crease. All were daughters of pioneer settlers (see KENTUCKY, Religion); their zeal and capacity for good works formed their only dower. They taught the children, spun wool or flax, and wove it into cloth out of which they fashioned garments for themselves and for Father David's seminarians, who, on their side, found time in the intervals of study to fell trees, hew logs, and build the seminary and convent. The first log house occupied by the sisters receiv d from Father David the name of Nazareth. This name the mother-house has preserved, and thence the sisters are popularly called "Sisters of Nazareth", being thus distinguished from other Sisters of Charity.
Mother Seton could not spare sisters from Emmitts- burg to train the new cominunity, as Bishop Flaget had requested, but she sent him the same copy of the Rule of St. Vincent de Paul which he himself had brought her from France, and Father David carefully attended to the training of the novices. In February, 1816, he found the first sisters sufficiently prepared to take the vows. An image should appear at this position in the text.ST. MARY'S WELL, NAZARETH The little body was fairly organized, and its work was fast ex- tending. Miss Elea- nor O'Connell (Sister Ellen), a scholarly woman and experi- enced teacher, came to them from Balti- more, and to her the early success of the educational work of Nazareth is largely due. The reputation of Nazareth Academy was soon established, and students, even from a distance, crowded the class- rooms, although it was not until 1829 that the Legislature of Kentucky granted its charter to the "Nazareth Literary and Benevolent In- stitution". Sister
Ellen prepared others to assist her, establishing what was virtually a normal school for the sisters, which has been zealously maintained ever since. In 1822 the mother-house was removed to a farm purchased for the purpose near Bardstown. Both the convent church and the academy building were completed in 1825. The sisters, at the same time, never lost sight of their primary work of succouring the sick and the poor. In each of their houses destitute children were cared for. St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum was opened in Louis- ville, after the cholera epidemic, in 1834. Thence- forth schools, hospitals, and asylums grew apace. Besides the mother-house, the congregation now has sixteen branch academies and high schools mod- elled upon it. The sisters teach about 15,000 children in parochial schools, and care for more than 5000 sick in their hospitals and infirmaries. On petition of the present superior, Mother Eutropia McMahon, the congregation received the formal approbation of the Holy See, 5 September, 1910, nearly 98 years after its first foundation.
Besides the historical works referred to under KENTUCKY and LOUISVILLE, see SPALDING, Sketches of Kentucky (1844): BARTON, Angels of the Battlefield (1897); Annals of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth: A Brief Historical Sketch of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky (1908).
MARIE MENARD.
Nazareth, the town of Galilee where the Blessed Virgin dwelt when the Archangel announced to her the Incarnation of the Word, and where Christ lived until the age of thirty years, unknown, and obedient to Mary and Joseph. In the manuscripts of the New Testament, the name occurs in a great orthographical variety, such as Ναζαρέτ, Ναζαρέθ, Ναζαρά, Ναζαράτ, and the like. In the time of Eusebius and St. Jerome (Onomasticon), its name was Nazara (in modern Arabic, en Nasirah), which therefore, seems to be the correct name: in the New Testament we find its derivatives written Najapnvbs, or Najwpalos, but never Najaperaios. The etymology of Nazara is nêser, which means "a shoot". The Vulgate renders this word by flos, "flower", in the Prophecy of Isaias (xi, 1), which is applied to the Saviour. St. Jerome (Epist., xlvi, "Ad Marcellam") gives the same inter- pretation to the name of the town. Nazareth is situated in the most southerly hills of the Lebanon range, just before it drops abruptly down to the plain of Esdrælon. The town lies in a hollow plateau about 1200 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, be- tween hills which rise to an altitude of 1610 feet. The ancient Nazareth occupied the triangular hillock that extends from the mountain on the north, having its point turned to the south. Its north- western boundary is marked by numerous Jewish tombs which have been discovered on the slope of Jebel es Likh. The south- eastern limit is the small valley that de- scends from the beautiful spring called St. Mary's Well, which was, Do doubt, the chief at- traction for the first settlers. In the last fifty years the popu- lation has increased rapidly, and amounts at the present day to more than 7000 souls. The modern houses, white and clean, run up all along the hillsides, especially on the north. Spread out in the shape of an amphitheatre, set in a green framework of vegetation, Nazareth offers to the eye a very attractive picture.
HISTORY. The town is not mentioned in the Old Testament, nor even in the works of Josephus. Yet, it was not such an insignificant hamlet as is generally believed. We know, first, that it possessed a syna- gogue. Neubauer (La géographie du Talmud, p. 190) quotes, moreover, an elegy on the destruction of Jeru- salem, taken from ancient Midrashim now lost, and according to this document, Nazareth was a home for the priests who went by turns to Jerusalem, for ser- vice in the Temple. Up to the time of Constantine, it remained exclusively a Jewish town. St. Epipha- nius (Ady. Hareses, I, ii, hær., 19) relates that in 339 Joseph, Count of Tiberias, told him that, by a special order of the emperor, "he built churches to Christ in the towns of the Jews, in which there were none, for the reason that neither Greeks, Samaritans, nor Christians were allowed to settle there, viz., at Tibe- rias, at Dioersarea, or Sepphoris, at Nazareth, and at Capharnaum". St. Paula and St. Sylvia of Aqui- taine visited the shrines of Nazareth towards the end of the fourth century, as well as Theodosius about 530; but their short accounts contain no description of its monuments. The Pilgrim of Piacenza saw
