THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
tradition about him. Whether he knew the Fourth Gospel, with which he has many ideas and expressions in common, is one of the points that are still in debate. He has occasional points of contact with the Pauline epistles, and even more with the Apocalypse, though it is difficult to establish quotations. His real Gospel appears to have been one of the lost Hebrew or Nazarene Gospels, perhaps the same as that of which Jerome found a copy in Tiberias. To this he owed some details in reference to the baptism, and perhaps one or two sayings of Jesus. It is curious that he has no eschatology, and no day of judgment; immortality is not innate, but acquired. On the ethical side the most important feature is that the book appears to contain the first Christian prohibition of the purchase of slaves.
The church orders and ritual are almost absent; it is not certain that baptism is alluded to, still less are there traces of a Christian eucharist, as commonly known. The only reference to the officials are an allusion: (1) to blessed deacons who carry the water of life, (2) to a priesthood in spiritual things which the wrriter says he possesses, which is carefully defined as not being of a carnal nature, but consisting of truth and purity in the inmost parts.
The wTiter shows a strong attachment to the Jewish religion on many sides: he has an affection for the sanctuary at Jerusalem, which must be assumed to have fallen before the time when he was writing; he holds fast to the Old Testament, allegorizes (as do all early Christians) the story in Genesis, imitates the Psalms, and makes evangelical doctrine out of Isaiah (e.g., chap. xxxv.).
Though there is much that is still uncertain, as to the place, time, and character of the writer, enough is known to place him as a worthy representative of the first or second generation after the apostles; and the new hymns will exert a wide influence upon the thought of the Church.
J. Rendel Habris.
Bibliography: The Odes and Psalms of Solomon, edited from the Syriac by J. Rendel Harris, Cambridge, 1909 (editio princeps); J. Rendel Harris, An early Christian Psalter, London, 1909; Ein judisch-christliches Psalmbuch aus dem ersten Jahrhundert. Aus dem Syrischen tibersetzt von J. Flemming, ed. A. Harnack, Leipsic, 1910; Literarisches Zentralblatt, 1910, no. 24, cols. 777-781.
SOLOMON, PSALMS OF. See Pseudepigrapha, O. T., II., 1.
SOLOMON, WISDOM OF. See Apocrypha, A, iv., 13.
SOM, KONRAD. See Sam.
SOMASCHIANS, so-mas'ki-ans ("Regular Clerks of St. Majolus "): One of the most important monastic congregations evoked by the Counter-Reformation. They derive their name from the Italian village of Somascho (between Milan and Bergamo), where their founder, Girolamo Miani (or Emiliani), wrote the first rule for them. Miani, who was of senatorial rank, was born at Venice in 1481, and, entering the army, was recognized as a brave but dissolute officer. Captured at the storming of Castelnuovo, near Treviso, in 1508, he was led during his imprisonment to repentance for his past career,
and on his liberation (according to many, through the miraculous aid of the Virgin) he devoted himself to asceticism, prayer, and the care of the sick and poor. At Venice he took orders, being ordained priest in 1518, and manifested the utmost selfdenial and bravery, especially during the famine and plague of 1528. He now made absolute renunciation of his wealth, and, in the habit of a mendicant friar, gave himself to the care, education, and conversion of orphans and fallen women. Within the year he established an orphan asylum in Venice, which was imitated at Bergamo, Verona, and Brescia, and in 1532 he opened a home for fallen women in his native city. In 1532 or 1533 Miani established his congregation for the care of these institutions and the training of pupils for the same purpose; and Clement VII. gave him the mother house at Somascho, where Miani died Feb. 8, 1537, after having established daughter houses at Pa via and Milan. He was beatified by Benedict XIV., and canonized in 1761 by Clement XIII., his day being July 20.
Miani's successor, Angelo Marco Gambarana, secured from Pius V., in 1568, the formal constitution of the congregation under the Augustinian rule, their name being now taken from the church of St. Majolus at Pavia, given them by St. Carlo Borromeo (q.v.). The Somaschians, who were united with the Theatines from 1546 to 1555, and with the French Fathers of Christian Doctrine from 1616 to 1647, exercised deep influence on education through their many colleges, especially the Clementinum, founded at Rome in 1595; while they so increased in numbers that they were divided into the Lombard, Venetian, and Roman provinces, to which was later added the French. The Roman province is now the most important.
The constitutions of the congregation, gradually developed from the autograph draft of the founder, collected by the procurator-general Antonio Paulino in 1626, and confirmed by Urban VIII. , have remained practically unchanged to the present day. They prescribe a habit precisely like that of the other regular clerks, strict simplicity of food and furniture, numerous prayers by day and night, fasts and self-castigation, and occupation with manual labor, care of the sick and orphans, and teaching.