came fourth Bishop of Como, in Italy, and is commemorated as the patron saint of that part of Lombardy. He was present at the Council of Constantinople, and represented St. Leo at that of Chalcedon.

Abbot. The President or Father [see ABBA] of a monastery, the name implying that the office was intended to be one of a paternal character, like that of the father of a family. Both the office and the name are traced back to St. Antony, under whom solitary ascetics first gathered themselves into communities, about the end of the third century. [MONASTERY.] In small monasteries which were cells of large abbeys, the local superior was called the Prior, and the same was the case also in some large abbeys, where, as at Durham and Ely, the bishop was Abbot ex oficio. The name was not adopted by the Friars or the Jesuits.

Abbots were elected by the monks over whom they were to preside, but in the case of those mitred abbots who sat in the House of Lords the assent of the Sovereign was also necessary, and was probably given by a congé d'élire as in the election of bishops by cathedral chapters. [CONGÉ D'ELIRE.] The election was then confirmed by the bishop of the diocese, who also instituted the new abbot to his spiritual charge by a formal service of benediction, and by the delivery of a pastoral staff, the ceremony taking place wherever the bishop might happen to be. Lastly, the newly-elected and instituted abbot was installed in the abbey over which he was appointed to preside by the archdeacon or his deputy, and was thus placed in actual and legal possession of the rights and privileges belonging to his office.

The duties of an abbot consisted of the general superintendence and control of the spiritual and temporal affairs of his monastery, but his jurisdiction was not without limit, for he was required to take the advice of the monks assembled in chapter on all important affairs, and an appeal might be made from his decision to the bishop of the diocese as visitor, who also made, or was entitled to make, periodical visitations of the abbey, unless it was exempted from the bishop's jurisdiction and placed under that of the Pope. But the abbot's jurisdiction did not extend over any other persons than the monks of his own monastery; and hence, while he bore a pastoral staff like that of a bishop as a symbol of jurisdiction, he carried it with the erook turned inward, to signify that his authority was thus limited within the bounds of the monastery.

Permission to wear mitres was often given to abbots, but it was a rule, apparently disregarded in England, that the mitre should be worn with the open part over the forehead instead of the broad side; and also that it should be of silver ornamented with gold, and

unjewelled, instead of being made of pure gold ornamented with jewels, as was the mitre of a bishop. Such mitres were worn in England only by those abbots who sat in the House of Lords, and who were all of the Benedictine Order.

It is said that as many as a hundred mitred abbots were summoned to Parliament by Henry III. in A.D. 1264, but about A.D. 1330 the number was restricted to twenty-six by Edward III., though just before the dissolution the Abbot of Tavistock was added by Henry VIII. These twenty-seven abbots, with the Prior of Coventry, sat in the House of Lords by the right of baronies which they held of the Crown; the Abbesses of Shaftesbury, Barking, Wilton, and St. Mary's at Winchester also holding such baronies and ranking as peeresses, but not being summoned to Parliament. The following were the abbeys whose abbots were thus Lords of Parliament at the dissolution of the monasteries:-St. Albans; Glastonbury; Westminster; Bury St. Edmunds; St. Bennet Holm, Norwich; Bardsey; Shrewsbury; Croyland; Abingdon; Evesham; Gloucester; Ramsey; St. Mary's, York; Tewkesbury; Reading; Battle; Winchelcomb; Hyde, Winchester; Cirencester; Waltham; Malmesbury; Thorney; St. Augustine's, Canterbury; Selby; Coventry; Peterborough: Colchester; Tavistock. [The Prior of St. John of Jerusalem sat in the House of Lords, but as the Premier Baron of England, not as a cleric].

The twenty-seven mitred abbots and the mitred Prior of Coventry sat on " the Spiritual side" of the House of Lords, that on the right of the Throne, and behind the bishops; not being attired, however, in episcopal robes, but in black cassocks with gowns and hoods. On the dissolution of the monasteries the mitred abbots disappeared from their places, leaving twenty-eight vacancies, which have since been occupied by temporal peers; but the tradition of their presence is still kept up in the printed Votes of the House, where the spiritual peers, however few, have a column to themselves on that which is still called "the Spiritual side" of the House, that on the Sovereign's right hand; and the temporal peers who occupy the benches on the same side are named, with the other temporal peers, as on "the Temporal side," that on the left of the Throne. There is an old folio engraving of the House of Lords at the opening of Parliament in the beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign, in which the mitred abbots are in their seats behind the bishops, and which is reproduced in Fiddes' Life of Cardinal Wolsey. In the Irish House of Lords twenty-five abbots and priors sat as spiritual peers.

