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Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 4 - "Jevons, Stanley" to "Joint"
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 4 - "Jevons, Stanley" to "Joint"" ***
Transcriber's notes:
(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally
printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an
underscore, like C_n.
(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.
(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective
paragraphs.
(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not
inserted.
(5) [root] stands for the root symbol; [alpha], [beta], etc. for greek
letters.
(6) The following typographical errors have been corrected:
ARTICLE JEWELRY: "Etruscan jewelry at its best is not easily
distinguished from the Greek, but it tends in its later forms to
become florid and diffuse, without precision of design." 'jewelry'
amended from 'jewlery'.
ARTICLE JEWELRY: "For the Aah-hotep jewels, see Mariette, Album de
Musée de Boulaq, pls. 29-31; Birch, Facsimiles of the Egyptian
Relics discovered in the Tomb of Queen Aah-hotep (1863)." 'hotep'
amended from 'hotp'.
ARTICLE JEWS: "Biblical history ends with the triumph of the
Judaean community, the true 'Israel,' the right to which title is
found in the distant past." 'Biblical' amended from 'Bibilical'.
ARTICLE JEWS: "The Leibzoll (body-tax) was also abolished, in
addition to the special law-taxes, the passport duty, the
night-duty and all similar imposts which had stamped the Jews as
outcast ..." 'similar' amended from 'similiar'.
ARTICLE JEWS: "But economic laws are often too strong for civil
vagaries or sectarian fanaticism, and as the commerce of Austria
suffered by the absence of the Jews, it was impossible to exclude
the latter from the fairs in the provinces or from the markets of
the capital." 'or' amended from 'of'.
ARTICLE JOB: "And further, the terrible conflict into which the
suspicions of the Satan brought Job could not be exhibited without
pushing him to the verge of ungodliness." 'Job' amended from 'Iob'.
ARTICLE JOB: "For, first, owing to the unity of thought and
language which pervades the Old Testament, in which, regarded
merely as a national literature ..." 'pervades' amended from
'prevades'.
ARTICLE JOHN XVI.: "The arrival of Otto at Rome in the spring of
998 put a sudden end to the treacherous compact. John sought safety
in flight, but was discovered in his place of hiding and brought
back to Rome, where after enduring cruel and ignominious tortures
he was immured in a dungeon." 'treacherous' amended from
'teacherous'.
ARTICLE JOHN XXIII.: "But on the 3rd of March 1413 John adjourned
the council of Rome till December, without even fixing the place
where the next session should be held." 'March' amended from
'Mrach'.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE
AND GENERAL INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME XV, SLICE IV
Jevons, Stanley to Joint
ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:
JEVONS, WILLIAM STANLEY JOHN XIX.
JEW, THE WANDERING JOHN XXI.
JEWEL, JOHN JOHN XXII.
JEWELRY JOHN XXIII.
JEWETT, SARAH ORNE JOHN I. (Roman emperor)
JEWS JOHN II.
JEWSBURY, GERALDINE ENDSOR JOHN III.
JEW'S EARS JOHN IV.
JEW'S HARP JOHN V. or VI.
JEZEBEL JOHN VI. or V.
JEZREEL JOHN VI. or VII.
JHABUA JOHN (king of England)
JHALAWAR JOHN I. (king of Aragon)
JHANG JOHN II.
JHANSI JOHN (king of Bohemia)
JHELUM (Indian river) JOHN I. (king of Castile)
JHELUM (Indian town) JOHN II.
JHERING, RUDOLF VON JOHN I. (king of France)
JIBITOS JOHN II.
JIBUTI JOHN (king of Hungary)
JICARILLA JOHN OF BRIENNE
JIDDA JOHN III. (king of Poland)
JIG JOHN I. (king of Portugal)
JIHAD JOHN II.
JIMENES DE CISNEROS, FRANCISCO JOHN III.
JIND JOHN IV.
JINGO JOHN V.
JINN JOHN VI.
JIRECEK, JOSEF JOHN (king of Saxony)
JIZAKH JOHN I. (duke of Brabant)
JOAB JOHN (margrave of Brandenburg-Cüstrin)
JOACHIM OF FLORIS JOHN (duke of Burgundy)
JOACHIM I. JOHN (elector of Saxony)
JOACHIM II. JOHN, DON (of Austria)
JOACHIM, JOSEPH JOHN, DON (the younger)
JOAN JOHN OF BEVERLEY, ST
JOAN OF ARC JOHN OF THE CROSS, ST
JOANES, VICENTE JOHN OF ASIA
JOANNA JOHN OF DAMASCUS
JOANNA I. JOHN OF HEXHAM
JOANNA II. JOHN OF IRELAND
JOASH JOHN OF RAVENNA
JOB JOHN OF SALISBURY
JOBST JOHN (of Swabia)
JOB'S TEARS JOHN, THE EPISTLES OF
JOCASTA JOHN, GOSPEL OF ST
JOCKEY JOHN ALBERT
JODELLE, ÉTIENNE JOHN ANGELUS
JODHPUR JOHN FREDERICK I.
JOEL JOHN FREDERICK (duke of Saxony)
JOEL, MANUEL JOHN GEORGE I.
JOFFRIN, JULES ALEXANDRE JOHN MAURICE OF NASSAU
JOGUES, ISAAC JOHN O' GROAT'S HOUSE
JO[H.]ANAN BEN ZACCAI JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
JOHANNESBURG (city of Transvaal) JOHNSON, ANDREW
JOHANNISBERG (German village) JOHNSON, BENJAMIN
JOHN (proper name) JOHNSON, EASTMAN
JOHN (the Apostle) JOHNSON, REVERDY
JOHN THE BAPTIST JOHNSON, RICHARD
JOHN I. (pope) JOHNSON, RICHARD MENTOR
JOHN II. JOHNSON, SAMUEL
JOHN III. JOHNSON, SIR THOMAS
JOHN IV. JOHNSON, THOMAS
JOHN V. JOHNSON, SIR WILLIAM
JOHN VI. JOHNSTON, ALBERT SIDNEY
JOHN VII. JOHNSTON, ALEXANDER
JOHN VIII. JOHNSTON, ALEXANDER KEITH
JOHN IX. JOHNSTON, ARTHUR
JOHN X. JOHNSTON, SIR HENRY HAMILTON
JOHN XI. JOHNSTON, JOSEPH EGGLESTON
JOHN XII. JOHNSTONE
JOHN XIII. JOHNSTOWN (New York, U.S.A.)
JOHN XIV. JOHNSTOWN (Pennsylvania, U.S.A.)
JOHN XV. JOHOR
JOHN XVI. JOIGNY
JOHN XVII. JOINDER
JOHN XVIII. JOINERY
JOINT
JEVONS, WILLIAM STANLEY (1835-1882), English economist and logician, was
born at Liverpool on the 1st of September 1835. His father, Thomas
Jevons, a man of strong scientific tastes and a writer on legal and
economic subjects, was an iron merchant. His mother was the daughter of
William Roscoe. At the age of fifteen he was sent to London to attend
University College school. He appears at this time to have already
formed the belief that important achievements as a thinker were possible
to him, and at more than one critical period in his career this belief
was the decisive factor in determining his conduct. Towards the end of
1853, after having spent two years at University College, where his
favourite subjects were chemistry and botany, he unexpectedly received
the offer of the assayership to the new mint in Australia. The idea of
leaving England was distasteful, but pecuniary considerations had, in
consequence of the failure of his father's firm in 1847, become of vital
importance, and he accepted the post. He left England for Sydney in June
1854, and remained there for five years. At the end of that period he
resigned his appointment, and in the autumn of 1859 entered again as a
student at University College, London, proceeding in due course to the
B.A. and M.A. degrees of the university of London. He now gave his
principal attention to the moral sciences, but his interest in natural
science was by no means exhausted: throughout his life he continued to
write occasional papers on scientific subjects, and his intimate
knowledge of the physical sciences greatly contributed to the success of
his chief logical work, _The Principles of Science_. Not long after
taking his M.A. degree Jevons obtained a post as tutor at Owens College,
Manchester. In 1866 he was elected professor of logic and mental and
moral philosophy and Cobden professor of political economy in Owens
college. Next year he married Harriet Ann Taylor, whose father had been
the founder and proprietor of the _Manchester Guardian_. Jevons suffered
a good deal from ill health and sleeplessness, and found the delivery of
lectures covering so wide a range of subjects very burdensome. In 1876
he was glad to exchange the Owens professorship for the professorship of
political economy in University College, London. Travelling and music
were the principal recreations of his life; but his health continued
bad, and he suffered from depression. He found his professorial duties
increasingly irksome, and feeling that the pressure of literary work
left him no spare energy, he decided in 1880 to resign the post. On the
13th of August 1882 he was drowned whilst bathing near Hastings.
Throughout his life he had pursued with devotion and industry the ideals
with which he had set out, and his journal and letters display a noble
simplicity of disposition and an unswerving honesty of purpose. He was a
prolific writer, and at the time of his death he occupied the foremost
position in England both as a logician and as an economist. Professor
Marshall has said of his work in economics that it "will probably be
found to have more constructive force than any, save that of Ricardo,
that has been done during the last hundred years." At the time of his
death he was engaged upon an economic work that promised to be at least
as important as any that he had previously undertaken. It would be
difficult to exaggerate the loss which logic and political economy
sustained through the accident by which his life was prematurely cut
short.
Jevons arrived quite early in his career at the doctrines that
constituted his most characteristic and original contributions to
economics and logic. The theory of utility, which became the keynote of
his general theory of political economy, was practically formulated in a
letter written in 1860; and the germ of his logical principles of the
substitution of similars may be found in the view which he propounded in
another letter written in 1861, that "philosophy would be found to
consist solely in pointing out the likeness of things." The theory of
utility above referred to, namely, that the degree of utility of a
commodity is some continuous mathematical function of the quantity of
the commodity available, together with the implied doctrine that
economics is essentially a mathematical science, took more definite form
in a paper on "A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy,"
written for the British Association in 1862. This paper does not appear
to have attracted much attention either in 1862 or on its publication
four years later in the _Journal of the Statistical Society_; and it was
not till 1871, when the _Theory of Political Economy_ appeared, that
Jevons set forth his doctrines in a fully developed form. It was not
till after the publication of this work that Jevons became acquainted
with the applications of mathematics to political economy made by
earlier writers, notably Antoine Augustin Cournot and H. H. Gossen. The
theory of utility was about 1870 being independently developed on
somewhat similar lines by Carl Menger in Austria and M.E.L. Walras in
Switzerland. As regards the discovery of the connexion between value in
exchange and final (or marginal) utility, the priority belongs to
Gossen, but this in no way detracts from the great importance of the
service which Jevons rendered to English economics by his fresh
discovery of the principle, and by the way in which he ultimately forced
it into notice. In his reaction from the prevailing view he sometimes
expressed himself without due qualification: the declaration, for
instance, made at the commencement of the _Theory of Political Economy_,
that "value depends entirely upon utility," lent itself to
misinterpretation. But a certain exaggeration of emphasis may be
pardoned in a writer seeking to attract the attention of an indifferent
public. It was not, however, as a theorist dealing with the fundamental
data of economic science, but as a brilliant writer on practical
economic questions, that Jevons first received general recognition. _A
Serious Fall in the Value of Gold_ (1863) and _The Coal Question_ (1865)
placed him in the front rank as a writer on applied economics and
statistics; and he would be remembered as one of the leading economists
of the 19th century even had his _Theory of Political Economy_ never
been written. Amongst his economic works may be mentioned _Money and the
Mechanism of Exchange_ (1875), written in a popular style, and
descriptive rather than theoretical, but wonderfully fresh and original
in treatment and full of suggestiveness, a _Primer on Political Economy_
(1878), _The State in Relation to Labour_ (1882), and two works
published after his death, namely, _Methods of Social Reform_ and
_Investigations in Currency and Finance_, containing papers that had
appeared separately during his lifetime. The last-named volume contains
Jevons's interesting speculations on the connexion between commercial
crises and sun-spots. He was engaged at the time of his death upon the
preparation of a large treatise on economics and had drawn up a table of
contents and completed some chapters and parts of chapters. This
fragment was published in 1905 under the title of _The Principles of
Economics: a Fragment of a Treatise on the Industrial Mechanism of
Society, and other Papers_.
Jevons's work in logic went on _pari passu_ with his work in political
economy. In 1864 he published a small volume, entitled _Pure Logic; or,
the Logic of Quality apart from Quantity_, which was based on Boole's
system of logic, but freed from what he considered the false
mathematical dress of that system. In the years immediately following he
devoted considerable attention to the construction of a logical machine,
exhibited before the Royal Society in 1870, by means of which the
conclusion derivable from any given set of premisses could be
mechanically obtained. In 1866 what he regarded as the great and
universal principle of all reasoning dawned upon him; and in 1869 he
published a sketch of this fundamental doctrine under the title of _The
Substitution of Similars_. He expressed the principle in its simplest
form as follows: "Whatever is true of a thing is true of its like," and
he worked out in detail its various applications. In the following year
appeared the _Elementary Lessons on Logic_, which soon became the most
widely read elementary textbook on logic in the English language. In the
meantime he was engaged upon a much more important logical treatise,
which appeared in 1874 under the title of _The Principles of Science_.
In this work Jevons embodied the substance of his earlier works on pure
logic and the substitution of similars; he also enunciated and
developed the view that induction is simply an inverse employment of
deduction; he treated in a luminous manner the general theory of
probability, and the relation between probability and induction; and his
knowledge of the various natural sciences enabled him throughout to
relieve the abstract character of logical doctrine by concrete
scientific illustrations, often worked out in great detail. Jevons's
general theory of induction was a revival of the theory laid down by
Whewell and criticized by Mill; but it was put in a new form, and was
free from some of the non-essential adjuncts which rendered Whewell's
exposition open to attack. The work as a whole was one of the most
notable contributions to logical doctrine that appeared in Great Britain
in the 19th century. His _Studies in Deductive Logic_, consisting mainly
of exercises and problems for the use of students, was published in
1880. In 1877 and the following years Jevons contributed to the
_Contemporary Review_ some articles on J. S. Mill, which he had intended
to supplement by further articles, and eventually publish in a volume as
a criticism of Mill's philosophy. These articles and one other were
republished after Jevons's death, together with his earlier logical
treatises, in a volume, entitled _Pure Logic, and other Minor Works_.
The criticisms on Mill contain much that is ingenious and much that is
forcible, but on the whole they cannot be regarded as taking rank with
Jevons's other work. His strength lay in his power as an original
thinker rather than as a critic; and he will be remembered by his
constructive work as logician, economist and statistician.
See _Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons_, edited by his wife
(1886). This work contains a bibliography of Jevons's writings. See
also LOGIC: _History_. (J. N. K.)
JEW, THE WANDERING, a legendary Jew (see JEWS) doomed to wander till the
second coming of Christ because he had taunted Jesus as he passed
bearing the cross, saying, "Go on quicker." Jesus is said to have
replied, "I go, but thou shalt wait till I return." The legend in this
form first appeared in a pamphlet of four leaves alleged to have been
printed at Leiden in 1602. This pamphlet relates that Paulus von Eizen
(d. 1598), bishop of Schleswig, had met at Hamburg in 1542 a Jew named
Ahasuerus (Ahasverus), who declared he was "eternal" and was the same
who had been punished in the above-mentioned manner by Jesus at the time
of the crucifixion. The pamphlet is supposed to have been written by
Chrysostomus Dudulaeus of Westphalia and printed by one Christoff
Crutzer, but as no such author or printer is known at this time--the
latter name indeed refers directly to the legend--it has been
conjectured that the whole story is a myth invented to support the
Protestant contention of a continuous witness to the truth of Holy Writ
in the person of this "eternal" Jew; he was to form, in his way, a
counterpart to the apostolic tradition of the Catholic Church.
The story met with ready acceptance and popularity. Eight editions of
the pamphlet appeared in 1602, and the fortieth edition before the end
of the following century. It was translated into Dutch and Flemish with
almost equal success. The first French edition appeared in 1609, and the
story was known in England before 1625, when a parody was produced.
Denmark and Sweden followed suit with translations, and the expression
"eternal Jew" passed as a current term into Czech. In other words, the
story in its usual form spread wherever there was a tincture of
Protestantism. In southern Europe little is heard of it in this version,
though Rudolph Botoreus, parliamentary advocate of Paris (_Comm.
histor._, 1604), writing in Paris two years after its first appearance,
speaks contemptuously of the popular belief in the Wandering Jew in
Germany, Spain and Italy.
