abandoned, it is difficult to admit his own view. For the spirit supposed to dwell in the fetish is not the soul or vital power belonging to that object, but a spirit foreign to the object, yet in some way connected with and embodied in it. Lippert (1881), true to his exaggerated animism, defines fetishism as "a belief in the souls of the departed coming to dwell in anything that is tangible in heaven or on earth". Schultze, analysing the consciousness of savages, says that fetishism is a worship of material objects. He claims that the narrow circle of savages' ideas leads them to admire and exaggerate the value of very small and insignificant objects, to look upon these objects anthropopathically as alive, sentient, and willing, to connect them with auspicious or inauspicious events and experiences, and finally to believe that such objects require religious veneration. In his view these four facts account for the worship of stocks and stones, bundles and bows, gores and stripes, which we call fetishism. But Schultze considers fetishism as a portion, not as the whole, of primitive religion. By the side of it he puts a worship of spirits, and these two forms run parallel for some distance, but afterwards meet and give rise to other forms of religion. He holds that man ceases to be a fetish-worshipper as soon as he learns to distinguish the spirit from the material object. To Müller and Brinton the fetish is something more than the mere object (Rel. of Prim. Peop., Philadelphia, 1898). Menzies (History of Religion, p. 129) holds that primitive man, like the untutored savage of to-day, in worshipping a tree, a snake, or an idol, worshipped the very objects themselves. He regards the suggestion that these objects represented or were even the dwelling-place of some spiritual being, as an afterthought, up to which man has grown in the lapse of ages. The study of the African negro refutes this view. Ellis writes, "Every native with whom I have conversed on the subject has laughed at the possibility of its being supposed that he could worship or offer sacrifice to some such object as a stone, which of itself would be perfectly obvious to his senses was a stone only and nothing more". De La Saussaye regards fetishism as a form of animism, i. e. a belief in spirits incorporated in single objects, but says that not every kind of worship paid to material objects can be called fetishism, but only that which is connected with magic; otherwise the whole worship of nature would be fetishism. The stock and stone which forms the object of worship is then called the fetish. Tylor has rightly declared that it is very hard to say whether stones are to be regarded as altars, as symbols, or as fetishes. He strives to place nature-worship as a connecting link between fetishism and polytheism, though he is obliged to admit that the single stages of the process defy any accurate description. Others, e.g. Reville, de La Saussaye, separate the worship of nature from animism. To Höffding, following Usener, the fetish is only the provisional and momentary dwelling-place of a spirit. Others, e.g. Lubbock, Happel, insist that the fetish must be considered as a means of magic -- not being itself the object of worship, but a means by which man is brought into close contact with the deity -- and as endowed with divine powers. De La Saussaye holds that to savages fetishes are both objects of religious worship and means of magic. Thus a fetish may often be used for magic purposes, yet it is more than a mere means of magic, as being itself anthropopathic, and often the object of religious worship. Within the limits of animism, Tiele and Höffding distinguish between fetishism and spiritism. Fetishism contents itself with particular objects in which it is supposed a spirit has for a longer or a shorter time taken up its abode. In spiritism, spirits are not bound up with certain objects, but may change their mode of revelation, partly at their own discretion, partly under the influence of magic. Thus Höffding declares that fetishism, as the lowest form of religion, is distinguished from spiritism by the special weight it attributes to certain definite objects as media of psychical activity. In selecting objects of fetishism, religion appears, according to Höffding, under the guise of desire. He holds that religious ideas are only religious in virtue of this connexion between need and expectation, i. e., as elements of desire, and that it is only when thus viewed that fetishism can be understood. Hübbe-Schleiden, on the contrary, holds that fetishism is not a proper designation for a religion, because Judaism and Christianity have their fetishes as well as the nature religions, and says the word fetish should be used as analogous to a word-symbol or emblem. Haddon considers fetishism as a stage of religious development. Jevons holds magic and fetishism to be the negation of religion. He denies that fetishism is the primitive religion, or a basis from which religion developed, or a stage of religious development. To him, fetishism is not only anti-social, and therefore anti-religious, he even holds that the attitude of superiority manifested by the possessor towards the fetish deprives it of religious value, or rather makes it anti-religious. The fetish differs from an idol or an amulet, though at times it is difficult to distinguish between them. An amulet, however, is the pledge of protection of a divine power. A fetish may be an image, e. g. the New Zealand wakapakoko, or not, but the divine power or spirit is supposed to be wholly incorporated in it. Farnell says an image may be viewed as a symbol, or as infused with divine power, or as the divinity itself. Idolatry in this sense is a higher form of fetishism. Farnell does not distinguish clearly between fetish and amulet, and calls relics, crucifixes, the Bible itself, fetishes. In his view any sacred object is a fetish. But objects may be held as sacred by external association with sacred persons or places without having any intrinsic sanctity. This loose use of the word has led writers to consider the national flag (especially a tattered battle-flag), the Scottish stone of Scone, the mascot, the horseshoe, as fetishes, whereas