Rites Sentence Examples

The rites of Ceres were Greek in language and form.

This mountain, too, was the scene of the mystic rites of Dionysus, and the festival of the Daedala in honour of Hera.

Corresponding to heaven, the abode of the righteous, we have Ge-henna (originally Ge-Hinnom, the scene of the Moloch rites of human sacrifice), the place of punishment after death for apostate Jews.

The altar at which these solemn rites are performed consists of a triple circular marble terrace, 210 ft.

Demeter then returns to Olympus, but before her final departure from earth, in token of her gratitude, she instructs the rulers of Eleusis in the art of agriculture and in the solemnities and rites whereby she desires in future to be honoured.

The members of each group lived on terms of equality, the families forming a society of worship the rites of which were conducted by the head.

In Spain and North Africa persecution created that strange and significant phenomenon Maranism or crypto-Judaism, a public acceptance of Islam or Christianity combined with a private fidelity to the rites of Judaism.

The history of Baalism among the Hebrews is obscured by the difficulty of determining whether the false worship which the prophets stigmatize is the heathen worship of Yahweh under a conception, and often with rites, which treated him as a local nature god; or whether Baalism was consciously recognized to be distinct from Yahwism from the first.

The two friends by their united force succeed in killing the bull, and then after performing certain votive and purification rites return to Erech, where they are hailed with joy In this adventure it is clearly Eabani who is artificially introduced in order to maintain the association with Gilgamesh.

Although the idea of the use of the catacombs for religious worship may have been pressed too far, there can be no doubt that the sacred rites of the church were celebrated within them.

It was accepted as an unquestionable fact by every one who undertook to describe the catacombs, that the Christians of Rome, finding in the labyrinthine mazes of the exhausted arenariae, which abounded in the environs of the city, whence the sand used in building had been extracted, a suitable place for the interment of their martyred brethren, where also the sacred rites accompanying the interment might be celebrated without fear of interruption, took possession of them and used them as cemeteries.

On the other hand, the absence of leaven may recall primitive practice before its introduction as a domestic luxury; sacral rites generally keep alive primitive custom.

For the rest, the pastoral staff in the Oriental rites is T-shaped.

Father Braun, to whose kindness the writer is indebted for the above account of the causes of the ritual changes in the Carolingian epoch, adds that the papacy was never narrowminded in its attitude towards local rites, and that it was not until the close of the middle ages, when diversity had become confusion and worse, that it began to insist upon uniformity.

The burial rites are the most fully described.

The substantial features of the ancient Dionysiac rites, including a ritual play by "goat-men" carrying a wooden phallus, may still be seen at Bizye, the old residence of the Thracian kings.

Even then it allowed those rites to survive which could prove a tradition of 200 years.

The general character of the vestments is much the same in the other Oriental rites.

Here they constituted themselves a free confederacy of many distinct tribal groups, each preserving the traditional customs, religious rites and even the very names of their original villages.

The charge of heathenism we find in Suidas is probable enough; that is to say, Tribonian may well have been a crypto-pagan, like many other eminent courtiers and litterateurs of the time (including Procopius himself), a person who, while professing Christianity, was at least indifferent to its dogmas and rites, cherishing a sentimental recollection of the older and more glorious days of the empire.

The immediate results of disestablishment were civil marriage, the civil registry of births and deaths, and the secularization of cemeteries; but the church retains its influence over all loyal churchmen through the confessional, the last rites of the church, and their sentiment against the profanation of holy ground.

In native cases the chiefs have civil jurisdiction in disputes among their own tribesmen and criminal jurisdiction over natives except in capital cases, offences against the person or property of non-natives, pretended witchcraft, cases arising out of marriages by Christian rites, &c. An appeal lies to a magistrates' court from every judgment of a native chief, and from the magistrates' judgment on such appeal to a native high court.

Exceptions were gradually made in favour of foreign residents; but it was not till 1785 that regular inhabitants were allowed to exercise the religious rites of other denominations, and it was not till after the war of freedom that they were allowed to have buildings in the style of churches.

Still the correspondence of religion and of funeral rites is very close.

Scyles, his son by the Greek mother, affected Greek ways, had a house in Olbia, and even took part in Bacchic rites.

St Jerome argued against Vigilantius with his accustomed vehemence, and especially meets the objection based on the resemblance between these rites and those of the pagans.

In 1828 a colony of them settled in Russian Armenia, bringing with them a book called the Key of Truth, which contains their rites of name-giving, baptism and election, compiled from old MSS., 1 we know not when.

It is also likely enough that they did not consider sensible matter to be a vehicle worthy to contain divine effluence and holy virtues, and knew that such rites were alien to early Christianity.

The education of a mandarin includes local history, cognizance of the administrative rites, customs, laws and prescriptions of the country, the ethics of Confucius, the rules of good breeding, the ceremonial of official and social life, and the practical acquirements necessary to the conduct of public or private business.

They declare that moral righteousness, the gaining of wisdom, divine contemplation, charity and the cultivation of devotional feelings are their rites and ceremonies.

The sick person, or his representative, after ablution, prayer and sacrifice, was made to sleep on the hide of the sacrificed animal, or at the feet of the statue of the god, while sacred rites were performed.

The theory of a development of Greek medicine from the rites of Asclepius, though defended by eminent names, must accordingly be rejected.

The slighting references to it by the Christian fathers are no more an argument against its existence in the primitive church than the similar denunciations by the Jewish prophets of burnt-offerings and sacrifices are any proof that there were no such rites as the offering of incense, and of the blood of bulls and fat of rams, in the worship of the temple at Jerusalem.

Libitina was the goddess of funerals; her officers were the Libitinarii our undertakers; her temple in which all business connected with the last rites was transacted, in which the account of deaths - ratio Libitinae - was kept, served the purpose of a register office."

They adopted Masonic rites and spread to America (1833) and Ailstralia.

Further, he shows an "astonishing familiarity with the Jewish rites," in the opinion of a modern Jew (Kohler in the Jewish Encycl.); so much so, that the latter agrees with another Jewish scholar in saying that "the writer seems to have been a converted Jew, whose fanatic zeal rendered him a bitter opponent of Judaism within the Christian Church."

The capture of Mecca (630) was not only an evidence of his growing power, which induced Arabs throughout the peninsula to join him, but gave him a valuable centre of pilgrimage, in which he was able by a politic adoption of some of the heathen Arabian ceremonies into his own rites to win men over the more easily to his own cause.

Condemned without a hearing, she was put to death (316) by the friends of those whom she had slain, and Cassander is said to have denied her remains the rites of burial.

An amphictyonic league, meeting in common rites at the temple of Hera on the Lacinian promontory, fostered a feeling of unity among them.

All this was done according to certain ancient and rigidly prescribed forms and after the performance of special religious rites, in which the consecration of the pickaxe and the sacrifice of sugar formed a prominent part.

In obedience to these they often travelled hundreds of miles in company with, or in the wake of, their intended victims before a safe opportunity presented itself for executing their design; and, when the deed was done, rites were performed in honour of that tutelary deity, and a goodly portion of the spoil was set apart for her.

For, though the form of the old cults was long preserved and even Antoninus Pius was honoured in an inscription for his care of the ancient rites of religion, the vital spirit was almost gone.

