andria Monophysites, and in this way became and remained Jacobites or Copts. In the following centuries numerous churches and monasteries were built even in Upper Nubia and Sennar, the ruins of which yet remain. Other documents show that Nubia was divided into three provinces with seventeen bishops: Maracu with the suffragan Dioceses of Korta, Ibrim, Bucoras, Dunkala, Sai, Termus, and Suenkur; Albadia with Borra, Gagara, Martin, Arodias, Banazi, and Menkesa; Niexamitis with Soper, Coucharim, Takchi, and Amankul. Yet Christianity was in continual danger from the Mohammedans. Nubia succeeded in freeing itself from the control of Egypt, which became an independent Mohammedan kingdom in 969, but in 1173 Saladin's brother Schems Eddawalah Turanschah advanced from Yemen, destroyed the churches, and carried off the bishop and 70,000 Nubians. At the same time Northern Nubia was conquered. In 1275 the Mameluke sultan Djahn Beibars sent an army from Egypt into Nubia. Dongola was conquered, the Christian king David was obliged to flee, and the churches were plundered. The inhabitants escaped forcible conversion to Mohammedanism only by payment of a head-tax. Nubia was divided into petty states, chief of which was Sennar, founded in 1484 by the negro Funji. For some time Sennar ruled Shendi, Berber, and Dongola. In the eighteenth century the King of Sennar obtained for a time Kordofan also. From the Middle Ages there is little information as to the position of Christianity; Islam became supreme, partly by force, partly by the amalgamation of the native with the Arabian tribes.

In 1821 Sennar and the dependent provinces submitted to Mohammed Ali, the founder of modern Egypt. The commanding position of the capital, Khartoum, led the Holy See to hope that the conversion of Central Africa could be effected from Nubia. On 26 December, 1845, the Propaganda erected a vicariate, confirmed by Gregory XVI, 3 April, 1846. The Austrian imperial family contributed funds and the mission was under the protection of the Austrian consulate at Khartoum. Missionary work was begun by the Jesuits Ryllo (d. 1848) and Knoblecher (d. 1858), who pushed forward as far as 4° 10' north of the equator, Kirchner, and several secular priests (among whom were Haller, d. 1854, and Gerbl, d. 1857). They founded stations at Heiligenkreuz on the Abiad (1855), and at Santa Maria in Gondokoro (1851). In 1861 the missions were transferred to the Franciscans. Father Daniel Comboni (d. at Khartoum, 1881) founded an institute at Verona for the training of missionaries to labour among the negroes of Soudan. The Pious Mothers of the Negro Country (Pie Madri della Nigrizia), founded in 1867, devoted itself to conducting schools for girls and dispensaries. The Mahdi, Mohammed Ahmed, in 1880 conquered Kordofan, in 1883 vanquished the Egyptian army, and on 26 January, 1885, destroyed Khartoum. A number of priests and sisters were held for years in captivity; the name of Christian seemed obliterated. After the overthrow of his successor, Caliph Abdullah, by the English under Lord Kitchener, 2 September, 1898, the mission was re-established. In 1895 a mission had been opened at Assuan. In 1899 Mgr Roveggio with Fathers Weiler and Huber established a station at Omdurman, and in 1900 founded the mission near the Shilluk and re-established the station at Khartoum. Under his successor, Geyer, stations were opened in 1904 at Halfaya, Lul, Atiko, Kayango; in 1905 at Mbili among the Djur, at Wau in Bahr el Ghazal, and the mission at Suakin, opened in 1885, was resumed. The Sons of the Sacred Cross, as the Missionaries of Verona had been called from 1887, founded a station at Port Sudan.

Starting from Khartoum the missionary territory is divided into a northern and a southern district. The majority of the population in the north is Mohamme

dan, and the chief task of the missionaries is pastoral work among the scattered Christian communities. In 1908 Khartoum had 69,344 inhabitants, Omdurman 57,985, among them about 2307 Europeans, of whom about 1000 are Catholics. Khartoum is served by 2 fathers, 1 brother, and 4 sisters; the schools contain 42 boys and 75 girls. In Omdurman there are 300 Catholics, 3 fathers, 1 brother, and 5 sisters; 44 boys and 45 girls attend the school. There is also a school for girls at Halfaya. At Assuan there are 2 fathers, 1 brother, and 4 sisters; 34 boys and 54 girls are taught in the schools. There are 500 Catholics among the workmen. At Port Sudan the Catholics number between 200 and 300. There are Catholics also at Halfa, Abu-Hammed, Dongola, Argo, Meraui, Berber, Atbara, Damer, Shendi, Kassala, Duen, ElObeid, Bara, and Nahud. The southern missions among the heathen negroes have already advanced beyond the boundaries of Nubia. The statistics for 1907 for the northern and southern missions were: 11 stations, 30 priests, 23 brothers, 41 sisters, 2407 Catholics, 492 boys and girls in the mission-schools.

