In the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December, 1854, Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary "in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin."

A work of spiritual devotion, also sometimes called the "Following of Christ". Its purpose is to instruct the soul in Christian perfection with Christ as the Divine Model.

German physicist, born 26 July, 1758, at Rissbach, in Bavaria; died 11 April, 1817 at Munich.

Cistercian of the Reform of St. Bernard, orientalist, biographer, theologian; born at Milan; flourished in the latter half of the seventeenth century.

The faculty of representing to oneself sensible objects independently of an actual impression of those objects on our senses.

It is an uncompromising attitude in the late Jewish history, together with the apparently obvious meaning of the First Commandment, that are responsible for the common idea that Jews had no images.

A district of the Balkan Peninsula, which has varied in extent at different periods.

Secret society founded in 1776.

False Spanish mystics.

Also known as Iltutus. Late fifth- to early sixth-century Welsh saint. Biographical article.

An important confederacy of Algonquian tribes formerly occupying the greater part of the present state of Illinois, together with the adjacent portions of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri.

One of the United States of America, bounded on the north by Wisconsin, on the west by the Mississippi, which separates it from Iowa and Missouri, on the south by the confluent waters of the Mississippi and the Ohio, which separate it from Kentucky, on the east by Indiana and Lake Michigan.

As generally defined, and as understood in this article, illegitimacy denotes the condition of children born out of wedlock.

Archbishop of Toledo, d. 667.

A monogram of the name of Jesus Christ.

Lack of knowledge about a thing in a being capable of knowing.

Tells the story of this son of Emperor Michael I, forced into monastic life by a rival. Patriarch of Constantinople, deposed on a wicked pretext. Ignatius died in 877.

Biography of the bishop and writer. Ignatius was martyred at Rome sometime between 98 and 117.

Biography of the Spanish founder of the Jesuits, who died in 1556.

Portuguese Jesuit, missionary to Brazil, martyred with thirty-nine companions by Huguenot pirates near the island of Palma in 1570.

A suffragan of Cagliari in Sardinia.

A Spanish of the coterie gathered about Meléndez, Valdés, born at Salamanca, 31 October, 1748; died 1791.

The country inhabited by the descendants of Edom.