In the popular mind the hosts of exciting oriental cults, which in the 3rd and 4th centuries of the Empire filled Rome with the rites of mysticism and initiation, held undisputed sway; and with the more educated a revived philosophy, less accurate perhaps in thought, but more satisfying to the religious conscience, gave men a clearer monotheistic conception, and a notion of individual relations with the divine in prayer and even of consecration.

From it many of the religious rites and ceremonies of Rome are said to have been derived, and even in imperial times a collegium of sixty haruspices continued to exist there.

Interamna is also mentioned in Cicero's time as being the place where Clodius wished to prove that he was on the night when he was caught in Caesar's house at the celebration of the rites of the Bona Dea.

Temples that had been wellnigh deserted were already beginning to be frequented, rites long intermitted were being renewed, and the trade in fodder for sacrificial victims was reviving.

Few such rites of consecration remain, but they must have been similar to those used in India to-day.

As the Greek and Roman methods of computing time were connected with certain pagan rites and observances which the Christians held in abhorrence, the latter began at an early period to imitate the Jews in reckoning their years from the supposed period of the creation of the world.

Other noteworthy tombs are those of the Granduca, with a single subterranean chamber carefully constructed in travertine, and containing eight sarcophagi of the same material; of Vigna Grande, very similar to this; of Cone Casuccini (the ancient stone door of which is still in working order), with two chambers, containing paintings representing funeral rites; of Poggio Moro and Valdacqua, in the former of which the paintings are almost destroyed, while the latter is now inaccessible.

In 1589 he became duke of Brunswick, and two years later he abolished the Catholic rites in Halberstadt.

He was a regular observer of religious rites, took great pains to secure decorum in the services of the church, and was generous in almsgiving both within his empire and without.

It has been argued that the sacramental rites of the Christians were largely imitated from the pagan mysteries; but for the first two hundred years this is hardly true, except perhaps in the case of certain Gnostic sects whose leaders intentionally amalgamated the new faith with old pagan ideas and rites.

But in the 4th century this puritanic zeal gave way; and this and other pagan feasts were taken over by the Church; a century earlier in Asia Minor Gregory the Thaumaturge was actively transforming into shrines and cult of martyrs the temples and idolatrous rites of heroes and demigods.

At a later period, however, the difficulty of screening the rites of baptism and Eucharist from the eyes of catechumens and from their ears the creeds and liturgies - a difficulty which had ever been formidable and which after the overthrow of paganism must have become insurmountable - seems to have provoked not only a great outpouring on the part of the Christian rhetors, like Basil, Chrysostom, the Gregories and the Cyrils, of phrases borrowed from the Greek mysteries, but perhaps an actual use of precautions.

The catechumenate, an old institution, older in most regions than the mysteries themselves, suggested and rendered feasible such wholesale theft, especially in an age in which the sacerdotal class wished to be pre-eminent, and left nothing undone to enhance in the eyes of the multitude the importance and solemnity of rites which it was their prerogative to administer.

These agreed in repudiating certain of the doctrines, rites and practices of the medieval Church, especially the sacrifice of the Mass and the headship of the bishop of Rome, and, whatever their official designations, came generally to be known as " Protestant."

A new edition of the German Bible was issued with the view of meeting the needs of Catholics, a new religious literature grew up designed to, substantiate the beliefs sanctioned by the Roman Church and to carry out the movement begun long before toward spiritualizing its institutions and rites.

Scarcely any one dreamed that individual subjects could safely be left to believe what they would, and permitted, so long as they did not violate the law of the land, freely to select and practise such religious rites as afforded them help and comfort.

A conservative Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies after the Use of the Church of England - commonly called the First Prayer Book of Edward VI.

Chiefs were at once qualified for the highest grade, but ordinary members attained promotion only through initiatory rites.

Outwardly they are Mussulmans of the Shiah branch, but most of them show little veneration for either Prophet or Koran, and the religion of some of them seems to be a mixture of Ali-Illahism involving a belief in successive incarnations combined with mysterious, ancient, heathen rites.

The Iliad concludes with the funeral rites of Hector.

Rites are practised in the name of religion which are abhorrent to Yahweh, because they either have no moral meaning at all, and are mere forms.

Indeed so severe a stress is laid upon the explicitly Christian life and its specific means, that orthodoxy itself interprets the rebirth by water and spirit, and the eating the flesh and drinking the blood to which entrance into the Kingdom and possession of interior life are here exclusively attached, as often represented by a simple sincere desire and will for spiritual purification and a keen hunger and thirst for God's aid, together with such cultual acts as such souls can know or find, even without any knowledge of the Christian rites.

This capitulary ordered the celebration of baptism and other Christian rites and ceremonies in addition to the payment of tithes, and forbade the observance of pagan customs on pain of death.

The stole of priests and bishops, decorated with crosses, was worn originally in all rites as in the West, i.e.

It is true that childsacrifice in connexion with fire prevailed among the Phoenicians, and, according to the Greeks, the deity honoured with these grisly rites was Kronos (identified with the Phoenician El, "God").

There was a tendency in time of misfortune to revert to earlier rites (illustrated in some ancient mourning customs), and it may have been some old disused practice revived under the pressure of national distress.

In this he gives a masterly survey of synagogal rites.

Sacrifice and other rites are also spoken of as conditions of the restoration of man to happy relations with God.

Many of the terms in common use in them were employed in connexion with the Christian rites, and many of the conceptions, particularly that of sharing in immortality by communion with deity, became an essential part of Christian doctrine.

Thus the early idea of the services, as occasions for mutual edification through the interchange of spiritual gifts, gave way in course of time to the theory that they consisted of sacred and mysterious rites by means of which communion with God is promoted.

Yet it is intelligible that religious interest should have concerned itself more keenly with the mystic rites of divine worship than with dogma.

Here was more than knowledge; here were representations of a mystic sensuousness, solemn rites, which brought the faithful into immediate contact with the Divine, and guaranteed to them the reception of heavenly powers.

On the other hand, gentes and phratriae, which had no natural head, had special priests chosen from their members; for every circle of ancient society, from the family up to the state, was a religious as well as a civil unity, and had its own gods and sacred rites.

The holiness of Israel centres in the sanctuary, and round the sanctuary stand the priests, who alone can approach the most holy things without profanation, and who are the guardians of Israel's sanctity, partly by protecting the one meeting-place of God and man from profane contact, and partly as the mediators of the continual atoning rites by which breaches of holiness are expiated.

The first forms the text of the principal argument in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which the author easily demonstrates the inadequacy of the mediation and atoning rites of the Old Testament, and builds upon this demonstration the doctrine of the effectual high-priesthood of Christ, who, in his sacrifice of himself, truly " led His people to God," not leaving them outside as He entered the heavenly sanctuary, but taking them with Him into spiritual nearness to the throne of grace.

The rites, met within all lands, of pouring out water or bathing in order to produce rain from heaven, differ in their significance from ablutions with water and belong to the realm of sympathetic magic.

The tradition is that the daughters of Minyas, king of Orchomenus, having despised the rites of the god, were seized with frenzy and ate the flesh of one of their children.

But we know that there were nebhiim among the Canaanites; the "prophets" of Baal appear in the history of Elijah as men who sought to attract their god by wild orgiastic rites.

But the later adherents of the, school did not possess this confidence'; they based their philosophy on revelations of the Deity, and they found these in the religious traditions and rites of all nations.

It was also about this same period that the grave scandal of the Chinese and Malabar rites began to attract attention in Europe, and to make thinking men ask seriously whether the Jesuit missionaries in those parts taught anything which could fairly be called Christianity at all.

