[529] The Rule of 1210, approved by Innocent III., is here meant [see [p. 374]].
[530] The consecrated wafer, believed to be the body of Christ, which in the Mass is offered as a sacrifice; also the bread before consecration.
[531] Certain periods of the day, set apart by the laws of the Church, for the duties of prayer and devotion; also certain portions of the Breviary to be used at stated hours. The seven canonical hours are matins and lauds, the first, third, sixth, and ninth hours, vespers, and compline.
[532] That is, infant baptism and the viaticum (the Lord's Supper when administered to persons in immediate danger of death).
[533] Extreme unction is the sacrament of anointing in the last hours,—the application of consecrated oil by a priest to all the senses, i.e., to eyes, ears, nostrils, etc., of a person when in immediate danger of death. The sacrament is performed for the remission of sins.
[534] St. Dionysius was bishop of Alexandria about the middle of the third century. He was a pupil of the great theologian Origen and himself a writer of no small ability on the doctrinal questions which vexed the early Church.
[535] Manichæus was a learned Persian who, in the third century, worked out a system of doctrine which sought to combine the principles of Christianity with others taken over from the Persian and kindred Oriental religions. The most prominent feature of the resulting creed was the conception of an absolute dualism running throughout the universe—light and darkness, good and evil, soul and body—which existed from the beginning and should exist forever. The Manichæan sect spread from Persia into Asia Minor North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. Though persecuted by Diocletian, and afterwards by some of the Christian emperors, it had many adherents as late as the sixth century, and certain of its ideas appeared under new names at still later times, notably among the Albigenses in southern France in the twelfth century.
[536] Annates were payments made to the pope by newly elected or appointed ecclesiastical officials of the higher sort. They were supposed to comprise the first year's income from the bishop's or abbot's benefice.
[537] The décime was an extraordinary royal revenue derived from the payment by the clergy of a tenth of the annual income from their benefices. Its prototype was the Saladin tithe, imposed by Philip Augustus (1180-1223) for the financing of his crusade. In the latter half of the thirteenth century, and throughout the fourteenth, the décime was called for by the kings with considerable frequency, often ostensibly for crusading purposes, and it was generally obtained by a more or less compulsory vote of the clergy, or without their consent at all.
[538] Pragmatic, in the general sense, means any sort of decree of public importance; in its more special usage it denotes an ordinance of the crown regulating the relations of the national clergy with the papacy. The modern equivalent is "concordat."