The popularity of the pamphlet and its translations soon led to reports
of the appearance of this mysterious being in almost all parts of the
civilized world. Besides the original meeting of the bishop and
Ahasuerus in 1542 and others referred back to 1575 in Spain and 1599 at
Vienna, the Wandering Jew was stated to have appeared at Prague (1602),
at Lübeck (1603), in Bavaria (1604), at Ypres (1623), Brussels (1640),
Leipzig (1642), Paris (1644, by the "Turkish Spy"), Stamford (1658),
Astrakhan (1672), and Frankenstein (1678). In the next century the
Wandering Jew was seen at Munich (1721), Altbach (1766), Brussels
(1774), Newcastle (1790, see Brand, _Pop. Antiquities, s.v._), and on
the streets of London between 1818 and 1830 (see _Athenaeum_, 1866, ii.
561). So far as can be ascertained, the latest report of his appearance
was in the neighbourhood of Salt Lake City in 1868, when he is said to
have made himself known to a Mormon named O'Grady. It is difficult to
tell in any one of these cases how far the story is an entire fiction
and how far some ingenious impostor took advantage of the existence of
the myth.
The reiterated reports of the actual existence of a wandering being, who
retained in his memory the details of the crucifixion, show how the idea
had fixed itself in popular imagination and found its way into the
19th-century collections of German legends. The two ideas combined in
the story of the restless fugitive akin to Cain and wandering for ever
are separately represented in the current names given to this figure in
different countries. In most Teutonic languages the stress is laid on
the perpetual character of his punishment and he is known as the
"everlasting," or "eternal" Jew (Ger. "Ewige Jude"). In the lands
speaking a Romance tongue, the usual form has reference to the
wanderings (Fr. "le Juif errant"). The English form follows the Romance
analogy, possibly because derived directly from France. The actual name
given to the mysterious Jew varies in the different versions: the
original pamphlet calls him Ahasver, and this has been followed in most
of the literary versions, though it is difficult to imagine any Jew
being called by the name of the typical anti-Semitic king of the Book of
Esther. In one of his appearances at Brussels his name is given as Isaac
Laquedem, implying an imperfect knowledge of Hebrew in an attempt to
represent Isaac "from of old." Alexandre Dumas also made use of this
title. In the _Turkish Spy_ the Wandering Jew is called Paul Marrane and
is supposed to have suffered persecution at the hands of the
Inquisition, which was mainly occupied in dealing with the Marranos,
i.e. the secret Jews of the Iberian peninsula. In the few references to
the legend in Spanish writings the Wandering Jew is called Juan Espera
en Dios, which gives a more hopeful turn to the legend.
Under other names, a story very similar to that given in the pamphlet of
1602 occurs nearly 400 years earlier on English soil. According to Roger
of Wendover in his _Flores historiarum_ under the year 1228, an Armenian
archbishop, then visiting England, was asked by the monks of St Albans
about the well-known Joseph of Arimathaea, who had spoken to Jesus and
was said to be still alive. The archbishop claimed to have seen him in
Armenia under the name of Carthaphilus or Cartaphilus, who had confessed
that he had taunted Jesus in the manner above related. This Carthaphilus
had afterwards been baptized by the name of Joseph. Matthew Paris, in
repeating the passage from Roger of Wendover, reported that other
Armenians had confirmed the story on visiting St Albans in 1252, and
regarded it as a great proof of the Christian religion. A similar
account is given in the chronicles of Philippe Mouskès (d. 1243). A
variant of the same story was known to Guido Bonati, an astronomer
quoted by Dante, who calls his hero or villain Butta Deus because he
struck Jesus. Under this name he is said to have appeared at Mugello in
1413 and at Bologna in 1415 (in the garb of a Franciscan of the third
order).
The source of all these reports of an ever-living witness of the
crucifixion is probably Matthew xvi. 28: "There be some of them that
stand here which shall in no wise taste of death till they see the Son
of Man coming in his kingdom." As the kingdom had not come, it was
assumed that there must be persons living who had been present at the
crucifixion; the same reasoning is at the root of the Anglo-Israel
belief. These words are indeed quoted in the pamphlet of 1602. Again, a
legend was based on John xxi. 20 that the beloved disciple would not die
before the second coming; while another legend (current in the 16th
century) condemned Malchus, whose ear Peter cut off in the garden of
Gethsemane (John xvii. 10), to wander perpetually till the second
coming. The legend alleges that he had been so condemned for having
scoffed at Jesus. These legends and the utterance of Matt. xvi. 28
became "contaminated" by the legend of St Joseph of Arimathaea and the
Holy Grail, and took the form given in Roger of Wendover and Matthew
Paris. But there is nothing to show the spread of this story among the
people before the pamphlet of 1602, and it is difficult to see how this
Carthaphilus could have given rise to the legend of the Wandering Jew,
since he is not a Jew nor does he wander. The author of 1602 was
probably acquainted either directly or indirectly with the story as
given by Matthew Paris, since he gives almost the same account. But he
gives a new name to his hero and directly connects his fate with Matt.
xvi. 28.
Moncure D. Conway (_Ency. Brit._, 9th ed., xiii. 673) attempted to
connect the legend of the Wandering Jew with a whole series of myths
relating to never-dying heroes like King Arthur, Frederick Barbarossa,
the Seven Sleepers, and Thomas the Rhymer, not to speak of Rip Van
Winkle. He goes even farther and connects our legend with mortals
visiting earth, as the Yima in Parsism, and the "Ancient of Days" in the
Books of Daniel and Enoch, and further connects the legend with the
whole medieval tendency to regard the Jew as something uncanny and
mysterious. But all these mythological explanations are supererogatory,
since the actual legend in question can be definitely traced to the
pamphlet of 1602. The same remark applies to the identification with the
Mahommedan legend of the "eternal" Chadhir proposed by M. Lidzbarski
(_Zeit. f. Assyr._ vii. 116) and I. Friedländer (_Arch. f.
Religionswiss._ xiii. 110).
This combination of eternal punishment with restless wandering has
attracted the imagination of innumerable writers in almost all European
tongues. The Wandering Jew has been regarded as a symbolic figure
representing the wanderings and sufferings of his race. The Germans have
been especially attracted by the legend, which has been made the subject
of poems by Schubart, Schreiber, W. Müller, Lenau, Chamisso, Schlegel,
Mosen and Koehler, from which enumeration it will be seen that it was a
particularly favourite subject with the Romantic school. They were
perhaps influenced by the example of Goethe, who in his _Autobiography_
describes, at considerable length, the plan of a poem he had designed on
the Wandering Jew. More recently poems have been composed on the subject
in German by Adolf Wilbrandt, Fritz Lienhard and others; in English by
Robert Buchanan, and in Dutch by H. Heijermans. German novels also exist
on the subject, by Franz Horn, Oeklers, Laun and Schucking, tragedies by
Klinemann, Haushofer and Zedlitz. Sigismund Heller wrote three cantos on
the wanderings of Ahasuerus, while Hans Andersen made of him an "Angel
of Doubt." Robert Hamerling even identifies Nero with the Wandering Jew.
In France, E. Quinet published a prose epic on the subject in 1833, and
Eugène Sue, in his best-known work, _Le Juif errant_ (1844), introduces
the Wandering Jew in the prologues of its different sections and
associates him with the legend of Herodias. In modern times the subject
has been made still more popular by Gustave Doré's elaborate designs
(1856), containing some of his most striking and imaginative work. Thus,
probably, he suggested Grenier's poem on the subject (1857).
In England, besides the ballads in Percy's _Reliques_, William Godwin
introduced the idea of an eternal witness of the course of civilization
in his _St Leon_ (1799), and his son-in-law Shelley introduces Ahasuerus
in his _Queen Mab_. It is doubtful how far Swift derived his idea of the
immortal Struldbrugs from the notion of the Wandering Jew. George
Croly's _Salathiel_, which appeared anonymously in 1828, gave a highly
elaborate turn to the legend; this has been republished under the title
_Tarry Thou Till I Come_.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--J. G. Th. Graesse, _Die Sage vom ewigen Juden_ (1844);
F. Helbig, _Die Sage vom ewigen Juden_ (1874); G. Paris, _Le Juif
errant_ (1881); M. D. Conway, _The Wandering Jew_ (1881); S. Morpugo,
_L' Ebreo errante in Italia_ (1891); L. Neubaur, _Die Sage vom ewigen
Juden_ (2nd ed., 1893). The recent literary handling of the subject
has been dealt with by J. Prost, _Die Sage vom ewigen Juden in der
neueren deutschen Literatur_ (1905); T. Kappstein, _Ahasver in der
Weltpoesie_ (1905). (J. Ja.)
JEWEL, JOHN (1522-1571), bishop of Salisbury, son of John Jewel of
Buden, Devonshire, was born on the 24th of May 1522, and educated under
his uncle John Bellamy, rector of Hampton, and other private tutors
until his matriculation at Merton college, Oxford, in July 1535. There
he was taught by John Parkhurst, afterwards bishop of Norwich; but on
the 19th of August 1539 he was elected scholar of Corpus Christi
college. He graduated B.A. in 1540, and M.A. in 1545, having been
elected fellow of his college in 1542. He made some mark as a teacher at
Oxford, and became after 1547 one of the chief disciples of Peter
Martyr. He graduated B.D. in 1552, and was made vicar of Sunningwell,
and public orator of the university, in which capacity he had to compose
a congratulatory epistle to Mary on her accession. In April 1554 he
acted as notary to Cranmer and Ridley at their disputation, but in the
autumn he signed a series of Catholic articles. He was, nevertheless,
suspected, fled to London, and thence to Frankfort, which he reached in
March 1555. There he sided with Coxe against Knox, but soon joined
Martyr at Strassburg, accompanied him to Zurich, and then paid a visit
to Padua.
Under Elizabeth's succession he returned to England, and made earnest
efforts to secure what would now be called a low-church settlement of
religion. Indeed, his attitude was hardly distinguishable from that of
the Elizabethan Puritans, but he gradually modified it under the stress
of office and responsibility. He was one of the disputants selected to
confute the Romanists at the conference of Westminster after Easter
1559; he was select preacher at St Paul's cross on the 15th of June; and
in the autumn was engaged as one of the royal visitors of the western
counties. His _congé d'élire_ as bishop of Salisbury had been made out
on the 27th of July, but he was not consecrated until the 21st of
January 1560. He now constituted himself the literary apologist of the
Elizabethan settlement. He had on the 26th of November 1559, in a sermon
at St Paul's Cross, challenged all comers to prove the Roman case out of
the Scriptures, or the councils or Fathers for the first six hundred
years after Christ. He repeated his challenge in 1560, and Dr Henry Cole
took it up. The chief result was Jewel's _Apologia ecclesiae
Anglicanae_, published in 1562, which in Bishop Creighton's words is
"the first methodical statement of the position of the Church of England
against the Church of Rome, and forms the groundwork of all subsequent
controversy." A more formidable antagonist than Cole now entered the
lists in the person of Thomas Harding, an Oxford contemporary whom Jewel
had deprived of his prebend in Salisbury Cathedral for recusancy. He
published an elaborate and bitter _Answer_ in 1564, to which Jewel
issued a _Reply_ in 1565. Harding followed with a _Confutation_, and
Jewel with a _Defence_, of the _Apology_ in 1566 and 1567; the
combatants ranged over the whole field of the Anglo-Roman controversy,
and Jewel's theology was officially enjoined upon the Church by
Archbishop Bancroft in the reign of James I. Latterly Jewel had been
confronted with criticism from a different quarter. The arguments that
had weaned him from his Zwinglian simplicity did not satisfy his
unpromoted brethren, and Jewel had to refuse admission to a benefice to
his friend Laurence Humphrey (q.v.), who would not wear a surplice. He
was consulted a good deal by the government on such questions as
England's attitude towards the council of Trent, and political
considerations made him more and more hostile to Puritan demands with
which he had previously sympathized. He wrote an attack on Cartwright,
which was published after his death by Whitgift. He died on the 23rd of
September 1571, and was buried in Salisbury Cathedral, where he had
built a library. Hooker, who speaks of Jewel as "the worthiest divine
that Christendom hath bred for some hundreds of years," was one of the
boys whom Jewel prepared in his house for the university; and his
_Ecclesiastical Polity_ owes much to Jewel's training.
Jewel's works were published in a folio in 1609 under the direction of
Bancroft, who ordered the _Apology_ to be placed in churches, in some
of which it may still be seen chained to the lectern; other editions
appeared at Oxford (1848, 8 vols.) and Cambridge (Parker Soc., 4
vols.). See also Gough's _Index to Parker Soc. Publ._; Strype's
_Works_ (General Index); _Acts of the Privy Council_; _Calendars of
Domestic and Spanish State Papers_; Dixon's and Frere's _Church
Histories_; and _Dictionary of National Biography_ (art. by Bishop
Creighton). (A. F. P.)
JEWELRY (O. Fr. _jouel_, Fr. _joyau_, perhaps from _joie_, joy; Lat.
_gaudium_; retranslated into Low Lat. _jocale_, a toy, from _jocus_, by
misapprehension of the origin of the word), a collective term for
jewels, or the art connected with them--jewels being personal ornaments,
usually made of gems, precious stones, &c., with a setting of precious
metal; in a restricted sense it is also common to speak of a gem-stone
itself as a jewel, when utilized in this way. Personal ornaments appear
to have been among the very first objects on which the invention and
ingenuity of man were exercised; and there is no record of any people so
rude as not to employ some kind of personal decoration. Natural objects,
such as small shells, dried berries, small perforated stones, feathers
of variegated colours, were combined by stringing or tying together to
ornament the head, neck, arms and legs, the fingers, and even the toes,
whilst the cartilages of the nose and ears were frequently perforated
for the more ready suspension of suitable ornaments.
Amongst modern Oriental nations we find almost every kind of personal
decoration, from the simple caste mark on the forehead of the Hindu to
the gorgeous examples of beaten gold and silver work of the various
cities and provinces of India. Nor are such decorations mere ornaments
without use or meaning. The hook with its corresponding perforation or
eye, the clasp, the buckle, the button, grew step by step into a special
ornament, according to the rank, means, taste and wants of the wearer,
or became an evidence of the dignity of office. Nor was the jewel deemed
to have served its purpose with the death of its owner, for it is to the
tombs of ancient peoples that we must look for evidence of the early
existence of the jeweller's art.
The jewelry of the ancient Egyptians has been preserved for us in their
tombs, sometimes in, and sometimes near the sarcophagi which contained
the embalmed bodies of the wearers. An amazing series of finds of the
intact jewels of five princesses of the XIIth Dynasty (c. 2400 B.C.) was
the result of the excavations of J. de Morgan at Dahshur in 1894-1895.
The treasure of Princess Hathor-Set contained jewels with the names of
Senwosri (Usertesen) II. and III., one of whom was probably her father.
The treasure of Princess Merit contained the names of the same two
monarchs, and also that of Amenemhe III., to whose family Princess
Nebhotp may have belonged. The two remaining princesses were Ita and
Khnumit.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
The art of the nameless Memphite jewellers of the XIIth Dynasty is
marked by perfect accuracy of execution, by sureness of intention, by
decorative instinct and sobriety in design, and by the serviceable
nature of the jewels for actual wear. All forms of work are
represented--including chiselling, soldering, inlaying with coloured
stones, moulding and working with twisted wires and filigree. Here
also occurs the earliest instance of granulated work, with small
grains of gold, soldered on a flat surface (fig. 1). The principal
items in this dazzling group are the following: Three gold pectorals
(fig. 2 and Plate I. figs. 35, 36) worked _à jour_ (with the
interstices left open); on the front side they are inlaid with
coloured stones, the fine _cloisons_ being the only portion of the
gold that is visible; on the back, the gold surfaces are most
delicately carved, in low relief. Two gold crowns (Plate I. figs. 32,
34), found together, are curiously contrasted in character. The one
(fig. 32) is of a formal design, of gold, inlaid (the plume, Plate I.
fig 33, was attached to it); the other (fig. 34) has a multitude of
star-like flowers, embodied in a filigree of daintily twisted wires. A
dagger with inlaid patterns on the handle shows extraordinary
perfection of finish.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
Nearly a thousand years later we have another remarkable collection of
Egyptian art in the jewelry taken from the coffin of Queen Aah-hotp,
discovered in 1859 by Mariette in the entrance to the valley of the
tombs of the kings and now preserved in the Cairo museum. Compared with
the Dahshur treasure the jewelry of Aah-hotp is in parts rough and
coarse, but none the less it is marked by the ingenuity and mastery of
the materials that characterize all the work of the Egyptians. Hammered
work, incised and chased work, the evidence of soldering, the
combinations of layers of gold plates, together with coloured stones,
are all present, and the handicraft is complete in every respect.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
A diadem of gold and enamel, found at the back of the head of the
mummy of the queen (fig. 3), was fixed in the back hair, showing the
cartouche in front. The box holding this cartouche has on the upper
surface the titles of the king, "the son of the sun, Aahmes, living
for ever and ever," in gold on a ground of lapis lazuli, with a
chequered ornament in blue and red pastes, and a sphinx couchant on
each side. A necklace with three pendant flies (fig. 4) is entirely of
gold, having a hook and loop to fasten it round the neck. Fig. 5 is a
gold drop, inlaid with turquoise or blue paste, in the shape of a fig.
