VOLUME II SLICE III Apollodorus to Aral (continued 2)

3. “Pillar” Apostles.—But in fact differentiation between apostles existed among the Twelve also. There were “pillars,” like Peter and John (and his brother James until his death), who really determined matters of grave moment, as in the conference with Paul in Gal. ii. 9—a conference which laid the basis of the latter’s status as an apostle even in the eyes of Jewish Christians. Such pre-eminence was but the sequel of personal distinctions visible even in the preparatory days of discipleship, and it warns us against viewing the primitive facts touching apostles in the official light of later times.

Consciousness of such personal pre-eminence has left its marks on the lists of the Twelve in the New Testament. Thus (1) Peter, James, John, Andrew, always appear as the first four, though the order varies, Mark representing relative prominence during Christ’s ministry, and Acts actual influence in the Apostolic Church (cf. Luke viii. 51, ix. 28). (2) The others also stand in groups of four, the first name in each being constant, while the order of the rest varies.

The same lesson emerges when we note that one such apostolic “pillar” stood outside the Twelve altogether, viz. James, the Lord’s brother (Gal. ii. 9, cf. i. 19); and further, that “the Lord’s brethren” seem to have ranked above “apostles” generally, being named between them and Peter in 1 Cor. ix. 5. That is, they too were apostles with the addition of a certain personal distinction.

4. Paul, the “Apostle of the Gentiles.”—So far apostles are only of the Palestinian type, taken from among actual hearers of the Messiah and with a mission primarily to Jews—apostles “of the circumcision” (Gal. ii. 7-9). Now, however, emerges a new apostleship, that to the Gentiles; and with the change of mission goes also some change in the type of missionary or apostle. Of this type Paul was the first, and he remained its primary, and in some senses its only, example. Though he could claim, on occasion, to satisfy the old test of having seen the risen Lord (1 Cor. ix. 1, cf. xv. 8), he himself laid stress not on this, but on the revelation within his own soul of Jesus as God’s Son, and of the Gospel latent therein (Gal. i. 16). This was his divine call as “apostle of the Gentiles” (Rom. xi. 13); here lay both his qualification and his credentials, once the fruits of the divine inworking were manifest in the success of his missionary work (Gal. ii. 8 f.; 1 Cor. xi. 1 f.; 2 Cor. in. 2 f., xii. 12). But this new criterion of apostleship was capable of wider application, one dispensing altogether with vision of the risen Lord—which could not even in Paul’s case be proved so fully as in the case of the original apostles—but appealing to the “signs of an apostle” (1 Cor. ix. 2; 2 Cor. xii. 12), the tokens of spiritual gift visible in work done, and particularly in the planting of the Gospel in fresh fields (2 Cor. x. 14-18). It may be in this wide charismatic sense that Paul uses the term in 1 Cor. xii. 28 f., Eph. ii. 20, iii. 5, iv. 11, and especially in Rom. xvi. 7, “men of mark among the apostles” (cf. 2 Cor. xi. 13, “pseudo-apostles” masquerading as “apostles of Christ,” and perhaps 1 Thess. ii, 6, of himself and Silas). That he used it in senses differing with the context is proved by 1 Cor. xv. 9, where he styles himself “the least of apostles,” although in other connexions he claims the very highest rank, co-ordinate even with the Twelve as a body (Gal. ii. 7 ff.), in virtue of his distinctive Gospel.

This point of view was not widely shared even in circles appreciative of his actual work. To most he seemed but a fruitful worker within lines determined by “the twelve apostles of the Lamb” as a body (Rev. xxi. 14). So we read of “the plant (Church) which the twelve apostles of the Beloved shall plant” (Ascension of Isaiah, iv. 3); “those who preached the Gospel to us (especially Gentiles)... unto whom He gave authority over the Gospel, being twelve for a witness to the tribes” (Barn. viii. 3, cf. v. 9); and the going forth of the Twelve, after twelve years, beyond Palestine “into the world,” to give it a chance to hear (Preaching of Peter, in Clem. Alex. Strom. vi. 5.43; 6.48). Later on, however, his own claim told on the Church’s mind, when his epistles were read in church as a collection styled simply “the Apostle.”

As the primary medium of the Gentile Gospel (Gal. i. 16, cf. i. 8, ii. 2) Paul had no peers as an “apostle of the Gentiles” (Rom. xi. 13, cf. XV. 15-20, and see 1 Cor. xv. 8, “last of all to me”), unless it were Barnabas who shares with him the title “apostle” in Acts xiv. 4, 14—possibly with reference to the special “work” on which they had recently been “sent forth by the Spirit” (xiii. 2, 4). Yet such as shared the spiritual gift (charisma) of missionary power in sufficient degree, were in fact apostles of Christ in the Spirit (1 Cor. xii. 28, II). Such a secondary type of apostolate—answering to “apostolic missionaries” of later times (cf. the use of ἱεραπόστολος in this sense by the Orthodox Eastern Church to-day)—would help to account for the apostolic claims of the missionaries censured in Rev. ii. 2, as also for the “apostles” of the second generation implied in the Didachē.

In the sub-apostolic age, however, the class of “missionaries” enjoying a charisma such as was conceived to convey apostolic commission through the Spirit, soon became distinguished from “apostles” (cf. Hennas, Sim. ix. 15.4, “the apostles and teachers of the message of the Son of God,” so 25.2; in 17.1 the apostles are reckoned as twelve), as the title became more and more confined by usage to the original apostles, particularly the Twelve as a body (e.g. Ascension of Isaiah and the Preaching of Peter), or to them and Paul (e.g. in Clement and Ignatius), and as reverence for these latter grew in connexion with their story in the Gospels and in Acts.2 Thus Eusebius describes as “evangelists” (cf. Philip the Evangelist in Acts xxi. 8, also Eph. iv. 11, 2 Tim. iv. 5) those who “occupied the first rank in the succession to the Apostles” in missionary work (Hist. Eccl. iii. 37, cf. v. 10). Yet the wider sense of “apostle” did not at once die out even in the third and fourth generations. It lingered on as applied to the Seventy3—by Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement and Origen— and even to Clement of Rome, by Clem. Alex. (? as a “fellow-worker” of Paul, Phil. iv. 3); while the adjective “apostolic” was applied to men like Polycarp (in his contemporary Acts of Martyrdom) and the Phrygian, Alexander, martyred at Lyons in A.D. 177 (Eus. v. 1), who was “not without share of apostolic charisma.”

The authority attaching to apostles was essentially spiritual in character and in the conditions of its exercise. Anything like autocracy among his followers was alien to Jesus’s own teaching (Matt, xxiii. 6-11). All Christians were “brethren,” and the basis of pre-eminence among them was relative ability for service. But the personal relation of the original Palestinian apostles to Jesus himself as Master gave them a unique fitness as authorized witnesses, from which flowed naturally, by sheer spiritual influence, such special forms of authority as they came gradually to exercise in the early Church. “There is no trace in Scripture of a formal commission of authority for government from Christ Himself” (Hort, Chr. Eccl. p. 84) given to apostles, save as representing the brethren in their collective action. Even the “resolutions” (δόγματα) of the Jerusalem conference were not set forth by the apostles present simply in their own name, nor as ipso facto binding on the conscience of the Antiochene Church. They expressed “a claim to deference rather than a right to be obeyed” (Hort, op. cit. 81-85). Such was the kind of authority attaching to apostles, whether collectively or individually. It was not a fixed notion, but varied in quantity and quality with the growing maturity of converts. This is how Paul, from whom we gather most on the point, conceives the matter. The exercise of his spiritual authority is not absolute, lest he “lord it over their faith”; consent of conscience or of “faith” is ever requisite (2 Cor. i. 24; cf. Rom. xiv. 23). But the principle was elastic in application, and would take more patriarchal forms in Palestine than in the Greek world. The case was essentially the same as on the various mission-fields to-day, where the position of the “missionary” is at first one of great spiritual initiative and authority, limited only by his own sense of the fitness of things, in the light of local usages. So the notion of formal or constitutional authority attaching to the apostolate, in its various senses, is an anachronism for the apostolic age. The tendency, however, was for their authority to be conceived more and more on formal lines, and, particularly after their deaths, as absolute.

The authority attaching to apostles as writers, which led gradually to the formation of a New Testament Canon—“the Apostles” side by side with “the Books” of the Old Testament (so 2 Clement xiv., c. A.D. 120-140)—is a subject by itself (see Bible).

This change of conception helped to further the notion of a certain devolution of apostolic powers to successors constituted by act of ordination. The earliest idea of an apostolical succession meant simply the re-emergence in others of the apostolic spirit of missionary enthusiasm. “The first rank in the succession of the apostles” consisted of men eminent as disciples of theirs, and so fitted to continue their labours (Euseb. iii. 37); and even under Commodus (A.D. 180-193) there were “evangelists of the word” possessed of “inspired zeal to emulate apostles” (v. 10). Such were perhaps the “apostles” of the Didachē. Of the notion of apostolic succession in ministerial grace conferred by ordination, there is little or no trace before Irenaeus. The famous passage in Clement of Rome (xliv. 2) refers simply to the succession of one set of men to another in an office of apostolic institution. The grace that makes Polycarp “an apostolic and prophetic teacher” (Mart. Polyc. 16) is peculiar to him personally. But Irenaeus holds, apparently on a priori grounds, that “elders” who stand in orderly succession to the apostolic founders of the true tradition in the churches, have, “along with the succession of oversight,” also an “assured gift of (insight into) truth” by the Father’s good pleasure (“cum episcopatus successione charisma veritatis certum secundum placitum Patris acceperunt”), in contrast to heretics who wilfully stand outside this approved line of transmission (adv. Haer. iv. 26. 2). So far, indeed, the succession is not limited to the monarchical episcopate as distinct from the presbyteral order to which it belonged (cf. “presbyterii ordo, principalis consessio” in the same context, and see iii. 14. 2), though the bishops of apostolic churches, as capable of being traced individually (iii. 3. 1), are specially appealed to as witnesses (cf. iv. 33. 8, v. 19. 2)—as earlier by Hegesippus (Euseb. iv. 22). Nor is there mention of sacerdotal grace attaching to the succession in apostolic truth.4 But once the idea of supernatural grace going along with office as such (of which we have already a trace in the Ignatian bishop, though without the notion of actual apostolic succession) arose in connexion with successio ab apostolis, the full development of the doctrine was but a matter of time.5

Literature.—In England the modern treatment of the subject dates from J.B. Lightfoot’s dissertation in his Commentary on Galatians, to which Dr F.J.A. Hort’s The Christian Ecclesia added elements of value; see also T.M. Lindsay, The Church and the Ministry, and articles in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible and the Ency. Biblica; A. Harnack, Die Lehre der Apostel, pp. 93 ff., and Dogmengeschichte (3rd ed.), i. 153 ff.; E. Haupt, Zum Verstandnis d. Apostolats in NT. (Halle, 1896); and especially H. Monnier, La Notion de l’apostolat, des origines à Irénée (Paris, 1903). The later legends and their sources are examined by T. Schermann, Propheten- und Apostellegenden (Leipzig, 1907).