Abbott, GEORGE, Archbishop of Canterbury in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., was born at Guildford, on October 29th, 1562, and died in his palace at Croydon on August

a Fellow of that college in 1581, and in his later life, in the year 1609, was elected to its Mastership. At this time he had won the special approval of James I., by his works against Bellarmine, and in defence of the Reformation, and having been appointed a Fellow of Chelsea College, he was further, when a vacancy occurred, appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. In 1615 he was promoted to the See of Salisbury, where he gained for himself the reputation of an active chief pastor and a hospitable prelate, and where he urged forward the restoration of the cathedral, which had become much dilapidated through neglect and spoliation. Occupying the see for only two years, he died at a comparatively early age from a very painful disorder to which studious men were then especially liable; but his death is said to have been hastened by the indignation which his brother, the archbishop, expressed at his second marriage. His works were chiefly in Latin, and were not of any lasting interest, some still remaining in manuscript in the Bodleian Library.

Abbreviators.-Officers of the Pope's chancery, who are so called because they are charged with the formal drawing up of breves, or briefs, bulls, and other official documents which proceed from the Court of Rome.

Abdias, ST.-He is commemorated in the Eastern Church on October 28th, and is said to have been the first Bishop of Babylon, consecrated by SS. Simon and Jude.

Abdon and Sennen, SS. [A.d. 250].— Two Persian princes, who suffered martyrdom at Rome under the Emperor Decius. In the ancient calendars of the Churches of England and Rome they are commemorated on July 30th, the name being found in the former as far back as A.D. 730. In one of the catacombs, that of Pontianus [CATACOMBS], there exists a fresco painting, of not later date than the seventh century, in which our Lord in glory is represented as placing crowns upon the heads of the two martyrs; and it is supposed that the tomb on the front of which this is painted contains their remains, which are recorded to have been removed to this cemetery in the time of Constantine, about seventy-five years after their death. In Spain, superstitious people are accustomed to invoke the protection of SS. Abdon and Sennen during hailstorms.

Abecedarians.-A sect of Lutherans, otherwise known as the Zwickau prophets. They separated from Luther about 1521, under the leadership of Nicholas Stork, a weaver of Zwickau; Thomas Münzer, the Lutheran pastor of the town; Mark Thomas, another weaver; and Mark Stübbner, a student of Wittenberg. Their distinctive principle was that Christians should abstain from human learning, even from the A B C, or

alphabet, and thus leave their minds open to receive direct Divine guidance by inspiration. The sect became seditious and troublesome -Munzer being the leader of a rebellion in which he proclaimed himself the head of a spiritual kingdom-and on the death of its leaders was absorbed into the general body of German Anabaptists.

Abecedarian Psalms and Hymns. -Those which were so composed that the successive letters of the A B C, or alphabet, formed the initial letters of the successive verses. [ALPHABET PSALMS, &c.]

A'Becket. [BECKET.]

Abel, THOMAS [d. 1540].-One of Queen Catherine of Aragon's chaplains, who became a victim of her husband Henry the VIII.'s cruelty. He was a Doctor of Divinity of Oxford, a man of much learning, well acquainted with Continental languages, and a great master of instrumental music. His faithfulness to the queen involved him in the controversies respecting her divorce, and in 1534 he printed a tract against it, which brought him to the Tower. On the wall of the Beauchamp Tower in that fortress he has left an interesting memorial of his imprisonment in the shape of a sculptured rebus of his name a bell, with the letter A upon it, and THOMAS above. Dr. Abel was burned in Smithfield on July 30th, 1540,"for denying the king's supremacy, and affirming his marriage with Queen Catherine to be good." Three Protestants-Dr. Barnes, Gerard, parson of Honey Lane, and Jerome, Vicar of Stepney-were burned at the same stake.

