AVILA
161
AVIZ
Uni^'Ersitt of A\aLA (1550-1807). — Under the
latronage of Queen Isabella, the Dominicans es-
ablished (1504) chairs of philosophy and theol-
)gy in their College of St. Thomas at Avila, Spain.
Vbout 1550, the Papal Nuncio, Juan Poggio, raised
he college to university rank. Gregory XIII, at
he request of Philip II, ratified the nuncio's action
)y the Bull "In Apostolatus culmine", 4 April, 1576.
nnocent X, in 1645, approved the statutes of the
miversity and empowered it to grant degrees in
irts, theology, medicine, and law. Its work, how-
ever, was mainly theological. Though it enjoyed
he favour of the Spanish sovereigns, especially of
rharles II, it never attracted a large number of stu-
lents. It had no endoT\anent, but depended upon
iuition fees. As a result, it began to decline during
•,he eighteenth century, and it was suppressed, along
frith several other minor universities, in 1807.
De Zah.vte, De la Jnstruccirin piiblica en Espafia (Madrid, 855) II 20S; L.l Fuente, Historia de las Universidadea . . . •n Espafia (Madrid, 1885), II, 149; Bullariitm Ord. Freed. Rome, 1733), V. t- , t,
E. A. Pace. Avila, Francisco de, curate or vicar in the province of Huarochiri of Peru, later curate at Hudnaco, finally Canon of the Church of La Plata Inow Sucre), in Bolivia. Born in Peru as a found- ing (quorum -parentes ignorantur he says him- self); date of demise unknown. He was one of the nost active investigators of Indian rites and cus- toms of his time. In 1608 he wrote a treatise of the 'Errors, False Gods, and Other Superstitions of the [ndians of the Province of Huarochiri, Mama, and Jhaclla ", of which unfortunately only the first six chapters are known to exist and have been trans- ated into English. It is, even in its incomplete
- orm, an invaluable contribution to the knowledge
Df the Peruvian Indians and their primitive lore, [n 1611 Avila «Tote an equally important report on the Indians of Huanaeo in eastern Peru, of which the unpublished MS. is extant. Such writings Treatly mitigate the charges which the destruction jf fetishes and other objects of primitive worship Df the Indians have called forth against the Church. (See AnR!.\GA, Pablo Jose.)
'Fables and Rites of the Incas (Hakluyt Society, 1872); Mendiburu, Diccionario histiirico hiogrdfico del Feru (1874); .A.RRiAaA Eitirpaciun de la Idolatrla del Ferii (Lima, 1621); Jimenez 'de la Espada, Tres relaciones de antigiiedades perua- las (Madrid, 1879), Introduction.
Ad. F. Bandeuer.
Avila, S.wcHO de, b. at Avila of the Kings, in Old Castile, 1546, and named after the place of his birth; d. at Plaseneia. in the same province, 6 or 7 December, 1625. He was of a distinguished family but was still more eminent for his saintliness, his vast knowledge, and his success as a preacher. He made his ecclesiastical studies and received his doctorate at the great University of Salamanca. He was afterwards consecrated bishop and held, at dif- ferent times, the Sees of Murcia, Jaen in Andalusia, Siguenza in Old Castile, in 1615, and, seven years later, Plaseneia, where he remained until his death. He had been a confessor of St. Theresa. The fol- lowing works of his in Spanish are worthy of note: "The 'Veneration Due to the Bodies and Relics of Saints" (Madrid, 1611); "Sermons" (Baeza, 1615); "The Sighs of St. Augustine", from the Latin (Mad- rid, 1601, 1626); and, in manuscript, the Lives of St. Augustine and St. Thomas.
William Devlin.
