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  • sacral nerve (anatomy)
    ...nerves, each of which receives and furnishes one dorsal and one ventral root. On this basis the spinal cord is divided into the following segments: 8 cervical (C), 12 thoracic (T), 5 lumbar (L), 5 sacral (S), and 1 coccygeal (Coc). Spinal nerve roots emerge via intervertebral foramina; lumbar and sacral spinal roots, descending for some distance within the subarachnoid space before reaching......
  • sacral plexus (anatomy)
    The ventral rami of L5 and S1–S3 form the sacral plexus, with contributions from L4 and S4. Branches from this plexus innervate gluteal muscles, muscles forming the internal surface of the pelvic basin (including those forming the levator ani), and muscles that run between the femur and pelvis to stabilize the hip joint (such as the......
  • sacral vertebra (bone anatomy)
    ...and mammals demonstrate five regions: (1) cervical, in the neck, (2) thoracic, in the chest, which articulates with the ribs, (3) lumbar, in the lower back, more robust than the other vertebrae, (4) sacral, often fused to form a sacrum, which articulates with the pelvic girdle, (5) caudal, in the tail. The atlas and axis vertebrae, the top two cervicals, form a freely movable joint with the......
  • sacrament (religion)
    religious sign or symbol, especially associated with Christian churches, in which a sacred or spiritual power is believed to be transmitted through material elements viewed as channels of divine grace....
  • sacramental (Christianity)
    ...a series of “holy acts” that are not, strictly speaking, sacraments. Though the Roman Catholic Church recognizes a difference between such “holy acts,” which are called sacramentals, and sacraments, the Orthodox Church does not, in principle, make such strict distinctions. Baptism and the Eucharist, therefore, have been established as sacraments of the church, but......
  • sacramental order (religion)
    The work of the laity was the business of the world. The clergy, however, considered itself far more important than the laity. Members of the clergy themselves were ranked in terms of sacramental orders, minor and major. When a boy or young man entered the clergy, he received the tonsure, symbolizing his new status. He might then move in stages through the minor orders: acolyte, exorcist,......
  • Sacramentarian (religious movement)
    ...by the University of Louvain as early as 1520). There was a Lutheran community in Antwerp; but otherwise, support was limited to individual priests and intellectuals. Another Protestant group, the Sacramentarians, differed with Luther over the question of the Eucharist; they denied the consubstantiation of Christ in the Eucharist, although their stance enjoyed little support from the people....
  • sacramentis Christianae fidei, De (work by Hugh of Saint-Victor)
    ...of medieval thought to a highly creative level was foreshadowed, in those very same years before Peter Abelard died, by Hugh of Saint-Victor (an Augustinian monk of German descent), when he wrote De sacramentis Christianae fidei (“On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith”), the first book in the Middle Ages that could rightly be called a summa; in its introduction, i...
  • Sacramento (California, United States)
    city, capital of California, U.S., and seat (1850) of Sacramento county, in the north-central part of the state. It is situated in the Sacramento Valley (the northern portion of the vast Central Valley) along the Sacramento River at its confluence with the American River, about 90 miles (145 km) northeast of San Francisco ...
  • Sacramento Mountains (mountains, United States)
    segment of the southern Rockies, extending southward for 160 mi (260 km) from Ancho, in south central New Mexico, into Culberson County, western Texas, U.S. They include the Sierra Blanca and the Guadalupe and Jicarilla mountains, with heights averaging from 8,000 to 10,000 ft (2,400 to 3,000 m). The Sierra Blanca Peak (12,003 ft) is the highest in the group, and Guadalupe Peak...
  • Sacramento River (river, California, United States)
    river rising in the Klamath Mountains, near Mount Shasta (in Siskiyou county), northern California, U.S. The river flows 382 miles (615 km) south-southwest between the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges, through the northern section (Sacramento Valley) of the Central Valley. It forms a c...
  • Sacramento River Deepwater Ship Canal (canal, United States)
    ...the Tidewater Ship Canal, a more direct and safer waterway than the Mississippi delta. The Pacific coast canals are not linked with the national network, but two major projects of importance are the Sacramento Deepwater Ship Canal and the Columbia River development, which will provide more than 500 miles of navigable river from the Pacific to Lewiston, Idaho....
