Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/280

ALABAMA not subject to taxation. The sale of liquors is regulated by State, county, and municipal license. Special prohibition laws, local dispensaries, and local option laws are in operation in various parts of the State. A State penitentiary is maintained. State and county convicts, under general or local regulations are worked in the mines, in lumber camps, on the public roads, on farms, and in factories. A reform school for white boys is conducted by the State at East Lake. Insane hospitals, for the whites at Tuscaloosa, and for the Negroes at Mt. Vernon, are generously supported by the State. Liberal regulations obtain on the subjects of wills of real and personal property, limited to soundness of mind, and to persons of twenty-one years, in the case of realty, and eighteen years, in the case of personality. Devises may be made to any person or corporation capable by law of holding real estate. The Supreme Court has held that a bequest to "the Baptist Societies for Foreign and Domestic Missions and the American and Foreign Bible Society", is valid; also one to "Pilgrim's Rest Association", and also one for the erection of monuments to certain named persons. But in the case of Festorazzi vs. St. Joseph's Church (104 Ala., 327), it was held that a bequest to a church to be expended in saying Mass for the repose of the testator's soul is invalid, because the church might apply the fund to other uses, and thus defeat the testator's intent.

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Alabanda, a titular see of Caria in Asia Minor, supposed to be the present Arab-Hissar. A list of its bishops is known from 451 to 879. In antiquity its inhabitants were noted for their habits of luxury. It was the seat of a district court in imperial times and a very flourishing town.



Alabaster (Gr. ; Lat. alabaster, -trum; of uncertain origin). The substance commonly known as alabaster is a fine-grained variety of gypsum (calcium sulphate) much used for vases and other ornamental articles. Oriental alabaster, the alabastrites of the classical writers, is a translucent marble (calcium carbonate) obtained from stalagmitic deposits; because of its usually banded structure, which gives it some resemblance to onyx, it is also called onyx marble, or simply, though incorrectly, onyx. From remote times it was highly esteemed for decorative purposes. Among the ancients Oriental alabaster was frequently used for vases to hold unguents, in the belief that it preserved them; whence the vases were called alabasters, even when made of other materials. Such was the "alabastrum unguenti" (Matt., xxvi, 7; Mark, xiv, 3, Luke, vii, 37), with which the sinful woman anointed the Saviour. The vase, however, though probably of alabaster, was not necessarily of that material, as our English translation "alabaster box of ointments" seems to imply.

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Alagoas, .—A South American diocese, in eastern Brazil, dependent on Bahia. By a decree of Leo XIII, Postremis hisce temporibus, 2 July, 1900, it was separated from the Diocese of Olinda. It comprises the State of Alagoas, bounded by Pernambuco on the north and north-west, the Atlantic on the south-east, and Sergipe on the south-west. Area, 22,583 square miles. Population (1890), 648,009. Monsignor Castilho de Brandao, the first bishop, who resides at Maceio, the capital, a town of 12,000 inhabitants, was consecrated at Belera de Para, 7 Sept., 1894, and transferred to this see, 5 June, 1901.

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Alagona,, theologian, b. at Syracuse, 1549; d. in Rome, 19 October, 1624. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1564, taught philosophy and theology, and was Rector of Trapani. His first works were published under the family name of his mother, Givarra. Later on he used his own name, Alagona, and is best known for his Compendium of the works of Martin Aspilcueta, who was a doctor of theology in Navarre. This Martin Aspilcueta was the uncle of St. Francis Xavier. The "Enchiridion, seu Manuale Confessariorum," which was compiled by Alagona, went through at least twenty-three editions. A translation of it into French by Legard, was condemned by the Parliament of Rouen, 12 February, 1762. He also published a compendium of the "Summa," which ran through twenty-five editions, and a compendium of the whole of Canon Law in two volumes, quarto. In the Jesuit College of Palermo there is also found a treatise by Alagona on Logic and Physics.

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Alain Chartier. See.

Alain de l'Isle, (also called, or etc.), monk, poet, preacher, theologian, and eclectic philosopher, b. probably at Lille, whence his name, about 1128; d. at Citeaux, 1203. Alain, there is reason to believe, studied and taught for some time in Paris. In 1179 he took part in the Third Council of the Lateran. Later he entered the Monastery of Citeaux, where he died in 1202 or 1203. Alain attained extraordinary celebrity in his day as a teacher and a learned man; he was called Alain the Great, The Universal Doctor, etc. To this the legend alludes, according to which a scholar, discomfited in a dialectical contest, cried out that his opponent was "either Alain or the devil". Alain's principal work is "Ars Fidei Catholicæ", dedicated to Clement III, and composed for the purpose of refuting, on rational grounds, the errors of Mohammedans, Jews, and heretics. With the same view he wrote "Tractatus Contra Hæreticos" and "Theologicæ Regulæ". He wrote two poems, "De Planctu Naturæ" and "Anticlaudianus". The only collection of Alain's works is Migne's somewhat uncritical edition, P.L., CCX. The two poems are published by Wright in "Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century", II (Rerum Britannicarum Scriptores). There are several of Alain's treatises still unpublished for instance, "De Virtutibus et Vitiis" (Codex, Paris, Bibl. Nat., n. 3238). Alain's theology is characterized by that peculiar variety of rationalism tinged with mysticism which is found in the writings of John Scotus Erigena, and which afterwards reappeared in the works of Raymond Lully. The mysticism is, perhaps, more in the style than in the matter; the rationalism consists in the effort to prove that all religious truths, even the mysteries of faith, flow out of principles that are self-evident to the human reason unaided