(J. V. B.)

1 By analogy, that is; for the wider sense of “apostle” in the Apostolic age need not be identical with a sub-apostolic use of the term (see below, 4 fin.).

2 The tendency is already visible in the Lucan writings. An anologous process is seen in the use of “disciple,” applicable in the apostolic age to Christians at large, but in the course of the sub-apostolic age restricted to personal “disciples of the Lord” or to martyrs (Papias in Eus. iii. 39, cf. Ignatius, Ad Eph. i. 2).

3 In the Edessene legend of Abgar, in Eus. i. 12, we read that “Judas, who is also Thomas, sent Thaddaeus as apostle—one of the Seventy,” where simply an authoritative envoy of Jesus seems intended. For traces of the wider sense of “apostle” in Gnostic, Marcionite and Montanist circles, see Monnier (as below).

4 The above is substantially the view taken by J.B. Lightfoot in his essay on “The Christian Ministry” (Comm. on Philippians, 6th ed., pp. 239, 252 f.), and by T.M. Lindsay, The Church and the Ministry (1902), pp. 224-228, 278 ff. Even C. Gore, The Church and the Ministry (1889), pp. 119 ff., while inferring a sacerdotal element in Irenaeus’s conception of the episcopate, says: “But it is mainly as preserving the catholic traditions that Irenaeus regards the apostolic succession” (p. 120).

5 See Lightfoot’s essay for Cyprian’s contribution, as also for that of the Clementines, which fix on the twofold position of James at Jerusalem, as apostle and bishop, as bearing on apostolic succession in the episcopate.

APOSTLE SPOONS, a set of spoons, usually of silver or silver gilt, with the handles terminating in figures of the apostles, each bearing their distinctive emblem. They were common baptismal gifts during the 15th and 16th centuries, but were dying out by 1666. Often single spoons were given, bearing the figure of the patron or name saint of the child. Sets of the twelve apostles are not common, and complete sets of thirteen, with the figure of our Lord on a larger spoon, are still rarer. The Goldsmiths’ Company in London has one such set, all by the same maker and bearing the hall-mark of 1626, and a set of thirteen was sold at Christie’s in 1904 for £4900.

See William Hone, The Everyday Book and Table Book (1831); and W.J. Cripps, Old English Plate (9th ed., 1906).

APOSTOLICAL CONSTITUTIONS (Διαταγαὶ or Διατάξεις τῶν ἁγίων ἀποστόλων διὰ Κλήμεντος τοῦ Ῥωμαίων ἐπισκόπου τε καὶ πολίτου. Καθολικὴ διδασκαλία), a collection of ecclesiastical regulations in eight books, the last of which concludes with the eighty-five Canons of the Holy Apostles. By their title the Constitutions profess to have been drawn up by the apostles, and to have been transmitted to the Church by Clement of Rome; sometimes the alleged authors are represented as speaking jointly, sometimes singly. From the first they have been very variously estimated; the Canons, as a rule, more highly than the rest of the work. For example, the Trullan Council of Constantinople (quini-sextum), A.D. 692, accepts the Canons as genuine by its second canon, but rejects the Constitutions on the ground that spurious matter had been introduced into them by heretics; and whilst the former were henceforward used freely in the East, only a few portions of the latter found their way into the Greek and oriental law-books. Again, Dionysius Exiguus (c. A.D. 500) translated fifty of the Canons into Latin,1 although under the title Canones qui dicuntur Apostolorum, and thus they passed into other Western collections; whilst the Constitutions as a whole remained unknown in the West until they were published in 1563 by the Jesuit Turrianus. At first received with enthusiasm, their authenticity soon came to be impugned; and their true significance was largely lost sight of as it began to be realized that they were not what they claimed to be. Vain attempts were still made to rehabilitate them, and they were, in general, more highly estimated in England than elsewhere. The most extravagant estimate of all was that of Whiston, who calls them “the most sacred standard of Christianity, equal in authority to the Gospels themselves, and superior in authority to the epistles of single apostles, some parts of them being our Saviour’s own original laws delivered to the apostles, and the other parts the public acts of the apostles” (Historical preface to Primitive Christianity Revived, pp. 85-86). Others, however, realized their composite character from the first, and by degrees some of the component documents became known. Bishop Pearson was able to say that “the eight books of the Apostolic Constitutions have been after Epiphanius’s time compiled and patched together out of the didascaliae or doctrines which went under the names of the holy apostles and their disciples or successors” (Vind. Ign. i. cap. 5); whilst a greater scholar still, Archbishop Usher, had already gone much further, and concluded, forestalling the results of modern critical methods, that their compiler was none other than the compiler of the spurious Ignatian epistles (Epp. Polyc. et Ign. p. lxiii. f., Oxon. 1644). The Apostolical Constitutions, then, are spurious, and they are one of a long series of documents of like character. But we have not really gauged their significance by saying that they are spurious. They are the last stage and climax of a gradual process of compilation and crystallization, so to speak, of unwritten church custom; and a short account of this process will show their real importance and value.

These documents are the outcome of a tendency which is found in every society, religious or secular, at some point in its history. The society begins by living in accordance with its fundamental principles. By degrees these Origin and real nature. translate themselves into appropriate action. Difficulties are faced and solved as they arise; and when similar circumstances recur they will tend to be met in the same way. Thus there grows up by degrees a body of what may be called customary law. Plainly, there is no particular point of time at which this customary law can be said to have begun. To all appearance it is there from the first in solution and gradually crystallizes out; and yet it is being continually modified as time goes on. Moreover, the time comes when the attempt is made, either by private individuals or by the society itself, to put this “customary law” into writing. Now when this is done, two tendencies will at once show themselves. (a) This “customary law” will at once become more definite: the very fact of putting it into writing will involve an effort after logical completeness. There will be a tendency on the part of the writer to fill up gaps; to state local customs as if they obtained universally; to introduce his personal equation, and to add to that which is the custom that which, in his opinion, ought to be. (b) There will be a strong tendency to fortify that which has been written with great names, especially in days when there is no very clear notion of literary property. This is done, not always with any deliberate consciousness of fraud (although it must be clearly recognized that truth is not one of the “natural virtues,” and that the sense of the obligations of truthfulness was far from strong), but rather to emphasize the importance of what was written, and the fact that it was no new invention of the writer’s. In a non-literary age fame gathers about great names; and that which, ex hypothesi, has gone on since the beginning of things is naturally attributed to the founders of the society. Then come interpolations to make this ascription more probable, and the prefixing of a title, then or subsequently, which states it as a fact. This is precisely the way in which the Apostolical Constitutions and other kindred documents have come into being. They are attempts, made in various places and at different times, to put into writing the order and discipline and character of the Church; in part for private instruction and edification, but in part also with a view to actual use; frequently even with an actual reference to particular circumstances. In this lies their importance, to a degree which is only just being adequately realized. They contain evidence of the utmost value as to the order of the Church in early days; evidence, however, which needs to be sifted with the greatest care, since the personal preferences of the writer and the customs of the local church to which he belongs are continually mixed up with things which have a wider prevalence. It is only by careful investigation, by the method of comparisons, that these elements can be disentangled; but as the number of documents of this class known to us is continually increasing, their value increases even more than proportionately. And whilst their local and fugitive character must be fully recognized and allowed for, is it unjustifiable to set them aside or leave them out of account as heretical, and therefore negligible.

It will be sufficient here to mention shortly the chief collections of this kind which came into existence during the first four centuries; generally as the work of private individuals, and having, at any rate, no more than a local authority Other collections. of some kind, (a) The earliest known to us is the Didachē or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, itself compiled from earlier materials, and dating from about 120 (see Didachē). (b) The Apostolic Church Order (apostolische Kirchenordnung of German writers); Ecclesiastical Canons of the Holy Apostles of one MS.; Sententiae Apostolorum of Pitra: of about 300, and emanating probably from Asia Minor. Its earlier part, cc. 1-14, depends upon the Didachē, and the rest of it is a book of discipline in which Harnack has attempted to distinguish two older fragments of church law (Texte u. Unters. ii. 5). (c) The so-called Canones Hippolyti, probably Alexandrian or Roman, and of the first half of the 3rd century. It will be observed that these make no claim to apostolic authorship; but otherwise their origin is like that of the rest, unless indeed, as has been suggested, they represent the work of an actual Roman synod, (d) The so-called Egyptian Church Order, in Coptic from a Greek pre-Nicene original (c. 310). It is part of the Egyptian Heptateuch and contains neither communion nor ordination forms, (e) The Ethiopic Church Order, perhaps twenty years later than (d), and forming part of the Ethiopic Statutes. (f) The Verona Latin Fragments, discovered and published by Hauler, portions of a form akin to (e), which may be dated c. 340, though possibly earlier. It has a preface which refers to a treatise Concerning Spiritual Gifts as having immediately preceded it. (g) The recently discovered Testament of the Lord, which is somewhat later in date (c. 350), and likewise depends upon the Canones Hippolyti. (h) The so-called Canons of Basil. This is an Arabic work perhaps based on a Coptic and ultimately on a Greek original, embodying with modifications large portions of the Canons of Hippolytus. (On the relations between the six last-named, see Hippolytus, Canons of.)