RENAUDOT, Liturgiarum orientalium_collectio (2 vols., Paris, 1716); LE QUIEN, Oriens christianus, II (Paris, 1740), 659-62; QUATREMERE, Mémoires géographiques et historiques sur l'Egypte, II (Paris, 1811), 1–161; BURCKHARDT, Travels in Nubia (London, 1819); NIEBUHR, Inscriptiones Nubienses (Rome, 1820); Gau, Antiquités de la Nubie (Paris, 1821-2); ROSELLINI, I monumenti dell Egitto e della Nubia (Pisa, 1832-44); CHAMPOLLION, Monuments de l'Egypte et de la Nubie (2 vols., Paris, 1844); MAKRIZI, Gesch. der Copten, tr. WüSTENFELD (Göttingen, 1845); LANE POOLE, Hist. of Egypt in the Middle Ages (London, 1901); BUTLER, The Arab Conquest of Egypt (Oxford, 1902); KUмм, Nubien von Assuan bis Dongola (Gotha, 1903); Cook, Handbook for Egypt and the Sudan (London, 1905); GEYER in Katholische Missionen (Freiburg, 1908). OTTO HARTIG.

Nueva Cáceres, DIOCESE OF (NOVA CACERES), created in 1595 by Clement VIII; it is one of the four suffragan sees of the Archdiocese of Manila, Philippine Islands. It comprises the provinces of Camarines Sur, Camarines Norte, Albay, and Tayabas in the southern part of Luzon, the islands Ticao, Masbate, Burias, and Cantanduanes, also numerous smaller islands off the coast of Southern Luzon. It includes a territory of 13,632 square miles, and has a population of nearly 600,000. The cathedral and episcopal residence are situated in the town of Nueva Cáceres, the capital of Camarines Sur. The territory now included in the diocese was first visited by Augustinian Friars, who had accompanied the famous Legaspi-Urdaneta expedition of 1565. When the missionaries began their labours, they found the natives given over to gross idolatries and superstitions (adoration of the sun, moon, and stars, ancestral worship), and to the propitiation of a multitude of deities by strange sacrifices; nor did they seem to have any idea of a supreme being. So fruitful, however, was the apostolic zeal of the missionaries that, within a few years, many thousands of converts were made in Albay, in Camarines Sur, and in Masbate. Assisted by heroic Catholic laymen, they gathered the natives into villages or reductions, where they instructed them in the truths of religion and taught them the advantages of a settled civilized life. The Augustinians had begun the spiritual conquest of the diocese, but, being few in number, they were unable to attend to so extensive a territory. In 1578 the Franciscans were called to assist them. The arrival of the latter gave a new impulse to the work of evangelization. Missions and reductions were multiplied in Albay, in Camarines Sur, and in Masbate; and new foundations were made in the Province of Tayabas. The ranks of the missionaries were strengthened from time to time by workers from Spain and Mexico; as early as 1595 the Church had made so much progress in these parts that Clement VIII created the Diocese of Nueva Cáceres, taking the name from the town of Nueva Cáceres founded in Camarines Sur in 1579 by Francisco de Sande, second Governor-General of the Philippine Islands. The