Abélard, PETER [A.D. 1079-1142].The name of Abélard has been made familiar to modern times by the romantic story of his intrigue and marriage with a young, beautiful, and learned lady named Héloïse, or Louisa, by the translation of their correspondence into French and English, and by Pope's poetical version of it. But his place in these pages is as one who greatly influenced the theology of the Middle Ages, and who may be said to have originated that school of thought which in modern times has been called Rationalism.

Abélard was the eldest son of noble parents, and was born at Palais, near Nantes, in Brittany, twelve years after the Norman Conquest. His ardent love of learning induced him to give up his right of inheritance to his younger brother, and to establish himself in Paris. At that time, the learning which was at a later age to be found in an university had its home in the "schools," or lecture-rooms, of cathedrals and monasteries; and it was under William of Champeaux, the head of the cathedral school and Archdeacon of Paris, that Abélard's great genius was developed. Eventually, the pupil set up a lecture-room for himself, first at

Melun and Corbeil, and afterwards at Paris, in which he propounded a system of philosophic theology much opposed to that of his teacher-a system which, divested of abstruse philosophical terms, may be called one of free inquiry. His eloquence and learning, and the novelty of his principles, drew thousands of students to his lectures from all parts of Europe, and at the age of forty he had long held a position of the greatest popularity and authority as a leader of thought. Among his pupils were trained one Pope, Celestine II., nineteen cardinals, more than fifty archbishops and bishops, French, English, and German, and many of those, such as Arnold of Brescia, who afterwards caused trouble to the Christian world by carrying Abelard's principles to a much greater extreme than he did himself.

of Clugni, Abélard died at that of St. Marcellus, near Chalons-on-the-Saöne, whither he had gone for change of air, on April 21st, 1142. His widow survived him for twentytwo years, being, from 1129 until her death in 1164, Abbess of the Convent of the Paraclete, which he had built for her and her nuns when they were driven from Argenteuil. There they lay buried in the same coffin for seven centuries and a half; but the convent having been destroyed during the Revolution, their remains were transferred, in 1817, to the Cemetery of Père la Chaise. There the grave of the aged ascetics is sentimentally regarded as that of two romantic young lovers; but Abélard the philosopher and theologian is known to few of the many who visit it.

It was when he was at the height of his popularity and influence that Abélard's passionate intrigue with Héloïse arose. After the birth of a son, they secretly married, Héloïse being then about eighteen years of age; but the marriage was shortly followed by the perpetration of a brutal outrage upon Abelard by some of her relatives, which led the husband to retire from the world in the Monastery of St. Denys, and the wife in the Convent of Argenteuil. Twenty years later, having in the meanwhile migrated to the Monastery of St. Gildas, in Brittany, he again began to lecture in public, and was soon surrounded by crowds of auditors. But the boldness of his theological statements brought him into collision with the ecclesiastical authorities. His first principle all through had been that nothing is to be believed but what has first been understooda principle the general acceptance of which would cause all mysteries to vanish from religion. The subtle and eloquent arguments with which Abélard applied this principle to the received doctrines of Christianity were very attractive to young students, but experienced theologians saw that his teaching was in reality a revival of old heresies in new forms. "When he talks of the Trinity," said St. Bernard, "Abélard savours of Arius; when he talks of grace he savours of Pelagius; when he talks of the Person of Christ he savours of Nestorius." Hence, the rest of his life was spent in weary endeavours to explain away his language before tribunals at which he was accused of heresy, his constant protest being that he taught in novel language, and with strict regard to logic, not heresy, but the very truths which had always been maintained as the orthodox principles of theology. Having been condemned to perpetual retirement, and inhibited from teaching or writing, by the Council of Sens, in 1140, Abélard appealed to the Pope. But Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of Clugni, brought about a compromise; and the last two years of his life having been spent at the Monastery

Abelites, ABELIANS, ABELOITES, ABELONITES, ABENONITES.-These are the various forms of the name by which a small sect designated itself in the fifth century. Nothing is known of their history beyond the statement of St. Augustine, that some of them lingered on till his time [d. 430] in his diocese that of Hippo, in North Africa. Their distinctive principle was that of compulsory marriage, with compulsory abstinence from the procreation of children; and they named themselves after Abel, alleging that he dwelt with his wife in this manner. To continue their sect, each couple adopted a boy and a girl, whom they brought up under an obligation to follow the same course. The object of the sect was not that of ascetic life, but that of preventing the perpetuation of original sin, the obvious fact being ap parently lost sight of that heaven is replenished by those who, having been born in original sin, are yet sanctified to become the children of God. As might be expected, the sect was not numerous, and was shortlived.