  • Sacramento sturgeon (fish)
    ...the Sea of Azov, and the Caspian Sea. The lake sturgeon of North America (A. fulvescens) occurs in the Mississippi valley, the Great Lakes, and northward into Canada. The white, Oregon, or Sacramento sturgeon (A. transmontanus) inhabits the waters of the Pacific Coast of North America from California to Alaska....
  • Sacramento Valley (valley, California, United States)
    ...Valley, are fed mainly by the abundant rains and melting snows of the Sierra Nevada’s western flank. The San Joaquin Valley in the south embraces more than three-fifths of the entire basin, and the Sacramento Valley in the north makes up the remainder. The most northerly part of the Sacramento Valley, known as Anderson Valley, extends about 30 miles (50 km) north of the city of Red Bluff...
  • Sacramentum Mundi (work by Rahner)
    ...and Christian thought that had been rendered obsolete by Protestantism’s appeal to Scripture and history. The German Roman Catholic dogmatician Karl Rahner’s contrasting definition, in Sacramentum Mundi, points to a perennial process:Dogma is a form of the abiding vitality of the deposit of faith in the church which itself remains always the......
  • Sacre Conversazioni (painting by Tintoretto)
    ...a richly fantastic and visionary spirit. Thus, the early works of Tintoretto were affected by all of these influences. Critics have identified a group of youthful works by Tintoretto, above all Sacre Conversazioni. One of these, painted in 1540, represents the Virgin with the Child on her knees, facing away from her, and six saints. While the style echoes various elements of the......
  • Sacre de la femme, Le (poem by Hugo)
    ...sacrificing his exuberant capacity to tell a story. Hugo’s personal mythology of the human struggle between good and evil lies behind each of the legends: Eve’s motherhood is exalted in “Le Sacre de la femme”; mankind liberating itself from all religions in order to attain divine truth is the theme of “Le Satyre”; and “Plein Ciel” proclaim...
  • “Sacre du printemps, Le” (ballet by Nijinsky and Stravinsky)
    ...a modern theme and modern design into ballet. Based on his own (rather erroneous) idea of a tennis match, the choreography incorporated sporting movements and dancers in modern dress. In The Rite of Spring, perhaps Nijinsky’s most innovative work, the dancers were arranged in massed groupings and executed harsh, primitive movements, the legs turned in, the arms hanging heavily,......
  • sacre rappresentazioni (Italian drama)
    (Italian: “holy performance”), in theatre, 15th-century Italian ecclesiastical drama similar to the mystery plays of France and England and the auto sacramental of Spain. Originating and flourishing in Florence, these religious dramas represented scenes from the Old and New Testaments, from pious legends, and from the lives of the saints. The plays were didactic, using dialog...
  • Sacré-Coeur (church, Audincourt, France)
    ...most seminal contributions of the School of Paris painters to the art of stained glass were Henri Matisse’s Chapel of the Rosary (1948–52) in Vence and Fernand Léger’s windows for the Sacré-Coeur (1950–52) in Audincourt. Both are by artists whose manner was rather directly translatable into stained glass. It was but a comparatively short step from Matis...
  • Sacré-Coeur, Basilique du (church, Paris, France)
    The most noted landmark of Montmartre was built only in 1919: the Sacred Heart Basilica (Basilique du Sacré-Coeur), paid for by national subscription after the French defeat by the Prussians in 1870, during the Franco-German War. The work began in 1876 but was delayed by the death of the architect, Paul Abadie, who took inspiration from the 12th-century five-domed Romanesque church of......
  • sacred (religion)
    the power, being, or realm understood by religious persons to be at the core of existence and to have a transformative effect on their lives and destinies. Other terms, such as holy, divine, transcendent, ultimate being (or reality), mystery, and perfection (or purity) have been used for this domain. “Sacred” is also an important technical term in the scholarly study and interpretati...
  • Sacred Allegory (painting by Bellini)
    ...earth is studied as carefully as those of human figures; but the purpose of this naturalism is to convey idealism through the realistic portrayal of detail. In the landscape Sacred Allegory, now in the Uffizi, he created the first of the dreamy enigmatic scenes for which Giorgione, his pupil, was to become famous. The same quality of idealism is to be found in his.....
  • Sacred and Profane Love (painting by Titian)
    ...Three Ages of Man, where the erotic relationship of the young couple is discreetly muted and a mood of tenderness and sadness prevails, is one of the most exquisite of these. The contemporary Sacred and Profane Love is likewise set in a landscape of extraordinary beauty, but here the allegory is less easily understood. The most generally accepted......
