Christianity at its very beginning, found the concept of the corporation well developed under Roman law and widely and variously organized in Roman society. It was a concept that the early Christians soon adapted to their organization and, as a means of protection in the periods of persecution.

Novelist, dramatist, and actress; b. at Staningfield, near Bury St. Edmunds, 15 Oct., 1753; d. at Kensington, London, 1 Aug., 1821.

Sexual intercourse between those who are related by blood or marriage.

An aromatic substance which is obtained from certain resinous trees and largely employed for purposes of religious worship.

The Incarnation is the mystery and the dogma of the Word made Flesh.

This congregation, with simple vows, was founded by Rt. Rev. C.M. Dubuis, Bishop of Galveston.

Founded in the early part of the seventeenth century by Jeanne Chezard de Matel.

In the ecclesiastical sense the words are used to denote that a given person is freed from the jurisdiction of one bishop and is transferred to that of another.

An Italian translation of the Latin in pectore, "in the breast", i.e. in the secret of the heart.

A term meaning "in the lands of the unbelievers," words added to the name of the see conferred on non-residential or titular Latin bishops.

A phrase used in canon law to designate a certain manner of collating an ecclesiastical benefice.

A papal Bull, so called from the feast on which it was annually published in Rome, viz, the feast of the Lord's Supper, or Maundy Thursday.

The reproaches which in the liturgy of the Office of Good Friday the Saviour is made to utter against the Jews, who, in requital for all the Divine favours and particularly for the delivery from the bondage of Egypt and safe conduct into the Promised Land, inflicted on Him the ignominies of the Passion and a cruel death.

That there would be hypocrites who would take advantage of a profession of piety to mask their own evil designs had been clearly foretold by Christ in the Gospels.

A symbolical ceremony by which one intends to communicate to another some favour, quality or excellence (principally of a spiritual kind), or to depute another to some office.

Canon law uses the word impediment in its restricted and technical sense, only in reference to marriage, while impediments to Holy orders are spoken of as irregularities.

An heretical doctrine according to which Christ is in the Eucharist through His human body substantially united with the substances of bread and wine, and thus is really present as God, made bread.

Italian painter; b. at Imola, c. 1494; d. at Bologna, c. 1550.

Diocese; suffragan of Bologna.

An exemption from a legal obligation (munus), imposed on a person or his property by law, custom, or the order of a superior.

By immortality is ordinarily understood the doctrine that the human soul will survive death, continuing in the possession of an endless conscious existence.

Latin, in manere, to remain in. The quality of any action which begins and ends within the agent.

Article covers several groups of this name.