Here also may be noticed the Didascalia Apostolorum, originally written in Greek, but known through a Syriac version and a fragmentary Latin one published by Hauler. It is of the middle of the 3rd century—in fact, a passage in the Latin translation seems to give us the date A.D. 254. It emanates from Palestine or Syria, and is independent of the documents already mentioned; and upon it the Constitutions themselves very largely depend. It is a mixture of moral and ecclesiastical instruction. The Sacramentary of Serapion (c. 350), The Pilgrimage of Etheria (Silvia) (c. 385), and The Catechetical Lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem (348) are also of value in this connexion. In the (so-called) Constitutions through Hippolytus we have possibly a preliminary draft of the famous 8th book of the Apostolical Constitutions.2

The Constitutions themselves fall into three main divisions. (i.) The first of these consists of books i.-vi., and throughout runs parallel to the Didascalia. Bickell, indeed, held that this latter was an abbreviated form of books i.-vi.; Contents. but it is now agreed on all hands that the Constitutions are based on the Didascalia and not vice versa. (ii.) Then follows book vii., the first thirty-one chapters of which are an adaptation of the Didachē, whilst the rest contain various liturgical forms of which the origin is still uncertain, though it has been acutely suggested by Achelis, and with great probability, that they originated in the schismatical congregation of Lucian at Antioch. (iii.) Book viii. is more composite, and falls into three parts. The first two chapters, περὶ χαρισμάτων, may be based upon a lost work of St Hippolytus, otherwise known only by a reference to it in the preface of the Verona Latin Fragments; and an examination shows that this is highly probable. The next section, cc. 3-27, περὶ χειροτονιῶν, and cc. 28-46, περὶ κανόνων, is twofold, and is evidently that upon which the writer sets most store. The apostles no longer speak jointly, but one by one in an apostolic council, and the section closes with a joint decree of them all. They speak of the ordination of bishops (the so-called Clementine Liturgy is that which is directed to be used at the consecration of a bishop, cc. 5-15), of presbyters, deacons, deaconesses, sub-deacons and lectors, and then pass on to confessors, virgins, widows and exorcists; after which follows a series of canons on various subjects, and liturgical formulae. With regard to this section, all that can be said is that it includes materials which are also to be found elsewhere—in the Egyptian Church Order and other documents already spoken of—and that the precise relation between them is at present not determined. The third section consists of the Apostolic Canons already referred to, the last and most significant of which places the Constitutions and the two epistles of Clement in the canon of Scripture, and omits the Apocalypse. They are derived in part from the preceding Constitutions, in part from the canons of the councils of Antioch, 341, Nicaea, 325, and possibly Laodicaea, 363.

A comparison of the Constitutions with the material upon which they are based will illustrate the compiler’s method. (a) To begin with the Didascalia already mentioned. It is unmethodical and badly digested, homiletical in style, and abounding in biblical quotations. There is no precise arrangement; but the subjects, following a general introduction, are the bishop and his duties, penance, the administration of the offerings, the settlement of disputes, the divine service, the order of widows, deacons and deaconesses, the poor, behaviour in persecution, and so forth. The compiler of the Constitutions finds here material after his own heart. He is even more discursive and more homiletical in style; he adds fresh citations of the Scriptures, and additional explanations and moral reflexions; and all this with so little judgment that he often leaves confusion worse confounded (e.g. in ii. 57, where, upon a symbolical description of the Church as a sheepfold, he has superimposed the further symbolism of a ship). (b) Passing on to books vii. and viii., we observe that the compiler’s method of necessity changes with his new material. In the former book he still makes large additions and alterations, but there is less scope for his prolixity than before; and in the latter, where he is no longer dealing with generalities, but making actual definitions, the Constitutions of necessity become more precise and statutory in form. Throughout he adopts and adapts the language of his sources as far as possible, “only pruning in the most pressing cases,” but towards the end he cannot avoid making larger alterations from time to time. And his alterations throughout are not made aimlessly. Where he finds things which would obviously clash with the customs of his own day, he unhesitatingly modifies them. An account of the Passion, with a curiously perverted chronology, the object of which was to justify the length of the Passion-tide fast, is entirely revised for this reason (v. 14); the direction to observe Easter according to the Jewish computation is changed into the exact contrary for the same reason (v. 17); and where his archetype lapses into speaking of a lull in persecution he naïvely informs us that the Romans have now given up persecuting and have adopted Christianity (vi. 26), forgetting altogether that he is speaking in the character of the apostles. Above all, he both magnifies the office of the Christian ministry as a whole and alters what is said of it in detail (for example, the deaconess loses rank not a little), to make it agree with the circumstances of his day in general, and with his own ideas of fitness in particular. It is here that his evidence is at once most valuable and needs to be used with the greatest care. To give one striking example of the value of these documents. The Canones Hippolyti (vi. 43) provide that one who has been a confessor for the faith may be received as a presbyter by virtue of his confessorship and not by the laying on of the bishop’s hands; but if he be chosen a bishop, he is to be ordained. This provision passes on into the Egyptian Ecclesiastical Canons and other kindred documents, and even into the Testamentum Domini. But the corresponding passage in the Apostolical Constitutions (viii. 23) entirely reverses it: “A confessor is not ordained, for he is so by choice and patience, and is worthy of great honour.... But if there be occasion, he is to be ordained either a bishop, priest, or deacon. But if any one of the confessors who is not ordained snatches to himself any such dignity upon account of his confession, let the same person be deprived and rejected; for he is not in such an office, since he has denied the constitution of Christ, and is worse than an infidel.”

Who, then, is the author of the Constitutions, and what can be inferred with regard to him? (i.) By separating off the sources which he used from his own additions to them, it at once becomes clear that the latter are the work of one Authorship, place, and date. man: the style is unmistakable, and the method of working is the same throughout. The compiler of books i.-vi. is also the compiler of books vii., viii. (ii.) As to his theological position, different views have been held. Funk suggests Apollinarianism, which is the refuge of the destitute; and Achelis inclines in the same direction. But the affinities of the author are quite otherwise, the most pronounced of them being a strong subordinationist tendency, denial of a human soul to Christ, and the like, which suggest not indeed Arianism but an inclination towards Arianism. Above all, his polemic is directed against the dying heresies of the 3rd century; and he writes with an absence of constraint which is not the language of one who lives amidst violent controversies or who is conscious of being in a minority. All this points to the position of a “conservative” or semi-Arian of the East, one who belongs, perhaps, to the circle of Lucian of Antioch and writes before the time of Julian. It is hard to think of any other time or circumstances in which a man could write like this, (iii.) The indications of time have been held to point to a different conclusion. On the one hand, the fact that the attempt to rebuild the temple by Julian in 363 is not mentioned in vi. 24 points to an earlier date; and the fact that the κοπιᾶται are not mentioned amongst the church officers points in the same direction, for elsewhere they are first mentioned in a rescript of Constantius in A.D. 357. On the other hand, in the cycle of feasts occur the names of several which are probably of later date—e.g. Christmas and St Stephen, which were introduced at Antioch c. A.D. 378 and 379 respectively. Again, Epiphanius (c. A.D. 374) appears to be unacquainted with it; he still quotes from the Didascalia, and elaborately explains it away where it is contrary to the usages of his own day. But as regards the former point, it is possible that the Apostolical Constitutions constantly gave rise to these festivals; or, on the other hand, that the two passages were subsequently introduced either by the writer himself or by some other hand, when the last book of the Constitutions was being used as a law-book. And as regards the latter, the fact that Epiphanius does not use the Constitutions is no proof that they had not yet been compiled. (iv.) As to the region of composition there is no real doubt. It was clearly the East, Syria or Palestine. Many indications are against the latter, and Syria is strongly suggested by the use of the Syro-Macedonian calendar. Moreover, the writer represents the Roman Clement as the channel of communication between the apostles and the Church. This fact both supplies him with the name by which he is commonly known, Pseudo-Clement, and also furnishes corroboration of his Syrian birth; since the other spurious writings bearing the name of Clement, the Homilies and Recognitions, are likewise of Syrian origin. Moreover, the spurious Ignatian epistles, which are also Syrian, depend throughout upon the Constitutions, (v.) But this is not all. It was long ago noticed that Pseudo-Clement bears a very close resemblance to Pseudo-Ignatius, the interpolator of the Ignatian Epistles in the longer Greek recension. Usher, as we have seen, identified them, and modern criticism accepts this identification as a fact (Lagarde, Harnack, Funk, Brightman). Lightfoot, indeed, still hesitated (Ap. Fathers, II. i. 266 n.) on the ground that Pseudo-Ignatius occasionally misunderstands the Constitutions, that the two writings give the Roman succession differently, and that Pseudo-Clement shows no knowledge of the Christological controversies of Nicaea. But as regards the first of these, it is rather a case of condensed citation than of misinterpretation; the second is explained by the writer’s carelessness as shown in other passages, and all are solved if a considerable interval of time elapsed between the compilation of the Constitutions and the spurious Ignatian epistles.

It seems clear then that the compiler was a Syrian, and that he also wrote the spurious Ignatian epistles; he was likewise probably a semi-Arian of the school of Lucian of Antioch. His date is given by Harnack as A.D. 340-360, with a leaning to 340-343; by Lightfoot as the latter half of the 4th century; by Brightman, 370-380; by Maclean, 375; and by Funk as the beginning of the 5th century.

Authorities.—W. Ueltzen, Constitutiones Apostolicae (Schwerin, 1853); P.A. de Lagarde, Didascalia Apostolorum Syriace (Leipz., 1854); Constitutiones Apostolorum (Leipz. and Lond., 1862); M.D. Gibson, Didascalia Apost. Syriace, with Eng. trans. (Horae Semiticae, i. and ii., Cambridge, 1903); J.B. Pitra, Juris Ecclesiastici Graecorum Historia et Monumenta, i. (Rome, 1864); Hauler, Didascaliae Apostolorum Fragmenta Ueronensia Latina, (Leipzig, 1900); Bickell, Geschichte des Kirchenrechts, i. (Giessen, 1843); F.X. Funk, Die apostolischen Konstitutionen (Rottenb., 1891); A. Harnack, Geschichte d. altchristl. Litteratur, i. 515 ff. (Leipz., 1893); F.E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western, I. xvii. ff. (Oxford, 1896); H. Achelis, in Hauck’s Realencyklopadie, i. 734 f., art. “Apostolische Konstitutionen und Kanones” (Leipz., 1896); A.S. Maclean, Recent Discoveries illustrating Early Christian Worship (Lond., 1904); J. Wordsworth, The Ministry of Grace, pp. 18 ff; J.P. Arendzen, “The Apostolic Church Order” (Syriac Text, Eng. trans. and notes) in Journ. of Theol. Studies, iii. 59. Trans. of Apost. Constitutions, book viii., in Ante-Nicene Christian Library.