  • sacred artifact (religion)
    any object used in a ritual or a religious ceremony....
  • sacred baboon (primate)
    large, powerful monkey of the plains and open-rock areas of the Red Sea coast, both in Africa (Eritrea, The Sudan) and on the opposite coast in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The hamadryas is the smallest baboon species, with a body length of about 60–70 cm (24–28 inches) and weight of up to 18 kg (40 pounds). Females are brown, but males are silvery gr...
  • Sacred Band (Theban military corps)
    ...the Maedi, a Thracian people; two years later he commanded the left wing at the Battle of Chaeronea, in which Philip defeated the allied Greek states, and displayed personal courage in breaking the Sacred Band of Thebes. A year later Philip divorced Olympias; and, after a quarrel at a feast held to celebrate his father’s new marriage, Alexander and his mother fled to Epirus, and Alexande...
  • sacred bone (Korean social system)
    There were eight classes in the system: two gols (sŏnggol, or “sacred bone,” and chin’gol, or “true bone”) and six dup’ums (or “head ranks”). The two gols were from the royal and formerly royal families; the sixth dup’um through the fourth were from the general nobility, and the t...
  • Sacred Books of the East, The (edited by Müller)
    ...published a translation of Afghan songs and a valuable essay on Afghan language and literature. His English translation of the Avesta, prepared in collaboration with L.H. Mills, appeared in Sacred Books of the East (vol. 4, 23, and 31, 1883–87), edited by the Anglo-German Orientalist and linguist Max Müller. Darmesteter’s French translation, Le Zend-Avesta, 3 ...
  • sacred calendar (religion)
    Worship takes place at appointed seasons and places. The religious calendar is thus of great importance for the worshipping community, since communities associate worship with critical times in the life of the society. The hunting, planting, and harvesting seasons are of special importance. The beginning of the year (at the time of the spring or fall equinox or of the summer or winter solstice,......
  • Sacred Canopy, The (work by Berger)
    Among the more recent theorists of the sociology of religion is the influential and eclectic American scholar Peter Berger. In The Sacred Canopy he draws on elements from Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and others, creating a lively theoretical synthesis. One problem is raised by his method, however; he espouses what he calls “methodological atheism” in his work, which appears to......
  • sacred clown (religion)
    ritual or ceremonial figure, in various preliterate and ancient cultures throughout the world, who represents a reversal of the normal order, an opening to the chaos that preceded creation, especially during New Year festivals. The reversal of normality that is the distinguishing mark of the clown relates him to the powerful world that existed before the present one....
  • Sacred College of Cardinals (Roman Catholic Church)
    ...Constantinople, bar Sauma was received hospitably by the Byzantine emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus, but on reaching Rome he learned that Pope Honorius IV had just died. He was interviewed by the Sacred College of Cardinals, who, less interested in his mission than in his theological tenets, asked him to recite the Nestorian creed. Reluctant to do so, as Nestorianism was considered a heresy......
  • sacred concerto (music)
    musical composition of the early Baroque era (late 16th and early 17th centuries) in which choirs, solo voices, and instruments are contrasted with one another. Although sometimes employing secular texts, the genre is particularly associated with sacred music and is sometimes referred to as the sacred concerto. Its principle of contrast is rooted in late Renaissance development...
  • Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship (Roman Catholic Church)
    Regulations regarding holy days and processes leading to the canonization of saints are controlled by the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship (formerly the Congregation of Rites). Certain feasts, in addition to all Sundays, are designated “holy days of obligation,” when all the faithful must attend Mass. In the United States these are: Christmas Day (December 25), the Feast of......
  • Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Roman Catholic Church)
    As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger earned a reputation as a hard-line enforcer of doctrinal uniformity. He condemned liberation theology and suppressed more-liberal theologians such as the Brazilian Leonardo Boff and the American Charles Curran. Despite his reputation, even his harshest critics recognized his intelligence and his ability to discuss......
  • Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Roman Catholicism)
    ...the episcopal structure and the decretal law adopted by Trent was not possible, the organization of mission activity was taken from missionaries and religious orders and given to the Holy See. The Sacred Congregation for Propagation of the Faith (the Propaganda) was established for this purpose in 1622. Missionaries received their mandate from Rome; the administration was given over to......