first bishop was Francisco de Ortega, an Augustinian friar who had laboured for several years in the Province of Manila. He took possession of his diocese in 1600. The present bishop (Rt. Rev. John B. McGinley, con. 1910) is his twenty-seventh successor. From the beginning until 1890, the greater number of parishes and missions were cared for by the Franciscans and the Augustinians. Although the latter had resigned during the first years in favour of the Franciscans, they returned to the diocese some years later and converted to the faith the whole of Camarines Norte. Each parish had as its parish priest a friar, assisted, according to the importance and population of the district, by one or more native secular priests. Only in later years were the latter placed in full charge of important parishes. As late as 1897, out of a total of 90 parishes, 43 were in charge of friars. The bishops were also generally chosen from the various religious orders, though on several occasions members of the secular clergy held the see, the most noted being (1723) the saintly Bishop de Molina, a native of Iloilo, whose name is still held in veneration. The Lazarists came in 1870, under Bishop Gainza, and were placed in charge of the diocesan seminary then in process of construction. The same prelate introduced the Sisters of Charity and placed them in charge of the academy and normal school which he had founded. In 1886 the Capuchins arrived and were given several missions. In 1898, on account of the revolution against Spanish rule and the feeling against the friars, most of these religious were withdrawn from their parishes and missions, and secular clergy placed in charge. The present (1908) statistics of the diocese are as follows: 168 priests, of whom 25 are regulars; the religious who are not priests number 12 (sisters 9, brothers 3); 122 parishes with resident priests; without resident priests, 6; parochial schools 180, with 46,000 children in attendance (24,000 boys and 22,000 girls); one hospital; one academy for girls, with 200 in attendance; a diocesan seminary, preparatory and theological, with 60 students; a college for secular students attached to the seminary, with 500 students. The total population of the diocese is nearly 600,000, of which number less than 1000 are non-Catholic.

El Archipiélago Filipino (Washington, 1900); Crónicas de la Apostólica Provincia de Franciscanos Descalzos (Manila, 1738); DE ZUNIGA, Historia de las Islas Philipinas (Sampoloc, 1803); DE COMYN, Estado de las Filipinas (Madrid, 1820); BLUMENTRITT, Diccionario Mitológico de Filipinas (Manila, 1895); DE VIGO, Historia de Filipinas (Manila, 1876); Guia Oficial de Filipinas (Manila, 1897); DE HUERTA, Estado de la Provincia de San Gregorio en las Islas Filipinas (Binondo, 1865).

Jos. J. DALY.

Nueva Pamplona, DIOCESE OF (NEO-PAMPILONENSIS), in Colombia, South America, founded in 1549 and a see erected by Gregory XVI on 25 September, 1835. The city contains 15,000 inhabitants and is the capital of the province of the same name in the Department Norte de Satander; the diocese is suffragan of Bogotá, with a population of 325,000, all Catholics except about one hundred dissenters, mostly foreigners. The first bishop, José Jorge Torres Estans, a native of Cartagena, ruled from 30 August, 1837, to 17 April, 1853, when he died at the age of 81, an exile in San Antonio del Fáchira, Venezuela. His successor, José Luis Niño, named vicar Apostolic, was consecrated in October, 1856, and also died an exile in San Antonio del Fáchira, 12 February, 1864. The third bishop, Bonifacio Antonio Toscano, governed from 13 October, 1865, to his retirement in 1873. He convoked the first diocesan synod, and assisted at the Provincial Council of New Granada in 1868 and at the Vatican Council. Indalecio Barreto succeeded him 3 December, 1874, and died 19 March, 1875, at La Vega near Cucuta. The Bishop of Panamá, Ignacio Antonio Parra, his successor, ruled from 8 June, 1876, until his death, 21 February, 1908. Bishop Parra had been exiled by the Liberal government from 1877 to 1878 on

account of his efforts to preserve the liberty of the Church. The present incumbent, Evaristo Blanco, was transferred from the Diocese of Socorro, 15 August, 1909.

The diocese has 52 parishes, 75 priests, a seminary, a normal school for women, 10 secondary schools for boys and 13 for girls, 180 primary schools with an average attendance of 10,500, 12 charity hospitals, 4 orphanages for girls, 3 for boys, 2 homes for the aged, 1 convent of Poor Clares, 9 convents of the Sisters of the Presentation, 4 of Bethlehemites, 3 of Little Sisters of the Poor. The Jesuits, Eudists, and Christian Brothers maintain schools. At present the Catholic element is actively promoting good journalism and workingmen's societies, in order to counteract socialism and establish a Christian ideal of society. ANTONIO JOSÉ URIBE.

Nueva Segovia, DIOCESE OF (NOVE SEGOBIÆ), in the Philippines, so called from Segovia, a town in Spain. The town of Nueva, or New, Segovia was in the Province of Cagayan, and was founded in 1581. Manila was the only diocese of the Philippine Islands until 14 Aug., 1595, when Clement VIII created three others, namely Cebú, Nueva Cáceres, and Nueva Segovia. The latter see was established at Nueva Segovia. About the middle of the eighteenth century, the see was transferred to Vigan, where it has since remained. The town of Nueva Segovia declined, was merged with a neighbouring town called Lalloc, and its name preserved only by the diocese. Leo XIII (Const. "Quæ mari Sinico") created four new dioceses in the Philippines, among them Tuguegarao, the territory of which was taken from Nueva Segovia, and comprises the Provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, and two groups of small islands. The territory retained by the Diocese of Nueva Segovia embraces the Provinces of Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, Union, Pangasinan, five towns in the province of Tarlac, the sub-province of Abra, and also a large part of what is called the Mountain province; all this territory lies between 15° and 19° N. lat. and is located in the large island of Luzon.

