of the term " curate " has been that the title of " perpetual curate " has fallen into desuetude in the Anglican Church, some inconvenience being found to result from the indis criminate application of the term "curate," in the case of perpetual curacies, both to the incumbent of the parish and to his assistant curate, and an Act of Parliament (31 and 32 Viet c. 1 17) has accordingly been passed to authorize such incumbents to style themselves vicars. The Act provides
as follows:—
The incumbent of the church of every parish or new parish for ecclesiastical purposes, not being a rector, who is or shall be autho rized to publish banns of matrimony in such church, and to solem nize therein marriages, churches, and baptisms, according to the laws and canons in force in this realm, and who is or shall be entitled to take, receive, and hold for his own sole use and benefit the entire fees arising from the performance of such offices without any reservation thereout, shall from and after the passing of this Act, for the purposes of style and designation, but not for any other purpose, be deemed and styled the vicar of such church and parish or new parish, as the case may be, and his benefice shall for the same purpose be styled and designated a vicarage."
CURES, an old town of the Sabines, not far from the left bank of the Tiber, about 25 miles from Rome. It was renowned in Roman story as the birth-place of Tatius, the colleague of Romulus, and of Numa the second king of Rome; and, according to the belief of the ancients, the term Quirites, the distinguishing epithet of the Roman people, was derived from its name. If it be true, as Strabo asserts, that Cures was at one time a large city, it early fell into decay. About 100 B.C. it was colonized by Sulla, and continued to prosper till about the 4th century of the Christian era. It was finally destroyed by the Lombards before the end of the 6th century. Remains of the town have been discovered at the modern village of Correse.
CURETON, William, D.D. (1808-1864), a famous English Orientalist, was born at Westbury, in Shropshire. After being educated at the Free Grammar School of Newport, and at Christ Church, Oxford, he took orders in 1832, became chaplain of Christ Church College, sub librarian of the Bodleian, and, in 1837, assistant keeper of MSS. in the British Museum. He was afterwards appointed select preacher to the university of Oxford, chaplain in ordinary to the queen, rector of St Margaret s, Westminster, and canon of Westminster. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society, corresponding member of the German Oriental Society and of the Institute of France, and foreign associate of the Institute, member of the French Asiatic Society and of the Historico-Theological Society of Leipsic, and trustee of the British Museum. He died in 1864.
Cureton s most remarkable work was the edition with notes and an English translation of the Epistles of St Ignatius to St Polycarp, the Ephesians, nnd the Romans, from a Syriac MS., found in the monastery of St Mary Deipara, in the desert of Nitria, near Cairo. He held that the MS. he used gave the truest text, that all other texts were inaccurate, and that the epistles contained in the MS. were the only genuine epistles of St Ignatius that we possess a view which received the support of F. C. Baur, Bunsen, and many others, but which was opposed by Dr Wordsworth and by several German scholars. Cureton supported his view by his Vindicice Ignatiance and his Corpus Ignatianum, a Complete Collection of tJic Ignatian Epistles, genuine, interpolated, and spurious. He also edited a partial Syriac text of the Festal Letters of St Athanasius, which was translated into English by Henry Burgess (1854), and published in the Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church; Remains of a very Ancient Recension of the Four Gospels in Syrian, hitherto miknoivn in Europe ; Spicilegium Syriacum, containing Remains of Bardcsan, Mcliton, Ambrose, Mara Bar Serapion ; The third Part of the Ecclesiastical History of John, Bishop of Ephesus, which was translated by Payne Smith ; Fragments of the Iliad of Homer from a Syriac Palimpsest ; an Arabic work known as the Thirty-first Chapter of the Book entitled The Lamp that guides to Salvation, written by a Christian of Tekrit ; The Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects, by Muhammed al Sharastani : a Commentary on the Book of Lamentations, by Rabbi Tuuclium ; and the Pillar of the Creed of the Sunnites. Cureton also published several sermons, among which was one entitled The Doc trine of the Trinity not Speculative but Practical. After his death Dr W. Wright of the British Museum edited with a preface the Ancient Syriac Documents relative to the earliest Establishment of Christianity in Edessa and the neighbouring Countries, from the year of our Lord s Ascension to the beginning of the fourth Century ; discovered, edited, and annotated by the late W. Cureton.
CURFEW, Curfeu, or Couver-feu, a signal, as by toll ing a bell, to warn the inhabitants of a town to extinguish their fires and lights and retire to rest. This was a common practice throughout the various countries of Europe during the Middle Ages, especially in cities taken in war. In the law Latin of those times it was termed ignitegium, or pyritegium. The curfew is commonly said to have been introduced into England by William the Conqueror, who ordained, under severe penalties, that at the ringing of the curfew-bell at eight o clock in the evening all lights and fires should be extinguished. It seems probable, however, that he merely enforced an existing and very common police regulation to that effect. The absolute prohibition of lights after the ringing of the curfew-bell was abolished by Henry I. in 1100. The practice of tolling a bell at a fixed hour in the evening, still extant in many places, is a survival of the ancient curfew. The common hour was at first seven, and it was gradually advanced to eight, and in some places to nine o clock. In Scotland ten was not an unusual hour. As a precaution against conflagrations, the curfew was a most useful regulation, at a period when it was the custom to place the fire in a hole in the middle of the floor, under an opening in the roof to allow the escape of the smoke. When a family retired to rest for the night, the fire was extinguished by covering it up ; and hence the term couvre-feu, or curfew. But this salutary regulation served another important end, since by obliging people to keep within doors, nocturnal brawls in the streets were in a great measure prevented. There is a popular tradition, for which no historical authority can be assigned, that the severity exhibited by William the Conqueror in enforcing obedience to the curfew, was more particularly designed to prevent the English from assembling in secret to plan schemes of rebellion against himself. The ringing of the " prayer-bell," as it is called, which is still practised in some Protestant countries, originated in that of the curfew-bell.
CURIA, the name of the ten divisions into which a tribe was divided by the constitution of Romulus. There being three tribes, there were thirty curing, a number which was not altsred when the number of the tribes was increased to thirty-five. This division was a division of the populus, to the exclusion of the plebs ; and hence the assembly of the populus was called the comitia curiata. But when Servius Tullius instituted the comitia centuriata as the sovereign assembly of the republic, the comitia curiata lost almost all power other than ecclesiastical, except that of conferring upon magistrates the imperiian and the privilege of taking auspices ; and even this remnant of their political authority became a mere form, which was sometimes neglected. But the curiae retained all their ecclesiastical functions ; each elected a chief priest, or curio, and a subordinate priest, called the curialis flamt .n, while together they elected the curio maximus, who presided over the curiones. The comitia curiata alone could sanc tion adrogatio, or the adoption of a man who was sui juris, or not under the control of parents. The building in vrhich a cuiia met was also called a curia ; and the name was given, besides, to the buildings in which a senate met, and even to a senate itself, though never to the senate of Rome.
important and very diversified functions, which Jacobus Gothofredus gives a catalogue of under twenty-two heads (see Animad. in Cod. Theod., lib. xii. tit. i.). Bingham
speaks of these offices of the " curiales " as synonymous.