A gold chain (fig. 6) is formed of wires closely plaited and very
flexible, the ends terminating in the heads of water fowl, and having
small rings to secure the collar behind. To the centre is suspended by
a small ring a scarabaeus of solid gold inlaid with lapis lazuli. We
have an example of a bracelet, similar to those in modern use (fig.
7), and worn by all persons of rank. It is formed of two pieces joined
by a hinge, and is decorated with figures in repoussé on a ground
inlaid with lapis lazuli.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--From _Archaeologia_, vol. 59, p. 447, by
permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London.]
That the Assyrians used personal decorations of a very distinct
character, and no doubt made of precious materials, is proved by the
bas-reliefs from which a considerable collection of jewels could be
gathered, such as bracelets, ear-rings and necklaces. Thus, for example,
in the British Museum we have representations of Assur-nazir-pal, king
of Assyria (c. 885-860 B.C.), wearing a cross (fig. 8) very similar to
the Maltese cross of modern times. It happens, however, that the
excavations have not hitherto been fertile in actual remains of gold
work from Assyria. Chance also has so far ordained that the excavations
in Crete should not be particularly rich in ornaments of gold. A few
isolated objects have been found, such as a duck and other pendants, and
also several necklaces with beads of the Argonaut shell-fish pattern.
More striking than these is a short bronze sword. The handle has an
agate pommel, and is covered with gold plates, engraved with spirited
scenes of lions and wild goats (fig. 9, A. J. Evans in _Archaeologia_,
59, 447). In general, however, the gold jewelry of the later Minoan
periods is more brilliantly represented by the finds made on the
mainland of Greece and at Enkomi in Cyprus. Among the former the gold
ornaments found by Heinrich Schliemann in the graves of Mycenae are
pre-eminent.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
The objects found ranged over most of the personal ornaments still in
use; necklaces with gold beads and pendants, butterflies (fig. 10),
cuttlefish (fig. 11), single and concentric circles, rosettes and
leafage, with perforations for attachment to clothing, crosses and
stars formed of combined crosses, with crosses in the centre forming
spikes--all elaborately ornamented in detail. The spiral forms an
incessant decoration from its facile production and repetition by
means of twisted gold wire. Grasshoppers or tree crickets in gold
repoussé suspended by chains and probably used for the decoration of
the hair, and a griffin (fig. 12), having the upper part of the body
of an eagle and the lower parts of a lion, with wings decorated with
spirals, are among the more remarkable examples of perforated
ornaments for attachment to the clothing. There are also perforated
ornaments belonging to necklaces, with intaglio engravings of such
subjects as a contest of a man and lion, and a duel of two warriors,
one of whom stabs his antagonist in the throat. There are also
pinheads and brooches formed of two stags lying down (fig. 13), the
bodies and necks crossing each other, and the horns meeting
symmetrically above the heads, forming a finial. The heads of these
ornaments were of gold, with silver blades or pointed pins inserted
for use. The bodies of the two stags rest on fronds of the date-palm
growing out of the stem which receives the pin. Another remarkable
series is composed of figures of women with doves. Some have one dove
resting on the head; others have three doves, one on the head and the
others resting on arms. The arms in both instances are extended to the
elbow, the hands being placed on the breasts. These ornaments are also
perforated, and were evidently sewed on the dresses, although there is
some evidence that an example with three doves has been fastened with
a pin.
An extraordinary diadem was found upon the head of one of the bodies
discovered in the same tomb with many objects similar to those noticed
above. It is 25 in. in length, covered with shield-like or rosette
ornaments in repoussé, the relief being very low but perfectly
distinct, and further ornamented by thirty-six large leaves of
repoussé gold attached to it. As an example of design and perfection
of detail, another smaller diadem found in another tomb may be noted
(fig. 14). It is of gold plate, so thick as to require no "piping" at
the back to sustain it; but in general the repoussé examples have a
piping of copper wire.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.]
The admirable inlaid daggers of the IVth grave at Mycenae are unique
in their kind, with their subjects of a lion hunt, of a lion chasing a
herd of antelopes, of running lions, of cats hunting wild duck, of
inlaid lilies, and of geometric patterns. The subjects are inlaid in
gold of various tints, and silver, in bronze plates which are inserted
in the flat surfaces of the dagger-blades. In part also the subjects
are rendered in relief and gilded. The whole is executed with
marvellous precision and vivid representation of motion. To a certain
limited extent these daggers are paralleled by a dagger and hatchet
found in the treasure of Queen Aah-hotp mentioned above, but in their
most characteristic features there is little resemblance. The gold
ornaments found by Schliemann at Hissarlik, the supposed site of Troy,
divide themselves, generally speaking, into two groups, one being the
"great treasure" of diadems, ear-rings, beads, bracelets, &c., which
seem the product of a local and uncultured art. The other group, which
were found in smaller "treasures," have spirals and rosettes similar
to those of Mycenae. The discovery, however, of the gold treasures of
the Artemision at Ephesus has brought out points of affinity between
the Hissarlik treasures and those of Ephesus, and has made any
reasoning difficult, in view of the uncertainties surrounding the
Hissarlik finds. The group with Mycenaean affinities (fig. 15)
includes necklaces, brooches, bracelets (g), hair-pins (a), ear-rings
(c, d, e, f), with and without pendants, beads and twisted wire drops.
The majority of these are ornamented with spirals of twisted wire, or
small rosettes, with fragments of stones in the centres. The twisted
wire ornaments were evidently portions of necklaces. A circular plaque
decorated with a rosette (h) is very similar to those found at
Mycenae, and a conventionalized eagle (k) is characteristic of much of
the detail found at that place as well as at Hissarlik. They were all
of pure gold, and the wire must have been drawn through a plate of
harder metal--probably bronze. The principal ornaments differing from
those found at Mycenae are diadems or head fillets of pure hammered
gold (b) cut into thin plates, attached to rings by double gold wires,
and fastened together at the back with thin twisted wire. To these
pendants (of which those at the two ends are nearly three times the
length of those forming the central portions) are attached small
figures, probably of idols. It has been assumed that these were worn
across the forehead by women, the long pendants falling on each side
of the face.
[Illustration: FIG. 15.]
The jewelry of the close of the Mycenaean period is best represented by
the rich finds of the cemetery of Enkomi near Salamis, in Cyprus. This
field was excavated by the British Museum in 1896, and a considerable
portion of the finds is now at Bloomsbury. It was rich in all forms of
jewelry, but especially in pins, rings and diadems with patterns in
relief. In its geometric patterns the art of Enkomi is entirely
Mycenaean, but special stress is laid on the mythical forms that were
inherited by Greek art, such as the sphinx and the gryphon.
Figs. 37-48 (Plate I.) are examples of the late Mycenaean treasures
from Enkomi.
" 37, 38 " Ear-rings.
" 39 " Diadem, to be tied on the forehead. The impressed
figure of a sphinx is repeated twelve times.
" 40, 41, 46 " Ear-rings, originally in bull's head form (fig.
40). Later, the same general form is retained,
but decorative patterns (figs. 41, 46) take
the place of the bull's head.
" 42 " Pin, probably connected by a chain with a fellow,
to be used as a cloak fastening.
" 43 " Pomegranate pendant, with fine granulated work.
" 44, 45 " Pins as No. 42. The heads are of vitreous paste.
" 46 (See above.)
" 47 " Pendant ornament, in lotus-form, of a pectoral,
inlaid with coloured pastes.
" 48 " Small slate cylinder, set in filigree.
Another find of importance was that of a collection of gold ornaments
from one of the Greek islands (said to be Aegina) which also found its
way to the British Museum. Here we find the themes of archaic Greek art,
such as a figure holding up two water-birds, in immediate connexion with
Mycenaean gold patterns.
Figs. 49-53 (Plate I.) are specimens from this treasure.
" 49 " Plate with repoussé ornament for sewing on a
dress.
" 50 " Pendant. Figure with two water-birds, on a lotus
his base, and having serpents issuing from
near middle, modified from Egyptian forms.
Fig. 51 (Plate I.) Ring, with cut blue glass-pastes in the
grooves.
" 52 " Pendant ornament, repoussé, and originally
inlaid with pieces of cut glass-paste.
" 53 " Pendant ornament, with dogs and apes, modified
from Egyptian forms.
For the beginnings of Greek art proper, the most striking series of
personal jewels is the great deposit of ornaments which was found in
1905 by D. G. Hogarth in the soil beneath the central basis of the
archaic temple of Artemis of Ephesus. The gold ornaments in question
(amounting in all to about 1000 pieces) were mingled with the closely
packed earth, and must necessarily, it would seem, have been in the
nature of votive offerings, made at the end of the 7th or the beginning
of the 6th century B.C. The hoard was rich in pins, brooches, beads and
stamped disks of gold. The greater part of the find is at
Constantinople, but a portion was assigned to the British Museum, which
had undertaken the excavations.
Figs. 54-58 (Plate II.) Examples of the Ephesus hoard.
" 54 " Electrum pin, with pomegranate head.
" 55 " Hawk ornament.
" 56 " Electrum pin.
" 57, 58 " Electrum ornaments for sewing on drapery.
The cemeteries of Cyprus have yielded a rich harvest of jewelry of
Graeco-Phoenician style of the 7th and following centuries B.C. Figs. 16
and 17 are typical examples of a ring and ear-ring from Cyprus.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.]
[Illustration: FIG. 17.]
Greek, Etruscan and Roman ornaments partake of very similar
characteristics. Of course there is variety in design and sometimes in
treatment, but it does not rise to any special individuality. Fretwork
is a distinguishing feature of all, together with the wave ornament, the
guilloche, and the occasional use of the human figure. The workmanship
is often of a character which modern gold-workers can only rival with
their best skill, and can never surpass.
[Illustration: FIG. 18.]
[Illustration: PLATE I.
EARLY EGYPTIAN.
LATE MYCENAEAN.
(FROM ENKOMI.)
(FROM THE GREEK ISLANDS.)]
[Illustration: PLATE II.
GREEK.
ETRUSCAN.
ROMAN.]
The Greek jewelry of the best period is of extraordinary delicacy and
beauty. Fine examples are shown in the British Museum from Melos and
elsewhere. Undoubtedly, however, the most brilliant collection of such
ornaments is that of the Hermitage, which was derived from the tombs of
Kerch and the Crimea. It contains examples of the purest Greek work,
together with objects which must have been of local origin, as is shown
by the themes which the artist has chosen for his reliefs. Fig. 18
illustrates the jewelry of the Hermitage (see also Ear-Ring).
[Illustration: FIG. 19.]
[Illustration: FIG. 20.]
[Illustration: FIG. 21.]
As further examples of Greek jewelry see the pendant oblong ornament for
containing a scroll (fig. 19).
The ear-rings (figs. 20, 21) are also characteristic.
Figs. 59-70 (Plate II.) Examples of fine Greek jewelry, in the
British Museum.
" 59-60 " Pair of ear-rings, from a grave at Cyme in
Aeolis, with filigree work and pendant
Erotes.
" 61 " Small bracelet.
" 62-63 " Small gold reel with repoussé figures of Nereid
with helmet of Achilles, and Eros. From
Cameiros (Rhodes).
" 64 " Filigree ornament (ear-ring?) with Eros in
centre. From Syria.
" 65 " Medallion ornament with repoussé head of
Dionysos and filigree work. (Blacas coll.)
" 66 " Stud, with filigree work.
" 67-68 " Pair of ear-rings, of gold, with filigree and
enamel, from Eretria.
" 69 " Diadem, with filigree, and enamel scales, from
Tarquinii.
" 70 " Necklace pendants.
Etruscan jewelry at its best is not easily distinguished from the Greek,
but it tends in its later forms to become florid and diffuse, without
precision of design. The granulation of surfaces practised with the
highest degree of refinement by the Etruscans was long a puzzle and a
problem to the modern jeweller, until Castellani of Rome discovered
gold-workers in the Abruzzi to whom the method had descended through
many generations. He induced some of these men to go to Naples, and so
revived the art, of which he contributed examples to the London
Exhibition of 1872 (see FILIGREE).
Figs. 71-77 (Plate II.) are well-marked examples of Etruscan work, in
the British Museum.
" 71 " Pair of sirens, repoussé, forming a hook and
eye fastening. From Chiusi (?).
" 72 " Early fibula. Horse and chimaera. (Blacas
coll.)
" 74 " Medallion-shaped fibula, of fine granulated
work, with figures of sirens in relief, and
set with dark blue pastes. (Bale coll.)
" 73, 75 " Pair of late Etruscan ear-rings.
" 76, 77 " Pair of late Etruscan ear-rings, in the florid
style.
The jewels of the Roman empire are marked by a greater use of large cut
stones in combination with the gold, and by larger surfaces of plain and
undecorated metal. The adaptation of imperial gold coins to the purposes
of the jeweller is also not uncommon.
Figs. 78-82 (Plate II.) Late Roman imperial jewelry, in the British
Museum.
" 78 " Large pendant ear-ring, set with stones and
pearls. From Tunis, 4th century.
" 79 " Pierced-work pendant, set with a coin of the
emperor Philip.
" 80 " Ear-ring, roughly set with garnets.
" 81 " Bracelet, with a winged cornucopia as central
ornament, set with plasmas, and with
filigree and leaf work.
" 82 " Bracelet, roughly set with pearls and stones.
From Tunis, 4th century.
With the decay of the Roman empire, and the approach of the barbarian
tribes, a new Teutonic style was developed. An important example of this
style is the remarkable gold treasure, discovered at Pétrossa in
Transylvanian Alps in 1837, and now preserved, as far as it survives, in
the museum of Bucharest. A runic inscription shows that it belonged to
the Goths. Its style is in part the classical tradition, debased and
modified; in part it is a singularly rude and vigorous form of barbaric
art. Its chief characteristics are a free use of strongly
conventionalized animal forms, such as great bird-shaped fibulae, and an
ornamentation consisting of pierced gold work, combined with a free use
of stones cut to special shapes, and inlaid either cloisonné-fashion or
in a perforated gold plate. This part of the hoard has its affinities in
objects found over a wide field from Siberia to Spain. Its rudest and
most naturalistic forms occur in the East in uncouth objects from
Siberian tombs, whose lineage however has been traced to Persepolis,
Assyria and Egypt. In its later and more refined forms the style is
known by the name, now somewhat out of favour (except as applied to a
limited number of finds), of Merovingian.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.]
[Illustration: FIG. 23.]
[Illustration: FIG. 24.]
[Illustration: FIG. 25.]
[Illustration: FIG. 26.]
[Illustration: FIG. 27.]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.]
The so-called Merovingian jewelry of the 5th century, and the
Anglo-Saxon of a later date, have as their distinctive feature thin
plates of gold, decorated with thin slabs of garnet, set in walls of
gold soldered vertically like the lines of cloisonné enamel, with the
addition of very decorative details of filigree work, beading and
twisted gold. The typical group are the contents of the tomb of King
Childeric (A.D. 481) now in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. In
Figs. 22 and 23 we have examples of Anglo-Saxon fibulae, the first being
decorated with a species of cloisonné, in which garnets are inserted,
while the other is in hammered work in relief. A pendant (fig. 24) is
also set with garnets. The buckles (figs. 25, 26, 27) are remarkably
characteristic examples, and very elegant in design. A girdle ornament
in gold, set with garnets (fig. 28), is an example of Carolingian design
of a high class. Another remarkable group of barbaric jewelry, dated by
coins as of the beginning of the 7th century, was excavated at Castel
Trosino near the Picenian Ascoli, and is attributed to the Lombards. See
_Monumenti antichi_ (_Accademia dei Lincei_), xii. 145.