these objects have no value in themselves, but are prized merely for their associations -- real in the ease of the battle-flag, fancied in the case of the horseshoe. The theory advanced by certain writers that fetishism represents the earliest stage of religious thought, has a twofold basis: + (1) philosophical; + (2) sociological. (1) Philosophical Basis: The Theory of Evolution Assuming that primitive man was a semi-brute, or a semi-idiot, some writers of the Evolutionist School under the influence of Comte taught that man in the earliest stage was a fetish-worshipper, instancing in proof the African tribes, who in their view represent the original state of mankind. This basis is a pure assumption. More recent investigation reveals clearly the universal belief in a Great God, the Creator and Father of mankind, held by the negroes of Africa; Comber (Gram. and Dict, of the Congo language) and Wilson (West Guinea) prove the richness of their languages in structure and vocabulary; while Tylor, Spencer, and most advocates of the animistic theory look upon fetishism as by no means primitive, but as a decadent form of the belief in spirit and souls. Finally, there are no well-authenticated cases of savage tribes whose religion consists of fetish-worship only. (2) Sociological Basis Historians of civilization, impressed by the fact that many customs of savages are also found in the highest stages of civilized life, concluded that the development of the race could best be understood by taking the savage level as a starting-point. The life of savages is thus the basis of the higher development. But this argument can be inverted. For if the customs of savages may be found among civilized races, evident traces of higher ideals are also found among savages. Furthermore, the theory that a savage or a child represents exclusively, or even prominently, the life of primitive man, cannot be entertained. Writers on the philosophy of religion have used the word fetishism in a vague sense, susceptible of many shades of meaning. To obtain a correct knowledge of the subject, we must go to authorities like Wilson, Norris, Ellis, and Kingsley, who have spent years with the African negroes and have made exhaustive investigations on the spot. By fetish or ju-ju is meant the religion of the natives of West Africa. Fetishism, viewed from the outside, appears strange and complex, but is simple in its underlying idea, very logically thought out, and very reasonable to the minds of its adherents. The prevailing notion in West Guinea seems to be that God, the Creator (Anyambe, Anzam), having made the world and filled it with inhabitants, retired to some remote corner of the universe, and allowed the affairs of the world to come under the control of evil spirits. Hence the only religious worship performed is directed to these spirits, the purpose being to court their favour or ward off their displeasure. The Ashantis recognize the existence of a Supreme Being, whom they adore in a vague manner although, being invisible, He is not represented by an idol. At the commencement of the world, God was in daily relations with man. He came on earth, conversed with men, and all went well. But one day He retired in anger from the world, leaving its management to subaltern divinities. These are spirits which dwell everywhere -- in waters, woods, rocks -- and it is necessary to conciliate them, unless one wishes to encounter their displeasure. Such a phenomenon then as fetish- or spirit-worship, existing alone without an accompanying belief in a Supreme Being who is above all fetishes and other objects of worship, has yet to be discovered. Other nations, holding the fundamental idea of one God who is Lord and Creator, say that this God is too great to interest Himself in the affairs of the world; hence after having created and organized the world, He charged His subordinates with its government. Hence they neglect the worship of God for the propitiation of spirits. These spirits correspond in their functions to the gods of Greek and Roman mythology, but are never confounded with the Supreme Being by the natives. Fetishism therefore is a stage where God is quietly disregarded, and the worship due to Him is quietly transferred to a multitude of spiritual agencies under His power, but uncontrolled by it. "All the air and the future is peopled by the Bantu", says Dr. Norris, "with a large and indefinite company of spiritual beings. They have personality and will, and most of the human passions, e.g., anger, revenge, generosity, gratitude. Though they are all probably malevolent, yet they may be influenced and made favorable by worship." In the face of this animistic view of nature and the peculiar logic of the African mind, all the seemingly weird forms and ceremonies of fetishism, e.g. the fetish or witch-doctor, become but the natural consequences of the basal idea of the popular religious belief. There are grades of spirits in the spirit-world. Miss Kingsley holds that fourteen classes of spirits are clearly discernible. Dr. Nassau thinks the spirits commonly affecting human affairs can be classified into six groups. These spirits are different in power and functions. The class of spirits that are human souls, always remain human souls; they do not become deified, nor do they sink in grade permanently. The locality of spirits is not only vaguely in the surrounding air, but in prominent natural objects, e.g. caves, enormous rocks, hollow trees, dark forests. While all can move from place to place, some belong peculiarly to certain localities. Their habitations may be natural (e.g. large trees, caverns, large rocks, capes, and promontories; and for the spirits of the dead, the villages where they had dwelt during the lifetime of the body, or graveyards) or acquired, e.g. for longer or shorter periods under the power wielded by the incantations of the nganga or native doctor. By his magic art any spirit may be localized in any object whatever, however small, and thus placed it is under the control of the "doctor" and subservient, to the wishes of the possessor or wearer of the object in which it is confined. This constitutes a fetish. The fetish-worshipper makes a clear distinction