Humiliati

HUME, ROBERT ALLEN: Congregationalist; b. at Bombay, India, Mar. 18, 1847. ,He received his education at Williston Seminary, at Yale College (B.A., 1868), Yale Divinity School (1869-71), and Andover Theological Seminary, being graduated from the latter in 1873. He was a teacher in the Collegiate and Commercial Institute at New Haven, Conn. (1868-69), and in the Edwards School at Stockbridge, Mass. (1871-72). He has been a missionary of the Marathi Mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions since 1874, and principal of Ahmednagar Theological Seminary since 1878. During the year 1900-01 he was chairman of the Christian Herald Indian Famine Relief Committee, and in 1900-02 was secretary of the Americo-Indian Famine Relief Committee, receiving the Kaiseri-Hind gold medal in 1901 in recognition of his services. In theological position he is conservatively liberal. He has written Mis sions from the Modern View (New York, 1905), and has edited the Marathi weekly Dnyanodaya at Bombay for several years.

HUMILIATI, hiu"mil-i-d'ti: A religious order, also called "Barettines of Penitence," from their headcovering (Ital. barettino), which traced its origin to the period of Emperor Henry II. and Pope Benedict VIII. (d. 1024). The real founder, however, was probably Johannes Oldratus, a noble of Milan (d.

405

about 1159), who is said to have established the first house of the Humiliati about the middle of the twelfth century at Rondenario, near Como. The first actual Humiliate monastery was probably the house established about 1178 near Milan, where male and female penitents lived and worked to gether. They were laymen, and many who were closely affiliated with them still maintained the family life. Refusing at the command of Alexander III. to refrain from holding conventicles and preaching in public, many of them were excom municated in 1179 and developed into the Lombard division of the Waldenses, while the remainder were faithful to the Church and became the Ordo Vumi liatorum. In the beginning of the thirteenth cen tury the Humiliati formed three divisions, the first of which, the original lay community, lived in their own houses, married, and engaged in manual labor, although they observed certain ascetic and religious principles, abstaining from oaths and receiving spiritual instruction on Sunday from one of their number under the supervision of the bishop of their diocese. The second division was the Hu miliate monks and nuns, who led a celibate cloister life, and the third was the Humiliate canons, both these classes differing from the lay brethren only in their monastic and priestly character.

All three classes were confirmed by Innocent III. (d. 1216). Although theoretically the lowest, the lay Humiliati were the most numerous and the most influential, and they were later regarded as tertiaries of the order. In the sixteenth century the corruption of the Humiliati led Pius V. to at tempt their reform, but in 1569 an attempt was made on the life of Carlo Borromeo, who had been commissioned to carry out the wishes of the pope, and in 1571 the order was suppressed, a portion of its monasteries being given to the Barnabites.

The Humiliate nuns (also called Blassonite Nuns after their supposed first head, Clara Blassoni, of Milan, who flourished about the middle of the twelfth century; and likewise termed Observantine Hospitaller Nuns) were exempted from the papal condemnation and still exist, having five convents in Italy, all independent of each other. Their habit is white, with a black veil in Rome and Vercelli, and that of the lay sisters is gray.

(O. Zöckler †.)

Bibliography: Vita S. Johannie de Meda, ASA Sept., vii. 343-360; H. Tiraboechi, Vetera Humiliatorum monumen ts, 3 vols., Milan, 1766-69; Helyot, Ordres monastiques, vi. 152 sqq., K. Müller, Die Anfiinpe doe M%noritenordem, pp. 162-167, Freiburg, 1885; Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen, i. 262-263.