Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/710

 FENTACOMIA

646

PENTATEUCH

fast case it should be in moderate proportion and not the result of a bargain. For the causes mentioned, a bishop may not impose a pension on a benefice itself, or to have etTeot after the decease of the incumbent, though some canonists have maintained the contrary. \\'hen a bishop confers a benefice, he is not allowed to burden its collation with a jiension to be paid to him- self, as this would be a simoniacal transaction.

When two beneficiaries interchange benefices, they may not make a pact by which the one receiving the richer post is to pay a pension to the other, but the bishop may make such a stipulation of his own free ■btII on the occasion of the exchange of two benefi- ciaries. In like manner, while it is simoniacal for an abdicant to stipulate for a pension out of the benefice he resigns, yet he may, for grave cause, request the bishop to give liim such a pension, and the bishop may bestow it upon him. Simoniacal pacts are those which are made without the intervention of the proper eccle- siastical authority.

LajTnen are incapable of receiving ecclesiastical pensions, and the clerical recipient must not be ex- communicate, suspended, or under interdict. Pen- sions may be transferred to another by the pensioner, if the proper authority sanctions it. The earliest men- tion of a pension in Church history is said to be that of Domnus of Antioch, who received one out of the reve- nues of the bishoi^ric, which he had vacated at the time of the Council of Chalcedon in 4.51.

Ferraris, Bibliotheca caiwnica. VI (Rome. 1890), s. v. Pensio; Webnz, Jus decretalium, II (Rome, 1899).

William H. W. Fanning.

Pentacomia, titular see of Palestine, suffragan of Arc<i]inlis (IV ItMbbah. It was never a residential see; the t'rusadrrs mistook the "Descriptio orbis romani" of George of Cyprus, where it is mentioned (ed. Gelzcr, 53), for a "Notitia episcopatuum ", whereas it is a purely civil document. There is a locality of this name in Arabia (op. cit., 54), and a third in Palaestina Prima, now known as Fendacoumieh, near Samaria. Le Quien has made the same error ("Oriens christi- anus", III, 773), but without discovering the name of one bishop. The site of Pentacomia seems unknown.

S. VAlLHfi.

Pentapolis. — The word, occurring in Wisdom, x, 6, designates the region where stood the five cities (Wn-e, 7r6Xis) — Sodom, Gomorrha, Segor (A. V., Zoar), Adama, Scboim — which united to resist the invasion of Chodorlahomor (Gen., xiv), and of which four were shortly after utterly destroyed. This region, which marked the southern limit of the territory occupied by the Canaanites, was included in what was known in old Palestinian geography as the "Kikkar" (i.e. "round" or "oval"; Gen., xiii, 10, 11, 12, etc.; D. V. "the coun- try about the Jordan"; A. V. "the plain"), that is to say probably the lower Jordan Valley and the land around the Dead Sea. The Kikkar was a very fertile country (Gen., xiii, 10). Its fertility caused Lot to settle there (Gen., xiii, 8-13). About the same epoch, or possibly a little earlier, the five kings of the Pentapo- lis had been defeated in a battle fought in the Valley of Siddim (D. V. "the woodland Vale") by Amraphel (most probably Hammurabi, q. v.), King of Sennaar, Arioch (Rim-Sin), King of EUasar (Larsa), Chodorla- homor (Kudur-Lagamar), King of Elam and Thadal (Tid al), "king of the nations" (probably countries in the neighbourhood of Elatn and in its dependence), and made tributary. Twelve years later the five kings revolting, the Pentapolis was once more invaded by the .armies of the East, the territory phmdered, and captives led away, among whom w-ere Lot and his hoM.sehold. We read in Gen., xiv, how Abraham went to the rescue of his nephew. The Pentapolis soon re- covered from the effects of its defeats, and in its re- stored prosperity renewed the shameful vices which

brought upon it the judgment of God. "The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and he destroyed these cities and all the country about, all the inhabitants of the cities and all tilings that spring from the earth" (Gen., xix, 24-25).

