Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/736

 DEAD

658

DEAD

is evident from certain prescriptions in St. Cummian's Penitential according to which a bishop or abbot was not to be obeyed if he commanded a monk to sing Mass for deceased heretics ; likewise, if it befell a priest singing Mass that another, in reciting the names of the dead, included heretics with the Catholic departed, the priest, on becoming aware of this was to perform a week's penance. In the Leabhar Breac, various prac- tices in behalf of the faithful departed are commended. "There is nothing which one does on behalf of the soul of him who has died that doth not help it, both prayer on knees, and abstinence and singing requiems and frequent blessings. Sons are bound to do penance for their deceased parents." (Whitley Stokes, Introd. to "Vita Tripartita"). It is not, then, surprising that the Irish Culdees of the eighth century had as part of their duty to offer "intercessions, in the shape of litanies, on behalf of the living and the dead" (Rule of the Culdees, ed. Reeves, Dubhn, 1864, p. 242). The old Irish civil law (Senchus Mor, A. D. 438-441) pro- vided that the Church should offer requiem for all tenants of ecclesiastical lands. But no such enact- ments were needed to stir up individual piety.

Devotion to the souls departed is a characteristic that one meets continually in the lives of the Irish saints. In the life of St. Ita, written about the middle of the seventh century, it is related that the soul of her uncle was released from purgatory through her earnest prayers and the charity which, at her instance, his eight sons bestowed (Colgan, Acta SS. Hibemise, pp. 69-70). St. Pulcherius (Mochoemog), in the sev- enth century, prayed for the repose of the soul of Ro- nan, a chieftain of Ele, and recommended the faithful to do likewise. In the life of St. Brendan, quoted, singularly enough, by Ussher, we read, "that the prayer of the living doth profit much the dead". In the "Acta S. Brendani", edited by Cardinal Moran, the following prayer is given (p. 39) : " Vouchsafe to the souls of my father and mother, my brothers, sis- ters, and relations, and of my friends, enemies and benefactors, living and dead, remission of all their sins, and particularly those persons for whom I have undertaken to pray."

At the death of St. Columbanus (615), his disciple, St. Gall, said: "After this night's watch, I understood by a vision that my master and father, Columbanus, to-day departed out of the miseries of this life into the joys of paradise. For his repose, therefore, the sacri- fice of salvation ought to be offered"; and "at a signal from the bell [the brethren] entered the oratory, prostrated themselves in prayer and began to say masses and to offer earnest petitions in commemora- tion of the blessed Columbanus" (Walafrid Strabo, Vita B Galli, I, Cap. xxvi). Cathcart (op. cit., 332) cites only the words narrating the vision, and says: "they show conclusively that heaven was the imme- diate home after death of all the early Christians of Great Britain and Ireland." But the truth is that praying for the dead was a traditional part of the relig- ious life. Thus, when St. Gall himself died, a bishop who was his intimate friend offered the Holy Sacrifice for him — "pro carissimo salutares hostias immolavit amico" (ibid., ch. xxx). The same is recorded of St. Columba when he learned of the death of Columbanus of Leinster (Adamnan, Vita S. Col., Ill, 12). These facts are the more significant because they show that prayers were offered even for those who had been models of holy living. Other evidences are furnished in donations to monasteries, ancient inscriptions on gravestones, and the requests for prayers with which the writers of manuscripts closed their volumes. These and the like pious practices were after all but other means of expressing what the faithful heard day by day at the memento for the dead in the Mass, when prayer was offered for those "who have gone before us with the sign of faith and rest in the sleep of peace" (Stowe Missal). (See Salmon, "The An-

cient Irish Church", Dublin, 1897; Bellesheun, "Gesch. d. katholischen Kirche in Irland", Mainz, 1890, I, and bibhography there given.)

In addition to works mentioned in the text see, among theo- logians: Bellarmine, De Purgatorio, Bk. II; Perrone, Pt(e- leclionf^ Theol., De Deo CreatoTe, n. 683 sq.; Ju.ngmann, De Nov'ssimis, n. 104 sq^, Chr. Pesch. Prtelecliones Dogmat., IX, n. 607 sq.; also Bernard and BouR, Communion des Sainis in Diet, de theologie caih. ; Gibbons, The Faith of Out Fathers (Baltimore, 1871), xvi. To the historical authori- ties mentioned shotlld be added .\tzberger, Geschichte der ehristlichen Eschatologie innerhalh der vomienmschen Zeit (Frei- burg im Br., 1896). Cf. also Oxenham, Catholic Eschatology (2nd ed., London, 1878), ii; and among .\ngUcans, LrcKOCK, After Death (new ed., London, 1898), Part I; and Plumpthe. The Spirits in Prison and other Studies on the Life after Death (popular ed., London, 1905), ix.

P. J. Toner.

Dead, Resitrrection of the. See Resurrec- tion.

Dead, Service for the. See Burial; Requiem.

Dead Sea, the name given to the lake that lies on the south-eastern border of Palestine. The Old Testa- ment makes frequent reference to it under a variety of titles; once only, however, by its present one. The Vulgate's rendering of Josue (iii, 16) reads, mare soliiudinis {quod nunc vacatur Mortuum) translated in the D. V. "the sea of the wilderness (which now is called the Dead Sea)". In the Hebrew Bible the verse reads DTOrTD' n3"lj?n D'l and in the Septua- gint TT)!/ 0a\aauav 'Apa/Sd, BiXaaaav d\6s, which the A. V. gives thus: "towards the sea of the plain, even the salt sea"; and the R. V., "the sea of the Arabah, even the salt sea". In Joel (ii, 20) the prophet speaks of "the east sea"; and the apocryphal Fourth Book of Esdras (v, 7) speaks of the mare Sodomiti- cum. — the Sodomitish ,Sea. Joseph us, Pliny, and other profane writers, among other names, called it the Lake of Asphalt; 'Acn^aXTiTis Xlfivrj and Locus Asphal- tites. The present-day inhabitants of its vicinity call it Bahr Lut — the Sea of Lot.

ITie Dead Sea is the final link of the chain of rivers and lakes that lies in the valley of the Jordan. Tak- ing its rise on the southern slopes of Mt. Hermon, the Jordan in its southern course first spreads out into Lake Merom, emerging from which it flows into the Lake of Tiberias, whence it descends into the Dead Sea. To convey a proper idea of the size and shape of the Dead Sea travellers often compare it to the Lake of Geneva. The resemblance between the two is striking in almost every particular. The great lake of the Holy Land is forty-seven miles long and about ten miles across at its T^idest part. Its area is approxi- mately 360 square miles. The surface of the water is 1292 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, which is only a few miles to the west. This extraordinary feature alone singles out the Dead Sea from all other bodies of water. A low-ljHng peninsula about ten miles wide, called el-Lisan, "the tongue", which runs out from the south-eastern shore to within three miles of the opposite shore, divides the sea into two unequal parts. The northern and larger part is very deep, reaching at one point a depth of 1310 feet. The southern bay is, on the contrarj', very shallow, aver- aging hardly a depth of thirteen feet. In two places it is possible to cross from the peninsula to the oppo- site shore by means of two fords which are known to the Arabs.

The water in the Dead Sea is salt. Every day the Jordan and other affluents pour into it over six and one half million tons of fresh water. There is, how- ever, no outlet to the ocean, and the sole agent where- by this increase is disposed of is evaporation. The power of the sun's rays in this great pit is, however, so intense that save for a small fluctuation between the wet and dry seasons, the level of the sea does not change, despite the great volume that is added to it. In the water that remains after evaporation solid mat- ters make up 26 per cent of the whole; 7 per (jent be-