All creatures else forgot their daily care, And sleep, the common gift of nature, share; Except the Trojan peers, who wakeful sate In nightly council for th' indanger'd state. They vote a message to their absent chief, Shew their distress, and beg a swift relief. Amid the camp a silent seat they chose, Remote from clamor, and secure from foes. On their left arms their ample shields they bear, The right reclin'd upon the bending spear. Now Nisus and his friend approach the guard, And beg admission, eager to be heard: Th' affair important, not to be deferr'd. Ascanius bids 'em be conducted in, Ord'ring the more experienc'd to begin. Then Nisus thus: "Ye fathers, lend your ears; Nor judge our bold attempt beyond our years. The foe, securely drench'd in sleep and wine, Neglect their watch; the fires but thinly shine; And where the smoke in cloudy vapors flies, Cov'ring the plain, and curling to the skies, Betwixt two paths, which at the gate divide, Close by the sea, a passage we have spied, Which will our way to great Aeneas guide. Expect each hour to see him safe again, Loaded with spoils of foes in battle slain. Snatch we the lucky minute while we may; Nor can we be mistaken in the way; For, hunting in the vale, we both have seen The rising turrets, and the stream between, And know the winding course, with ev'ry ford."
HEFELE, KARL JOSEF VON (1809-1893), German theologian, was born at Unterkochen in Württemberg on the 15th of March 1809, and was educated at Tübingen, where in 1839 he became professor-ordinary of Church history and patristics in the Roman Catholic faculty of theology. From 1842 to 1845 he sat in the National Assembly of Württemberg. In December 1869 he was enthroned bishop of Rottenburg. His literary activity, which had been considerable, was in no way diminished by his elevation to the episcopate. Among his numerous theological works may be mentioned his well-known edition of the _Apostolic Fathers_, issued in 1839; his _Life of Cardinal Ximenes_, published in 1844 (Eng. trans., 1860); and his still more celebrated _History of the Councils of the Church_, in seven volumes, which appeared between 1855 and 1874 (Eng. trans., 1871, 1882). Hefele's theological opinions inclined towards the more liberal school in the Roman Catholic Church, but he nevertheless received considerable signs of favour from its authorities, and was a member of the commission that made preparations for the Vatican Council of 1870. On the eve of that council he published at Naples his _Causa Honorii Papae_, which aimed at demonstrating the moral and historical impossibility of papal infallibility. About the same time he brought out a work in German on the same subject. He took rather a prominent part in the discussions at the council, associating himself with Félix Dupanloup and with Georges Darboy, archbishop of Paris, in his opposition to the doctrine of Infallibility, and supporting their arguments from his vast knowledge of ecclesiastical history. In the preliminary discussions he voted against the promulgation of the dogma. He was absent from the important sitting of the 18th of June 1870, and did not send in his submission to the decrees until 1871, when he explained in a pastoral letter that the dogma "referred only to doctrine given forth _ex cathedra_, and therein to the definitions proper only, but not to its proofs or explanations." In 1872 he took part in the congress summoned by the Ultramontanes at Fulda, and by his judicious use of minimizing tactics he kept his diocese free from any participation in the Old Catholic schism. The last four volumes of the second edition of his _History of the Councils_ have been described as skilfully adapted to the new situation created by the Vatican decrees. During the later years of his life he undertook no further literary efforts on behalf of his church, but retired into comparative privacy. He died on the 6th of June 1893. Entry: HEFELE
In Homer the term is applied especially to warrior princes, to kings and kings' sons, even to distinguished persons of lower rank, and free men generally. In Hesiod it is chiefly confined to those who fought before Troy and Thebes; in view of their supposed divine origin, he calls them demi-gods ([Greek: hêmitheoi]). This name is also given them in an interpolated passage in the _Iliad_ (xii. 23), which is quite at variance with the general Homeric idea of the heroes, who are no more than men, even if of divine origin and of superior strength and prowess. But neither in Homer nor in Hesiod is there any trace of the idea that the heroes after death had any power for good or evil over the lives of those who survived them; and consequently, no cult. Nevertheless, traces of an earlier ancestor worship appear, e.g. in funeral games in honour of Patroclus and other heroes, while the Hesiodic account of the five ages of man is a reminiscence of the belief in the continued existence of souls in a higher life. This pre-historic worship and belief, for a time obscured, were subsequently revived. According to Porphyry (_De abstinentia_, iv. 22), Draco ordered the inhabitants of Attica to honour the gods and heroes of their country "in accordance with the usage of their fathers" with offerings of first fruits and sacrificial cakes every year, thereby clearly pointing to a custom of high antiquity. Solon also ordered that the tombs of the heroes should