RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Almain Alombrados
benevolence, which seeks no merit in the gift and aims at permanent benefit, not the satisfying of a temporary need. Modern humanitarian endeavor and recent legislation, which seek to prevent those incapable of work from becoming recipients of alms, are but an extension of the principles enunciated by the Reformation. Churches should accept the rational principle which avoids indiscriminate and unintelligent almsgiving, tending to pauperization and the encouragement of idleness. But it is true that organization can never fully take the place of personal benevolence or render it unnecessary. (L. Lemme.) Bibliography: On the historical side, S. Chastel, Charity of the Primitive Churches, Philadelphia, 1857; G. Uhlhorn, Christliche Liebesthatigke.it, 3 vols., Stuttgart, 1895, Eng. transl., Christian Charity in the Ancient Church, New York, 1883. On the practical side, P. Church,', The Philosophy of Benevolence, New York, 1836; Systematic Beneficence, comprising " The Great Reform " by A. Stevens, " The Great Question " by L. Wright, " Property consecrated " byB. St. J. Fry, New York, 1856; M. W. Moggridge.MeiW in Almsgiving, London, 1882. Consult also the books on Christian Ethics and on Socialism.
ALOGI, al'o-ji (Gk. alogoi): A name coined by Epiphanius (Haer., li.) to designate certain people whom he treats as a distinct sect. The account which he gives agrees with that of Philaster (Haer., lx.), because both depend on the Syntagma of Hippolytus. Epiphanius can not have known of them by either oral tradition or personal contact; he speaks of them as a phenomenon of the past, of the time when Montanism vexed the Church of Asia Minor, and is unable to give any answer to the most obvious questions in regard to them. Before his time they have no more definite name than " the heretics who reject the writings of John." Epiphanius was uncertain whether they rejected the epistles of John, and Hippolytus had referred only to their criticism of the Gospel and the Apocalypse. The former justifies the name " Alogi " by the assertion that the sect did not accept the Logos proclaimed by John; but the grounds which he quotes from them for their rejection of the Johannine writings, equally with the indications of Hippolytus and Philaster, fail to support this view of their critical attitude; indeed, in another place Epiphanius contradicts himself. His consequent association of the Theodotians with the Alogi is thus only one of his groundless fancies.
Epiphanius quotes a number of their assertions, e.g., that the books in question were written not by John, but by Cerinthus, and are unworthy to be received in the Church; that they do not agree with the works of the other apostles; and that the Apocalypse is absurd in numerous particulars. The determining motive of their criticism can not be made out from his fragmentary indications. K the name " Alogi " and the notion that this motive was a rejection of the Christology of the fourth Gospel are demonstrably groundless inventions of Epiphanius, which moreover fail to explain the contemptuous tone of the sect toward the Apocalypse, it is all the more noteworthy that he not only places them in chronological and geographical relation to the Montanists of Asia Minor, but attributes to them also a denial of the existence
of the charismata in the Church. If he has here, as a comparison with Irenaeus (III. xi. 9) shows, repeated confusedly the thoughts of Hippolytus, it follows that the latter found in the passage of Irenaeus referred to an argument against the Alogi, although Irenaeus's context only requires him to deal with their rejection of the fourth Gospel and not of the Apocalypse. Thus it may be taken as the opinion of Irenaeus and Hippolytus that these otherwise orthodox people, in their opposition to the Montanists, sought to withdraw from the latter the supports which they found for their doctrine of the Paraclete in the Gospel of John and for their millenarianism in the Apocalypse. The rejection of the Johannine books by the Alogi is evidence that these books were generally received; their ascription to Cerinthus, a contemporary of John, of the belief that they were written in John's lifetime. This ascription need not involve any special reference to the actual teaching of Cerinthus, which, according to the more trustworthy authority of Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and the pseudo-Tertullian (Haer., x.), bore no resemblance to that of the apostle. (T. Zahn.)
Bibliography: The sources are indicated in the text. Consult: Harnack, Litteratur, II. i. 376 sqq., 670-671, 689- 691, 692, 695; T. Zahn, Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons, i. 220-262, ii. 47,50,236,967-991, 1021, Leipsic, 1890-91; idem, Forschungen, v. 35-43, 1892; Neander, Christian Church, i. 526, 583, 682; Moeller, ChristianChurch, i. 158, 223,233; DB, ii. 701, iii. 537, iv. 240; G. P. Fisher, Some Remarks on the Alogi, in Papers of the American Society of Church History, vol. [ii., pt. 1, pp. 1-9, New York, 1890.
ALOMBRADOS, a"lom-bra'dez (modern spelling, ALUMBRADOS; Lat. Illuminati; "Enlightened"): Spanish mystics who first attracted the attention of the Inquisition in 1524 (Wadding, Annates minorum, under the year 1524), when a certain Isabella de Cruce of Toledo is mentioned as a representative of their quietistic-ascetic teachings and their enthusiastic striving for divine inspirations and revelations. About 1546 Magdalena de Cruce of Aguilar, near Cordova, a member of the Poor Clares, is said to have been accused of spreading immoral antinomian teachings and to have been forced to abjure her heresies; and there are like reports of a Carmelite nun, Catherina de Jesus of Cordova, about 1575, and of a Portuguese Dominican nun, Maria de Visitatione, in 1586. The founder of the Society of Jesus, in his student days, was accused of belonging to the Illuminati at Alcala in 1526, and at Salamanca in 1527, and the second time was imprisoned for forty-two days (cf. Gothein, p. 225; see Jesuits). A connection between the Spanish Illuminati of the sixteenth century and the German reformatory movement has often been conjectured, especially by Roman Catholics, but without good reason; nor can influence from Anabaptists like Mtinzer or Schwenckfeld be seriously considered.
An ordinance of the Spanish Inquisition dated Jan. 28, 1558, mentions the following heretical teachings as characteristic of the Illuminati: " Only inward prayer is well-pleasing to God and meritorious, not external prayer with the lips. The confessors who impose outward acts of repentance are not to be obeyed; the true servants of God
Alombrados Alsace-Lorraine