SERGEANT
727
SERGIOPOLIS
appointed on 31 Aug., 1909. The diocesan territory
exceeds 60,000 sq. miles, with a population (Catholic)
of about 250,000. There are 64 secular, 35 regular
priests; 30 parishes; 145 churches and chapels.
The town of La Serena, with about 20,000 inhabitants,
has 20 churches (including an imposing cathedral,
erected 1844-60); boasts a seminary with 160
students; affords good educational facilities —
notably in technical branches; and supports hospitals,
an orphan asylum, lazaretto, and foundling home.
Sisters of Mercy, of the Good Shepherd, and of the
Congregation of Picpus are active.
Ann. Pont. Calk. (1910); La Provincia Eclesidslica Chilena Ereccion de sus Obispados y Division en Parroquias (Freiburg, 1895), xi, xviii, 201, xx, 267 sqq., and passim; Gerarchia Cattolica (Rome, 1910); Werner, Orbis Terrarum Caiholicus (Freiburg, 1890).
P. J. MacAuley.
Sergeant, John, b. at Barrow-upon-Humber, Lin- colnshire, in 1623; d. in 1710, not, as Dodd asserts, in 1707 (MS. "Obituary of the Old Chapter"). He was son of William Sergeant, a yeoman, and was edu- cated as an Anglican at St. John's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1642-3. Being appointed secretary to Bishop Morton of Durham, he was em{)lo}-ed in patris- tic and historical researches which resulted in his con- version. He then went to the English College, Lis- bon, where he studied theology and was ordained priest (24 Feb., 1650). He taught humanities till 1652, when he became procurator and prefect of studies. In 1653 he was recalled to the English mis- sion, where he made many converts ; but the year fol- lowing he returned to Lisbon to resume his former offices and to teach philosophy. In 1655 the chapter, recognizing his unusual ability, elected him a canon and appointed him secretary. For the next twenty years he was actively engaged in controversy with Stillingfleet, Tillotson, and other Anglican divines, also with the CathoUc theologians who opposed the views of Thomas Blacklow. At the time of the Gates Plot he entered into communication with the Privy Council, which greatly scandalized the Catholics, but some of the incidents which happened suggest that his mind was unbalanced at the time. He avoided arrest by passing as a physician under the names of Dodd, Holland, and Smith. His peculiar temperament, which always made him cUfhcult to work with, in- creased in his later years, and he fell into a state of nervous irritation, saying and writing things which caused great offence and pain, even to his friends. He was a voluminous writer, lea\'ing over fifty works, either published or in MS. His chief writings are: "Schism Disarm'd" (Paris, 1655); "Schism Dis- patcht" (1657); "VintUcation of Benedict XII. 's Bull" (Paris, 1659); "Reflections upon the Oath of Supremacy and Allegiance" (1661); "Statera Ap- pensa" (London, 1661); "Tradidi Vobis" (London, 1662); "Sure-Footing in Christianity" (London, 1665), a system of controversy, for which he was at- tacked by Peter Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, and in defence of which Sergeant wrote several pamphlets; "Solid Grounds of the Roman Catholic Faith" (1666); "Faith Vindicated" (Louvain, 1667); "Rea- son against Raillery" (1672); "Error Non-plust" (1673); "Methodus Compendiosa" (Paris, 1674); "Clypeus Septemplex" (Paris. 1677), a defence of his o^vn teaching; a series of "Catholic Letters" in reply to StilUngfleet (London, 1687-8); "Method to Sci- ence" (London, 1696); a series of works against Car- tesian philosophy, "Ideae Cartesiana;" (London, 1698); "Non Ultra" (London, 1698); "Raillery de- feated by Calm Reason" (London, 1699); "Abstract of the Transactions relating to the English Secular Clergy" (London, 1706); other pamphlets relating to the chapter, some of which, with replies thereto, were suppressed by the orders of the chapter. There is an original painting at the English College, Lisbon.
Kirk, Literary Life of the Rev. John Sergeant, written by Ser-
geant himself in 1700, and printed in The Catholicon (1816);
Dodd, Church History, III (Brussels vere Wolverhampton, 1739-
42); Wood, Athena; Oxonienses (London, 1813-20); Butler,
Memoirs of English Catholics (London, 1819); Gillow, Bibl.
