Volume 1

A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood.

Date:: [between 1890 and 1899?]

Credit: A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

33/1096 (page 13)

$782 {Angl.-Sax. Chr. and H. Hunt., ib. 336, 731). (ii.) A.D. 787 (Kemble, C. D., No. 151). (iii.) A.D. 788, Sept. 29, in the year and month of the murder of Elfwald of Northumbria, Sept. 21, 788 (Wilk. i. 153 ; Mansi, xiii. 825, 826). (iv.) A.D. 789 {Angl.-Sax. Chr., M. H. B. 337 “ a great synod ”), in the 6th year of Brihtric, King of Wessex (H. Hunt., ib. 732). (v.) A.D. 804 (Kemble, C. D., No. 186). (vi.) A.D. 805, Aug. 6 (id. ib., Nos. 190,191). (vii.) a.d. 810 (id. ib.. No. 256). Nos. ii., V., and vi. probably, and No. vii. cer- tainly, were at Ockley, in Surrey; or, at any rate, not in the Northumbrian Aclea. Nothing more is known of any of these synods, or rattier Witenagemots, beyond the deeds (grants of lands) above referred to, in Kemble. [A. W. H.] ACOEMETAE, lit. the “ sleepless ” or “ un- resting ” (for the theological or moral import of the term v. Suicer, Thesaur. Eccl. s.v.), a so-called order of monks established in the East about the middle, rather than the commencement, of the 5th century, being altogether unnoticed by Socrates and Sozomen, the latter a zealous chro- nicler of monks and monasteries, who bring their histories down to a.d. 440 ; yet mentioned by Evagrius (iii. 19) as a regularly established order in 483. Later authorities make their founder to have been a certain officer of the imperial house- hold at Constantinople named Alexander, who quitted his post to turn monk, and after having had to shift his quarters in Syria seA^eral times, at length returned to Constantinople, to give permanence to the system which he had already commenced on the Euphrates. The first monas- tery which he founded there was situated near the church of St. Mennas. It was composed of 300 monks of different nations, whom he divided into six choirs, and arranged so that one of them should be always employed in the work of prayer and praise day and night without intermission all the year round. This was their peculiar cha- racteristic—and it has been copied in various ways elsewhere since then—that some part of “the house,” as Wordsworth (Excurs. viii. 185) expresses it, “ was evermore watching to God.” Alexander having been calumniated for this practice as heretical, he was imprisoned, but regained his liberty, and died, say his biographers, about A.D. 430—it might be nearer the mark to say 450—in a new convent of his own founding on the Dardanelles. Marcellus, the next head of the order but one, brought all the zeal and energy to it of a second founder ; and he doubt- less found a powerful supporter in Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople, a.d. 458-71, a great restorer of discipline and promoter of learning amongst the clergy. Then it was that Studius, a noble Roman, and in process of time consul, emigrated to Constantinople, and converted one of the churches there, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, into the celebrated monastery bearing his name, but which he peopled with the Acoe- metae. There was another monastery founded by St. Dius, in the reign of Theodosius the Great, that also became theirs sooner or later, to which Valesius (Ad. Evag. iii. 19 and 31) adds a third founded by St. Bassianus. It may have been owing to their connexion with Studius that they w'ere led to correspond with the West. At all events, on the acceptance by Acacius, the patri- arch succeeding Gennadius, of the Henoticon of the emperor Zeno, and communion with the schis- matic patriarch of Alexandria, their “ hegumen,” or president, Cyril lost no time in despatching comidaints of him to Rome ; nor were their emissaries slow to accuse the legates of the Pope themselves of having, during their stay at Con- stantinople, held communion with heretics. The ultimate result was, that the two legates, Vitalis and Misenus, were deprived of their sees, and Acacius himself excommunicated by the Popes Simplicius and Felix. Meanwhile one who had been expelled from their order, but had learnt his trade in their monasteries, Peter the Fuller, had become schismatic patriarch of Antioch, and he, of course, made common cause with their op- ponents. Nor was it long before they laid them- selves open to retaliation. For, under Justinian, their ardour impelled them to deny the cele- brated proposition, advocated so warmly by the Scythian monks, hesitated about so long at Rome, that one of the Trinity had suffered in the flesh. Their denial of this proposition threw them into the arms of the Nestorians, who were much in- terested in having it decided in this way. For if it could be denied that one of the Trinity had suffered, it could not be maintained, obviously, that one of the Trinity had become incarnate. Hence, on the monks sending two of their body, Cyrus and Eulogius, to Rome to defend their views, the emperor immediately despatched two bishops thither, Hypatias and Demetrius, to denounce them to the Pope (Pagi ad Baron., A.D. 533, n. 2). In short, in a letter, of which they were the bear<*rs, to John II., afterwards inserted by him in Lib. I. Tit. “ De summa Trini- tate ” of his Code, he himself accused them of favouring Judaism and the Nestorian heresy. The Pope in his reply seems to admit their hete- rodoxy, but he entreats the emperor to forgive them at his instance, should they be willing to abjure their errors and return to the unity of the Church. With what success he interceded for them we are not told. During the iconoclastic controvei'sy they seem to have shared exile with the rest of the monks ejected from their monas- teries by Constantine Copronyjnus(Pa^j ad Baron. A.D. 79*8, n. 2); but under the empress Irene the Studium, at all events, was repeopled with its for- mer alumni by the most celebrated of them all, Theodore, in whose surname, “ Studites,” it has perhaps achieved a wider celebrity than it ever would otherwise have possessed. In the West a branch of the order long held the abbey of St. Maurice of Agaune in Valais, where they were established by Sigismund, king of Burgundy, and had their institute confirmed by a Council held there A.D. 523. For fuller de- tails see Bonanni’s Hist, du Clerg. sec. et reg. vol. ii. p. 153 et seq. (Amsterdam, 1716) ; Bulteau's Hist. Monast. d’Orient, iii. 33 (Paris, 1680); Hospin, De Orig. Monach. iii. 8; Du Fresne, Gloss. Lat. s. V. ; and Constant. Christian, iv. 8 2; Bingham’s Antiq. vii. 11, 10. [E. S. F.] ACOLYTES—ACOLYTHS-ACOLYTH- ISTS AkoXovOoi). One of the minor orders peculiar to the Western Church, although the name is Greek. In the Apostolic age, the only order which existed, in addition to those of bishops, priests, and deacons, was that of dea- conesses—widows usually at first, who were em- ployed in such ministrations towards their own sex as were considered unsuitable for men, espe- cially in the East. But about the end of the 2nd$