The transfiguration is so fine a subject for the paint- er that we are not surprised to learn that it employed Raphael's best hours, and_ that his portraiture of it is confessedly the highest of all efforts of pictorial genius. The original work, still unfaded, though more than three centuries have passed over it, hangs in the Vati- can. A copy of it in mosaic on a colossal scale, and which might pass with most men for the original, fills the head of the left aisle in St. I'eter's at Home. The design is as simple as tlie artless narrative of tiie evan- gelists. In the centre, and in raiment white as the light, is he, the fashion of wht)se countenance was al- tered. On either hand, and floating on the air, appear in glory Moses and Elias. Beneath, the disciples, over- shadowed by a bright cloud, their hands shielding their dazzled eyes, are fallen on their faces, sore afraid of the voice proceeding out of the cloud, but catching glimpses of Jesus transfigured before them. — Kitlo.
11 iphuer& Kepieseutdtiou of the Tiau&tiguiaiiou.
IGl ; Bagot, 0« the TransJu/iiratioH (Lond. 1840); Anon. Tabor''s Teachimjs (ibid. 1867, 1808) ; also the (Am.) Free-will Buptist Quarteiiij, Jan. 1858. See Jesus CiiKisr.
Transfiguration- (or Jesus-) day was kept in the Wesicru Church in the time of St. Li'o, and in the (ireek Cliurch about A.D. 700. By a bidl of Calixtus III, 1450 (or 1457), it was ordered to be generally ob- served, in memory of the victory of Hunniades and tlie Hungarian army over Mohammed and the Turks. In the English calendar it stands on Aug. 0. In France, after consecration, the chalice was filled with new wine, or, as at Tours, received some of the juice of the ripe grapes; and the clusters are blessed in Germany and the East on this day. — Blunt, Diet, of Theol. s. v. ; Wal- cott. Sac. A rchmol. s. v.
Transitoriuni, a term for a short anthem, or re- sjiond, in the rite of Milan, chanted after the communion of the priest. — Lee, Gloss, of Liiurg. Terms, s. v.
Translation, Biblical. See Versions.
TRANSLATION, in ecclesiastical usage, is the re- moval of a bishop from the charge of one diocese to that of another. After such removal, the l)ishop, in all his attestations, dates from the year of his transla- tion {anno trunslationis nostrce), not from tliat of his consecration {anno consecratioitis nostrce\ In the early Church a bishop could not translate himself to another see without the consent and approbation f>f a provincial coiuieil. Some, indeed, thought it absolutely unlawful for a bishop to forsake his first see and betake himself to any other, because they looked upon his consecration to be a sort of marriage to his church, and therefore looked upon his removal to another see as spiritual adultery.
Transmigration {a passing or e7-),'m the theolog- ical acceptation of the term, means the supposed translation of the soul after death into another substance or body than that which it occupied before. The basis of this belief being the assumption that the human soul does not perish to- gether with the body, it can belong only to those nations which believe in the im- mortality of the soul. But in proportion as such an idea is crude or developed, as it is founded merely on a vague fear of death, and a craving for materi.il life, or on ethical grounds, and a supiioscil causal connection between this and a future life, tlie belief in transmigration assumes va- rious forms. The notion, dating back to a remote antiquity, and being spread all over the world, seems to be anthropolog- ically innate, and to be the first form in which the idea of immortality occurred to man.
1. India. — It was in India, where the problems of metajihysics and ethics as connected with ontology and the destiny of the soul were elal)orated to the last de- gree on a theistic basis, that metempsy- chosis was most ingeniously and exten- sively developed. The Hiiuh'is believed that human souls emanated from tlie Su- preme Being, which, as it were, in a state of bewilderment or Ibrgetfulness allowed them to become separate existences and to be born on earth. The soul thus severed from the real source of its life is bound to return to it, or to become merged again into that divine sub- stance with which it was originall}' one. But having become contaminated with
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sin, it must strive to free itself from guilt and become tit for its heavenly career. Keligion teaches that this is (lone by the observance of religious rites and a life in conformity with the precepts of the sacred books; philosophy, that tlie soul will be reunited with Brah- man, if it understands the true nature of the divine essence whence it comes. So long, therefore, as the soul has not attained this condition of purity, it must be born again after the dissolution of the body to which it was allied; and the degree of its impurity at one of these various deaths determines the exist- ence which it will assume in a subsetpient life. So closely was the account of a soul's misdeeds kept that it might pass thousands of years, or knlpas (seons), in one or other of the heavens, as a reward for good deeds or self-inflicted suffering, and yet be obliged to return to earth or hell to ex|iiate as an animal, man, or dremon certain sins. To us the details of the soul's migration, as described in the religious works of the Hindus, are only interesting as they afford a kind of standard by which the moral merit or demerit of human actions was measured in India (see Manu, Code of Laws, bk. xii). A more general doctrine of the transmigration of souls is based by Hindit philosophers on the as- sumption of tlie three cosmic qualities of satiioa, i. e. purity or goodness ; lyrjas, i. e. troubledness or passion ; and fanins, i. e. darkness or sin, witli which the human soul may become endued. t)n this basis Jlanu and other writers built an elaborate theory of the various births to which the soul may be subject. Manu teaches that "souls endued with the quality of suttira attain the condition of deities; those having the qual- ity of ?-(ij(ig, the coniiitiou of men ; and those having the qualit)' of tamus, the condition of beasts." The Buddiiistic belief in transmigration is derived from that of the Brahmanic Hindus, and agrees with it in principle, though it differs from it in the imaginary de- tail in which it was worked out. To enlarge here on this difference is not necessary, and yet it will not be superfluous to point out one great difference which sep- arates the notions of one class of Buddhists from those of the rest, as well as from those of the Brahmanic Hindus. While other Hindus believe that the same soul appears at the several births, the Southern Buddh- ists teach that the succession of existences is a suc- cession of souls; that when the body dies the soul is "extinguished," and nothing remains but the good and bad acts performed in life ; the result of these acts be- comes the seed of a new life, which soul is the necessary product of the soul of the former life. This dogma is illustrated by various similes, e. g. '• One lamp is kinilled at another; the light of the former is not identical with that of the latter, but, nevertheless, without this the other light could not have originated."