(W. E. Co.)

1 Why he did not go on to give the remaining thirty-five is not clear; they belong to the same date as, and are not inferior to, the first fifty.

2 At a later date various collections were made of the documents above mentioned, or some of them, to serve as law-books in different churches—e.g. the Syrian Octateuch, the Egyptian Heptateuch, and the Ethiopic Sīnōdōs. These, however, stand on an entirely different footing, since they are simply collections of existing documents, and no attempt is made to claim apostolic authorship for them.

APOSTOLIC CANONS, a collection of eighty-five rules for the regulation of clerical life, appended to the eighth book of the Apostolical Constitutions (q.v.). They are couched in brief legislative form though on no definite plan, and deal with the vexed questions of ecclesiastical discipline as they were raised towards the end of the 4th century. At least half of the canons are derived from earlier constitutions, and probably not many of them are the actual productions of the compiler, whose aim was to gloss over the real nature of the Constitutions, and secure their incorporation with the Epistles of Clement in the New Testament of his day. The Codex Alexandrinus does indeed append the Clementine Epistles to its text of the New Testament. The Canons may be a little later in date than the preceding Constitutions, but they are evidently from the same Syrian theological circle.

APOSTOLIC FATHERS, a term used to distinguish those early Christian writers who were believed to have been the personal associates of the original Apostles. While the title “Fathers” was given from at least the beginning of the 4th century to church writers of former days, as being the parents of Christian belief and thought for later times, the expression “Apostolic Fathers” dates only from the latter part of the 17th century. The idea of recognizing these “Fathers” as a special group exists already in the title “Patres aevi apostolici, sive SS. Patrum qui temporibus apostolicis floruerunt ... opera,” under which in 1672 J.B. Cotelier published at Paris the writings current under the names of Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Hermas, Ignatius and Polycarp. But the name itself is due to their next editor, Thomas Ittig (1643-1710), in his Bibliotheca Patrum Apostolicorum (1699), who, however, included under this title only Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp. Here already appears the doubt as to how many writers can claim the title, a doubt which has continued ever since, and makes the contents of the “Apostolic Fathers” differ so much from editor to editor. Thus the Oratorian Andrea Gallandi (1700-1779), in re-issuing Cotelier’s collection in his Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum (1765-1781), included the fragments of Papias and the Epistle to Diognetus, to which recent editors have added the citations from the “Elders” of Papias’s day found in Irenaeus and, since 1883, the Didachē.

The degree of historic claim which these various writings have to rank as the works1 of Apostolic Fathers varies greatly on any definition of “apostolic.” Originally the epithet was meant to be taken strictly, viz. as denoting those whom history could show to have been personally connected, or at least coeval, with one or more apostles; and an effort was made, as by Cotelier, to distinguish the writings rightly and wrongly assigned to such. Thus editions tended to vary with the historical views of editors. But the convenience of the category “Apostolic Fathers” to express not only those who might possibly have had some sort of direct contact with apostles—such as “Barnabas,” Clement, Ignatius, Papias, Polycarp—but also those who seemed specially to preserve the pure tradition of apostolic doctrine during the sub-apostolic age, has led to its general use in a wide and vague sense.

Conventionally, then, the title denotes the group of writings which, whether in date or in internal character, are regarded as belonging to the main stream of the Church’s teaching during the period between the Apostles and the Apologists (i.e. to c. A.D. 140). Or to put it more exactly, the “Apostolic Fathers” represent, chronologically in the main and still more from the religious and theological standpoint, the momentous process of transition from the type of teaching in the New Testament to that which meets us in the early Catholic Fathers, from the last quarter of the 2nd century onwards. The Apologists no doubt show us certain fresh factors entering into this development; but on the whole the Apostolic Fathers by themselves go a long way to explain the transition in question, so far as knowledge of this saeculum obscurum is within our reach at all. It is true that they do not include the whole even of the ecclesiastical literature of the sub-apostolic age, not to mention what remains of Gnostic and other minority types. The Preaching and Apocalypse of Peter, for instance, are quite typical of the same period, and help us to read between the lines of the Apostolic Fathers. Yet they do not really add much to what is there already, and they have the drawbacks of pseudonymity; they lack concrete and personal qualities; they are general expressions of tendencies which we cannot well locate or measure, save by means of the Apostolic Fathers themselves or of their earliest Catholic successors.

(A) In external features the group is far from homogeneous, a fact which has led to their being disintegrated as a group in certain histories of early Christian literature (e.g. those of Harnack and Krüger), and classed each under its own literary type—so sacrificing to outer form, which is quite secondary in primitive Christian writings, the more significant fact of religious affinity. Its original members, those still best entitled to their name in any strict sense, are epistles, and in this respect also most akin to Apostolic writings. Indeed Ignatius takes pleasure in saluting his readers “after the apostolic stamp” (ad Troll. inscr.), while yet disclaiming all desire to emulate the apostolic manner in other respects, being fully conscious of the gulf between himself and apostles like Peter and Paul in claim to authority (ib. in. 3, ad Rom. iv. 3). The like holds of Polycarp, who, in explaining that he writes to exhort the Philippians only at their own request, adds, “for neither am I, nor is any other like me, able to follow the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul” (in. 2). Clement’s epistle, indeed, conforms more to the elaborate and treatise-like form of the Epistle to the Hebrews, on which it draws so largely; and the same is true of “Barnabas.” But one and all are influenced by study of apostolic epistles, and witness to the impression which these produced on the men of the next generation. Unconsciously, too, they correspond to the apostolic type of writing in another respect, viz. their occasional and practical character. They are evoked by pressing needs of the hour among some definite body of Christians and not by any literary motive.2 This is a universal trait of primitive Christian writings; so that to speak of primitive Christian “literature” at all is hardly accurate, and tends to an artificial handling of their contents. These sub-apostolic epistles are veritable “human documents,” with the personal note running through them. They are after all personal expressions of Christianity, in which are discernible also specific types of local tradition. To such spontaneous actuality a large part of their interest and value is due.

Nor is this pre-literary and vital quality really absent even from the writing which is least entitled to a place among “Apostolic Fathers,” the Epistle to Diognetus. This beautiful picture of the Christian life as a realized ideal, and of Christians as “the soul” of the world, owes its inclusion to a double error: first, to the accidental attachment at the end of another fragment (§ ii), which opens with the writer’s claim to stand forth as a teacher as being “a disciple of apostles”; and next, to mistaken exegesis of this phrase as implying personal relations with apostles, rather than knowledge of their teaching, written or oral. Whether in form addressed to Diognetus, the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, as a typical cultured observer of Christianity, or to some other eminent person of the same name in the locality of its origin, or, as seems more likely, to cultured Greeks generally, personified under the significant name “Diognetus” (“Heaven-born,” of. Acts xvii. 28 along with § iii. 4)—the epistle is in any case an “open letter” of an essentially literary type. Further, its opening seems modelled on the lines of the preface to Luke’s Gospel, to which, along with Acts, it may owe something of its very conception as a reasoned appeal to the lover of truth. But while literary in form and conception, its appeal is in spirit so personal a testimony to what the Gospel has done for the writer and his fellow Christians, that it is akin to the piety of the Apostolic Fathers as a group. It is true that it has marked affinities, e.g. in its natural theology, with the earliest Apologists, Aristides and Justin, even as it is itself in substance an apology addressed not to the State, but to thoughtful public opinion. But this only means that we cannot draw a hard and fast line between groups of early Christian writings at a time when practical religious interests overshadowed all others.

If thus related to the Apologists of the middle of the 2nd century, the Epistle to Diognetus has also points of contact with one of the most practical and least literary writings found among our Apostolic Fathers, viz. the homily originally known as the Second Epistle of Clement (for this ascription, as for other details, see Clementine Literature). The recovery of its concluding sections in the same MS. which brought the Didachē to light, proves beyond question that we have here the earliest extant sermon preached before a Christian congregation, about A.D. 120-140 (so J.B. Lightfoot). Its opening section, recalling to its hearers the passing of the mists of idolatry before the revelation in Jesus Christ, is markedly similar in tone and tenor to passages in the Epistle to Diognetus. Far closer, however, are the affinities between the homily and the Shepherd of Hermas, “the first Christian allegory,” which as a literary whole dates from about A.D. 140, but probably represents a more or less prolonged prophetic activity on the part of its author, the brother of Pius, the Roman bishop of his day (c. 139-154). In both the primary theme is repentance, as called for by serious sins, after baptism has placed the Christian on his new and higher level of responsibility. Thus both are hortatory writings, the one argumentative in form, the other prophetic, after the manner of later Old Testament prophets whose messages came in visions and similitudes. This prophetic and apocalyptic note, which characterizes Hermas among the Apostolic Fathers (though there are traces of it also in the Didachē and in Ignatius, ad Eph. xx.), is a genuinely primitive trait and goes far to explain the vogue which the Shepherd enjoyed in the generations immediately succeeding, as also the influence of its disciplinary policy, which is its prophetic “burden” (see Hermas, Shepherd of).

We come finally to the anonymous Teaching of the Twelve Apostles and Papias’s Exposition of Oracles of the Lord, so far as this is known to us. The former, besides embodying catechetical instruction in Christian conduct (the “Two Ways”), which goes back in substance to the early apostolic age and is embodied also in “Barnabas,” depicts in outline the fundamental usages of church life as practised in some conservative region (probably within Syria) about the last quarter of the 1st century and perhaps even later. The whole is put forth as substantially the apostolic teaching (Didachē) on the subjects in question. This is probably a bona fide claim. It expresses the feeling common to the Apostolic Fathers and general in the sub-apostolic age, at any rate in regions where apostles had once laboured, that local tradition, as held by the recognized church leaders, did but continue apostolic doctrine and practice. Into later developments of this feeling an increasing element of illusion entered, and all other written embodiments of it known to us take the form of literary fictions, more or less bold. It is in contrast to these that the Didachē is justly felt to be genuinely primitive and of a piece with the Apostolic Fathers. Thus while its form would by analogy tend per se to awaken suspicion, its contents remove this feeling; and we may even infer from this surviving early formulation of local ecclesiastical tradition, that others of somewhat similar character came into being in the sub-apostolic age, but failed to survive save as embodied in later local teaching, oral or written, very much as if the Didachē had perished and its literary offspring alone remained (see Didachē).

