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 FRESNEL

280

FRIAR

8 Mav, 101)7. — A general permission is granted to give Comniiiniou in private oratories to all who attend Mass, except as to I'^aster Communion and Viaticvim.

14 July, 1907. — Brief again delegating Cardinal V. Vannutelli to the Euchari.stic Congress at Metz, which was exclusively devoted to the consideration of the question of Holy Communion. The following is an extract from the Brief: "This [frequent Communion] in trutli is (lie sliortest way to secure the salvation of every individual man as well as that of society. "

Hedlet, The Holy Eucharist, viii (London, 1907); De Zulu- eta, Noles on Daily Communion, 2nd ed. (London, 1907); Fer- RERES, The Decree on Daily Communion, tr. Jimenez (London, 1908); de Segur, La Trts Sainte Communion in CEuvres (Paris, 1872), III, 417 sqq.; Frassinetti, Teologia Morale (Genoa, 1875), II, 53 sqq.; Godts, Exagerations Historiques et Theolo- giques concemant la Communion Quotidienne (Brussels, 1904); Chatel, Drfcih^e tie In Doctrine Catholique sur la Commxmion Fri'iu, nL iHiii — il, I'Hi", i; Fetk-vivs, De Theolofficis Doffmafi- bu.'i l^ ' III I . . i I /'- Pcenitentia Publica et Prceparatione ad < ' 1 /f'honsus, Theologia Moralis (Paris,

186- \ . I' I ' "r!i, n. 148 sqq.; Lehmkuhl, TAeo/offia

Mora I i || ' nil Hr., 1902), n. 156 sqq.; Bridgett, History of //" ' '-/ in Great Britain, ed. H. Thurston (Lon-

don, '^"'^ .11 lit, c. i; LlNTELLO, Opuscules sur la Com- mwHi. ; ,,,:'- ,1 quotidienne (P:iris, 190S); Salter, Fre- quent fuminninnn \n The Messenger (New York, Dec., 1908). T. B. SCANNELL.

Fresnel, Augustin-Jean, physicist; b. at Broglie near Bernay, Normandy, 10 May, 1788; d. at Ville il '.\vray, near Paris, 14 July, 1827. His early progress in letters was slow t hough he showed while still young an aptitude for l)hysical .science. I II h is seventeenth year he entered the Ecole Poly- technique in Paris where he attracted the attention of Legendre. After spending some time at the Ecole des P o n t s et Chaussees he was assigned to the engineering corps and served succes- sively in the de- jiartnients of Ven- dee, Drome, and Ille-et^Vilaine. He lost his appointment through politics on the return of Napoleon from Elba. In 1819 he was made a member of the Lighthouse Commission, becoming its secretary in 1824, and was an examiner at the Ecole Polytech- nique from 1821 to 1824. Shortly afterward his health, which had never been robust, became so weak- ened that he was obliged to give up nearly all active work. He was unanimously elected a member of the Academie des Sciences in 1823, and in 1825 was made an associate of the London Royal Society, receiving its Rumford Medal on his death-bed.

Fresnel occupies a prominent place among the French physicists of the nineteenth century. His cho,sen field of research was optics, and in a series of brilliant memoirs he did much to place the wave theory upon a firm liasis. He introduced with conspicuous success the conjecture of Hooke (1672) that the light vibrations are transverse. His first paper was on aberration, but it was never published. In connexion with his study of the theory and phenomena of diffrac- tion and interference ho devised his double mirrors and biprisni in order to obtain two sources of light inde- pendcril nf :i|icrl iircs or the edges of opaque obstacles. His iiiiiilc 1)11 ihl'lraclion won the prize of the Acad<5- mie ill'.-, .'-^licnics in 1S19. He extended the work of Huygliens and othei's on double refraction and devel-

oped the well-known theory which bears his name. 'With Arago he investigated the phenomena and form- ulated the laws of the interference of polarized light. He showed how to obtain and detect circularly polar- ized light by means of his rhomb. An account of his more important contributions to optics may be foimd in Preston's "Theory of Light" (New York, 1901), or Wood's "Physical Optics" (New York, 1905). Fres- nel gave a course of physics for some months at the Athende in 1819, but otherwise had no academic con- nexions apart from his position as examiner at the Ecole Polytechnique. Most of his researches were carried on in the leisure he could obtain from his pro- fessional duties. In applied optics mention should be made of his system of lenses developed during his con- nexion with the lighthouse commission which has revolutionized lighthouse illumination throughout the world. Fresnel was a deeply religious man and re- markable for his keen sense of duty. A three-volume edition of his complete works was published in 1866.

Arago, (Euvrcs Completes (Paris. 1854), I, 107-185; Verdet, CEuvres Completes d'Aug. Fresnel, introduction in vol. I (Paris, 1866); Heller, Gesehiehle der Physik (Stuttgart, 1884), II. H. M. Brock.

Friar [from Lat. frater, through O. Fr. jredre, frere, M. E. frcre; It. frntc (as prefix fra) ; Sp. fraile (as prefix fray) ; Port, frei; unlike the other Romance languages, French has but the one word frcre for friar and brother], a member of one of the mendicant orders.

LTsE OF THE Word. — In the early Church it was usual for all Christians to address each other as fratres, or brothers, all being children of the one Heavenly Father, through Christ. Later, with the rise and growth of the monastic orders, the appellation began gradually to have a more restricted meaning; for ob- viously the bonds of brotherhood were drawn more closely between those who lived under the rule and guidance of one spiritual father, their abbot. The word occurs at an early date in English literature with the signification of brother, and from the end of the thirteenth century it is in frequent use referring to the members of the mendicant orders, e. g. c. 1297, "frere prechors" (R. Glouc. 10105); c. 1325, "freres of the Carme and of Seint Austin " (Pol. Songs, 331) ; c. 1400, "frere meneours" (Maunder, xxxi, 139); c. 1400, "Sakked freres" (Rom. Rose). Shakespeare speaks of the "Friars of orders gray" (Tarn. Shr., iv, i, 148). The word was also loosely applied to members of monastic and military orders, and at times to the convent of a particular order, and hence to the part of a town in which such a convent had been located. _

The word friar is to be carefully distinguished in its application from the word monk. For the monk re- tirement and solitude are undisturbed by the public ministry, unless under exceptional circumstances. His vow of poverty binds him .strictly as an individual, but in no way affects the right of tenure of his order. In the life of the friar, on the contrary, the exercise of the sacred ministry is an essential feature, for which the life of the cloister is considered as but an imme- diate preparation. His vow of poverty, too, not only binds him as an individual to the exercise of that virtue, but, originally at least, precluded also the right of tenure in common with his brethren. Thus origin- ally the various orders of friars could possess no fixed revenues and lived upon the voluntary offerings of the faithful. Hence their name of mendicants. This second feature, by which the friar's life differs so essentially from that of the monk, has become con- siderably modified since the Council of Trent. In Session XXV, ch. iii, " De Regular.", all the mendicant orders — the Friars Minor and Capuchins alone ex- cepted — were granted the liberty of corporate posses- sion. The Discalced Carmelites and the Jesuits have availed themselves of this privilege with restrictions (cf. Wernz, Jus Decretal., Ill, pt. II, 262, note). It may, however, be pertinently remarked here that the