officer, was allowed to erect a fort on the then frontier of California, on the present site of Sacramento. He became a Mexican official (1840), and in 1841 obtained from the Mexican government a grant of 11 square leagues of land. Sutter's fort, or “New Helvetia” (a reproduction of which, with a historical museum, in Fort Sutter Park, is one of the objects of interest in the city), was on the direct line of overland immigration from the East, and its position—purposely selected by Sutter with a view to freedom of interference from Mexican officials—made Sutter a man of great importance in the last years of the Mexican régime. After the discovery of gold in 1848, made on Sutter's land, near the present Coloma, about 45 m. E.N.E. of Sacramento, several rival towns were started on Sutter's property near the fort. Of these fortune finally favoured Sacramento—a name already frequently applied to the fort, and adopted for the name of the settlement about its embarcadero or river landing in 1848. The first sale of town lots was in January 1849. Here began the determined movement for the organization of a state government. The extraordinary richness of the placer mines of '49 caused the city to grow with wonderful rapidity. In October 1849 its population was probably 2000, in December 4000 and a year later 10,000. Trouble with land “squatters” almost led to local war in 1850. In 1849 the city offered $1,000,000 for the honour of being the state capital, which it finally secured in February 1854 (the legislature having already met here once in 1851). Between November 1849 and January 1853 the city was thrice devastated by fearful floods, and it was two-thirds destroyed by fire in November 1852; but though these misfortunes caused a collapse of inflated realty values they did not seriously cripple the city in its development. A city government was organized in August 1849, and in February 1850 this government was incorporated, and in 1863 reincorporated; the city and county governments were consolidated from 1858 to 1863; and a new city charter was received in 1893, coming into effect in 1894. The first local steam railway of California was opened from Sacramento in 1855, and here in 1863 was begun the building of the Central Pacific railway across the Sierras, the first train from the Atlantic coast reaching Sacramento in May 1869. In 1862 there was another flood, the most destructive in the history of the city; since then the measures taken for protection have secured safety from the river. The government of the city in the 'fifties was excessively corrupt and expensive. Progress since the end of the flush mining days has been steady and conservative.
SACRARIUM, the term in classic architecture given to the cella of a temple, and to the apartment in a dwelling house which was sacred to a deity. In medieval architecture the term is applied on the European continent to that portion of a chancel, which, enclosed with a railing or balustrade in front of the altar, is devoted to the celebration of the Holy Eucharist; this in England is generally known as the presbytery.
SACRED HEART. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a cult peculiar to the modern Roman Catholic Church. The principal object of this devotion is the Saviour Himself. The secondary and partial object is that Heart which was the seat or organ of His love, and which forms the natural symbol thereof. Heart and love are viewed, not physiologically, but in their moral connexion. The chief liturgical expressions of this cult are the institution of a feast of the Sacred' Heart and public representations of it by statues and pictures.
Private worship of Christ's heart in particular is of great antiquity in the Church, and is prominent in St Gertrude and other mystics. It was greatly stimulated in the 17th century by St Francis of Sales (q.v.) who gave this symbol to his Order (the Visitation) as its badge. The Venerable Fr. Eudes must also be mentioned as a great propagator of the devotion, in the same century, and he was the first to obtain a certain public, though only local, authorization of the new pious practices. Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), a Visitation nun of Paray-le-Monial, assisted by her director, the Venerable Claude de la Colombière, S.J. (1641-1682), was the instrument of the introduction of the specific worship of the Sacred Heart into the Church by a decision of the supreme authority, although their work only took effect long after their death. Mary of Modena, the exiled queen of James II., at the instance of the Visitation, petitioned in 1697 for a proper Feast of the Sacred Heart. Neither then, however, nor on the presentation of new petitions in 1726, was an affirmative answer obtained. Meanwhile the chief objection, that of “novelty,” was gradually removed by the multiplication of local manifestations, the genuineness of which was proved to the satisfaction of the Roman Congregation of Rights, and in 1765 it was allowed for houses of the Visitation and certain countries. It must be added that this devotion was strongly opposed, not only by the Jansenists, but by others within the Church, under the mistaken idea that the Heart of Christ was viewed in it as separate from the rest of His Being. The formulation of this objection by the synod of Pistoia,[1] in 1786, however, only provoked a clearer explanation of the doctrine, which contributed to confirm the cult. In 1856 Pius IX. introduced the feast into the general calendar of the Roman Catholic Church, fixing the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi for its celebration. The Beatification of Blessed M.M. Alacoque in 1864 gave a new impetus to the cause of which she had been the apostle.
See Nic. Nilles, S.J., De rationibus festorum SS. Cordis Jesu, &c. (3rd ed., Innsbruck, 1873); E. Letrierce, S.J., Études sur le Sacré Cœur et la Visitation (Paris, 1890). These two works contain bibliographical lists. Dalgairns, The Devotion to the Heart of Jesus (1853); H. E. Manning, The Glories of the Sacred Heart (1876); Jos. Nix, Cultus SS. Cordis Jesu . . . cum additamento de cultu purissimi cordis B. V. Mariae (2nd ed., Freiburg-i.-B., 1891). (H. B. M.)
SACRIFICE (from Lat. sacrificium; sacer, holy, and facere, to make), the ritual destruction of an object, or, more commonly, the slaughter of a victim by effusion of blood, suffocation, fire or other means. While the Hebrew for sacrifice, ובה, makes the killing of the victim the central feature of the ceremony, the Latin word brings out the fact that an act of sacralization (see Taboo) is an essential element in many cases. The sacrifice of desacralization is, however, also found; hence MM. Hubert and Mauss describe a sacrifice as “a religious act, which, by the consecration of a victim, modifies the moral state of the sacrifice or of certain material objects which he has in view,” i.e. it either confers sanctity or removes it and its analogue, impurity. It is, in fact, “a procedure whereby communication is established between the sacred and profane spheres by a victim, that is to say by an object destroyed in the course of the ceremony.” By this definition the term sacrifice is extended to cover the inanimate offering which is consumed by fire, broken or otherwise rendered useless for the purpose of human life.
Theories of Sacrifice.—Explanations of sacrifice, as of other rites, are naturally not wanting among the peoples who have practised or still practise it; but they are often of the nature of etiological myths and give no clue to the original meaning. Scientific theories date from the second half of the last century, and were originated in the first instance by the English anthropological school.
(a) According to the view put forward by Dr Tylor, the sacrifice is originally a gift, offered to supernatural beings by man for the purpose of securing their favour or minimizing their hostility. By a natural series of transitions the gift theory became transformed, in the minds of the sacrificers, into the homage theory, which again passed by an easy transition into the renunciation theory. These were, in fact, simply the popular theories of sacrifice put on an evidential basis by facts drawn from various stages of culture.
(b) With W. Robertson Smith, on the other hand, a new era was reached, in which the recently recognized existence of Totemism (q.v.) was made the basis of an attempt to give a
- ↑ Scipione de Ricci, bishop of Pistoia from 1780 to 1791, on the ex-Jesuits requesting him to consecrate a bell dedicated to this object, issued a pastoral letter (3rd June 1784) in which he pointed out that the spirit of true religion was “far removed from fetishism,” and warned his flock against “cardiolatry.” This pastoral was subsequently in 1786 annexed to the resolutions passed by the reforming synod of Pistoia (q.v.), and was condemned with eighty-four other propositions by papal bull in 1794.—Ed.