between the reverence with which he regards a certain material object and the worship he renders to the spirit for the time being inhabiting it. Where the spirit, for any reason, is supposed to have gone out of that thing and definitively abandoned it, the thing itself is no longer reverenced, but thrown away as useless, or sold to the curio-hunting white man. Everything the African negro knows by means of his senses, he regards as a twofold entity-partly spirit, partly not spirit or, as we say, matter. In man this twofold entity appears as a corporeal body, and a spiritual or "astral" body in shape and feature like the former. This latter form of "life" with its "heart" can be stolen by magic power while one is asleep, and the individual sleeps on, unconscious of his loss. If the life-form is returned to him before he awakes, he will be unaware that anything unusual has happened. If he awakes before this portion of him has been returned, though he may live for a while, he will sicken and eventually die. If the magician who stole the "life" has eaten the "heart", the victim sickens at once and dies. The connexion of a certain spirit with a certain mass of matter is not regarded as permanent. The native will point out a lightning-struck tree, and tell you its spirit has been killed, i. e., the spirit is not actually dead, but has fled and lives elsewhere. When the cooking pot is broken, its spirit has been lost. If his weapon fails, it is because some one has stolen the spirit, or made it sick by witchcraft. In every action of life he shows how much he lives with a great, powerful spirit-world around him. Before starting to hunt or fight, he rubs medicine into his weapons to strengthen the spirit within them, talking to them the while, telling them what care he has taken of them and what he has given them before, though it was hard to give, and begging them not to fail him now. He may be seen bending over the river, talking with proper incantations to its spirit, asking that, when it meets an enemy, it will upset the canoe and destroy the occupant. The African believes that each human soul has a certain span of life due or natural to it. It should be born, grow up through childhood, youth, and manhood to old age. If this does not happen, it is because some malevolent influence has blighted it. Hence the Africans' prayers to the spirits are always: "Leave us alone!" "Go away!" "Come not into this town, plantation, house; we have never injured you. Go away!" This malevolent influence which cuts short the soul-life may act of itself in various ways, but a coercive witchcraft may have been at work. Hence the vast majority of deaths -- almost all deaths in which no trace of blood is shown -- are held to have been produced by human beings, acting through spirits in their command, and from this idea springs the widespread belief in and witches and witchcraft. Thus every familiar object in the daily life of these people is touched with some curious fancy, and every trivial action is regulated by a reference to unseen spirits who are unceasingly watching an opportunity to hurt or annoy mankind. Yet upon close inspection the tenets of this religion are vague and unformulated, for with every tribe and every district belief varies, and rites and ceremonies diverge. The fetish-man, fetizero, nganga, chitbone, is the authority on all religious observances. He offers the expiatory sacrifice to the spirits to keep off evil. He is credited with a controlling influence over the elements, winds and waters obey the waving of his charm, i. e. a bundle of feathers, or the whistle through the magic antelope horn. He brings food for the departed, prophesies, and calls down rain. One of his principal duties is to find out evil-doers, that is, persons who by evil magic have caused sickness or death. He is the exorcist of spirits, the maker of charms (i. e. fetishes), the prescriber and regulator of ceremonial rites. He can discover who "ate the heart" of the chief who died yesterday; who caused the canoe to upset and gave lives to the crocodiles and the dark waters of the Congo; or even "who blighted the palm trees of the village and dried up their sap, causing the supply of malafu to cease; or who drove away the rain from a district, and withheld its field of nguba" (ground-nuts). The fetish doctors can scarcely be said to form a class. They have no organization, and are honoured only in their own districts, unless they be called specially to minister in another place. In their ceremonies they make the people dance, sing, play, beat drums, and they spot their bodies with their "medicines". Anyone may choose the profession for himself, and large fees are demanded for services. Among the natives on the lower Congo is found the ceremony of n'kimba, i. e. the initiation of young men into the mysteries and rites of their religion. Every village in this region has its n'kimba enclosure, generally a walled-in tract of half an acre in extent buried in a thick grove of trees. Inside the enclosure are the huts of the nganga and his assistants, as well as of those receiving instruction. The initiated alone are permitted to enter the enclosure, where a new language is learned in which they can talk on religious matters without being understood by the people. In other parts of the Congo the office falls on an individual in quite an accidental manner, e.g. because fortune has in some way distinguished him from his fellows. Every unusual action, display of skill, or superiority is attributed to the intervention of some supernatural power. Thus the future nganga usually begins his career by some lucky adventure, e. g. prowess in hunting, success in fishing, bravery in war. He is then regarded as possessing some charm, or as enjoying the protection of some spirit. In consideration of payment he pretends to impart his power to others by means of charms, i. e. fetishes consisting of different herbs, stones, pieces of wood, antelope horns, skin and feathers tied in little bundles, the possession of which is supposed to yield to the purchaser the same power over spirits as the nganga himself enjoys. The fetish-man always carries in his sack a strange assortment of articles out of