ROGATION DAYS. (So called from rogare, “to beseech.”) They are three days immediately before the festival of Ascension. These litanic or Rogation days were first instituted by Mamertus, bishop of Vienne, in the fifth century. Mamertus was not the originator of litanical supplications, but was the first institutor of the Rogation fast, and the first who applied the use of litanies on these days, accompanied with public processions, which continued till the æra of the Reformation. In the Church of England it has been thought fit to continue the observance of these days as private fasts. There is no office, or order of prayer, or even single collect, appointed for the Rogation days in the Prayer Book; but among the homilies there is one designed for the improvement of these days. (See Perambulation.) The requisitions of the Church are “abstinence” and “extraordinary acts and exercises of devotion.” Perambulations were in many parishes observed in the Rogation days. (See Perambulation.)
ROMANISM. (See Pope and Popery, Church of Rome, Council of Trent.) Romanism consists of the addition of certain anti-scriptural propositions to the articles of the ancient catholic faith.
In addition to what is said in the other articles referred to, we may state the tenets of Romanism in the words of Morgan, in his interesting work on the “Verities of the Church.”
1. The spiritual, and, by the Ultramontane party, the temporal, autocracy of the Bishop of Rome.
2. The compulsory celibacy of the priesthood.
3. Solitary priestly communion, or private mass.
4. The denial of the chalice, or the cup of the blood of our Lord, to the laity.
5. Compulsory auricular confession.
6. Mariolatry, or the adoration of the Blessed Virgin.
7. Hagiolatry, or the adoration of canonized saints.