As regards Papias’s Exposition, which Lightfoot describes as “among the earliest forerunners of commentaries, partly explanatory, partly illustrative, on portions of the New Testament,” we need here only remark that, whatever its exact form may have been—as to which the extant fragments still leave room for doubt—it was in conception expository of the historic meaning of Christ’s more ambiguous Sayings, viewed in the light of definitely ascertained apostolic traditions bearing on the subject. The like is true also of the fragments of the Elders preserved in Irenaeus (so far as these do not really come from Papias). Both bodies of exposition represent the traditional principle at work in the sub-apostolic age, making for the preservation in relative purity, over against merely subjective interpretations—those of the Gnostics in particular—of the historic or original sense of Christ’s teaching, just as Ignatius stood for the historicity of the facts of His earthly career in their plain, natural sense.

(B) Here the question of external form passes readily over into that of the internal character and spirit. Indeed much has already been said or suggested bearing on these. The relation of these writers to the apostolic teaching generally has become pretty evident. It is one of absolute loyalty and deference, as to the teaching of inspiration. They are conscious, as are we in reading them, that they are not moving on the same level of insight as the Apostles; they are sub-apostolic in that sense also. Hence there appear constant traces of study of the Apostolic writings, so far as these were accessible in the locality of each writer at his date of writing (for the details of this subject, and its bearing on the history of the Canonical Scriptures of the New Testament, see The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, Oxford, 1905). As Lightfoot points out (Apostolic Fathers, pt. i. vol. i. p. 7), however, personality, with its variety of temperament and emphasis, largely colours the Apostolic Fathers, especially the primary group. Clement has all the Roman feeling for duly constituted order and discipline; Ignatius has the Syrian or semi-oriental passion of devotion, showing itself at once in his mystic love for his Lord and his over-strained yearning to become His very “disciple” by drinking the like cup of martyrdom; Polycarp is, above all things, steady in his allegiance to what had first won his conscience and heart, and his “passive and receptive character” comes out in the contents of his epistle. Of the rest, whose personalities are less known to us, Papias shares Polycarp’s qualities and their limitations, the anonymous homilist and Hermas are marked by intense moral earnestness, while the writer to Diognetus joins to this a profound religious insight. These personal traits determine by selective affinity, working under conditions given by the special local type of tradition and piety, the elements in the Apostolic writings which each was able to assimilate and express—though we must allow also for variety in the occasions of writing. Thus one New Testament type is echoed in one and another in another; or it may be several in turn. The latter is the case in Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp; perhaps also in “Barnabas.” In Hermas there is special affinity to the language and thought of the epistle of James, and in the homilist to those of Paul. Yet their very use of the same terms or ideas makes us the more aware of “a marked contrast to the depth and clearness of conception with which the several Apostolic writers place before us different aspects of the Gospel” (Lightfoot). While Apostolic phrases are used, the sense behind them is often different and less evangelic. They have not caught the Apostolic meaning, because they have not penetrated to the full religious experience which gave to the words, often words with long and varied history both in the Septuagint and in ordinary Greek usage, their specific meaning to each apostle and especially to Paul. This phenomenon was noted particularly by E. Reuss, in his Histoire de la théologie chrétienne an siècle apostolique (3rd ed., 1864). Take for instance Clement. Lightfoot, indeed, dwells on the all-round “comprehensiveness” with which Clement, as the mouthpiece of the early Roman Church, utters in succession phrases or ideas borrowed impartially from Peter and Paul and James and the Epistle to Hebrews. He admits, however, that such mere co-ordination of the language of Paul and James, for instance, as appears in his twice bracketing “faith and hospitality” as grounds of acceptance with God (the cases are those of Abraham and Rahab, in chs. x. and xii.), is “from a strictly dogmatic point of view” his weakness. But the weakness is more than a dogmatic one; it is one of religious experience, as the source of spiritual insight. It is not merely that “there is no dogmatic system in Clement” or in any other of the Apostolic Fathers; that may favour, not hinder, religious insight. There is a want of depth in Christian experience, in the power of realizing relative spiritual values in the light of the master principle involved in the distinctively Christian consciousness, such as could raise Clement above a verbal eclecticism, rather than comprehensiveness, in the use of Apostolic language. As R.W. Dale remarks, in a note on Reuss’s too severe words (Eng. trans. ii. 295): “The vital force of the Apostolic convictions gave to Apostolic thought a certain organic and consistent form.” It is lack of this organic quality in the thought, not only of Clement but also of the Apostolic Fathers generally—with the possible exception of Ignatius, who seems to share the Apostolic experience more fully than any other, to which Reuss rightly directs attention. In virtue of this defect, due largely to the failure to enter into the Apostolic experience of mystic union with Christ, he can rightly speak of “an immense retrogression” in theology visible “at the end of the century, and in circles where it might have been least expected” (ii. p. 294, cf. 541).

In fact the perspective of the Gospel was seriously changed and its most distinctive features obscured. This was specially the case with the experimental doctrines of grace. Here the central glory of the Cross as “the power of God unto salvation” suffered some eclipse, although the passion of Christ was felt to be a transcendent act of Divine Grace in one way or another. But even more serious was the loss of an adequate sense of the contrast between “grace” and “works” as conditions of salvation. There was little or no sense of the danger of the legal principle, as related to human egoism and the instinct to seek salvation as a reward for merit. The passages in which these things are laid bare by Paul’s remorseless analysis of his own experience “under Law” seem to have made practically no impression on the Apostolic Fathers as a whole. Gentile Christians had not felt the fang of the Law as the ex-Pharisee had occasion to feel it. Even if first trained in the Hellenistic synagogues of the Dispersion, as was often the case, they apprehended the Law on its more helpful and less exacting side, and had not been brought “by the Law to die unto the Law,” that they might “live unto God.” The result was too great a continuity between their religious conceptions before and after embracing the Gospel. Thus the latter seemed to them simply to bring forgiveness of past sins for Christ’s sake, and then an enhanced moral responsibility to the New Law revealed in Him. Hence a new sort of legalism, known to recent writers as Moralism, underlies much of the piety of the Apostolic Fathers, though Ignatius is quite free from it, while Polycarp and “Barnabas” are less under its influence than are the Didachē, Clement, the Homilist and Hermas. It conceives salvation as a “wages” (μισθός) to be earned or forfeited; and regards certain good works, such as prayer, fasting, alms—especially the last—as efficacious to cancel sins. The reality of this tendency, particularly at Rome, betrays itself in Hermas, who teaches the supererogatory merit of alms gained by the self-denial of fasting (Sim. v. 3. 3 ff.). Marcion’s reaction, too, against the Judaic temper in the Church as a whole, in the interests of an extravagant Paulinism, while it suggests that Paul’s doctrines of grace generally were inadequately realized in the sub-apostolic age, points also to the prevalence of such moralism in particular.

(C) In attempting a final estimate of the value of the Apostolic Fathers for the historian to-day, we may sum up under these heads: ecclesiastical, theological, religious. (a) As a mine of materials for reconstructing the history of Church institutions, they are invaluable, and that largely in virtue of their spontaneous and “esoteric” character, with no view to the public generally or to posterity. (b) Theologically, as a stage in the history of Christian doctrine, their value is as great negatively as positively. Impressive as is their witness to the persistence of the Apostolic teaching in its essential features, amidst all personal and local variations, perhaps the most striking thing about these writings is the degree in which they fail to appreciate certain elements of the Apostolic teaching as embodied in the New Testament, and those its higher and more distinctively Christian elements.3 This negative aspect has a twofold bearing. Firstly, it suggests the supernormal level to which the Apostolic consciousness was raised at a bound by the direct influence of the Founder of Christianity, and justifies the marking-off of the Apostolic writings as a Canon, or body of Christian classics of unique religious authority. To this principle Marcion’s Pauline Canon is a witness, though in too one-sided a spirit. Secondly, it means that the actual development of ecclesiastical doctrine began, not from the Apostolic consciousness itself, but from a far lower level, that of the inadequate consciousness of the sub-apostolic Church, even when face to face with their written words. This theological “retrogression” is of much significance for the history of dogma, (c) On the other hand, there is great religious and moral continuity, beneath even theological discontinuity, in the life working below all conscious apprehension of the deeper ideas involved (E. von Dobschutz, Christian Life in the Primitive Church, 1905). There is continuity in character; the Apostolic Fathers strike us as truly good men, with a goodness raised to a new type and power. This is what the Gospel of Christ aims chiefly at producing as its proper fruit; and the Apostolic Fathers would have desired no better record than that they were themselves genuine “epistles of Christ.”

Literature.—This is too large to indicate even in outline, but is given fully in the chief modern editions, viz. of Gebhardt, Harnack and Zahn jointly (1875-1877), J.B. Lightfoot (1885-1890) and F.X. Funk (1901); also in O. Bardenhewer, Gesch. der altkirchlichen Litteratur (1902), Band i., and in Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, with Handbuch thereto, edited by E. Hennecke (Tübingen, 1904). The fullest discussion in English of the teaching of Barnabas, Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp is by J. Donaldson, The Apostolical Fathers (1874), which, however, suffers from the imperfect state of the texts when he wrote. The most useful edition for ready reference, containing critical texts (up to date) and good translations, is Lightfoot’s one-volume edition, The Apostolic Fathers (London, 1891).

(J. V. B.)

1 Cotelier included the Acts of Martyrdom of Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp; and those of Ignatius and Polycarp are still often printed by editors.

2 See G.A. Deissmann, Bible Studies, pp. 1-60, for this distinction between the genuine “letter” and the literary “epistle,” as applied to the New Testament in particular.

3 One result is their inability to form a true theory of Judaism and of the Old Testament in relation to the Gospel, a matter of great moment for them and for their successors.

APOSTOLICI, Apostolic Brethren, or Apostles, the names given to various Christian heretics, whose common doctrinal feature was an ascetic rigidity of morals, which made them reject property and marriage. The earliest Apostolici appeared in Phrygia, Cilicia, Pisidia and Pamphylia towards the end of the 2nd century or the beginning of the 3rd. According to the information given by Epiphanius (Haer. 61) about the doctrines of these heretics, it is evident that they were connected with the Encratites and the Tatianians. They condemned individual property, hence the name sometimes given to them of Apotactites or Renuntiatores. They preserved an absolute chastity and abstained from wine and meat. They refused to admit into their sect those Christians whom the fear of martyrdom had once restored to paganism. As late as the 4th century St Basil (Can. 1 and 47) knew some Apostolici. After that period they disappeared, either becoming completely extinct, or being confounded with other sects (see St Augustine, Haer. 40; John of Damascus, Haer. 61).