And finally, as in all mystical religions, so here too, holy rites and formulas, acts of initiation and consecration, all those things which we call sacraments, play a very prominent part.

Everywhere we are met with the most varied forms of holy rites - the various baptisms, by water, by fire, by the spirit, the baptism for protection against demons, anointing with oil, sealing and stigmatizing, piercing the ears, leading into the bridal chamber, partaking of holy food and drink.

The rites performed were such as are found elsewhere - prayer, sacrifice, processions, dances, Brasseur de Bourbourg.

The funeral rites of the Mexicans are best seen in the ceremonies at the death of a king.

How closely related some of the Central-American nations were in institutions to the Mexicans appears, not only in their using the same peculiar weapons, but in the similarity of their religious rites; the connexion is evident in such points as the ceremony of marriage by tying together the garments of the couple, or in holding an offender's face over burning chillies as a punishment; the native legends of Central America make mention of the royal ball-play, which was the same as the Mexican game of tlachtli already mentioned.

The cult of the serpent is found in many parts of the Old World; it is also not unknown in America; in Australia, on the other hand, though many species of serpent are found, there does not appear to be any species of cult unless we include the Warramunga cult of the mythical Wollunqua totem animal, whom they seek to placate by rites.

As an example of this stage in one of its aspects may be taken the European belief in the corn spirit, which is, however, the object of magical rather than religious rites; Dr Frazer has thus defined the character of the animistic pantheon, "they are restricted in their operations to definite departments of nature; their names are general, not proper; their attributes are generic rather than individual; in other words, there is an indefinite number of spirits of each class, and the individuals of a class are much alike; they have no definitely marked individuality; no accepted traditions are current as to their origin, life and character."

According to the decisions of the Congregation of Rites chasubles must not be of linen, cotton or woollen stuffs, but of silk; though a mixture of wool (or linen and cotton) and silk is allowed if the silk completely cover the other material on the outer side; spun glass thread, as a substitute for gold or silver thread, is also forbidden, owing to the possible danger to the priest's health through broken fragments falling into the chalice.

In the Armenian, Syrian, Chaldaean and Coptic rites it is copeshaped.

His residence at Linz was troubled by the harsh conduct of the pastor Hitzler, in excluding him from the rites of his church on the ground of supposed Calvinistic leanings - a decision confirmed, with the addition of an insulting reprimand, on his appeal to Wurttemberg.

For that bread and a cup of water is presented in the rites of their initiation with certain conclusions (or epilogues), you either know or can learn."

To lack such care and tendance was - along with want of regular burial - the most dreadful fate that could overtake an ancient; and a Roman, like a Hindu, in case he was childless, adopted a male child whose duty it would be, as if his own son, to continue after his death the family rites or sacra.

Outcasts alone, the offspring of irregular unions, could be ignorant of the blood which ran in their veins, of the unseen ancestors to be fed and tended in family and gentile rites.'

The due performance of funeral rites re-created the blood tie and renewed the kinship of living and dead at the moment when death seemed specially to endanger it by removal of that representative of the household whose special duty it had been to keep up the family sacra.

If the rites are not properly performed or not performed by the proper person, no relation is considered as established between the deceased and anybody surviving Livy

The Church when it had once conquered the world allowed such precepts to lapse and fall into the background, and no one save monks or Manichaean heretics remembered them any more; indeed modern divines affect to believe that marriage rites and family ties were the peculiar concern of the Church from the very first; and few moderns will fail to sympathize with the misgivings of the barbarian chief who, having been converted and being about to receive Christian baptism, paused as he stepped down into the font, and asked the priests if in the heaven to which their rites admitted him he would meet and converse with his pagan ancestors.

The Christian and Mahommedan historians could learn little of the Manichaean mysteries and "sacraments," and hence the former charged them with obscene rites and abominable usages.

It may be held as undoubted that the later Manichaeans celebrated mysteries analogous to Christian baptism and the Lord's Supper, which may have rested upon ancient consecration rites and other ceremonies instituted by Mani himself and having their origin in nature worship.

The conclusion, then, which seems warranted by the evidence, is that the acolyte was an office only at Rome, and, becoming an order in the Gallican Church, found its way as such into the Roman books at some period before the fusion of the two rites under Charlemagne.

He went from one Catholic family to another, administering the rites of his Church, and in 1589 became domestic chaplain to Ann Howard, whose husband, the first earl of Arundel, was in prison convicted of treason.

It appears no longer as the object of a special cult, but limited to the homage of certain sects, expressed by superstitious rites of obscure significance.

The requisitions of their idolatry were severe and its rites cruel and bloody.

This principle, however, of continuity in ministry, belongs to a different department of Christian thought from the sacrament of baptism, which really corresponds to the Jewish rites of admission to the covenant.

This sanctioned jurisdiction of Catholic bishops, and observance of certain rites, while all were to accept justification by faith (relegating sola to the adiaphora).

In religion, the chief feature was the priesthood of Druids, who here, as in Gaul, practised magical arts and barbarous rites of human sacrifice, taught a secret lore, wielded great influence, but, at least as Druids, took ordinarily no part in politics.

Even at the present day, in spite of a decree of the Congregation of Rites (27th of May 1697) ordering it to be placed over all altars, it is - even at Rome itself - usually only found over the high altar and the altar of the Blessed Sacrament.

Subsequently, admission to the rites were extended to men and celebrations took place five times a month.

In the literatures of other Teutonic countries we have only occasional references to the religious rites of heathen times, and these are generally in no way comparable to the detailed accounts given in Icelandic writings.

With the reservation of those questions, especially of a dogmatic character, which belong to the Holy Office, and of purely ritual questions, which come under the Congregation of Rites, this Congregation brings under one authority all disciplinary questions concerning the sacraments, which were formerly distributed among several Congregations and offices.

Further, even for those countries which it continues to administer, the Propaganda has to submit to the various Congregations all questions affecting the Faith, marriage and rites.

Under the same cardinal prefect is found that section of the Propaganda which deals with matters concerning oriental rites (Congregatio specialis pro negotiis ritus Orientalis), the object of which is indicated by its name.

In 1908, however, it was suppressed, as stated above, and its functions as to indulgences were transferred to the Holy Office, and those as to relics to the Congregation of Rites.

This punishment, originally inflicted on those who neglected certain mystic rites, was transferred to those who, like the Danaides, despised the mystic rite of marriage; cf.

The Eucharist was, therefore, long associated with the matal or animal victim, and only in the 8 th century do we hear of an interval of time being left between the fleshly and the spiritual sacrifices, as the two rites were then called.

They retain their Armenian liturgies and rites, pruned to suit the Vatican standards of orthodoxy, and they recognize the pope as head of the church.

In the latter place the Armenians occupy a convent on Mount Sion, and keep up in the churches of the Sepulchre and of Bethlehem their own distinct rites .and feasts, the only ones there which at all resemble those of the 4th century.

In their uma-luli, or sacred (tabooed) enclosures, rites are performed resembling those of the Polynesian islanders.

Romance and tradition speak of strange rites - the mingling and even the drinking of blood - as having in remote and rude ages marked the inception of these martial and fraternal associations.

In the Oriental rites there is no surplice, nor any analogous vestment.

According to modern Roman use, laid down by the decree of the Congregation of Rites in 1819, the amice must be of linen or of a hempen material, not wool; and, as directed by the new Roman Missal (1570), a small cross must be sewn or embroidered in the middle of it.

