52 9 
SAC 
SACRILE'GIOUS, adj. [sacrilegus, Lat.] Violating 
things sacred. 
Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, 
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands. Pope. 
SACRILE'GIOTJSLY, adv. With sacrilege.—When these 
evils befal him, his conscience tells him it was for sacrilegi¬ 
ously pillaging and invading God’s house. South. 
SACRlLE'GIOUSNESS, s. A disposition to sacrilege. 
Scott. 
SA'CRILEGIST, s. One who commits sacrilege.—The 
hand of God is still upon the posterity of Antiochus Epi- 
phanes the sacrilcgist. Spelman. 
SA'CRING, part, [from sacre, an obsolete verb.~\ Con¬ 
secrating. “ Sacring my song to every deity.” Chap¬ 
man. It was very early applied to the little bell, used in 
elevating the host, and other offices of the Romish church; 
as in an ancient song, written about the year 1400, 
given in Ritson’s Anc. Songs, p. 56. “ Ryng the belle, 
that these forsaiden may come to the sacrying," i. e. to 
the elevation of the host. 
I’ll startle you, 
Worse than the sacring bell. Shahspeare. 
The sacring of the kings of France is the sign of their 
sovereign priesthood as well as kingdom, and in the right 
thereof they are capable of holding all vacant benefices. 
Temple. 
SA'CRIST, or Sa'cristan, s. [sacristain, Fr.] He that 
has the care of the utensils or moveables of the church.—A 
sacrist or treasurer are not dignitaries in the church of com¬ 
mon right, but only by custom. Ayliffe. 
SA'CRISTY, s. \sacristie, Fr.] An apartment where 
the consecrated vessels or moveables of a church are repo- 
sited.—A third apartment should be a kind of sacristy for 
altars, idols,-and sacrificing instruments. Addison. 
SACROBOSCO (John de), an eminent mathematician in 
the thirteenth century, is claimed for a countryman by 
writers of the English, Scotch, and Irish nations. According 
to Leland and Pitts, he was born at Halifax, in Yorkshire, 
whence they derive his surname; the former rendering it in 
the Saxon idiom, Ha/igwalde, or Halifax, and the latter in 
English, Holywood. According to Stainhurst, he was a 
native of Holywood, near Dublin ; but according to Demp¬ 
ster and Mackenzie, of Nithsdale, in Scotland. His English 
biographers state, that he appears to have received his aca¬ 
demical education at Oxford. Mackenzie, on the contrary, 
informs us, that, after finishing his studies, he took holy 
orders, and became a canon regular of the order of St. Augus¬ 
tine, in the famous monastery of Holywood, in Nithsdale. 
They all agree, however, in asserting, that he spent the 
greatest part of his life at Paris; where, says Mackenzie, he 
was admitted a member of the university in the year 1221, 
under the syndics of the Scotch nation. In this seminary 
he distinguished himself by his proficiency in polite litera- 
ture and philosophy; and more particularly, by the ardour 
and success with which he cultivated the mathematical 
sciences. Being elected professor of the mathematics, he dis¬ 
charged the duties of that appointment with very high repu¬ 
tation for many years, and was justly considered to be the' 
ablest mathematician of his time. He died in 1256, as ap¬ 
pears from the inscription on his monument in the cloisters 
belonging to that branch of the Trinitarians called Mathurins, 
at Paris. He was the author of a treatise “ De Sphaera 
Mundi,” which has been frequently printed, and illustrated 
with the commentaries of Christopher Clavius, Peter Vale¬ 
rian, Elias Venetus, Peter Nonius, and other learned mathe¬ 
maticians ; “ De Anni Ratione, seu de Computo Ecclesias- 
tico,” also frequently printed, both in a separate form, and 
with the former in an 8vo. volume; “ De Algorismo,” 
printed at Paris, in 1498, with “ Comment. Petri Cirvilli 
Hisp .“ De Astrolabis;” “ Breviarium Juris,” &c. Hut¬ 
ton's Math. Diet. 
SACRO-LUMBALIS, a muscle. See Anatomy. 
Vol. XXII. No. 1520. 
