Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/663

 Q

Quadragesima (Lat., the fortieth) denotes a season of preparation by fasting and prayer, to imitate the example of Christ (Matt., iv). Several such were ob- served by the early Christians, viz. before Christmas, Easter, and the feast of St. John the Baptist; the Greeks had four, the Maronites six, and the Arme- nians eight (DuCange, "Gloss."). The major, before Easter, is commonly known. It is mentioned in the fifth canon of the Council of Nicoea, in the sixty-ninth of the Apostolic Canons, and in the Pilgrimage of .(Etheria (Duchesne, 499). In the Anglo-Saxon Church Mass was said on the weekdays of Quadra- gesima late in the afternoon and food was taken only near sunset (Rock, IV, 70). According to the Roman Rite, the feriw of this time, beginning with Ash Wednesday, are major (see Feria). The season " a proper preface. In ferial masses a special oration is added after the ordinary postcommunion, with the in- vitation: "Humiliate capita vestra Deo". Octaves are forbidden, and if, by special concession, they are allowed they must be interrupted on Sundays. The first Sunday of Lent, known as Invocabit from the first word of the Introit, is for the Greeks a commemoration of the veneration of images (19 Feb., 842). For Gaul it was the jour de bures or fele des brandons and for Germany Funkenlag or Hallfeuer, because on that day the young people ran about the streets with burning torches (Nilles, II, 102). The second Sunday, Remi- niscere, was marked by the Greeks as vacat (Nilles, II, 122). The third Sunday, Oculi, was for the Greeks Adoratio Crucis with a ceremony similar to that of the Latins on Good Friday. For the Bohemians it was the Ned. Kychdvnd in memory of the sneezing plague at the end of the sixth century and of Litania sepli- formis of Gregory the Great. The remaining Sundays are Laelare, Passion and Palm Sunday (q. v.). (See also Lent; Septuaoesim.*..)

Rock, Church of Out Fathers (London, 1904); Duchesne, Christian Worship (London. 1904). Kellner, Heortologie (Frei- burg, 1906, tr. London and St. Louis, 1908) ; Benoer, Pastoral- theologie. III (Ratisbon, 1863), 201; Binterim, Dtnkumrdig- keilen, V, 1, 169), NlLLES, Kalendarium manunte (Innsbruck, 1897).

Francis Mershman.

QuadriTium. See Arts, The Seven Liberal. Quakers. See Friends, Society of.

Quadratus, the first of the Christian apologists. He is said by Eusebius (Chron. ad ann. Abrah. 2041, 124 a. d.) to have been a disciple of the Apostles {auditor aposlolorum). He addressed a discourse to the Emperor Hadrian containing an apology for the Christian religion, during a visit which the latter made to Athens in 124 or 125. With the exception of a short passage quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., IV, iii), this apology has entirely disappeared. Eusebius states (Chron.) incorrectly, however, that the appeal of Quadratus moved the emperor to issue a favourable edict. Because of the similar- ity of name some scholars have concluded (e. g. Bardenhewer, "Patrology", p. 46) that Quadratus the apologist is the same person as Quadratus, a prophet mentioned elsewhere by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., Ill, xxxvii). The evidence, however, is too slight to be convincing. The later references to Quadratus in .Jerome and the martyrologies are all based on Eusebius or are arbitrary enlargements of his account.

RoiiTH, Rrliquim Same, I (Oxford. 1846), 69-79; Habnack, Ueberlifferung der griech. ApoloqHen, lO.'i; Gmch. d. altchrist. Li(er., I, 9.5; 11,269-71; Babdenheweb, Pa(ro(oou, tr. Shahan (St. Louis, 1908).

Patrick J. Healy.

Quality (Gr. Toidrits — Plato, Aristotle — Toiiv; Lat. qualilas, quale) is used, 1st, in an e.xtended sense, as whatever can be attributed to the subject of dis- course; and 2nd, in its exact signification, as that cate- gory which is distinguished from the nine others enumerated by Aristotle. In the present article the word is treated in its stricter sense. The eighth chapter of the "Categories" treats of quality, as distinct from substance and the other predicaments. It is described, however, in the opening words of the sixth chapter of the same book as that on account of ^sn vk'hich we say that anything is such or such — woibT-qTn nas g^ A^7w, KaB'' ^v irotU nvci [ilvai] \4yovTai, It is thus the accidental form which determines the subject to a special mode of being. It is the reply to the question Qualis sit res?, as St. Thomas Aquinas remarks; and is the correlative to Talis (as Quanlus to Tanlus), as is pointed out by James Mill in his "Analysis". As the notion is a simple one, it is not possible strictly to define it; for, to do this, it would be necessary to split it up into genus and differentia — an impossibility where the simplest concepts are concerned. It is itself not a real genus, since many particular things, not generically identical, can be subjects of the same predicate, analogically employed. Quality is the category according to which objects are said to be like or unlike ; and, in view of the tendency introduced into modern science by the mechanist theories of Descartes, and fostered by the postulate of the trans- formation of energy, it is of importance that the qualitative should be distinguished from the quanti- tative differences of objects (cf. Quantity). Aris- totle's classification of the heads of discourse in the "Categories" is a logical one, in which the attri- butes are considered as possible predicates of a sub- ject. But they are further understood metaphys- ically; and, in this sense, quality is one or other of the four modes in which substance is determined to being talis or talis, i.e. such or such. Considered thus, it is an accidental determination (cf. Form).

The four divisions of quality are: (1) Habit, or condition (habitus) ; a permanent and comparatively stable quality by which man, considered as to his nature or operation, is well or ill-adapted towards his natural end. Strictly speaking, only man can be the subject of habit. It is thus di.slinguisiied from disposition; which is used of other tiian human beings. Less stable conditions, as hot, cold, sick, well, are also mentioned here. (2) Natural powers or incapacities (potentia activa el impotentia). These are distinguished, as accidents, from the substance; and are further distinguished among themselves as are the distinct acts from which they are inferred. The im- portant Scholastic thesis of the real distinction of nature from its faculties arises in this connexion. (3) Power of causing sensations and results of the modification of sense; the one belonging, as quality, to the objects of sense; the other to the senses that are modified. (4) Figure, or circumscriliing form of extended bodies. St. Thoiiuis Aquinas insists upon the fact that this mode of (|u;i,lily (nKjrphdlogy) is the most certain index of the identity or diversity of species, especially in plants and animals. Quality admits in the concrete, though not in the abstract, of more and less; and in some cases, though not in all,

589