A special section (erected by Pius IX.) has charge of the affairs of all the Oriental rites in union with the Roman see.

The Maori rebellion, fomented by French Catholics, was an outbreak against everything foreign, and the strange religion Hau-hauism, a blend of Old Testament history, Roman Catholic dogmas, pagan rites and ventriloquism, found many adherents.

Mary who had already married her kinsman in secret at Stirling Castle with Catholic rites celebrated in the apartment of David Rizzio, her secretary for correspondence with France, assured the English ambassador, in reply to the protest of his mistress, that the marriage would not take place for three months, when a dispensation from the pope would allow the cousins to be publicly united without offence to the Church.

The duke, as a conscientious Protestant, refused to marry his mistress according to the rites of her Church, and she, the chosen champion of its cause, agreed to be married to him, not merely by a Protestant but by one who before his conversion had been a Catholic bishop, and should therefore have been more hateful and contemptible in her eyes than any ordinary heretic, had not religion as well as policy, faith as well as reason, been absorbed or superseded by some more mastering passion or emotion.

They believe also in omens and divination, but they have neither temples nor idols, nor religious rites.

The Syrian god was proclaimed the chief deity in Rome, and all other gods his servants; splendid ceremonies in his honour were celebrated, at which Heliogabalus danced in public, and it was believed that secret rites accompanied by human sacrifice were performed in his honour.

The custom dates from 1263, and was formerly confined to the Franciscans; it was prescribed for the universal church by the Congregation of Rites on the 19th of May 1697.

In addition to the religious rites there is said to have been a chariot race from the earliest times, in which Erechtheus himself won the prize.

The annual festival, probably held on the 28th and 29th of Hecatombaeon (about the middle of August), consisted solely of the sacrifices and rites proper to this season in the cult of Athena.

Even the religious rites were celebrated with much greater splendour at the Greater Panathenaea.

The statement that he issued an edict of toleration, to the effect that, while the exercise of magical rites would be severely punished, his subjects should enjoy full liberty of conscience, rests on insufficient evidence.

The successful candidate had to take an oath to the people (that he would not take bribes, &c.) and to go through certain preliminary rites.

It was his duty to ferry over the Styx (or Acheron) those souls of the deceased who had duly received the rites of burial, in payment for which service he received an obol, which was placed in the mouth of the corpse.

At the conclusion of the rites the image, its vestments and its vehicle were bathed in a lake.

The plan is curious, and deviates much from the ordinary type; the internal arrangements are adapted for the performance of the peculiar rites of this deity.

Mersenne begged him not to die outside the Roman Catholic Church, but Hobbes said that he had already considered the matter sufficiently and afterwards took the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England.

In the Homeric hymn to Demeter, Triptolemus is simply one of the nobles of Eleusis, who was instructed by the goddess in her rites and ceremonies.

It is, in reality, a suit at law, pleaded before the tribunal of the Congregation of Rites, which is a permanent commission of cardinals, assisted by a certain number of subordinate officers and presided over by a cardinal.

In the ceremony of beatification the essential part consists in the reading of the pontifical brief, placing the Venerable in the rank of the Blessed, which is done during a solemn mass, celebrated with special rites in the great hall above the vestibule of the basilica of St Peter.

He renounced the cross which its priests had signed on him with their chrism, their sham baptisms and other magical rites.

The latter in being ordained had the Gospel laid on their heads, and the same feature occurs in old Gallican and Coptic rites of ordaining a bishop.

These rites recall our May day observance, and give colour to the earthgoddess theory.

Early every norning the officiating priest proceeded to the holy of holies, tfter the preliminaries of purification had cleansed him from my miasma that might interfere with the efficacy of the rites.

As to the manual rites of the daily cult, all that can here be said is that incense, purifications and anointings with various Oils played a large part; the sacrifices consisted chiefly of slaughtered oxen and geese; burnt offerings were a very late innovation.

At an early date the rites practised in the various temples were conformed to a common pattern.

Music and dancing formed part of the festival rites.

As with the rites and ceremonies, so also the temples were early modelled upon a common type.

However carefully the preliminary rites of embalmment and burial might have been performed, however sumptuous the tomb wherein the dead man reposed, he was never- The soul.

Magic.Among the rites that were celebrated in the temples or before the statues of the dead were many the mystical meaning of which was but imperfectly understood, though their efficacy was never doubted.

The religious rites and ceremonies are full of it.

When Julian visited the place in 362 the impudent population railed at him for his favour to Jewish and pagan rites, and to revenge itself for the closing of its great church of Constantine, burned down the temple of Apollo in Daphne.

Thus he allowed the necessity of good works to salvation, but not in the old sense; proposed to allow the seven sacraments, but only as rites which had no inherent efficacy to salvation, and so on.

Meanwhile, in December, Mary held the feasts for the baptism of her son by Catholic rites at Stirling (17th of December), while Marriage with Darnley.

The annual vicissitudes of the life of Sabazius, the Greek Dionysus, were accompanied by the mimic rites of his worshippers, who mourned with his sufferings and rejoiced with his joy.

The rites spread first among the common people and those engaged in foreign trade.

The system of taboo was connected with their religious rites.

Presently we find an offer of discipleship met by the warning that " the Son of Man " is a homeless wanderer; and then the stern refusal of a request for leave to perform a father's funeral rites.

The betrothal was actually fixed for the 22nd of September, when the whole arrangement foundered on the obstinate refusal of Gustavus to allow his destined bride liberty of worship according to the rites of the Greek Orthodox Church - a rebuff which undoubtedly accelerated the death of the Russian empress.

There were rites and customs which only after lapse of time were considered iniquitous.

There is indeed a development, but it is none the less noteworthy that the post-exilic priestly ritual preserves in the worship of the universal and only God Yahweh, Develop- rites, practices and ideas which can be understood only in the light of other nature-religions, especially that of Babylonia, with which there are striking parallels.'

Note also the British Indian legislation imposed upon the various castes and creeds each with their peculiar rites and customs.

Athough under ecclesiastical censures, he had never swerved from a consistent profession of faith as a Catholic; and on his death-bed he duly received the last rites of his communion.

However, as late as the middle of the 17th century the Carmelite P. Vincenzo found that the people still called themselves Christians, and had a strange mixture of Jewish, Christian and Pagan rites.

On the extreme east, Mount Parasnath - like Mount Abu on the extreme west, sacred to Jain rites - rises to 4400 ft.

The extreme severity of his rule repelled the Bohemians, whom he vainly strove to wean from their national customs and pagan rites.

As already indicated, the local cults in the important centres of the south and north maintained themselves despite the tendency towards centralization, and while the cults themselves varied according to the character of the gods worshipped in each centre, the general principles were the same and the rites differed in minor details rather than in essential variations.

An important factor which thus served to maintain the rites in a more or less stable condition was the predominance of what may be called the astral theology as the theoretical substratum of the Babylonian religion, and which is equally pronounced in the religious system of Assyria.

Animal sacrifice, libations, ritualistic purification, sprinkling of water, and symbolical rites of all kinds accompanied by short prayers, represent a religious practice which in the Babylonian-Assyrian religion, as in all religions, is older than any theology and survives the changes which the theoretical substratum of the religion undergoes.

