IV. A.D. 1311 to 1517. — Councils ostensibly aiming to secure reform "in head and members" — Pisa, Constance, and Basle (tj. v. severally).
V. A.D. 1517 to 1563. — The Reformation and the re- actionary Synod of Trent (q. v.).
For an enumeration and characterization of the more important synods see the article Colncils, to which we also refer for a list of sources. — Herzog, Real-EncykUrp. s. V.
Synodus {(jvvo^oq). a term applied in the early Church to the building (church) in which the synod was held. It was simjily transferred from the assembly to denote the place of assembly, as was done with the word ecclesia.
Synthioniis {(Tvv^poroc),a Greek term to signify the seats of a bishop and his clergy in the bema of an Oriental Cliurch.
Syn'tyche C^vvrl'xi], with Fate), a female mem- ber of the Church of Philippi, mentioned (Phil, iv, 2, 3) along with another named Euodias (or rather Euodia). A.D. 57. To what has been said under the latter head the following may be added: The apostle's injunction to these two women is that they shoidd live in harmony with each other, from which we infer that tjiey had, more or less, failed in this respect. Such harmony was doubh' important if thej' held office as deaconesses in the Church, and it is highly probable that this was the case. They had afforded to Paul active co-operatioir under difficult circiunstances (iv to) tiioyytXuit avvi]- Si\i]<Tdi' fiot, ver. 3), and perhaps there were at Philippi other women of the same class (aiTivec, ibid.). At all events, this passage is an illustration of what tlie Gospel did for women, and women for the Gospel, in tiie apos- tolic times; and it is the more interesting as having reference to that Church which was the first founded by Paul in Euroi^e, and the first member of which was Lydia. Some thoughts on this subject will be found in Rilliet, Comm. sur VEpitre uux Pliilipp. p. 311-314. — Smith.
Synii£ia.stae (mn'ovaiauTai) were those who held that the incarnation of our Lord was effected by a blend- ing or commixture of the Divine substance with the substance of the human flesh. The name is taken from the statement of the doctrine avvovaiuKsu' ytyei'ijrr^ai Ka't Kpaaiu T>j<; ^forj/rof (Theod. JJeer. Fab. iv, 9). Theodoret calls this sect Poleiiiiar/s, one of the Apolli- narist sects; and Ajiollinaris himself, in the latter part of his life, added to his distinguishing heresy regarding the soul of our Lord either this heresy or one closely akin to it. At the Lateran Council in A.D. 649 were quoted two extracts from Polemon's works, from which it appears that the Synusiastaa retained the heresy re- garding the soul of our Lord, denying him a human
SYRACUSE
94
SYRACUSE
will, and asserting that he was to himself a rational soul. They seem to have been led to the adoption olthe her- esy ill this manner. At tlie outbreak of the eontrover- sies regarding tlie inearnation, some asserted the con- version of tlie substance of tlie (iodhcad into the sub-
About B.C. 210 this city was taken and sacked by Marecllus, the Itoman general, and, in storming the place, Archimedes, the great mathematician, wlio is es- teemed the iirst inventor of tiie si)here (and who, dur- tlie siege, had sorely galled tlie Komans with as-
stance of tlesh, others that the Divine nature supplied tonishing military engines of his own invention), was
in Christ the place of the human soul. The attemjit ti hold these two tenets together resulted in a denial of an irar^pioTTifotg altogether. To avoid this denial, it was allowed that the tlesh of man was assumed, but so blend- ed with the Divine substance as to eliminate that ten- dency to sill which it was alleged could not but be resi- dent in human nature. Diodorus of Tarsus and Theod- otus of Antioch wrote against this heresy. See Cave. IJkt. Lil. ; Blunt, Diet, of Sects, etc., s. v.
Syr'acuse {^IvpaKovaai ; Lat. Si/racusce), a cele-
slain by a common soldier while intent upon his stud- ies. After it was thus destroyed by Marcellus, Augus- tus rebuilt that jiart of it which stood upon the island, and ill time it so far recovered as to have three walls, three castles, and a marble gate, and to be able to seiul out twelve thousand horse soldiers and four hundred ships. In A.D. 1)75 the Saracens seized on it, but in 1090 it was taken from them by Roger, duke of Apulia. It yet exists under its original name (Ital. Sirucdsa), and is still much frequented on account of its commodi-
linphitlie-itrcl
brated city on the eastern coast of Sicily, whither Paul j otis harbor. Paul stayed here three days as he went arrived in an Alexandrian ship from jNIelita, on his voy- i prisoner to Rome (Acts xxvii, 1"2) ; here also Christian- age to Rome (Acts xxviii, 12). It had a tine prospect j ity was early planted, and still, at least in name, contin- from every entrance both by sea and land. Its port, I ues; but the city has lost its ancient splendor, thuugh which had the sea on both sides of it, was almost all of [ it is a bishop's see.
it environed with beautiful buildings, and all that part The magniticence which Cicero describes as stiJl re- of it which was without the city was on both sides I maining in his time was no doubt greatly impaired banked up and sustained with very fair walls of mar- I when Paul visited it. The whole of the resources of ble. The city itself, while in its splendor, was the i Sicily had been exhausted in the civil wars of Cfesar largest and richest that the <4reeks possessed in any j and Pompey, and the piratical warfare which Sextus part of the world. For (according to Strabo) it was i Pompeius, the youngest son of the latter, subsecpiently