Avitus (Alcimus Ecdicius), Saint, a distin- guished Bishop of Vienne, in Gaul, from 490 to about 518, though liis death is placed by some as late as 525 or 526. He was born of a prominent Gallo-Roman family closely related to the Empenjr Avitus and other illustrious persons, and in which episcopal honours were hereihtary. In difficult U,— 11
times for the Catholic Faith and Roman culture in
Southern Gaul, A\'itus exercised a favourable in-
fluence. He pursued with earnestness and success
the extinction of the Arian heresy in the barbarian
Kingdom of Burgundy (443-532), won the confidence
of King Gundobad, and converted his son. King Sig-
ismund (516-523). He was also a zealous opponent
of Semipelagianism, and of the Acacian Scliism at
Constantinople. Like his contemporary, Ennodius
of Pavia, he was strenuous in his assertion of the
authority of the Apostohc See as the chief bulwark
of rehgious unity and the incipient Christian civiliza-
tion. "If the pope", he says, "is rejected, it follows
that not one bishop, but the whole episcopate
threatens to fall" (.Si papa urbis vacatur in dubium,
episcopatus videbitur, non episcopius, vacillare. — Ep.
xxxiv; ed. Peiper). The literary fame of Avitus
rests on a poem of 2,552 hexameters, in five books,
deahng with the Scriptural narrative of Original Sin,
Expulsion from Paradise, the Deluge, the Crossing
of the Red Sea. The first three books offer a certain
dramatic unity; in them are told the preliminaries of
the great disaster, the catastrophe itself, and the
consequences. The fourth and fifth books deal
with the Deluge and the Crossing of the Red Sea
as symbols of baptism. A\-itus deals freely and
familiarly with the Scriptural events, and exhibits
well their beauty, sequence, and significance. He
is one of the last masters of the art of rhetoric as
taught in the schools of Gaul in the fourth and fifth
centuries. Ebert says that none of the ancient
Christian poets treated more successfully the poetic
elements of the Bible. His poetic diction, though
abounding in archaisms and rhythmic redundancy,
is pure and select, and the laws of metre are well
observed. It is said that Milton made use of his
paraphase of Scripture in the preparation of " Para-
dise Lost". He wrote also 666 hexameters " De
^^rginitate" or "De consolatoria castitatis laude"
for the comfort of liis sister Fuscina, a nun. His
prose works include "Contra Eutychianam Hsresim
Ubri H", written in 512 or 513, and also about
eighty-seven letters that are of considerable impor-
tance for the ecclesiastical and political history of
the years 499-518. Among them is the fanious
letter to Clovis on the occasion of liis baptism.
There was once extant a collection of his homilies,
but they have perished with the exception of two
and some fragments and excerpts. In recent times
Julien Havet has demonstrated (Questions m^rovin-
giennes, Paris, 1885) that A\'itus is not the author
of the "Dialogi cum Gundobado Rege", a defence
of the CathoUc Faith against the Arians, purporting
to represent the famous Colloquy of Lyons in 449,
and first published by d'Ach^ry (1661) in his
" Spicilegium " (V, 110-116). It is a forgery of the
Oratorian, Jerome Viguier, who also forged the letter
of Pope Symmachus (13 Oct., 501) to Avitus. The
works of Avitus are found in Migne, P. L., LIX,
191-398. There are two recent editions: one by
R. Peiper (in Mon. Germ. Hist.: Auct. Antiq., VI,
Berlin, 1883), the other by U. ChevaUer (Lyons,
1890).
Acta SS., 1 February; Avite. so vie, tea ceuvres (Pans, 1S70); Denkinger, St. Avite et la destruction de I'Arianisme en Gaule (Geneva. 1890); Gcizot. Hist, de la civilisation en France (1829), II, 198-216; Gorini. Defense de VEglise (Pans, 1866), II 1-86; KuRTH, Hist, poitique des meravinffiens (1893), 243 sqq ■ YocNQ in Diet. Christ. Biogr., I, 233; Bardenhewer, Pair^ologie (Freiburg, 1901), 538, 539.
Thomas J. Shah.an.
Aviz, Order of, a military body of Portuguese knights.— The Kingdom of Portugal, founded in 1128, was not only contemporaneous with the Crusades but conducted one of its own against the Moors. Some crusaders were bound only by tem- ])orary vows, and when these expired they would sometimes return to their country although the war
