SPEAR
210
SPECEBACHER
documents are not authentic — everything indicates
the contrary, as the coexistence of the King Arius
and the high-priest Onias, and the fact that under
Jonathan the Bible does not speak of kings of Sparta,
as in fact the last tyrant Nabis died in 192 b. c.
We see again towards the year 170 b. c. the high
priest Jason took advantage of the bonds of relation-
ship of the Jews with Sparta to take refuge there —
where he died (II Mach., v, 9). In 139 b. c. the
Romans addressed to Sparta, and likewise to other
kingdoms and cities a circular in favour of the Jews
(I Mach., XV, 23) ; this would seem to prove that there
was already a Jewish community estabhshed in this
city. The behef in the consanguinity of the two
peoples existed even in the time of Josephus (Bel.
Jud., I, xxvi, 1), and Sparta participated in the
generosities of Herod the Great (Bel. Jud., I, x.\i, 11),
perhaps because he had there a Jewish community.
Christianity was introduced into Sparta at an
early date. Eusebius (Hist, eccl., IV, xxiii) reports
that under Marcus Aurelius, the Bishop of Corinth,
Denis, wrote to the Lacedemonians a letter which is
"a catechism of orthodoxj' and which has peace and
unity for its object". Le Quien (Oriens christ., II,
1S9-92) mentions fifteen bishops, among them Hosius
in 458, Theodosius in 681, Theocletus in 898, finally
the metropolitan Chrj'santhus, who must have be-
come a Catholic in the seventeenth century. In the
beginning suffragan of Corinth, then of Patras, the
see was made a metropolis in 1082 and numbered
several suffragan bishoprics, of which there were three
in the fifteenth century (Gelzer, "Ungedruckte . . .
Texte der Notitiae episcopatuum", 635). In 1833,
after the Peloponnesus had been included in the King-
dom of Greece, Sparta was reduced to the rank of a
simple bishopric; it remains the same to-day, but
the see is called Monembasia and Sparta. The bishop
resides at Sparta and exercises his jurisdiction over
all the district of this name. When the region fell
into the power of the Franks, Honorius III established
there in 1217 a Latin see which by degrees became a
titular and finally disappeared (Eubel, "Hier. cath.
med. oevi", I, 302; 11,188; 111,234). The city num-
bers to-day 5000 inhabitants.
Palmer. De epistolarum quas Spartiani atque Judcei inticem tibi mississe dicuntur veritate (Darmstadt, 1S2S).
S. Vailkb. Spear, The Holt. See Lance, The Holt.
Spear and Nails, Feast of the. See Passion
Offices.
Species, in scholastic terminology, the necessary determinant of every cognitive process. Few scho- lastic doctrines have been more frequently misunder- stood, misrepresented, and ridiculed than that of the species intentionales. And yet few are more obvious and unobjectionable, although we are no longer accustomed to them. While using different terms, modern psychology offers an explanation of knowledge which, in its essential features, is identical with that which was proposed by the great thinkers of the Middle Ages.
Knowledge is essentially the union of an object with the mind. As the cognitive process takes place in the mind, it follows that the known object must in some manner bo present in the mind. "Cognitio contingit secundum quod cognitum est in cog- noscente" (St. Thomas, "Contra gentiles", II, c. Ixxvii and xcviii). Any cognitive faculty is indeter- mined, or in potenlia in two ways: (1) as we have no innate ideas, it is at first a mere aptitude to acquire knowledge, a power which is not always exercised; (2) the same faculty is capable of knowing many things. Thus tlie eye can perceive any colour; th<' ear, any sound; the intellect, any conceptual ri'lation, etc. To pass from this state of twofold iudeterminatiou to a concrete and determined act of
knowledge, the faculty needs a complement, a deter-
mining principle, or actus (see Actus et Potentia).
It must be "informed", or acted upon, by its object.
For this reason all faculties of knowledge were called
passive, not in the sense that the mind is merely
passive in its cognitive process, but in the sense that
it must first be acted upon, and thence be enabled to
exercise its own cognitive activity. In other words,
knowledge is not a spontaneousactivity springing from
the mind alone, but a reaction in response to an
external stimulation.
The "species", frequently also caWei forma, is the determinant of the mind in the process of knowledge. It partakes of the nature both of the object from which it proceeds, and of the faculty in which it is received, for, as the scholastic axiom expresses is: "Quidquid recipitur per modum recipientis recipitur." And more specifically: "Cognitum est in cognoscente secundum modum cognoscentis " (St. Thomas, "Summa theol.", I, Q. xii, art. 4). Hence the species impressa Ls the modification of the faculty by the action of the object. The species expressa is the re- action of the mind as a cognitive process. The former is impressed in the faculty which it determines, and corresponds to the passive phase of knowledge which is a necessary condition but is not yet actual knowl- edge. The latter is the active response of the faculty, the cognitive process itself by which the mind reaches the object. The species must not be conceived as a substitute for the object, but as a mere medium of knowledge. The mind reaches the object directly and immediately, not the species. The species is not that which is known, "id quod cognoscitur", but that by which the object is known, "id quo objectum cog- noscitur" (St. Thomas, "Summa theol.", I, Q. xii, art. 9; Q. xiv, art. 5; Q. lx.xxv, art. 2; "De Veritate", Q. X, art. S, ad 2"m.etc.). The object as acting on the faculty, and the faculty as acted on by the object, are one and the .same reality. Actio and passio are the same thing with two aspects or phases. Hence there is no need of a bridge to pass from the subject to the object. The question: how can the mind know extramental objects? has no meaning when knowledge is conceived as the vital union of the known object with the knowing mind.
This general function of the species applies to both sensitive or organic and intellectual or spiritual faculties of knowledge. The species sensibilis is not an efflux from the object, not a physical miniature of it — a view which was accepted by some inter- preters of Aristotle, but which the great scholastics, with St. Thomas, reject. It is a modification of the sense organ by the action of the object. It is some- times called material because it results from the activity of material objects, and is a modification of a material organ. Sometimes also it is called inten- tional, or even spiritual, because it is not in itself a material representation, and is not received in physical matter, but in an organ which is animated by the soul. In other words, it is psychophysical. Thespecies. intelligibilis is the determinant of the intellectual act of knowledge. It is elaborated from the data of the senses by a special activity of the intellect (intcllectus ageiu), and received in the inteltcciui- patiens or possibilis which ehcits the act itself of knowledge (see Intellect).
BouHQLWRD, Doctrine de la cojiTiaiasance d'apris St. Thomaa d'Aquin (Paris. 1S77); IvLEUTGEN, Die Phitosophie der Vorzeit (Munster. 1867); Libeh.vtobe, Delta canoscema intelleltmle (Rome, 1873): M.vher. Psychology (Xew York and Londoa, 1910); Pe8CH, Inslitutiones psychologicic (Freiburg, 1S97); Turner. History of Philosophy (Boston, 1903), 363.
C. A. DnsRAT.
Speckbacher, Josef, a Tyrolean patriot of 1S09, b. at Gn:i(ifn\v;tld, near H;dl, in the Tvrol, 13 July, 1707; (1. at Hall, 28 March, 1820. Si)eckbacher w:i.sthe son of a pc;iaant and spent his youth in roanung, anil he did not learn to read and write until later in life. At the
