(E. F. S.)
KYRIE (in full kyrie eleison, or eleeson, Gr. κύριε ἐλέησον; cf. Ps. cxxii. 3, Matt. XV. 22, &c., meaning “Lord, have mercy”), the words of petition used at the beginning of the Mass and in other offices of the Eastern and Roman Churches. In the Anglican Book of Common Prayer the Kyrie is introduced into the orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, and also, with an additional petition, as a response made by the congregation after the reading of each of the Ten Commandments at the opening of the Communion Service. These responses are usually sung, and the name Kyrie is thus also applied to their musical setting. In the Lutheran Church the Kyrie is still said or sung in the original Greek. “Kyrielle,” a shortened form of Kyrie eleison, is applied to eight-syllabled four-line verses, the last line in each verse being repeated as a refrain.
KYRLE, JOHN (1637-1724), “the Man of Ross,” English philanthropist, was born in the parish of Dymock, Gloucestershire, on the 22nd of May 1637. His father was a barrister and M.P., and the family had lived at Ross, in Herefordshire, for many generations. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and having succeeded to the property at Ross took up his abode there. In everything that concerned the welfare of the little town in which he lived he took a lively interest—in the education of the children, the distribution of alms, in improving and embellishing the town. He delighted in mediating between those who had quarrelled and in preventing lawsuits. He was generous to the poor and spent all he had in good works. He lived a great deal in the open air working with the labourers on his farm. He died on the 7th of November 1724, and was buried in the chancel of Ross Church. His memory is preserved by the Kyrie Society, founded in 1877, to better the lot of working people, by laying out parks, encouraging house decoration, window gardening and flower growing. Ross was eulogized by Pope in the third Moral Epistle (1732), and by Coleridge in an early poem (1794).
KYSHTYM, a town of Russia, in the government of Perm, 56 m. by rail N.N.W. of Chelyabinsk, on a river of the same name which connects two lakes. Pop. (1897), 12,331. The official name is Verkhne-Kyshtymskiy-Zavod, or Upper Kyshtym Works, to distinguish it from the Lower (Nizhne) Kyshtym Works, situated two miles lower down the same river.