842 



MI8LETOE MISSIONS. 



MISLETOE (viscum album) ; a European plant, 

 growing parasitically on various trees, and celebrated 

 on account of the religious purposes to which it was 

 consecrated by the ancient Celtic nations of Europe, 

 particularly when it was found growing on the oak. 

 At the time of the winter solstice, the Druids, who 

 were the priests and magistrates of these people, went 

 into the forests accompanied by the populace, and, at 

 the foot of an old oak bearing this plant, built an 

 altar, sacrificed victims, and performed various other 

 religious rites and ceremonies. Some relics of this 

 superstition still remain in France ; and it is also the 

 custom in England to hang up branches of this plant 

 at Christmas, mixed with other evergreens. From 

 the same cause, for a long time, it sustained a high 

 reputation as a medicine. It is a jointed, dichoto- 

 mous shrub, with sessile, oblong, entire, and opposite 

 leaves, and small, yellowish-green flowers, the whole 

 forming a pendent bush, from two to five feet in 

 diameter, and, in winter, covered with small white 

 berries. These berries are very glutinous, and con- 

 tain a single heart-shaped seed. The roots of the 

 misletoe insinuate their fibres into the woody substance 

 of trees, and the plant lives entirely at the expense of 

 their sap, as the stems and leaves are incapable ot 

 absorbing moisture. All the attempts which have 

 hitherto been made to raise this plant from the earth 

 have failed. Though the misletoe is common enough 

 on certain species of trees, it is very seldom found on 

 the oak, and a specimen of this is preserved in France 

 as a great rarity. Bird-lime is made fr >m the berries 

 and bark, which are boiled in water, beaten in a 

 mortar, and washed; but this article is usually manu- 

 factured from the bark of the holly. The American 

 misletoe grows on trees from about lat. 40 to the 

 gulf of Mexico, and also in the West India islands. 



MISNOMER; in law, a misnaming or mistaking 

 a person's name. The Christian name of a person 

 should always be perfect ; but the law is not so strict 

 in regard to surnames, a small mistake in which will 

 be overlooked. 



MISPRISION; a neglect, oversight, or contempt 

 (from mespris, French, contempt). Thus conceal- 

 ment of known treason or felony is misprision. In a 

 larger sense, misprision is taken for many great 

 offences which are neither treason, nor felony, nor 

 capital, but very near them ; and every great misde- 

 meanor which hath no certain name appointed by law 

 is sometimes termed misprision. 



MISSAL (from the Latin missale), in the Catholic 

 liturgy; the book which contains the prayers and 

 ceremonies of the mass. It was formed by collect- 

 ing the separate liturgic books formerly used in the 

 religious services, particularly the Oratorium, Lec- 

 tionarium,Evangeliarium,4ntiphonarium, the Canon, 

 &c., for the convenience of the priest. The greater 

 part of these prayers and ceremonies are very ancient, 

 and some of them have come down from the times of 

 the popes Gelasius I. and Gregory the Great ; some 

 are even older. Considerable deviations and cor- 

 ruptions, which had, in the course of time, crept into 

 the Missal, induced the council of Trent to request of 

 the pope a revision of it. Pius V., in 1570, required 

 the Missal, which had been revised under his direc- 

 tion, to be adopted by the whole Catholic church, 

 with the exception of those societies which, for more 

 than two centuries, had followed another ritual with 

 the consent of the papal see. This form of the 

 Roman Missal has been retained until the present 

 time ; the changes made by pope Clement VIII. and 

 Urban VIII. (the latter under the direction of Bellar- 

 rain) extending little beyond alterations of single 

 expressions and the addition of a fesv new masses, 

 which are by no means among the best. The earliest 

 printed missal is the Missale per totius Anni Circulnm 



More j4mbrosiano compositum (Milan, 1475, fol.)> 

 which was followed by tlie Missale secitndutn Con- 

 i net ud inem Romanes Curias (Rome, 1475). These, 

 iiul earlier ones, composed for particular churches, 

 especially if on parchment, are objects of biblio- 

 mania. (For the Bedford Missal, see Bedford.) The 

 atest edition of the Missale Romanum is that of Dijon 

 and Paris (1828, 4to).* See Liturgy. 