We turn now to the Celtic group of jewelled ornaments, which has an
equally long and independent line of descent. The characteristic Celtic
ornaments are of hammered work with details in repoussé, having
fillings-in of vitreous paste, coloured enamels, amber, and in the later
examples rock crystal with a smooth rounded surface cut _en cabochon_.
The whole group is a special development within the British Isles of
the art of the mid-European Early Iron age, which in its turn had been
considerably influenced by early Mediterranean culture. In its early
stages its special marks are combinations of curves, with peculiar
central thickenings which give a quasi-naturalistic effect; a skilful
use of inlaid enamels, and the chased line. After the introduction of
Christianity, a continuous tradition combined the old system with the
interlaced winding scrolls and other new forms of decoration, and so led
up to the extreme complexity of early Irish illumination and metal work.
A remarkable group of gold ornaments of the pre-Christian time (probably
of the 1st century) was discovered about 1896, in the north-west of
Ireland, and acquired by the British Museum. It was subsequently claimed
by the Crown as treasure trove, and after litigation was transferred to
Dublin (see _Archaeologia_, lv., pl. 22).
[Illustration: FIG. 29.]
Figs. 29 and 30 are illustrations of two brooches of the latest period
in this class of work. The first is 13th century; the latter is probably
12th century, and is set with paste, amber and blue.
Rings are the chief specimens now seen of medieval jewelry from the 10th
to the 13th century. They are generally massive and simple. Through the
16th century a variety of changes arose; in the traditions and designs
of the _cinquecento_ we have plenty of evidence that the workmen used
their own designs, and the results culminated in the triumphs of Albert
Dürer, Benvenuto Cellini and Hans Holbein. The goldsmiths of the Italian
republics must have produced works of surpassing excellence in
workmanship, and reaching the highest point in design as applied to
handicrafts of any kind. The use of enamels, precious stones, niello
work and engraving, in combination with skilful execution of the human
figure and animal life, produced effects which modern art in this
direction is not likely to approach, still less to rival.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.]
In fig. 31 illustrations are given of various characteristic specimens
of the Renaissance and later forms of jewelry. A crystal cross set in
enamelled gold (a) is German work of the 16th century. The pendant
reliquary (b), enamelled and jewelled, is of 16th century Italian
work, and so probably is the jewel (c) of gold set with diamonds and
rubies. The Darnley or Lennox jewel (d), now in the possession of the
king, was made about 1576-1577 for Lady Margaret Douglas, countess of
Lennox, the mother of Henry Darnley. It is a pendant golden heart set
with a heart-shaped sapphire, richly jewelled and enamelled with
emblematic figures and devices. It also has Scottish mottoes around
and within it. The ear-ring (e) of gold, enamelled, hung with small
pearls, is an example of 17th century Russian work, and another (f) is
Italian of the same period, being of gold and filigree with enamel,
also with pendant pearls. A Spanish ear-ring, of 18th century work
(g), is a combination of ribbon, cord and filigree in gold; and
another (h) is Flemish, of probably the same period; it is of gold
open work set with diamonds in projecting collets. The old
French-Normandy pendant cross and locket (l) presents a characteristic
example of peasant jewelry; it is of branched open work set with
bosses and ridged ornaments of crystal. The ear-ring (j) is French of
17th century, also of gold open work set with crystals. A small
pendant locket (k) is of rock crystal, with the cross of Santiago in
gold and translucent crimson enamel; it is 16th or 17th century
Spanish work. A pretty ear-ring of gold open scroll work (m), set with
minute diamonds and three pendant pearls, is Portuguese of 17th
century, and another ear-ring (n) of gold circular open work, set also
with minute diamonds, is Portuguese work of 18th century. These
examples fairly illustrate the general features of the most
characteristic jewelry of the dates quoted.
During the 17th and 18th centuries we see only a mechanical kind of
excellence, the results of the mere tradition of the workshop--the
lingering of the power which when wisely directed had done so much and
so well, but now simply living on traditional forms, often combined in a
most incongruous fashion. Gorgeous effects were aimed at by massing the
gold, and introducing stones elaborately cut in themselves or clustered
in groups. Thus diamonds were clustered in rosettes and bouquets;
rubies, pearls, emeralds and other coloured special stones were brought
together for little other purpose than to get them into a given space in
conjunction with a certain quantity of gold. The question was not of
design in its relation to use as personal decoration, but of the value
which could be got into a given space to produce the most striking
effect.
The traditions of Oriental design as they had come down through the
various periods quoted, were comparatively lost in the wretched results
of the _rococo_ of Louis XIV. and the inanities of what modern
revivalists of the Anglo-Dutch call "Queen Anne." In the London
exhibition of 1851, the extravagances of modern jewelry had to stand
comparison with the Oriental examples contributed from India. Since then
we have learnt more about these works, and have been compelled to
acknowledge, in spite of what is sometimes called inferiority of
workmanship, how completely the Oriental jeweller understood his work,
and with what singular simplicity of method he carried it out. The
combinations are always harmonious, the result aimed at is always
achieved; and if in attempting to work to European ideas the jeweller
failed, this was rather the fault of the forms he had to follow, than
due to any want of skill in making the most of a subject in which half
the thought and the intended use were foreign to his experience.
A collection of peasant jewelry got together by Castellani for the Paris
exhibition of 1867, and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum,
illustrates in an admirable manner the traditional jewelry and personal
ornaments of a wide range of peoples in Europe. This collection, and the
additions made to it since its acquisition by the nation, show the forms
in which these objects existed over several generations among the
peasantry of France (chiefly Normandy), Spain, Portugal, Holland,
Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, and also show how the forms popular in
one country are followed and adopted in another, almost invariably
because of their perfect adaptation to the purpose for which they were
designed.
Apart from these humbler branches of the subject, in the middle of the
19th century the production of jewelry, regarded as a personal art, and
not as a commercial and anonymous industry, was almost extinct. Its
revival must be associated with the artistic movement which marked the
close of that century, and which found emphatic expression in the Paris
international exhibition of 1900. For many years before 1895 this
industry, though prosperous from the commercial point of view, and
always remarkable from that of technical finish, remained stationary as
an art. French jewelry rested on its reputation. The traditions were
maintained of either the 17th and 18th centuries or the style affected
at the close of the second empire--light pierced work and design
borrowed from natural flowers. The last type, introduced by Massin, had
exercised, indeed, a revolutionary influence on the treatment of
jewelry. This clever artist, not less skilful as a craftsman, produced a
new _genre_ by copying the grace and lightness of living blossoms, thus
introducing a perfectly fresh element into the limited variety of
traditional style, and by the use of filigree gold work altering its
character and giving it greater elegance. Massin still held the first
rank in the exhibition of 1878; he had a marked influence on his
contemporaries, and his name will be remembered in the history of the
goldsmith's art to designate a style and a period. Throughout these
years the craft was exclusively devoted to perfection of workmanship.
The utmost finish was aimed at in the mounting and setting of gems;
jewelry was, in fact, not so much an art as a high-class industry;
individual effort and purpose were absent.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.]
Up to that time precious stones had been of such intrinsic value that
the jeweller's chief skill lay in displaying these costly stones to the
best advantage; the mounting was a secondary consideration. The settings
were seldom long preserved in their original condition, but in the case
of family jewels were renewed with each generation and each change of
fashion, a state of things which could not be favourable to any truly
artistic development of taste, since the work was doomed, sooner or
later, to destruction. However, the evil led to its own remedy. As soon
as diamonds fell in value they lost at the same time their overwhelming
prestige, and refined taste could give a preference to trinkets which
derived their value and character from artistic design. This
revolutionized the jeweller's craft, and revived the simple ornament of
gold or silver, which came forward but timidly at first, till, in the
Salon of 1895, it burst upon the world in the exhibits of René Lalique,
an artist who was further confirmed in his remarkable position by the
exhibition of 1900. What specially stamps the works of Lalique is their
striking originality. His work may be considered from the point of view
of design and from that of execution. As an artist he has completely
reconstructed from the foundation the scheme of design which had fed the
poverty-stricken imagination of the last generation of goldsmiths. He
had recourse to the art of the past, but to the spirit rather than the
letter, and to nature for many new elements of design--free double
curves, suave or soft; opalescent harmonies of colouring; reminiscences,
with quite a new feeling, of Egypt, Chaldea, Greece and the East, or of
the art of the Renaissance; and infinite variety of floral forms even of
the humblest. He introduces also the female nude in the form of sirens
and sphinxes. As a craftsman he has effected a radical change, breaking
through old routine, combining all the processes of the goldsmith, the
chaser, the enameller and the gem-setter, and freeing himself from the
narrow lines in which the art had been confined. He ignores the
hierarchy of gems, caring no more on occasion for a diamond than for a
flint, since, in his view, no stone, whatever its original estimation,
has any value beyond the characteristic expression he lends it as a
means to his end. Thus, while he sometimes uses diamonds, rubies,
sapphires or emeralds as a background, he will, on the other hand, give
a conspicuous position to common stones--carnelian, agate, malachite,
jasper, coral, and even materials of no intrinsic value, such as horn.
One of his favourite stones is the opal, which lends itself to his
arrangements of colour, and which has in consequence become a
fashionable stone in French jewelry.
In criticism of the art of Lalique and his school it should be observed
that the works of the school are apt to be unsuited to the wear and tear
of actual use, and inconveniently eccentric in their details. Moreover,
the preciousness of the material is an almost inevitable consideration
in the jeweller's craft, and cannot be set at naught by the artist
without violating the canons of his art.
The movement which took its rise in France spread in due course to other
countries. In England the movement conveniently described as the "arts
and crafts movement" affected the design of jewelry. A group of
designers has aimed at purging the jeweller's craft of its character of
mere gem-mounting in conventional forms (of which the more
unimaginative, representing stars, bows, flowers and the like, are
varied by such absurdities as insects, birds, animals, figures of men
and objects made up simply of stones clustered together). Their work is
often excellently and fancifully designed, but it lacks that exquisite
perfection of execution achieved by the incomparable craftsmen of
France. At the same time English sculptor-decorators--such as Alfred
Gilbert, R.A., and George J. Frampton, A.R.A.--have produced objects of
a still higher class, but it is usually the work of the goldsmith rather
than of the jeweller. Examples may be seen in the badge executed by
Gilbert for the president of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours
and in the mayoral chain for Preston. Symbolism here enters into the
design, which has not only an ornamental but a didactic purpose.
The movement was represented in other countries also. In the United
States it was led by L. C. Tiffany, in Belgium by Philippe Wolfers, who
occupies in Belgium the position which in France is held by René
Lalique. If his design is a little heavier, it is not less beautiful in
imagination or less masterly in execution. Graceful, ingenious,
fanciful, elegant, fantastic by turns, his objects of jewelry and
goldsmithery have a solid claim to be considered _créations d'art_. It
has also been felt in Germany, Austria, Russia and Switzerland. It must
be admitted that many of the best artists who have devoted themselves to
jewelry have been more successful in design than in securing the
lightness and strength which are required by the wearer, and which were
a characteristic in the works of the Italian craftsmen of the
Renaissance. For this reason many of their masterpieces are more
beautiful in the case than upon the person.
_Modern Jewelry._--So far we have gone over the progress and results of
the jeweller's art. We have now to speak of the production of jewelry as
a modern art industry, in which large numbers of men and women are
employed in the larger cities of Europe. Paris, Vienna, London and
Birmingham are the most important centres. An illustration of the
manufacture as carried on in London and Birmingham will be sufficient to
give an insight into the technique and artistic manipulation of this
branch of art industry; but, by way of contrast, it may be interesting
to give in the first place a description of the native working jeweller
of Hindustan.
He travels very much after the fashion of a tinker in England; his
budget contains tools, materials, fire pots, and all the requisites of
his handicraft. The gold to be used is generally supplied by the
patron or employer, and is frequently in gold coin, which the
travelling jeweller undertakes to convert into the ornaments required.
He squats down in the corner of a courtyard, or under cover of a
veranda, lights his fire, cuts up the gold pieces entrusted to him,
hammers, cuts, shapes, drills, solders with the blow-pipe, files,
scrapes and burnishes until he has produced the desired effect. If he
has stones to set or coloured enamels to introduce, he never seems to
make a mistake; his instinct for harmony of colour, like that of his
brother craftsman the weaver, is as unerring as that of the bird in
the construction of its nest. Whether the materials are common or rich
and rare, he invariably does the very best possible with them,
according to native ideas of beauty in design and combination. It is
only when he is interfered with by European dictation that he ever
vulgarizes his art or makes a mistake. The result may appear rude in
its finish, but the design and the thought are invariably right. We
thus see how a trade in the working of which the "plant" is so simple
and wants are so readily met could spread itself, as in years past it
did at Clerkenwell and at Birmingham before gigantic factories were
invented for producing everything under the sun.
It is impossible to find any date at which the systematic production of
jewelry was introduced into England. Probably the Clerkenwell trade
dates its origin from the revocation of the edict of Nantes, as the
skilled artisans in the jewelry, clock and watch, and trinket trades
appear to have been descendants of the emigrant Huguenots. The
Birmingham trade would appear to have had its origin in the skill to
which the workers in fine steel had attained towards the middle and end
of the 18th century, a branch of industry which collapsed after the
French Revolution.
Modern jewelry may be classified under three heads: (1) objects in
which gems and stones form the principal portions, and in which the
work in silver, platinum or gold is really only a means for carrying
out the design by fixing the gems or stones in the position arranged
by the designer, the metal employed being visible only as a setting;
(2) when gold work plays an important part in the development of the
design, being itself ornamented by engraving (now rarely used) or
enamelling or both, the stones and gems being arranged in
subordination to the gold work in such positions as to give a
decorative effect to the whole; (3) when gold or other metal is alone
used, the design being wrought out by hammering in repoussé, casting,
engraving, chasing or by the addition of filigree work (see FILIGREE),
or when the surfaces are left absolutely plain but polished and highly
finished.
Of course the most ancient and primitive methods are those wholly
dependent upon the craft of the workman; but gradually various
ingenious processes were invented, by which greater accuracy in the
portions to be repeated in a design could be produced with certainty
and economy: hence the various methods of stamping used in the
production of hand-made jewelry, which are in themselves as much
mechanical in relation to the end in view as if the whole object were
stamped out at a blow, twisted into its proper position as regards the
detail, or the various stamped portions fitted into each other for the
mechanical completion of the work. It is therefore rather difficult to
draw an absolute line between hand-made and machine-made jewelry,
except in extreme cases of hand-made, when everything is worked, so to
speak, from the solid, or of machine-made, when the hand has only to
give the ornament a few touches of a tool, or fit the parts together
if of more than one piece.
The best and most costly hand-made jewelry produced in England,
whether as regards gold work, gems, enamelling or engraving, is made
in London, and chiefly at Clerkenwell. A design is first made with
pencil, sepia or water colour, and when needful with separate
enlargement of details, everything in short to make the drawing
thoroughly intelligible to the working jeweller. According to the
nature and purpose of the design, he cuts out, hammers, files and
brings into shape the constructive portions of the work as a basis.
Upon this, as each detail is wrought out, he solders, or (more rarely)
fixes by rivets, &c., the ornamentation necessary to the effect. The
human figure, representations of animal life, leaves, fruit, &c., are
modelled in wax, moulded and cast in gold, to be chased up and
finished. As the hammering goes on the metal becomes brittle and hard,
and then it is passed though the fire to anneal or soften it. In the
case of elaborate examples of repoussé, after the general forms are
beaten up, the interior is filled with a resinous compound, pitch
mixed with fire-brick dust; and this, forming a solid but pliable body
underneath the metal, allows of the finished details being wrought out
on the front of the design, and being finally completed by chasing.
When stones are to be set, or when they form the principal portions of
the design, the gold or other metal has to be wrought by hand so as to
receive them in little cup-like orifices, these walls of gold
enclosing the stone and allowing the edges to be bent over to secure
it. Setting is never effected by cement in well-made jewelry.
Machine-made settings have in recent years been made, but these are
simply cheap imitations of the true hand-made setting. Even strips of
gold have been used, serrated at the edges to allow of being easily
bent over, for the retention of the stones, true or false.
Great skill and experience are necessary in the proper setting of
stones and gems of high value, in order to bring out the greatest
amount of brilliancy and colour, and the angle at which a diamond
(say) shall be set, in order that the light shall penetrate at the
proper point to bring out the "spark" or "flash," is a subject of
grave consideration to the setter. Stones set in a haphazard, slovenly
manner, however brilliant in themselves, will look commonplace by the
side of skilfully set gems of much less fine quality and water.
