aureola

[In Fr. auréole; Port. aureola; from Lat. aureolus = golden; aureus = golden; aurum = gold.) The circle of rays with which painters surround the head of Christ and the saints. Trench is in error when he says that this word is in none of the Dictionaries. It is in Webster, ed. 1848. The Archbishop says that the following citation from Donne should be inserted with it:- "Because in their translation, in the Vulgate edition of the Roman Catholic Church, they [the Roman Catholics] find in Exod. xxv. 25 that word aureolam. Facies coronam aureolam, 'Thou shalt make a le er crown of gold;' out of this diminutive and mistaken word they have established a doctrine that, besides these cor onæ aureæ, those crowns of gold which are communicated to all the saints from the crown of Christ, some saints have made to themselves, and produced out of their own extraordinary merits, certain aureolas, certain le er crowns of their own And these aureolas they ascribe only to three sorts of persons-to Virgins, to Martyrs, to Doctors." (Donne: Sermon, 73.) (Trench: On some Def. in our Eng. Dict., p. 42.) [From Lat. aurum = gold, and