Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/149

Rh S A C S A C 131 Avere preached, the one at Derby, 14th August, the other at St Paul's Cathedral, 5th November 1709. They were immediately reprinted, the latter being dedicated to the lord mayor and the former to the author's kinsman, George Sacheverell, high sheriff of Derby for the year ; and, as the passions of the whole British population were at this period keenly exercised between the rival factions of Whig and Tory, the vehement invectives of this furious divine on behalf of an ecclesiastical institution which supplied the bulk of the adherents of the Tories made him their idol. The Whig ministry, then slowly but surely losing the sup- port of the country, were divided in opinion as to the pro- priety of prosecuting this zealous parson. Somers was against such a measure ; but Godolphin, who was believed to be personally alluded to in one of these harangues under the nickname of " Volpone," urged the necessity of a prosecution, and gained the day. The trial lasted from 27th February to 23d March 1710, and the verdict was that Sacheverell should be suspended for three years and that the two sermons should be burnt at the Royal Ex- change. This was the decree of the state, and it had the effect of making him a martyr in the eyes of the populace and of bringing about the downfall of the ministry. Im- mediately on the expiration of his sentence (13th April 1713) he was instituted to the valuable rectory of St Andrew's, Holborn, by the new Tory ministry, who despised the author of the sermons, although they dreaded his in- fluence over the mob. He died at the Grove, Highgate, on 5th June 1724. Ample information about his life and trial will be found in Hearne's Diaries, Bloxam's Register of Magdalen, iii. 98-110, and Hill Burton's Queen Anne, vol. ii. Mr Madan of the Bodleian Library has compiled a Sacheverell bibliography. SACHS, HANS (1494-1576), the most eminent German poet of the 16th century, was born at Nuremberg on 5th November 1494. His father was a shoemaker, and Hans was trained to the same calling. Before beginning his apprenticeship, however, he was educated at the Latin school of Nuremberg. Having finished his "Lehrjahre" as a shoemaker, he began his "Wanderjahre" in 1511, and worked at his craft in many towns, including Ratisbon, Passau, Salzburg, Leipsic, Liibeck, and Osnabriick. In 1516 he returned to Nuremberg, where he remained during the rest of his life, working steadily at his business, and devoting his leisure time to literature. He married in 1519, and after his wife's death he married again in 1561. He died on 19th January 1576. Sachs was much respected by his fellow-citizens, and acquired great fame as a poet. Early in life he received instruction in the principles and rules of the " JVleistergesang," and at Munich in 1513 he completed his study of "the charming art." Afterwards he wrote many poems in the formal manner of the " Meistersinger, " but to these efforts he attributed so little importance that he did not include them in his own collection of his works. Among his best writings are his hymns, in which he gave expression to the highest spiritual aspirations of the age of the Reformation. He was one of the most ardent adherents of Luther, and in 1523 wrote in his honour the poem beginning, " Die wittenbergisch Nachtigall, Die man jetz horet iiberall." This poem attracted much attention and was of great service to Luther. Sachs also wrote in verse many fables, parables, tales, and dialogues. Of his dramatic poems, the most remarkable are his Shrove Tuesday Plays, in each of which he offers a lively representation of an action without any attempt at exact portraiture or at a profound appreciation of motives. Works of this kind were popular before Sachs's time, but he gave them fresh vitality by his humour and fancy. Sachs had extra- ordinary fertility of imagination, and none of his German contem- poraries approached him in his mastery of the forms of literary expression which were then known. He wrote thousands of poems, and in his lifetime a large number of them were printed, in three volumes ; after his death two additional volumes appeared ; and in recent times many volumes of his works in manuscript have been discovered. _ From about the middle of the 17th centuiy, when German writers of verse became as a rule mere imitators of foreign models, Sachs was almost forgotten, until interest in his work was revived by Goethe ; and many selections from his writings have since been published. A complete edition, prepared by A. von Keller, has been issued by the Literary Society of Stuttgart. A biography of Sachs by M. Solomon Ranisch was published in 1765, and there are later biographies by J. L. Hoffmann (1847), Weller (1868), and Liitzelberger (1874). SACKING AND SACK MANUFACTURE. Sacking is a stout close- woven fabric, properly of flax, but now very largely made of jute. The chief centres of the manufacture are Dundee and Forfar in Scotland. Sacks, however, are made of many qualities and from different fibres, according to the purposes to which they are devoted. A large pro- portion of flour sacks, those particularly of American origin, are made of stout cotton. Numerous attempts have been made to manufacture seamless sacks ; but none have met with success. The invention of a sewing-machine for the " overhead " seaming of sacks has been successfully solved in the machine of Laing and other inventors. SACO, a city of the United States, in York county, Maine, on the left or north bank of the Saco river, opposite Biddeford, 9 miles from the sea and 100 from Boston by the Boston and Maine Railroad. The water- power furnished by the river, which here falls 55 feet, is utilized by various cotton-factories, machine-shops, lumber- mills, &c. Originally included in Biddeford, but sepa- rately incorporated in 1762 as Pepperellborough, Saco re- ceived its present name in 1805 and was made a city in 1867. The population was 5755 in 1870 and 6389 in 1880. SACRAMENT. The Latin word sacramentum, mean- ing " an oath," is most commonly used by classical writers to denote the military oath of allegiance ; for its technical application in legal phraseology see ROMAN LAW, vol. xx. p. 682. In the earliest ecclesiastical Latin traces of the old military meaning are still present ; thus Tertullian (Ad Mart., 3) writes, " We were called to the warfare of the living God in our very response to the sacramental words [in baptism] " ; but the main import of the word has entirely changed, it being used simply as the equiva- lent of the Greek /Mwrr}piov. Thus even in the Vulgate we still have the "sacrament of godliness" (1 Tim. iii. 16), "of the seven stars" (Rev. i. 20), "of the woman and the beast " (Rev. xvii. 7) ; but in earlier Latin versions the word also occurred in numerous other places where "mysterium " is now found (e.g., Rom. xvi. 25 ; 1 Cor. xiii. 2). In addition to its general sense the word /XWT^/OIOV not unnaturally soon came to have for Christians a more special meaning as denoting those external rites of their religion, solemn, instructive, and more or less secret, which had most analogy with the MYSTERIES (q.v.) of paganism. No attempt, however, was at first made to enumerate or to define these. Tertullian speaks of the sacrament of baptism and the Eucharist, Cyprian of "either sacrament," meaning baptism and confirmation, and many others, fol- lowing Eph. v. 22 (see Vulgate), of the sacrament of marriage, but all with the utmost vagueness. Augustine's definition of the word was little more explicit, but for cen- turies it was all the Western Church had, and for even a longer period it continued to be a sufficiently adequate expression of the Oriental view also. According to him a sacrament is "the visible form of invisible grace," or "a sign of a sacred thing." The sacraments he principally has in view are those of baptism and the Lord's Supper, but with so wide a definition there was nothing to prevent him from using the word (as he freely does) in many other applications. The old Sacramentaries or liturgical books, which can in some cases be carried back as far as to the 8th century, in like manner contain prayers and benedic- tions, not only for the administration of the Eucharist and of baptism, but also for a variety of other rites, such as the blessing of holy water and the dedication of churches. In the De sacramentis Christian^ fidd of Hugh of St