CHIUSI and PIENZA, dioceses of. – In the province of Siena, suffraganeal to Siena. Chiusi in the Valdichiana was one of the twelve Etruscan lucumonies.
Christianity is attested in the third century by monuments, as is the origin of the diocese, since a Christian inscription records the bishop Lucius Petronius Dexter, born in 256 and died in 322 (CIL, X, i, 2548). Other known bishops are Florentius (558–60), to whom Pope Pelagius I wrote, and Ecclesius in 600.
The diocese has an area of 1,168 km², with 65,575 inhabitants, all Catholic, 61 parishes, 82 diocesan priests and 24 regular clergy, and a seminary at P[ienza].
In 1633, near the church of St Mustiola, a subterranean Christian cemetery was discovered, though it was only explored in the spring of 1830. The martyr Mustiola is commemorated in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum: in Tuscia s. Mustiolae on 23 November; there is also a Passio of hers (BHL, nos. 443–56). An inscription found in the cemetery mentions a Julia Asinia Felicissima ex genere Mustiola sanctae (CIL, XI, 2549). Could the martyr be the eponym of the cemetery? The ancient entrance leads to a large hall from which the cemetery galleries branch off, mostly with arcosolia. There, besides the aforementioned inscription of Bishop L. Petronius Dexter, were found those of a deacon named Sulpicius Felicissimus (CIL, XI, 2561), of an exorcist Senzius Respectus, of the neophytes Sulpicius Vincentius (ibid., 2560) and Ulpia Faustina (ibid., 2563). *Aurelius Melitius iuifans cristaeanus fidelis peregrinus mori dine Saturai Pascae noctis ipsius percigliatio oratione quinta* (ibid., 2551), that is, on Holy Saturday, on the night of the Easter vigil while the fifth oration was being recited. The inscription belongs to the second half of the fourth century, between 354 and 363 or 378. A Redempta died in the year 390 (ibid., 2573). There is also a Peregrinus Ciconius *cuius nomine Deus scit* (ibid., 2568). In a fragment belonging to a *C[larissima] p[uelis]* there is the wish: *dormis in somno pacis* (ibid., 2579). The cemetery called of St Catherine is located on the road to Città di Pieve; it also presents a large cubiculum, at the entrance of which is a travertine architrave recording the burial of the child Capelione (ibid., 2537). In the inscription of L. Fonteia Concordia, wife of Sienus Callicrates, it is said that they conducted the funeral *cereis colstibus* (ibid., 2534). Among other Christian inscriptions of Chiusi should be noted that of a Laurentia *quae credidit resurrectionem*, who died in the year 493 (ibid., 2585).
The cathedral, dedicated to St Secondianus (12th century), which has three naves divided by 18 reused columns, was disfigured by a restoration at the end of the 19th century. It preserves three epigrams relating to the restoration of the marble ciborium carried out at the time of Bishop Arcadius and King Liutprand by Duke Gregory of Chiusi. In the sacristy are preserved 22 illuminated choir books from the 15th century, coming from the monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, sacred vestments from the 13th century, and an ivory casket from the 15th century. The church of St Francis has a Romanesque portal; that of St Mary of Death is from the 13th century, though now renewed, and uses the adjacent medieval tower as its bell tower.
The Etruscan hypogea (called della Scimia, del Colle, del Granduca, della Tassinala), and the archaeological material partly preserved in the local civic museum, were illustrated by R. Bianchi Bandinelli, *Clusium*, in *Monumenti antichi dei Lincei*, XXX, II (1925).
In 1880 G. B. De Rossi identified in Chiusi an ivory comb which on both sides bears the engraving of two sheep; on one side they are turned towards a veiled chair, on the other towards a crown. Together with the comb were found many coins from the 4th century and some terracotta lamps also from the 4th century (*G. B. De Rossi, Pettine adorno di simboli cristiani trovato in Chiusi*, in *Bullett. d'arch. crist.*, 3rd series, 6 [1881], pp. 75–85).
For the history of Pienza: V. PAZIENZA.
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CHOBAR (Heb. Kēbhār). – A river in the “land of the Chaldeans,” on whose bank stood the locality called Tēl-’Ābhībh (“hill of ears of grain”), where the first deportation of Jews was established (597 BC), among whom was also Ezekiel (Ez. 1:1–3; 3:15, etc.). It is confidently identified with the Naru kabaru (“great canal”), a navigable canal that crossed Nippur (modern Niffer) southeast of the city of Babylon.
CHOCARNE, BERNARD. – Dominican, b. 1826, d. 1895. He was among the most meritorious figures in the Dominican restoration in France, founder and superior of various convents and twice provincial during the turbulent period of political oppression.
*The Vita intima e religiosa del p. Lacordaire* (Paris 1866, Italian trans. 1870) remains the classic biography of the great orator and the heartfelt effusion of a devoted disciple toward his master. He is also the author of the pamphlet *Derniers moments du p. Lacordaire* (Paris 1861).
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CHOCÓ, APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE OF. – It was erected in 1908 and entrusted to the Claretian Fathers of the Colombian province. Before then, the entire territory of the apostolic prefecture was served by five secular priests of the diocese of Popayán. At the end of the 19th century, the Franciscan Fathers also worked there, but had to leave due to the unhealthy climate and political reasons. The Claretians founded their first residence in 1909 at Quibdó, followed by those of Istmina and Carmen de Atra in 1910; the latter, however, was detached from the prefecture in 1916 and annexed to the diocese of Jericó.