In this character her special sanctuary was in the prytaneum, where the common hearth-fire round which the magistrates meet is ever burning, and where the sacred rites that sanctify the concord of city life are performed.

Hence the demon is laid to rest by burning the serpent-image with due funereal rites.

The symbol of the Bacchic orgies was a consecrated serpent, and the snakes kept in the sacred cistae of the cult of Dionysus find a parallel among the sect of the Ophites where, at the sacramental rites, bread was offered to the living serpent and afterwards distributed among the worshippers.

The rites included the " pursuit," possibly derived from the intentional opportunity of escape allowed the victim.

The rites, we may suppose, have become modified and more orthodox, but none the less they are a valuable testimony to the persistence of the cult among people who still claim power over serpents and immunity from their bite, and who live hard by the home of the ancient tribe which ascribed its origin to the son of Circe."

Now anthropological research has vividly shown that woman, naturally fitted (as it seemed) to understand the mysteries of increase, was assigned a prominent part in rites for the furtherance of growth and fertility.

This beginning is not in the dimness of antiquity nor in a multitude of customs, beliefs, traditions, rites and personalities, as is the case with the so-called " natural " religions.

Belief in mysterious powers attached to food, feasts, ceremonial rites and sacred things is all but universal.

Sometimes, indeed, such contact with deity is thought to be dangerous, and the rites indicate avoidance (tabu), and sometimes it is thought desirable.

The bodies of the dead, and sometimes even of the sick, are despatched to sea westwards, with certain rites; those of the chiefs, however, are buried, for the order has something essentially divine about it; their bodies therefore are sacred, and their spirits naturally assume the position above described.

Chief amongst these are the Brahmans who minister for" unclean "Sudras and lower castes, including the makers and dealers in spirituous liquors; as well as those who officiate at the great public shrines or places of pilgrimage where they might be liable to accept forbidden gifts, and, as a matter of fact, often amass considerable wealth; and those who officiate as paid priests at cremations and funeral rites, when the wearing apparel and bedding of the deceased are not unfrequently claimed by them as their perquisites.

These presentday practices, and the attitude of the Brahman towards them, help at all events to explain the aversion with which the strange rites of the subjected tribes were looked upon by the worshippers of the Vedic pantheon.

At the same time, in judging the apparently inhuman way in which the Sudras were treated in the caste rules, one has always to bear in mind the fact that the belief in metempsychosis was already universal at the time, and seemed to afford the only rational explanation of the apparent injustice involved in the unequal distribution of the good things in this world; and that, if the Sudra was strictly excluded from the religious rites and beliefs of the superior classes, this exclusion in no way involved the question of his ultimate emancipation and his union with the Infinite Spirit, which were as certain in his case as in that of any other sentient being.

His followers, the Kabir Panthis (" those following Kabir's path "), though neither worshipping the gods of the pantheon, nor observing the rites and ceremonial of the Hindus, are nevertheless in close touch with the Vaishnava sects, especially the Ramavats, and generally worship Rama as the supreme deity, when they do not rather address their homage, in hymns and otherwise, to the founder of their creed himself.

Although the Vaishnava sects hitherto noticed, in their adoration of Vishnu and his incarnations, Krishna and Ramachandra, usually associate with these gods their Brot wives, as their saktis, or female energies, the sexual element is, as a rule, only just allowed sufficient scope to enhance the emotional character of the rites of worship. In some of the later Vaishnava creeds, on the other hand, this element is far from being kept within the bounds of moderation and decency.

And even amongst the adherents of the left-hand mode of worship, many of these are said to follow it as a matter of family tradition rather than of religious conviction, and to practise it in a sober and temperate manner; whilst only an extreme section - the so-called Kaulas or Kulinas, who appeal to a spurious Upanishad, the Kaulopanishad, as the divine authority of their tenets - persist in carrying on the mystic and licentious rites taught in many of the Tantras.

But strict secrecy being enjoined in the performance of these rites, it is not easy to check any statements made on this point.

The generally recognized principal Avatars do not, however, by any means constitute the only occasions of a direct intercession of the deity in worldly affairs, but - in the same way as to this day the eclipses of the sun and moon are ascribed by the ordinary Hindu to these luminaries being temporarily swallowed by the dragon Rahu (or Graha, " the seizer") - so any uncommon occurrence would be apt to be set down as a special manifestation of divine power; and any man credited with exceptional merit or achievement, or even remarkable for some strange incident connected with his life or death, might ultimately come to be looked upon as a veritable incarnation of the deity, capable of influencing the destinies of man, and might become an object of local adoration or superstitious awe and propitiatory rites to multitudes of people.

At the same time one also meets with frank avowals of a superstitious fear lest any irregularity in the performance of the obsequial rites should cause the Fathers to haunt their old home and trouble the peace of their undutiful descendant, or even prematurely draw him after them to the Pitri-loka or world of the Fathers, supposed to be located in the southern region.

This has only been possible owing to the temper of the Oriental mind which, while clinging tenaciously to its rites, values dogma only in so far as it is expressed in rites.

This principle has even been carried to the extent of recognizing several bishops having jurisdiction over the adherents of various rites in the same see; thus there are three uniat patriarchs of Antioch (GraecoMelchite, Maronite and Syrian).

One mass of Greek and Roman erudition, including history and metaphysics, law and science, civic institutions and the art of war, mythology and magistracies, metrical systems and oratory, agriculture and astronomy, domestic manners and religious rites, grammar and philology, biography and numismatics, formed the miscellaneous subject-matter of this so-styled rhetoric. Notes taken at these lectures supplied young scholars with hints for further exploration; and a certain tradition of treating antique authors for the display of general learning, as well as for the elucidation of their texts, came into vogue, which has determined the method of scholarship for the last three centuries in Europe.

Human sacrifices to Baal were common, and, though in Phoenicia proper there is no proof that the victims were burned alive, the Carthaginians had a brazen image of Baal, from whose downturned hands the children slid into a pit of fire; and the story that Minos had a brazen man who pressed people to his glowing breast points to similar rites in Crete, where the child-devouring Minotaur must certainly be connected with Baal and the favourite sacrifice to him of children.

At first sight these rites seem intended to call down the pity of heaven on man, but as Robertson Smith points out, their real import was by shedding blood on a holy stone or in a holy place to tie or renew a blood-bond between the God and his faithful ones.

The zeal of the friars in stamping out the religious rites of the natives, the severe penalties inflicted for non-observance of the rules of the Church, and the heavy tribute in kind demanded by the Spanish authorities, aroused feelings of resentment in the Pueblo Indians and led in 1680 to a general revolt, headed by a native named Pope.

The flamens were held to be elected for life, but they might be compelled to resign office for neglect of duty, or on the occurrence of some ill-omened event (such as the cap falling off the head) during the performance of their rites.

Mannhardt, and a lower stratum of beliefs and rites began to emerge into view beneath the poetic forms of the more developed mythologies.

Meanwhile, tradition strictly prescribes the ways and means of such reinforcement, so that religion becomes largely a matter of sacred lore; and the expert director of rites, who is likewise usually at this stage the leader of society, comes more and more to be needed as an intermediary between the lay portion of the community and the sacred powers.

The object of these rites is primarily to impart mystic virtue to the novice, such virtue, in the eyes of the primitive man, being always something more than social usefulness, amounting as it does to a share in the tribal luck by means of association with all it holds sacred.

