Mocetto, GirolaSio, a painter and engraver of the Venetian school, and sometimes called Ilieronijimis Mo- cetus, was a native of Verona, according to Lauzi, or of Brescia, according to Vasari, and was probably an early disciple of Bellini. Lanzi mentions an altar-piece in the church of S. Nazario-e-Celso bearing his name, and dated 1493. Mocetto was chiefly known, however, as an en- graver, and his works in tliis line are extremely scarce and valuable. Among others may be mentioned en- gravings of the Resurrection ; the Sacrifice, with many tigures; the Virr/iii and Child, with St. John the Baptist- and another saint, v.hich is now in the British Museum; the Virgin and Child seated on a Throne, and a wood-cut of the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem. He died about 1500. See Spooner, Biog. Hist, of the Fine A7-ts (N. Y. 1865, 2 vols. Svo), ii, 590 ; Lanzi, Hist, of Painting, transl. by Roscoe (Lond. 1847, 3 vols. Svo), ii, 107; Revue des Beaux Arts, Juin 15, 1859.
Mocha OF Tiberias, or Palestine, a noted rabbi, who flourished shortly after the middle of the 8th cen- tury, is said to have been one of the world's greatest savans. Unfortunately but little is known of his per- sonal history. He established, or at least amplified, the interlineary system of vocalization, called the Tiberian, or Palestinian, which has for centuries been generally adopted both by Jew and Gentile in pointed editions of the O.-T. Scriptures, to the exclusion of the superline- ary system, called the Babylonian, or Assyrian, which was invented or extended b}^ Acha of Irak (in the first half of the 6lh century). Like his predecessor R. Acha, the author of the opposite sj^stem, R. IMocha also com- piled a large and small ]Masorah, in which are discussed the writing of words -with or without the voivel letters (lOni N^n), the affixing of certain accents (m3152), accented syllables, Dagesh and Raphe, rare forms, ar- chaic words, homonymes, etc., as is evident from an an- cient MS. of the Pentateuch by Firkowitzsch, where the following Masoretic gloss frequently occurs: "Rabbi Mocha writes this with and tliat without the vowel let- ters." These IMasoretic glosses he wrote in Aramaic, and in the Tiberian dialect— the language of the Pales- tinian Jews — in order to make his labors both accessible and intelligible to all his people. Not unfrequently, however, these Masoretic glosses are intermixed with notes written in Hebrew. See Pinsker, Likuti Kadmo- nijot (Vienna, 1860), p. 62, Appendix ; Griitz, Gesch. d. Juden,\, 552; Flirst, Gesch. des Karderthums, i, 15 sq., 134 sq.— Kitto, Cyclop, of Bibl. Lit. ii, 195.
Moch'mur, the Brook (o xitltc'tppoQ Moxnovp; Alex, omits Mox- ; Vulg. omits), a torrent, i. e. a wady — the word "brook" conveys an entirely false impres-
sion— mentioned only in Judith vii, 18 ; and there as spec- ifying the position of Ekrebel— "Near unto Chusi, and upon the brook jMochmnr." Ekrebel has been identi- fied, with great probability, by Mr. Van de Velde in Ak- rabeh, a ruined site in the mountains of Central Pales- tine, equidistant from Nabliis and Seilun, south-east of the former and north-east of the latter; and the torrent Mochmur may be either the Wady MaJcfuriyeh, on the northern slopes of which Akrabeh stands, or the Wady Ahmar, which is the continuation of the former cast- wards. The reading of the Syriac {Nachol de-Ptor) possibly points to the existence of a sanctuary of Baal- Peor in this neighborhood, but is more probably a cor- ruption of the original name, which was a]jparently "i^'cn^a (Simon, Onomasticon N. T. p. 111). — Smith.
Modalism is a term applied to the heretical views regarding the Trinity first espoused by Sabellius, a presbyter of Ptolemais, who flourished about the middle of the 3d century. Adopting the notions of the earlier Monarchians, he maintained, in opposition to the doc- trine propounded by Origen and his scliool, that the appellations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were only so many different manifestations and names of one and the same divine being. He thus converted the objec- tive and real distinction of persons (a trinity of essence) into a merely subjective and modalistic view (the trin- ity of manifestation). See, however, jMonarchiaxs; Sabellianisji. Compare also the articles Hvposta- sis and Trinity.
Modality (from Lat. modus'), a philosophical term applied by Kant, who, in treating of our judginents, re- duced them to the four heads of quantity, qualit}-, rela- tion, and modality. In reference to modality, he teaches, they are either problematic, or assertory, or apodictical. Hence the category of modality includes possibility and impossibility, existence and non-existence, necessity or contingency. But existence and non-existence should have no place; the contingent and the necessary are not different from being. Kant was not, however, the first to use the term modality. Aristotle may not have used it himself in the four ?noc7«Z propositions which he defined and opposed (Uepl tpixr]veiag, c. 12-14), but it is to be found among his commentators and the scholastic philosophers. See Krauth's Fleming, Vocabulary of Philos. (N. Y., Sheldon & Co.) p. 320, 321 ; Diet, des Sci- ences Philosoph. s. V.
Modena, formerly a sovereign duchy of Upper It- aly, and now a part of the united kingdom, is situated between Parma, Lombardy, Venice, the Papal States, Tuscany, and the Adriatic Ocean, and covers an area of about 2300 square miles, with 604,500 inhabitants (in 1870).