  • sacred corner (religion)
    ...A large amount of evidence indicates that religious–magical rites, from birth ceremonies to funerals, were performed in such bathhouses. There are various opinions as to whether the so-called holy corner (heilige Hinterecke)—i.e., the dark corner of a peasant’s house in which a deity or patron lives—belongs to pre-Christian concepts or not. On the other...
  • Sacred Country (novel by Tremain)
    ...settings. Her novel Restoration (1989; filmed 1995) offers a many-layered historical narrative about the interconnected lives of a group of characters during the reign of Charles II. Sacred Country (1992) relates the picaresque adventures of Mary Ward, who is convinced from the age of six that she is meant to be a boy and spends three decades trying to achieve this goal.......
  • Sacred Crown, Order of the (Japanese honour)
    Japanese order founded in 1875 by Emperor Meiji and awarded for exceptional civil or military merit. The order, which has a women’s counterpart called the Order of the Sacred Crown, was originally the Order of Merit. It consists of eight classes, and the badge awarded depends on the class level attained....
  • sacred dance (religious dance)
    Religious symbolism is significant even in the human interactions of the dance. Men often symbolize phallic, aggressive supernatural beings and rain-bringing deities, whereas women symbolize actual fertility. In Iroquois ceremonies, women represent the Three Life-Giving Sisters—i.e., the spirits of corn (maize), beans, and squash, with no mimetic representation. Similarly, Pueblo women......
  • sacred decad (philosophy)
    ...of spiritual purification; (3) the heavenly destiny of the soul and the possibility of its rising to union with the divine; (4) the appeal to certain symbols, sometimes mystical, such as the tetraktys, the golden section, and the harmony of the spheres (to be discussed below); (5) the Pythagorean theorem; and (6) the demand that members of the order shall observe a strict loyalty and......
  • sacred drama
    The drama that is most meaningful and pertinent to its society is that which arises from it and is not imposed upon it. The religious drama of ancient Greece, the temple drama of early India and Japan, the mystery cycles of medieval Europe, all have in common more than their religious content: when the theatre is a place of worship, its drama goes to the roots of belief in a particular......
  • Sacred Fount, The (novel by James)
    ...characters within an identifiable social world, but he found his characters and their world increasingly elusive and enigmatic and his own grasp upon them, as he made clear in The Sacred Fount (1901), the questionable consequence of artistic will....
  • sacred grove (religion)
    among the Votyaks and Zyryans, a sacred grove where sacrifices were performed. The lud, surrounded by a high board or log fence, generally consisted of a grove of fir trees, a place for a fire, and tables for the sacrificial meal. People were forbidden to break even a branch from the trees within the enclosure, which was watched over by a special guardian whose position was hereditary.......
  • Sacred Grove, The (work by Puvis de Chavannes)
    ...by having name cards printed “Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, flunker of the arts.” This iconoclasm surfaced also when he parodied Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’s serious Symbolist work The Sacred Grove by turning it into a boisterous scene filled with rowdy friends (1884). Yet he also could push himself in pursuits like swimming and boating, and toward....
  • Sacred Heart (Roman Catholicism)
    in the Roman Catholic Church, the physical heart of Jesus as an object of devotion. The use of Jesus’ heart to symbolize his love for men is not found in the Bible but in the writings of some medieval mystics. The devotion was fostered by Carthusian and Jesuit priests and promoted by St. Francis de Sales and became popular following the disclosure of private revelations to a French Visitan...
  • Sacred Heart Basilica (church, Paris, France)
    The most noted landmark of Montmartre was built only in 1919: the Sacred Heart Basilica (Basilique du Sacré-Coeur), paid for by national subscription after the French defeat by the Prussians in 1870, during the Franco-German War. The work began in 1876 but was delayed by the death of the architect, Paul Abadie, who took inspiration from the 12th-century five-domed Romanesque church of......
  • Sacred Heart, Church of the (church, Audincourt, France)
    ...most seminal contributions of the School of Paris painters to the art of stained glass were Henri Matisse’s Chapel of the Rosary (1948–52) in Vence and Fernand Léger’s windows for the Sacré-Coeur (1950–52) in Audincourt. Both are by artists whose manner was rather directly translatable into stained glass. It was but a comparatively short step from Matis...
