ROLAND'S or RULAND'S COLUMNS are stone statues of a man in armor, generally rudely formed, and found in twenty-eight German cities. According to tradition, they were erected in honor of Charlemagne's paladin (q. v.) Roland; but, if ever this hero existed (see Roland), the Germans, particularly the Saxons, in whose former territory they are found, would probably have been the last to erect statues to him. Besides, they are evidently of a later age: probably they were the same with the Weichbild, the symbol of incorporated towns, possessing jurisdiction over their own members; and thus the name has been considered a corruption of Rügelandssäulen (Rügeland's columns), from Rüge, which was equivalent, formerly, to court of justice. See Türk De Statuis Rolandinis (Rostock, 1824). ROLLER (Coracias); a genus of birds allied to the crows and jays, found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the hot climates of America. They are more wild and untractable than their congeneres, and do not appear to possess the imitative faculty of the jay or magpie, as all attempts to teach them to speak have been unsuccessful. The plumage of almost all the species is very beautiful, being in general an assemblage of blue and green, mixed with white, and heightened by the contrast of more obscure and less vivid colors. The rollers are very shy, inhabiting the thickest and most unfrequented woods, though, like the crows, they are frequently seen in newly ploughed fields, searching for worms and larvæ. They are not carnivorous, except in cases of necessity, and their flesh is said to be palatable.

ROLLIN, Charles, a historian, was born at Paris in 1661. His father was a cutler, who intended him for the same business; but his talents obtained the notice of a learned Benedictine, who procured him a place in the college of Du Plessis, by which he was enabled to gratify his inclination for learning. After going through a course of theology at the Sorbonne, he received the tonsure. In 1688, he obtained the chair of eloquence in the royal college, of which he became rector in 1694; reformed the academical course in many particulars, and revived the study of the Greek language. In 1698, he was chosen coadjutor or head of the college of Beauvais, which was also much benefited by his attention. In 1720, he was again chosen rector of the university of Paris; but was displaced in consequence of his connexion with the Jansenists. His productions are Traité des Études (1726);

Histoire Ancienne (13 vols., 1730 and 1738); and Roman History (5 vols.), to the war against the Cimbri (completed by Crevier, 16 vols., 12mo.). He died in 1741. Rollin's writings are distinguished for purity and elegance of style, but they are diffuse and prolix, and his historical works are deficient in critical sagacity. There is an edition of his works in 30 vols., 8vo. (Paris, 1827), with notes on the historical part by Guizot.

ROMAGNA; formerly a province of the States of the Church, bordering on the Adriatic, forty-five miles in length by thirty in breadth. The delegations of Forli and Ravenna have been formed from it.

ROMAIC. (See Greece, division, Modern Greek Language and Literature.)

ROMANA, marquis de la; general in the war of the Spaniards against Napoleon. Preparatory to his plans against the Bourbons in Spain, the French emperor had drawn to Germany, in 1807, a body of from ten to twelve thousand Spanish troops, at the head of which was general Romana, who, taking advantage of his station on the island of Funen, entered into a secret correspondence, with the commander of the English fleet established there, obtained English transports, and, with all his forces, excepting a few divisions, who could not be brought up quick enough, embarked, between the seventeenth and twentieth August, 1808, at Nyborg and Svenborg, and arrived at Corunna. From this time, Romana was incessantly employed in exciting the Spaniards. He was the first to suggest the idea of arming the peasantry and forming the Guerillas. (q. v.) In this way, as well as by his personal services in the field, Romana had an important part in maintaining the independence of Spain. He died in 1811.

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH; that society of Christians which acknowledges the bishop of Rome as its visible head, in contradistinction to the Greek church, which likewise calls itself a catholic, that is, a universal church, but disowns the Roman pope. The Roman Catholic church exercised a spiritual supremacy over all Europe, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, until the time of the reformation. It has more followers than all the Protestant sects united; and its exertions have gradually brought nearly 2,000,000 of the adherents of the Greek ritual in Europe under the spiritual dominion of the pope. (See the article United Greeks.)