Thus in Australia the initiation ceremonies, concerned as they partly are with marriage, always an affair between the kin-groups, are tribal, whilst the totemic rites are the prime concern of the members of the totem clans.

Thus in process of time birth-rites, marriage-rites, funeral rites, not to mention subordinate ceremonies such as those of name-giving and food-taking, become domestic sacraments.

The process of enrolling the spirits of the dead in the ranks of what may be more or less definitely called " gods " may be seen in the popular usages of India at the present day, or traced in the pages of the Peking Gazette under the direction of the Board of Rites, one of the most ancient branches of Chinese administration.

The belief that the Powers controlling man's life are willing upon occasion to disclose something of their purpose, has led to widespread rites of divination, which Plato described as the " art of fellowship between gods and men," and the Stoics defended on grounds of a priori religious expectation as well as of universal experience.

They are deposited in a temple, in charge of a small sacred college; new deities and rites are introduced under their sanction; when they are accidentally destroyed, envoys are sent to the East and fresh collections are made; these are in their turn purged, the false are discarded and the true reverently preserved.

Thus among the tribes of south-eastern Australia described by Mr Howitt, 10 the native rites and laws handed down from generation to generation were supposed to have been first imparted by some higher being such as Nurrundere, who made all things on the earth; or Nurelli, who created the whole country, with the rivers, trees and animals; or Daramulun, who (like Nurrundere) bestowed weapons on the men, and instituted the rites and ceremonies connected with life and death.

They punish all offences against the laws of human society, such as perjury, violation of the rites of hospitality, and, above all, the murder of relations.

Such appear to be the facts, but Tyrrell's relations with Rome were such that a good deal of mystery was made as to whether he really received the last rites of his Church in any authorized manner.

It seems to have been originally included, along with the greater part of north-eastern Bengal, in the old Hindu territory of Kamrup. Its early legends point to great religious revolutions between the rival rites of Krishna and Siva as a source of dynastic changes.

Mannhardt sees in the ceremony an allusion to certain agricultural rites, the object of which was to prevent the failure of the crops and to avert pestilence (or to protect them and the flocks against the ravages of wolves).

The external side of religion - its rites and observances - must of necessity be subject to a certain control on the part of the state, whose business it is to see to the preservation of decency and order.

Such rites are often associated with the actual eating of the victim whose virtues are coveted.

His father being a convert to Christianity, Uriel was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, and strictly observed the rites of the church till the course of his inquiries led him, after much painful doubt, to abandon the religion of his youth for Judaism.

Hitherto no marriage was legal unless celebrated according to the rites of the Roman Catholic religion, and all registers of births and deaths were kept by the parish priests.

When, again, he met Wordsworth in 1797, the two poets freely and sympathetically discussed Spinoza, for whom Coleridge always retained a deep admiration; and when in 1798 he gave up his Unitarian preaching, he named his second child Berkeley, signifying a new allegiance, but still without accepting Christian rites otherwise than passively.

On his death-bed Charles had at length declared himself an adherent of that religion and had received the last rites according to the Romanist usage.

According to Aeschylus, he met his sister Electra before the tomb of Agamemnon, whither both had gone to perform rites to the dead; a recognition takes place, and they arrange how Orestes shall accomplish his revenge.

From all this we conclude that what is poetry to us - akin to the folk-lore of water-sprites, naiads, kelpies, river-gods and water-worship in general - was to Tertullian and to the generations of believers who fashioned the baptismal rites, ablutions and beliefs of the church, nothing less than grim reality and unquestionable fact.

Doubtless, as Benzinger suggests, the rites to be performed by the officiating high priest on the annual Day of Atonement, which are not prescribed in vv.

The Jews were ordered under pain of death to substitute for their own observances the Pagan rites prescribed for the empire generally.

Many, including the Hasidim, thereupon flocked to his standard, and set themselves to revive Jewish rites and to uproot Paganism from the land.

Converted to Roman Catholicism under compulsion, these "New Christians" often continued to observe Jewish rites in their homes, as the Inquisition records attest.

This crime of Stilicho alone is sufficient in the eyes of Rutilius to account for the disasters that afterwards befell the city, just as Merobaudes, a generation or two later, traced the miseries of his own day to the overthrow of the ancient rites of Vesta.

The bishops are still authorized by law to dedicate and set apart buildings for the solemnization of divine service, and grounds for the performance of burials, according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England; and such buildings and grounds, after they have been duly consecrated according to law, cannot be diverted to any secular purpose except under the authority of an act of parliament.

As the stronger side of Gotama's teaching was neglected, the debasing belief in rites and ceremonies, and charms and incantations, which had been the especial object of his scorn, began to spread like the Birana weed warmed by a tropical sun in marsh and muddy soil.

When Dionysus, with his band of frenzied women (Maenads) arrived at Thebes (his native place and the first city visited by him in Greece), Pentheus denied his divinity and violently opposed the introduction of his rites.

This led to a prolonged controversy; Hooper had already denounced the "Aaronic vestments" and the oath by the saints prescribed in the new Ordinal; and he refused to be consecrated according to its rites.

In the following year he marched against Arminius, the conqueror of Varus, and performed the last rites over the remains of the Roman soldiers that still lay there unburied, erecting a barrow to mark the spot.

Elaborate funeral rites, often accompanied by human sacrifice,, play a most important part in native life.

The Li ki, or Books of Rites and Ancient Ceremonies and of Institutions, chiefly of the Chow dynasty, have come down to us in a sadly mutilated condition.

Evidence of this class, proving the derivation of modern civilization, not only from ancient barbarism, but beyond this, from primeval savagery, is immensely plentiful, especially in rites and ceremonies, where the survival of ancient habits is peculiarly favoured.

Lastly, still following the main lines of human culture, the primitive germs of religious institutions have to be traced in the childish faith and rude rites of savage life, and thence followed in their expansion into the vast systems administered by patriarchs and priests, henceforth taking under their charge the precepts of morality, and enforcing them under divine sanction, while also exercising in political life an authority beside or above the civil law.

On the same bench of a Calcutta college sit youths trained up in the strictest theism, others indoctrinated in the mysteries of the Hindu trinity and pantheon, with representatives of every link in the chain of superstition - from the harmless offering of flowers before the family god to the cruel rites of Kali, whose altars in the most civilized districts of Bengal, as lately as the famine of 1866, were stained with human blood.

The census officers employ it as a convenient generic to include 42 millions of the population of Bengal, comprising elements of transparently distinct ethnical origin, and separated from each other by their language, customs and religious rites.

The observance or variation of the discipline belongs to the Congregation of Rites; in pontifical processions, which are regulated by the masters of the ceremonies (magistri ceremoniarum pontificalium), these points are decided by the chief cardinal deacon.

As to processions within the churches, some difference of opinion having arisen as to the regulating authority, the Congregation of Rites has decided that the bishop must ask, though not necessarily follow, the advice of the chapter in their regulation.

These and similar stories point to the vigorous resistance offered to the introduction of the mystic rites of Dionysus, in places where an established religion already existed.

Brown contains a wealth of material, but is weak in scholarship. For a striking survival of Dionysiac rites in Thrace (Bizye), see Dawkins, in J.H.S.

The triviality of these rites is ill concealed by the legends of the sa'y of Hagar and of the tawaf being first performed by Adam in imitation of the circuit of the angels about the throne of God; the meaning of their ceremonies seems to have been almost a blank to the Arabs before Islam, whose religion had become a mere formal tradition.

