Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/630

Rh ANTINOE

564

ANTINOMIANISM

of the antimensium, such as missionaries and travel- ling priests were using, the Holy Sacrifice could be offered on any altar, because the antimensium, at least, had been properly consecrated and contained the required rehcs. Although it was primarily in- tended for altars which had not been consecrated by a bishop, it gradually became used for all altars in the Greek Church. It was also much used for altars in military camps, on shipboard, and among the hermits and ccnobites of the desert, where a church or a chapel was unknown. After the great schism which divided the Eastern Church from the Holy See, the antimensium was looked on as a peculiarly Greek religious article. The United Greeks have also retained it, although, by special regulation of the Holy See, in its absence an altar-stone may be used by them. A Greek Catholic priest may .say Mass in a Greek church upon an altar-stone, yet a Latin priest may not say Mass upon an antimensium in a Latin church, although either may use the anti- mensium in a Greek church (Benedict XIV, Imposito nobis).

In the Council of Moscow (1675) the Russian Church decreed that antiraensia should be used upon every altar, whether it had been consecrated by a bishop or not. The only apparent exception allowed in the Russian Church is that an antimensium with- out reUcs may be used upon the altar of a cathedral church. The form of consecration of the anti- raensia is almost the same as that followed by a bishop in consecrating an altar. Indeed, they are usually consecrated at the same time as the altar, and are considered to share in the latter's consecration; by way of exception, especially in the Russian Church, they may be consecrated at another time. As already said, the customary material was originally pure hnen; yet, since 1862, by a decree of the Holy Synod in Russia, they may be made either of linen or silk. They have varied slightly in size and form, but the kind now used is about the size of those made in the twelfth century. They are often beautifully embroidered, the decorations usually representing Our Lord in the Sepulchre, sometimes with a cross and sometimes with a chalice above Him; they also have the letters IC. XC. NIKA, i. e. "Jesus Christ conquers", or other traditional devices worked upon them. Whenever a new antimensium is placed upon an altar the old one must not be removed, but must be kept next to the altar under the altar-cloth. Usually the date of consecration is worked upon them. By a decree of the Holy Synod in 1842, each Russian church must keep an exact register of the antiraensia contained in it.

Go\B, Euchologium. aive Rituale Gnecorum (Venice, ed. 17.30); Renaudot, Liturgiarum Orientatium Collectio, I, 181- 331; Brightman, Eastern Liturgies (Oxford, 1896), 569; Neale, Ilisloni of the Holu Eastern Church (London, 1850), I, 180-187; PfcTRlDks, in Diet, d'arch. chret., I, 2319-26; Cldg- NET, Diet, grec-fran^aia des noma liturgiquea (Paris, 1895).

Andrew J. Shipman.

Antinoe (or Antinopolis), a titular see of the The- baid, now Esneh or Esench, a city in Egypt, built by the Emperor Hadrian A. D. 132, in memory of his favourite, Antinous. Situated in the very centre of Egypt, the city attracted more than ordinary attention, not only by its splendour, but by its originality, being constructed, as it was, on the plan of Roman and Greek cities, without any trace of Egyptian architecture. The topography of its ruins is yearly growing less distinct, .since an European industry set up in the neiglibourliood draws on its antique materials a.s it miglit on some deserted marble quarry. After the fashion of Greek and Aaiatic cities, the city was intersected by streets along the sid&s of which ran porticoes and colonnades, and several of the the streets were arched over.

Antinoe played but a small part in the history of Christianity. It became the seat of a bishopric

subject to Thebes, and a good many monasteries were founded in the neighbourhood. Thanks to the Egyptian climate, the cemeteries opened in recent years have supplied the science of Christian an- tiquity with many noteworthy objects. Roman and Byzantine burial-places have been found in a won- derful state of preservation. The bodies, before burial, underwent a preparation very different from that in use with the ancient Egyptians, and were carefully dressed; clothes, stuffing, and a mask being used instead of mummification, which was no longer practised. The bodies, however, had the appear- ance of mummies. To this manner of preparing their dead we owe the preservation of various per- sonal effects as well as of stuffs. The tomb of a young woman named Kuphemiaan (?) contained an embroidery case in the folds of lier dress, and shoes of red leather enriched with gold tracery. The excavations carried on by M. A. Gayet have brought to light objects which are now in the Mus^e Guiraet at Paris, such as prayer-chaplets, baskets, phials, boxes of wood and ivory, etc. Papyri have also been found at Antinoe, one of the most int-^resting being the will of Aurelius CoUuthus.

Several ruins of some importance are to be seen in the neighbourhood of Antinoe. One of the most noteworthy is that of Deir Abou-Hennys, where there is an underground church, ornamented with paintings of real interest, less on account of the choice of subjects than for the skill and taste which they show in a Coptic artist of the seventh or eighth century. They represent scenes from the Gospel, with a few drawn from the apocryphal books, and are interspersed with a great number of inscriptions, most of which are mutilated or undecipherable.

Leclercq in Diet, d'archeol. chrH. et de lit., I, col. 2326-2359; De Bock, Convent de Saint Jean pria d'Anlinoe in MateriauT pour servir h Varch^ologie de VEgypte chretienne (St. Petersburg, 1901); Gayet, in Annates du Musee Ouimet (1902), XXX, Part 2; J. Cledat, in Bulletin de I'institut fran- (ais d'archeol, orien, (1902), II.

H. Leclercq.

Antinomies. See Ivant, Philosophy of.

Antinomianism (dirrl. against, and ^4/xos, law), the heretical doctrine that Christians are exempt from the obligations of the moral law. The term first came into vise at the Protestant Reformation, when it was employed by Martin Luther to designate the teaching of Johannes Agricola and his sectaries, who, pushing a mistaken and perverted interpreta- tion of the Reformer's doctrine of justification by faith alone to a far-reaching but logical conclusion, asserted tliat, as good works do not promote salva- tion, so neither do evil works hinder it; and, as all Christians are necessarily sanctified by their very vo- cation and profession, so, as justified Christians, they are incapable of losing their spiritual holiness, justi- fication, and final salvation by any act of disobedi- ence to, or even by any direct violation of the law of God. This theory — for it was not, and is not, necessarily, anything more than a purely theoretical doctrine, and many professors of Antinomianism, as a matter of fact, led, and lead, lives quite as moral as those of their opponents — was not only a more or less natural outgrowth from the distinctively Prot- estant principle of justification by faith, but prob- ably also the result of an erroneous view taken with regard to the relation between the Jewish and Chris- tian dispensations and the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Doubtless a confused understand- ing of the Mosaic ceremonial precepts and the fun- damental moral law embodied in the Mosaic code was to no small extent operative in allowing the con- ception of true Christian liljerty to grow beyond all rcas(mabk> bounds, and to take the form of a theo- retical doctrine of unlimited licentiovisness.

Although the term designating this error carae into use only in the sixteenth century, the doctrine itself