Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/283

 RELIGIOUS ORDERS REMAINDER 267 writers, though distinguished by them into clerical and monastic houses. Thus the first great class of religious associations embraces those anciently designated as the "regular clergy," that is, persons who were by vocation clergymen and embraced a monastic form of life ; while the second class, or monks proper, comprises persons who are devoted to a life of seclusion, and are supposed to engage only by accident in the active ministrations of the parochial clergy. Hence both in time and in dignity the regular clergy are first. The canons regular of all denominations were al- ways held by their rule to the public recitation or chanting of the divine office. The regular clerks of the society of Jesus were the first to deviate from this custom ; and their ex- emption from choral service caused them to be bitterly assailed by other religious orders, who for this very reason refused for a long time to acknowledge them as one of the mo- nastic brotherhoods. The third group of reg- ular clerks, consisting of the Passionists and Redemptorists, are called in the list "religious congregations," because their vows have less of solemnity than those of the Jesuits, and are more binding than those of the following groups. They are, besides, held to recite the office in common. The members of the " ec- clesiastical congregations " are held together by simple vows of obedience and poverty, or by promises of fidelity to their respective rules, and aim at discharging the clerical functions, or some duties closely connected therewith, such as the instruction of youth. The monks proper are subdivided into two great families. The distinctive characteristics of the first are a life of seclusion, varied in some groups, like the Benedictines, by devotion to literary cul- ture, and in others, like the Trappists, by a seeking after penitential austerity. The men- dicants originally aimed at combining the con- templative and austere retirement of the monk with the active ministrations of the canons regular. They obtained their early reputation and popularity by living in poverty, prayer, and self-abnegation in the midst of the people to whose spiritual needs they ministered. To most of the religious orders, soon after their formation, nuns of the same rule attached themselves. They were often called the sec- ond branch of the order, and their convents were generally under the ecclesiastical juris- diction of the priests of the order. Besides the nuns, most of the orders received numer- ous additions by admitting lay brothers (fra- > tres conversi) or lay sisters (sorores conversed), who were charged with the performance of the housework and with keeping up com- munication with the world. The Protestant churches in general have declared themselves opposed to the fundamental principle of mo- nastic institutions; but in modern times sev- eral such communities, living in common and binding themselves to the observance of a rule, have been formed. In the church of England an institution of sisterhoods has been consid- erably extended under the auspices of the so- called high church party. More recently an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Lyne, as- suming the name of Father Ignatius, endeav- ored to establish an Anglican branch of the Benedictine order ; but the first monastery at Norwich, after the trial of a few years, had to be abandoned. Another clergyman tried to revive the canons regular of the Augustinian order, but, although the number of those who advocate the revival of monasticism in the church of England has considerably increased, notable results have not yet been obtained. In the Evangelical church of Germany communi- ties of women, called deaconesses, were estab- lished for charitable purposes, especially for nursing the sick. This institution has assumed large dimensions and established branches in many other countries. (See DEACONESSES.) The most curious example of a Protestant reli- gious order is found in the United States, among the Seventh -Day German Baptists or Seventh-Day Dunkers. (See DUNKEES.) REMAINDER, in law, an interest in that which remains of a whole estate, after a partial or particular estate, as it is called, which was re- served out of the whole, has been determined. Like many other branches of the common law, it had its foundation in the feudal polity. In the long lapse of time, and under the influence of other branches of the English real proper- ty law, the learning of remainder has been wrought out into manifold distinctions and re- finements. Sir Edward Coke says a remainder is " a remnant of an estate in land, depending upon a particular prior estate, created at the same time and by the same instrument, and limited to arise immediately on the determina- tion of that estate, and not in abridgment of it." Thus, if a man who is seized in fee of lands grant them to A for 20 years, and, after that term has expired, to B and his heirs for ever, A is tenant for years, and B has remain- der in fee. But the residue of the estate after A's term may be still subdivided; for example, the limitation to B may be for life, then a limi- tation to C in tail, remainder over to D in fee. It matters not how many partial estates may be thus successively reserved or carved, as the phrase is, out of the fee; all together, with the final limitation, form one whole estate. It is one of the cardinal rules respecting re- mainders, that no remainder can be limited upon or after the grant of an estate in fee, for the fee is the whole and there can be nothing left. Nor can there be a remainder without a prior partial estate. This partial or particular estate is also essential to the existence of any subsequent remainder that amounts to a free- hold ; for, by an old rule of the common law, a freehold cannot be created to commence in future, but must commence at the time of the* grant ; and inasmuch as, with all partial estates, the remainder forms but one whole, delivery of possession to the first particular tenant vests