which he makes the fetishes. The flight of the poisonous arrow, the rush of the maddened buffalo, or the venomous bite of the adder, can be averted by these charms; with their assistance the waters of the Congo may be safely crossed. The Moloki, ever ready to pounce on men, is checked by the power of the nganga. The eye-teeth of leopards are an exceedingly valuable fetish on the Kroo coast. The Kabinda negroes wear on their necks a little brown shell sealed with wax to preserve intact the fetish-medicine within. A fetish is anything that attracts attention by its curious shape (e.g. an anchor) or by its behaviour, or anything seen in a dream, and is generally not shaped to represent the spirit. A fetish may be such by the force of its own proper spirit, but more commonly a spirit is supposed to be attracted to the object from without (e.g. the suhman), whether by the incantations of the nganga or not. These wandering spirits may be natural spirits or ghosts. The Melanesians believe that the souls of the dead act through bones, while the independent spirits choose stones as their mediums (Brinton, Religions of Prim. Peoples, New York, 1897). Ellis says, if a man wants a suhman (a fetish), he takes some object (a rudely cut wooden image, a stone, a root of a plant, or some red earth placed in a pan), and then calls on a spirit of Sasabonsum (a genus of deities) to enter the object prepared, promising it offerings and worship. If a spirit consents to take up its residence in the object, a low hissing sound is heard, and the suhman is complete. Every house in the Congo village has its m'kissi; they are frequently put over the door or brought inside, and are supposed to protect the house from fire and robbery. The selection of the object in which the spirit is to reside is made by the native nganga. The ability to conjure a free wandering spirit into the narrow limits of this material object, and to compel or subordinate its power to the service of some designated person and for a special purpose, rests with him. The favourite articles used to confine spirits are skins (especially tails of bushcats),horns of the antelope, nutshells, snail-shells, eagles' claws and feathers, tails and heads of snakes, stones, roots, herbs, bones of any animal (e.g. small horns of gazelles or of goats), teeth and claws of leopards, but especially human bones -- of ancestors or of renowned men, but particularly of enemies or white men. Newly made graves are rifled for them, and among the bodily parts most prized are portions of human skulls, human eyeballs, especially those of white men. But anything may be chosen -- a stick, string, bead, stone, or rag of cloth. Apparently there is no limit to the number of spirits; there is literally no limit to the number and character of the articles in which they may be confined. As, however, the spirits may quit the objects, it is not always certain that fetishes possess extraordinary powers; they must be tried and give proof of their efficiency before they can be implicitly trusted. Thus, according to Ellis, the natives of the Gold Coast put their bohsum in fire as a probation, for the fire never injures the true bohsum. A fetish then, in the strict sense of the word, is any material object consecrated by the nganga or magic doctor with a variety of ceremonies and processes, by virtue of which some spirit is supposed to become localized in that object, and subject to the will of the possessor. These objects are filled or rubbed by the nganga with a mixture compounded of various substances, selected according to the special work to be accomplished by the fetish. Its value, however, depends not on itself, nor solely on the nature of these substances, but on the skill of the nganga in dealing with spirits. Yet there is a relation, difficult sometimes for the foreigner to grasp, between the substances selected and the object to be attained by the fetish. Thus, to give the possessor bravery or strength, some part of a leopard or of an elephant is selected; to give cunning, some part of a gazelle; to give wisdom, some part of the human brain; to give courage, a portion of the heart; to give influence, some part of the eye. These substances are supposed to please and attract some spirit, which is satisfied to reside in them and to aid their possessor. The fetish is compounded in secret, with the accompaniment of drums, dancing, invocations, looking into mirrors or limpid water to see faces human or spiritual, and is packed into the hollow of the shell or bone, or smeared over the stick or stone. If power over some one be desired, the nganga must receive crumbs from the food, clippings of the finger-nails, some hair, or even a drop of blood of the person, which is mixed in the compound. So fearful are the natives of power being thus obtained over them, that they have their hair cut by a friend; and even then it is carefully burned, or cast into the river. If one is accidentally cut, he stamps out the blood that has dropped on the ground, or cuts away the wood which it has saturated. The African negro in appealing to the fetish is prompted by fear alone. There is no confession, no love, rarely thanksgiving. The being to whom he appeals is not God. True he does not deny that God is; if asked, he will acknowledge His existence. Very rarely and only in extreme emergencies, however, does he make an appeal to Him, for according to his belief God is so far off, so inaccessible, so indifferent to human wants, that a petition to Him would be almost vain. He therefore turns to some one of the mass of spirits whom he believes to be ever near and observant of human affairs, in which, as former human beings, some of them once had part. He seeks not spiritual, but purely physical, safety. A sense of moral and spiritual need is lost sight of, although not quite eliminated, for he believes in a good and a bad. But the dominant feeling is fear of possible natural injury from human or subsidized spiritual enemies. This physical salvation is sought either by prayer, sacrifice, and certain other ceremonies rendered to the spirit of the fetish or to non-localized spirits, or by the use of charms or amulets. These charms may be