be treated with the greatest respect, and Cleisthenes (q.v.) sought to create a pan-Athenian enthusiasm by calling his new tribes after Attic heroes and setting up their statues in the Agora. Heroic honours were at first bestowed upon the founders of a colony or city, and the ancestors of families; if their name was not known, one was adopted from legend. In many cases these heroes were purely fictitious; such were the supposed ancestors of the noble and priestly families of Attica and elsewhere (Butadae at Athens, Branchidae at Miletus Ceryces at Eleusis), of the eponymi of the tribes and demes. Again, side by side with gods of superior rank, certain heroes were worshipped as protecting spirits of the country or state; such were the Aeacidae amongst the Aeginetans, Ajax son of Oïleus amongst the Epizephyrian Locrians and Hector at Thebes. Neglect of the worship of these heroes was held to be responsible for pestilence, bad crops and other misfortunes, while, on the other hand, if duly honoured, their influence was equally beneficent. This belief was supported by the Delphic oracle, which was largely instrumental in promoting hero-worship and keeping alive its due observance. Special importance was attached to the grave of the hero and to his bodily remains, with which the spirit of the departed was inseparably connected. The grave was regarded as his place of abode, from which he could only be absent for a brief period; hence his bones were fetched from abroad (e.g. Cimon brought those of Theseus from Scyros), or if they could not be procured, at least a cenotaph was erected in his honour. Their relics also were carefully preserved: the house of Cadmus at Thebes, the hut of Orestes at Tegea, the stone on which Telamon had sat at Salamis (in Cyprus). Special shrines ([Greek: hêrôa]) were also erected in their honour, usually over their graves. In these shrines a complete set of armour was kept, in accordance with the idea that the hero was essentially a warrior, who on occasion came forth from his grave and fought at the head of his countrymen, putting the enemy to flight as during his lifetime. Like the gods, the cult heroes were supposed to exercise an influence on human affairs, though not to the same extent, their sphere of action being confined to their own localities. Amongst the earliest known historical examples of the elevation of the dead to the rank of heroes are Timesius the founder of Abdera, Miltiades, son of Cypselus, Harmodius and Aristogiton and Brasidas, the victor of Amphipolis, who ousted the local Athenian hero Hagnon. In course of time admission to the rank of a hero became far more common, and was even accorded to the living, such as Lysimachus in Samothrace and the tyrant Nicias of Cos. Antiochus of Commagene instituted an order of priests to celebrate the anniversary of his birth and coronation in a special sanctuary, and the kings of Pergamum claimed divine honours for themselves and their wives during their lifetime. The birthday of Eumenes was regularly kept, and every month sacrifice was offered to him and games held in his honour. In addition to persons of high rank, poets, legendary and others (Linus, Orpheus, Homer, Aeschylus and Sophocles), legislators and physicians (Lycurgus, Hippocrates), the patrons of various trades or handicrafts (artists, cooks, bakers, potters), the heads of philosophical schools (Plato, Democritus, Epicurus) received the honours of a cult. At Teos incense was offered before the statue of a flute-player during his lifetime. In some countries the honour became so general that every man after death was described as a hero in his epitaph--in Thessaly even slaves. Entry: HERO
There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers. The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians. "The whole of time is a festival unto Christians because of the excellency of the good things which have been given" is the comment of St Chrysostom on 1 Cor. v. 7, which has been erroneously supposed to refer to an apostolic observance of Easter. The ecclesiastical historian Socrates (_Hist. Eccl._ v. 22) states, with perfect truth, that neither the Lord nor his apostles enjoined the keeping of this or any other festival. He says: "The apostles had no thought of appointing festival days, but of promoting a life of blamelessness and piety"; and he attributes the observance of Easter by the church to the perpetuation of an old usage, "just as many other customs have been established." Entry: EASTER
LEO I., who alone of Roman pontiffs shares with Gregory I. the surname of THE GREAT, pope from 440 to 461, was a native of Rome, or, according to a less probable account, of Volterra in Tuscany. Of his family or early life nothing is known; that he was highly cultivated according to the standards of his time is obvious, but it does not appear that he could write Greek, or even that he understood that language. In one of the letters (_Ep._ 104) of Augustine, an acolyte named Leo is mentioned as having been in 418 the bearer of a communication from Sixtus of Rome (afterwards pope) to Aurelius of Carthage against the Pelagians. In 429, when the first unmistakable reference to Pope Leo occurs, he was still only a deacon, but already a man of commanding influence; it was at his suggestion that the _De incarnatione_ of the aged Cassianus, having reference to the Nestorian heresy, was