Formgeschichte
(form criticism)
:
Forty hours devotion
.
A Christian (mainly Roman Catholic) adoration of the blessed sacrament in a
monstrance
(i.e. exposed to view).
Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
.
Forty Roman Catholics from England and Wales put to death between 1535 and 1680. The group is representative of a larger number of martyrs. They were canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970: feast day, 25 Oct.
Foucauld, C. de
(founder of Little Brothers)
:
Four Books
or Ssu Shu
.
A group of texts within the
Confucian Classics
, singled out for special attention by the literati (
ju
) of the Confucian renaissance in the Sung period (960–1279). It included Lun Yü (
Analects
), Meng Tzu (
Mencius
), Ta Hsüeh (
Great Learning
), and Chung Yung (
Doctrine of the Mean
). These works, equipped with the commentaries of Chu Hsi (1130–1200), provided the classical authority for the neo-Confucian programme of self-cultivation for the attainment of sainthood.
Four Captives
.
A Spanish medieval story of four
rabbis
captured by Muslim pirates. The story is preserved in Abraham
ibn Daud's
Sefer ha-Kabbalah
.