The mission covers an area of 40,000 km² with a population of about 80,000, most of whom are Catholic. There are 17 priests, 26 sisters, and 7 brothers. Missionary works are fairly well established: there are elementary and secondary schools, hospitals, and a printing press.
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CHODORLAHOMOR (Heb. Kēdhorlá’ōmer). – King of Elam, who held Palestine subject for twelve years until it rebelled against him. He then organized an expedition against it with three of his vassal kings (Gen. 14:1–17).
CHOISEUL, Étienne François, Duke of. – French statesman (1719–85). Having first devoted himself to a military career, he fought valiantly in the War of the Austrian Succession. By furthering the intrigues of the favourite, Madame de Pompadour, he secured her favour and in 1754 was appointed ambassador to Rome, where he remained until 1757. In that office he succeeded in reaching an agreement with Benedict XIV on the thorny question that had been agitating part of the French clergy regarding the refusal to grant sacramental absolution to those among the appellants against the bull Unigenitus who refused to submit and acknowledge their disobedience. The bull of Benedict XIV, Ex omnibus, was published on 16 October 1756, and with it the political importance of the Jansenists in France came to an end.
From 1757 to 1758 Choiseul was ambassador to Vienna and worked to confirm the Franco-Austrian alliance that reversed previous policy in order to direct it against Prussia. In November 1758 he replaced the Abbé de Bernis as Foreign Minister; in 1761 he also took charge of the War Ministry and the following year that of the Navy. For twelve years he was the true governor of France and strove to tighten the “Family Compact” between the Bourbon dynasties, aimed at suppressing the Jesuits, in which he played a major part. A friend of Voltaire, he was among those who considered religion good only for the common people. He deemed it politically expedient for France to acquire a large colonial empire in rivalry with England, and succeeded in doing so; he also annexed Corsica and Lorraine.
Having fallen out of favour with the new favourite, the Comtesse du Barry, he was exiled by Louis XV to his estate at Chanteloup, where he remained from 1770 to 1774, a victim of court intrigues. He died financially ruined because of his extravagant lifestyle.
Pio Paschini
CHOMJAKOV, Alexei Stepanovič. – B. 1804, d. 1860, one of the most prominent representatives of Slavophilism, the Russian national movement that saw salvation, progress, and the full development of Russia in a return to the ancient national customs prior to Peter the Great. Slavophilism was of religious and Christian inspiration, in opposition to Westernism, which was dependent on secularized Western Europe. Chomjakov was a versatile genius: a poet, inventor, sociologist, philosopher (developing the themes of his friend Ivan Kirejevskij) and especially the first great lay theologian of Russia. His followers regarded him as the father of the modern Russian Church.
He developed in particular the concept of the Church as a community of unity, freedom, and love. Catholicism, he argued, would have renounced love, preferring its own opinions to those of its Eastern brethren, and would possess unity without freedom; Protestantism, deriving logically from Catholicism, would have freedom without unity; the synthesis of unity, freedom, and charity would be found only in the Eastern Church. Among other things, he denied the essential difference between the teaching and the taught Church and the existence of an external authority in the Church. Fundamental, moreover, was his assertion that integral knowledge depends on love and presupposes fraternal union with others in the Church. Among Russians separated from Rome, Chomjakov’s influence continues to grow.
Complete works in Russian: 8 vols., Moscow 1900 ff. (some volumes in several editions). His theology was hindered by the censorship of Tsarist Russia. He published in French his polemical writings against the Catholic Church (A. S. Chomjakov, L'Église latine et le protestantisme au point de vue de l'Église d'Orient, Lausanne and Vevey 1872). His correspondence with the Anglican Palmer (who later became a Catholic) is found in W. J. Birkbeck, Russia and the English Church during the last fifty years, I (London 1895).
Bernardo Schultze
CHOPIN, Frédéric. – Pianist and composer, b. at Żelazowa Wola (Warsaw) on 22 February 1810, d. in Paris on 17 October 1849. After completing his studies in Warsaw (1827), he began his concert career and continued it in the principal European capitals, surrounded by ever-growing admiration. He was a close friend of Berlioz, Bellini, Balzac, and Fr. Jełowicki, who on his deathbed induced him to make a Christian end.
Chopin initiated a new and entirely personal approach, anticipating in musical romanticism similar literary phenomena, the dissolution of more rigid formal and syntactic structures into emotional melodic and harmonic atmospheres, now elegiac and abandoned, now impetuous and passionate, all of which envelop a fundamental feeling of strength and distress. Chopin’s work finds its perfection in the piano, which reveals here all its expressive possibilities: one may recall the Études, the Preludes, the Ballades, the Mazurkas, the Nocturnes, the Polonaises, the Scherzi, the Waltzes; the news of the fall of Warsaw (1831), which reached him in Stuttgart, inspired his famous Étude in C minor (op. 10, no. 12), which has accompanied the Poles in every hour of misfortune and hope.
CHOUCHIH (Chowchih), APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE OF. – It is situated in the central part of the province of Shensi (China). It was erected on 17 June
