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 special prayers and exorcisms; oil from the lamps lit before the altar has a peculiar virtue of its own, perhaps because it can be burned to give light, and disappears to heaven in doing so. In any case oil has ever been regarded as the aptest symbol and vehicle of the holy and illuminating spirit. For this reason the catechumens are anointed with holy oil both before and after baptism; the one act (of eastern origin) assists the expulsion of the evil spirits, the other (of western origin), taken in conjunction with imposition of hands, conveys the spirit and retains it in the person of the baptized. In the postbaptismal anointing the oil was applied to the organs of sense, to the head, heart, and midriff. Such ritual use of oil as a  or seal may have been suggested in old religions by the practice of keeping wine fresh in jars and amphorae by pouring on a top layer of oil; for the spoiling of wine was attributed to the action of demons of corruption, against whom many ancient formulae of aversion or exorcism still exist.

The holy oil, chrism, or , as the Easterns call it, was prepared and consecrated on Maundy Thursday, and in the Gelasian sacramentary the formula used runs thus: “Send forth, O Lord, we beseech thee, thy Holy Spirit the Paraclete from heaven into this fatness of oil, which thou hast deigned to bring forth out of the green wood for the refreshing of mind and body; and through thy holy benediction may it be for all who anoint with it, taste it, touch it, a safeguard of mind and body, of soul and spirit, for the expulsion of all pains, of every infirmity, of every sickness of mind and body. For with the same thou hast anointed priests, kings, and prophets and martyrs with this thy chrism, perfected by thee, O Lord, blessed, abiding within our bowels in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In various churches the dead are anointed with holy oil, to guard them against the vampires or ghouls which ever threaten to take possession of dead bodies and live in them. In the Armenian church, as formerly in many Greek churches, a cross is not holy until the Spirit has been formally led into it by means of prayer and anointing with holy oil. A new church is anointed at its four corners, and also the altar round which it is built; similarly tombs, church gongs, and all other instruments and utensils dedicated to cultual uses. In churches of the Greek rite a little of the old year’s chrism is left in the jar to communicate its sanctity to that of the new.

ANOMALY (from , unevenness, derived from , privative, and  , even), a deviation from the common rule. In astronomy the word denotes the angular distance of a body from the pericentre of the orbit in which it is moving. Let AB be the major axis of the orbit, B the pericentre, F the focus or centre of motion, P the position of the body. The anomaly is then the angle BFP which the radius vector makes with the major axis. This is the actual or true anomaly. Mean anomaly is the anomaly which the body would have if it moved from the pericentre around F with a uniform angular motion such that its revolution would be completed in its actual time (see ). Eccentric anomaly is defined thus:—Draw the circumscribing circle of the elliptic orbit around the centre C of the orbit. Drop the perpendicular RPQ through P, the position of the planet, upon the major axis. Join CR; the angle CRQ is then the eccentric anomaly.

In the ancient astronomy the anomaly was taken as the angular distance of the planet from the point of the farthest recession from the earth.

Kepler’s Problem, namely, that of finding the co-ordinates of a planet at a given time, which is equivalent—given the mean anomaly—to that of determining the true anomaly, was solved approximately by Kepler, and more completely by Wallis, Newton and others.

The anomalistic revolution of a planet or other heavenly body is the revolution between two consecutive passages through the pericentre. Starting from the pericentre, it is completed on the return to the pericentre. If the pericentre is fixed, this is an actual revolution; but if it moves the anomalistic revolution is greater or less than a complete circumference.

An Anomalistic year is the time (365 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes, 48 seconds) in which the earth (and similarly for any other planet) passes from perihelion to perihelion, or from any given value of the anomaly to the same again. Owing to the precession of the equinoxes it is longer than a tropical or sidereal year by 25 minutes and 2.3 seconds. An Anomalistic month is the time in which the moon passes from perigee to perigee, &c.

ANORTHITE, an important mineral of the felspar group, being one of the end members of the (q.v.) series. It is a calcium and aluminium silicate, CaAl2Si2O3, and crystallizes in the anorthic system. Like all the felspars, it possesses two cleavages, one perfect and the other less so, here inclined to one another at an angle of 85° 50′. The colour is white, greyish or reddish, and the crystals are transparent to translucent. The hardness is 6-6, and the specific gravity 2·75.

Anorthite is an essential constituent of many basic igneous rocks, such as gabbro and basalt, also of some meteoric stones. The best developed crystals are those which accompany mica, augite, sanidine, &c., in the ejected blocks of metamorphosed limestone from Monte Somma, the ancient portion of Mount Vesuvius; these are perfectly colourless and transparent, and are bounded by numerous brilliant faces. Distinctly developed crystals are also met with in the basalts of Japan, but are usually rare at other localities.

The name anorthite was given to the Vesuvian mineral by G. Rose in 1823, on account of its anorthic crystallization. The species had, however, been earlier described by the comte de Bournon under the name indianite, this name being applied to a greyish or reddish granular mineral forming the matrix of corundum from the Carnatic in India. Several unimportant varieties have been distinguished.

ANQUETIL, LOUIS PIERRE (1723–1808), French historian, was born in Paris, on the 21st of February 1723. He entered the congregation of Sainte-Geneviève, where he took holy orders and became professor of theology and literature. Later, he became director of the seminary at Reims, where he wrote his Histoire civile et politique de Reims (3 vols., 1756–1757), perhaps his best work. He was then director of the college of Senlis, where he composed his Esprit de la Ligue ou histoire politique des troubles de la Fronde pendant le XVI&#8202;e et le XVII&#8202;e siècles (1767). During the Reign of Terror he was imprisoned at St Lazare; there he began his Précis de l’histoire universelle, afterwards published in nine volumes. On the establishment of the national institute he was elected a member of the second group (moral and political sciences), and was soon afterwards employed in the office of the ministry of foreign affairs, profiting by his experience to write his Motifs des guerres et des traités de paix sous Louis XIV., Louis XV., et Louis XVI. He is said to have been asked by Napoleon to write his Histoire de France (14 vols., 1805), a mediocre compilation at second or third hand, with the assistance of de Mézeray and of Paul François Velly (1709–1759). This work, nevertheless, passed through numerous editions, and by it his name is remembered. He died on the 6th of September 1808. ANQUETIL DUPERRON, ABRAHAM HYACINTHE (1731–1805), French orientalist, brother of Louis Pierre Anquetil, the historian, was born in Paris on the 7th of December 1731. He was educated for the priesthood in Paris and Utrecht, but his taste for Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and other languages of the East