The population of the Diocese of Nueva Segovia is about one million, consisting principally of the Ilocanos and Pangasinanes tribes, besides mountaineers who are nearly all Igorrotes. The Ilocanos and Pangasinanes live, mostly, in the plain between the mountains on the east and the China Sea on the west. They were all converted by the Spaniards, and, up to the present time have, generally speaking, remained faithful to the Catholic Church. Since the American occupation, a few Protestant sects have established themselves here, and have drawn a few of the ignorant class away from the Church. The fidelity of the Catholics was severely tested by the schism of 1902, started by Rev. Gregorio Aglipay, an excommunicated priest. He was born in this diocese, was a high military officer during the rising of the natives against the American sovereignty, and found much sympathy, especially in this part of the islands. He pretended to champion the rights of the native clergy, though the movement was political. He drew with him twenty-one priests and a large number of lay people. He and his movement have been discredited, and the people, in large numbers, have returned to the Church. Only a small part of the Igorrotes has been converted. The Spanish missionaries were evangelizing them until 1898, when the insurrection against the United States broke out, and the missionaries had to flee. Belgian and German priests have taken the place of the Spaniards in the missionary field, and gradually are reclaiming the people from their pagan and especially from their bloodthirsty customs.

There is at Vigan a seminary-college under Spanish Jesuit Fathers, with four hundred collegians and

tion and in 1891 established in Bevington Bush a Refuge for Fallen Women and a Night Shelter for homeless women which (1891-1905) received 2300 poor women. In 1892 Leo XIII appointed him a domestic prelate. In memory of his golden jubilee as a priest he purchased for Temperance meetings and concerts, the Jubilee Hall in Burlington St. The citizens of Liverpool on 5 May, 1897, presented to him at an enormous public meeting his own portrait now in the Liverpool Art Gallery and over £1300 with which he began the House of Providence, West Dingle, for young unmarried mothers with their first babies; 200 such cases were sheltered from 1897-1905. In 1904 at the age of eighty-two, he visited America with Abbot Gasquet but taken ill at St. Paul, Minnesota, he hurried home to die. On 8 December, 1906, there was erected near St. George's Hall, a bronze statue commemorating him as: Apostle of Temperance, Protector of the Orphan Child, Consoler of the Prisoner, Reformer of the Criminal, Saviour of Fallen Womanhood, Friend of all in Poverty and Affliction, An Eye to the Blind, a Foot to the Lame, the Father of the Poor. Catholic Times, Liverpool Daily Post, Catholic Family Annual, files; London Catholic Weekly (29 June, 1906). JAMES HUGHES.

Numbers, the name of the fourth book of the Pentateuch (q. v.).

Numbers, USE OF, IN THE CHURCH.-No attentive reader of the Old Testament can fail to notice that a certain sacredness seems to attach to particular numbers, for example, seven, forty, twelve, etc. It is not merely the frequent recurrence of these numbers, but their ritual or ceremonial use which is so significant. Take, for example, the swearing of Abraham (Gen., xxi, 28 sqq.) after setting apart (for sacrifice) seven ewe lambs, especially when we remember the etymological connexion of the word nishba (2) to take an oath, with sheba (2) seven. Traces of the same mystical employment of numbers lie much upon the surface of the New Testament also, particularly in the Apocalypse. Even so early a writer as St. Irenæus (Hær., V, xxx) does not hesitate to explain the number of the beast 666 (Apoc., xiii, 18) by the word AATEINOZ since the numerical value of its constituent letters yields the same total (30+1+330+5+ 10+ 50+70+200=666); while sober critics of our own day are inclined to solve the mystery upon the same principles by simply substituting for Latinus the words Nero Cæsar written in Hebrew characters which give the same result. Of the ultimate origin of the mystical significance attached to numbers something will be said under SYMBOLISM. Suffice it to note here that although the Fathers repeatedly condemned the magical use of numbers which had descended from Babylonian sources to the Pythagoreans and Gnostics of their times, and although they denounced any system of philosophy which rested upon an exclusively numerical basis, still they almost unanimously regarded the numbers of Holy Writ as full of mystical meaning, and they considered the interpretation of these mystical meanings as an important branch of exegesis. To illustrate the caution with which they proceeded it will be sufficient to refer to one or two notable examples. St. Irenæus (Hær., I, viii, 5 and 12, and II, xxxiv, 4) discusses at length the Gnostic numerical interpretation of the holy name Jesus as the equivalent of 888, and he claims that by writing the name in Hebrew characters an entirely different interpretation is necessitated. Again St. Ambrose commenting upon the days of creation and the Sabbath remarks: "The number seven is good, but we do not explain it after the doctrine of Pythagoras and the other philosophers, but rather according to the manifestation and division of the grace of the Spirit; for the prophet Isaias has enumerated the principal gifts of the Holy Spirit as seven" (Letter to Horontianus). Simi