S A D 
SACRO-SCIATIC. NERVES. See Anatomy. 
SA'CROSANCT, Adj. \sdcrosancttis, Lat.] Inviolable : 
sacred. Unused. —The Roman Church — makes itself so 
sacrosanct and infallible. Mure. 
SACRUM, s. [Lat.] The rump-bone. 
SACS, a tribe of Indians in North America and Louisiana, 
who principally reside in four villages on the Mississippi. 
They hunt on this river and its confluent streams, from the 
Illinois to the river Jowa, and on the plains west of those 
which border on the Missouri. They occasionally resort to 
agriculture for subsistence, raising in considerable quantities, 
corns, beans, and melons. The tribe consists of about 
3000, and it is estimated that 700 fighting men can be 
mustered. 
SACY (Louis de), an advocate and an estimable man of 
letters, was born at Paris, in 1654. He was brought up to 
the bar, at which he appeared with distinction, as w’ell for 
the eloquence and soundness of his pleadings, as for the pro¬ 
bity of his conduct, and the polish and amenity of his 
manners. Attached to literature by inclination, he employed 
his leisure in composing works, of which the first that ap¬ 
peared was a “ Translation of Pliny’s Epistles,” 1699. 
This was very .well received by the public, and obtained him 
a seat in the French academy, in 1701. This version, says 
D’Alembert, is “ as agreeable to read as the original, and at 
the same time less fatiguing, because the translator, while he 
enters into all Pliny’s refinement of thought, expresses it with 
more simplicity ; so that the author’s wit appears with more 
advantage by being freed from the studied dress which loo 
often impairs its beauty in the Latin.” , M. de Sacy prefixed 
to his work an elegant life of Pliny the Younger, and he fol¬ 
lowed it with a translation of his “ Panegyric of Trajan.” 
The reputation and amiable qualities of this writer gave him 
admission into a select society of which the celebrated Mar¬ 
quise de Lambert was the centre, and he became her most 
intimate and confidential friend. It was in the bosom of this 
society that he composed his “ Traite de l’Amitie,” a work 
which displayed the influence of friendship upon his own 
pure and elegant mind, though, according to D’Alembert, it 
is neither sufficiently tender for the votaries of sensibility, nor 
profound enough for philosophers; it was dedicated to 
Madame de Lambert. . Soon after, he published a “ Traite 
de la Gloire; and in these compositions, as well as in the 
collection of his “ Factums” or pleadings, which, with some 
other pieces, he published some time before his death, in two 
vols. 4to., he had obviously in view the imitation of the 
great Roman orator, whom, indeed, he followed with very 
distant steps. • He could not, however, be surpassed, in the 
generous manner in which he exercised his profession. The • 
president, Montesquieu, who succeeded him in the academy, 
said of him, “ All who wanted his assistance became his 
friends. At the close of every day he found scarcely any 
other recompence than the consciousness of some additional 
good actions; and growing continually less rich but much 
more disinterested, he left to his children only the honour of 
having had so respectable a father.” M. de Sacy died at. 
Paris, in 1727, at the age' of 73. His style as a writer is 
pure and elegant, his thoughts are refined, and his sentiments 
elevated; but he is charged with being too fond, of epigram¬ 
matic turns and antitheses. Moreri. D'Alembert. 
SACZKA, a small town of the north-east of Bohemia, 
in the circle of Biczow, on the Schwarzbach. Population 
1100 . 
SAD, adj. [Of this word the etymology is not known. 
“ It is probably a contraction of sagged, heavy, burthened, 
overwhelmed, from To sag, to load. Johnson. —Todd says, 
perhaps our earliest usage of sad is in the sense of settled, 
steady, firm. “ We ben made parceneris of Christ, if netheles 
we holden the bigynnyng of his substaunce sad in to the 
ende.” Wiciiffe. —So Chaucer, unsad, for unsettled. “ O 
stormy peple, and ever untrewe.”]—Sorrowful; full of grief. 
One from sad dismay 
Recomforted, and after thoughts disturb’d, 
Submitting to what seem’d remediless. Milton. 
6 T The 