Enamelling (see ENAMEL) has of late years largely taken the place of
"paste" or false stones.
Engraving is a simple process in itself, and diversity of effect can
be produced by skilful manipulation. An interesting variety in the
effect of a single ornament may be produced by the combination of
coloured gold of various tints. This colouring is a process requiring
skill and experience in the manipulation of the materials according to
the quality of the gold and the amount of silver alloy in it. The
objects to be coloured are dipped in a boiling mixture of salt, alum
and saltpetre. Of general colouring it may be said that the object
aimed at is to enhance the appearance of the gold by removing the
particles of alloy on the surface, and thus allowing the pure gold
only to remain visible to the eye. The process has, however, gone much
out of fashion. It is apt to rot the solder, and repairs to gold work
can be better finished by electro-gilding.
The application of machinery to the economical production of certain
classes of jewelry, not necessarily imitations, but as much "real
gold" work, to use a trade phrase, as the best hand-made, has been on
the increase for many years. Nearly every kind of gold chain now made
is manufactured by machinery, and nothing like the beauty of design
or perfection of workmanship could be obtained by hand at, probably,
any cost. The question therefore in relation to chains is not the mode
of manufacture, but the quality of the metal. Eighteen carat gold is
of course preferred by those who wear chains, but this is only gold in
the proportion of 18 to 24, pure gold being represented by 24. The
gold coin of the realm is 22 carat; that is, it contains one-twelfth
of alloy to harden it to stand wear and tear. Thus 18 carat gold has
one-fourth of alloy, and so on with lower qualities down to 12, which
is in reality only gold by courtesy. It must be remembered that the
alloys are made by weight, and as gold is nearly twice as heavy as the
metal it is mixed with, it only forms a third of the bulk of a 12
carat mixture.
The application of machinery to the production of personal ornaments
in gold and silver can only be economically and successfully carried
on when there is a large demand for similar objects, that is to say,
objects of precisely the same design and decoration throughout. In
machine-made jewelry everything is stereotyped, so to speak, and the
only work required for the hand is to fit the parts together--in some
instances scarcely that. A design is made, and from it steel dies are
sunk for stamping out as rapidly as possible from a plate of rolled
metal the portion represented by each die. It is in these steel dies
that the skill of the artist die-sinker is manifested. Brooches,
ear-rings, pinheads, bracelets, lockets, pendants, &c., are struck out
by the gross. This is more especially the case in silver and in plated
work--that is, imitation jewelry--the base of which is an alloy,
afterwards gilt by electro-plating. With these ornaments imitation
stones in paste and glass, pearls, &c., are used, and it is remarkable
that of late years some of the best designs, the most simple,
appropriate and artistic, have appeared in imitation jewelry. It is
only just to those engaged in this manufacture to state distinctly
that their work is never sold wholesale for anything else than what it
is. The worker in gold only makes gold or real jewelry, and he only
makes of a quality well known to his customers. The producer of silver
work only manufactures silver ornaments, and so on throughout the
whole class of plated goods.
It is the retailer who, if he is unprincipled, takes advantage of the
ignorance of the buyer and sells for gold that which is in reality an
imitation, and which he bought as such. The imitations of old styles
of jewelry which are largely sold in curiosity shops at foreign places
of fashionable resort are said to be made in Germany, especially at
Munich.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--For the Dahshur jewels, see J. de Morgan and others;
_Fouilles à Dahchour, Mars-Juin 1894_ (Vienna, 1895) and _Fouilles à
Dahchour en 1894-1895_ (Vienna, 1903). For the Aah-hotep jewels, see
Mariette, _Album de Musée de Boulaq_, pls. 29-31; Birch, _Facsimiles
of the Egyptian Relics discovered in the Tomb of Queen Aah-hotep_
(1863). For Cretan excavations, see A. J. Evans, in _Annual of the
British School at Athens_, Nos. 7 to 11; _Archaeologia_, vol. lix. For
excavations at Enkomi, see _Excavations in Cyprus_, by A. S. Murray
and others (1900). For _Schliemann's excavations_, see Schliemann's
works; also Schuchhardt, Schliemann's Excavations; Perrot & Chipiez,
_Histoire de l'Art_, vi. For the Greek Island treasure, see A. J.
Evans, _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xiii. For Ephesus gold treasure,
see D. G. Hogarth, _British Museum Excavations at Ephesus_; _The
Archaic Artemisia_. For the Hermitage Collection from South Russia,
see Gillé, _Antiquités du Bosphore Cimmérien_ (reissued by S.
Reinach), and the _Comptes rendus_ of the Russian Archaeological
Commission (St Petersburg). For later jewelry, Pollak,
_Goldschmiedearbeit_. For Treasure of Pétrossa, A. Odobesco, _Le
Trésor de Pétrossa_. For the European and west Asiatic barbaric
jewelry, see O. M. Dalton, in _Archaeologia_, lviii. 237, and the
_Treasure of the Oxus_ (British Museum, 1905). For the whole history,
G. Fontenay, _Les Bijoux anciens et modernes_ (Paris [Quantin], 1887).
For the recent movement, Léonce Bénédite, "La Bijouterie et la
joaillerie, à l'exposition universelle; René Lalique," in the _Revue
des arts décoratifs_, 1900 (July, August). (A. H. Sm.)
JEWETT, SARAH ORNE (1840-1909), American novelist, was born in South
Berwick, Maine, on the 3rd of September 1849. She was a daughter of the
physician Theodore H. Jewett (1815-1878), by whom she was greatly
influenced, and whom she has drawn in _A Country Doctor_ (1884). She
studied at the Berwick Academy, and began her literary career in 1869,
when she contributed her first story to the _Atlantic Monthly_. Her best
work consists of short stories and sketches, such as those in _The
Country of the Pointed Firs_ (1896). The People of Maine, with their
characteristic speech, manners and traditions, she describes with
peculiar charm and realism, often recalling the work of Hawthorne. She
died at South Berwick, Maine, on the 24th of June 1909.
Among her publications are: _Deephaven_ (1877), a series of sketches;
_Old Friends and New_ (1879); _Country By-ways_ (1881); _A Country
Doctor_ (1884), a novel; _A Marsh Island_ (1885), a novel; _A White
Heron and other Stories_ (1886); _The King of Folly Island and other
People_ (1888); _Strangers and Wayfarers_ (1890); _A Native of Winby
and other Tales_ (1893); _The Queen's Twin and other Stories_ (1899),
and _The Tory Lover_ (1901), an historical novel.
JEWS (Heb. _Yehudi_, man of Judah; Gr. [Greek: Ioudaioi]; Lat.
_Judaei_), the general name for the Semitic people which inhabited
Palestine from early times, and is known in various connexions as "the
Hebrews," "the Jews," and "Israel" (see § 5 below). Their history may be
divided into three great periods: (1) That covered by the Old Testament
to the foundation of Judaism in the Persian age, (2) that of the Greek
and Roman domination to the destruction of Jerusalem, and (3) that of
the Diaspora or Dispersion to the present day.
I.--OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY
I. _The Land and the People._--For the first two periods the history of
the Jews is mainly that of Palestine. It begins among those peoples
which occupied the area lying between the Nile on the one side and the
Tigris and the Euphrates on the other. Surrounded by ancient seats of
culture in Egypt and Babylonia, by the mysterious deserts of Arabia, and
by the highlands of Asia Minor, Palestine, with Syria on the north, was
the high road of civilization, trade and warlike enterprise, and the
meeting-place of religions. Its small principalities were entirely
dominated by the great Powers, whose weakness or acquiescence alone
enabled them to rise above dependence or vassalage. The land was
traversed by old-established trade routes and possessed important
harbours on the Gulf of 'Akaba and on the Mediterranean coast, the
latter exposing it to the influence of the Levantine culture. It was
"the physical centre of those movements of history from which the world
has grown." The portion of this district abutting upon the Mediterranean
may be divided into two main parts:--Syria (from the Taurus to Hermon)
and Palestine (southward to the desert bordering upon Egypt). The latter
is about 150 m. from north to south (the proverbial "Dan to Beersheba"),
with a breadth varying from 25 to 80 m., i.e. about 6040 sq. m. This
excludes the land east of the Jordan, on which see PALESTINE.
From time to time streams of migration swept into Palestine and Syria.
Semitic tribes wandered northwards from their home in Arabia to seek
sustenance in its more fertile fields, to plunder, or to escape the
pressure of tribes in the rear. The course leads naturally into either
Palestine or Babylonia, and, following the Euphrates, northern Syria is
eventually reached. Tribes also moved down from the north: nomads, or
offshoots from the powerful states which stretch into Asia Minor. Such
frequently recurring movements introduced new blood. Tribes, chiefly of
pastoral habits, settled down among others who were so nearly of their
own type that a complete amalgamation could be effected, and this
without any marked modification of the general characteristics of the
earlier inhabitants. It is from such a fusion as this that the ancestors
of the Jews were descended, and both the history and the genius of this
people can be properly understood only by taking into account the
physical features of their land and the characteristics of the Semitic
races in general (see PALESTINE, SEMITIC LANGUAGES).
2. _Society and Religion._--The similarity uniting the peoples of the
East in respect of racial and social characteristics is accompanied by a
striking similarity of mental outlook which has survived to modern
times. Palestine, in spite of the numerous vicissitudes to which it has
been subjected, has not lost its fundamental characteristics. The
political changes involved in the Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian or
Persian conquests surely affected it as little as the subsequent waves
of Greek, Roman and other European invasions. Even during the temporary
Hellenization in the second great period the character of the people as
a whole was untouched by the various external influences which produced
so great an effect on the upper classes. When the foreign civilization
perished, the old culture once more came to the surface. Hence it is
possible, by a comprehensive comparative study of Eastern peoples, in
both ancient and modern times, to supplement and illustrate within
certain limits our direct knowledge of the early Jewish people, and thus
to understand more clearly those characteristics which were peculiar to
them, in relation to those which they shared with other Oriental
peoples.
Even before authentic history begins, the elements of religion and
society had already crystallized into a solid coherent structure which
was to persist without essential modification. Religion was inseparable
from ordinary life, and, like that of all peoples who are dependent on
the fruits of the earth, was a nature-worship. The tie between deities
and worshippers was regarded as physical and entailed mutual
obligations. The study of the clan-group as an organization is as
instructive here as in other fields. The members of each group lived on
terms of equality, the families forming a society of worship the rites
of which were conducted by the head. Such groups (each with its local
deity) would combine for definite purposes under the impulse of external
needs, but owing to inevitable internal jealousies and the incessant
feuds among a people averse from discipline and authority, the unions
were not necessarily lasting. The elders of these groups possessed some
influence, and tended to form an aristocracy, which took the lead in
social life, although their authority generally depended merely upon
custom. Individual leaders in times of stress acquired a recognized
supremacy, and, once a tribe outstripped the rest, the opportunities for
continued advance gave further scope to their authority. "The ...
interminable feuds of tribes, conducted on the theory of blood-revenge,
can seldom be durably healed without the intervention of a third
party who is called in as arbiter, and in this way an impartial and wise
power acquires of necessity a great and beneficent influence over all
around it" (W. R. Smith). In time, notwithstanding a certain inherent
individualism and impatience of control, veritable despotisms arose in
the Semitic world, although such organizations were invariably liable to
sudden collapse as the old forms of life broke down with changing
conditions.[1]
3. _Early History._[2]--Already in the 15th century B.C. Palestine was
inhabited by a settled people whose language, thought and religion were
not radically different several hundred years later. Small native
princes ruled as vassals of Egypt which, after expelling the Hyksos from
its borders, had entered upon a series of conquests as far as the
Euphrates. Some centuries previously, however, Babylonia had laid claim
to the western states, and the Babylonian (i.e. Assyrian) script and
language were now used, not merely in the diplomatic correspondence
between Egypt and Asia, but also for matters of private and everyday
life among the Palestinian princes themselves. To what extent specific
Babylonian influence showed itself in other directions is not completely
known. Canaan (Palestine and the south Phoenician coast land) and Amor
(Lebanon district and beyond) were under the constant supervision of
Egypt, and Egyptian officials journeyed round to collect tribute, to
attend to complaints, and to assure themselves of the allegiance of the
vassals. The Amarna tablets and those more recently found at Taannek
(bibl. Taanach), together with the contemporary archaeological evidence
(from Lachish, Gezer, Megiddo, Jericho, &c.), represent advanced
conditions of life and culture, the precise chronological limits of
which cannot be determined with certainty. This age, with its regular
maritime intercourse between the Aegean settlements, Phoenicia and the
Delta, and with lines of caravans connecting Babylonia, North Syria,
Arabia and Egypt, presents a remarkable picture of life and activity, in
the centre of which lies Palestine, with here and there Egyptian
colonies and some traces of Egyptian cults. The history of this, the
"Amarna" age, reveals a state of anarchy in Palestine for which the
weakness of Egypt and the downward pressure of north Syrian peoples
were responsible. Subdivided into a number of little local
principalities, Palestine was suffering both from internal intrigues and
from the designs of this northern power. It is now that we find the
restless Habiru, a name which is commonly identified with that of the
"Hebrews" (_'ibrim_). They offer themselves where necessary to either
party, and some at least perhaps belonged to the settled population. The
growing prominence of the new northern group of "Hittite" states
continued to occupy the energies of Egypt, and when again we have more
external light upon Palestinian history, the Hittites (q.v.) are found
strongly entrenched in the land. But by the end of the first quarter of
the 13th century B.C. Egypt had recovered its province (precise boundary
uncertain), leaving its rivals in possession of Syria. Towards the close
of the 13th century the Egyptian king Merneptah (Mineptah) records a
successful campaign in Palestine, and alludes to the defeat of Canaan,
Ascalon, Gezer, Yenuam (in Lebanon) and (the people or tribe) Israel.[3]
Bodies of aliens from the Levantine coast had previously threatened
Egypt and Syria, and at the beginning of the 12th century they formed a
coalition on land and sea which taxed all the resources of Rameses III.
In the Purasati, apparently the most influential of these peoples, may
be recognized the origin of the name "Philistine." The Hittite power
became weaker, and the invaders, in spite of defeat, appear to have
succeeded in maintaining themselves on the sea coast. External history,
however, is very fragmentary just at the age when its evidence would be
most welcome. For a time the fate of Syria and Palestine seems to have
been no longer controlled by the great powers. When the curtain rises
again we enter upon the historical traditions of the Old Testament.
4. _Biblical History._--For the rest of the first period the Old Testament
forms the main source. It contains in fact the history itself in two
forms: (a) from the creation of man to the fall of Judah (Genesis-2
Kings), which is supplemented and continued further--(b) to the foundation
of Judaism in the 5th century B.C. (Chronicles--Ezra-Nehemiah). In the
light of contemporary monuments, archaeological evidence, the progress of
scientific knowledge and the recognized methods of modern historical
criticism, the representation of the origin of mankind and of the history
of the Jews in the Old Testament can no longer be implicitly accepted.
