ENCYCLOPÆDIA AMERICANA.

A

POPULAR DICTIONARY

OF

ARTS, SCIENCES LITERATURE, HISTORY POLITICS AND

BIOGRAPHY,

BROUGHT DOWN TO THE PRESENT TIME;

INCLUDING

A COPIOUS COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL ARTICLES

IN

AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY;

ON

THE BASIS OF THE SEVENTH EDITION OF THE GERMAN

CONVERSATIONS-LEXICON.

EDITED BY

FRANCIS LIEBER,

ASSISTED BY

E. WIGGLESWORTH AND T. G. BRADFORD.

Vol. X.

Philadelphia:

CAREY AND LEA.
SOLD IN PHILADELPHIA BY E. L. CAREY AND A. HART-IN NEW YORK

BY G. & C. & H. CARVILL-IN BOSTON BY

CARTER & HENDEE.

Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1832, by

CAREY AND LEA, In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Men fib.
Source haprown

16-46

ENCYCLOPÆDIA AMERICANA.

INJUNCTION-INK.

ND.

PEN, WRITING-Pers. It is well known year 1433, extremely rare in Venice. We that the ancients employed a certain reed, learn from the familiar letters of learned the nature of which is not precisely ascer- men of that time, that they were equally tained, for writing. The reeds were split, troubled by the rarity of quills and by the and shaped to a point like our quills. difficulty of making good ink. Of late, When goose-quills first came into use, or steel pens have been much used and imwho first borrowed from the emblem of proved, and for certain purposes, as for folly the instruments of wisdom, is not signing bank notes, to make the signatures known. It has been asserted, that quills uniform, they appear well adapted; as also were used for writing as early as the fifth for people who cannot make pens; but, century, according to the history of Con- on the whole, the quill affords a much stantius. The oldest certain account is a easier and handsomer chirography. passage of Isidore, who died 636 A. D., PENAL Law. (See Criminal Law.) and who, among the instruments employ- PENANCE; every penalty borne for the ed for writing, mentions reeds and feath- expiation of an offence. In the early ers. There exists, also, a poem on a pen, Christian church, this ancient judicial written in the same century, and to be principle was transferred to religious penfound in the works of Adhelm, the first ance, that is, to the atonement which the Saxon who wrote in Latin. Alcuin (q. v.), sinner has to make, for his trespasses, to the friend and teacher of Charlemagne, God and the church. According to the mentions writing-pens in the eighth cen- doctrine of the Protestants, it is not among tury. After that time, proofs exist which the sacraments. This doctrine considers pui the question of their use beyond dis- compunction and faith as the only elepute. Mabillon (q. v.) saw a manuscript ments of repentance and reformation. gospel of the ninth century, in wbich the Penance is considered by the Catholic evangelists were represented with pens in church a sacramental institution. The their hands. Calami properly signify the conditions for the necessary transition reeds which the ancients used in writing. from bad to good, are a humble consciousModern authors often use the word as a ness of guilt. The conversion itself is a Latin term for pens, and it is probable change in the soul of man, effected by the that the same was employed to signify power of God, but necessarily connected quills before the time of Isidore. Reeds with an exterior alteration. were used for a considerable time after the of forgiving sins, in the literal sense of the introduction of writing-pens. In convents word, say the Catholics, has been transthey were retained a long time for the ferred by Christ to the apostles, and to initials only. By some letters of Erasmus the church; but the latter can forgive the to Reuchlin, it appears that the former re- sins only of the truly repentant and conceived three reeds from the latter, and verted sinner. To bring him to the expressed a wish that Reuchlin, when he knowledge of himself, the church has procured more, would send some of them established confession; to calm his conto a certain learned man in England. science, absolution ; for the instruction Quills, for some reason, were, about the and discipline of the converted, she in

The power