470 



PEROUSE PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS. 



vols., 4u>); an unfinished History of the Medusae, 

 fragments of which have been published, and several 

 valuable memoirs on subjects of natural history. 



PEROUSE, LA. See Laperouse. 



PERPENDICULAR, in geometry; a line falling 

 directly on another line, so as to make equal angles 

 on each side; called also a normal line. These lines 

 may be straight lines or curves. A plane is perpen- 

 dicular to another plane, if a line drawn on one of 

 them, perpendicular to the line of intersection, forms 

 right angles with a perpendicular line on the other 

 plane drawn to the same point. (See Plumb Line.} 

 A vertical line is one perpendicular to a horizontal 

 line (a line parallel to the surface of calm water), so 

 called because it passes from our vertex, or zrukli 

 (q. v.) down to the nadir (q. v.), so that the vertical 

 line is a particular kind of perpendicular line. 



PERPETUAL MOTION; a motion which is 

 supplied and renewed from itself, without the inter- 

 vention of external causes. The problem of a per- 

 petual motion consists in the inventing of a machine 

 which has the principle of its motion within itself; 

 and numberless schemes have been proposed for its 

 solution. The difficulty is, that the resistance of the 

 air, the friction of the parts of the machine, &c. 

 necessarily retard, and finally stop, the motions of 

 machines, and therefore seem to render perpetual 

 motion an impossibility. Attempts have recently 

 been made to produce a perpetuum mobile, by means 

 of galvanism; a metallic bar being placed between* 

 two dry galvanic columns, is alternately attracted by 

 each column. 



PERPETUITY, in the doctrine of annuities, is 

 the number of years in which the simple interest of 

 any principal sum will amount to the same as the 

 principal itself; or it is the number of years' pur- 

 chase to be given for an annuity which is ts con- 

 tinue for ever; and it is found by dividing 100 by 

 the rate of interest agreed upon ; thus, allowing five 

 per cent., the perpetuity is < 1 $=20. 



PERP1GNAN; a city of France, capital of East 

 Pyrenees, about a league from the Mediterranean 

 sea; Ion. 2 54' E.; lat. 42 42' N.; population, 

 15,350. It is a place of strength, and accounted one 

 of the keys of the kingdom, on the side of Spain. It 

 is mostly ill built and gloomy. The trade consists in 

 corn, wool, iron, and wine. The manufactures are 

 woollen and silk. 



PERR AULT. Of four brothers of this name, who 

 lived during the reign of Louis XIV., the most 

 known are Claude (born 1613, died 1688), a phy- 

 sician, naturalist, and architect, from whose designs 

 the celebrated facade of the Louvre, and the obser- 

 vatory at Paris were built ; and Charles (born 1633, 

 died 1703), a man of erudition, but of little taste, 

 whose verses have not outlived his day. Colbert 

 availed himself of their assistance in founding the 

 French academy of art, of which Charles was the 

 librarian. His poem Le Siecle de Louis le Grand, 

 which he read before the academy in 1687, gave 

 rise to the famous controversy on the comparative 

 merits of the ancients and moderns. In his Paralelle 

 des Anciens et Modernes (1688 96), in the form of 

 a dialogue, he maintains that the moderns have car- 

 ried art and science, which were in a state of 

 infancy among the ancients, to the highest perfec- 

 tion, and have excelled them in their works. This 

 opinion was warmly attacked by Boileau, and 

 zealously defended by Fontenelle and Hudart de la 

 Motte. Perrnult was also author of Les Homme sillus- 

 tret de France (1696 1700). The Conies de ma 

 Mere I' Oye (Tales of Mother Goose), of which he is 

 the reputed author, has procured for him, but 

 perhaps unjustly, the title of " inventor of the French 

 Fairy Tales." See Fairies. 



PERRON, ANQUETIL DC. See Anquetil du Per- 

 ron, and Zendavesta. 



PERRY. See fear. 



PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS. The per- 

 secutions which the early Christians underwent were 

 a natural consequence of the anxiety which the free 

 spirit of the Christian doctrine and worship, so oppo- 

 site to the religious institutions previously existing, 

 excited among Jews and heathens. As long as the 

 Jewish state continued, the Christian communities 

 established within its limits hail little reason to expect 

 toleration, as even the founder of their religion had 

 been regarded as a stirrer up of sedition, on account 

 of his opposition to the ordinances of the Jewish 

 church, which were zealously defended by the 

 Pharisees, who formed the ruling party ; and the 

 sanhedrim could not forgive his followers for regard- 

 ing him as the true Messiah. But, as this body 

 had not power to carry its wishes into effect, and 

 the Christians abstained from open violation of the 

 public peace, there was no general persecution of 

 them in Palestine under the sanction of the Roman 

 authorities ; and only some of the heads of the con- 

 gregations at Jerusalem, such as Stephen and the 

 apostles James the elder and James the younger, 

 suffered martyrdom, the former forty-three, the 

 latter sixty-three years after Christ. But the Jews 

 in the towns of the Roman empire, where they had 

 made settlements, and where Christian congregations 

 soon sprung up, excited against them the suspicions 

 of the magistrates, who, at first, may have considered 

 the Christians as an unimportant Jewish sect, or 

 have tolerated the new worship with less reluctance, 

 since the introduction of a new divinity had little in 

 it to startle the mind of a heathen. Nero, indeed, 

 ascribed to the Christians the conflagration of the 

 city of Rome kindled by himself, and, in the year 

 64, subjected them to a dreadful persecution, in 

 which the apostles Peter and Paul suffered ; but this 

 was more an exercise of imperial tyranny than of 

 policy, or an intolerant spirit. This first persecu- 

 tion does not appear to have extended far beyond 

 Rome. There arose, however, a second, in the 

 year 95, because Domitian, deceived by the royal 

 title which the Christians gave to Jesus, after 

 fruitless inquiries for the supposed relations of Jesus 

 and pretenders to the crown, caused many of his 

 followers, particularly in Asia Minor, to be banished, 

 or put to death. 



What is called the third persecution of the Chris- 

 tians, took place in the time of Trajan, who issued 

 an edict against secret societies, which was fol- 

 lowed, in 105, by a prohibition of their meetings, 

 and the punishment of some refractory individuals, 

 because the Roman proconsuls (for example, Pliny 

 the younger, in Bithynia) considered the refusal of 

 the Christians to pay the usual homage to the image 

 of the emperor as deserving of punishment ; and 

 their suspicions were awakened by the independent 

 character of the followers of the new faith, and 

 their deviation from the national customs. Charges 

 of outrage and sedition, principally excited and 

 spread abroad by the Jews, increased the unfavour- 

 able disposition of the heathens towards the Chris- 

 tians. It was said that they were accustomed, in 

 their assemblies, to eat human flesh (a misconcep- 

 tion of the eucharist), and to practise shameful 

 vices, and not only to aim at the destruction of the 

 old religion, but at the overthrow of the Roman 

 imperial throne, and the foundation of a new 

 monarchy. These reports easily grew out of their 

 peculiar habits. The obscurity in which they enve- 

 loped themselves, on account of their well-founded 

 apprehensions ; the spirit of their associations, which 

 kept them separate from the rest of the world, 



