MEN
191
MENOLOGIUM
HeenteredtheSocietyof Jesus, 25 May, 1594. Afterthe
usual years of training and of teaching the classics, he
became professor of sacred scripture and then of moral
theology at Milan ; thereafter began his long life of superiorship. He was successi\'ely superior of Cremona,
Milan, and Genoa, rector of the Roman College, provin-
cial of the provinces of Milan and Rome, assistant of
Italy, and admonitor to the Fathers-General Carafa and
Piccolomini. The exegetical work of Menoehio is still
deservedly famous. His first essay along this line W2,s a
politico-Biblical study: " Hieropoliticon, sive Institu-
tiones Politica; e Sacris Scripturis depromptse ", 956
pages (Lyons, 1625). This book on theocratic poli-
tics was dedicated to Cardinal Alessandro Orsini. A
second edition (Cologne, 1626) was dedicated to Fer-
dinand HI. The Jesuit poet Sarbiewski made this
study the subject of an ode (see "Lyrica", II, n.
18).
The next year there appeared an economic study of the Bible: " Institutiones CEconomiciE ex Sacris Lit- teris depromptae", 543 pages (Lyons, 1627). The author translated into Italian these lessons on the care of one's own household; this translation was a posthumous publication: " Economia Christiana", 542 pages (Venice, 1656). The work by which Meno- ehio lives and will live is his " Brevis Explicatio Sensus Litteralis Sacne Scripturoe optimis quibusque Auc- toribus per Epitoraen Collecta", 3 vols., 115 pages, 449, 549 + 29 (Cologne, 16.30). Many other editions of this commentary have been published in many lands: Cologne, 1659; Antwerp, 1679; Lyons, 16S3, 1697, 1703; the revised editions of Tournemine, S.J., published at ParLs, 1719, 1721, 1731; Avignon, 1768; Ghent, 1829 ; the enlarged and revised editions of Zac- caria, S.J., published at Venice, 1743, 1755, 1761. The scholia of Menoehio are introduced into the " Biblia Magna " and " Biblia Maxima " of de La Haye ; the "Biblia Sacra" of Lucas Brugeusis; the "Cursus Script. Sacr." of Migne; fourteen editions of the "Sainte Bible" of Carriere, S.J.; and "La Sainte Bible" of Drioux (Paris, 1873).
The clearness, brevity, and critical acumen of Meno- ehio have won him the praise of friend and foe. The father of modern criticism, Simon, though not at all in sympathy with the orthodoxy of the Jesuit, says: "C'est un des plus judicieux scoliastes que nous ayons tant sur le Vieux que sur le Nouveau Tes- tament" (Hist. Crit. du N. T., xliv). Reusch (Kirchenlex.) prefers the notes of Menoehio to those of Sa and Mariana. The method of this great commen- tator was that of the best Catholic exegetes of to-day; a method which sought to find the literal meaning of Holy Writ in the Bible and the Fathers. Menoehio studied the text in its original, and brought to bear upon that study a vast store of knowledge of Jewish antiquities.
SoMMERVOGEL, Bihliothlque de la Compagnie dej., V, IX. Walter Drum.
Men of Understanding (Homines Intelligen- TL-E), iiuiiif'u.ssuiiiiMl liy a hiTcticalsect whichin 1410- 11 was cited before the Inciuisition at Brussels. Its leaders were Egidius Cantoris, an illiterate layman, and the Carmelite William of Hildernisscn, near Ber- gen-op-Zoom. The sect was doctrinally relateil with the earlier Brethren of the Free Spirit. It taught the eventual salvation of all human lacings and even of the demons, maintained that the soul of man cannot be defiled by bodily sin, and believed in a mystical state of illumination and union with God so perfect, that it exempted from all subjection to moral and ecclesias- tical laws and was an infalhble pledge of salvation. Both leaders gloried in the visions with which they claimed to have been favoured. Cantoris in a moment of religious exaltation went so far as to run nude through the streets of Brussels declaring himself the saviour of mankind. About 1410 Peter d'Ailly,
Bishop of Cambrai, seems to have taken the first steps
towards the suppression of the heresy. William of
Hildernissen consented to a retractation, the sincerity
of which appeared doubtful. In 1411 a second inves-
tigation resulted in another retractation, but also in a
sentence compelling Williai to return permanently to
an jxtra-diocesan Carmelite monastery after three
years' detention in one of the episcopal castles. No
information has reached us respecting the result of the
inquisitorial procedure against the other members of
the sect.
Fredericq, Corpus documentorum inquisiiionis Neerlandicai, I. 267-79 (Ghent, 1889); Hatjpt in Realenc. f. prot. Theol., VIII, 311-12; Lea, History of the Inquisition, II, 405-06 (New York, 1SS8)- N.A.Weber.
Menologium. — Although the word Menologium (in English also written Menology and Menologe) has been in some measure, as we sliall see, adopted for Western use, it is originally and in strictness a name describing a particular service-book of the Greek Church. From its derivation the tenn Menologium {firivo\6yiov, from fii^y " a month ") means " month-set ", in other words, a book arranged according to the months. Like a good many other liturgical terms, e. g. lectionary (q. v.), the word has been used in several quite distinct senses by writers of authority, and the main purpose of the present notice must be to try to elucidate this confusion.
( 1 ) In the first place Menologium is not unf requently used as synonymous with Menaion {txva-hu). The Menaia usually in twelve volumes, one to each month, but sometimes bound in three, form an otiice-book, which in the Greek Church, corresponds, though very roughly, to the Proprium Sanctorum of the Breviary. They mclude all the movable parts of the services connected with the commemoration of saints and in particular the canons sung in the Orthros, the office which corresponds with our Lauds, including the synaxaries, i. e. the historical notices regarding the saints of the day, which are always inserted between the sixth and seventh odes of the canon. The .Synax- aries are read in this place very much as the Marty- rologium for the day is interpolated in the choral recitation of Prime in the offices of Western Christen- dom. (2) Secondly and more frequently, the term Menologium is used to denote the bare collection of those historical notices just mentioned, without the odes and the other matter of the canons in which they are inserted. Such a collection, consisting as it does purely of historical matter, bears a considerable re- semblance, as will be readily understood, to our Martyrology, although the notices of the saints are for the most part considerably larger and fuller than those found in our Martyrology, while on the other hand the number of entries is smaller. The "Menology of Basil ", a work of early date often referred to in con- nexion wifh the history of the Greek Offices, is a book of this class. (3) Thirdly, it frequently happens that the tables of scriptural lessons, arranged according to months and saints' days, which are often found at the beginning of manuscripts of the gospels or other lectionaries, are described as menologia. The saints' days are briefly named and the readings indicated beside each ; thus the document so designated corre- sponds much more closely to a calendar than anything else of Western use to which we can compare it. (4) Lastly the word Menologium is very widely applied to the collections of long lives of the saints of the Greek Church, whenever the,se lives, as commonly happens, are arranged according to months and days of the month. This arrangement has always been a favour- ite one also in the great Legendaria of the West, and it might be illustrated from the "Acta Sanctorum" or the well-known Lives of the .Saints by .Surius. The Greek compilers however regard September as the first and August as the last month of the ecclesiastical year. .