larly St. Augustine, replying to Tichonius the Donatist, observes that "if Tichonius had said that these mystical rules open out some of the hidden recesses of the law, instead of saying that they reveal all the mysteries of the law, he would have spoken truth" (De Doctrina Christiana, III, xlii,). Many passages from St. Chrysostom and other Fathers might be cited as displaying the same caution and showing the reluctance of the great Christian teachers of the early centuries to push this recognition of the mystical significance of numbers to extremes.

On the other hand there can be no doubt that influenced mainly by Biblical precedents, but also in part by the prevalence of this philosophy of numbers all around them, the Fathers down to the time of Bede and even later gave much attention to the sacredness and mystical significance not only of certain numerals in themselves but also of the numerical totals given by the constituent letters with which words were written. A conspicuous example is supplied by one of the earliest of Christian documents not included in the canon of Scripture, i. e., the so-called Epistle of Barnabas, which Lightfoot is inclined to place as early as A. D. 70-79. This document appeals to Gen., xiv, 14, and xvii, 23, as mystically pointing to the name and self-oblation of the coming Messias. "Learn, therefore", says the writer, "that Abraham who first appointed circumcision, looked forward in spirit unto Jesus when he circumcised, having received the ordinances of three letters. For the Scriptures saith 'And Abraham circumcised of his household eighteen males and three hundred'. What then was the knowledge given unto him? Understand ye that He saith 'the eighteen' first, and then after an interval 'three hundred'. In the eighteen I stands for 10, H for 8. Here thou hast Jesus (IHZOTZ). And because the cross in the T was to have grace, he saith also 'three hundred'. So he revealeth Jesus in two letters and in the remaining one the cross" (Ep. Barnabas, ix). It will, of course, be understood that the numerical value of the Greek letters and 7, the first letters of the Holy Name, is 10 and 8=18, while T, which stands for the form of the cross, represents 300. At a period, then, when the Church was forming her liturgy and when Christian teachers so readily saw mystical meanings underlying everything which had to do with numbers, it can hardly be doubted that a symbolical purpose must constantly have guided the repetition of acts and prayers in the ceremonial of the Holy Sacrifice and indeed in all public worship. Even in the formulæ of the prayers themselves we meet unmistakable traces of this kind of symbolism. In the Gregorian Sacramentary (Muratori, "Liturgia Romana Vetus", II, 364) we find a form of Benediction in some codices (it is contained also in the Leofric Missal), assigned to the Circumcision or Octave of the Nativity, which concludes with the following words: "Quo sic in senarii numeri perfectione in hoc sæculo vivatis, et in septenario inter beatorum spirituum aginina requiescatis quatenus in octavo resurrectione renovati; jubilæi remissione ditati, ad gaudia sine fine mansura perveniatis. Amen".

We are fairly justified then when we read of the threefold, five-fold, and seven-fold litanies, of the number of the repetitions of Kyrie eleison and Christe eleison, of the number of the crosses made over the oblata in the canon of the Mass, of the number of the unctions used in administering the last sacraments, or the prayers in the coronation of a king (in the ancient form in the so-called Egbert Pontifical these prayers have been carefully numbered), of the intervals assigned for the saying of Masses for the dead, of the number of the lessons or the prophecies read at certain seasons of the year, or of the absolutions pronounced over the remains of bishops and prelates, or again of the number of subdeacons that accompany the pope and of the acolytes who bear candles before him-we