Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/457

 ELYMOS

397

EMANATIONISM

John Alcock, founder of Jesus College, Cam- bridge, 14SG Richard Redman, 1501 James Stanley, 1506 Nicholas West, 1515 Thomas Goodrich, 1533* Thomas Thirlby, 1554- 1559

Thomas Fitz-Alan (or

Arundel), 1374* John Fordham, 1388 Philip Morgan, 1426 Vacancy (Cardinal Louis of Luxemburg, admin- istrator), 1435 Thomas Bourchier, 1444 William Gray, 1454t John Morton, 1479*

Bishop Goodrich showed reforming tendencies and during his pontificate the monastery with all its de- pendencies was suppressed. The last Catholic bishop was Thomas Thirlby, who was one of the eleven confessor-bishops imprisoned by Elizabeth and who died at Lambeth in 1570. In the diocese there were one archdeaconry and 141 parishes. The arms of the see were: gules, three ducal crowns, or.

Liber EUensis (one vol. only published, London, 1848); In- quisitio EUensis (published by Royal Society of Lit. (London, 1876): Bentham, Hist, and Antiq. of the Conventual and Cathe- dral Church of Ely (Cambridge, 1771); Winkles, Cathedrals of Englandand Wales (I860): Stewart, Architectural History of Ely (1868); Stdbbs, Memorials of Ely (London, 1897); Hills, Hand- book to the Cathedral Church of Ely (Ely, 1852), largely re- written and edited by Dean Stubbs (20th edition, Ely, 1898); Farven, Cathedral Cities of Ely and Norwich (introd. by Prof. Freeman): Sweeting, Ely: the Cathedral and See (London, 1901); Gibbons, Ely Episcopal Records.

Edwin Burton. Elymos. See B.^rjesds.

Elzear of Sabran, Saint, Baron of Ansouis, Count of .Vriano, b. in the castle of Saint-Jean de Robians, in Provence, 1285; d. at Paris, 27 September, 1323. After a thorough training in piety and the sciences under his uncle William of Sabran, Abbot of St. Victor at Marseilles, he acceded to the wish of Charles II of Naples and married the virtuous Delphine of the house of Gland^ves. He respected her desire to live in vir- ginity and joined the Third Order of St. Francis, vying with her in the practice of prayer, mortification, and charity towards the unfortunate. At the age of twenty he moved from Ansouis to Puy-Michel for greater solitude, and formulated for his servants rules of conduct that made his household a model of Chris- tian virtue. On the death of his father, in 1309, he went to Italy and, after subduing by kindness his sub- jects who despised the French, he went to Rome at the head of an army and aided in expelling the Emperor Henry VII. Returning to Provence, he made a vow of chastity with his spouse, and in 1317 went back to Naples to become the tutor of Duke Charles and later his prime minister when he became regent. In 1323 he was sent as ambassador to France to obtain Marie of Valois in marriage for Charles, edifying a worldly court by his heroic virtues. He was buried in the Franciscan habit in the church of the Minor Conven- tuals at Apt. The decree of his canonization was signed by his godson Urban V and published by Gre- gory XI. His feast is kept by the Friars Minor and Conventuals on the 27th of September, and by the Capuchins on the 20th of October.

Wadding, Annates Minorum. VI, 247 sqq.; Acta SS., Sept., VII, 494 sqq.; BozE, Histoire de .S. Elzear el de Ste Delphtne, suivie de leur eloge (Lyons, 1862) ; Leo, Lives of the Saints and Blessed of the Three Orders of St. Francis (Taunton, 1886), III, 2;J2— 10; Butler, Lives of the Saints, 27 Sept.

Gregory Carr.

Emanationism, the doctrine that emanation (Lat. umanare, "to flow from") is the mode by which all things are derived from the First Reality, or Principle.

I. The term emanation, being itself a metaphor, ha.s been, and is still, used in many senses, and frequently by writers who are not emanationists. Others, with- out using the word, really hold the doctrine of emana- tion. Furthermore, emanationism is always inter- woven with different opinions on various subjects; to separate it from these .so as to assign its fundamental elements is more or less arbitrary. Taking emanation-

ism in the sense commonly received to-day, it is not primarily a theological, but rather a cosmogonic sys- tem, not a direct answer to the question of the nature of God, but to that of the mode of origin of things from God. In general it holds that all things proceed from the same Divine substance, some immediately, others mediately. All beings form a series the beginning of which is God. The second reality is an emanation from the first, the third from the second, and so on. At every step the derived being is less perfect than its source ; but, by giving rise to other beings, the source itself loses none of its perfections. The first source, then, from which everything fiows, remains imchanged ; its perfection is neither exhausted nor lessened.

Emanationism is frequently referred to as a form of pantheism ; but while this latter is primarily a system of reality, identifying all things as modes or appear- ances of the one substance, emanationism is concerned chiefly with the mode of derivation. Nor does it necessarily affirm the substantial identity of all things ; it may assert the distinct, though dependent, substan- tiality of emanated realities. It is true that emana- tion is conceived by some in a pantheistic sen.se, as an immanent process, an expansion of the Divine sub- stance within itself. But by many it is understood as implying a separation of the derived beings from their source. Hence, not only some forms of pantheism are not emanationistic, but also many emanationists — with more or less consistency — reject pantheism. For tho.se who admit that matter is eternal and exists inde- pendently of God, God cannot be more than an archi- tect, who arranges pre-existing materials. In the doctrine of complete emanationism, all things, from the highest spiritual substances to the lowest forms of matter, come from God as their first origin, matter be- ing the last and therefore most imperfect emanation. Some views, however, combine the theory of the eter- nity of matter with the theory of emanation.

The doctrine of creation teaches that all things are distinct from God, but that God is their efficient cause. God does not produce things from His own substance nor from any pre-existing reality, but by an act of His will brings them out of nothing. According to emana- tionism, on the contrary, the Divine substance is the reality from which all things are derived, not by any voluntary determination, but by a necessity of nature. And God does not produce all things immediately ; the lower are more distant, and are separated from Him by necessary intermediaries. (It may be noted, however, that sometimes the word emanation is used in a broader sense including also creation. Thus St. Thomas: "Quaeritur de modo emanationis rerum a primo principio qui dicitur creatio". — Summa, I, Q. xlv, a. 1.)

Evolution implies the change of one thing into something else, whereas a reality from which another emanates remains identical with itself. The process of evolution — at least in its totality — is generally con- sidered as an ascent, a movement upwards towards a greater perfection. Emanation is a descent ; it begins with the infinitely perfect, and at every step the ema- nating beings are less pure, less perfect, less divine. The Infinite is postulated as a starting-point, instead of being the goal which the universe is ever striving to realize. Some comparisons used by emanationists, though only metaphors, and consequently misleading if taken literally, may give a clearer idea of the system. Things proceed from God as water from a spring or an overflowing vessel ; as the stem, branches, leaves, etc., from the roots ; as the web from the spider; as light or heat from the sun or a fire; as the doctrine from the teacher. It is easy to see that all such comparisons are deficient in many points. They are intended simply to illustrate that which is above human com- prehension.

II. Vague indications of emanationism are found in ancient mythologies and religions, especially those of