Did. Eng. Cath. s. v. ; Croft, Kirk's Historical Account of Lisbon
College (London, 1902) ; Cooper, Diet. Nat. Biog. a. v.
Edwin Bxtrton.
Sergeant, Richard, Venerable, EngUsh martyr, executed at Tyburn, 20 April, 1586. He was prob- ably a younger son of Thomas Sergeant of Stone, Gloucestershire, by Katherine, daughter of John Trye of Hard wick. He took his degree at Oxford (20 Feb., 1570-1), and arrived at the English College, Reims, on 25 July, 1581. He was ordained subdeacon at Reims (4 April, 1582), deacon at Soissons (9 June, 1582), and priest at Laon (7 April, 1583). He said his first Mass on 21 April, and left for England on 10 September. He was indicted at the Old Bailey (17 April, 1586) as Richard Lea alias Longe. With him was condemned and suffered Venerable William Thom- son, a native of Blackburn, Lancashire, who arrived at the Enghsh College, Reims, on 28 May, 1583, and was ordained priest in the Reims cathedral (31 March, 1583-4). Thomson was arrested in the house of Roger Line, husband of the mart>T Anne Line (q. ■■.'.), in Bishopsgate Ht. Without, while saying Mars. Both were executed merely for being priests and coming into the realm.
Challoner, Missionary Priests, I (London, 1878), nos. 32, 33; Knox, Douay Diaries (London, 1878); Foster, Alumni Oxoni- enses (Oxford, 1892); Harleian Soc. Publ, xxi (London, 1885), 258; Pollen, English Martyrs 1.584-1603 in Cath. Rec. Soc. (London, 1908), 129; Cath. Rec. Soc, II (London, 1906), 249, 255,
2'i- John B. Wainewright.
Sergiopolis, a titular see in Augusta Euphratensis, suffragan of Hierapolis. Under its native name Rhcsapha, it figures in Ptolemy, V, xiv, 19; as Risapa in the "Tabula Peutinger."; as Rosafa in the "Notitia dignitatum" (edited by Bocking, p. 88), the latter locates in it the eqidles promoti iyidigena;, i. e. the natives promoted to Roman Knighthood. This name signifies in Arabic causeway, paved or flagged road, and a milliary mentioned by Sterrett (Corpus inscript. latin.. Ill, 6719) who calls the town Strata Diocletiana. Procopius also (De bello pers., II, i, 6) speaks of a region called Strata (see Clermont- Ganneau, "La voie romaine de Palmyre a Resapha" and "Resapha et la Strata Diocletiana" in "Recueil d'archeol. orientale", IV, 69-74, 112). It is com- monly admitted that Resapha is identical with the Reseph (IV Kings, xix, 12; Is., xxxvii, 12) which the envoys of Sennac^herib to King Ezechias mentioned as having recently fallen into the hands of the Assyrians; the name occurs also several times in the cuneiform inscriptions under the forms Rasaappa, Rasappa, or Rasapi, and a certain number of its Assyrian governors from 839 to 737 b. c. are known. The town was then an important commercial centre [Schrader, " Keihnschrif ten und Geschichtsforschung" (Giessen, 1878), 167, 199]. At Rosapha in the reign of Maximian the soldier Sergius, after whom the town was officially named, was martyred on 7 Oct. ; Rosapha contained a Roman fortress at that time. Its first bishop was appointed shortly after 431 by John of Antioch, in spite of the opposition of the Metropoli- tan of Hierapolis, on whom that church had till then depended, for he had, he declared spent three hun- dred pounds of gold on it (Mansi, "Concil. collectio", V, 915, 943). A httle later Marianus of Rhosapha assisted at the Council of Antioch (Mansi, op. cit., VII, 325). The metropolis of Sergiopolis with five suffragan sees figures in the "Notitia episcopatuum " of Antioch in the sixth century ("Echosd'Orient", X, 145). It had obtained this title from Emperor Anas- tasius I (491-518), according to a contemporary (Cramer, "Anecdota", 11, 12, 109); at the fifth general council (553) Abraham signed as metropoli- tan (Mansi, op. cit., IX, 390). The favours of Anas-