material, i. e. fetishes; vocal, e.g. utterances of cabbalistic words which are supposed to have power over the local spirits; ritual, e.g. prohibited food, i. e. orunda, for which any article of food may be selected and made sacred to the spirit. At night the Congo chief will trace a slender line of ashes round his hut, and firmly believe that he has erected a barrier which will protect him and his till morning against the attacks of the evil spirit. The African believes largely in preventive measures, and his fetishes are chiefly of this order. When least conscious, he may be offending some spirit with power to work him ill; he must therefore be supplied with charms for every season and occasion. Sleeping, eating, drinking, he must be protected from hostile influences by his fetishes. These are hung on the plantation fence, or from the branches of plants in the garden, either to prevent theft or to sicken the thief over the doorway of the house, to bar the entrance of evil; from the bow of the canoe, to ensure a successful voyage; they are worn on the arm in hunting to ensure an accurate aim; on any part of the person, to give success in loving, hating, planting, fishing, buying; and so through the whole range of daily work and interests. Some kinds, worn on a bracelet or necklace, ward off sickness. The new-born infant has a health-knot tied about its neck, wrist, or loins. Before every house in Whydah, the seaport of Dahomey, one may perceive a cone of baked clay, the apex of which is discoloured with libations of palm-oil, etc. To the end of their lives the people keep on multiplying, renewing, or altering these fetishes. In fetish-worship the African negro uses prayer and sacrifice. The stones heaped by passers-by at the base of some great tree or rock, the leaf cast from a passing canoe towards a point of land on the river bank, are silent acknowledgements of the presence of the ombwiris (i.e. spirits of the place). Food is offered, as also blood-offerings of a fowl, a goat, or a sheep. Until recently human sacrifices were offered, e.g. to the sacred crocodiles of the Niger Delta; to the spirits of the oil-rivers on the upper Guinea coast, where annual sacrifices of a maiden were made for success in foreign commerce; the thousands of captives killed at the "annual custom" of Dahomey for the safety of the king and nation. In fetishism prayer has a part, but it is not prominent, and not often formal and public. Ejaculatory prayer is constantly made in the utterance of cabbalistic words, phrases, or sentences adopted by, or assigned to, almost every one by parent or doctor. According to Ellis no coercion of the fetish is attempted on the Gold Coast, but Kidd states that the negro of Guinea beats his fetish, if his wishes are frustrated, and hides it in his waist-cloth when he is about to do anything of which he is ashamed. The fetish is used not only as a preventive of or defence against evil (i. e. white art), but also as a means of offence, i. e. black art or witchcraft in the full sense, which always connotes a possible taking of life. The half-civilized negro, while repudiating the fetish as a black art, feels justified in retaining it as a white art, i. e. as a weapon of defence. Those who practise the black art are all "wizards" or "witches" -- names never given to practisers of the white art. The user of the white art uses no concealment; a practitioner of the black art denies it, and carries on its practice secretly. The black art is supposed to consist of evil practices to cause sickness and death. Its medicines, dances, and enchantments are also used in the professed innocent white art; the difference is in the work which the spirit is entrusted to perform. Not every one who uses white art is able to use also the black art. Anyone believing in the fetish can use the white art without subjecting himself to the charge of being a wizard. Only a wizard can cause sickness or death. Hence witchcraft belief includes witchcraft murder. There exists in Bantu a society called the "Witchcraft Company", whose members hold secret meetings at midnight in the depths of the forest to plot sickness or death. The owl is their sacred bird, and their signal-call is an imitation of its hoot. They profess to leave their corporeal bodies asleep in their huts, and it is only their spirit-bodies that attend the meeting, passing through walls and over tree-Lops with instant rapidity. At the meeting they have visible, audible, and tangible communications with spirits. They have feasts, at which is eaten "the heart-life" of some human being, who through this loss of his "heart" falls sick and dies unless the "heart" be restored. The early cock-crow is a warning for them to disperse, for they fear the advent of the morning star, as, should the sun rise upon them before they reach their corporeal bodies, all their plans would fail and they would sicken. They dread cayenne pepper; should its bruised leaves or pods be rubbed over their corporeal bodies during their absence, their spirits are unable to re-enter, and their bodies die or waste miserably away. This society was introduced by black slaves to the West Indies, e.g. Jamaica and Hayti, and to the Southern States as Voodoo worship. Thus Voodooism or Odoism is simply African fetishism transplanted to American soil. Authentic records are procurable of midnight meetings held in Hayti, as late as 1888, at which human beings, especially children, were killed and eaten at the secret feasts. European governments in Africa have put down the practice of the black art, yet so deeply is it implanted in the belief of the natives that Dr. Norris does not hesitate to say it would revive if the whites were to withdraw. Fetishism in Africa is not only a religious belief; it is a system of government and a medical profession, although the religious element is fundamental and colours all the rest. The fetish-man, therefore, is priest, judge, and physician. To the believers in the fetish the killing of those guilty of witchcraft is a judicial act; it is not murder, but execution. The fetish-man has power to condemn to death. A judicial system does not exist. Whatever rules there are, are handed down by tradition, and the persons familiar with