The site of the Pentapolis has been sought in many places around the Dead Sea, even in its very bed. According to the holders of the latter opinion, we should see, in the Biblical description of the destruc- tion of Sodom and Gomorrha, the account of a great geological disturbance which caused a sinking of the country, tliis forming the bed of the Dead Sea. Trav- ellers pointed out as a remnant of the submerged cit- ies the "Kujm el-B4hr", a ledge of rock to the north of the sea, now entirely covered with water, but form- ing an island or even a peninsula at periods when the lake was considerably lower than now (as, for in- stance, from 1848 to 1892). Modern geologists, on the other hand, while admitting that disturbances of that character may have occurred in that region in the last fifty or forty centuries, yet with one accord hold that the origin of that body of water goes back to pre-his- toric times. The site must accordingly be .sought else- where. There are some, among them Armstrong, Wil- son, Conder, Tristram, and recently Dr. Huntington ("Harper's Monthly Magazine", Jan., 1910, pp. 186 sqq.), who, deceived by a certain likeness in names, searched for the Pentapohs to the north of the Dead Sea. Clermont-Ganneau, on the contrary, thought Gomorrha was in the Arabah, about 60 miles south of the Dead Sea (Recueil d'Archcol. Orient., I, pp. 163 sqq.). Most geographers, however, think that the site of the Pentapolis should be sought partly in the shal- low bed of the south end of the lake, and partly in its immediate neighbourhood. This view seems to be supported by two serious arguments. First, the name "Jebel Usdum", given to a conspicuous mountain of salt on the south-west shore, echoes apparently a long- standing tradition that Sodom was near by. Second, Segor, the only city that survived the ruin, was known throughout Biblical times (Is., xv, 5; Jer., xlviii, 4) and in the early Christian centuries [Joseph., "Ant.", I, xi, 4; "Bellum jud.", IV, viii, 4; Ptolemy, V, xvii, 5; Euseb., "Onomast.", 231, 261; Madaba Mosaic Map; medieval Arabic geographers (cf. Le Strahge, "Palestine under the Moslems", p. 292); crusaders (Guillaume de Tyr, xxii, 30) ; Segor, then called Zoora, was an episcopal see at the time of the Council of Chalcedon, 451]; it was situated south-east of the Dead Sea, at a distance of 580 stadia (almost 66 miles) from the north shore of the same, and to all appear- ances should be looked for near the mouth of the Wady Qerahy. The other three cities were possibly north of Segor.

Commentaries on Gen., xix; Armstrong, Wilson, Conder, Names and places in the O. T. (London, 1887): Baedeker-Ben- ZIQER, Palestine avd Syria (4th Engl, ed., Leipzig, 1906) ; Con- der, Handbook to the Bible (London, 1887); Le Strange, Pal- estine under the Moslems (London, 1890); Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine (London. 18S6) ; Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land (London, 1894) ; Tristram, The Land of Israel (London, 1872); Idem, The Land of Monb (London, 1873); Abel. Une Croisih-e aulour de la Mer Mortc (Paris, 1911); Gautier, Autour de la Mer Morte (Geneva, 1901); Gu^rin. Des- cription de la Palestine, Samarie (Paris, 1874-1875) ; Blanken- HORN, Enstehung und Geschichte des Todten Meeres in Zeitschrift des Deutschen PalHstina-Vereins, XIX (1896), 1-64; Idem, Noch eintnal Sodom und Gomorrha, ibid., XXI (1898), 6.3-83; BuHL, Geographie des AUen Paldstina (Leipzig, 1896).

Charles L. Sotjvay.

Pentateuch, in Greek vevTarevxl)^, is the name of the first five books of the Old Testament. I. Name. — Though it is not certain whether the word originally was an adjective, qualifying the omitted noun p/^Xos, or a substantive, its literal meaning "five cases" ap- pears to refer to the sheaths or boxes in which the separate five rolls or volumes were kept. At what pre- cise time the first part of the Bible was divided into