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tos; of Zeus at Olympia; of Amphiraos at Thebes and Oropos; about a hundred of Asklcpios are known. Most were estabhshed by a source, many near a ine- phit ic chasm or srot t o. Usually the clients would stand in a large vestibule, or chresmographion, from which they could see the naos or shrine, with the god's statue. In the centre, usually at a lower level, was the adyton, where the spring, chasm, tripod, and laurel huslies were seen. Here the prophetess received the divine inspiration. Nearly all the oracles were administered by a group of officials, originally, no doubt, members of some privileged family. At Del- phi, the .saints (So-ioi); at Miletus, the Branchidai and Euangelidai, etc. These usually elected the staff of resident priests, the schools of prophets (at the oracle of Zeus Ammon, e. g., under an arch-prophet), and even, at times, the pythoness. At Delphi, the priests elected her from the neighbourhood : she was to be over fifty (so, on account of a scandalous incident), and quite ignorant. Her guidance was not to be too positive!

In its best days, the Delphic oracle exercised an enormous influence: its staff was international and highly expert; gold flowed in unceasing streams into its treasury, free access to it was guaranteed to pil- grims even in time of war. In constitutional and colonial history, in social and religious crises, in things artistic as in matters of finance, its intervention was constant and final. Had it realized its own position, its work of unification, whether as regards religion or politics in Hellas, might have been unlimited. Like all human things, it but half-saw its ideal (human as that ideal could at best have been) and but half-realized what it saw. Easily corrupted by the gold and pray- ers of kings, the centre of Asiatic and African, no less than of European intrigues, it became an end to itself. At the time of the Persian War, it sacrificed Athens and imperilled all Western civilization. It was re- sponsible for more than one war. It drained the colonies of their revenues. It gradually set against itself the indignant rivalries of the local cults of Greece. No moral or religious instruction can be accredited to it. Thus, while formidable enemies were ranged against it at home, the conquests of Alexander dimmed national glories, and opened the gates to far more fascinating cults. The prophecies based upon the rigid data of astrology supplanted the Pythian ravings; Plutarch relates the decay and silencing of the oracles (De defect, orac). In Rome diviners and astrologers, always suspected, had long found legisla- tion active against them. The Sibylhne books, huge records of oracles ceaselessly interpolated by each new philosophy, by Jewish and even Christian apocalyptic prophecy, had been famous by the side of indigenous oracles, the carmina Marciana, for example: yet as early as 213 B. c. the Senate began its confiscations; Augustus made an auto-da-fe of over 2000 volumes; Tiberius, more scrupulous, expurgated the rest. Con- stant enactments proved vain against the riot of superstition in which the empire was collapsing; the sanest emperors were themselves adepts; Marcus Aurelius consulted the miserable charlatan Alexander, with his snake-oracle at Abonoteichos. Christianity alone could conquer the old homes of revelation. Constantine stripped Delphi and Dodona, and closed Mgx and Aphaka; Julian tried to re-awake the stam- mering, failing voices; but under Theodosius the re- pression is complete, and henceforward the oracles are dumb. (Sec Divination.)

Babylon and As.sybta: Jastrow, Die Religion Bahylonienn u. Assj/rienfr. (Giessen, 1906), xix. and in Hastings, Diet, of the Bihle, extra vol. (London, 1904), 556-63: Knitdtzon. Assyrische Ge- bele a. d. Sonnenf/ott (Leiozif;, 1893) ; Dhorme, Choix de textes (Pari.s. 1907), xxxvi, 382; Relig. axxyro.-habylonienne (Paris, 1910), 203. 291 etc.

Tbe Hebrews: Dhorme. Les livrea de Samuel (Paris, 1910): Lagrange. Le lirre deg Juges (Paris. 1903) ad loec: Hastings, Dui. of the Bible, extra vol. (London, 1904), 641a, 662b etc.

