The Caloyers of Mount Athos have a great aversion to the pope, and relate that a Roman pontiff, having visited their monasteries, had plundered and burned some of them, because they would not adore him.
There are female Caloyers, or Greek nuns, who likewise follow the rule of St. Basil. Their nunneries are always dependent on some monastery. The Turks buy sashes of their working, and they open their gates freely to the Turks on this occasion. Those of Constantinople are widows, some of whom have had several husbands. They make no vow, nor confine themselves within their convents. The priests are forbidden, under severe penalties, to visit these religious.—Broughton.
CALVINISTS. Those who interpret Scripture in accordance with the views of John Calvin, who was born at Noyon, A. D. 1509, and afterwards settled at Geneva, and who established a system both of doctrine and of discipline peculiarly his own.
The essential doctrines of Calvinism have been reduced to these five: particular election, particular redemption, moral inability in a fallen state, irresistible grace, and the final perseverance of the saints. These are termed, by theologians, the five points; and ever since the synod of Dort, (see Dort,) when they were the subjects of discussion between the Calvinists and Arminians, and whose decrees are the standard of modern Calvinism, frequent have been the controversies agitated respecting them. Even the Calvinists themselves differ in the explication of them: it cannot therefore be expected that a very specific account of them should be given here. Generally speaking, however, they comprehend the following propositions:—
1st, That God has chosen a certain number in Christ to everlasting glory, before the foundation of the world, according to his immutable purpose, and of his free grace and love, without the least foresight of faith, good works, or any conditions performed by the creature; and that the rest of mankind he was pleased to pass by, and ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sins, to the praise of his vindictive justice.
2ndly, That Jesus Christ, by his sufferings and death, made an atonement only for the sins of the elect.
3dly, That mankind are totally depraved in consequence of the fall; and, by virtue of Adam’s being their public head, the guilt of his sin was imputed, and a corrupt nature conveyed to all his posterity, from which proceeds all actual transgression; and that by sin we are made subject to death, and all miseries, temporal, spiritual, and eternal.
4thly, That all whom God has predestinated to life, he is pleased, in his appointed time, effectually to call, by his word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ.
And 5thly, That those whom God has effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit, shall never finally fall from a state of grace.
CAMALDOLI. A religious order of Christians founded by St. Romuald, about the end of the tenth century: this man gave his monks the rule of St. Bennet’s order, with some particular constitutions, and a white habit, after a vision he had of several persons clothed so, who were going up on a ladder to heaven. He was of a noble family of Ravenna, and having found on the Apennine hills near Arezzo a frightful solitary place, called Campo Maldoli, he began to build a monastery there, about the year 1009, and this monastery gave its name to all the order. The congregation of hermits of St. Romuald, or of Mount Couronne, is a branch of the Camaldoli, to which it was joined in 1532. Paul Justinian, of Venice, began its establishment in 1520, and founded the chief monastery in the Apennine, in a place called the Mount of the Crown, ten miles from Perugia, and dedicated to our Saviour in 1555.—Hist. des Ord. Relig.