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ALTAMIRANO occasions, such as First Communion; 17 societies.—(6) Homes for the care of the sick and infirm; 45 with 4,421 inmates.—(7) Asylums for idiots, epileptics, and insane; 7 with 2,330 inmates.—(8) Asylums for the blind and for deaf mutes; three with more than 200 inmates.—(9) Lying-in hospitals for poor women at Colmar, Masmünster, Mülhausen, Rappoltsweiler, Strasburg, and Thann.—(10) Out-of-door care of the sick and Poor: (a) By 32 Societies of St. Vincent de Paul with 661 members, who support 1,300 families. A branch of the St. Vincent de Paul Society is the Society of St. Francis Regis, which provides needy persons with the documents required for civil and religious marriage, and effects the legitimation of children. It exists in all the parishes of Colmar and Mülhausen and in Strasburg, where, between 1894 and 1897, it brought about 152 marriages between Catholics, 48 between Catholics and Protestants, and 12 between Protestants. (b) By 16 ladies' societies. (c) By Sisters of the Divine Redeemer in 23 districts; Sisters of St. Joseph in 13, Sisters of the Cross in 10, Sisters of Mercy in 4, and Franciscan nuns in 1. (d) By means of soup establishments and peoples' kitchens in 11 places.—(11) Care of destitute prisoners at Colmar and Strasburg.—(12) Employment agencies in various places.—(13) A peoples' bureau at Strasburg, founded in connection with the Peoples' Society for Catholic Germany, which distributed without pay in one year (1904) information in 2805 pamphlets; 113 on old age and disablement insurance, 288 on accident insurance, 62 on sick insurance, 308 on collections, 437 on other civil matters, 280 on penal matters, 63 on matters of trusteeship, 51 on taxation, 24 on military matters, 42 on matters relating to domestic service, 308 on the relations of landlord and tenant, 241 on matters relating to inheritance, 220 on the duties of directors, 61 on prices, 307 on various matters.—(14) Protection of girls. This society is connected with the International Catholic Society for the Protection of Girls; its object is to assist with advice and help unprotected, grown-up girls, house servants, factory girls, shop girls, teachers, and others, those, especially, who are away from home, and to shield them from dangers to faith and morals. Thirty-six visits were made to such girls during 1905, 561 letters received, and 765 written; 1,101 domestic servants were lodged in St. Arbogast's Home, 86 free, for 919 days, and 57 at a reduced price for 1,012 days.—(15) Young ladies' societies, twenty-four in number. The members have use of libraries, are advised as to savings banks and insurance companies; they receive instruction in sewing, mending, ironing, French, singing, and are directed to situations.—(16) Women's and mothers' societies, nine in number. These provide assistance for the poorer members in case of sickness, and defray the burial fees in cases of death.—(17) Societies with social objects in eleven places. The members receive free medical attendance and medicine, sick pay, and death pay, and Masses are said for them after death.—(18) There are Homes for workmen and workwomen, and students at Colmar, Erstein, Gebweiler, Muelhausen, Müllerhof near Urmatt, Regisheim, and three at Strasburg.—(19) Higher instruction for boys and girls in 23 schools.—(20) Women's Union; an organization for women for religious, social, scientific, and charitable purposes. There were as many as 600 members in 1906 in the Women's Union, the second year after its foundation.—(21) The aim of the youths' and men's societies, some of which were founded 200 years ago, but most of which were established within the last twenty years, is not merely to protect and strengthen the faith of their members, but to assist them in their material interests. The first is attained by means of common worship and general communion; the second, in the case of young men, by means of social intercourse, lectures, the use of libraries, athletics, music, and shooting contests, instruction in German, French, arithmetic, drawing, bookkeeping, and short hand; dramatic performances, savings and insurance funds, assistance to the sick and those doing military service, and finding situations; for older men by social intercourse, lectures, savings, loans, insurance for sickness and death funds, employment agencies, legal protection, and co-operative societies. According to the latest returns published, there were 40 such youths' societies, in 1904, with 15,300, and 32 older men's societies with 18,346 members. These do not include the three Catholic "Casinos" in Strasburg, or those in Hazenau, Colmar, and Schlettstadt, or the Catholic students' societies at the University of Strasburg. These last are Franconia, Merovingia, Staufia (Catholic Students' Union of the S.K.V.); Badenia, Rappolstein (Catholic Students' Association of S.C.V.); Erwinia (Catholic Students' Association of the S.C.V.); Unitas, Catholic Science Students' Union, the Academic Society of St. Boniface, the Academic Marian Congregation and the Academic Conference of St. Vincent de Paul.—The following societies, which are gradually becoming firmly established in Alsace-Lorraine, should also be mentioned: the Society of the Supporters of the Centrum (Zentrumsverein), the Peoples' Union for Catholic Germany, the Branch Unions for Catholic schoolmasters and mistresses. On 11 March, 1906, representatives of all the "Centre Societies" in Alsace-Lorraine met at Strasburg and agreed unanimously on the foundation of a local Centre Party. Statutes of incorporation were drawn up and the working programme for the immediate future decided on. (The Union in Strasburg has 1,650 members, the one in Mülhausen 2,000.) The Peoples' Union, known as a legacy of Windthorst, whose object is to guard the common people against the dangerous and disturbing influence of Social Democracy, had 42,000 members, in Alsace-Lorraine, in 1906, 22,000 of whom were Alsatians, 15,000 German-speaking, and 5,000 French-speaking Lorrainers. Some 600 schoolmasters are members of the Catholic Masters' Society, and some 490 women-teachers of the Catholic Schoolmistresses' Society.

2em

Altamirano, Diego Francisco, Jesuit, b. at Madrid, 26 October, 1625; d. Lima, 22 December, 1715. He wrote "Historia de la provincia Peruana de la Compañía de Jesús", the twelfth book only of which was published, in 1891, by Manuel Vicente Ballivian, with a sliort biographical notice from the pen of Torres Saldamando. It was followed by another by Altamirano: "Breve noticia de las misiones de los infieles que fione la Compañía de Jesús en esta provincia del Perú, en las provincias de los Mojos", also with introduction by Saldamando. The original MS. of the "Historia" is in the National Archives at Lima, in a deplorable state of decomposition.

2em

Altamura and Acquaviva, an exempt archipresbyterate in the province of Bari, in southern Italy. Altamura was declared exempt from episcopal jurisdiction by Innocent IV in 1248, and again