Greece and Rome; cf. especially Bouch£-Leclercq, Hist, de

la divination dans tantiquiti (Paris, 1879-82), and Darembehg AND Saglio, 8. V. Ditination; Monceatt, I'tiV/., s. v. Oraculum: CouGNY, Anthol. grcec, append. (Paris. IS'.Ml). lOl-.iSS for relics of verse oracles: Boissier, Fin du jifmninsmf, II. On Sibyliino literature: Wolff, De novissima oriiciilnrum nl,ilr (licrlin, 1854); Porphyrii de Philosophia ex oraculis haarunda librorumreliquim (Bcriin, 18.56): Hencless, Oracula yraai (Halle, 1877); Rouse, Greek Votite Offerings (Cambridge, 1902); Farnell, Cults of the Greek Stales, IV, 181 sqq., 1907; MvERS in Ilellenica (London, ISSO), 426-92.

C. C. Mautindale.

Oran, Diocese of (Oranensis), in Algiers, sep- arated from the Archdiocese of Algiers, 2.') July, 1866, to which it is suffragan. In the early centuries there were no less than 123 dioceses in Ca-sarcan and Tingi- tan Mauretania. Tlemcen (in the present diocese) was an important see. Victor, Bishop of Tlemcen, assisted at the Council of Carthage (411); Honoratus (484) was exiled by King Huneric for denying Arian- ism. Though the Arabs (708) destroyed many churches, according to Abou-Obcd-el-Bekrii in his "Roads and Empires", there were in 963, churches and Christians at Tlemcen. Until 12.54 Christian troops were in the service of the Moorish kings of Tlemcen; from a Bull of Nicholas IV (1290) it is evident that a bishop of Morocco, legate of the Holy See, had jurisdiction over this region, ravaged by a violent persecution in the second half of the thirteenth century.

Oran, probably of Moorish origin, was taken by the Spanish in 1509. The expedition which Comte d'Al- caudette, captain general from 1534 to 1558, led against Tlemcen (1.543) was in fact a crusade. The Spaniards ruled until 1708, and again from 1732 to 1792. The Bey having sought the protection of France, the French occupied Oran (10 December, 1830).

The pilgrimage of Notre-Dame du Salut at Santa Cruz near Oran was founded in 1849. Before the Associations Law of 1901 the diocese had Jesuits; Lazarists; and several orders of teaching Brothers, one native to the diocese, namely the Brothers of Our Lady of the Annunciation, with their mother-house at Slisserghin. The Trinitarian Sisters, with their mother-house at Valence (Drome) are numerous. The diocese in 1901 contained 273,527 Europeans, excluding the French army; in 1905 there were 5 canonical parishes; 77 succursal parishes, 13 curacies remunerated by the State; 14 auxiliary priests.

MORCELLI, Africa Christiana (Brescia, 1816); BARoiis, Tlem- cen, ancienne capitate du royaume de ce nam (Paris, 1859) : De Prats, L Eglise Africaine (Tours, 1894) ; Ruff, La domination espagnole d Oran sous le gouvernemetit du comte d' Alcaudette, 1535- 1558 (Paris, 1900).

Georges Goyau.

Orange, Councils of. — Two councils were held at Orange (Arausio), a town in the present department of Vaucluse in southern France. The first met on 8 No- vember, 441, in the church called " Ecclesia Justinian- ensis" or " Justianensis". The council is designated either by the name of the church, " synodus Justinian- ensis ", or by that of the episcopal city, " Arausicana la " (first of Orange). St. Hilary of Aries presided, as the dio- cese formed part of his metropolitan district. Among the ot her sixt een bi.shops present was St. Eucherius who, as Mctropolit:m of Lyons, signed the acts in the name of all his suffragans. The council, as appears from its twenty-ninth canon, was held in obedience to an ordi- nance of the Synod of Riez (4,39) prescribing .semi- annual provincial .sj;nods. The thirty canons which it is.sued have occa.sioned considenil)Ie controversy. Their subject-matter was: the administnition of the sacraments (canons i-iv, xii-xvii), the right of sanctu- ary (v-vi), mutual episcopal relations (viii-xi), cate- chumens (xviii-xx), bishops (xxi, xxx), the marriage of clerics (xxii-xx\'). deaconesses (xxvi), widowhood and virginity (xxvii-xxviii), the holding of councils (xxix). To these genuine canons Gratian and others added un- authentic ordinances printed in the "Corpus Juris