a Greek term, literally signifying substance, or subsistence; used in theology for person.—The word is Greek, ὑποστάσις; compounded of ὑπό, sub, "under," and στάσις, stasis, "I stand, I exist;" q. d. sub stantia. Thus we hold, that there is but one nature or essence in God, but three hypostases or persons.

The term hypostasis is of a very ancient standing in the church. St Cyril repeats it several times, as also the phrase union according to hypostasis. The first time it occurs is in a letter from that father to Nestorius, where he uses it instead of προσώπων, the word we commonly render person, which did not seem expressive enough. "The philosophers (says St Cyril) have allowed three hypostases: They have extended the Divinity to three hypostases: They have even sometimes used the word trinity: And nothing was wanting but to have admitted the confusibility of the three hypostases, to show the unity of the divine nature, exclusive of all triplicity in respect of distinction of nature, and not to hold it necessary to conceive any respective inferiority of hypostases."

This term occasioned great dissensions in the ancient church; first among the Greeks, and afterwards also among the Latins. In the council of Nice, hypostasis was defined to denote the same with essence or substance; so that it was hereby to say that Jesus Christ was of a different hypostasis from the Father; but custom altered its meaning. In the necessity they were under of expressing themselves strongly against the Sabellians, the Greeks made choice of the word hypostasis, and the Latins of persona; which change proved the occasion of endless disagreement. The phrase τρεῖς ἰδιότητες, used by the Greeks, scandalized the Latins, whose usual way of rendering ἰδιότητες in their language was by substantia. The barrenness of the Latin tongue in theological phrases, allowed them but one word for the two Greek ones, ἰδιότητες and ἰδιότητες; and thus disabled them from distinguishing essence from hypostasis. For which reason they chose rather to use the term tres personas, and tres hypostases.—An end was put to logomachias, in a synod held at Alexandria about the year 362, at which St Athanasius assisted; from which Hypostasis time the Latins made no great scruple of saying tres hypostases, nor the Greeks of three persons.

HYPOTHECA, in the Civil Law, an obligation, whereby the effects of a debtor are made over to his creditor, to secure his debt. The word comes from the Greek ὑποθέκη, a thing subject to some obligation; of the verb ὑποθέκω, suppono, "I am rejected;" of ὑπό, under, and θέκω, pono, "I put."

As the hypotheca is an engagement procured on purpose for the security of the creditor, various means have been made use of to secure to him the benefit of the convention. The use of the pawn or pledge is the most ancient, which is almost the same thing with the hypotheca; all the difference consisting in this, that the pledge is put into the creditor's hands; whereas, in a simple hypotheca, the thing remained in the possession of the debtor. It was found more easy and commodious to engage an estate by a civil covenant than by an actual delivery: accordingly the expedient was first practised among the Romans; and from them the Romans borrowed both the name and the thing: only the Greeks, the better to prevent frauds, used to fix some visible mark on the thing, that the public might know it was hypothecate or mortgaged by the proprietor; but the Romans, looking on such advertisements as injurious to the debtor, forbade the use of them.

The Roman lawyers distinguished four kinds of hypothecas: the conventional, which was with the will and consent of both parties; the legal, which was appointed by law, and for that reason called tacit; the praetor's pledge, when by the flight or non-appearing of the debtor, the creditor was put in possession of his effects; and the judiciary, when the creditor was put in possession by virtue of a sentence of the court.

The conventional hypotheca is subdivided into general and special. The hypotheca is general, when all the debtor's effects, both present and future, are engaged to the creditor. It is special, when limited to one or more particular things.

For the tacit hypotheca, the civilians reckon no less than twenty-five different species thereof.