composed in that year, and about 431 we find Cyril of Alexandria writing to him that he might prevent the Roman Church from lending its support in any way to the ambitious schemes of Juvenal of Jerusalem. In 440, while Leo was in Gaul, whither he had been sent to compose some differences between Aetius and another general named Albinus, Pope Sixtus III. died. The absent deacon, or rather archdeacon, was unanimously chosen to succeed him, and received consecration on his return six weeks afterwards (September 29). In 443 he began to take measures against the Manichaeans (who since the capture of Carthage by Genseric in 439 had become very numerous at Rome), and in the following year he was able to report to the Italian bishops that some of the heretics had returned to Catholicism, while a large number had been sentenced to perpetual banishment "in accordance with the constitutions of the Christian emperors," and others had fled; in seeking these out the help of the provincial clergy was sought. It was during the earlier years of Leo's pontificate that the events in Gaul occurred which resulted in this triumph over Hilarius of Arles, signalized by the edict of Valentinian III. (445), denouncing the contumacy of the Gallic bishop, and enacting "that nothing should be done in Gaul, contrary to ancient usage, without the authority of the bishop of Rome, and that the decree of the apostolic see should henceforth be law." In 447 Leo held the correspondence with Turribus of Astorga which led to the condemnation of the Priscillianists by the Spanish national church. In 448 he received with commendation a letter from Eutyches, the Constantinopolitan monk, complaining of the revival of the Nestorian heresy there; and in the following year Eutyches wrote his circular, appealing against the sentence which at the instance of Eusebius of Dorylaeum had been passed against him at a synod held in Constantinople under the presidency of the patriarch Flavian, and asking papal support at the oecumenical council at that time under summons to meet at Ephesus. The result of a correspondence was that Leo by his legates sent to Flavian that famous epistle in which he sets forth with great fulness of detail the doctrine ever since recognized as orthodox regarding the union of the two natures in the one person of Jesus Christ. The events at the "robber" synod at Ephesus belong to general church history rather than to the biography of Leo; his letter, though submitted, was not read by the assembled fathers, and the papal legates had some difficulty in escaping with their lives from the violence of the theologians who, not content with deposing Flavian and Eusebius, shouted for the dividing of those who divided Christ. When the news of the result of this oecumenical council (oecumenical in every circumstance except that it was not presided over by the pope) reached Rome, Leo wrote to Theodosius "with groanings and tears," requesting the emperor to sanction another council, to be held this time, however, in Italy. In this petition he was supported by Valentinian III., by the empress-mother Galla Placidia and by the empress Eudoxia, but the appeal was made in vain. A change, however, was brought about by the accession in the following year of Marcian, who three days after coming to the throne published an edict bringing within the scope of the penal laws against heretics the supporters of the dogmas of Apollinaris and Eutyches. To convoke a synod in which greater orthodoxy might reasonably be expected was in these circumstances no longer difficult, but all Leo's efforts to secure that the meeting should take place on Italian soil were unavailing. When the synod of Chalcedon assembled in 451, the papal legates were treated with great respect, and Leo's former letter to Flavian was adopted by acclamation as formulating the creed of the universal church on the subject of the person of Christ. Among the reasons urged by Leo for holding this council in Italy had been the threatening attitude of the Huns; the dreaded irruption took place in the following year (452). After Aquileia had succumbed to Attila's long siege, the conqueror set out for Rome. Near the confluence of the Mincio and the Po he was met by Leo, whose eloquence persuaded him to turn back. Legend has sought to enhance the impressiveness of the occurrence by an unnecessarily imagined miracle. The pope was less successful with Genseric when the Vandal chief arrived under the walls of Rome in 455, but he secured a promise that there should be no incendiarism or murder, and that three of the oldest basilicas should be exempt from plunder--a promise which seems to have been faithfully observed. Leo died on the 10th of November 461, the liturgical anniversary being the 11th of April. His successor was Hilarius or Hilarus, who had been one of the papal legates at the "robber" synod in 449. Entry: LEO
