III. Under tin Papacy. -Such are the various causes — influential in different degrees, perhaps, in the several organizations -in supplanting the popular government of the primitive Church and substituting in its place prelacy, which, under different forms of centralization. finallj culminated in the pope of Rome. This culmina- tion, and the craft by which it was accomplished, re- quire a fuller detail than our limits will allow. We can only affirm that this important period in history, when the foundation was laid for rendering the hierarchy in- dependent both of clerical and secular power, has not been noticed by historians SO particularly as its impor- tance requires. They seem not to have noted the fact that Hildebrand, who A. I). 1073 became Gregory VII. concerted measures for the independence of t he church. ••It was the deep design of Hildebrand, which he for a Ion",- time prosecuted with unwearied zeal, to bring the pope wholly within the pale of the Church, and to pre- vent the interference in his election of all secular influ- ence and arbitrary power. And thai measure of the council which wrested from the emperor a right of long standing, and \\ hicli has never been called in ques- tion, may deservedly be regarded as the masterpiece of popish intrigue, or rather of Hildebrand's cunning. The concession which disguised this crafty design of his was expressed as follows: That the emperor should continui to hold, as he i ver had held, the right of confirm- ing the election of the pop* derived from him. The covert design of this clause was not perceived, I mi it expressed nothing less than that the emperor should ever receive and hold from the pope himself the right of confirming the appointment of the pope" (Voigt, Hildebrand \ Wei- mar. 1815, 8vo], p. 54, cited by August), i. 209).
As might have been expected, the lolly claim of the
pope was resisted i but he bad the address to defend his usurped authority against all opposition, and proudly proclaimed himself " the successor of Si. Peter, set up by Cod io govern, not. only the Church, but the whole world.'" The gradations of ecclesiastical organization through which prelacy has passed are fr congrega- tional to parochial, parochial to diocesan, diocesan to metropolitan, metropolitan to patriarchal, patriarchal to papal from the humble pastor of a little flock to the pope of Home, the supreme and universal prelate of the Church of Christ on earth. See Coleman, Prelacy and : National Repository, Feb. L878 i A / Cathe- dra), (L.C.)
Prelate (Lat. pralatus, i. e. promoted) is an eccle- siastic who has direct authority over other ecclesiastics
The term is a general one. and includes not menh
bishops of various degrees, but also in Roman Catholii
countries the heads of religious houses or orders and other similar ecclesiastical dignitaries. These, foi the most pan. are privileged to wear the insignia of the episcopal rank. In the Roman court many of the offi- cials, although not possessing episcopal or quasi-epis o- pal jurisdiction, have the insignia and the title of prel- ate. They are of two classes -tint higher, called del mantelletto ("of the little mantle"), and the secondary, called </</ manteUom ("of the great mantle"), from t la- robe which they respectively bear. The same root un- derlies other ecclesiastical terms in which all the clergy are on an equality, and arc governed by a representa- tive body or by the local church; prelatic and prelat- ical. i. e. pertaining to a prelacy or a prelate, as pre- latical authority. Prelates are confined to those churches which recognise in the bishop (q. v.) a distinct and su- perior order of clergy. See PjbbLACY.
Premare, Joseph-Henri, a French Jesuit, was horn about 1670 in Normandy. March 7. 1698, he em- barked with several other Jesuits at I. a Rochelle to preach the Gospel in China. He arrived Oct. '"> at Suneian, and addressed, Feb. 17. 1699, a relation of his journey to pere I. a Chaise, with a descriptive notice of the countries he had visited. As soon as he had mas- tered the Chinese language be made a careful study of the antiquities and literature of the country. Though he expressed some strange ideas, it cannot be denied that his erudition was considerable, and that lie thor- oughly knew the philosophical works of the Chinese, lie died at Peking about 1735. He left, Recherches sur /is Temps anterieurs <i ceux dont parte A Chou-Kirtg ft sur In Mythohgie Chinoise, published by Deguignes in the translation of the Chou-King, by pere Gaubii, in the form of a preliminary discourse d'aris. 1770, 4to) : — a number of other works, three of them in Chinese:— The Life of St. Joseph, the Lou-ckou-chii, or true sense of the six classes of characters, and a small treatise on the attributes of Cod, inserted in the Notitia lingua sinicae, which is the best of all those composed hith- erto by Europeans on this subject: — several other treatises in Latin and in French, preserved among the manuscripts of the National Library of Paris, where we find also the originals of several letters of pere Pre- mare. Three letters of this missionary were published in the Lettres idifiantes, and a fourth in the Annates encyclop< liques of Klaproth. He translated also a dra- ma. Tchao i-lii Kou-cul (the Orphan of the House of Chao), which furnished to Voltaire some ideas for his Orphelin <h In Chine. See iMtres idifiantes, vols, xvi and xxi ; Catalogut dt Fowmont Faine. Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generate, s. v.