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'gyro pnlue Tabernacle, The Mosaic THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Marcus Eugenicus of Ephesus, a strictly orthodox anti-unionist. According to his own account, he detested the whole journey, did not expect success, became involved in conflict with the patriarch and even the emperor, and obstinately refused his assent to the agreement; only the demand and threat of the emperor induced him to sign, and this he counted a weakness. After his return to Constantinople his concessions at the synod occasioned bitter attacks. He then retired from his activity and gave an account of this important experience in a work bearing perhaps the title as " Recollections of the Council of Florence." It is of great value as a source, being the work of a participant in the events. Though partizan, it reveals a series of relationships and developments which otherwise would have remained unknown. The author tries to prove that a real harmony could not be attained, but that the leading personalities, the pope, Bessarion, the patriarch, and the emperor, together with some other spokesmen, approached each other more closely until the urgent position of the Greeks decided the issue. Syropulus justly calls the result a mediating pact, instead of a union.
TABERNACLE: The term used in the Middle Ages for the outer vessel in which the host is preserved, the inner being named the pyx (see Vl;s sELS, SACRED). The word also designates the baldaquin above the altar, and the ciborium (see ALTAR, IL, 1, § 1).
TABERNACLE CONNECTION. See METHODISTS, 1.,2.
" 7abernacle " is the term used in the English versions of the Biblical account of the exodus to name the structure serving in the wilderness wanderings as the dwelling-place of God, to which the people assembled. It represents several Hebrew phrases-'ohel mo'edh, 'ohel Ha'edhuth, mishkan, mishkan ha'edhuth, which, translated literally, mean "tent of meeting," " tent of testimony," but it is not to be taken as a place in which men met. In structure it was a temple in the form of a tent.
The tent itself consisted of a wooden structure of acacia boards covered with curtains. The boards were forty-eight in number, each one ten cubits long and one and a half wide. They
r. The were distributed in such away that Tent. there were twenty boards each on the north side and the south side, eight boards at the west or rear; the front, on the east, remained open. Inasmuch as the boards were closely joined to make a real wall, the length of the structure was thirty cubits, the width twelve cubits, and the height, corresponding to the length 244 In 1642 Claudius Serrarius, the learned senator in Paris, had the work of Syropulus copied from a codex of the Bibliotheca regia (N. 1247) and sent the manuscript to Isaak Vossius for publication. The English minister, Robert Creighton, chaplain at the court of Charles II. and subsequently bishop of Bath, was entrusted with the work; he undertook the publication of the Greek text together with a Latin translation under the title, Vera historic uniortis non verEe inter Grcscos et Latinos, sive Con cilii Florentine exactissima narratio grcece scripts per SyZvestrum Sguropulum (The Hague, 1660). Unfor tunately the edition is incomplete since the whole of the first book was missing in the Paris codex, but the beginning may perhaps still be supplied from manuscript. (PHILIPP MEYER.) BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Allatius. In R. Creyphtoni apparatum. ad historiam eoncilii Florentine, part i., Rome, 1665, also 1674; Fabricius-Harles, Bibliotheca Gra'ca, xi. 711, Hamburg, 1808; Hefele. Conciliengeschichte, vol. vii, passim; idem, in TQ, xxix (1847); O. T. Frommann, Kritische Beitriige zur Geschichte der FlorenEiner Kircheneinigung, Halls, 1872; A. C. Demetracopulos, Gra?eia orthodoxa, p. 109, Leipsic. 1872; KL, xi. 1154-55.
SZEGEDINUS. See His, STEri3errus.of the boards, ten cubits. The boards were con
nected with each other and with the floor by tenons
and sockets. The sockets were of silver, and each
board had two such sockets, i.e., probably holes into
which the tenons were put. The rear wall had, be
sides the six boards that were like the others, two
corner boards of a different kind, but it is not clear
from Ex. xxvi. 24 wherein their peculiarity con
sisted. The boards were fastened together with
five bars for each side that were thrust through
rings of gold; the boards were covered with gold,
as were the bars, which were made of acacia wood.
This wooden structure became a " tabernacle "
or " tent " only through the curtains spread over
it (Ex. xxvi. 1 sqq., xxxvi. 8 sqq.) which were so
essential to it that one of them, the byssus curtain,
could be called the tabernacle (xxvi. 1,
a. The 6, etc.). The lowest covering, the so
Curtains. called byssus curtain, consisted of ten
pieces each twenty-eight cubits long
and four wide, of twined byssus, therefore probably
of white as the ground-color, interwoven with pat
terns of blue, purple, and scarlet cherubim. Five
of these ten pieces were fastened together so as to
make two large curtains twenty-eight cubits long
and twenty cubits broad. Each of these curtains
had fifty loops of purple yarn through which were
thrust golden taches, fastening the whole into one
covering. Over this curtain, to which the name
" tabernacle " was given, there was spread for its
protection a curtain of goats' hair, called " tent."
It consisted of eleven pieces, each thirty cubits
long and four wide, so connected as to make two
curtains, one of five, the other of six of the smaller
pieces. In the larger of these two the sixth piece
was to be doubled in the forefront of the tabernacle.
These were coupled together by the fifty loops oil
