Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 17.djvu/454

SACBIFICE. 414 SACY. as substitutes for the more expensive victims. No wine was ever oirered to the gods of the lower world. Tlieir libations were honey, milk, and water. At some altars only bloodless offer- ings were allowed. Among the Romans offerings were made daily and on special occasions by the family to tlie Lares, Penates, and other household gods. In their simplest form these consisted of the articles of daily food, milk, wine, beans, grain, cakes of many shapes and sizes, garlands, firstfruits of the flock or field, or incense. Similar were doubt- less the pul)lic offerings of the early religion, and this simplicity was long preserved, accompanied by an elaliorate and minute ritual. Thus in certain sacrifices the victim must be slain by a Hint knife ; elsewhere only hand-made earthen- ware vessels could be used, or the grain must be pounded, not ground. The swine was perhaps the commonest animal sacrificed, and the great otfering was the Suovetaurilia (q.v.), or boar, ram, and bull. In the developed ritual the state sacrifices were usually bloody, and the choice of the animal was regulated by minute rules, which prescribed the color, age, and sex, as well as the Ivind of victim appropriate to the god or the occasion. Horses were only offered to Mars ; for the gods of the lower world black or dark vic- tims were prescribed, and white cattle for .Jupiter and Juno as gods of the heaven ; in the latter case we find that chalk sometimes helped nature in securing the needful color. While the old ritual seems to have prescribed very modest sacrifices, the later custom added extra victims, honoris causa, and often in great numbers. The ceremonial of the sacrifice consisted in a careful inspection of the victim, which was then brought to the altar decked with garlands, ribl)ons, and fillets. Here the offerer first threw incense and wine into a fire by the altar, and then symboli- cally slew the victim, the actual killing and cut- ting up being performed by servants. The exta (heart, lungs, liver, etc.) were carefully exam- ined to see that they were perfect, then cooked, and offered on the altar to the god ; the remainder of the animal was eaten by the priests and offi- cials, or, in the case of private siicrifices, by the worshiper and his friends. In the case of foreign gods other rituals, especially the 'Greek rite' (grcBCus ritus), were followed. For the litera- ture, see the articles on Greek and Roman Re- ligion. SACRISTAN (OF., Fr. sacristnin, from ML. sacristaiius, sexton, from sacrista, sacristan, from Lat, sacer, sacred) . A title applied in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches to the official who has the care of the sacristy and the sacred vessels, vestments, and other valuables contained in it. The duties of the sacristan were originally performed by a separate class of clerics, who constituted the lowest of the four minor orders. (See OsTiARius.) The term ssw^ristan has be- come corrupted into sexton, and the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, although the sacristan proper has a more responsible office. In cathedrals and collegiate churches he is usu- ally a dignitary of the chapter — in the English cathedrals one of the minor canons. SACBISTY (ML. sacristia, vestry, from sa- crista, sacristan). An apartment attached to a church, in w-hich are kept the sacred objects used in the public worship, and in which the clergy and other functionaries who take part in the service assemble and prepare for the cere- monies on which they are about to enter. In many European churches the sacristy is a spa- cious and costly building. Anciently there was a distinction between the sacristy, where the vestments were kept, and the treasury, where the books and vessels were guarded, these two cham- bers being placed on the right and left of the apse of tlie church, where they were replaced in the Middle Ages by the side-apses and chapels. Many church sacristies in Europe are still small museums. SAC'ROBOS'CO, Johannes de, John of HoLYwooD, or Halifax (?-1256). An English mathematician, probably born at Halifax, in Yorkshire. He was educated at Oxford, entered the University of Paris about 1230, and after- wards became professor of mathematics and astronomy there. Sacrobosco was among the first scholars of the Middle Ages to make use of the astronomical writings of the Arabians. His treatise Tractatus de Spluera Mundi is a para- phrase of a portion of Ptolemy's Almagest (see Almagest), and no book enjoyed greater renown as a manual among the scholastics. First pub- lished in Ferrara in 1472 (an edition now very rare), it passed through twoscore editions with many commentaries. Sacrobosco's work on arith- metic, Tractatus de Arte Numcrandi (printed without place and date ) , variously called Opus- culum de Praxi Numerorum quod Alf/orismum rocant (1510) and Algorism us Domini .Joannis de i^acro Bosco ( 1523 ) , contains the nine Hindu digits and the zero. He also wrote De Anni Ra- tion-e (1550). Consult: Enestrijm on Sacrobos- co's arithmetic, in Bibliotheca Mathematica (1894); Halliwell, "Tractatus de Arte Nume- randi," in Kara Mathematica (London, 1839). SACRtTM (Lat., sacred), or Os Sacrum. A triangular bone situated at the lower part of the vertebral column (of which it is a natural continuation ) , and wedged between the two in- nominate bones so as to form the keystone to the pelvic arch. It is readily seen to consist of five vertebriE with their bodies and processes, all consolidated into a single bone. Its anterior surface is concave, not only from above down- ward, but also from side to side. The posterior surface is convex, and presents, in the middle vertical line, a crest, formed by the fusion of the spines of the vertebne, of which the bone is composed. The last sacral vertebra has, how- ever, no spine, and the termination of the ver- tebral canal is here very slightly protected. SACY, sa'se', Antoine Isaac, Baron Silvestre de (1758-1838). One of the greatest of French Orientalists. He was bom in Paris, began the study of Hebrew at the age of twelve, and gradu- ally acquired an extensive knowledge of Semitic and Iranian languages. Being intended for the civil service, he studied law, and in 1781 was ap- pointed counselor of the mint. In 1785 he was elected a member of the Academic des Inscrip- tions, and rendered valuable service as member of a committee to publish unedited manuscripts in the royal library. During the Revolution he lost his position. He had already begun the decipherment of the Pehlevi inscriptions of the Sassanian kings, and in 1793 published his His- toire de la dynastie des Hassanides. translated from the Persian, with four dissertations. In