It is not so easy to get at the nature of the original rites, which Islam was careful to suppress.

We know that the rites at Mozdalifa were originally connected with a holy hill bearing the name of the god Quzah (the Edomite Koze) whose bow is the rainbow, and there is reason to think that the ifadas from Arafa and Quzah, which were not made as now after sunset and before sunrise, but when the sun rested on the tops of the mountains, were ceremonies of farewell and salutation to the sun-god.

He was the first to arrange a complete liturgy for the synagogue, and his Prayer-Book (Siddur Rab Amram) was the foundation of most of the extant rites in use among the Jews.

For any alteration or amendment of " articles, doctrines, rites or rubrics," a two-thirds majority of each order of the represen tative house was required and a year's delay for consultation of the diocesan synods.

His body was brought to Amesbury for interment; the funeral services were held in the open air, and conducted after the simple rites of the Friends, in the presence of a large concourse, certain of whom " spake as they were moved " in tribute to the bard.

Such are the leading features of the rite in Tertullian, and they reappear in the 4th century in the rites of all the orthodox churches of East and West; Tertullian testifies that the Marcionites observed the particulars numbered one to six, which must therefore go back at least to the year 150.

These two rites really begin the catechumenate or period of instruction in the faith and discipline of the church.

Analogous Rites in other Religions (see also Purification).

But it is not to be supposed that the Christians borrowed from these or from any Gentile source any essential features of their baptismal rites.

The ceremony of turning to the west three times with renunciation of the Evil One, then to the east, is exactly paralleled in a rite of purification by water common among the Malays and described by Skeat in his book on Malay magic. If the Malay rite is not derived through Nlahommedanism from Christianity, it is a remarkable example of how similar psychological conditions can produce almost identical rites.

Ecclesiae Ritibus (gives Western rites) (Bassani, 1788).

All originated in pagan funeral or commemorative rites, and continued to be held, even in Christian times, in very ancient cemeteries.

For in Palermo under the Norman kings Christians of both rites, Mahommedans and Jews were all allowed to flourish after their several fashions.

These rites are found all over the world, and in his monumental work, The Golden Bough, Dr Frazer has traced a host of extant beliefs and practices to this source.

The earliest form of the Grail story, the Gawain- Bleheris version, exhibits a marked affinity with the characteristic features of the Adonis or Tammuz worship; we have a castle on the sea-shore, a dead body on a bier, the identity of which is never revealed, mourned over with solemn rites; a wasted country, whose desolation is mysteriously connected with the dead man, and which is restored to fruitfulness when the quester asks the meaning of the marvels he beholds (the two features of the weeping women and the wasted land being retained in versions where they have no significance); finally the mysterious food-providing, self-acting talisman of a common feast - one and all of these features may be explained as survivals of the Adonis ritual.

Its name is supposed to point to the time when Beltane rites were observed on its summit.

One (Yoma, " the day ") deals exclusively with the rites which were to be observed on the great day of expiation or atonement; the other (Taanith, " fast ") is devoted to the other fasts, and See Judith viii.

His son Benjamin, who had been admitted to it with the usual rites eight days after his birth, was baptized at St Andrew's church in Holborn on the 31st of July 1817.

It is in the Arcadian and Athenian rites and legends, however, which are certainly earlier than Homer, that the original conception of the goddess is to be found.

He instituted the flamens (sacred priests) of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus; the virgins of Vesta, to keep the sacred fire burning on the hearth of the city; the Salii, to guard the shield that fell from heaven; the pontifices and augurs, to arrange the rites and interpret the will of the gods; he also divided the handicraftsmen into nine gilds.

Although the first attempt to convert the Lapps to Christianity seems to have been made in the 11th century, the worship of heathen idols was carried on openly in Swedish Lappmark as late as 1687, and secretly in Norway down to the first quarter of the 18th century, while the practices of heathen rites survived into the 19th century, if indeed they are extinct even yet.

Like all borrowed religions in Rome, it must have retained the rites and the terminology of its Greek original (Festus p. 257).

When we come to treat of religious rites and worship, our sources leave us completely in the dark.

Eventually Turgeis established himself in Armagh, whilst his wife Ota settled at Clonmacnoise and profaned the monastery church with pagan rites.

Tradition connects the better known of these fairs with pagan rites performed round the tombs of the heroes of the race; thus the assembly of Telltown was stated to have been instituted by Lugaid Lamfada.

A test act requiring members of the assembly to conform to the Church of England and to take the sacrament of the Eucharist according to the rites and usages of that Church (1704) was defeated only through the intervention of the Whig House of Lords in England.

Even religion is affected by these irrational notions, and the gods of savages and of many civilized peoples are worshipped with cruel, obscene, and irrational rites.

Frazer, the human representatives or animal representatives, in the rites, of the spirit of vegetation; of the corn spirit; of the changing seasons, winter or summer, have been developed into many forms of gods, with appropriate myths, explanatory of the magic, and of the sacrifice of the chief performer.

Mrs Langloh Parker, of course, was not initiated (indeed, no white man has gone through the actual and very painful rites), but confidences were made to her with great secrecy.

One of these children is often his mediator with men, and has the charge of the rites and the mystic bull-roarer.

These rites are common in North America, but are worked by members of gilds or societies, not by totem kins.

Plutarch remarked the fact that the Greek myths of Cronus, of Dionysus, of Apollo and the Python, and of Demeter, " all the things that are shrouded in mystic ceremonies and are presented in rites," " do not fall short in absurdity of the legends about Osiris and Typhon."

The hypothesis that the rites and the stories are savage inventions surviving into civilized religion seems better to meet the difficulty.

The survivals of rites, objects of worship, and sacrifices like these prove that religious conservatism in Greece retained much of savage practice, and the Greek mythology is not less full of ideas familiar to the lowest races.

When the missionaries of other Roman Catholic orders made their way into China, twenty years later, they found great fault with the manner in which certain Chinese practices had been dealt with by the Jesuits, a matter in which Ricci's action and policy had given the tone to the mission in China - though in fact that tone was rather inherent in the Jesuit system than the outcome of individual character, for controversies of an exactly parallel nature arose two generations later in southern India, between the Jesuits and Capuchins, regarding what were called "Malabar rites."

From their first appearance in literature, they are already often identified or confused with them, and are distinguished only by their Asiatic origin and by the more pronouncedly orgiastic nature of their rites.

The Romans had no historical explanation of these curious rites, and neither the theories of their scholars nor the beliefs of the common people, who fancied that the puppets were substitutes for old men who used at one time to be sacrificed to the river, are worth serious consideration.

Their churches are non -parochial, and they can perform such rites as baptisms, marriages, &c., only by permission of the parish priest, who is entitled to receive all fees due in respect of these ministrations.

The 23rd of March had always been the day of the tubilustrium, or purification of the trumpets used in the sacred rites, so that the ceremony came to be on the last day of Minerva's festival, but it is very doubtful whether it was really connected with her.

The initiated went through rites of purification, and practised a degree of asceticism; but for many the festival was believed to be an occasion for dark orgies.

He acted up to his famous saying that "the philosopher should be the hierophant of the whole world" by celebrating Egyptian and Chaldaean as well as Greek festivals, and on certain days performing sacred rites in honour of all the dead.

Siegfried, to be sure, is buried with all the pomp of medieval Catholic rites; but Kriemhild, while praying for his soul like a good Christian, plots horrible vengeance like her pagan prototype.

