Semi-double, an inferior or secondary ecclesiasti- cal festival, ranking next above a simple feast or bare commemoration.
Semi-frater, a layman or a secular cleric who, having benefited a religious house by gifts or personal service, was regarded as in some way belonging to the order or fraternity, having a share in its prayers during life, and in mortuary masses after death.
Semi-jejuDia (half-fasts), a name given to the weekly fasts in the ancient Christian Church, because the services of the Church continued on these days no longer than till three o'clock in the afternoon, whereas a perfect and complete fast was never reckoned to end before evening. These half-fasts were also called Sta- tions (q. v.). — Gardner, Faiths of the World, s. v.
Semi-Judaizers (1), a Socinian sect, originated in the 6th century by Francis David, a Hungarian, who was superintendent of the Socinian churches in Tran- sylvania. The principal doctrine which David and his followers maintained was that neither prayer nor any other act of religious worship should be offered to Jesus Christ. Faustus Socinus argued strongly against this tenet; and when all efforts to reclaim the Hinigarian heretic were found to be fruitless, the public authorities threw him into prison, where he died at an advanced age, A.D. 1579. The sect, however, survived its found- er, and for a long time gave no little trouble to Socinus and his followers in Poland and Lithuania. Faustus Socinus wrote a book expressly against the Semi-.Juda- izers, while at the same time he strongly admitted that the point in debate between himself and them was of no great importance, since in his own view it was not necessary to salvation that a person should pray to Christ.
(2.) The name Semi-.Tudaizers was also given to a sect founded near the close of the 16th century by Martin Seidelius, a Silesian, who promulgated various strange doctrines in Poland and the neighboring coun- tries. The chief points of this system were that (iod had indeed promised a Saviour or a Messiah to the Jew- ish nation, but that this Messiah had never appeared, and never woulil appear, because the Jews by their sins had rendered themselves unworthy of so great a deliv- erer; that of course Jesus Christ was erroneously re- garded as the Messiah ; that it w-as his only business and office to explain the laws of nature, which had been greatly obscured, and therefore that whoever shall obej' this law as expounded by Jesus Christ will fulfil all the religious duties that God requires of him. While dif- fusing these erroneous opinions, Seidelius rejected all the books of the New Test, as spurious.
(3.) In Russia, also, a small sect of Semi-Judaizers, called Sahatniki (q. v.), exists, which mixes up to a con- siderable extent Jewish and Christian rites. — Gardner, Faiths of the World, s. v.
Semikin ("^a'^'SD), or Junctions, is a Masoretic term to denote " approaching, belonging together, con-
nection," of one word with another. Now, when two or more words are associated together through the addi- tion or diminution of a letter or word, or by the inter- change of words which are not in the habit of being joined in this manner, and if it only occurs so in one place, the Masorites remark thereon, ~i?3DT P^b, i. e. " not extant so joined." Thus, on ir"lT1 "|5Tl, ami coiti and tcine (Gen. xxvii, 37), they remark " not extant so joined," since in all other places where these two words occur the word 'm has not the Vav conjunctive ("^s^ "112'^nrt 1 ^^) -, and thus the Masorah finalis under the letter Vav, p. 28 a, col. 2, 3, gives a list of sixty-two pairs, both words of which have Yav conjunctive, and are without parallel. The same remark is made on T^TS'iZ) n'^TT, briers, thorns (Isa. xxvii, 4), since in all other places it is with Vav conjunctive. The sixteen pairs without the Vav conjunctive are given in the Masorah. The same remark is made on V2V "ir^TI.", Sahbatism, Sabbath (Exod. xvi, 23), since in all other passages in which these two words are joined they are inverted. Thus in ver. 23 we read ra^U '|irn'U, but every- where else "(inao r2'J. A list of thirty -nine in- stances'which occur in this connection is given by the Masorah in the part entitled Various Readings (^Slbn nx-i-ip). See Frensdorff, Ochlah we-OcMah, § 253, p. 50, 139 sq.; § 252, p. 50, 138 sq.; § 273, p. 53, 147 sq.; Levita, Massoreth Ila-Massoreth (ed. Ginsburg), p. 212 sq. ; Buxtorf, Tiberias, sive Coiimienturius Maso- reticus, p. 258 sq. (B. P.)
Seminarist, a Roman Catholic priest who has been educated in a seminary.
Seminary-priest, a name given in England to Roman Catholic clergy during the 17th century, on ac- count of their having been educated and prepared for holy orders in one of the foreign seminaries — e. g. Rheims, Douai, or Toulouse.
Semiophorus C^ijfiHotpupog), a Greek term for a
worker of miracles.
Semi-Pelagianism, the name invented by the schoolmen to mark the middle line of opinion held by the Pelagians (q. v.), on one side, and the predestina- rian theory of Augustine, on the other. As early as A.D. 426 the monks of Adrumetum, in Byzacene Africa, having read Augustnie's letter to Sixtiis {Ep. 194), were astounded at the doctrine therein propounded, viz. that men were disposed of eternally, either in the way of happiness or misery, by an arbitrary decree. To their strictures Augustine answered bj' putting forth his two works De Gratia et Libera A rbitrio and De Correptione et Gratia. The task of harmonizing these conflicting systems of theology was attempted by John Cassianus (q. v.), and he became the real founder of Semi-Pelagi- anism. Cassianus acknowledged the universal deteri- oration of human nature bj' the fall; but he assigned also an unlimited scope to the divine goodness and love that wills the salvation of all, and bends everything to that end. He expressly condemns the main position of Pelagius: " Let no one imagine that by this we give support to the profane notion of some who assert that the sum of salvation is in our own power, and b}' as- cribing everything to free will make the grace of God to be dispensed according to each man's merit" (Coll. xiii, 16). He entirely ignores irresistible grace and ab- solute decrees of divine predestination, though his doc- trine with respect to preventing grace agrees generally with that of Augustine. In fact, he can neither agree with those who make the gift of grace dependent upon human merit, nor with others who deny that man has any power in himself to originate good in his own heart. These ojiinions doubtless helped to form a general dis- like for the theory of irresistible grace and divine pre- destination. Stanch partisans opposed the Semi -Pe- lagians, the master-spirit among them being Prosper of