Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/233

Rh spread of the church. But it must not be supposed that there were no more catechumens when the totality of the population had become Christian, or that the catechumenate, as it was called, denoted solely the period of conversion from heathendom to Christianity. The children of Chris- ti.-in parents, who were not old enough, or not yet sufficiently instructed, to be admitted to the mystery of the Eucharist were catechumens, and subjected to the instruction of the church by a catechist appointed for the purpose. But throughout all the long period, during which pro- selytism from either Roman or barbarian heathenism was going on, the numbers of the catechumens were largely increased by a practice very curiously illustrative of the special superstition of the time. Large numbers of persons, who had become persuaded of the truth of Christianity, and who were fully minded to be baptized, put off the receiving of that sacrament, for a longer or shorter period, often until they found themselves in the presence of death. The object of this was to avoid responsibility before God for that greater heinousness of guilt, which would have resulted from sin committed after baptism. They argued that since baptism washed out all previous sin, and could be had only once, it was clearly expedient that it should be received as late in life as possible. And thus many remained as catechumens during the greater part of their lives. And this practice prevailed uot only among those who were quitting paganism for Christianity ; it was also common among those born of Christian parents. Tenderness of conscience, too, seems often to have produced the same result in prolonging the catechumenate as the superstitious notion mentioned above. St Ambrose, St Gregory Nazianzen, and St Augustine all remained catechumens till far on in life. The emperors Theodoric, Yalentinian, and Constantino the Great did the same. And the abuse became so great that towards the end of the 4th century (see Baronius, ad an. 877) the church tried to provide a remedy for it, and among other fathers of the church, Saints Ambrose and Gregory exerted themselves to prevent others from following (though probably from very different motives) their own example. The idea of the probable numbers of the members of a congregation likely to be in the condition of catechumens, which may be obtained from a consideration of the above circumstances, may serve to explain in some degree the architectural arrangements still to be seen in some churches of the early centuries. The complete plan of a church of that time seems to have comprised a court in front of the principal western entrance, surrounded with colonnades, as may still be seen in the cases of the church of St Ambrose at Milan, and that of St Clement at Rome, and some others. Now, when the catechumens were dismissed previously to the commencement of that portion of the service which we should call the &quot; Communion Service,&quot; it was not understood that they should depart entirely, but they remained in these courts. It would seem, however, that those thus dismissed must have been the catechumens of the second class only the audientes. And in the churches that have been mentioned, especially in that of St Clement at Rome, the body of the building is divided by permanent stone constructions into the presbytery or Chancel for the clergy at the eastern end, an intermediate portion for the lay members of the congregation of the male sex (the females being in the galleries), and a much larger part of the nave at the western extremity of the church, destined for the catechumens.

1em 1em 1em 1em  CATEGORY (Gr. /car^yopta), a term first introduced into the philosophical vocabulary by Aristotle, means etymologically an accusation. Even in the writings of Aristotle the word occurs once or twice in this its primary 