I. The Foundation of the Catholic Faith. Christianity is a revelation, a positive his

torical religion. Both Protestants and Catholics believe in the reality of Christ's revelation; and the first and fundamental difference between them is, that the former considers the Bible the only repository of this divine revelation, while the Catholic acknowledges, in addition to this, the authority of tradition, or (which amounts to the same thing) considers the Christian revelation as handed down by tradition, of which the Bible, according to his belief, makes a part, just as a code of laws constitutes a part only of the whole law of a land; and its deficiencies are supplied by the traditional law preserved among the people, without which no code could exist. The Catholic considers tradition as the very life of his church, and the whole of his religion as depending upon a correct understanding of it; for which reason we give the following exposition, the production of a Catholic writer, without comment. -Mankind commenced with goodness, but error and evil soon sprang up. The Son of the eternal Father came, took away guilt, and established Christianity. The Son, the Holy Spirit, and the apostles of the Son, taught it, and the believers handed it down from generation to generation. Various portions of that which the apostles taught and delivered as what they had received from their Lord, and seen of him, were committed to writing; and such writings became a part of the revelation. The revelation brought by the Son was not a written code, but the living Word. The Son did not write a single letter. The apostles were not commanded to commit doctrines to paper, but to go into all the world and to preach the gospel. (Matt. x. 7.) There was a rule of faith which, for a long time before the New Testament was written, was the spiritual property of the church. In the course of centuries, the Epistles of the apostles were collected, and, several centuries after the origin of Christianity, these, together with the Gospels, which were also authenticated by tradition, were formed into the canon (q. v.), which constitutes the body or entire collection of those writings which have been transmitted to us as divine: thus none of the fathers thought of confining the sources of the religious knowledge of the church to them exclusively. Irenæus says, "Every one who would know the truth is at liberty to examine the tradition of the apostles, which has been proclaimed through all the world; and we might also refer to the authority of all those bishops who have been appointed in the 6

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church by the apostles and their successors, even to our times. If the apostles had left behind no writings, should we not have been obliged to follow the tradition preserved by those to whose care the apostles intrusted the church? Many barbarous nations which believe in Christ, and upon whose hearts the doctrines of salvation have been impressed by the Holy Spirit without the aid of writing, do so, and carefully preserve the old tradition." Clement of Alexandria speaks of his teachers thus: "They preserved the true tradition of the doctrines of salvation, and, by the help of God, handed it down to us from Peter, James, John and Paul, the holy apostles (like children who transmit the inheritance of their father), in order to deposit the seeds of apostolical doctrine preserved by their predecessors." Basilius: "Some of the dogmas and public instructions preserved in the church, we have learned from the Sacred Scriptures; others we have received as mysteries handed down to us by the tradition of the apostles. Both have equal validity in religion, and no man will gainsay them, who is in the least conversant with the order of things established in the church. I consider it as apostolical to adhere, also, to the unwritten traditions." Chrysostom says, "Thence it appears that the apostles did not teach every thing by epistles, but that they also taught without writing. But the unwritten instructions are as worthy of belief as the written. Let us, therefore, hold the tradition of the church as worthy of belief." Other fathers of the church have expressed themselves alike decisively; and even the Protestant Semler says, "Nothing but ignorance of history has confounded the Christian religion with the Bible, as if there were no Christianity when there was yet no Bible; or as if, on that account, those Christians who, of four Gospels, knew only one, and of so many Epistles knew only a few, had been less truly pious. Previous to the fourth century, no such thing as a complete New Testament had been thought of; and yet there were always genuine disciples of Christ." That which was written is, therefore, according to the Catholic view, only a part of the tradition, and not the tradition itself. The knowledge of the Catholic church is of a historical character, not speculative. The Catholic believes that his tradition rests on the same grounds as the faith of the Protestant in the Bible, because it is tradition originally which assures the Protestant of the genuineness of the Bible.

