S. The rabbins have no judicial power; that belongs exclusively to the Sanhedrim. As the Jews of France and Italy enjoyed the equal protection of the laws at that lime, there was no necessity to confer any jurisdiction or authority on their teachers.
9. The election and authority of the rabbins are gov- erned solely by custom.
10. There is no law which forbids the Jew to engage in any kind of business. The Talmud enjoins that every Jew shall be taught some trade.
11 and 12. The Mosaic law forbids unlawful interest; but that was a regulation intended for an agricultural people. The Talmud allows interest to be taken from brethren and strangers, but forbids usury.
Napoleon expressed himself satisfied with the.se an- swers of the Sanhedrim. On Feb. 9, 1807, the second Sanhedrim was convoked, to which Jews from other countries, and especially from Holland, were invited, that the principles laid down by the first Sanhedrim might acquire the force of law among the Jews in all parts. Tlie answers of the former were sanctioned, and a plan of reform adopted exactly suited to the emperor's purpose. The Jews, and even the rabbins, were to be governed by consistories, which, of course, were to be governed by Napoleon.
Art. xii of this plan defines the duties of the consistories : "The functions ofthe consistories shall be, 1st, to see that the rabbins do not, either in public or private, give any instructions or explanations of the law in contradiction to the answers of llie assembly, confirmed by the decision of the Gieat Sanhedrim." Art. xxi : "The functions of The rabbins are, 1st, to teach reliiriou ; 2d, to inculcate the doctrines contained in the decisicnis of the Great Sanhe- drim; 3d, to represent military service to the Israelites as a sacred duty, and to declare to them that while they are engaged in it the law exempts them from the prac- tices which might be inconipatilile with it." Art. xxii fixes the salaries of the rabbins.
It is almost inconceivable that any Jew could ap- jjrove, much less praise, this system of spiritual tyranny imposed by a Gentile despot. Yet Jest saj-s, " The ef- fects of these deliberations, to which the emperor gave his assent, were peculiarly beneficial." See Tama, Col- lection de.t Proces-Verbaiix et Decisions du Giand Sari- hedrim (Par. 1807, 8vo) ; id. Collection des A ctes de VA s-
semblee des Israelites de France et du Royaume d'ltalie (ibid. 1807, 8vo) ; Griitz, Gesch. d. Juden, xi, 290 sq., 620 sq.; Jost, Gesch. d.Judenth. U.S. Sekten, in, o28 sq. ; Des- sauer, Gesckichte der Isrueliten, p. 475 sq. ; Stern, Gesch. d. Judenth. seit Mendelssohn, p. 138 sq. ; Schmucker, Ilistory of the Modern Jeics, p. 25(5 sq. ; Da Costa, Is- rael and the Gentiles, p. 3Gi sq. ; Hnic, History oj' the Jev:s,p. 216 sq.; H. Adains, IJistory of the Jetvs,u, 154 sq. ; IM'Canl, sketches of Judaism and the Jews, p. 54 sq. ; id. The Old Path, p. 366 sq. ; Milman, Ilistory of the Jeu-s (New York, 1870), iii, 414 sq. ; Palmer, History of the Jewish Nation (Lond. 1874), p. 297 sq. (B. P.)
Parisis, Piehke Louis, a French prelate, was one of the greatest luminaries of the French episcopacy. He was born in 1795. In 1835 he was consecrated as bish- op of Arras. Later he became bishop of Boulogne and St. Omcr, and those eminent positions he filled un- til his death, Jan. 28, 18G6. Parisis was the founder and editor of the Revue des sciences ecclesiastiques, and the author of some apologetical works, as Jesus Christ is God (French and German), written against Eenan's Vie de Jesus ; and on Dirine Truth, also translated into German. See Litcrarischer Ilandiceiser fur das katho- lische Beutsch/and, 1864, p. 64 sq.. 110; 1865, p. 117; 1866, p. 355.
Parisot, Pieiuse, a noted French Capuchin mis- sionary, was born at Bar-le-Duc in 1697. In 1736 he went as a missionary to the East Indies; but having quarrelled with the Jesuits, they had him removed to America. He returned to Europe in 1744, and soon af- ter published a work, entitled Historical Memoirs rela- tive to the Missions in the Indies, which gave such of- fence to his own order as well as the Jesuits that he withdrew to England, where he established two manu- factories of tapestrj'. After visiting part of Germany and the Peninsula, he at length returned to his native country, became reconciled to his order, and again ab- jured it. Parisot died in 1770. His most important work is a History of the Society of Jesus, from its First Foundation by lynatius Loyola.
Parity, in ecclesiastic judicial parlance, signifies the equality of rights of different religious denominations in their relations to the state ; those states, therefore, are jKirital which have granted equal rights to the several churches established in their domains. The principle of parity, totally unknown to Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages, has but gradually attained recognition since the Eelormation. It was at first, and that only partially, acknowledged in the relations of the Lutheran estates to the German empire, by the Augsburg (re- ligious) compact of 1555, which however excluded the Reformed (Calvinistic) Church ; yet for the single ter- ritories the professed creed of the reigning prince was determinative. In the Peace of Westphalia (1648) this territorial j)rinciple was restricted or abolished ; but the denominational character, in spite of the imperial stat- utes, continued in the single territories with manifold restrictions. The Netherlands, after their struggle for liberation, and Cromwell and the English common- wealth of the 17th century, were the first to pronounce and practice the principle of religions toleration (q. v.) at least of all evangelical .sects; in Germany it was the great elector who carried out the parity of the Reform- ed with the Lutheran Church at the Westphalian peace. But only after the principle ciijns reyio, ejus reliyio — the maxim prevalent in the 15th and 16th centuries — had yielded to the influence of the doctrine of universal human rights, the idea of tlie state parity for the differ- ent churches came to prevail, and is now incorporated in the constitutions of the European states. In Ger- many parity was formally declared only as late as the act of the Rhenish Confetleration, by art. xvi, in 1806. In America it has been acknowledged since the estab- lishinent of the Union ; in Pennsylvania it had been in- troduced by ^^'illiam Penn, who may properly be con- sidered the founder of our parity idea. In the details,