Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/428

 ELCESAITES

372

ELDER

landed on the island, 4 May, lSl-1, but left it on 26 February, 1815; during his short administration Napoleon did much for the benefit of the island, espe- ciallj' in the improvement of the roads. The Con- gress of Menna, in 1S15, restored the island to Tuscany, with which it was finally incorporated into the united Kingdom of Italy.

SiMONiN, La Toscane el la mei- Tijrrhcnienne (Pans. ISBSh PuLLE, Monografia agraria (id circondario deW Elba (Porto Ferrajo, 1879); Fatichi, holad'Elba (Florence, ISSo); Gruyer, Napoleon Toi de Vile d'Elba (Paris, 1905, tr. London, 1906); Gregorovius, Wanderjahre in Ilalien (9th ed., Leipzig, 1905), I 1-50* HoRSTEL, Die Napoleonsinsein Korsika und Elba (2nd ed., Berlin. 190S); Annuario Ecclesiastico (Rome, 1909), s. v. Massa Marittima. GreGOR ReiNHOLD.

Elcesaites (or Helkesaites), a sect of Gnostic Ebionites, whose religion was a wild medley of heathen superstitions and Christian doctrines with Judaism. Hippolytus (Philosophumena, IX, 13-17) tells us that under Callistus (217-222) a cunning in- dividual called Alcibiades, a native of Apamea in Syria, came to Rome, bringing a book which he said had been received from Parthia by a just man named Elchasai ('HXxai^of; but Epiphanius has 'HXJai and 'EXKeo-craroi; Methodius, ' EXitctraios, and Origen, 'EX«(raiTai). The contents of the book had been re- vealed by an angel ninety-six miles high, sixteen miles broad, and "twenty-four across the shoulders, whose footprints were fourteen miles long anci four miles wide by two miles deep. This was the Son of God, and He was accompanied by His Sister, the Holy Ghost, of the same dimensions. Alcibiades an- nounced that a new remission of sins had been pro- claimed in the third year of Trajan (a. d. 100), and he described a baptism which should impart, this forgive- ness even to the grossest sinners. Harnack makes him say "w.as proclaimed" instead of "has been pro- claimed" (as if e6ayye\uT0TJpaL and not fvriyyMadai), and thus infers that a special year of remission is spoken of as past once for all^that Alcibiades had no reason for inventing this, so that Hilgenfeld was right in holding that Elchasai really lived under Tra- jan, as Epiphanius supposed. If we put aside this blunder of Harnack's (and also his earlier odd conjec- ture that the remission in the third year of Trajan meant that the first two books of the Pastor of Her- mas were published in that year), we see that the re- mission offered is by the new baptism. Hippolj-tus represents this doctrine as an improvement invented by Alcibiades on the lax teaching of his enemy Cal- listus. He does not perhaps expect us to take this seriously — it is most likely ironical — but he seenis to regard Alcibiades as the author of the book. Origen, writing somewhat later (c. 246-9), says the heresy- was quite new; he seems to have met with Alcibi- ades, though he does not give his name. There is no reason why we should dissent from these contempo- rary witnesses, and we must place the first appearance of the book of Elchasai c. 220. A century and a half later, St. Epiphanius found it in use among the Samp- SEeans, descendants of the earlier Elcesaites, and also among the Ossa;ans, and many of the other Ebionite communities. En-hedim, an Arabic writer, c. 987, found a sect of Saba>ans in the desert who counted El- Chasaiach as their founder (Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier, 1856, I, 112; II, 543, cited by Salmon).