  • Sacred Heart Missionaries (Roman Catholic congregation)
    priest, author, and founder of the Missionarii Sacratissimi Cordis Jesu (Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus), commonly called Sacred Heart Missionaries, a Roman Catholic congregation of men originally dedicated to teaching and restoring the faith in the rural sections of France and later expanded to world missions....
  • Sacred Heart of Mary, Congregation of the (Roman Catholic congregation)
    In 1876 Butler became a novice in the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Mary in Béziers, France. She took the name Marie Joseph. In 1879 she was sent as a teacher to the order’s convent school in Oporto, Portugal, where in 1880 she entered into full membership in the order. In 1881 she was transferred to a convent school in Braga, Portugal, where she became superior in 1893....
  • Sacred Heart, Society of the (Roman Catholic congregation)
    (R.S.C.J.), a Roman Catholic religious congregation of women devoted to the education of girls, founded in France in 1800 by Madeleine Sophie Barat. Joseph Varin, a leader in the religious renewal in France following the French Revolution, was looking for a young woman to head an educational order modelled on the Jesuits and dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He chose Mothe...
  • Sacred Hill, The (work by Barrès)
    ...de l’Allemagne, 1905 [“In the Service of Germany”]; Colette Baudoche, 1909) earned success as French propaganda during World War I. La Colline inspirée (1913; The Sacred Hill) is a mystical novel that urges a return to Christianity for social and political reasons....
  • Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, The (work by Allen)
    ...traditional tribal songs, rituals, and legends into the story of a woman of mixed heritage whose struggle for survival is aided by Spider Grandmother, a figure from ancient tribal mythology. In The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986), she argued that feminist and Native American perspectives on life are compatible, claiming that traditional tribal......
  • Sacred Hymns, The (work by Manzoni)
    ...later Manzoni himself returned to Catholicism. Retiring to a quiet life in Milan and at his villa in Brusiglio, he wrote (1812–15) a series of religious poems, Inni sacri (1815; The Sacred Hymns), on the church feasts of Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter, and a hymn to Mary. The last, and perhaps the finest, of the series, “La pentecoste,” was published in......
  • sacred ibis (bird)
    The sacred ibis (Threskiornis aethiopica), of southern Arabia and Africa south of the Sahara (and formerly of Egypt), was sacred to the ancient Egyptians. It is about 75 cm (30 in.) long, white with black in its wings, dark plumes on the lower back, and a bare black head and neck....
  • sacred kingship (religious and political concept)
    religious and political concept by which a ruler is seen as an incarnation, manifestation, mediator, or agent of the sacred or holy (the transcendent or supernatural realm). The concept originated in prehistoric times, but it continues to exert a recognizable influence in the modern world. At one time, when religion was totally connected with the whole existence of the individua...
  • “Sacred Lake of the Acts of Rāma” (work by Tulsīdās)
    version, written in a dialect of Hindi, of the Sanskrit epic poem the Rāmāyaṇa, one of the masterpieces of medieval Hindu literature and a work with significant influence on modern Hinduism. Written in the 16th century by the poet Tulsīdās, the poem is distinguished both by its great expression of love for a personal g...
  • sacred literature (religious literature)
    the revered texts, or Holy Writ, of the world’s religions. Scriptures comprise a large part of the literature of the world. They vary greatly in form, volume, age, and degree of sacredness; but their common attribute is that their words are regarded by the devout as sacred....
  • sacred lotus (plant)
    ...is a white water lily, Nymphaea lotus (family Nymphaeaceae). The blue lotus (N. caerulea) was the dominant lotus in Egyptian art. The sacred lotus of the Hindus is an aquatic plant (Nelumbo nucifera) with white or delicate pink flowers; the lotus of eastern North America is Nelumbo pentapetala, a similar plant with yellow blossoms (see Nelumbonaceae). The lotu...
  • Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests (forest sites, Kenya)
    ...were named World Heritage sites beginning in 1997. Lamu Old Town, in Coast province, contains beautiful examples of Swahili architecture; it became a World Heritage site in 2001. In 2008 the Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests—several forests containing the remains of villages (kaya) once inhabited by the Mijikenda (Nyika) people and now considered sacred—were collectively......
  • sacred mina (ancient Hebrew unit of measurement)
    ...and Hebrews derived their systems generally from the Babylonians and Egyptians. Hebrew standards were based on the relationship between the mina, the talent (the basic unit), and the shekel. The sacred mina was equal to 60 shekels, and the sacred talent to 3,000 shekels, or 50 sacred minas. The Talmudic mina equaled 25 shekels; the Talmudic talent equaled 1,500 shekels, or 60 Talmudic......
