Sainfoin

SAINFOIN (Onobrychis sativa) in botany is a low-growing perennial plant of the pea family (Leguminosae), with a woody rootstock, whence proceed the stems, which are covered with fine hairs and bear numerous long pinnate leaves, the segments of which are elliptic. The flowers are borne in close pyramidal or cylindrical clusters on the end of long stalks. Each flower is about half an inch in length with lanceolate calyx-teeth shorter than the corolla, which latter is pink, with darker stripes of the same col our. The pods or legumes are flattened, wrinkled, somewhat sickle-shaped and crested, and contain a single olive-brown seed.

In Great Britain the plant is a native of the calcareous districts of the southern counties. It is native through central Europe and Siberia and is sparingly naturalized in the eastern United States. SAINT. The articles on the different Saints are to be found in their proper alphabetical places, followed not preceded by the word saint, as Peter, Saint; Patrick, Saint, etc.

The term was originally applied,

e.g. in the New Testament and also in the most ancient monuments of Christian thought, to all believers. In ancient inscriptions it often means those souls who are enjoying eternal happiness, or the martyrs. For a long time, too, sanctus was an official title, particularly reserved for bishops (v. Analecta Bollandiana, xviii. 410--411). It was not till almost the 6th century that the word became a title of honour specially given to the dead whose cult was publicly celebrated in the churches. It was to the martyrs that the Church first began to pay special honour. We find traces of this in the 2nd half of the 2nd century, in the Martyrium Polycarpi (xviii. 3) in connection with a meeting to celebrate the anniversary of the martyr's death. Another passage in the same document (xvii. 3) shows clearly that this was not an innovation, but a custom already established among the Christians. It does not follow that it was henceforth universal. The Church of Rome does not seem to have inscribed in its calendar its martyrs of an earlier date than the 3rd century. The essential form of the cult of the martyrs was that of the honours paid to the illustrious dead; and these honours were offi cially paid by the community. Each church first confined itself to celebrating its own martyrs; but it was not long before it be came customary to celebrate the anniversaries of martyrs of other churches. Finally the famous ascetics began to share in the hon

ours paid to the martyrs.

The cult of the saints early met with opposition, in answer to which the Church Fathers had to defend its lawfulness and explain its nature. The Church of Smyrna had early to explain its posi tion in this matter with regard to St. Polycarp : "We worship Christ, as the Son of God ; as to the martyrs, we love them as the disciples and imitators of the Lord" (Martyrium Polycarpi, xvii. 3). St. Cyril of Alexandria defends the worship of the martyrs against Julian, St. Asterius and Theodoret against the pagans in general, and they all lay emphasis on the fact that the saints are not looked upon as gods by the Christians, and that the honours paid to them are of quite a different kind from the adoration re served to God alone. St. Jerome argued against Vigilantius with his accustomed vehemence, and especially meets the objection based on the resemblance between these rites and those of the pagans. But it is above all St. Augustine who in his refutation of Faustus, as well as in his sermons and elsewhere, clearly defined the true character of the honours paid to the saints : "Non eis templa, non eis altaria, non sacrificia exhibemus. Non eis sacer dotes offerunt, absit, Deo praestantur. Etiam apud memorias sanctorum martyrum cum offerimus, nonne Deo offerimus? . . . Quando audisti dici apud memoriam sancti Theogenis : offero tibi, sancte Theogenis, aut offero tibi Petre, aut offero tibi Paule?" (Sermo, 273, 7; cf. Contra Faustum, xx. 21). The undoubted abuses which grew up, especially during the middle ages, raised up, at the time of the Reformation, fresh adversaries of the cult of the saints. The council of Trent, while reproving all superstitious practices in the invocation of the saints, the veneration of relics and the use of images, expresses as follows the doctrine of the Roman Church: "That the saints who reign with Christ offer to God their prayers for men ; that it is good and useful to invoke them by supplication and to have recourse to their aid and assist ance in order to obtain from God His benefits through His Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, who alone is our Saviour and Redeemer." BIBLIOGRAPHY.-See H. Thurston, art. "Saints and Martyrs, Chris tian" in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, xi. 51 ff.; H. R. Percival, The Invocation of Saints (London, 1896).