Written by an Oriental people and clothed in an Oriental dress, the Old
Testament does not contain objective records, but subjective history
written and incorporated for specific purposes. Like many Oriental works
it is a compilation, as may be illustrated from a comparison of Chronicles
with Samuel-Kings, and the representation of the past in the light of the
present (as exemplified in Chronicles) is a frequently recurring
phenomenon. The critical examination of the nature and growth of this
compilation has removed much that had formerly caused insuperable
difficulties and had quite unnecessarily been made an integral or a
relevant part of practical religion. On the other hand, criticism has
given a deeper meaning to the Old Testament history, and has brought into
relief the central truths which really are vital; it may be said to have
replaced a divine account of man by man's account of the divine. Scholars
are now almost unanimously agreed that the internal features are best
explained by the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis. This involves the view that
the historical traditions are mainly due to two characteristic though very
complicated recensions, one under the influence of the teaching of
Deuteronomy (Joshua to Kings, see § 20), the other, of a more priestly
character (akin to Leviticus), of somewhat later date (Genesis to Joshua,
with traces in Judges to Kings, see § 23). There are, of course, numerous
problems relating to the nature, limits and dates of the two recensions,
of the incorporated sources, and of other sources (whether early or late)
of independent origin; and here there is naturally room for much
divergence of opinion. Older material (often of composite origin) has been
used, not so much for the purpose of providing historical information, as
with the object of showing the religious significance of past history;
and the series Joshua-Kings is actually included among the "prophets" in
Jewish reckoning (see MIDRASH). In general, one may often observe that
freedom which is characteristic of early and unscientific historians. Thus
one may note the reshaping of older material to agree with later thought,
the building up of past periods from the records of other periods, and a
frequent loss of perspective. The historical traditions are to be
supplemented by the great body of prophetic, legal and poetic literature
which reveal contemporary conditions in various internal literary,
theological or sociological features. The investigation of their true
historical background and of the trustworthiness of their external setting
(e.g. titles of psalms, dates and headings of prophecies) involves a
criticism of the historical traditions themselves, and thus the two major
classes of material must be constantly examined both separately and in
their bearing on one another. In a word, the study of biblical history,
which is dependent in the first instance upon the written sources, demands
constant attention to the text (which has had an interesting history) and
to the literary features; and it requires a sympathetic acquaintance with
Oriental life and thought, both ancient and modern, an appreciation of the
necessity of employing the methods of scientific research, and (from the
theological side) a reasoned estimate of the dependence of individual
religious convictions upon the letter of the Old Testament.[4]
In view of the numerous articles in this work dealing with biblical
subjects,[5] the present sketch is limited to the outlines of the
traditional history; the religious aspect in its bearing upon biblical
theology (which is closely bound up with the traditions) is handled
separately under HEBREW RELIGION. The related literature is enormous
(see the bibliographies to the special articles); it is indexed
annually in _Orientalische Bibliographie_ (Berlin), and is usefully
summarized in the _Theologische Jahresbericht_ (Berlin). On the
development of the study of biblical history see C. A. Briggs, _Study
of Holy Scripture_ (1899), especially ch. xx. The first scientific
historical work was by H. Ewald, _Gesch. d. Volkes Israel_ (1843; 3rd
ed., 1864-1868; Eng. trans., 1869-1883), popularized by Arthur Penrhyn
Stanley in his _Hist. of the Jewish Church_ (1863-1879). The works of
J. Wellhausen (especially _Prolegomena to the Hist. of Israel_, Eng.
trans., 1885, also the brilliant article "Israel" in the 9th ed. of
the _Ency. Brit._, 1879) were epoch-making; his position was
interpreted to English readers by W. Robertson Smith (_Old Test. in
Jewish Church_, 1881, 2nd ed., 1892; _Prophets of Israel_, 1882, 2nd
ed. by T. K. Cheyne, 1902). The historical (and related) works of T.
K. Cheyne, H. Graetz, H. Guthe, F. C. Kent, A. Kittel, W. H. Kosters,
A. Kuenen, C. Piepenbring, and especially B. Stade, although varying
greatly in standpoint, are among the most valuable by recent scholars;
H. P. Smith's _Old Test. Hist._ ("International Theological Library,"
Edinburgh, 1903) is in many respects the most serviceable and complete
study; a modern and more critical "Ewald" is a desideratum. For the
works of numerous other scholars who have furthered Old Testament
research in the past it must suffice to refer to the annotated list by
J. M. P. Smith, _Books for O.T. Study_ (Chicago, 1908).
For the external history, E. Schrader, _Cuneiform Inscr. and the Old
Testament_ (Eng. trans. by O. C. Whitehouse, 1885-1888) is still
helpful; among the less technical works are J. F. McCurdy, _History,
Prophecy and the Monuments_; B. Paton, _Syria and Palestine_ (1902);
G. Maspero, _Hist. ancienne_ (6th ed., 1904); A. Jeremias, _Alte Test.
im Lichte d. Alten Orients_ (2nd ed., 1906); and especially
_Altoriental. Texte u. Bilder zum Alten Test._, ed. by H. Gressman,
with A. Ungnad and H. Ranke (1909). The most complete is that of Ed.
Meyer, _Gesch. d. Alterthums_ (2nd ed., 1907 sqq.). That of Jeremias
follows upon the lines of H. Winckler, whose works depart from the
somewhat narrow limits of purely "Israelite" histories, emphasize the
necessity of observing the characteristics of Oriental thought and
policy, and are invaluable for discriminating students. Winckler's own
views are condensed in the 3rd edition--a re-writing--of Schrader's
work (_Keilinschr. u. d. Alte Testament_, 1903), and, with an
instructive account of the history of "ancient nearer Asia," in H. F.
Helmolt's _World's History_, iii. 1-252 (1903). All modern histories
of any value are necessarily compromises between the biblical
traditions and the results of recent investigation, and those studies
which appear to depart most widely from the biblical or canonical
representation often do greater justice to the evidence as a whole
than the slighter or more conservative and apologetic
reconstructions.[6] Scientific biblical historical study,
nevertheless, is still in a relatively backward condition; and
although the labours of scholars since Ewald constitute a distinct
epoch, the trend of research points to the recognition of the fact
that the purely subjective literary material requires a more
historical treatment in the light of our increasing knowledge of
external and internal conditions in the old Oriental world. But an
inductive and deductive treatment, both, comprehensive and in due
proportion, does not as yet (1910) exist, and awaits fuller external
evidence.[7]
5. _Traditions of Origin._--The Old Testament preserves the remains of
an extensive literature, representing different standpoints, which
passed through several hands before it reached its present form.
Surrounded by ancient civilizations where writing had long been known,
and enjoying, as excavation has proved, a considerable amount of
material culture, Palestine could look back upon a lengthy and stirring
history which, however, has rarely left its mark upon our records.
Whatever ancient sources may have been accessible, whatever trustworthy
traditions were in circulation, and whatever a knowledge of the ancient
Oriental world might lead one to expect, one is naturally restricted in
the first instance to those undated records which have survived in the
form which the last editors gave to them. The critical investigation of
these records is the indispensable prelude to all serious biblical
study, and hasty or sweeping deductions from monumental or
archaeological evidence, or versions compiled promiscuously from
materials of distinct origin, are alike hazardous. A glimpse at
Palestine in the latter half of the second millennium B.C. (§ 3)
prepares us for busy scenes and active intercourse, but it is not a
history of this kind which the biblical historians themselves transmit.
At an age when--on literary-critical grounds--the Old Testament writings
were assuming their present form, it was possible to divide the
immediately preceding centuries into three distinct period. (a) The
first, that of the two rival kingdoms: Israel (Ephraim or Samaria) in
the northern half of Palestine, and Judah in the south. Then (b) the
former lost its independence towards the close of the 8th century B.C.,
when a number of its inhabitants were carried away; and the latter
shared the fate of exile at the beginning of the 6th, but succeeded in
making a fresh reconstruction some fifty or sixty years later. Finally
(c), in the so-called "post-exilic" period, religion and life were
reorganized under the influence of a new spirit; relations with Samaria
were broken off, and Judaism took its definite character, perhaps about
the middle or close of the 5th century. Throughout these vicissitudes
there were important political and religious changes which render the
study of the composite sources a work of unique difficulty. In addition
to this it should be noticed that the term "Jew" (originally _Yehudi_),
in spite of its wider application, means properly "man of Judah," i.e.
of that small district which, with Jerusalem as its capital, became the
centre of Judaism. The favourite name "Israel" with all its religious
and national associations is somewhat ambiguous in an historical sketch,
since, although it is used as opposed to Judah (a), it ultimately came
to designate the true nucleus of the worshippers of the national god
Yahweh as opposed to the Samaritans, the later inhabitants of Israelite
territory (c). A more general term is "Hebrew" (see HEBREW LANGUAGE),
which, whether originally identical with the Habiru or not (§ 3), is
used in contrast to foreigners, and this non-committal ethnic deserves
preference where precise distinction is unnecessary or impossible.
The traditions which prevailed among the Hebrews concerning their origin
belong to a time when Judah and Israel were regarded as a unit. Twelve
divisions or tribes, of which Judah was one, held together by a
traditional sentiment, were traced back to the sons of Jacob (otherwise
known as Israel), the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham. Their names
vary in origin and probably also in point of age, and where they
represent fixed territorial limits, the districts so described were in
some cases certainly peopled by groups of non-Israelite ancestry. But as
tribal names they invited explanation, and of the many characteristic
traditions which were doubtless current a number have been preserved,
though not in any very early dress. Close relationship was recognized
with the Aramaeans, with Edom, Moab and Ammon. This is characteristically
expressed when Esau, the ancestor of Edom, is represented as the brother
of Jacob, or when Moab and Ammon are the children of Lot, Abraham's
nephew (see GENEALOGY: _Biblical_). Abraham, it was believed, came from
Harran (Carrhae), primarily from Babylonia, and Jacob re-enters from
Gilead in the north-east with his Aramaean wives and concubines and their
families (Benjamin excepted). It is on this occasion that Jacob's name is
changed to Israel. These traditions of migration and kinship are in
themselves entirely credible, but the detailed accounts of the ancestors
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as given in Genesis, are inherently doubtful as
regards both the internal conditions, which the (late) chronological
scheme ascribes to the first half of the second millennium B.C., and the
general circumstances of the life of these strangers in a foreign land.
From a variety of independent reasons one is forced to conclude that,
whatever historical elements they may contain, the stories of this remote
past represent the form which tradition had taken in a very much later
age.
Opinion is at variance regarding the patriarchal narratives as a
whole. To deny their historical character is to reject them as
trustworthy accounts of the age to which they are ascribed, and even
those scholars who claim that they are essentially historical already
go so far as to concede idealization and the possibility or
probability of later revision. The failure to apprehend historical
method has often led to the fallacious argument that the
trustworthiness of individual features justifies our accepting the
whole, or that the elimination of unhistorical elements will leave an
historical residuum. Here and frequently elsewhere in biblical history
it is necessary to allow that a genuine historical tradition may be
clothed in an unhistorical dress, but since many diverse motives are
often concentrated upon one narrative (e.g. Gen. xxxii. 22-32, xxxiv.,
xxxviii.), the work of internal historical criticism (in view of the
scantiness of the evidence) can rarely claim finality. The patriarchal
narratives themselves belong to the popular stock of tradition of
which only a portion has been preserved. Many of the elements lie
outside questions of time and place and are almost immemorial. Some
appear written for the first time in the book of Jubilees, in "the
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs" (both perhaps 2nd century B.C.)
and in later sources; and although in Genesis the stories are now in a
post-exilic setting (a stage earlier than Jubilees), the older
portions may well belong to the 7th or 6th cent. This question,
however, will rest upon those criteria alone which are of true
chronological validity (see further GENESIS).
The story of the settlement of the national and tribal ancestors in
Palestine is interrupted by an account of the southward movement of
Jacob (or Israel) and his sons into a district under the immediate
influence of the kings of Egypt. After an interval of uncertain duration
we find in Exodus a numerous people subjected to rigorous oppression. No
longer individual sons of Jacob or Israel, united tribes were led out by
Moses and Aaron; and, after a series of incidents extending over forty
years, the "children of Israel" invaded the land in which their
ancestors had lived. The traditions embodied in the books Exodus-Joshua
are considerably later than the apparent date of the events themselves,
and amid the diverse and often conflicting data it is possible to
recognize distinct groups due to some extent to distinct historical
conditions. The story of the "exodus" is that of the religious birth of
"Israel," joined by covenant with the national god Yahweh[8] whose aid
in times of peril and need proved his supremacy. In Moses (q.v.) was
seen the founder of Israel's religion and laws; in Aaron (q.v.) the
prototype of the Israelite priesthood. Although it is difficult to
determine the true historical kernel, two features are most prominent in
the narratives which the post-exilic compiler has incorporated: the
revelation of Yahweh, and the movement into Palestine. Yahweh had
admittedly been the God of Israel's ancestors, but his name was only now
made known (Exod. iii. 13 sqq., vi. 2 seq.), and this conception of a
new era in Yahweh's relations with the people is associated with the
family of Moses and with small groups from the south of Palestine which
reappear in religious movements in later history (see KENITES). Amid a
great variety of motives the prominence of Kadesh in south Palestine is
to be recognized, but it is uncertain what clans or tribes were at
Kadesh, and it is possible that traditions, originally confined to those
with whom the new conception of Yahweh is connected, were subsequently
adopted by others who came to regard themselves as the worshippers of
the only true Yahweh. At all events, two quite distinct views seem to
underlie the opening books of the Old Testament. The one associates
itself with the ancestors of the Hebrews and has an ethnic character.
The other, part of the religious history of "Israel," is essentially
bound up with the religious genius of the people, and is partly
connected with clans from the south of Palestine whose influence appears
in later times. Other factors in the literary growth of the present
narratives are not excluded (see further § 8, and EXODUS, THE).[9]
6. _The Monarchy of Israel._--The book of Joshua continues the fortunes
of the "children of Israel" and describes a successful occupation of
Palestine by the united tribes. This stands in striking contrast to
other records of the partial successes of individual groups (Judg. i.).
The former, however, is based upon the account of victories by the
Ephraimite Joshua over confederations of petty kings to the south and
north of central Palestine, apparently the specific traditions of the
people of Ephraim describing from their standpoint the entire conquest
of Palestine.[10] The book of Judges represents a period of unrest after
the settlement of the people. External oppression and internal rivalries
rent the Israelites, and in the religious philosophy of a later
(Deuteronomic) age the period is represented as one of alternate
apostasy from and of penitent return to the Yahweh of the "exodus." Some
vague recollection of known historical events (§ 3 end) might be claimed
among the traditions ascribed to the closing centuries of the second
millennium, but the view that the prelude to the monarchy was an era
when individual leaders "judged" all Israel finds no support in the
older narratives, where the heroes of the age (whose correct sequence is
uncertain) enjoy only a local fame. The best historical narratives
belong to Israel and Gilead; Judah scarcely appears, and in a relatively
old poetical account of a great fight of the united tribes against a
northern adversary lies outside the writer's horizon or interest (Judg.
v., see DEBORAH). Stories of successful warfare and of temporary leaders
(see ABIMELECH; EHUD; GIDEON; JEPHTHAH) form an introduction to the
institution of the Israelite monarchy, an epoch of supreme importance in
biblical history. The heroic figure who stands at the head is Saul
("asked"), and two accounts of his rise are recorded. (1) The
Philistines, a foreign people whose presence in Palestine has already
been noticed, had oppressed Israel (cf. SAMSON) until a brilliant
victory was gained by the prophet Samuel, some account of whose early
history is recorded. He himself held supreme sway over all Israel as the
last of the "judges" until compelled to accede to the popular demand for
a king. The young Saul was chosen by lot and gained unanimous
recognition by delivering Jabesh in Gilead from the Ammonites. (2) But
other traditions represent the people scattered and in hiding; Israel is
groaning under the Philistine yoke, and the unknown Saul is raised up by
Yahweh to save his people. This he accomplishes with the help of his son
Jonathan. The first account, although now essential to the canonical
history, clearly gives a less authentic account of the change from the
"judges" to the monarchy, while the second is fragmentary and can hardly
be fitted into the present historical thread (see SAUL). At all events
the first of a series of annalistic notices of the kings of Israel
ascribes to Saul conquests over the surrounding peoples to an extent
which implies that the district of Judah formed part of his kingdom (1
Sam. xiv. 47 seq). His might is attested also by the fine elegy (2 Sam.
i. 19 sqq.) over the death of two great Israelite heroes, Saul and
Jonathan, knit together by mutual love, inseparable in life and death,
whose unhappy end after a career of success was a national misfortune.
Disaster had come upon the north, and the plain of Jezreel saw the total
defeat of the king and the rout of his army. The court was hastily
removed across the Jordan to Mahanaim, where Saul's son Ishbaal
(Ish-bosheth), thanks to his general Abner, recovered some of the lost
prestige. In circumstances which are not detailed, the kingdom seems to
have regained its strength, and Ishbaal is credited with a reign of two
years over Israel and Gilead (2 Sam. ii. 8-10; contrast v. 11). But at
this point the scanty annals are suspended and the history of the age is
given in more popular sources. Both Israel and Judah had their own
annals, brief excerpts from which appear in the books of Samuel, Kings
and Chronicles, and they are supplemented by fuller narratives of
distinct and more popular origin. The writings are the result of a
continued literary process, and the Israelite national history has come
down to us through Judaean hands, with the result that much of it has
been coloured by late Judaean feeling. It is precisely in Saul's time
that the account of the Judaean monarchy, or perhaps of the monarchy
from the Judaean standpoint, now begins.
7. _The Monarchy of Judah._--Certain traditions of Judah and Jerusalem
appear to have looked back upon a movement from the south, traces of
which underlie the present account of the "exodus." The land was full of
"sons of Anak," giants who had terrified the scouts sent from Kadesh.