The consistent Catholic, therefore, endeavors to ascertain accurately this tradition; i. e. to guard the purity of his faith. The first means for the attainment of this object was the authority of the Sacred Scriptures. They obtain authority as the embodying of tradition; necessarily subjected, however, to the judgment and the exposition of the church, on which, indeed, all tradition, and even Scripture, is, according to him, dependent. By this authority of the Bible, the falsification of traditions has been, in a great measure, prevented. In the controversies concerning tradition, and concerning the accounts and the meaning of the Bible, the belief of the church always decided. The actual belief of the church universal is, necessarily, the Catholic's last appeal; but what this is may be the subject of controversy. There is, in this case, no better remedy than to assemble the church, and let her express herself as is done in councils. The Catholic doubts not that the same Holy Spirit which is promised to the church, even till the end of time, will assist the church, when assembled, in rightly expressing her faith. The council creates no articles of faith. The whole church is unable to do this. The council merely expresses what the church believes, and declares that the church has preserved such a truth. The church, in the possession of a revelation handed down by tradition, must declare herself infallible. The established religious faith necessarily excludes a conviction of the possibility of the truth of the opposite opinion. If, therefore, the revelation, the tradition, is in itself infallible (as the Protestant holds the Bible to be infallible), should the church, which expresses this tradition, be less infallible? The church explains the Bible in accordance with tradition, of which it is a part and a copy. What the council expresses as a doctrine of faith is a canon. A canon is that which, according to the judgment of the church, is expressed in the Bible, and has always, and every where, and by all, been believed (semper et ubique et ab omnibus creditum). Whenever the church finds one of these requisitions wanting, it establishes no canon. In this way the Bible and tradition are intimately blended. If it is asked, Why does the church consider those historical truths which have been handed down by tradition, and attested by the church assembled, as real truths? the answer of the Catholic is, Because her institution is of divine origin, and because a revelation has been delivered to her.

Reason here objects, that the conclusion is obtained by arguing in a circle. The Catholic replies, that the objection is made because reason is desirous of having that proved which, resting on itself, is capable of no proof, and which, if it might have been proved and confirmed by evidence external to itself, would fall to pieces, because it would then be necessary to place reason above revelation. How can the church be censured for laying claim to infallibility, for rejecting the criticism of reason? If Christianity is a revelation, faith can be grounded only upon the testimony of the church (which, by means of tradition, hands down revelation, the sacred books, and regulations), and not upon the free investigation of reason, which protests against authority. That one council should, with respect to doctrine, contradict another, is an event which is, and must be, inconceivable to the Catholic. This is the fundamental view of Catholicism. There can, therefore, be only one infallible church.

II. The Doctrines of Catholicism.* The Catholic church is the community of saints, which has one faith, one charity, one hope. It believes in the doctrine of the Trinity, the redemption, &c. It believes in free will, immortality, and the moral law. The church is to restore the kingdom of God. The first man was created immediately by God, free from sin, adorned with innocence and holiness, and possessed of a claim to eternal life. This first man sinned, and thereby lost his innocence, holiness, and claim to eternal life. By his sins, all his posterity became sinners before God, and, therefore, in like manner, lost eternal life. In this state of moral corruption, man was not to remain. Called to the kingdom of God, he must become holy and perfect, as God himself is holy and perfect. Revelation assists him in the attainment of this high destination; first, by informing him of what it is necessary for him to know (by enlightening mankind), and, secondly, by an extraordinary internal sanctification (by the consecration of mankind). But man actually attains to his high destination by faith in these doctrines and this sanctification, and by a course of life uninterruptedly continued and regulated accordingly. The Catholic believes in the immortality of the soul, and that it will hereafter be clothed with its body, which God will raise in perfection; further, that the condition of man in a future state will

