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OFFERINGS

Oengus, Saint. See Aengus, Saint.

Oertel, John James Maximilian, journalist, b. at Ansbaeh, Bavaria, 27 April, 1811 ; d. at Jamaica, New York, 21 August, 1882. Born a Lutheran, he was sent to the Lutheran University of Erlangen where he studied theology and five years later was ordained a minister. After his ordination he accepted a call to care for his countrymen in the LInited States, and arrived in New York in October, 1837. The unortho- dox opinions of the New York Lutherans displeased him, and he left for Missouri early in 1839. Things were no better there, so he returned to New York. Denominational dissensions weakened his faith, and in 1840 he became a Catholic. An account of his conversion in pamphlet form published 25 March,

1850, had quite a vogue in the controversial literature of the day. After his conversion he taught German at St. John's College, Fordham; later he edited in Cin- cinnati the "Wahrheitsfreund", a German Catholic weekly, and in 1846 he left for Baltimore where he founded the weekly "Ivirchenzeitung", which, under his editorial direction, was the most prominent Ger- man Catholic publication in the United States. In

1851, he moved the paper to New York. In 1869 he published " Altesund Neues". In 1875 Pius IX made him a Knight of St. Gregory in recognition of his ser- vice to the Church and Catholic literature.

U. S. Cath. Hist. Soc, Hist, Records and Studies, IV. parts I and II (New York, Oct., 1906) ; Shea, The Cath. Church in the U. S. (New York, 1856); Catholic News (New York, 18 April, 190S).

Thomas F. Mbehan.

Oettingen (Altotting, Oetinga), during the Car- lovingian period a royal palace near the confluence of the Isen and the Inn in Upper Bavaria, near which King Karlmann erected a Benedictine monastery in 876, with Werinolf as first abbot, and also built the abbey church in honour of the Apostle St. Philip. In 907 King Louis the Child, gave the abbey in commen- dam to Bishop Burchard of Passau (903-915), proba- bly identical with Burchard, second and last abbot. In 910 the Hungarians ransacked and burnt the church and abbey. In 122S Duke Louis I of Bavaria rebuilt them and put them in charge of twelve Augus- tinian Canons and a provost. The Augustinians re- mained until the secularization of the Bavarian mon- asteries in 1803. LTnder their care was also the Lieb- frauen-Kapelle with its miraculous image of Our Lady, dating from the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century. The pilgrims became so numerous that to aid the Augustinian Canons the Jesuits erected a house in 1591 and remained until the suppression of their order in 1773. Franciscans settled there from 1653 to 1803; from 1803 to 1844 the Capuchins and some secular priests, from 1844 to 1873 the Redemptorists had charge, and since 1872 the Capuchins. About 300,000 pilgrims come annually. Since the middle of the seventeenth century the hearts of the deceased Bavarian princes are preserved in the Liebfrauen-Kapelle.

Maier, Gedenkblatter und CuUurbilder aus der Geschichte von AU^ting (Augsburg. 1885) ; Krauthahn. Geschichte der uraUen WaUfahrt in Allotting (9th ed., Altotting. 1893).

Michael Ott.

Offa, King of Mercia, d. 29 July, 796. He was one of the leading figures of Saxon history, as appears from the real facts stripped of all legend. He obtained the throne of Mercia in 757, after the murder of his cousin. King ^thelbald, by Beornraed. After spending four- teen years in consolidating and ordering his territories he engaged in conquests which made him the most powerful king in England. After a successful cam- paign against the Hestingi, he flefeated the men of Kent at Otford (775); the West Saxons at Ben.sington in Oxfordshire (779); and finally the Welsh, depriving the last-named of a large part of Powys, including the

town of Pengwem. To repress the raids of the Welsh he built Offa's dyke, roughly indicating for the first time what has remained the boundary between Eng- land and Wales. Offa was now supreme south of the Humber, with the result that England was divided into three poUtical divisions, Noithumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. His next step was to complete the inde- pendence of Mercia by inducing the pope to erect a Mercian archbishopric, so as to free Mercia from the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Had- rian I sent two legates, George and Theophylactus, to England to arrange for the transfer of five suffragan sees of Canterbury (viz. Worcester, Leicester, Lindsay, Elmham, and Dunwich) to the new Archbishopric of Lichfield, of which Higbert was first archbishop. This was effected at the Synod of Celchyth (787), at which Offa granted the pope a yearly sum equal to one mancus a day for the relief of the poor and for lights to be kept burning before St. Peter's tomb. At the same time he as.sociated his son Ecgferth with him in the kingship. He preserved friendly relations with Charlemagne, who undertook to protect the English pilgrims and merchants who passed through his terri- tories. Many charters granting lands to various mon- asteries are extant, and, though some are forgeries, enough are genuine documents to show that he was a liberal benefactor to the Church. The laws of Offa are not extant, but were embodied by Alfred in his later code The chief stain on his character is the execution of yEthelbert., King of the East Angles. In all other respects he showed himself a great Christian king and an able and enlightened ruler.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which misdates hia death by two years: most of the chief medieval historians, William of Malmesbury, Matthew Paris etc., and later standard works, Lingard etc.; Mackenzie, Essay on the life and institutions of Offa (London, 1840): Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes (London, 1840): Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus (Evi Saxonici (London. 1839-48); Jaff6, Bibl. rerum Germanarum, IV: Monumenta Carolina (Ber- lin, 1864-73) : Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents. Ill and V (Oxford. 1869-1878): Green, Making of England (London, 1885); BrRCH, Car/u/ariwrn Saxonicum (Lon- don, 1885-93); ,Searle, Anglo-Saxon Bishops, Kings, and Nobles (Cambridge. 1899): Hdghes, On Offa's Dyke in Archceologia (1893), III, 465 sqq. EdWIN BuRTON.

Ofierings (Oblations). — I. The word oblation, from the supine of the Latin verb offero ( " to off er " ), is ety mo- logically akin to offering, but is, unlike the latter, al- most exclusively restricted to matters religious. In the Enghsh Bibles "oblation", "offering", "gift", "sacrifice" are used indiscriminately for anything presented to God in worship, or for the service of the Temple or priest. This indiscriminate rendering arises from the fact that these words do not purport to render always the same Hebrew expressions. The latter, moreover, are not distinct h' specific in their meaning. In this article oblations will be considered in the narrow sense the term has tended to assume of vegetable or lifeless things offered to God, in con- tradistinction to "bloody sacrifices".

Oblations of this kind, hke sacrifices, were found in all ancient Semitic reUgions — in fact are a world- wide and ever-existing institution. Various theories have been proposed to explain how offerings came to be a part of worship. Unfortunately very many modern scholars assume that mankind began in the savage state. According to one theory, the god being considered the first owner of the land, it was inferred he had a claim to a tribute from the increase of the soil: this is the frifeute theory. It relies on the fact that the offering of first-fruits is one of the earliest forms of oblations found among ancient peoples. The assumption that primitive men conceived deity under low anthropomorphic forms is the source whence have sprung the gift theory, the table-bond theory, and the communion theory. According to the first of these systems, the god is approachefl through pres- ents which the worshipper counts on to insure favour {AQpa ffeovs neMei,' Sup alSolovs ^atriX^as). That such