FOSCARARI, EGIDIO: Italian Dominican, bishop of Modena; b. at Bologna Jan. 27, 1512; d. at Rome Dec. 23, 1564. After officiating as lector in various monasteries, he became magister sacri palatii at Rome in 1546. Four years later Julius II. appointed him bishop of Modena, and in this capacity he attended the sessions of the Council of Trent in 1551. When the council was suspended, he returned to his diocese, where he performed his duties in an exemplary manner, but was suspected of heresy by the Inquisition in 1558 and was im prisoned by Paul IV., like his predecessor Giovanni de Morone (q.v.). Although his heterodoxy could not be proved, he did not receive formal ab solution until it was granted him by Pius IV. in 1560, whereupon he was permitted to return to his see amid the rejoicings of the people. He was present at the concluding sessions of the council, and was a member of the committees which, after the close of the council, prepared the Index libro rum prohibilorum, and the Catechismus Romanus, and revised the breviary and missal. .
Bibliography: J. Qu6tif and J. Echard, Script. ordinia Pradicatorum, ii. 184-185, Paris, 1721; KL, iv. 1636-37.
FOSS, CYRUS DAVID: Methodist Episcopal bishop; b. at Kingston, N. Y., Jan. 17, 1834. He studied at Wesleyan University (B.A., 1854), and after being instructor and principal at Amenia Seminary, Amenia, N. Y., 1854-57, entered the. ministry in the New York conference, being sta tioned at Chester, N. Y., in 1857-59. He was then transferred to the New York East conference, and was pastor of churches in Brooklyn (1859-65) and New York (1869-75). From 1875 to 1880 he was president of Wesleyan University, and in 1880 was elected bishop. He was fraternal delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1878, and to the British Wes leyan Conference in 1886, while he made an official tour of the Methodist Episcopal missions in Europe in 1886, of Mexico in 1893, and of India and Malaysia in 1897-98.
FOSSARIAN (Lat. fossarius, fossor; Gk. kopien, kopiates): The designation of the grave-diggers of the early Church. In primitive times the burial of the poor was one of the services of love which the wealthier Christians voluntarily undertook for their needy brethren. Later the congregations had
special cemeteries, and burial was entrusted to professional grave-diggers, which must have been the case in the third century and possibly even in the latter part of the second. The oldest document showing the existence of fossarians is the Gesta apud Zenophilum, which dates from 303 and is printed as an appendix to the editions of Optatus. In this work, as elsewhere, fossarians were reckoned among the clergy, but this was not invariably the case, as, for instance, in Rome. Fossarians are frequently represented in the paintings of the Roman catacombs, and it is clear from the inscriptions that they controlled the sale of graves. See Cemeteries, II., 4, § 1.
Bibliography: G. B. de Rossi, Roma sotterranea, iii. 533 sqq., Rome, 1877, Eng. ed. by Northcote and Brownlow, Roma Sotterranea, i., chap. vii., pp. 205-216, London, 1879; J. A. Martigny, Dictionnaire des antiquit6s;'chrétiennes, p. 281, Paris, 1877; DCA, i. 684; KL,1638-40 (valuable).
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