Failing a more exact designation, the name of Apostolici has been given to certain groups of Latin heretics of the 12th century. It is the second of the two sects of Cologne (the first being composed very probably of Cathari) that is referred to in the letter addressed in 1146 by Everwin, provost of Steinfeld, to St Bernard (Mabillon, Vet. Anal. iii. 452). They condemned marriage (save, perhaps, first marriages), the eating of meat, baptism of children, veneration of saints, fasting, prayers for the dead and belief in purgatory, denied transubstantiation, declared the Catholic priesthood worthless, and considered the whole church of their time corrupted by the “negotia saecularia” which absorbed all its zeal (of. St Bernard, Serm. 65 and 66 in Cantic.). They do not seem to have been known as Apostles or Apostolici: St Bernard, in fact, asks his hearers: “Quo nomine istos titulove censebis?” (Serm. 66 in Cantic.). Under this designation, too, are included the heretics of Perigueux in France, alluded to in the letter of a certain monk Heribert (Mabillon, Vet. Anal. iii. 467). Heribert says merely: “Se dicunt apostolicam vitam ducere.” It is possible that they were Henricians (see Henry of Lausanne). During his mission in the south-east of France in 1146-1147 St Bernard still met disciples of Henry of Lausanne in the environs of Périgueux. The heretics of whom Heribert speaks condemned riches, denied the value of the sacraments and of good works, ate no meat, drank no wine and rejected the veneration of images. Their leader, named Pons, gathered round him nobles, priests, monks and nuns.

In the second half of the 13th century appeared in Italy the Order of the Apostles or Apostle Brethren (see especially the Chron. of Fra Salimbene). This was a product of the mystic fermentation which proceeded from exalted Franciscanism and from Joachimism (see Fraticelli and Joachim). It presents great analogies with groups of the same character, e.g. Sachets, Bizocchi, Flagellants, &c. The order of the Apostles was founded about 1260 by a young workman from the environs of Parma, Gerard Segarelli, who had sought admission unsuccessfully to the Franciscan order. To make his life conform to that of Christ, his contemporaries say that he had himself circumcised, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a cradle, and that he then, clad in a white robe and bare-footed, walked through the streets of Parma crying “Penitenz agite!” (“Poenitentiam agite!”). He was soon followed by a throng of men and women, peasants and mechanics. All had to live in absolute poverty, chastity and idleness. They begged, and preached penitence. Opizo, bishop of Parma, protected them until they caused trouble in his diocese. Their diffusion into several countries of Christendom disturbed Pope Honorius IV., who in 1286 ordered them to adhere to an already recognized rule. On their refusal, the pope condemned them to banishment and Opizo imprisoned Segarelli. The councils of Würzburg (1287) and Chichester (1289) took measures against the Apostles of Germany and England. But in 1291 the sect reappeared, sensibly increased, and Pope Nicholas IV. published anew the bull of Honorius IV. From that day the Apostles, regarded as rebels, were persecuted pitilessly. Four were burned in 1294, and Segarelli, as a relapsed heretic, went to the stake at Parma in 1300.

They had had close relations with the dissident Franciscans, but the Spirituals often disavowed them, especially when the sect, which in Segarelli’s time had had no very precise doctrinal character, became with Dolcino frankly heterodox. Dolcino of Novara was brought up at Vercelli, and had been an Apostle since 1291. Thrice he fell into the hands of the Inquisition, and thrice recanted. But immediately after Segarelli’s death he wrote an epistle, soon followed by a second, in which he declared that the third Joachimite age began with Segarelli and that Frederick of Sicily was the expected conqueror (Hist. Dulcini and Addit. ad Hist. Dulcini in Muratori, Scriptores, vol. ix.). He gave himself out as an angel sent from God to elucidate the prophecies. Soon he founded an Apostolic congregation at whose head he placed himself. Under him were his four lieutenants, his “mystic sister,” Margherita di Franck, and 4000 disciples. He taught almost the same principles of devotion as Segarelli, but the Messianic character which he attributed to himself, the announcement of a communistic millennial kingdom, and, besides, an aggressive anti-sacerdotalism, gave to Dolcino’s sect a clearly marked character, analogous only to the theocratic community of the Anabaptists of Münster in the 16th century. On the 5th of June 1305 Pope Clement V., recognizing the impotence of the ordinary methods of repression, issued bulls for preaching a crusade against the Dolcinists. But four crusades, directed by the bishop of Vercelli, were required to reduce the little army of the heresiarch, entrenched in the mountains in the neighbourhood of Vercelli. Not till the 23rd of March 1307 were the sectaries definitively overcome. The Catholic crusaders seized Dolcino in his entrenchments on Mount Rubello, and the pope at once announced the happy event to King Philip the Fair. At Vercelli Dolcino suffered a horrible punishment. He was torn in pieces with red-hot pincers—the torture lasting an entire day—while Margherita was burned at a slow fire. Dante mentions Dolcino’s name (Inferno, c. xxviii.), and his memory is not yet completely effaced in the province of Novara. The Apostles continued their propaganda in Italy, Languedoc, Spain and Germany. In turn they were condemned by the councils of Cologne (1306), Treves (1310) and Spoleto (1311). The inquisitor of Languedoc, Bernard Gui, persecuted them unremittingly (see Gui’s Practica Inquisitionis). From 1316 to 1323 the condemnations of Apostles increased at Avignon and Toulouse. They disappeared, however, at a comparatively late date from those regions (council of Lavaur, 1368; council of Narbonne, 1374). In Germany two Apostles were burned at Lübeck and Wismar at the beginning of the 15th century (1402-1403) by the inquisitor Eylard.

Several controversialists, including Gotti, Krohn and Stockmann, have mentioned among the innumerable sects that have sprung from Anabaptism a group of individuals whose open-air preaching and rigorous practice of poverty gained them the name of Apostolici. These must be carefully distinguished from the Apostoolians, Mennonites of Frisia, who followed the teachings of the pastor Samuel Apostool (1638-beginning of 18th century). In the Mennonite church they represent the rigid, conservative party, as opposed to the Galenists, who inclined towards the Arminian latitudinarianism and admitted into their community all those who led a virtuous life, whatever their doctrinal tendencies.

(P. A.)

APOSTOLIC MAJESTY, a title borne by the kings of Hungary. About A.D. 1000 it was conferred by Pope Silvester II. upon St Stephen (975-1038), the first Christian king of Hungary, in return for his zeal in seeking the conversion of the heathen. It was renewed by Pope Clement XIII. in 1758 in favour of the empress Maria Theresa and her descendants. The emperor of Austria bears the title of apostolic king of Hungary.

APOSTOLIUS, MICHAEL (d. c. 1480), a Greek theologian and rhetorician of the 15th century. When, in 1453, the Turks conquered Constantinople, his native city, he fled to Italy, and there obtained the protection of Cardinal Bessarion. But engaging in the great dispute that then raged between the upholders of Aristotle and Plato, his zeal for the latter led him to speak so contemptuously of the more popular philosopher and of his defender, Theodorus Gaza, that he fell under the severe displeasure of his patron. He afterwards retired to Crete, where he earned a scanty living by teaching and by copying manuscripts. Many of his copies are still to be found in the libraries of Europe. One of them, the Icones of Philostratus at Bologna, bears the inscription: “The king of the poor of this world has written this book for his living.” Apostolius died about 1480, leaving two sons, Aristobulus Apostolius and Arsenius. The latter became bishop of Malvasia (Monemvasia) in the Morea.

Of his numerous works a few have been printed: Παροιμίαι (Basel, 1538), now exceedingly rare; a collection of proverbs in Greek, of which a fuller edition appeared at Leiden, “Curante Heinsio,” in 1619; “Oratio Panegyrica ad Fredericum III.” in Freher’s Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, vol. ii. (Frankfort, 1624); Georgii Gemisthi Plethonis et Mich. Apostolii Orationes funebres duae in quibus de Immortalitate Animae exponitur (Leipzig, 1793); and a work against the Latin Church and the council of Florence in Le Moine’s Varia Sacra.

APOSTROPHE (Gr. ἀποστροφή, turning away; the final e being sounded), the name given to an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a speaker or writer breaks off and addresses some one directly in the vocative. The same word (representing, through the French, the Greek ἀπόστροφος προσῳδία, the accent of elision) means also the sign (’) for the omission of a letter or letters, e.g. in “don’t.” In physiology, “apostrophe” is used more precisely in connexion with its literal meaning of “turning away,” e.g. for movement away from the light, in the case of the accumulation of chlorophyll-corpuscles on the cells of leaves.

APOTACTITES, or Apotactici (from Gr. ἀποτακτός, set apart), a sect of early Christians, who renounced all their worldly possessions. (See Apostolici ad init.)

APOTHECARY (from the Lat. apothecarius, a keeper of an apotheca, Gr. ἀποθήκη, a store), a word used by Galen to denote the repository where his medicines were kept, now obsolete in its original sense. An apothecary was one who prepared, sold and prescribed drugs, but the preparing and selling of drugs prescribed by others has now passed into the hands of duly qualified and authorized persons termed “chemists and druggists,” while the apothecary, by modern legislation, has become a general medical practitioner, and the word itself, when used at all, is applied, more particularly in the United States and in Scotland, to those who in England are called “pharmaceutical chemists.” The Apothecaries’ Society of London is one of the corporations of that city, and both by royal charters and acts of parliament exercises the power of granting licences to practise medicine. The members of this society do not possess and never have possessed any exclusive power to deal in or sell drugs; and until 1868 any person whatever might open what is called a chemist’s shop, and deal in drugs and poisons. In that year, however, the Pharmacy Act was passed, which prohibits any person from engaging in this business without being registered.

