Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/69

ACACIA in church government are abuna, bishops (Ico- mur), alaka, who has charge of the revenues, and priests and deacons, who prepare the com- munion bread. The bishops now have only the duty of keeping the churches and church utensils sacred ; the seven dioceses into which the church was formerly divided have become extinct. Priests and monks are' very abun- dant. It requires 20 priests and deacons to do the full duties of one church. The nu- merous monks are all placed under the jurisdic- tion of the etshege, the superior of the convent Debra Libanos in Shoa. He ranks next to the abuna, and his authority is greatly respected in all matters of faith. He governs not only the numerous convents of his own order, but also those of the second order of the country, that of St. Eustathius. The most celebrated convents are Debra Libanos in Shoa, St. Stephen on Lake Haik in the Yesbu country, Debra Damo and Axum Thion in Tigre", and Lalibela in Lasta. The secular priests are, as in the other oriental churches, allowed to be once married, but the monks take the vow of celibacy. The churches are small, and their walls are covered with hideous pictures of the Virgin Mary, the saints, the angels, and the devil. Each church has a tabot or ark of the covenant, on which its sanctity wholly depends ; it contains a parchment bearing the name of the patron saint, and stands behind a curtain in the holy of holies, which only the alaka and the priest who consecrates the elements are allowed to enter. If a man has had four wives and outlives them all, he must go into a monastery or be excommunicated. The husband can break the marriage tie at any time by becoming a monk, and leave his wife to take care of the children. The priests have the power of granting divorces. There is a version of the Bible in the ancient language of the empire of Axum, usually called the Ethio- pian, but by the natives the Geez language. It was probably made from the Greek in the 4th or 5th century, and is still the only one used in the church services, though the an- cient Ethiopian language is no longer spoken. The Ethiopian Bible contains all the books of the Roman Catholic canon, with several others, the best known of which is the book of Enoch. The total number of books is 81. A translation of the Old and New Testaments in the living Amharic language was made by Meeka, an Abyssinian, the companion of Bruce. See Gobat, " Three Years' Residence in Abyssinia " ; Isenberg's and Krapf 's mission- ary journals in Abyssinia ; Volz, Die Christ- liehe Kirche AetMopiens (in Studien und Kritilcen, 1869, giving a review of all the information to be obtained from the recent literature on Abyssinia) ; Stanley, "The East- ern Church," pp. 96-99. ACACIA, a genus of plants of the order legu- minosa, widely diffused over the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the ' earth ; most abun- dant in Africa and Australia. They are trees 5 VOL. i. 5 or shrubs, rarely herbs, with small, usually inconspicuous petals and sepals, but with many (10-400) long stamens, which give to the heads or spikes of flowers great beauty. The pods are two-valved, jointless and woody, containing seeds of which some species are edible. The leaves are either pinnate in vari- ous degrees, or simply distended leaf stalks (pJiyllodia). In nearly all the species the leaves are pinnate at first, and as the plant grows gradually give place to the phyllodia, often showing all gradations between the two forms. The stems and branches are often armed with spines. The acacias are not only most ornamental trees, with slender branches, delicate foliage, and attractive flowers, but the timber is often of great value, as that of A. Ara- bica, which is much used in India for wheels ; and the A. Koa has a fine, hard, and varie- gated grain. The bark contains much tannin. A. Verek yields gum Senegal, and A. Nilotica, and Seyal gum arabic. Other valuable gums of a similar nature are obtained from other species. The flowers of A. Farnesiana yield by distillation a delicious perfume, much prized in the East. Many species are easily culti- vated under glass. Little is known of the uses of most of the 420 species that have been de- scribed. ACADEMY (Gr. A/casern), originally the name of a public pleasure ground situate in the Ceramicus (tile field), a suburb of Athens, on the Cephissus, said to have be- longed in the time of the Trojan war to Acade- mus, a local hero. In the 5th century B. C. this land belonged to Cimon the son of Miltia- des, who beautified the grounds, gave free ad- mission to the public, and at his death be- queathed them to his fellow citizens. They naturally became a favorite resort for all the loungers of the city, and Socrates was wont to hold forth in this delightful place. Plato taught his philosophy in its groves, and his school was hence named the Academic. As the Platonists were also called academists, so wherever an academist started a school, he called that school an academy. The word academy is used in English in two senses. In its unam- bitious acceptation it means a place of higher instruction for youths, ranking with the gym- nasia of Germany. The name is also given to national military and naval high schools in England and America. But the word acad- emy, in its larger acceptation, is employed to designate a society of learned men, established for the improvement of science, literature, or the arts. The first association of this sort re- corded in history was called Musseon or Mu- seum, and was founded in Alexandria by Ptolemy Soter, one of the generals and succes- sors of Alexander the Great. This soldier, af- ter he had got possession of Egypt, restricted his energies to maintaining a defensive balance of power and to the cultivation of letters and science. Gathering around him scholars of various attainments, he sought to attach them