The rites of passage story quickly became a bestseller.

He had died administering the last rites to people fatally injured.

Most rites involve invocation, prayer, and spirit possession on the part of the priest and inevitably require some type of offering.

Without proper funeral rites, the spirit of the deceased will cause misfortune to its family.

The religious believer joins in similar communal rites, thus accepting the " universal neurosis " of religion.

She also posits a connection with witch rites on nearby Cadbury Hill.

Furthermore, the performance of these rites was the exclusive prerogative of the priests.

They are coming from every corner of the globe to perform the sacred rites of Hajj.

He does not wish to live with his kinsmen, he says, for they practice pagan rites.

Whilst working in Sri Lanka she was able to observe rites and ceremonies among women to which men would not have been allowed access.

The people were all very glad to be able to perform some of the proper funeral rites.

Having regard to circles wherein sacrificial rites were observed, a slab of stone was a conspicuous object in that dread ceremonial.

Arthur noted the role of alcohol in pagan rites.

Indeed, the Biblical temples were not even used for temple marriage, but for purification rites, and animal sacrifices.

The Minoan Brotherhood and Minoan sisterhood are sibling paths in the Minoan Tradition, each with its own Mysteries and rites.

Its rites and ordinances were like the sign-posts we set up to guide the wayfarer.

From the savage state, through the terror that gives birth to religions, through the creation of families by marriage, through burial rites and piety towards the dead, men approach civilization with the aid of poetic wisdom, and pass through three periods - the divine, heroic and human - in which they have three forms of government, language, literature, jurisprudence and civilization.

To Evander was attributed the introduction of Greek rites and customs into his new country; of writing, music and other arts; of the worship of Pan (called Faunus by the Italians) and the festival of Lupercalia.

At one of the meetings the father of a newly-born child explained that he could not go outside France to seek a pure baptism and that his conscience would not permit his child to be baptized according to the rites of the Romish Church.

Being devoid of all attributes, it can be the object only of meditation, not of practical devotional rites; and philosophy can only attempt to characterize it in general and vague terms, as in the favourite formula which makes it to be sachchidananda, i.e.

These manuals are also called Srauta-sutras, treating as they do, like the Brahmanas, of the Srauta rites - i.e.

Thus the most prominent subdivision of the older school, the Taittiriyas, in their Samhita, have treated the main portion of the ceremonial in this promiscuous fashion, and to add to the confusion they have, by way of supplement, put forth a so-called Taittiriya-brahmana, which, so far from being a real Brahmana, merely deals with some additional rites in the same confused mixture of sacrificial formulae and dogmatic explanations.

If the literary style in which the exegetic discussion of the texts and rites is carried on in the Brahmanas is, as a rule, of a very bald and uninviting nature, it must be borne in mind that these treatises are of a strictly professional and esoteric character, and in no way lay claim to being considered as literary compositions in any sense of the word.

After the death of Faustina and the pacification of Syria, Aurelius proceeded, on his return to Italy, through Athens, and was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, the reason assigned for his doing so being that it was his custom to conform to the established rites of the countries he visited.

As closely connected with religious life, he was an augur and seer; practised magical arts, especially astrology; founded or rendered accessible many important cults, such as those of Apollo and Dionysus; instituted mystic rites, both public and private; prescribed initiatory and purificatory ritual.

It was in the "yamen" of one of these boards - the Li Pu or board of rites - that Lord Elgin signed the treaty at the conclusion of the war in 1860 - an event which derives especial interest from the fact of its having been the first occasion on which a European plenipotentiary ever entered Peking accompanied by all the pomp and circumstance of his rank.

Sometimes the spirits were summoned to appear as did the phantoms of the Greek heroes to Odysseus; sometimes they were called to enter a crystal (see Crystal-Gazing); sometimes they are merely asked to declare the future or communicate by moving external objects without taking a visible form; thus among the Karens at the close of the burial ceremonies the ghost of the dead man, which is said to hover round till the rites are completed, is believed to make a ring swing round and snap the string from which it hangs.

Excluded from political and municipal life by the laws which required either the taking of an oath or joining in the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Established Church, excluding themselves not only from the frivolous pursuits of pleasure, but from music and art in general, attaining no high average level of literary culture (though producing some men of eminence in science and medicine), the Quakers occupied themselves mainly with trade, the business of their Society, and the calls of philanthropy.

The slave was introduced with certain customary rites into his position in the family; he was in practice, though not by law, permitted to accumulate a private fund of his own; his marriage was also recognized by custom; though in general excluded from sacred ceremonies and public sacrifices, slaves were admissible to religious associations of a private kind; there were some popular festivals in which they were allowed to participate; they had even special ones for themselves both at Athens and in other Greek centres.

A renovation of the Gallican Church was not the least crying need; and, in view of the confusion of rites (Gallican, Gothic, Roman, Ambrosian) in the Frankish empire, Charlemagne recognized that this innovation could only be effectually carried out by a closer connexion with Rome in ritual as in other matters.

Other features reminiscent of the original barbarous rites in the primitive caverns of the East, no doubt also occupied a place in the cult; bandaging of eyes, binding of hands with the intestines of a fowl, leaping over a ditch filled with water, witnessing a simulated murder, are mentioned by the Pseudo-Augustine; and the manipulation of lights in the crypt, the administration of oaths, and the repetition of the sacred formulae, all contributed toward inducing a state of ecstatic exaltation.

We infer that the Paulicians merely rejected the Eucharistic rites and doctrine of the Greeks.

The king had now clarified the ancient laws of the realm to his satisfaction, and could proceed to abolish superstitious rites, remedy abuses, and seize such portions of the Church's possessions, especially pious and monastic foundations, as he deemed superfluous for the maintenance of religion.

But from this enormous increase of territory and influence arose a whole series of new and difficult problems. The court of Rome had to substitute for the old Greek hierarchy a hierarchy of Latin bishops; to force the remaining Greek clergy to practise the beliefs and rites of the Roman religion and bow to the supremacy of the pope; to maintain in the Greco-Latin Eastern Church the necessary order, morality and subordination; to defend it against the greed and violence of the nobles and barons who had founded the Latin Empire; and to compel the leaders of the new empire to submit to the apostolic power and execute its commands.

While a student he was not unaccustomed " to make good cheer and be merry," but at the same time he was a punctilious observer of the minutest rites of his faith and "as obstinate a Papist as any in England."

But against these considerations it might be urged that a Protestant had no occasion to boast of a harmony most natural to him, while his further remark to the effect that a state church is indispensable, and that those who cannot belong to it on conscientious grounds ought to leave the country rather than show any opposition to its rites, seems rather to indicate the crypto-Catholic. The same conclusion is supported by the fact that Stevinus, a year before his death, bequeathed a pious legacy to the church of Westkerke in Flanders out of the revenues of which masses were to be said.

Tacitus states that many Teutonic tribes worshipped her with orgies and mysterious rites celebrated at night.

The reign of Pushyamitra, who held his own against Menander and succeeded in establishing his claim to be lord paramount of northern India, is mainly remarkable as marking the beginning of the Brahmanical reaction and the decline of Buddhism; according to certain Buddhist writers the king, besides reviving Hindu rites, indulged in a savage persecution of the monks.

This being so, it is of the deepest interest to study the Cathar cult, since through its rites we can get a glimpse of those of the primitive church, about which want of documents leaves us too often in the dark."