From early records we learn that the different branches of the medical profession were not regularly distinguished till the reign of Henry VIII., when separate duties were assigned to them, and peculiar privileges were granted to each. In 1518 the physicians of London were incorporated, and the barber-surgeons in 1540. But, independently of the physicians and the surgeons, there were a great number of irregular practitioners, who were more or less molested by their legitimate rivals, and it became necessary to pass an act in 1543 for their protection and toleration. As many of these practitioners kept shops for the sale of medicines, the term “apothecary” was used to designate their calling.

In April 1606 James I. incorporated the apothecaries as one of the city companies, uniting them with the grocers. On their charter being renewed in 1617 they were formed into a separate corporation, under the title of the “Apothecaries of the City of London.” These apothecaries appear to have prescribed medicines in addition to dispensing them, and to have claimed an ancient right of acting in this double capacity; and it may be mentioned that Henry VIII., after the grant of the charter to the College of Physicians, appointed an apothecary to the Princess Mary, who was delicate and unhealthy, at a salary of 40 marks a year, “pro meliore cura, et consideratione sanitatis suae.” During the 17th century, however, there arose a warm contest between the physicians and the apothecaries,—the former accusing the latter of usurping their province, and the latter continuing and justifying the usurpation until the dispute was finally set at rest by a judgment of the House of Lords in 1703 (Rose v. College of Physicians, 5 Bro. P. C. 553), when it was decided that the duty of the apothecary consisted not only in compounding and dispensing, but also in directing and ordering the remedies employed in the treatment of disease. In 1722 an act was obtained empowering the Apothecaries’ Company to visit the shops of all apothecaries practising in London, and to destroy such drugs as they found unfit for use. In 1748 great additional powers were given to the company by an act authorizing them to appoint a board of ten examiners, without whose licence no person should be allowed to dispense medicines in London, or within a circuit of 7 m. round it. In 1815, however, an act of parliament was passed which gave the Apothecaries’ Society a new position, empowering a board, consisting of twelve of their members, to examine and license all apothecaries throughout England and Wales. It also enacted that, from the 1st of August of that year, no persons except those who were so licensed should have the right to act as apothecaries, and it gave the society the power of prosecuting those who practised without such licence. But the act expressly exempted from prosecution all persons who were then in actual practice, and it distinctly excluded from its operation all persons pursuing the calling of chemists and druggists. It was also provided that the act should in no way interfere with the rights or privileges of the English universities, or of the English College of Surgeons or the College of Physicians; and indeed a clause imposed severe penalties on any apothecaries who should refuse to compound and dispense medicines on the order of a physician, legally qualified to act as such. It is therefore clear that the act contemplated the creation of a class of practitioners who, while having the right to practise medicine, should assist and co-operate with the physicians and surgeons.

Before this act came into operation the education of the medical practitioners of England and Wales was entirely optional on their own part, and although many of them possessed degrees or licences from the universities or colleges, the greater number possessed no such qualification, and many of them were wholly illiterate and uneducated. The court of examiners of the Apothecaries’ Society, being empowered to enforce the acquisition of a sufficient medical education upon its future licentiates, specified from time to time the courses of lectures or terms of hospital practice to be attended by medical students before their examination, and in the progress of years regular schools of medicine were organized throughout England.

As it was found that, notwithstanding the stringent regulations as to medical acquirements, the candidates were in many instances deficient in preliminary education, the court of examiners instituted, about the year 1850, a preliminary examination in arts as a necessary and indispensable prerequisite to the medical curriculum, and this provision has been so expanded that, at the present day, all medical students in the United Kingdom are compelled to pass a preliminary examination in arts, unless they hold a university degree. An act of parliament, passed in 1858, and known as the Medical Act, made very little alteration in the powers exercised by the Apothecaries’ Society, and indeed it confirmed and in some degree amplified them, for whereas by the act of 1815, the licentiates of the society were authorized to practise as such only in England and Wales, the new measure gave them the same right in Scotland and Ireland. The Medical Act 1886 extended the qualifications necessary for registration under the medical acts, by making it necessary to pass a qualifying examination in medicine, surgery and midwifery. (See Medical Education.)

An act, passed in 1874, related exclusively to the Apothecaries’ Society, and is termed the Apothecaries’ Act Amendment Act. By this measure some provisions of the act of 1815, which had become obsolete or unsuitable, were repealed, and powers were given to the society to unite or co-operate with other medical licensing bodies in granting licences to practise. The act of 1815 had made it compulsory on all candidates for a licence to have served an apprenticeship of five years to an apothecary, and although by the interpretation of the court of examiners of the society this term really included the whole period of medical study, yet the regulation was felt as a grievance by many members of the medical profession. It was accordingly repealed, and no apprenticeship is now necessary. The restriction of the choice of examiners to the members of the society was also repealed, and the society was given the power (which it did not before possess) to strike off from the list of its licentiates the names of disreputable persons. The act of 1874 also specified that the society was not deprived of any right or obligation they may have to admit women to examination, and to enter their names on the list of licentiates if they acquit themselves satisfactorily.

The Apothecaries’ Society is governed by a master, two wardens and twenty-two assistants. The members are divided into Three grades, yeomanry or freemen, the livery, and the court. Women are not, however, admitted to the freedom. The hall of the society, situated in Water Lane, London, and covering about three-quarters of an acre, was acquired in 1633. It was destroyed by the great fire, but was rebuilt about ten years later and enlarged in 1786. This is the only property possessed by the society. In 1673, the society established a botanic and physic garden at Chelsea, and in 1722 Sir Hans Sloane, who had become the ground owner, gave it to the society on the condition of presenting annually to the Royal Society fifty dried specimens of plants till the number should reach 2000. This condition was fulfilled in 1774. Owing to the heavy cost of maintenance and other reasons, the “physic garden” was handed over in 1902, with the consent of the Charity Commissioners, to a committee of management, to be maintained in the interests of botanical study and research.

See C.R.B. Barrett, The History of the Society of Apothecaries of London (1905).

APOTHEOSIS (Gr. ἀποθεοῦν, to make a god, to deify), literally deification. The term properly implies a clear polytheistic conception of gods in contrast with men, while it recognizes that some men cross the dividing line. It is characteristic of polytheism to blur that line in several ways. Thus the ancient Greek religion was especially disposed to belief in heroes and demigods. Founders of cities, and even of colonies, received worship; the former are, generally speaking, mythical personages and, in strictness, heroes. But the worship after death of historical persons, such as Lycurgus, or worship of the living as true deities, e.g. Lysander and Philip II. of Macedon, occurred sporadically even before Alexander’s conquests brought Greek life into contact with oriental traditions. It was inevitable, too, that ancient monarchies should enlist polytheistic conceptions of divine or half-divine men in support of the dynasties; “Seu deos regesve canit deorum Sanguinem,” Horace (Odes, iv. 2, II. 12, 13) writes of Pindar; though the reference is to myths, yet the phrase is significant. In the East all such traits are exaggerated, a result perhaps rather of the statecraft than of the religions of Egypt and Persia. Whatever part vanity or the flattery of courtiers may have played with others, or with Alexander, it is significant that the dynasties of Alexander’s various successors all claim divine honours of some sort (see Ptolemies, Seleucid Dynasty, &c.). Theocritus (Idyll 17) hails Ptolemy Philadelphus as a demigod, and speaks of his father as seated among the gods along with Alexander. Ancestor worship, or reverence for the dead, was a third factor. It may work even in Cicero’s determination that his daughter should enjoy “ἀποθέωσις”— as he writes to Atticus—or receive the “honour” of consecratia (fragment of his De Consolatione). Lastly, we need not speak of mere sycophancy. Yet it was common; Verres was worshipped before he was impeached!

The Romans had, up to the end of the Republic, accepted only one official apotheosis; the god Quirinus, whatever his original meaning, having been identified with Romulus. But the emperor Augustus carried on the tradition of ancient statecraft by having Julius Caesar recognized as a god (divus Julius), the first of a new class of deities proper (divi). The tradition was steadily followed and was extended to some ladies of the imperial family and even to imperial favourites. Worship of an emperor during his lifetime, except as the worship of his genius, was, save in the cases of Caligula and Domitian, confined to the provinces. Apotheosis after his death, being in the hands of the senate, did not at once cease, even when Christianity was officially adopted. The Latin term is consecratio, which of course has a variety of senses, including simple burial. (Inscription in G. Boissier, La Religion romaine; Renier, Inscriptions d’Algiers, 2510.) The Greek term Apotheosis, probably a coinage of the Hellenistic epoch, becomes more nearly technical for the deification of dead emperors. But it is still used simply for the erection of tombs (clearly so in some Greek inscriptions, Corpus Inscript. Graec. 2831, 2832, quoted in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Apotheosis). Possibly there is a trace of ancestor worship even here; but the two usages have diverged. The squib of the philosopher Seneca on the memory of Claudius (d. A.D. 54), Apocolocyntosis (“pumpkinification”), is evidence that, as early as Seneca’s lifetime, apotheosis was in use for the recognition of a departed emperor as a god. It also indicates how much contempt might be associated with this pretended worship. The people, says Suetonius (Jul. Caes. c. 88), fully believed in the divinity of Julius Caesar, hinting at the same time that this was by no means the case with the majority of the apotheoses subsequently decreed by the senate. Yet we learn from Capitolinus that Marcus Aurelius was still worshipped as a household divinity in the time of Diocletian, and was believed to impart revelations in dreams (Vit. M. Ant. c. 18). Antinous, the favourite of Hadrian, was adored in Egypt a century after his death (Origen, Contra Celsum, iii. 36), though, according to Boissier, his worship never had official sanction. The ceremonies attendant on an imperial apotheosis are very fully described by Herodianus (bk. iv. c. 2) on occasion of the obsequies of Severus, which he appears to have witnessed. The most significant was the liberation, at the moment of kindling the funeral pyre, of an eagle which was supposed to bear the emperor’s soul to heaven. Sharp-sighted persons had actually beheld the ascension of Augustus (Suet. August, c. 100), and of Drusilla, sister of Caligula. Representations of apotheoses occur on several works of art; the most important are the apotheosis of Homer on a relief in the Townley collection of the British Museum, that of Titus on the arch of Titus, and that of Augustus on a magnificent cameo in the Louvre.

In China at the present day many Taoist gods are (or are given out as) men deified for service to the state. This again may be statecraft. In India, the (still unexplained) rise of the doctrine of transmigration hindered belief. Apotheosis can mean nothing to those who hold that a man may be reborn as a god, but still needs redemption, and that men on earth may win redemption, if they are brave enough. Curiously, Buddhism itself is ruled by the ghost or shadowy remainder of belief in transmigration—Karma.