  • sacred monogram (Christianity)
    ...at the Irish monastery of Kells, is renowned as one of the most beautiful Hiberno-Saxon manuscripts. Its page depicting the appearance of Jesus Christ’s name in Matthew 1:18 is called the “Chi-Rho page.” The design presents the monogram XPI—which was used to signify Christ in many manuscripts—as an intricately designed pattern of shimmering colour and spiralin...
  • sacred music
    Sacred music...
  • sacred object (religion)
    any object used in a ritual or a religious ceremony....
  • sacred office (religion)
    ...of the whole body of Christ. “Where Christ is, there is the Catholic church,” wrote Ignatius of Antioch (c. ad 100). Modern Orthodox theology also emphasizes that the office of the bishop is the highest among the sacramental ministries and that there is therefore no divinely established authority over that of the bishop in his own community, or d...
  • sacred order (religion)
    ...of the whole body of Christ. “Where Christ is, there is the Catholic church,” wrote Ignatius of Antioch (c. ad 100). Modern Orthodox theology also emphasizes that the office of the bishop is the highest among the sacramental ministries and that there is therefore no divinely established authority over that of the bishop in his own community, or d...
  • Sacred Pipe (American Indian culture)
    one of the central ceremonial objects of the Northeast Indians and Plains Indians of North America, it was an object of profound veneration that was smoked on ceremonial occasions. Many Native Americans continued to venerate the Sacred Pipe in the early 21st century....
  • sacred place
    Sacrifice often was conducted in the open or in groves and forests. The human sacrifice to the tribal god of the Semnones, described by Tacitus, took place in a sacred grove; other examples of sacred groves include the one in which Nerthus usually resides. Tacitus does, however, mention temples in Germany, though they were probably few. Old English laws mention fenced places around a stone,......
  • Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, The (work by Lowth)
    ...1742): “apply thyself wholly to the text,” he directed; “apply the text wholly to thyself.” The English bishop Robert Lowth’s (1710–87) Oxford lectures on The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, published in Latin in 1753, greatly promoted the understanding of the poetry of the Old Testament by expounding the laws of its parallelistic structure. The......
  • Sacred Rock (structure, Machu Picchu, Peru)
    Few of Machu Picchu’s white granite structures have stonework as highly refined as that found in Cuzco, but several are worthy of note. In the southern part of the ruin is the Sacred Rock, also known as the Temple of the Sun (it was called the Mausoleum by Bingham). It centres on an inclined rock mass with a small grotto; walls of cut stone fill in some of its irregular features. Rising abo...
  • sacred site
    Sacrifice often was conducted in the open or in groves and forests. The human sacrifice to the tribal god of the Semnones, described by Tacitus, took place in a sacred grove; other examples of sacred groves include the one in which Nerthus usually resides. Tacitus does, however, mention temples in Germany, though they were probably few. Old English laws mention fenced places around a stone,......
  • sacred symbol
    respectively, the basic and often complex artistic forms and gestures used as a kind of key to convey religious concepts and the visual, auditory, and kinetic representations of religious ideas and events. Symbolism and iconography have been utilized by all the religions of the world....
  • “Sacred Symphonies” (concerto by Schütz)
    ...often already encountered in the popular Baroque trio setting of two high parts over a low part. The last main landmarks of the vocal-instrumental concerto were the three sets of Schütz’s Symphoniae sacrae, or Sacred Symphonies (Venice, 1629; Dresden, 1647 and 1650), works that reveal all the variety of treatment to be found in Schein’s sacred concerti, except...
  • sacred talent (ancient Hebrew unit of measurement)
    ...from the Babylonians and Egyptians. Hebrew standards were based on the relationship between the mina, the talent (the basic unit), and the shekel. The sacred mina was equal to 60 shekels, and the sacred talent to 3,000 shekels, or 50 sacred minas. The Talmudic mina equaled 25 shekels; the Talmudic talent equaled 1,500 shekels, or 60 Talmudic minas....
  • sacred thread (Hinduism)
    ...dressed as an ascetic and brought before his guru (personal spiritual guide), who invests him with a deerskin to use as an upper garment, a staff, and the sacred thread (upavita, or yajnopavita). The thread, consisting of a loop made of three symbolically knotted and twisted strands of cotton cord, is replaced......