* We continue to give the statement of the Catholic writer.

vary according as he has done good or evil. The wicked are for ever deprived of the sight of God. How those images in the sacred books, which represent this state to the senses, are to be understood, is not decided by the church. The good enjoy God for ever, and are blessed. The state of the good and the wicked commences immediately after death. A middle state is admitted for those souls which were not entirely estranged from the Eternal, which, therefore, in the other world, still have a hope of ultimately becoming united with the Creator. (See Purgatory.) The happy spirits, in the church triumphant, have not ceased to be connected with their brethren in the church militant. A band of love unites both worlds. (See Saints.) Every one is rewarded according to those works which he has freely performed, although, at the same time, he has followed the influences of grace; but, as the Eternal foreknows the actions of men, so he foreknows, likewise, who will attain to happiness. (Controversy concerning predestination, decided by the council of Trent, session VI, canons 12, 15, 17.) A religious mind conceives the world to be entirely dependent upon God, and so revelation represents it. According to this, the world was created by God. Whether the Mosaic cosmogony is to be literally understood, the church has by no means decided. God preserves and governs the world. Hereafter, the world is to be destroyed. Man having been thus instructed by the church respecting divine things, men and the world, it is necessary, in the second place, that he should be sanctified and consecrated by her. "The Christian standard demands not only an enlightened man, but one who is adorned with holiness; a man who is repelled from God by no polluting stain, but is drawn towards him by a pure nature. It requires a man who comes into connexion with God, not merely by a purely moral intercourse, in a spiritual way, but who, surrounded by the light of God himself, sees and enjoys him, and is exalted above sin, suffering and death." The Founder of our religion, therefore, in the first place, made a universal atonement for mankind; secondly, ordained means for their purification and sanctification, according to their various necessities. The Savior, by his death, procured the pardon of sin for all men, justified them, and put it into their power to make themselves partakers of his elevation. Now the particular means for the purification and the sancti

fication of men are the seven sacraments. (q. v.) These sacraments are the essence of the Catholic mysteries. Without mysteries, man is cold and insensible. The Catholic mysteries, however, differ from the Protestant in this, that the former have a more universal and more settled character, while the latter are suffered to take their tone from the feelings of individuals. The centre of the Catholic mysteries is the sacrament of the Lord's supper, whereby believers join in real communion with the Lord. For all conditions and wants, she has made provision, and in her bosom has prepared a suitable asylum for every one. A man would greatly err, however, if he should believe that the church favored mysteries, and attached herself to the arts, merely for the purpose of attracting adherents, and concealing internal defects. She needs it not. She offers words of life. Her system of belief is pure and consistent, and her morality is also pure. Indeed, the peculiar faith of the Catholic church has so often been disfigured by Protestants, that it is not strange that even the welleducated Protestant pities the honest Catholic, on account of the doctrines and ordinances falsely attributed to the Catholic church.

III. The ecclesiastical Constitution of Catholicism, or the Catholic Church. [It would be impossible even to mention all the objections which have been started against the organization of the Catholic church in the present work; but its historical importance makes it necessary to be known; and it is but fair to let the Catholics give their own statement on this subject. We therefore proceed with the Catholic article.] It was the design of Christ to establish a church, and certainly one which should endure. The object of the church is, through Christ, to reconcile fallen humanity with God. The church, which is to accomplish this object, is a spiritual and visible society. As a spiritual society, it stands in relation to Christ. As such, it is the union, the community, of all her living members with God the Father, through one Christ, in one Spirit of love. The apostle Paul represents these ideas particularly under two forms-under the form of a body, and that of a building. 1. He represents it under the form of a body. (Eph. iv; 1 Cor. xii, 4-30, xiii, 1—13, xiv, 1-40.) According to this, the church is a spiritual organization under one Head, Christ, in which no member is to remain isolated from the body, but each must necessarily