Apotheosis may also be used in wider senses. (a) Some (e.g. Herbert Spencer) hold that most gods are deified men, and most myths historical traditions which have been grotesquely distorted. This theory is known as Euhemerism (see Euhemerus). It is needless to say that the attitude of those holding the Euhemerist theory is at the farthest pole from belief in apotheosis. According to the latter, some men may become gods. According to the former, all gods are but men; or, some men have been erroneously supposed to become gods. The Euhemerist theory mainly appeals to ancestor worship—a fact of undoubted importance in the history of religion, especially in China and in ancient Rome. In India, too, a dead person treated with funeral honours becomes a guardian spirit—if neglected, a tormenting demon. But whether the great gods of polytheism were really transfigured ancestors is very doubtful. (b) Again, there is a tendency to offer something like worship to the founders of religions. Thus more than human honour is paid to Zoroaster and Buddha and even to the founders of systems not strictly religious, e.g. to Confucius and Auguste Comte. It is noticeable that this kind of worship is not accorded in rigidly monotheistic systems, e.g. to Moses and Mahomet. Nor is it accurate to speak of apotheosis in cases where the founder is in his lifetime regarded as the incarnation of a god (cf. Ali among Shi’ite Mahommedans; the Băb in Babism; the Druse Hakim). Most Christians on this ground repudiate the application of the term to the worship of Jesus Christ. Curiously, Apotheosis is used by the Latin Christian poet, Prudentius (c. 400), as the title of a poem defending orthodox views on the person of Christ and other points of doctrine—the affectation of a decadent age. (c) The worship paid to Saints, in those Christian churches which admit it, is formally distinguished as dulia (δουλεία) from true worship or latria (λατρεία). Even the Virgin Mary, though she is styled Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, receives only dulia or at most hyperdulia.

(R. G.; R. Ma.)

APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS, the general name given to a vast system of elevations in North America, partly in Canada, but mostly in the United States, extending as a zone, from 100 to 300 m. wide, from Newfoundland, Gaspé Peninsula and New Brunswick, 1500 m. south-westward to central Alabama. The whole system may be divided into three great sections: the Northern, from Newfoundland to the Hudson river; the Central, from the Hudson Valley to that of New river (Great Kanawha), in Virginia and West Virginia; and the Southern, from New river onwards. The northern section includes the Shickshock Mountains and Notre Dame Range in Quebec, scattered elevations in Maine, the White Mountains and the Green Mountains; the central comprises, besides various minor groups, the Valley Ridges between the Front of the Allegheny Plateau and the Great Appalachian Valley, the New York-New Jersey Highlands and a large portion of the Blue Ridge; and the southern consists of the prolongation of the Blue Ridge, the Unaka Range, and the Valley Ridges adjoining the Cumberland Plateau, with some lesser ranges.

The Chief Summits.—The Appalachian belt includes, with the ranges enumerated above, the plateaus sloping southward to the Atlantic Ocean in New England, and south-eastward to the border of the coastal plain through the central and southern Atlantic states; and on the north-west, the Allegheny and Cumberland plateaus declining toward the Great Lakes and the interior plains. A remarkable feature of the belt is the longitudinal chain of broad valleys—the Great Appalachian Valley—which, in the southerly sections divides the mountain system into two subequal portions, but in the northernmost lies west of all the ranges possessing typical Appalachian features, and separates them from the Adirondack group. The mountain system has no axis of dominating altitudes, but in every portion the summits rise to rather uniform heights, and, especially in the central section, the various ridges and intermontane valleys have the same trend as the system itself. None of the summits reaches the region of perpetual snow. Mountains of the Long Range in Newfoundland reach heights of nearly 2000 ft. In the Shickshocks the higher summits rise to about 4000 ft. elevation. In Maine four peaks exceed 3000 ft., including Katahdin (5200 ft.), Mount Washington, in the White Mountains (6293 ft.), Adams (5805), Jefferson (5725), Clay (5554), Monroe (5390), Madison (5380), Lafayette (5269); and a number of summits rise above 4000 ft. In the Green Mountains the highest point, Mansfield, is 4364 ft.; Lincoln (4078), Killington (4241), Camel Hump (4088); and a number of other heights exceed 3000 ft. The Catskills are not properly included in the system. The Blue Ridge, rising in southern Pennsylvania and there known as South Mountain, attains in that state elevations of about 2000 ft.; southward to the Potomac its altitudes diminish, but 30 m. beyond again reach 2000 ft. In the Virginia Blue Ridge the following are the highest peaks east of New river: Mount Weather (about 1850 ft.), Mary’s Rock (3523), Peaks of Otter (4001 and 3875), Stony Man (4031), Hawks Bill (4066). In Pennsylvania the summits of the Valley Ridges rise generally to about 2000 ft., and in Maryland Eagle Rock and Dans Rock are conspicuous points reaching 3162 ft. and 2882 ft. above the sea. On the same side of the Great Valley, south of the Potomac, are the Pinnacle (3007 ft.) and Pidgeon Roost (3400 ft.). In the southern section of the Blue Ridge are Grandfather Mountain (5964 ft.), with three other summits above 5000, and a dozen more above 4000. The Unaka Ranges (including the Black and Smoky Mountains) have eighteen peaks higher than 5000 ft., and eight surpassing 6000 ft. In the Black Mountains, Mitchell (the culminating point of the whole system) attains an altitude of 6711 ft., Balsam Cone, 6645, Black Brothers, 6690, and 6620, and Hallback, 6403. In the Smoky Mountains we have Clingman’s Peak (6611), Guyot (6636), Alexander (6447), Leconte (6612), Curtis (6588), with several others above 6000 and many higher than 5000.

In spite of the existence of the Great Appalachian Valley, the master streams are transverse to the axis of the system. The main watershed follows a tortuous course which crosses the mountainous belt just north of New river in Virginia; south of this the rivers head in the Blue Ridge, cross the higher Unakas, receive important tributaries from the Great Valley, and traversing the Cumberland Plateau in spreading gorges, escape by way of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers to the Ohio and Mississippi, and thus to the Gulf of Mexico; in the central section the rivers, rising in or beyond the Valley Ridges, flow through great gorges (water gaps) to the Great Valley, and by south-easterly courses across the Blue Ridge to tidal estuaries penetrating the coastal plain; in the northern section the water-parting lies on the inland side of the mountainous belt, the main lines of drainage running from north to south.

Geology.—The rocks of the Appalachian belt fall naturally into two divisions; ancient (pre-Cambrian) crystallines, including marbles, schists, gneisses, granites and other massive igneous rocks, and a great succession of Paleozoic sediments. The crystallines are confined to the portion of the belt east of the Great Valley where Paleozoic rocks are always highly metamorphosed and occur for the most part in limited patches, excepting in New England and Canada, where they assume greater areal importance, and are besides very generally intruded by granites. The Paleozoic sediments, ranging in age from Cambrian to Permian, occupy the Great Valley, the Valley Ridges and the plateaus still farther west. They are rarely metamorphosed to the point of recrystallization, though locally shales are altered to roofing slates, sandstones are indurated, limestones slightly marblized, and coals, originally bituminous, are changed to anthracite in northern Pennsylvania, and to graphite in Rhode Island. Igneous intrusions consist only of unimportant dikes of trap. The most striking and uniformly characteristic geologic feature of the mountains is their internal structure, consisting of innumerable parallel, long and narrow folds, always closely appressed in the eastern part of any cross-section (Piedmont Plateau to Great Valley), less so along a central zone (Great Valley and Valley Ridges), and increasingly open on the west (Allegheny and Cumberland Plateaus). Asymmetry of the folds is a marked characteristic in the zones of closer folding, the anticlines having long gently inclined easterly limbs, and short, steep and even overturned limbs upon the west. The effect of such folds is often exaggerated by thrusts, and faulting of this sort is prominent in the southern section, where the existence of over-thrusts measured by several miles has been established.

What may be termed the ancestral Appalachian system was formed during the post-carboniferous revolution, though certain of its elements had been previously outlined, and perhaps at different dates. Folding of the rocks resulted from the operation of great compressive forces acting tangentially to the figure of the earth. Extensive and deep-seated crumpling was necessarily accompanied by vertical uplift throughout the zone affected, but once at least since their birth the mountains have been worn down to a lowland, and the mountains of to-day are the combined product of subsequent uplift of a different sort, and dissection by erosion. Produced by long-continued subaerial decay and erosion, in later Cretaceous times this lowland extended from the Atlantic Ocean well toward the interior of North America; since then the whole continent has been generally elevated, and by successive steps the Appalachian belt has been raised to form a wide but relatively low arch. The crosswise courses of the greater rivers result from the rivers being older than the mountains, which indeed have been produced by circumdenudation. The master streams of the present have inherited their channels from the drainage systems of the Cretaceous lowland, and though raised athwart the courses of the lowland trunk streams the great arch was developed so slowly that these channels could be maintained through pari passu deepening. Former tributaries have given place to others developed with reference to the distribution of more or less easily eroded strata, the present longitudinal valleys being determined by the out-crop of soft shales or soluble limestones, and the parallel ridges upheld by hard sandstones or schists. Parallelism of mountain ridges and intervening valleys is thus attributable to the folding of the rocks, but the origin of the interior structure of the mountains is to be kept distinct from the origin of the mountains as features of topography.

Flora and Fauna.—Much of the region is covered with forest yielding quantities of valuable timber, especially in Canada and northern New England. The most valuable trees for lumber are spruce, white pine, hemlock, cedar, white birch, ash, maple and basswood; all excepting pine and hemlock and poplar in addition are ground into wood pulp for the manufacture of paper. In the central and southern parts of the belt oak and hickory constitute valuable hard woods, and certain varieties of the former furnish quantities of tan bark. The tulip tree produces a good clear lumber known as white wood or poplar, and is also a source of pulp. In the south both white and yellow pine abounds. Many flowering and fruit-bearing shrubs of the heath family add to the beauty of the mountainous districts, rhododendron and kalmia often forming impenetrable thickets. Bears, mountain lions (pumas), wild cats (lynx) and wolves haunt the more remote fastnesses of the mountains; foxes abound; deer are found in many districts and moose in the north.