Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/477

 SULPICIUS SEVERUS SUMACH 461 the island and founded there a missionary es- tablishment ; but their claims to exclusive paro- chial jurisdiction being resisted, 'De Queylus in 1659 obtained in Eome a bull erecting Montreal into an independent parish, and used the pow- ers thus conferred in spite of Bishop de Laval, till a lettre de cachet forcibly removed him in October, 1660. This conflict of jurisdiction broke out anew in 1821, on the erection of the see of Montreal, and has been kept up till the present time, the most eminent Canadian jurists taking sides in the controversy. Both parties appealed to Rome, and a final decision had not been reached in the beginning of 1876. The Sulpicians Francois de Fenelon, brother of the author of Telemaque, and Claude Trouv6, found- ed in 1668 the first Iroquois mission at the western extremity of Lake Ontario. In July, 1669, a party of Sulpicians under Dollier de Casson first explored Lake Erie and sailed round it and Lake St. Clair. But their mis- sionary labors were soon necessarily limited to the Indian tribes in the immediate neighbor- hood of Montreal, where they collected the remnants of the Christian Algonquin and Iro- quois tribes into two contiguous settlements at the lake of Two Mountains on the Ottawa. In Montreal city, besides the seminary proper attached to the church of Notre Dame as a pa- rochial residence, founded in 1657, they possess the theological seminary, to which students are sent from every part of the United States, the preparatory seminary or " college of Montreal," founded in 1773, and several other succfirsal churches with their residences. In April, 1791, at the call of Bishop (afterward Archbishop) Carroll, a band of four Sulpicians and three seminarians, headed by Frangois Charles Nagot (died 1816), sailed for Baltimore, where they formed for a time the clergy of the cathedral. They sent some of their number to teach in Georgetown college, and founded in Baltimore the theological seminary of St. Mary's, with a collegiate or preparatory school. The semi- nary was raised by Pope Gregory XVI. to the rank of a Catholic university ; the collegiate school was removed to near Ellicott City, Howard co., in 1849, and suppressed in 1852. SULPICIUS SEVERUS, a Roman historian, born near Toulouse about A. D. 363, died at Mar- seilles about 410. He was a lawyer, but on the death of his wife adopted an ascetic life. His father disinherited him; but, encouraged and assisted by his father-in-law, he formed with his own freedmen and a few followers a monastic establishment near Marseilles. He wrote the life of St. Martin of Tours, an abridg- ment of the Scriptural narrative, which was a favorite text book in the schools of the mid- dle ages, and a continuation to his own time, under the title of " The Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus." His works, which have been often printed, include also "Three Dialogues" and a collection of letters. The last critical edition is that of Halm, forming vol. i. of the Vienna Corpus (1866). SUMACH, or Sumac (Arab, summak}, the com- mon name for plants of the genus rhus (the ancient Greek and Latin name), of the cashew family or anacardiacece, which includes, be- sides the cashew, the mango and other tropical fruits. The sumachs are represented in the United States by about 12 species, which are shrubs or small trees, with alternate, some- times simple, but generally trifoliolate or odd- pinnate leaves, and small polygamous flowers in terminal or axillary panicles ; the sepals and petals are five, and the stamens, also five, are inserted under the margin of a disk which lines the calyx ; fruit a small, dry, nut-like drupe. Our species are separable into several well marked sections or subgenera. 1. The su- machs proper, with pinnate leaves, flowers in a terminal crowded panicle, and the globular fruit clothed with acid hairs ; the plants not poisonous, and containing an abundance of tannin. The smooth sumach (rhus glalra) is the most common, often covering extensive tracts of barren soil; it grows from 2 to 12 ft. high, with leaves a foot or more long, consisting of 11 to 31 lance-oblong, pointed, serrate leaflets, which are whitish beneath; the yellowish green flowers appear in June, and are pleasantly fragrant; the fruit, in dense clusters, is of the richest crimson, with a velvety appearance from the number of small hairs ; it has a pleasant acid taste, due to the presence of a great abundance of bimalate of lime ; an infusion of the berries is sometimes used to make a cooling drink in fevers, and as a gargle in affections of the throat and mouth. The leaves of this species are among the first which put on autumn colors, and Smooth Sumach (Ehus glabra). show fine tints of yellow and scarlet ; a variety in which the leaflets are much subdivided, discovered some years ago in Pennsylvania,^ in cultivation for the fern-like beauty of its foliage under the name of cut-leaved sumach. The stag's-horn sumach (R. typhind) is the