The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2567 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
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Unam Sanctum
(bull):
Unction
.
The religious use of oil for
anointing
; and in Christian use specifically the rite of anointing of the sick. The practice has its authority in the New Testament (Mark 6. 13, James 5. 14 f.), and in the Middle Ages came to be numbered among the seven
sacraments
. In the early cents., it was connected with recovery from illness, but thereafter the rite became so closely connected with repentance and the whole
penitential
system that it was commonly postponed until death was approaching. Thus the name ‘extreme unction’ by which the rite was long known probably derives from its reception
in extremis
.
Underhill, Evelyn
(1875–1941)
. Christian spiritual writer. Born into an unreligious upper middle-class family, she quickly showed an interest in the religious capacities of the human soul, culminating in her great work,
Mysticism
(1911). As an Anglican, she exercised an enormous influence through her books (among them,
Worship
, 1936) and spiritual direction, both with individuals and in the giving of retreats.
Underworld
.
Domain in which the dead are (or were) believed to have continued existence—‘life’ would be too strong a word (see
SHEOL
). Whereas it was once thought that all the dead ended up in the same place somewhere beneath the earth, it was later believed that the evil were separated from the good, and that only the evil were in the underworld, which then became a place of punishment. In this way
hell
developed from the underworld.
U-Netanneh Tokef
(Heb., ‘let us declare the importance’). Jewish
piyyut
recited on Roshha-Shanah and Yom Kippur (
Day of Atonement
). It was written
c.
8th cent. CE, and announces that God is full of forgiveness.

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