  • sacred time (religion)
    ...sacrifices two religious functions are often combined: (1) to provide new power (energy, life) for the world, and (2) to purify the corrupted, defiled existence. Religious festivals are a return to sacred time, that time prior to the structured existence that most people commonly experience (profane time). Sacred calendars provide the opportunity for the profane time to be rejuvenated......
  • Sacred War, Fourth (Greek history)
    ...Amphissa was the capital of Ozolian (western) Locris. The ruined acropolis of the modern tiered town dates apparently from about the 5th century bc, or late Archaic period. The city provoked the Fourth Sacred War when it was denounced (339 bc) for the impiety of cultivating the sacred wooded plain of Crisa, still drained by the stream Pleistus. The following year it ...
  • Sacred War, Third (Greek history)
    ...policy of sending cleruchies (colonizing groups) to Samos, the subjection of Cos and Naxos to Athenian jurisdiction, and the arbitrary demands of Athenian generals for money, and then by the Sacred War, fought as a result of the refusal of the Phocians to pay a fine levied by the Amphictyons, and when Persia was again threatening, there could be no question of Greece uniting to attack.......
  • Sacred Way (ancient road, Italy)
    ...policy of sending cleruchies (colonizing groups) to Samos, the subjection of Cos and Naxos to Athenian jurisdiction, and the arbitrary demands of Athenian generals for money, and then by the Sacred War, fought as a result of the refusal of the Phocians to pay a fine levied by the Amphictyons, and when Persia was again threatening, there could be no question of Greece uniting to attack..........
  • Sacred Well of Chichén Itzá (Mayan religion)
    His most productive effort—and for many years a unique exploit in archaeology—was the dredging and underwater exploration of the Sacred Well of Chichén Itzá. Actually a small lake, it had been traditionally regarded as the grave of girls and captive warriors sacrificed alive to propitiate the rain god, who was supposed to reside at the bottom of the well. Thompson......
  • Sacred Wood, The (work by Eliot)
    ...literary milieu dominated by the standards of the preceding age. In the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, appearing in his first critical volume, The Sacred Wood (1920), Eliot asserts that tradition, as used by the poet, is not a mere repetition of the work of the immediate past (“novelty is better than repetition,” he......
  • sacred writings
    ...literary milieu dominated by the standards of the preceding age. In the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, appearing in his first critical volume, The Sacred Wood (1920), Eliot asserts that tradition, as used by the poet, is not a mere repetition of the work of the immediate past (“novelty is better than repetition,” he......
  • sacrifice (religion)
    a religious rite in which an object is offered to a divinity in order to establish, maintain, or restore a right relationship of a human being to the sacred order. It is a complex phenomenon that has been found in the earliest known forms of worship and in all parts of the world. The present article treats the nature of sacrifice and surveys the theories about its origin. It the...
  • sacrifice bunt (baseball)
    ...a fielder. A batter also can move the runner by hitting to the right side of the infield (forcing the defense to play in a direction opposite that of the runner) or by “sacrificing.” A sacrifice occurs when the batter bunts the ball—that is, tries to tap it lightly with the bat to make it roll slowly along the ground in fair territory between the catcher and pitcher—...
  • sacrifice fly (baseball)
    ...runner should be confident that the catch has put the fielder in a position where throwing him out will be difficult. When such a fly ball or line drive out allows a runner to score, it is called a sacrifice fly. Sacrifice plays and sacrifice flys can occur only with less than two outs....
  • Sacrifice of Isaac (work by Andrea del Sarto)
    ...a valley north of Florence, but the interruption was brief. After the expulsion of the Medici, once again, in 1527, he worked for the republican government of Florence. His Sacrifice of Isaac, intended as a political present to Francis I, was painted in this period. After the siege of Florence by imperial and papal forces, he succumbed to a new wave of plague and......
  • Sacrifice of Isaac, The (fresco by Tiepolo)
    ...with strong contrasts of light and shade, or chiaroscuro. Such strong shadings of light and dark, coupled with a genuine dramatic feeling, may be seen in his first public work, The Sacrifice of Isaac (1716), for the church of Sta. Maria dei Derelitti, or Ospedaletto. Tiepolo’s name first appears on the lists of the Venetian painters’ guild as an indepen...
