SERVITES. The Servites or the " Religious Ser vants of the Holy Virgin " were founded in 1233 by seven merchants of Florence. These merchants met together on the Festival of the Assumption, and agreed to renounce the world. They sold their goods, took up their abode in a house outside the city, practised great austerity, and begged their bread in the streets. They next built a convent on the top of Monte Senario. In 1306 Juliana Falconieri, niece of one of the seven merchants, Alexis Falconieri, founded the Servite Third Order, a branch for women. In 1487 Innocent VIII. " bestowed on the Servites equal privileges and prerogatives with those enjoyed by the other four mendicant orders—viz., the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Augustinian Hermits, and the Carmelites " (Cath. Diet.). The Servites are well represented in Italy, Austria, and Germany. See Prot. Diet.; Cath. D4ct., 1905; Brockhaus.
SET. An Egyptian deity. Set was the personifica
tion of Evil, of such things as drought, darkness, dieease, etc. As such he was greatly feared by gods and men alike. The kings of the Old Kingdom, in order to be on good terms with the powers of Good and Evil, repre rented themselves as being Set as well as Horns (q.v.). In late times fear was converted into hatred, and his adherents were persecuted. In the New Kingdom he became known as Sfltekh. a name which is simply a lengthened form of Set. His figure was human, but he is represented with the head of an animal, perhaps that of a camel. He holds a sceptre. In the Osiris myth, Set is the wicked brother of Osiris and is defeated by Horns. Herodotus in his identification of Greek with Egyptian gods, identifies the gigantic Typhon with Set. See Alfred Wiedemann; Adolf Erman Handbook; Na ville, The Old Egyptian Faith, 1909.