According to Hippolytus the teaching of Alcibi- ades was borrowed from various heresies. He taught circumcision, that Christ was a man like others, that he had many times been born on earth of a virgin, that he devoted himself to astrology, magic, and in- cantations. For all sins of impurity, even against nature, a second baptism is enjoined "in the name of the great and most high God and in the name of His Son the great King", with an adjuration of the seven witnesses written in the book, sky, water, the holy spirits, the Angels of pr;iyer, oil, salt, and earth. One who has been bitten by a mad dog is to run to the

nearest water and jump in with all his clothes on, using the foregoing formula, and promising the seven wit- nesses that he will abstain from sin. The same treat- ment — forty days consecutively of baptism in cold water — is recommended for consumption and for the possessed. Other Ebionites in Epiphanius's time practised this treatment. That saint tells us that mention was made in the book of Elchasai's brother, lexai, and that the heresiarch was a Jew of the time of Trajan. Two of his descendants, two sisters, Mar- thus and Marthana, lived till the days of Epiphanius. They were reverenced as goddesses and the dust of their feet and th°ir spittle were used to cure diseases. This suggests that Elchasai was not a fictitious per- sonage. He was presumably a primitive leader of an Ebionite community, to whom Alcibiades ascribed his own book. We learn further from Epiphanius that the book condemned virginity and continence, and made marriage obligatory. It permitted the worship of idols to escape persecution, provided the act was merely an external one, disowned in the heart. Prayer was to be made not to the East, but always to- wards Jerusalem. Yet all sacrifice was condemned, with a denial that it had been off'ered by the patriarchs or under the Law. The Prophets as well as the Apos- tles were rejected, and of course St. Paul and all his writings. It has been customary to find Elcesaite doctrine in the Clementine  Homilies " and  Recogni- tions", especially in the former. On the groundless- ness of this see Clementines.

Hippolytus, Philosophumena. IX, 13-17; X, 29; Origen in EusEBius, H. E., \l, 38; Methodius. Conviv., VIII, 10; EpiPHANltis. Hot., XIX and LIII, also XXX, 3, 17, 18. Theo- doret has simply used Epiphanius. See Hilgenfeld, N. T., extra canonem receplum (Leipzig, 1881), fasc. Ill; cf. also Id., Judcntum und Christentum (Leipzig, 1SS6) and the various writers on the Pseudo-Clementines, esp. Uhlhorn. A good ar- ticle by SALMON is in Diet. Christ. Biog., s. v. Elkesai; more re- cent are Harnack, GfscA. der aiteftr. /,*., I, 207; II, i, 267; II, ii, 167; Barde.vhewer, Gesch. der altkirchl. Lit., I, 350; Idem. Shahan tr., Pafrofosi/ (Freiburg im Br.. 1908), 81.

John Chapman.

Elder, George, educator, b. 11 August, 1793, in Kentucky, U. S. A.; d. 28 Sept., 1838, at Bardstown. His parents, James Elder and Ann Richards (a con- vert), natives of Maryland, emigrated shortly after their marriage to Hardin's Creek, in the present Marion County, Kentucky, where George, the second of their seven children was born. The Elders enjoyed a moderate competency and were full of zeal for their Catholic Faith. George's early education devolved mainly upon his father, who was well versed in the Scriptures and thoroughly acquainted with the teach- ing of the Church, which he frequently defended in discussion and explained to converts who were pre- paring for baptism. George Elder imbibed a love for serious study, and in his sixteenth year he entered llount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Maryland, to pursue classical studies. Here he became the friend of William Byrne (q. v.), afterwards founder of St. Mary's College, Kentucky. Both studied theology in St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, and were ordained priests at Bardstown by Bishop David, IS Sept., 1819. In addition to the duties of an assistant at the cathe- dral there. Father Elder was entrusted by Bishop Flaget with the founding of a high-grade school or college for lay students. This was, at first, a day school and was taught in the basement of the theo- logical seminary (erected in 1818). A separate build- ing was erected in 1820-23. The college was then one of the largest and best appointed educational struc- tures in the entire West. "The arrival, in 1825, of fifty southern students was the beginning of the extensive patronage the college received from the Sovithcrn States, notably Louisiana and Mississippi, and which continued down to the Civil War. In 1827 the Rev. Ignatius A. Reynolds (afterwards Bishop of Charles- ton) was appointed president and Father Elder was given charge of the congregation of St. Pius, in Scott