  • Sacrifice of Isaac, The (work by Brunelleschi)
    ...with Lorenzo Ghiberti and five other sculptors in 1401 to obtain the commission to make the bronze reliefs for the door of the Baptistery of Florence. Brunelleschi’s trial panel depicting “The Sacrifice of Isaac” is the high point of his career as a sculptor. His ability to arrest narrative action at the moment of its greatest dramatic impact and the vigorous gestures and.....
  • Sacrifice of the Trojan Prisoners (Etruscan painting)
    ...shading. Tombs in Vulci and Tarquinii of the 1st century bc carry the development of these techniques even further. In the François Tomb at Vulci there is a celebrated fresco known as the “Sacrifice of the Trojan Prisoners.” It is next to a historical scene showing wars between Etruscan and Roman princes during the Archaic period. This renewed interest in myth...
  • sacrilege (religion)
    originally, the theft of something sacred; as early as the 1st century bc, however, the Latin term for sacrilege came to mean any injury, violation, or profanation of sacred things. Legal punishment for such acts was already sanctioned, in the Levitical code of ancient Israel. The Israelites had extensive rules to safeguard what was holy or consecrated, violation ...
  • sacristan (religion)
    a sexton or, more commonly, the officer of the church in charge of the sacristy and its contents, such as the sacred vessels and vestments. The person may be either someone in holy orders, as is common in a cathedral, or a lay person. ...
  • sacristy (architecture)
    in architecture, room in a Christian church in which vestments and sacred objects used in the services are stored and in which the clergy and sometimes the altar boys and the choir members put on their robes. In the early Christian church, two rooms beside the apse, the diaconicon and the prothesis, were used for these purposes....
  • sacro egoismo (Italian history)
    ...the treaty required. Prime Minister Antonio Salandra, a nationalist dedicated to the Irredentists’ goal of recovery of Trentino and Trieste from Austria, announced that Italy would be informed by sacro egoismo. This, he explained, was a mystical rather than cynical concept, but it set off seven months of haggling over what the Allies would offer Italy to enter the war, and what th...
  • Sacro Speco (cave, Subiaco, Italy)
    ...three small lakes where the emperor Nero built a villa. An inundation destroyed the lakes in 1305, and only traces remain of the villa. St. Benedict retired as a hermit (c. 494) to a cave, Sacro Speco (“Holy Grotto”), above the lakes; he founded 12 monasteries in the district before departing for Cassino. The Abbey of San Benedetto on the mountain slope has 9th-century......
  • sacroiliac (anatomy)
    weight-bearing synovial joint that articulates, or connects, the hip bone with the the sacrum at the base of the spinal column. Strong ligaments around the joint help to stabilize it in supporting the weight of the upper body; the joint’s motion is also limited by the irregular surfaces of the sacrum (the fused vertebrae of the lower spine), which closely articulate with...
  • Sacrorum antistitum (decree by Pius X)
    ...and hindered rather than helped the combating of Modernism. On June 29, 1908, Pius X publicly admitted that Modernism was a dead issue, but at the urging of Benigni on Sept. 1, 1910, he issued Sacrorum antistitum, which prescribed that all teachers in seminaries and clerics before their ordination take an oath denouncing Modernism and supporting Lamentabili and Pascendi....
  • Sacrosancta (ecclesiastical decree)
    (July 7, 1438), decree issued by King Charles VII of France after an assembly had examined the decrees of the Council of Basel (see Basel, Council of). It approved the decree Sacrosancta of the council, which asserted the supremacy of a council over the pope, and established the “liberties” of the Gallican Church, restricting the rights of the pope and in many cases......
  • sacrum (anatomy)
    wedge-shaped triangular bone at the base of the vertebral column, above the caudal (tail) vertebrae, or coccyx, that articulates (connects) with the pelvic girdle. In humans it is usually composed of five vertebrae, which fuse in early adulthood. The top of the first (uppermost) sacral vertebra articulates with the last (lowest) lumbar vertebra. The transverse processes of the ...
  • Sacrum Romanum Imperium (historical empire, Europe)
    the varying complex of lands in western and central Europe ruled over first by Frankish and then by German kings for 10 centuries, from Charlemagne’s coronation in 800 until the renunciation of the imperial title in 1806. (For histories of the territories governed at various times by the empire, see France, history of; Germany, history of;...
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