these old sayings and customs are present in the trial of disputed matters. Fetishes are set up to punish offenders in certain cases where it is considered specially desirable to make the law operative though the crimes cannot be detected (e.g. theft). The fetish is supposed to be able not only to detect but to punish the transgressor. In cases of death the charge of witchcraft is made, and the relatives seek a fetish-man, who employs the ordeal by poison, fire or other tests to detect the guilty person. Formerly mbwaye (i. e. ordeal by poison) was performed by giving to the accused a poisonous drink, the accuser also having to take the test to prove their sincerity. If he vomited immediately he was innocent; if he was shown guilty, the accusers were the executioners. On the upper coast of Guinea the test is a solution of the sassawood, and is called "red water"; at Calahar, the solution of a bean; in the Gabun country, of the akazya leaf or bark; farther south in the Nkami country, it is called mbundu. The distinction between poison and fetish is vague in the minds of many natives, to whom poison is only another material form of a fetish power. It has been estimated that for every natural death at least one -- and often ten or more -- has been executed. The judicial aspect of fetishism is revealed most plainly in the secret societies (male and female) of crushing power and far-reaching influence, which before the advent of the white man were the court of last appeal for individual and tribal disputes. Of this kind were the Egho of the Niger Delta, Ukuku of the Corisco region, Yasi of the Ogowé, M'wetyi of the Shekani, Bweti of the Bakele, Inda and Njembe of the Mpongwe, Ukuku and Malinda of the Batanga region. All of these societies had for their primary object the laudable one of government, and, for this purpose, they fostered the superstitious dread with which the fetish was regarded by the natives. But the arbitrary means employed in their management, the oppressive influences at work, the false representations indulged in, made them almost all evil. They still exist among the interior tribes; on the coast, they have either been entirely suppressed or exist only for amusement (e.g. Ukuku in Gabun), or as a traditional custom (e.g. Njembe). The Ukuku society claimed the government of the country. To put "Ukuku on the white man" meant to boycott him, i. e. that no one should work for him, no one should sell food or drink to him; he was not allowed to go to his own spring. In Dahomey the fetish-priests are a kind of secret police for the despotic king. Thus, while witchcraft was the religion of the natives, these societies constituted their government. Although sickness is spoken of among the natives as a disease, yet the patient is said to be sick because of an evil spirit, and it is believed that when this is driven out by the magician's benevolent spirit, the patient will recover. When the heathen negro is sick, the first thing is to call the "doctor" to find out what spirit by invading the body has caused the sickness. The diagnosis is made by drum, dance, frenzied song, mirror, fumes of drugs, consultation of relics, and conversation with the spirit itself. Next must be decided the ceremony peculiar to that spirit, the vegetable and mineral substances supposed to be either pleasing or offensive to it. If these cannot be obtained, the patient must die. The witch-doctor believes that his incantations have subsidized the power of a spirit, which forthwith enters the body of the patient and, searching through its vitals, drives out the antagonizing spirit which is the supposed actual cause of the disease. The nkinda, "the spirit of disease", is then confined by the doctor in a prison, e.g. in a section of sugar-cane stalk with its leaves tied together. The component parts of any fetish are regarded by the natives as we regard the drugs of our materia medica. Their drugs, however, are esteemed operative not through certain inherent chemical qualities, but in consequence of the presence of the spirit to whom they are favourite media. This spirit is induced to act by the pleasing enchantments of the magic-doctor. The nganga, as surgeon and physician, shows more than considerable skill in extracting bullets from wounded warriors, and in the knowledge of herbs as poisons and antidotes. Whether the black slaves brought to America the okra or found it already existing on the continent is uncertain, but the term gumbo is undoubtedly of African origin, as also is the term mbenda (peanuts or ground-nuts), corrupted into pindar in some of the Southern States. The folk-lore of the African slave survives in Uncle Remus's tales of "Br'er Rabbit". Br'er Rabbit is an American substitution for Brother Nja (Leopard) or Brother Iheli (Gazelle) in Paia N'jambi's (the Creator's) council of speaking animals. Jevons holds that fetishes are private only, although, in fact, not only individuals, but families and tribes have fetishes. The fetish Deute at Krakje and Atia Yaw of Okwaou were known and feared for leagues around. In the Benga tribe of West Africa the family fetish is known by the name of Yãkã. It is a bundle of the parts of bodies of their dead, i. e. first joints of fingers and toes, lobe of ear, hair. The value of Yãkã depends on the spirits of the family dead being associated with the portions of their bodies, and this combination is effected by the prayer and incantation of the doctor. The Yãkã is appealed to in family emergencies, e.g. disease, death, when ordinary fetishes fail. This rite is very expensive and may require a month, during which time all work is suspended. The observances of fetish-worship fade away into the customs and habits of everyday life by gradations, so that in some of the superstitious beliefs, while there may be no formal handling of a fetish amulet containing a spirit nor actual prayer nor sacrifice, nevertheless spiritism is the thought and is more or less consciously held, and consequently the term fetish might perhaps be extended to them. The superstition of the African negro is different from that of the Christian, for it is the practical and logical application of his religion. To the Christian it is a pitiful