Abgar (Lat., Abgarus].-This was a titular name borne by the Under-kings or Toparchs of Edessa, a small kingdom in the south-west of Mesopotamia, assumed on coming to the throne, apparently in the same manner as Pharaoh among the Egyptians, or Cæsar among the Romans. The name is interesting in Christian history on account of a very early tradition connected with the fifteenth of the kings who bore it-Abgar the Black [A.D. 9-46], who was contemporary with Christ's ministry. Eusebius, the Church historian [A.D. 265-338], found the narrative of it in the archives of Edessa, in which it was stated that Abgar, having suffered much from an incurable disease, heard of the miracles of healing wrought by Christ, and appealed to His mercy in the following letter:

"Abgar, Prince of Edessa, sends greeting to Jesus, the excellent Saviour, Who has appeared in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem.

I have heard the reports respecting Thee and Thy cures, which are effected without the use of medicines or herbs. For, as it is said, Thou dost cause the blind to see, the lame to walk: Thou dost cleanse lepers and cast out unclean spirits and demons: Thou dost heal those that are tormented by long disease, and Thou dost raise the dead. And hearing all these things of Thee, I conclude that one of two things must be true: either Thou art God Himself descended from heaven, to be able to work such wonders as are reported of Thee; or else Thou art the Son of God. Now, therefore, I have written beseeching Thee to visit me, and to heal the disease with which I am afflicted. I have also heard that the Jews murmur against Thee, and are plotting harm against Thee: but I have a kingdom which, though very small, is a noble one, and it shall be sufficient for Thee and me."

To this letter of Abgar the following alleged reply was found by Eusebius :—

"Blessed art thou, O Abgar, for having believed on Me without seeing Me. For it is written concerning Me, That they who see Me shall not believe in Me, in order that they who see Me not may believe and live. But as to thy request that I should come to thee to heal thee, it is necessary that I should here fulfil all things for which I am sent into the world, and when they are fulfilled, return to Him who sent Me. But after I have been received up I will send unto thee one of My disciples, who shall heal thee of thy disease, and give life to thee and to thy people."

The narrative found by Eusebius went on to say that after our Lord's ascension Thaddeus, one of the Seventy, visited Abgar, healed him of his disease, and converted him and his subjects to the Christian faith. A later historian, Moses of Chorēne [d. A.D. 470], in his history of Armenia, adds to the narrative, as given by Eusebius, that our Lord sent His portrait to Abgar, either at the time or on the visit of Thaddeus, and also gives a correspondence between Abgar and the Emperor Tiberius respecting the Crucifixion of our Lord. Two pictures-the one in the Church of St. Sylvester, at Rome, and the other in that of the same dedication at Genoa-claim to be the original of this portrait. The former is thought to be a copy of some very ancient Byzantine picture, and represents a beautiful, calm, and rather youthful face, with a forked beard, straight nose, and hair parted in the middle.

In the Syrian Church King Abgar is commemorated as a saint on June 20th.

Abjuration. A formal act, by which heretics and those suspected of heresy repudiated and renounced their errors, and were thus prepared for absolution and restoration to communion. Four kinds of abjuration are distinguished by the canonists:-[1] de

formali, by a notorious apostate or heretic; [2] de vehementi, by one strongly tainted with heretical opinions; [3] de violenta suspicione, by one strongly suspected of them; and [4] de levi, by one only slightly suspected. The first of these was made publicly, the others in more or less privacy before witnesses. There is no provision for such discipline in the modern Church of England.

Ablavius. A famous orator, who lived in the time of Theodosius the Younger, who joined the Novatians, and eventually became Novatian Bishop at Nicæa, about A.D. 430. He adopted the principles of the Novatians in their utmost severity, denying that there could be any forgiveness of sins except in baptism. [NOVATIANS.]

Ablution. [WATER, CEREMONIAL USE OF.]

Abracadabra.-This strange word is supposed to have been the Persian name for Mithras, the sun-god. In Christian times it was used by the Basilidian heretics as an amulet to charm away fever. It was written in a triangular form on a square piece of paper, thus: