Rubber and some other natural products are exported. There is only one railway in the state, which runs from Aracajú northward to Capella, with a branch running westward to Simão Dias. The only manufacturing industries of importance are cotton mills, sugar factories and distilleries, one of the largest sugar usines in Brazil being located at Riachuelo near Larangeiras. There are no good ports on the coast because of the bars at the mouths of the rivers.
The capital of the state is Aracajú (pop. 1890, 16,336; 1906 estimate, 25,000), on the lower course, or estuary, of the Cotinguiba river, near the coast. The bar at the entrance to this river is exceptionally dangerous, and the port is frequented only by coasting vessels of light draught. The town stands on a sandy plain, and there are sand dunes within the city limits. The public buildings are a large plain church with unfinished twin towers, the government palace, the legislative halls, a normal school and public hospital. The other principal towns are Estancia (pop. 1890, 14,555) on the Rio Real in the southern part of the state, with manufactures of cotton textiles, cigars and cigarettes, and soap, and an active trade; Laranjeiras (11,350), in a highly productive sugar district N. of the capital; Capella (11,034); Simão Dias (10,984); Lagarto (10,473); São Christovão, formerly Sergipe d’el-Rey (8793), the old capital, near the mouth of the Irapiranga, and Maroim (7851).
SERGIUS, ST, generally associated with St Bacchus, one of the most celebrated martyrs of Christian antiquity. His festival is on the 7th of October, and the centre of his cult was Resafa, or Rosafa, in Syria, in the province of Augusta Euphratesia. This town, which since the middle of the 6th century was also called Sergiopolis, acquired importance as a place of pilgrimage, and became a bishop's see (Le Quien, Oriens Christ. ii. 951). The cult of the saint spread rapidly. In 353 we find a church of St Sergius at Eitha, in Batanaea (Waddington, Inscriptions de Syrie, n. 2124)—the most ancient example of a dedication of this kind. In the 6th century St Sergius was honoured in the West (Gregory of Tours, De gloria martyrum, 96). According to their Acta (which, however, have little authority), SS. Sergius and Bacchus were soldiers. In art they are most generally represented in military costume.
See Acta sanctorum (October), iii. 833-883; Analecta Bollandiana, xiv. 373-395. (H. De.)
SERGIUS, the name of four popes.
Sergius I., pope from 687 to 701, came of an Antiochene family which had settled at Palermo. He was elected after a fierce struggle between two other candidates, Paschal and Theodore. In the second year of his pontificate he baptized King Ceadwalla of Wessex at Rome. For rejecting certain canons of the Trullan (Quinisext) council of 692, Justinian II. commanded his arrest and transportation to Constantinople, but the militia of Ravenna and the Pentapolis forced the imperial protospatharius to abandon the attempt to carry out his orders. Sergius was followed by John VI. as pope.
Sergius II., pope from 844 to 847, a Roman of noble birth, elected by the clergy and people to succeed Gregory IV., was forthwith consecrated without waiting for the sanction of the emperor Lothair, who accordingly sent his son Louis with an army to punish the breach of faith. A pacific arrangement was ultimately made, and Louis was crowned king of Lombardy by Sergius. He was a man of weak health, suffering much from gout, and abandoned the direction of affairs to unworthy persons, whose administration provoked many complaints. In this pontificate Rome was ravaged, and the churches of St Peter and St Paul robbed, by Saracens (August 846). Sergius was succeeded by Leo IV.
Sergius III., elected pope by one of the factions in Rome in 898, simultaneously with John IX., was expelled from the city by his adversaries. Circumstances becoming more favourable, he reappeared in 904, seized the two claimants, Leo V. and Christopher, who were disputing the succession of Benedict IV., and had them strangled. His adherents rallied round the vestiarius Theophylact, a powerful Roman functionary, and his wife Theodora. Sergius is reputed to have been the lover of Theodora's daughter Marozia, by whom he is said to have had a son, who became pope as John XI. This is the beginning of the so-called “pornocracy.” Unlike John IX. and his successors, Sergius was very hostile to the memory of Pope Formosus, and refused to recognize any of the ordinations celebrated by him, thus causing grave disorders. He also affected to consider as anti-popes, not only John IX., but also his successors down to and including Christopher. He restored the Lateran basilica, which had fallen down in 897. He died on the 14th of April 911, and was succeeded by Anastasius III.
Sergius IV., pope from 1009 to 1012, originally bore the name of Bucca porca (Os porci). He was a mere tool in the hands of the feudal nobility of the city; he was succeeded by Benedict VIII.
SERGIYEVO, a town of Russia, in the government of Moscow, 44 m. by rail N.N.E. of Moscow. It has grown up round the monastery or lavra of Troitsko-Sergiyevskaya. It is situated in a beautiful country, the buildings extending partly over the hill occupied by the monastery and partly over the valley below. Including the suburbs it had, in 1884, 31,400 inhabitants, and 31,413 in 1900. Sergiyevo has long been renowned for its manufacture of holy pictures (painted and carved), spoons, and other articles carved in wood, especially toys, which are sold to pilgrims who resort to the place to the number of 100,000 annually.
The Troitsk or Trinity monastery is the most sacred spot in middle Russia, the Great Russians regarding it with more veneration than even the cathedrals and relics of the Kremlin at Moscow. It occupies a picturesque site on the top of a hill, protected on two sides by deep ravines and steep slopes. The walls, 25 to 50 ft. in height, are fortified by nine towers, one of which is a prison for both civil and ecclesiastical offenders. Thirteen churches, including the Troitskiy (Trinity) and Uspenskiy cathedrals, a bell-tower, a theological academy, various buildings for monks and pilgrims, and a hospital stand within the precincts, which are two-thirds of a mile in circuit. A small wooden church, erected by the monk Sergius, and afterwards burned (1391) by the Tatars, stood on the site now occupied by the cathedral of the Trinity, which was built in 1422, and contains the relics of Sergius, as well as ecclesiastic treasures of priceless value and a holy picture which has frequently been brought into requisition in Russian campaigns. The Uspensky cathedral was erected in 1585; close beside it are the graves of Tsar Boris Godunov (died in 1605) and his family. In the southern part of the monastery is the church of Sergius, beneath which are spacious rooms where 200,000 dinners are distributed gratis every year to the pilgrims. The bell-tower, 320 ft. high, has a bell weighing 64 tons. Several monasteries of less importance exist in the neighbourhood. In 1340 two brothers erected a church on the spot. The elder took monastic orders under the name of Sergius, and became famous among the peasants around. His monastery acquired great fame and became the wealthiest in middle Russia. Ivan the Terrible in 1561 made it the centre of the ecclesiastical province of Moscow. During the Polish invasion at the beginning of the 17th century it organized the national resistance. In 1608–1609 it withstood a sixteen months' siege by the Poles; at a later date the monks took a lively part in the organization of the army which crushed the outbreak of the peasants. In 1685 Peter the Great took refuge here from the revolted streltzi, or Muscovite military guards. The theological seminary, founded in 1744 and transformed in 1814 into an academy, reckoned Platon and Philarete among its pupils.
SERIEMA, or Cariama, a South-American bird, sufficiently well described and figured in G. de L. Marcgrav's work (Hist. ref. nat. Brasiliae, p. 203), posthumously published by De Laet in 1648, to be recognized by succeeding ornithologists, among whom M. J. Brisson in 1760 acknowledged it as forming a distinct genus Cariama, while Linnaeus regarded it as a second species of Palamedea (see Screamer), under the name of P. cristata, Englished by J. Latham in 1785 (Synopsis, v. 20) the “Crested Screamer,”—an appellation since transferred to a wholly different bird. Nothing more seems to have been known of it in Europe till 1803, when Azara published at Madrid his