weakness; to the negro, a trusted belief. Thus some birds and beasts are of ill omen, others of good omen. The mournful hooting of an owl at midnight is a warning of death, and all who hear the call will hasten to the wood and drive away the messenger of ill-tidings with sticks and stones. Hence arises the belief in the power of Ngoi, Moloki, N'doshi or Uvengwa (i. e., evil-spirited leopard, like the German werewolf), viz., that certain possessors of evil spirits have ability to assume the guise of an animal, and reassume at will the human form. To this superstition must be referred the reverence shown fetish leopards, hippopotami, crocodiles, sokos (large monkeys of the gorilla type). (See AMULET, ANIMISM, DEITY, IDOLATRY, MAGIC, NATURISM, RELIGION, SPIRITISM, TOTEMISM, SHAMANISM, SYMBOLISM.) BRINTON, The Religions of Primitive Peoples (New York, 1897); ELLIS, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast of W. Africa (London, 1887); IDEM, The Yomba-speaking Peoples of the Slave-Coast of W. Africa (London, 1894); FARNELL, Evolution of Religion (London and New York, 1905); HADDON, Magic and Fetichism in Religions, Ancient and Modern (London, 1906); HÖFFDING, The Philosophy of Religion, tr. MEYEA (London and New York, 1906); JEVONS, Introduction to Study of Comparative Religion (New York, 1908); KELLOG, Genesis and Growth of Religion (London and New York, 1892); KIDD, The Essential Kaffir (London, 1904); KINGSLEY, Travels in West Africa (London, 1898); IDEM, West African Studies (London, 1899); LEPPEET, Die Religionen der europäischen Culturvölker (Berlin, 1881); MÜLLER, Natural Religion (London, 1892); IDEM, Origin and Growth of Religion (London, 1878); NORRIS, Fetichism in W. Africa (New York, 1904); SCHULTZE, Psychologie der Naturvölker (Leipzig, 1900); SPENCER ST. JOHN, Hayti and the Black Republic (2d ed., London, 1889); TYLOR, Primitive Culture (2d ed., London, 1873); WILSON, Western Africa (New York, 1856); AMES, African Fetichism (Heli Chatelain) in FolkLore (Oct., Dec., 1894); GLAU, Fetichism in Congo Land in Century (April, 1891); KINGSLEY, The Fetich View of the Human Soul in Folk-Lore (June, 1897); NIPPESLEY, Fetich Faith in W. Africa in Pop. Sc. Monthly (Oct., 1887); LE ROY, La religion des primitifs (Paris, 1909). JOHN T. DRISCOLL. Francois Feuardent François Feuardent A Franciscan, theologian, preacher of the Ligue, b. at Coutanees, Normandy, in 1539; d. at Paris, 1 Jan., 1610. Having compteted his humanities at Bayeux, he joined the Friars Minor. After the novitiate, he was sent to Paris to continue his studies, where he received (1576) the degree of Doctor in Theology and taught with great success at the university. He took a leading part in the political and religious troubles in which France was involved at that time. With John Boucher and Bishop Rose of Senlis, he was one of the foremost preachers in the cause of the Catholic Ligue and, as Roennus remarks in an appendix to Feuardent's "Theomachia", there was not a church in Paris in which he had not preached. Throughout France and beyond the frontiers in Lorraine and Flanders, he was an eloquent and ardent defender of the Faith. Nevertheless even Pierre de l'Etoile, a fierce adversary of the Ligue, recognises in his "Mémoires" the merits of Feuardent's subsequent efforts in pacifying the country. In his old age he retired to the convent of Bayeux, which he restored and furnished with a good library. His works can be conveniently grouped in three classes: (1) Scriptural; (2) patristical; (3) controversial. Only some of the most remarkable may be pointed out here. (1) A new edition of the medieval Scripturist, Nicholas of Lyra: "Biblia Sacra, cum glossa ordinaria . . . et postillâ Nicolai Lyrani" (Paris, 1590), 6 vols. fol.). He also wrote commentaries on various books of Holy Scripture, viz on Ruth Esther, Job, Jonas, the two Epistles of St. Peter, the Epistles of St. Jude and St. James, the Epistle of St. Paul to Philemon, and others. (2) "S. Irenaei Lugd. episcopi adversus Valentini . . . haereses libri quinque" (Paris, 1576); "S. lldephonsi archiepiscopi Toletani de virginitate Mariae liber" (Paris, 1576). Feuardent also wrote an introduction and notes to "Michaelis Pselli Dialogus de energiâ seu operatione daemonum translatus a Petro Marrello" (Paris, 1577). (3) "Appendix ad libros Alphonsi a Castro (O.F.M.) contra haereses" (Paris, 1578). "Theomachia Calvinistica", his chief work is based on some earlier writings, such as: "Semaine premiere des dialogues auxquels sont examinees et refutees 174 erreurs des Calviniste" (1585); "Seconde semaine des dialogues . . ." (Paris, 1598); "Entremangeries et guerres mininstrales . . ." (Caen, 1601). LIVARIUS OLIGER Baron Ernst von Feuchtersleben Baron Ernst Von Feuchtersleben An Austrian poet, philosopher, and physician; born at Vienna, 29 April, 1806; died 3 September, 1849. After completing his course at the Theresian Academy, he took up the study of medicine in 1825, receiving the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1833. In 1844 he began a series of free lectures on psychiatry at the University of Vienna, the next year became dean of the medical faculty, and in 1847 was made vice-director of medico-chirurgical studies. In July, 1848, he was appointed under-secretary of state in the ministry of public instruction, and in this capacity he attempted to introduce some important reforms in the system of education, but, discouraged by the difficulties which he encountered, he resigned in December of the following year. As a medico-philosophical writer, Feuchtersleben attained great popularity, especially through his book "Zur Diätetik der Seele" (Vienna, 1838), which went through many editions (46th in 1896). Hardly less famous is his "Lehrbuch der ârztlichen Seelenkunde" (Vienna, 1845), translated into English by H. Evans Lloyd under the title of "Principles of Medical Psychology" (revised and edited by B. C. Babington, London, 1847). He also wrote an essay, "Die Gewissheit und Würde der Heilkunst" (Vienna, 1839), a new edition of which appeared under the title "Aerzte und Publikum" (Vienna, 1845). As a poet Feuchtersleben is chiefly known by the well-known song, "Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rat", which