Missal, in German, is also the name of the largest 

 etters, because formerly the missulia, or mass-books, 

 which contain the songs and ceremonies of the mass, 

 were written or printed with them. It is the same 

 tvith the French canon, which probably derived its 

 name from being early employed on some work 

 relating to the canons of the church. 



MISS ALIA (Latin); the money paid to a clergy 

 man for a mass read for the dead, at a Catholic 

 funeral. 



MISSIONS; MISSIONARIES. Even in the early 

 ages of Christianity, it was usual for Christians, either 

 at their own impulse, or at the desire of the com- 

 munity, to go into neighbouring and distant lands, to 

 preach the gospel ; and. except in a few particular 

 cases, Christianity has been propagated, not by arms, 

 but by persuasion. Thus Augustine, with forty as- 

 sociates, was sent by Gregory the Great, to preach 

 the gospel among the wild Saxons of Britain (597). 

 The German church was also established, in the 

 eighth century, by similar preachers of the gospel, 

 who were afterwards called missionaries. More has 

 been done for the support of missions by the Catholic 

 church than by the Protestants. Various reasons may 

 be assigned for this : the interests of the papal hier- 

 archy, in this case, coincided with the interests of 

 religion ; and, before Britain had acquired the supe- 

 riority by sea. Catholic Europe was more closely con- 

 nected with the other parts of the world than the 

 Protestant countries were ; moreover, the Catholic 

 church had monks, whom the pope could send 

 wherever he pleased; and, finally, it was more 

 wealthy than the Protestant church (see Propaganda, 

 and Jesuits); not to mention, that zealous Catholics, 

 persuaded that this was the only saving faith, had a 

 much stronger incitement to undertake the difficult 

 work of conversion than Protestants. The principal 

 missions of the Catholic church, are those to China, 

 the East Indies, and Japan. In the last named 

 country, though Christianity had once made con- 

 siderable progress, it is now entirely extirpated. 

 But in China and on the Coromandel coast, the set- 

 tlements established for the diffusion of Christianity 

 still continue. The events which followed the 

 French revolution contracted the funds of the mis- 

 sions, and checked their activity. According to the 

 Nouvelles Lettres edifiantes des Missions de la Chine 

 et des Indes Orientales (Paris, 1818 20, 5 vols.), 

 there are yet three bishoprics in China, endowed by 

 the crown of Portugal those of Macao, Pekin, and 

 Nankin. The bishop of Pekin, however, lives at 

 Macao, because no missionary is permitted to reside 



* Baron Reichlin Meldegg, doctor of theology, and professor 

 of ecclesiastical history at the university of Freiburg, in his 

 Proposals for the Reformation of the German Catholic Church, 

 observes, " Some of the masses of the Roman Missal are 

 founded on stories not sufficiently authenticated, some on 

 evident fables, for instance, the mass of the J.nncea Christi, 

 of the Inventio Cruets, of several saints, &c. Others contain 

 prayers gross in their expression-, as, for instance. Corpus 

 tuum, Domine, quod sumsi, et sanguis, quern pntavi, adhtf- 

 reat msceribua meis, et fac, ut in me mm remaneat scelerum 

 maculn, quern pura et sancta refecerunt sacramenta. On 

 the other hand, how simple, beautiful, and touching is the 

 prayer immediately after the administration of the host, quod 

 ore sumsimus, Domine, pura mente capiamux, et de mune.re. 

 temporali fiat, nobis remedium sempiternum ! See Wider 

 Romische Verketzerutigsmcht (Leipsir, 1831), p. 72. Some 

 maintain that the bishop, with his clergy and the consent of 

 government, has the right to change the missal 



