texuvium

[Mod. Lat.] [EXUVIE.] Zool. & Botany : Any single thing cast off by an animal or plant. ( Owen .) Generally the term Exuvio (q. v.) is used. ěx vō-tō, s. & a. [Lat.] A. As substantive: Religions: An ex voto is something offered to some divinity either in gratitude for an exemplary favor, e. g., deliverance from imminent danger or miraculous restoration to health-or to obtain these benefits. The ex votos of the Romans were generally of the former kind. (Cf. Hor ., Od. I. v. Pison ., 20, 21; Juven ., xii. 27, 28; Pers ., i 89, 90.) In other forms of paganism ex votos were of both kinds, but ordinarily of the latter. Pictorial ex votos are common in Catholic churches on the Continent, and as they are not of a high order of art, it is usual, in the slang of the ateliers , to call a daub an ex voto . Like many other pagan customs this, with slight alteration, was adopted by the early Christians, not without protest on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities; but the custom still survives in the Roman Church, and ex votos in the shape of pictures, models of diseased or wasted limbs, and even walking-sticks and crutches-may seen suspended near the altars of the Virgin and the saints in many churches on the Continent, notably at Notre Dame des Victoires, in Paris, and at Lourdes, and in some few cases in England. The practice is based on the idea of the value of sacrifice, whether the offering of the model of the diseased limb be propitiatory before the cure or eucharistic after it has been performed. How widely this idea obtained in Germany, early in the present century, may be seen in Heine's Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar , and in the note which relates the incident on which the poem was founded. B. As adj .: Offered in order to obtain some miraculous benefit, or in thanksgiving for some benefit miraculously bestowed. *ey (1), s . [EGG.] *ey (pron. 1) (2), [Icel.; A. S. ig .] [EYOT.] An island; it is still preserved as an element in the names of places, as in Sheppey, Alderney, Angle sea. ey'-a-lět, s. A Turkish political division, under rule of a vizier.