appeared in "Gedichte" (Stuttgart, 1836) and was set to music by Mendelssohn. His later poems are more philosophical and critical. His essays and other prose writings were published under the title "Beiträge zur Litteratur-, Kunst- und Lebenstheorie" (Vienna, 1837-41). His complete works (exclusive of his medical writings) were edited by Friedrich Hebbel (7 vols., Vienna, 1851-53). Consult the autobiography prefixed to the above-mentioned edition; also NECKER, Ernst v. Feuchtersleben, der Freund Grillparzers in Jahrbuch der Grillparzer-Gesellschaft, III (Vienna, 1893). ARTHUR F.J. REMY Feudalism Feudalism This term is derived from the Old Aryan pe'ku, hence Sanskrit pacu, "cattle"; so also Lat. pecus (cf. pecunia); Old High German fehu, fihu, "cattle", "property", "money"; Old Frisian fia; Old Saxon fehu; Old English feoh, fioh, feo, fee. It is an indefinable word for it represents the progressive development of European organization during seven centuries. Its roots go back into the social conditions of primitive peoples, and its branches stretch out through military, political, and judicial evolution to our own day. Still it can so far be brought within the measurable compass of a definition if sufficient allowance be made for its double aspect. For feudalism (like every other systematic arrangement of civil and religious forces in a state) comprises duties and rights, according as it is looked at central or local point of view. (1) As regards the duties involved in it, feudalism may be defined as a contractual system by which the nation as represented by the king lets its lands out to individuals who pay rent by doing governmental work not merely in the shape of military service, but also of suit to the king's court. Originally indeed it began as a military system. It was in imitation of the later Roman Empire, which met the Germanic inroads by grants of lands to individuals on condition of military service (Palgrave, "English Commonwealth", I, 350, 495, 505), that the Carlovingian Empire adopted the same expedient. By this means the ninth century Danish raids were opposed by a semi-professional army, better armed and more tactically efficient than the old Germanic levy. This method of forming a standing national force by grants of lands to individuals is perfectly normal in history, witness the Turkish timar fiefs (Cambridge Modern History, I, iii, 99, 1902), the fief de soudée of the Eastern Latin kingdoms (Bréhier, "L'Eglise et l'Orient au moyen âge", Paris, 1907, iv, 94), and, to a certain extent, the Welsh uchelwyr (Rhys and Jones, "The Welsh People", London, 1900, vi, 205). On the whole feudalism means government by amateurs paid in land rather than professionals paid in money. Hence, as we shall see, one cause of the downfall of feudalism was the substitution in every branch of civil life of the "cash-nexus" for the "land-nexus". Feudalism, therefore, by connecting ownership of land with governmental work, went a large way toward solving that ever present difficulty of the land question; not, indeed, by any real system of land nationalization, but by inducing lords to do work for the country in return for the right of possessing landed property. Thus, gradually, it approximated to, and realized, the political ideal of Aristotle, "Private possession and common use" (Politics, II, v, 1263, a). To a certain extent, therefore, feudalism still exists, remaining as the great justification of modern landowners wherever, -- as sheriffs, justices of the peace, etc. -- they do unpaid governmental work. (2) As regards the rights it creates, feudalism may be defined as a "graduated system based on land tenure in which every lord judged, taxed, and commanded the class next below him" (Stubbs, "Constitutional History", Oxford, 1897, I, ix, 278). One result of this was that, whenever a Charter of Liberties was wrung by the baronage from the king, the latter always managed to have his concessions to his tenants-in-chief paralleled by their concessions to their lower vassals (cf. Stubbs, "Select Charters", Oxford, 1900, § 4, 101, 60, 304). Another more serious, less beneficent, result was that, while feudalism centrally converted the sovereign into a landowner, it locally converted the landowner into a sovereign. Origin The source of feudalism rises from an intermingling of barbarian usage and Roman law (Maine, "Ancient Law", London, 1906, ix). To explain this reference must be made to a change that passed over the Roman Empire at the beginning of the fourth century. About that date Diocletian reorganized the Empire by the establishment of a huge bureaucracy, at the same time disabling it by his crushing taxation. The obvious result was the depression of free classes into unfree, and the barbarization of the Empire. Before A.D. 300 the absentee landlord farmed his land by means of a familia rustica or gang of slaves, owned by him as his own transferable property, though others might till their fields by hired labor. Two causes extended and intensified this organized slave system: (1) Imperial legislation that two thirds of a man's wealth must be in land, so as to set free hoarded specie, and prevent attempts to hide wealth and so escape taxation. Hence land became the medium of exchange instead of money, i.e. land was held not by rent but by service. (2) The pressure of taxation falling on land (tributum soli) forced smaller proprietors to put themselves under their rich neighbors, who paid the tax for them, but for whom they were accordingly obliged to perform service (obsequium) in work and kind. Thus they became tied to the soil (ascripti glebae), not transferable dependents. Over them the lord had powers of correction, not apparently, of jurisdiction. Meanwhile, the slaves themselves had become also territorial not personal. Further, the public land (ager publicus) got memorialized by grants partly to free veterans (as at Colchester in England), partly to laeti, -- a semi-servile class of conquered peoples (as the Germans in England under Marcus Antonius), paying, beside the tributum soli, manual service in kind (sordida munera). Even in the Roman towns, by the same process, the urban landlords (curiales) became de