In the article Marie a la Coque we have already given the personal history of this remirkable Komish saint. It remains to be added here that the Romanists of Paray-le-Monial claim to possess her bones, and that over them stands the altar erected to her memorj-. A correspondent of the New York Tribune, -who was an eye- witness, in September, 1873, of the arrival and reception
of a great body of English pilgrims — a motley throng of men and women, priests and laymen, old and young, rich and poor — thus describes the saint's remains and their costly shrine :
"She lies stretched upon an altar in the splendid chapel which her devotees have endowed. When the bones al- ready referred to weie gathered up from the grave in which they had lain for two hundred years, tliey were committed to the charge of a cunning artificer, Avho rev- erently connected them as far as they would go with gold wire. Head, feet, and hands were formed out of wax and attached to the bones, and the body was wrapped up in wadding, with an outward covering of cloth of gold, and laid upon a inatruiflcent marble altar enclosed in a rich case of bronze-dore, and studded with precious stones. The eyes of the wax figure, which are made of enamel, are half open. With its right hand it presses upon its breast a burning heart of pure gold, and in its left hand it holds a branch of silver lilies. The chapel itself is almost oppressive from the richness of its decoration. The walls are hidden belund the pictures and the banners which tlie faithful have deposited there. Tlie vault is of azure, stud- ded with stars of gold. The pavement of the church is of marble, while that of the sanctuary is set with stones, in imitation of carpet-patterns. Before the wax figure burn constantly, day and night, sixteen golden lamps set with precious stones. One of the lamps burns for the preservation of the faith in Belgium, another for the con- version of England, a third represents the Order of the Sacred Heart, and the rest are severally devoted to simi- lar 'intentions.' After this week the nnml)er of lamps will be increased by one, which the English pilgrims have brought with them, and for the endowment of which a sum of money has been invested. As things go, it takes a capital sum of forty pounds to endow a lamp with oil in perpetuity."
See Pilgrimage.
Par'bar (Heb. hajJ-Parhar', ISnEtl, with the article; Sept. Siacixofiivovg ; Vulg. celluke), a word oc- curring in Hebrew and A. V. onlj' in 1 Chron. xxvi, 18, but there found twice : "At [the] Parbar westward four [Levites] at the causeway, two at [the] Parbar." From this passage, and also from the context, it would seem that Parbar was some place on the west side of the Temple enclosure, the same side with the causeway and the gate Shallecheth. The latter was cFse to the causeway — probably on it, being that which in later times gave place to the bridge: and we know from its remains that the bridge was at the extreme south of the western wall. Parbar therefore must have been north of Shallecheth, apparently where the Bab Silsilis now is. As to the meaning of the name, the rabbins gcn- eralh' agree (see the Targum of the jiassage; also Bux- torf, Lex Talm. s. v. H^S ; and the references in Light- foot, Prospect of Temple, ch. v) in translating it " the outside place ;" while modern authorities take it as ecjuivalent to Iha jmrvarim in 2 Kings xxiii, 11 (A. V. "suburbs"), a word almost identical with intrbar, and used by the early Jewish interpreters as the ecpiivalent of mif/rashim, the precincts (A. Y. "suburbs") of the Levitical cities. Accepting this interpretation, there is no difficulty in identifying the Parbar with the suburb (ro TrpoctOTdov) mentioned by Josephus in describing Herod's Temple (^Ant. xv, 11, 5), as lying in the deep vallej' which separated the west wall of the Temple from the city opposite it; in other words, the southern end of the Tj'ropojon, which intervenes between the Wailing-place and the (so-called) Zion. The two gates in the original wall were in Herod's Temple increased to four. It does not follow (as some have assumed) that Parbar was identical with the "suburbs" of 2 Kings xxiii, 11, though the words denoting each mav have the same signification. For it seems most consonant with probability to suppose that the "horses of the Sun" would be kept on the eastern side of the Temple mount, in full view of the rising rays of the god as they shot over the Monr.t of Olives, and not in a deep valley on its western side. Parbar is probably an ancient Jebu- sitish name, which perpetuated itself after the Israelitish conquest of the city. Gesenius (Thesaur. p. 1123 «) and Fiirst {llamhch. ii, 235 b) connect parhur and par- varim with a similar Persian word,yi(?-M-a?-, meaning n
PARCJE
666
PARCHED CORN
summer-house or building open on all sides to the sun and air. — Smith. See Templk.
ParcaB (from the root pa?:'!, " a part"), the name given by the Romans to the powerful female divinities who presided over the birth and the life of mankind ; they are called the goddesses of Ftite, from the fact that they assigned to every one his " jjart" or lot. The Greek name, Moirce, has the same meaning (from fispoc, a share). They were three in number, Clolho, Lache- sis, and A/ropos, daughters of Nox and Erebus, accord- ing to Hesiod, or of Jupiter and Themis, according to the same poet in another poem. Some make them daughters of the sea. Clotho, the youngest of the sis- ters, presided over the moment in which we are born, and held a distaff in her hand; Lachesis spun out all the events and actions of our life; and Atropos, the eldest of the three, cut the thread of human life with a pair of scissors. Their different functions are well ex- pressed in this ancient verse : "Clotho colum retiuet, Lachesis net, et Atropos occat."