Nor is this pre-literary and vital quality really absent even from the writing which is least entitled to a place among "Apostolic Fathers," the Epistle to Diognetus. This beautiful picture of the Christian life as a realized ideal, and of Christians as "the soul" of the world, owes its inclusion to a double error: first, to the accidental attachment at the end of another fragment (§ ii), which opens with the writer's claim to stand forth as a teacher as being "a disciple of apostles"; and next, to mistaken exegesis of this phrase as implying personal relations with apostles, rather than knowledge of their teaching, written or oral. Whether in form addressed to Diognetus, the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, as a typical cultured observer of Christianity, or to some other eminent person of the same name in the locality of its origin, or, as seems more likely, to cultured Greeks generally, personified under the significant name "Diognetus" ("Heaven-born," of. Acts xvii. 28 along with § iii. 4)--the epistle is in any case an "open letter" of an essentially literary type. Further, its opening seems modelled on the lines of the preface to Luke's Gospel, to which, along with Acts, it may owe something of its very conception as a reasoned appeal to the lover of truth. But while literary in form and conception, its appeal is in spirit so personal a testimony to what the Gospel has done for the writer and his fellow Christians, that it is akin to the piety of the Apostolic Fathers as a group. It is true that it has marked affinities, e.g. in its natural theology, with the earliest Apologists, Aristides and Justin, even as it is itself in substance an apology addressed not to the State, but to thoughtful public opinion. But this only means that we cannot draw a hard and fast line between groups of early Christian writings at a time when practical religious interests overshadowed all others. Entry: A
GREGORY, ST (c. 213-c. 270), surnamed in later ecclesiastical tradition Thaumaturgus (the miracle-worker), was born of noble and wealthy pagan parents at Neocaesarea in Pontus, about A.D. 213. His original name was Theodorus. He took up the study of civil law, and, with his brother Athenodorus, was on his way to Berytus to complete his training when at Caesarea he met Origen, and became his pupil and then his convert (A.D. 233). In returning to Cappadocia some five years after his conversion, it had been his original intention to live a retired ascetic life (Eus. _H.E._ vi. 30), but, urged by Origen, and at last almost compelled by Phaedimus of Amasia, his metropolitan, neither of whom was willing to see so much learning, piety and masculine energy practically lost to the church, he, after many attempts to evade the dignity, was consecrated bishop of his native town (about 240). His episcopate, which lasted some thirty years, was characterized by great missionary zeal, and by so much success that, according to the (doubtless somewhat rhetorical) statement of Gregory of Nyssa, whereas at the outset of his labours there were only seventeen Christians in the city, there were at his death only seventeen persons in all who had not embraced Christianity. This result he achieved in spite of the Decian persecution (250-251), during which he had felt it to be his duty to absent himself from his diocese, and notwithstanding the demoralizing effects of an irruption of barbarians (Goths and Boranians) who laid waste the diocese in A.D. 253-254. Gregory, although he has not always escaped the charge of Sabellianism, now holds an undisputed place among the fathers of the church; and although the turn of his mind was practical rather than speculative, he is known to have taken an energetic part in most of the doctrinal controversies of his time. He was active at the first synod of Antioch (A.D. 264-265), which investigated and condemned the heresies of Paul of Samosata; and the rapid spread in Pontus of a Trinitarianism approaching the Nicene type is attributed in large measure to the weight of his influence. Gregory is believed to have died in the reign of Aurelian, about the year 270, though perhaps an earlier date is more probable. His festival (semiduplex) is observed by the Roman Catholic Church on the 17th of November. Entry: GREGORY
INNOCENT I., pope from 402 to 417, was the son of Pope Anastasius I. It was during his papacy that the siege of Rome by Alaric (408) took place, when, according to a doubtful anecdote of Zosimus, the ravages of plague and famine were so frightful, and help seemed so far off, that papal permission was granted to sacrifice and pray to the heathen deities; the pope was, however, absent from Rome on a mission to Honorius at Ravenna at the time of the sack in 410. He lost no opportunity of maintaining and extending the authority of the Roman see as the ultimate resort for the settlement of all disputes; and his still extant communications to Victricius of Rouen, Exuperius of Toulouse, Alexander of Antioch and others, as well as his action on the appeal made to him by Chrysostom against Theophilus of Alexandria, show that opportunities of the kind were numerous and varied. He took a decided view on the Pelagian controversy, confirming the decisions of the synod of the province of proconsular Africa held in Carthage in 416, which had been sent to him. He wrote in the same year in a similar sense to the fathers of the Numidian synod of Mileve who, Augustine being one of their number, had addressed him. Among his letters are one to Jerome and another to John, bishop of Jerusalem, regarding annoyances to which the first named had been subjected by the Pelagians at Bethlehem. He died on the 12th of March 417, and in the Roman Church is commemorated as a confessor along with Saints Nazarius, Celsus and Victor, martyrs, on the 28th of July. His successor was Zosimus. Entry: INNOCENT