THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
commemoration of the dead (cf. G. C. Horst, Mysteriosophie, ii., Frankfort, 1817, 432). The litany of the Moravians for Easter morning is a Protestant pendant to All Souls' Day, and the rapid rise and popularity of the festival show that it satisfies a feeling of the Christian mind which the Church would do well to recognize. W Caspari.
ALMAIN, ol"men', JACQUES: Gallican theologian; b. at Sens c. 1450; d. in Paris 1515. He was professor of theology in the College of Navarre in Paris, and at the request of Louis XII. prepared a reply to Cardinal Cajetan's work on the superiority of the pope to a general council (Tractatus de auctoritate ecclesice et conciliorum generalium adversus Thomam de Vio, Paris, 1512; see Cajetan, Cardinal). A similar work was his Expositio circa decisiones magistri Guilelmi Occam super potestate Romani pontificis (1517). He wrote also Moralia (1510) and Dictata super sententias magistri Helcot (1512).
ALMEIDA, al-me'i-da, MANOEL: Jesuit missionary; b. at Vizeu (50 m. e.s.e. of Oporto), Portugal, 1580; d. at Goa 1646. He entered the Order of the Jesuits 1595; was sent to the East Indies 1602; lived in Abyssinia 1624-34; returned to Goa and became provincial of the order in the Indies. He left material for a general history of Abyssinia and of the Jesuits there, which was edited and published, in Portuguese, with additions, by Balthazar Tellez (Coimbra, 1660). Almeida's letter from Abyssinia to the general of his order for 1626-27 was published in Italian and French (Rome and Paris, 1629).
ALMONER (Fr. aumonier ; Lat. eleemosynarius): An office at the French court from the thirteenth century onward, originally filled by one of the court chaplains who was entrusted with the distribution of the royal alms. Later there were several of these almoners, so that from the fifteenth century a grand almoner was named. The first to bear this title was Jean de Rely, later bishop of Angers and confessor of Charles VII. The grand almoner was one of the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries in France, and was charged with the supervision of charitable works in general, and of the court clergy. Nominations to benefices in the king's gift, including bishoprics and abbeys, were made through him. The office was abolished with the monarchy, though it was revived under both Napoleons.
Attached to the British court is the Royal Almonry, which dispenses alms for the sovereign, with these officers: hereditary grand almoner (the marquis of Exeter), lord high almoner (the lord bishop of Ely), subalmoner (subdean of chapels royal), the groom of the almonry, and the secretary to the lord high almoner. In the papal court the almoner of the pope is president of the elimosineria apostolica, a body composed of two clerics and four laymen. There is a similar office at the Spanish court.
ALMS: A gift to which the recipient has no claim and for which he renders no return, made purely from pity and a desire to relieve need. Such a gift has religious value in Buddhism and in Islam. But it was in Judaism that almsgiving
was first highly regarded from a religio-ethical point of view. The Old Testament has a higher conception, based upon the ideas that the land belongs not to individuals but to God, whence all have equal right to its fruits, and that the regulating principle of conduct toward others among God's chosen people must be " thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself " (Lev. xix. 18, 34). Benevolence follows as an ordinary duty. In postcanonical times almsgiving almost imperceptibly assumed the character of a voluntary act of merit and even of expiation for sin and assurance of salvation (Tobit iv. 7-11, xii. 8-9; Ecclus. iii. 30, xxix. 12- 13). Such overvaluation of external acts is rebuked in Matt. vi. The New Testament revelation is a gospel of the voluntary love of God, in which good works can have no efficacy toward justification and salvation. They are, on the contrary, the inevitable result and proof of the renewed life (Matt. vii. 15-23; Luke x. 33-37). It is from this point of view that the idea of a divine reward finds application to the observance of charity in the New Testament (Matt. vi. 4, xix. 21; Luke xiv. 14; Acts x. 4; II Cor. ix. 7; Gal. vi. 9).
The Judaic conception of almsgiving as an act of merit and satisfaction came into the early Church through the Jewish Christians. A classic expression of Jewish-Christian thought is II Clement xvi. 4: "Almsgiving, therefore, is a good thing, even as repentance for sin. Fasting is better than prayer, but almsgiving than both. And love covereth a multitude of sins; but prayer out of a good conscience delivereth from death. Blessed is every man that is found full of these. For almsgiving lifteth off the burden of sin." The idea is completely dominant in Cyprian (De opere et eleemosynis), and was, indeed, unavoidable, if the Old Testament Apocrypha were accepted as on a par with the canon. Save that propitiatory value was afterward assigned to the sacrament of penance, the position of the Roman Catholic Church has remained essentially that of Cyprian. Augustine conceded influence in the alleviation of purgatorial suffering to almsgiving, and the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard, the dogmatic manual of the Middle Ages, emphasize the idea out of all true proportion.
Poverty was so highly prized by the early Church that the pseudo-Clementine Homilies (XV. vii. 9) declare the possession of property as defilement with the things of this world, a sin. In the fourth century poverty, through monasticism, became a factor in the Christian ideal life. And in the thirteenth century begging, through Francis of Assisi, received a religious idealization, which was in the highest degree pernicious to social good order. The mendicant monk is nothing more nor less than a grossly immoral character. The Reformation rejected all these errors, required some form of labor from the Christian as the basis of his membership in society, and sought to substitute organized care of the poor for the prevalent haphazard methods of giving and receiving alms. Protestant dogmatics grants to alms no share whatever in the doctrine of salvation. Far above any individual instance of almsgiving is the spirit of