Caleb (q.v.) alone had distinguished himself by his fearlessness, and
the clan Caleb drove them out from Hebron in south Judah (Josh. xv. 14
sqq.; cf. also xi. 21 seq.). David and his followers are found in the
south of Hebron, and as they advanced northwards they encountered
wondrous heroes between Gath and Jerusalem (2 Sam. xxi. 15 sqq.; xxiii.
8 sqq.). After strenuous fighting the district was cleared, and
Jerusalem, taken by the sword, became the capital. History saw in David
the head of a lengthy line of kings, the founder of the Judaean
monarchy, the psalmist and the priest-king who inaugurated religious
institutions now recognized to be of a distinctly later character. As a
result of this backward projection of later conceptions, the recovery of
the true historical nucleus is difficult. The prominence of Jerusalem,
the centre of post-exilic Judaism, necessarily invited reflection.
Israelite tradition had ascribed the conquest of Jerusalem, Hebron and
other cities of Judah to the Ephraimite Joshua; Judaean tradition, on
the other hand, relates the capture of the sacred city from a strange
and hostile people (2 Sam. v.). The famous city, within easy reach of
the southern desert and central Palestine (to Hebron and to Samaria the
distances are about 18 and 35 miles respectively), had already entered
into Palestinian history in the "Amarna" age (§ 3). Anathoth, a few
miles to the north-east, points to the cult of the goddess Anath, the
near-lying Nob has suggested the name of the Babylonian Nebo, and the
neighbouring, though unidentified, Beth-Ninib of the Amarna tablets may
indicate the worship of a Babylonian war and astral god (cf. the solar
name Beth-Shemesh). Such was the religious environment of the ancient
city which was destined to become the centre of Judaism. Judaean
tradition dated the sanctity of Jerusalem from the installation of the
ark, a sacred movable object which symbolized the presence of Yahweh. It
is associated with the half-nomad clans in the south of Palestine, or
with the wanderings of David and his own priest Abiathar; it is
ultimately placed within the newly captured city. Quite another body of
tradition associates it with the invasion of all the tribes of Israel
from beyond the Jordan (see ARK). To combine the heterogeneous
narratives and isolated statements into a consecutive account is
impossible; to ignore those which conflict with the now predominating
views would be unmethodical. When the narratives describe the life of
the young David at the court of the first king of the northern kingdom,
when the scenes cover the district which he took with the sword, and
when the brave Saul is represented in an unfavourable light, one must
allow for the popular tendency to idealize great figures, and for the
Judaean origin of the compilation. To David is ascribed the sovereignty
over a united people. But the stages in his progress are not clear.
After being the popular favourite of Israel in the little district of
Benjamin, he was driven away by the jealousy and animosity of Saul.
Gradually strengthening his position by alliance with Judaean clans, he
became king at Hebron at the time when Israel suffered defeat in the
north. His subsequent advance to the kingship over Judah and Israel at
Jerusalem is represented as due to the weak condition of Israel,
facilitated by the compliance of Abner; partly, also, to the
long-expressed wish of the Israelites that their old hero should reign
over them. Yet again, Saul had been chosen by Yahweh to free his people
from the Philistines; he had been rejected for his sins, and had
suffered continuously from this enemy; Israel at his death was left in
the unhappy state in which he had found it; it was the Judaean David,
the faithful servant of Yahweh, who was now chosen to deliver Israel,
and to the last the people gratefully remembered their debt. David
accomplished the conquests of Saul but on a grander scale; "Saul hath
slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands" is the popular
couplet comparing the relative merits of the rival dynasts. A series of
campaigns against Edom, Moab, Ammon and the Aramaean states, friendly
relations with Hiram of Tyre, and the recognition of his sovereignty by
the king of Hamath on the Orontes, combine to portray a monarchy which
was the ideal.
But in passing from the books of Samuel, with their many rich and vivid
narratives, to the books of Kings, we enter upon another phase of
literature; it is a different atmosphere, due to the character of the
material and the aims of other compilers (see § 9 beginning). David, the
conqueror, was followed by his son Solomon, famous for his wealth,
wisdom and piety, above all for the magnificent Temple which he built at
Jerusalem. Phoenician artificers were enlisted for the purpose, and with
Phoenician sailors successful trading-journeys were regularly
undertaken. Commercial intercourse with Asia Minor, Arabia, Tarshish
(probably in Spain) and Ophir (q.v.) filled his coffers, and his realm
extended from the Euphrates to the border of Egypt. Tradition depicts
him as a worthy successor to his father, and represents a state of
luxury and riches impressive to all who were familiar with the great
Oriental courts. The commercial activity of the king and the picture of
intercourse and wealth are quite in accordance with what is known of the
ancient monarchies, and could already be illustrated from the Amarna
age. Judah and Israel dwelt at ease, or held the superior position of
military officials, while the earlier inhabitants of the land were put
to forced labour. But another side of the picture shows the domestic
intrigues which darkened the last days of David. The accession of
Solomon had not been without bloodshed, and Judah, together with David's
old general Joab and his faithful priest Abiathar, were opposed to the
son of a woman who had been the wife of a Hittite warrior. The era of
the Temple of Jerusalem starts with a new régime, another captain of the
army and another priest. Nevertheless, the enmity of Judah is passed
over, and when the kingdom is divided for administrative purposes into
twelve districts, which ignore the tribal divisions, the centre of
David's early power is exempt from the duty of providing supplies (1
Kings iv.). Yet again, the approach of the divided monarchy is
foreshadowed. The employment of Judaeans and Israelites for Solomon's
palatial buildings, and the heavy taxation for the upkeep of a court
which was the wonder of the world, caused grave internal discontent.
External relations, too, were unsatisfactory. The Edomites, who had been
almost extirpated by David in the valley of Salt, south of the Dead Sea,
were now strong enough to seek revenge; and the powerful kingdom of
Damascus, whose foundation is ascribed to this period, began to threaten
Israel on the north and north-east. These troubles, we learn, had
affected all Solomon's reign, and even Hiram appears to have acquired a
portion of Galilee. In the approaching disruption writers saw the
punishment for the king's apostasy, and they condemn the sanctuaries in
Jerusalem which he erected to the gods of his heathen wives.
Nevertheless, these places of cult remained some 300 years until almost
the close of the monarchy, when their destruction is attributed to
Josiah (§ 16). When at length Solomon died the opportunity was at once
seized to request from his son Rehoboam a more generous treatment. The
reply is memorable: "My little finger is thicker than my father's loins;
my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with
scorpions." These words were calculated to inflame a people whom history
proves to have been haughty and high-spirited, and the great Israel
renounced its union with the small district of Judah. Jeroboam (q.v.),
once one of Solomon's officers, became king over the north, and thus the
history of the divided monarchy begins (about 930 B.C.) with the
Israelite power on both sides of the Jordan and with Judah extending
southwards from a point a few miles north of Jerusalem.
8. _Problems of the Earliest History._--Biblical history previous to
the separation of Judah and Israel holds a prominent place in current
ideas, since over two-fifths of the entire Old Testament deals with
these early ages. The historical sources for the crucial period, from
the separation to the fall of Jerusalem (586 B.C.), occupy only about
one-twelfth, and even of this about one-third is spread over some
fifteen years (see below, § 11). From the flourishing days of the
later monarchy and onwards, different writers handled the early
history of their land from different standpoints. The feeling of
national unity between north and south would require historical
treatment, the existence of rival monarchies would demand an
explanation. But the surviving material is extremely uneven; vital
events in these centuries are treated with a slightness in striking
contrast to the relatively detailed evidence for the preceding
period--evidence, however, which is far from being contemporary. Where
the material is fuller, serious discrepancies are found; and where
external evidence is fortunately available, the independent character
of the biblical history is vividly illustrated. The varied traditions
up to this stage cannot be regarded as objective history. It is
naturally impossible to treat them from any modern standpoint as
fiction; they are honest even where they are most untrustworthy. But
the recovery of successive historical nuclei does not furnish a
continuous thread, and if one is to be guided by the historical
context of events the true background to each nucleus must be sought.
The northern kingdom cherished the institution of a monarchy, and in
this, as in all great political events, the prophets took part. The
precise part these figures play is often idealized and expresses the
later views of their prominence. It was only after a bitter experience
that the kingship was no longer regarded as a divine gift, and
traditions have been revised in order to illustrate the opposition to
secular authority. In this and in many other respects the records of
the first monarchy have been elaborated and now reveal traces of
differing conceptions of the events (see DAN; DAVID; ELI; SAMUEL;
SAUL; SOLOMON). The oldest narratives are not in their original
contexts, and they contain features which render it questionable
whether a very trustworthy recollection of the period was retained.
Although the rise of the Hebrew state, at an age when the great powers
were quiescent and when such a people as the Philistines is known to
have appeared upon the scene, is entirely intelligible, it is not
improbable that legends of Saul and David, the heroic founders of the
two kingdoms, have been put in a historical setting with the help of
later historical tradition. It is at least necessary to distinguish
provisionally between a possibly historical framework and narratives
which may be of later growth--between the general outlines which only
external evidence can test and details which cannot be tested and
appear isolated without any cause or devoid of any effect.
Many attempts have been made to present a satisfactory sketch of the
early history and to do justice to (a) the patriarchal narratives,
(b) the exodus from Egypt and the Israelite invasion, and (c) the
rise of the monarchy. As regards (b), external evidence has already
suggested to scholars that there were Israelites in Palestine before
the invasion; internal historical criticism is against the view that
all the tribes entered under Joshua; and in (a) there are traces of an
actual settlement in the land, entirely distinct from the cycle of
narratives which prepare the way for (b). The various reconstructions
and compromises by modern apologetic and critical writers alike
involve without exception an extremely free treatment of the biblical
sources and the rejection of many important and circumstantial
data.[11] On the one hand, a sweeping invasion of all the tribes of
Israel moved by a common zeal may, like the conquests of Islam, have
produced permanent results. According to this view the enervating
luxury of Palestinian culture almost destroyed the lofty ideal
monotheism inculcated in the desert, and after the fall of the
northern tribes (latter part of the 8th cent.) Judah is naturally
regarded as the sole heir. But such a conquest, and all that it
signifies, conflict both with external evidence (e.g. the results of
excavation), and with any careful inspection of the narratives
themselves. On the other hand, the reconstructions which allow a
gradual settlement (perhaps of distinct groups), and an intermingling
with the earlier inhabitants, certainly find support in biblical
evidence, and they have been ingeniously built up with the help of
tribal and other data (e.g. Gen. xxxiv., xxxviii.; Judg. i. ix.). But
they imply political, sociological and religious developments which do
not do justice either to the biblical evidence as a whole or to a
comprehensive survey of contemporary conditions.[12] Thus, one of the
important questions is the relation between those who had taken part
in the exodus and the invasion and those who had not. This inquiry is
further complicated by (c), where the history of Israel and Judah, as
related in Judges and 1 Samuel, has caused endless perplexity. The
traditions of the Ephraimite Joshua and of Saul the first king of
(north) Israel virtually treat Judah as part of Israel and are related
to the underlying representations in (a). But the specific independent
Judaean standpoint treats the unification of the two divisions as the
work of David who leaves the heritage to Solomon. The varied
narratives, now due to Judaean editors, preserve distinct points of
view, and it is extremely difficult to unravel the threads and to
determine their relative position in the history. Finally, the
consciousness that the people as a religious body owed everything to
the desert clans (b) (see § 5) subsequently leaves its mark upon
(north) Israelite history (§ 14), but has not the profound
significance which it has in the records of Judah and Jerusalem.
Without sufficient external and independent evidence wherewith to
interpret in the light of history the internal features of the
intricate narratives, any reconstruction would naturally be hazardous,
and all attempts must invariably be considered in the light of the
biblical evidence itself, the date of the Israelite exodus, and the
external conditions. Biblical criticism is concerned with a composite
(Judaean) history based upon other histories (partly of non-Judaean
origin), and the relation between native written sources and external
contemporary evidence (monumental and archaeological) distinctly
forbids any haphazard selection from accessible sources. The true
nature of this relation can be readily observed in other fields
(ancient Britain, Greece, Egypt, &c.), where, however, the native
documents and sources have not that complexity which characterizes the
composite biblical history. (For the period under review, as it
appears in the light of existing external evidence, see PALESTINE:
_History_.)
9. _The Rival Kingdoms._--The Palestine of the Hebrews was but part of a
great area breathing the same atmosphere, and there was little to
distinguish Judah from Israel except when they were distinct political
entities. The history of the two kingdoms is contained in Kings and the
later and relatively less trustworthy Chronicles, which deals with Judah
alone. In the former a separate history of the northern kingdom has been
combined with Judaean history by means of synchronisms in accordance
with a definite scheme. The 480 years from the foundation of the temple
of Jerusalem back to the date of the exodus (1 Kings vi. 1) corresponds
to the period forward to the return from the exile (§ 20). This falls
into three equal divisions, of which the first ends with Jehoash's
temple-reforms and the second with Hezekiah's death. The kingdom of
Israel lasts exactly half the time. Of the 240 years from Jeroboam I.,
80 elapse before the Syrian wars in Ahab's reign, these cover another
80; the famous king Jeroboam II. reigns 40 years, and 40 years of
decline bring the kingdom to an end. These figures speak for themselves,
and the present chronology can be accepted only where it is
independently proved to be trustworthy (see further W. R. Smith,
_Prophets of Israel_, pp. 144-149). Next, the Judaean compiler regularly
finds in Israel's troubles the punishment for its schismatic idolatry;
nor does he spare Judah, but judges its kings by a standard which agrees
with the standpoint of Deuteronomy and is scarcely earlier than the end
of the 7th century B.C. (§§ 16, 20). But the history of (north) Israel
had naturally its own independent political backgrounds and the literary
sources contain the same internal features as the annals and prophetic
narratives which are already met with in 1 Samuel. Similarly the thread
of the Judaean annals in Kings is also found in 2 Samuel, although the
supplementary narratives in Kings are not so rich or varied as the more
popular records in the preceding books. The striking differences between
Samuel and Kings are due to differences in the writing of the history;
independent Israelite records having been incorporated with those of
Judah and supplemented (with revision) from the Judaean standpoint (see
CHRONICLES; KINGS; SAMUEL).
The Judaean compiler, with his history of the two kingdoms, looks back
upon the time when each laid the foundation of its subsequent fortunes.
His small kingdom of Judah enjoyed an unbroken dynasty which survived
the most serious crises, a temple which grew in splendour and wealth
under royal patronage, and a legitimate priesthood which owed its origin
to Zadok, the successful rival of David's priest Abiathar. Israel, on
the other hand, had signed its death-warrant by the institution of
calf-cult, a cult which, however, was scarcely recognized as contrary to
the worship of Yahweh before the denunciations of Hosea. The scantiness
of political information and the distinctive arrangement of material
preclude the attempt to trace the relative position of the two rivals.
Judah had natural connexions with Edom and southern Palestine; Israel
was more closely associated with Gilead and the Aramaeans of the north.
That Israel was the stronger may be suggested by the acquiescence of
Judah in the new situation. A diversion was caused by Shishak's
invasion, but of this reappearance of Egypt after nearly three centuries
of inactivity little is preserved in biblical history. Only the Temple
records recall the spoliation of the sanctuary of Jerusalem, and
traditions of Jeroboam I. show that Shishak's prominence was well
known.[13] Although both kingdoms suffered, common misfortune did not
throw them together. On the contrary, the statement that there was
continual warfare is supplemented in Chronicles by the story of a
victory over Israel by Abijah the son of Rehoboam. Jeroboam's son Nadab
perished in a conspiracy whilst besieging the Philistine city of
Gibbethon, and Baasha of (north) Israel seized the throne. His reign is
noteworthy for the entrance of Damascus into Palestinian politics. Its
natural fertility and its commanding position at the meeting-place of
trade-routes from every quarter made it a dominant factor until its
overthrow. In the absence of its native records its relations with
Palestine are not always clear, but it may be supposed that amid varying
political changes it was able to play a double game. According to the
annals, incessant war prevailed between Baasha and Abijah's successor,
Asa. It is understood that the former was in league with Damascus, which
had once been hostile to Solomon (1 Kings xi. 24 seq.)--it is not stated
upon whom Asa could rely. However, Baasha at length seized Ramah about
five miles north of Jerusalem, and the very existence of Judah was
threatened. Asa utilized the treasure of the Temple and palace to induce
the Syrians to break off their relations with Baasha. These sent troops
to harry north Israel, and Baasha was compelled to retire. Asa, it is
evident, was too weak to achieve the remarkable victory ascribed to him
in 2 Chron. xiv. (see ASA). As for Baasha, his short-lived dynasty
resembles that of his predecessors. His son Elah had reigned only two
years (like Ishbaal and Nadab) when he was slain in the midst of a
drunken carousal by his captain Zimri. Meanwhile the Israelite army was
again besieging the Philistines at Gibbethon, and the recurrence of
these conflicts points to a critical situation in a Danite locality in
which Judah itself (although ignored by the writers), must have been
vitally concerned. The army preferred their general Omri, and marching
upon Zimri at Tirzah burnt the palace over his head. A fresh rival
immediately appeared, the otherwise unknown Tibni, son of Ginath. Israel
was divided into two camps, until, on the death of Tibni and his brother
Joram, Omri became sole king (c. 887 B.C.). The scanty details of these
important events must naturally be contrasted with the comparatively
full accounts of earlier Philistine wars and internal conflicts in
narratives which date from this or even a later age.
