Q
Quadragesima (Lat., the fortieth) denotes a season
of preparation by fasting and prayer, to imitate the
example of Christ (Matt., iv). Several such were ob-
served by the early Christians, viz. before Christmas,
Easter, and the feast of St. John the Baptist; the
Greeks had four, the Maronites six, and the Arme-
nians eight (DuCange, "Gloss."). The major, before
Easter, is commonly known. It is mentioned in the
fifth canon of the Council of Nicoea, in the sixty-ninth
of the Apostolic Canons, and in the Pilgrimage of
.(Etheria (Duchesne, 499). In the Anglo-Saxon
Church Mass was said on the weekdays of Quadra-
gesima late in the afternoon and food was taken only
near sunset (Rock, IV, 70). According to the Roman
Rite, the feriw of this time, beginning with Ash
Wednesday, are major (see Feria). The season "
a proper preface. In ferial masses a special oration is
added after the ordinary postcommunion, with the in-
vitation: "Humiliate capita vestra Deo". Octaves
are forbidden, and if, by special concession, they are
allowed they must be interrupted on Sundays. The
first Sunday of Lent, known as Invocabit from the first
word of the Introit, is for the Greeks a commemoration
of the veneration of images (19 Feb., 842). For Gaul
it was the jour de bures or fele des brandons and for
Germany Funkenlag or Hallfeuer, because on that day
the young people ran about the streets with burning
torches (Nilles, II, 102). The second Sunday, Remi-
niscere, was marked by the Greeks as vacat (Nilles,
II, 122). The third Sunday, Oculi, was for the Greeks
Adoratio Crucis with a ceremony similar to that of the
Latins on Good Friday. For the Bohemians it was
the Ned. Kychdvnd in memory of the sneezing plague
at the end of the sixth century and of Litania sepli-
formis of Gregory the Great. The remaining Sundays
are Laelare, Passion and Palm Sunday (q. v.). (See
also Lent; Septuaoesim.*..)
Rock, Church of Out Fathers (London, 1904); Duchesne, Christian Worship (London. 1904). Kellner, Heortologie (Frei- burg, 1906, tr. London and St. Louis, 1908) ; Benoer, Pastoral- theologie. III (Ratisbon, 1863), 201; Binterim, Dtnkumrdig- keilen, V, 1, 169) , NlLLES, Kalendarium manunte (Innsbruck, 1897).
Francis Mershman.
QuadriTium. See Arts, The Seven Liberal.
Quakers. See Friends, Society of.
Quadratus, the first of the Christian apologists.
He is said by Eusebius (Chron. ad ann. Abrah. 2041,
124 a. d.) to have been a disciple of the Apostles
{auditor aposlolorum). He addressed a discourse to
the Emperor Hadrian containing an apology for the
Christian religion, during a visit which the latter
made to Athens in 124 or 125. With the exception
of a short passage quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl.,
IV, iii), this apology has entirely disappeared.
Eusebius states (Chron.) incorrectly, however,
that the appeal of Quadratus moved the emperor
to issue a favourable edict. Because of the similar-
ity of name some scholars have concluded (e. g.
Bardenhewer, "Patrology", p. 46) that Quadratus
the apologist is the same person as Quadratus, a
prophet mentioned elsewhere by Eusebius (Hist.
Eccl., Ill, xxxvii). The evidence, however, is too
slight to be convincing. The later references to
Quadratus in .Jerome and the martyrologies are all
based on Eusebius or are arbitrary enlargements of
his account.
RoiiTH, Rrliquim Same, I (Oxford. 1846), 69-79; Habnack, Ueberlifferung der griech. ApoloqHen, lO.'i; Gmch. d. altchrist. Li(er., I, 9.5; 11,269-71; Babdenheweb, Pa(ro(oou, tr. Shahan (St. Louis, 1908).
Patrick J. Healy.
Quality (Gr. Toidrits — Plato, Aristotle — Toiiv; Lat.
qualilas, quale) is used, 1st, in an e.xtended sense, as
whatever can be attributed to the subject of dis-
course; and 2nd, in its exact signification, as that cate-
gory which is distinguished from the nine others
enumerated by Aristotle. In the present article the
word is treated in its stricter sense. The eighth
chapter of the "Categories" treats of quality, as
distinct from substance and the other predicaments.
It is described, however, in the opening words of the
sixth chapter of the same book as that on account of
^sn vk'hich we say that anything is such or such — woibT-qTn
nas g^ A^7w, KaB ^v irotU nvci [ilvai] \4yovTai, It is thus
the accidental form which determines the subject to a
special mode of being. It is the reply to the question
Qualis sit res?, as St. Thomas Aquinas remarks; and
is the correlative to Talis (as Quanlus to Tanlus), as
is pointed out by James Mill in his "Analysis". As
the notion is a simple one, it is not possible strictly
to define it; for, to do this, it would be necessary to
split it up into genus and differentia — an impossibility
where the simplest concepts are concerned. It is
itself not a real genus, since many particular things, not
generically identical, can be subjects of the same
predicate, analogically employed. Quality is the
category according to which objects are said to be
like or unlike ; and, in view of the tendency introduced
into modern science by the mechanist theories of
Descartes, and fostered by the postulate of the trans-
formation of energy, it is of importance that the
qualitative should be distinguished from the quanti-
tative differences of objects (cf. Quantity). Aris-
totle's classification of the heads of discourse in the
"Categories" is a logical one, in which the attri-
butes are considered as possible predicates of a sub-
ject. But they are further understood metaphys-
ically; and, in this sense, quality is one or other of the
four modes in which substance is determined to
being talis or talis, i.e. such or such. Considered thus,
it is an accidental determination (cf. Form).
The four divisions of quality are: (1) Habit, or condition (habitus) ; a permanent and comparatively stable quality by which man, considered as to his nature or operation, is well or ill-adapted towards his natural end. Strictly speaking, only man can be the subject of habit. It is thus di.slinguisiied from disposition; which is used of other tiian human beings. Less stable conditions, as hot, cold, sick, well, are also mentioned here. (2) Natural powers or incapacities (potentia activa el impotentia) . These are distinguished, as accidents, from the substance; and are further distinguished among themselves as are the distinct acts from which they are inferred. The im- portant Scholastic thesis of the real distinction of nature from its faculties arises in this connexion. (3) Power of causing sensations and results of the modification of sense; the one belonging, as quality, to the objects of sense; the other to the senses that are modified. (4) Figure, or circumscriliing form of extended bodies. St. Thoiiuis Aquinas insists upon the fact that this mode of (|u;i,lily (nKjrphdlogy) is the most certain index of the identity or diversity of species, especially in plants and animals. Quality admits in the concrete, though not in the abstract, of more and less; and in some cases, though not in all,
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