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 RITES

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RITES

tiuncula; that is, as often as a visit is made to a church of the order. In common with all friars the Servite priests wear an amice ou the head instead of a biretta while proceeding to and from the altar. The Mass is begun with the first part of the Angelical Salutation, and in the Confiteor the words Septcm beati^ patribus nostris are inserted. At the conclusion of >iass the Salve Regina and the oration Omiiipotens sempiterne Deus are recited. In the rei^itation of the Divine Office each canonical hour is begun with the Ave Maria do\\Ti to the words vcntris tui, Jesus. The custom of reciting daily, immediately before Vespers, a special prayer called Vigilia, composed of the three psalms and three antiphons of the first nocturn of the Office of the Blessed \'irgin. followed by three les- sons and responses, comes down from the thirteenth century, when they were ofTerod in thanksgiving for a special favour bestowed ujjon the order by Pope Alexander IV (13 May, 1259). The Salve Regina is daily chanted in choir whether or not it is the anti- phon proper to the season. P. J. Griffin.

Rites, Congregation of. See Roman Congre- gations.

Rites in the United States. — Since immigration from the eastern portion of Europe and from Asia and Africa set in with such volume, the peoples who (both in union with and outside the imitj^ of the Church) follow the various Eastern rites arrived in the United States in large numbers, bringing with them their priests and their forms of worship. As the}' grew in number and financial strength, they erected churches in the various cities and towns throughout the country. Rome used to be considered the city where the various rites of the Church through- out the world could be seen grouped together, but in the United States they may be observed to a greater advantage than even in Rome. In Rome the various rites are kept alive for the purpose of educating the various national clergj' who study there, and for demonstrating the unity of the Church, but there is no body of laymen who follow those rites; in the United States, on the contrarj-, it is the number and pressure of the laity which have caused the establi.shment and support of the churches of the various rites. There is consequently no better field for studying the various rites of the Church than in the chief cities of the United States, and such study has the advantage to the exact observer of affording an opportunity of comparing the dissident churches of those rites with those which belong to Catholic unity. The chief rites which have established themselves in America are these: (1) Armenian, (2) Greek or Byzantine, and (3) S>TO-Maronite. There are also a handful of ad- herents of the Coptic, Syrian, and Chaldean rites, which will also be noticed, and there are occasionally priests of the various Latin rites.

I. The Armenian Rite. — This rite alone, of all the rites in the Church, is confined to one people, one language, and one alphabet. It Ls, if anything, more exclusive than Judaism of old. Other rites are more widely extendwl in every way: the Roman Rite is spread throughout Latin, Teutonic, and Slavic peoples, and it even has two languages, the Latin and the Ancient Slavonic, and two alphabets, the Roman and the Glagolitic, in which its ritual is written; the Gre<;k or Byzantine Rite extends among Greek, Slavic, Latin, and Syrian peoples, and its services are celebrateiJ in Greek, Slavonic, Rumanian, and Arabic with sr^rvice-books in the Greek, Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic alphabets. But the Armenian Rite, whether Catholic or Gregorian, is confined exclusively to per- sons of the Armenian race, and employs the ancient Armenian language and alphabet. The history and origin of the race have been given in the article Ar- menia, but a word may be said of the language (Hayk, as it is called;, and its use in the hturgy. The uuijor-

ity of the Armenians were converted to Christianity bj' St. Gregory the Illuminator, a man of noble family, who was made Bishop of Armenia in 302 (see Gregory the Illuminator). So thoroughly was his work effected that Armenia alone of the ancient nations converted to Christianity has preserved no pagan literature antedating the Christian literature of the people ; pagan works, if they ever existed, seem to have perished in the ardour of the Armenians for Christian thought and expression. The memory of St. Gregorj^ is so revered that the Armenians who are opposed to union with the Holy See take pride in calling themselves "Gregorians", impljong that they keep the faith taught by St. Gregor5\ Hence it is usual to call the dissidents "Gregorians", in order to distinguish them from the Uniat Catholics. At first the language of the Christian liturgy in Armenia was S>Tiac, but later they discarded it for their own tongue, and translated all the services into Armenian, which was at first written in Syriac or Persian letters. About 400 St. Mesrob invented the present Armenian alphabet (except two final letters which were added in the year 1200), and their language, both ancient and modern, has been ■nTitten in that alphabet ever since. Mesrob al.so translated the New Testament into Armenian and revised the entire liturgy. The Armenians in their church life have led almost aa checkered an existence as they have in their national life. At first they were in full communion with the Universal Church. They were bitterly opposed to Nestorianism, and, when in 451 the Council of Chalcedon condemned the doctrine of Eutyches, they seceded, holding the opinion that such a definition was sanctioning Nestorianism, and have since remained separated from and hostile to the Greek Church of Constantinople. In 1054 the Greeks seceded in turn from unity with the Roman Church, and nearly three centuries later the Armenians became reconciled with Rome, but the union lasted only a brief period. Breaking away from unity again, the majority formed a national church which agrees neither with the Greek nor the Roman Church; a minority, recruited by con- verts to union with the Holy See in the seventeenth century, remained united Armenian Catholics.

The Mass and the whole liturgy of the Armenian Church is said in Ancient Armenian, which differs considerably from the modern tongue. The lan- guage is an offshoot of the Iranian branch of the Indo- Germanic family of languages, and probably found its earliest written ex-pression in the cuneiform in- scriptions; it is unlike the Semitic languages im- mediately surrounding it. Among its peculiarities are twelve regular declensions and eight irregular declensions of nouns and five conjugations of the verbs, while there are many difficulties in the way of postpositions and the like. It abounds in consonants and guttural sounds; the words of the Lord's Prayer in Armenian will suffice as an example: "Hair mier, vor herghins ies, surp iegitzi anun ko, ieghastze arkautiun ko, iegitzin garnk ko, vorbes hierghms iev hergri, zhatz mi<!r hanabazort dur miez aissor, iev tog miez ezbardis mier, vorbes iev mek togumk merotz bardabanatz, iev mi danir zmez i porsutiun, ailperghea i chare." The language is written from left to right, like Greek, Latin or Engli.sh, but in an alphabet of thirtyH'ight neculiar letters which are dissimilar in form to anything in the (ire(!k or Latin alphabet, and are arranged in a most penilexing order. For in- stance, the Armenian alphabet starts off with a, p, k, t, z, etc., and ends up with the letter/. It may also be noted that the Armenian has changed the con- sonantal values of most of the ordinary sounds in Christian names; thus George becomes Kevork; Sergius, Sarkis; Jacob, Hagop; Joseph, Hovsep; Gregory, Krikori; Peter, Bedros, and so on. The usual clan a<ldition of the word "son" (ian) to most Armenian family names, something like the use of