10. _The Dynasty of Omri._--Omri (q.v.), the founder of one of the
greatest dynasties of Israel, was contemporary with the revival of Tyre
under Ithobaal, and the relationship between the states is seen in the
marriage of Omri's son Ahab to Jezebel, the priest-king's daughter. His
most notable recorded achievement was the subjugation of Moab and the
seizure of part of its territory. The discovery of the inscription of a
later king of Moab (q.v.) has proved that the east-Jordanic tribes were
no uncivilized or barbaric folk; material wealth, a considerable
religious and political organization, and the cultivation of letters (as
exemplified in the style of the inscription) portray conditions which
allow us to form some conception of life in Israel itself. Moreover,
Judah (now under Jehoshaphat) enjoyed intimate relations with Israel
during Omri's dynasty, and the traditions of intermarriage, and of
co-operation in commerce and war, imply what was practically a united
Palestine. Alliance with Phoenicia gave the impulse to extended
intercourse; trading expeditions were undertaken from the Gulf of Akaba,
and Ahab built himself a palace decorated with ivory. The cult of the
Baal of Tyre followed Jezebel to the royal city Samaria and even found
its way into Jerusalem. This, the natural result of matrimonial and
political alliance, already met with under Solomon, receives the usual
denunciation. The conflict between Yahweh and Baal and the defeat of the
latter are the characteristic notes of the religious history of the
period, and they leave their impression upon the records, which are now
more abundant. Although little is preserved of Omri's history, the fact
that the northern kingdom long continued to be called by the Assyrians
after his name is a significant indication of his great reputation.
Assyria[14] was now making itself felt in the west for the first time
since the days of Tiglath-Pileser I. (c. 1100 B.C.), and external
sources come to our aid. Assur-nazir-pal III. had exacted tribute from
north Syria (c. 870 B.C.), and his successor Shalmaneser II., in the
course of a series of expeditions, succeeded in gaining the greater part
of that land. A defensive coalition was formed in which the kings of
Cilicia, Hamath, the Phoenician coast, Damascus and Ammon, the Arabs of
the Syrian desert, and "Ahabbu Sirlai" were concerned. In the last, we
must recognize the Israelite Ahab. His own contribution of 10,000 men
and 12,000 chariots perhaps included levies from Judah and Moab (cf. for
the number 1 Kings x. 26). In 854 the allies at least maintained
themselves at the battle of Karkar (perhaps Apamea to the north of
Hamath). In 849 and 846 other indecisive battles were fought, but the
precise constitution of the coalition is not recorded. In 842
Shalmaneser records a campaign against Hazael of Damascus; no coalition
is mentioned, although a battle was fought at Sanir (Hermon, Deut. iii.
9), and the cities of Hauran to the south of Damascus were spoiled.
Tribute was received from Tyre and Sidon; and Jehu, who was now king of
Israel, sent his gifts of gold, silver, &c., to the conqueror. The
Assyrian inscription (the so-called "Black Obelisk" now in the British
Museum), which records the submission of the petty kings, gives an
interesting representation of the humble Israelite emissaries with their
long fringed robes and strongly marked physiognomy (see COSTUME, fig.
9). Yet another expedition in 839 would seem to show that Damascus was
neither crushed nor helpless, but thenceforth for a number of years
Assyria was fully occupied elsewhere and the west was left to itself.
The value of this external evidence for the history of Israel is
enhanced by the fact that biblical tradition associates the changes in
the thrones of Israel and Damascus with the work of the prophets Elijah
and Elisha, but handles the period without a single reference to the
Assyrian Empire. Ahab, it seems, had aroused popular resentment by
encroaching upon the rights of the people to their landed possessions;
had it not been for Jezebel (q.v.) the tragedy of Naboth would not have
occurred. The worship of Baal of Tyre roused a small circle of zealots,
and again the Phoenician marriage was the cause of the evil. We read the
history from the point of view of prophets. Elijah of Gilead led the
revolt. To one who favoured simplicity of cult the new worship was a
desecration of Yahweh, and, braving the anger of the king and queen, he
foreshadowed their fate. Hostility towards the dynasty culminated a few
years later in a conspiracy which placed on the throne the general Jehu,
the son of one Jehoshaphat (or, otherwise, of Nimshi). The work which
Elijah began was completed by Elisha, who supported Jehu and the new
dynasty. A massacre ensued in which the royal families of Israel and
Judah perished. While the extirpation of the cult of Baal was furthered
in Israel by Jonadab the Rechabite, it was the "people of the land" who
undertook a similar reform in Judah. Jehu (q.v.) became king as the
champion of the purer worship of Yahweh. The descendants of the detested
Phoenician marriage were rooted out, and unless the close intercourse
between Israel and Judah had been suddenly broken, it would be supposed
that the new king at least laid claim to the south. The events form one
of the fundamental problems of biblical history.
11. _Damascus, Israel and Judah._--The appearance of Assyria in the
Mediterranean coast-lands had produced the results which inevitably
follow when a great empire comes into contact with minor states. It
awakened fresh possibilities--successful combination against a common
foe, the sinking of petty rivalries, the chance of gaining favour by a
neutrality which was scarcely benevolent. The alliances,
counter-alliances and far-reaching political combinations which spring
up at every advance of the greater powers are often perplexing in the
absence of records of the states concerned. Even the biblical traditions
alone do not always represent the same attitude, and our present sources
preserve the work of several hands. Hazael of Damascus, Jehu of Israel
and Elisha the prophet are the three men of the new age linked together
in the words of one writer as though commissioned for like ends (1 Kings
xix. 15-17). Hostility to Phoenicia (i.e. the Baal of Tyre) is as
intelligible as a tendency to look to Aramaean neighbours. Though Elisha
sent to anoint Jehu as king, he was none the less on most intimate terms
with Bar-hadad (Old. Test. Ben-hadad) of Damascus and recognized Hazael
as its future ruler. It is a natural assumption that Damascus could
still count upon Israel as an ally in 842; not until the withdrawal of
Assyria and the accession of Jehu did the situation change. "In those
days Yahweh began to cut short" (or, altering the text, "to be angry
with") "Israel." This brief notice heralds the commencement of Hazael's
attack upon Israelite territory east of the Jordan (2 Kings x. 32). The
origin of the outbreak is uncertain. It has been assumed that Israel had
withdrawn from the great coalition, that Jehu sent tribute to
Shalmaneser to obtain that monarch's recognition, and that Hazael
consequently seized the first opportunity to retaliate. Certain
traditions, it is true, indicate that Israel had been at war with the
Aramaeans from before 854 to 842, and that Hazael was attacking Gilead
at the time when Jehu revolted; but in the midst of these are other
traditions of the close and friendly relations between Israel and
Damascus! With these perplexing data the position of Judah is
inextricably involved.
The special points which have to be noticed in the records for this
brief period (1 Kings xvii.-2 Kings xi.) concern both literary and
historical criticism.[15] A number of narratives illustrate the work
of the prophets, and sometimes purely political records appear to have
been used for the purpose (see ELIJAH; ELISHA). If Elijah is the
prophet of the fall of Omri's dynasty, Elisha is no less the prophet
of Jehu and his successors; and it is extremely probable that his
lifework was confined to the dynasty which he inaugurated.[16] In the
present narratives, however, the stories in which he possesses
influence with king and court are placed before the rise of Jehu, and
some of them point to a state of hostility with Damascus before he
foresees the atrocities which Hazael will perpetrate. But Ahab's wars
with Syria can with difficulty be reconciled with the Assyrian
evidence (see AHAB), and the narratives, largely anonymous, agree in a
singular manner with what is known of the serious conflicts which, it
is said, began in Jehu's time. Moreover, the account of the joint
undertaking by Judah (under Jehoshaphat) and Israel against Syria at
Ramoth-Gilead at the time of Ahab's death, and again (under Ahaziah)
when Jehoram was wounded, shortly before the accession of Jehu, are
historical doublets, and they can hardly be harmonized either with the
known events of 854 and 842 or with the course of the intervening
years. Further, all the traditions point clearly to the very close
union of Israel and Judah at this period, a union which is apt to be
obscured by the fact that the annalistic summaries of each kingdom are
mainly independent. Thus we may contrast the favourable Judaean view
of Jehoshaphat with the condemnation passed upon Ahab and Jezebel,
whose daughter Athaliah married Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat. It is
noteworthy, also, that an Ahaziah and a Jehoram appear as kings of
Israel, and (in the reverse order) of Judah, and somewhat similar
incidents recur in the now separate histories of the two kingdoms. The
most striking is a great revolt in south Palestine. The alliance
between Jehoshaphat and Ahab doubtless continued when the latter was
succeeded by his son Ahaziah, and some disaster befell their trading
fleet in the Gulf of Akaba (1 Kings xxii. 48 seq.; 2 Chron. xx.
35-37). Next came the revolt of Moab (2 Kings i. 1), and Ahaziah,
after the briefest of reigns, was followed by Jehoram, whose Judaean
contemporary was Jehoshaphat (ch. iii.), or perhaps rather his own
namesake (i. 17). The popular story of Jehoram's campaign against
Moab, with which Edom was probably allied (see MOAB), hints at a
disastrous ending, and the Judaean annals, in their turn, record the
revolt of Edom and the Philistine Libnah (see PHILISTINES), and allude
obscurely to a defeat of the Judaean Jehoram (2 Kings viii. 20-22).
Further details in 2 Chron. xxi.-xxii. 1 even record an invasion of
Philistines and Arabians (? Edomites), an attack upon Jerusalem, the
removal of the palace treasures and of all the royal sons with the
sole exception of Jehoahaz, i.e. Ahaziah (see JEHORAM; JEHOSHAPHAT).
Had the two kingdoms been under a single head, these features might
find an explanation, but it must be allowed that it is extremely
difficult to fit the general situation into our present history, and
to determine where the line is to be drawn between trustworthy and
untrustworthy details. Moreover, of the various accounts of the
massacre of the princes of Judah, the Judaean ascribes it not to Jehu
and the reforming party (2 Kings x. 13 seq.) but to Athaliah (q.v.).
Only the babe Jehoash was saved, and he remained hidden in the Temple
adjoining the palace itself. The queen, Athaliah, despite the weak
state of Judah after the revolt in Philistia and Edom, actually
appears to have maintained herself for six years, until the priests
slew her in a conspiracy, overthrew the cult of Baal, and crowned the
young child. It is a new source which is here suddenly introduced,
belonging apparently to a history of the Temple; it throws no light
upon the relations between Judah with its priests and Israel with its
prophets, the circumstances of the regency under the priest Jehoiada
are ignored, and the Temple reforms occupy the first place in the
compiler's interest. The Judaean annals then relate Hazael's advance
to Gath; the city was captured and Jerusalem was saved only by using
the Temple and palace treasure as a bribe. On the other hand,
Chronicles has a different story with a novel prelude. Jehoash, it is
said, turned away from Yahweh after the death of Jehoiada and gave
heed to the Judaean nobles, "wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for
their guilt," prophets were sent to bring them back but they turned a
deaf ear. The climax of iniquity was the murder of Jehoiada's son
Zechariah. Soon after, a small band of Syrians entered Judah,
destroyed its princes, and sent the spoil to the king of Damascus; the
disaster is regarded as a prompt retribution (2 Chron. xxiv.). The
inferiority of Chronicles as a historical source and its varied
examples of "tendency-writing" must be set against its possible access
to traditions as trustworthy as those in Kings.[17] In the present
instance the novel details cannot be lightly brushed aside. The
position of Judah at this period must be estimated (a) from the
preceding years of intimate relationship with Israel to the accession
of Jehu, and (b) from the calamity about half a century later when
Jerusalem was sacked by Israel. The Judaean narratives do not allow us
to fill the gap or to determine whether Judaean policy under the
regent Jehoiada would be friendly or hostile to Israel, or whether
Judaean nobles may have severed the earlier bond of union. If the
latter actually occurred, the hostility of the Israelite prophets is
only to be expected. But it is to be presumed that the punishment came
from Israel--the use of Syrian mercenaries not excluded--and if,
instead of using his treasure to ward off the invasion of Syria,
Jehoash bribed Damascus to break off relations with Israel, an
alternative explanation of the origin of the Aramaean wars may be
found.[18]
12. _The Aramaean Wars._--If the records leave it uncertain (a) whether
Jehu (like Tyre and Sidon) sent tribute to Shalmaneser as a sign of
submission or, while severing relations with Hazael, sought the favour
of Assyria, and (b) whether Judah only escaped Hazael's vengeance by a
timely bribe or, in freeing itself from Israel, had bribed Hazael to
create a diversion, it appears that the southern kingdom suffered little
in the disastrous wars between Damascus and Israel. There were, indeed,
internal troubles, and Jehoash perished in a conspiracy. His son Amaziah
had some difficulty in gaining the kingdom and showed unwonted leniency
in sparing the children of his father's murderers. This was a departure
from the customs of the age, and was perhaps influenced less by
generosity than by expediency. Israel, on the other hand, was almost
annihilated. The Syrians seized Gilead, crossed over into Palestine, and
occupied the land. Jehu's son Jehoahaz saw his army made "like the dust
in threshing," and the desperate condition of the country recalls the
straits in the time of Saul (1 Sam. xiii. 6, 7, 19-22), and the days
before the great overthrow of the northern power as described in Judges
v. 6-8. The impression left by the horrors of the age is clear from the
allusions to the barbarities committed by Damascus and its Ammonite
allies upon Gilead (Amos i. 3, 13), and in the account of the interview
between Elisha and Hazael (2 Kings viii. 12). Several of the situations
can be more vividly realized from the narratives of Syrian wars ascribed
to the time of Omri's dynasty, even if these did not originally refer to
the later period. Under Joash, son of Jehoahaz, the tide turned. Elisha
was apparently the champion, and posterity told of his exploits when
Samaria was visited with the sword. Thrice Joash smote the Syrians--in
accordance with the last words of the dying prophet--and Aphek in the
Sharon plain, famous in history for Israel's disasters, now witnessed
three victories. The enemy under Hazael's son Ben-hadad (properly
Bar-hadad) was driven out and Joash regained the territory which his
father had lost (2 Kings xiii. 25); it may reasonably be supposed that a
treaty was concluded (cf. 1 Kings xx. 34). But the peace does not seem
to have been popular. The story of the last scene in Elisha's life
implies in Joash an easily contented disposition which hindered him from
completing his successes. Syria had not been crushed, and the failure to
utilize the opportunity was an act of impolitic leniency for which
Israel was bound to suffer (2 Kings xiii. 19). Elisha's indignation can
be illustrated by the denunciation passed upon an anonymous king by the
prophetic party on a similar occasion (1 Kings xx. 35-43).
At this stage it is necessary to notice the fresh invasion of Syria by
Hadad (Adad)-nirari, who besieged Mari, king of Damascus, and exacted a
heavy tribute (c. 800 B.C.). A diversion of this kind may explain the
Israelite victories; the subsequent withdrawal of Assyria may have
afforded the occasion for retaliation. Those in Israel who remembered
the previous war between Assyria and Damascus would realize the
recuperative power of the latter, and would perceive the danger of the
short-sighted policy of Joash. It is interesting to find that
Hadad-nirari claims tribute from Tyre, Sidon and Beth-Omri (Israel),
also from Edom and Palastu (Philistia). There are no signs of an
extensive coalition as in the days of Shalmaneser; Ammon is probably
included under Damascus; the position of Moab--which had freed itself
from Jehoram of Israel--can hardly be calculated. But the absence of
Judah is surprising. Both Jehoash (of Judah) and his son Amaziah left
behind them a great name; and the latter was comparable only to David (2
Kings xiv. 3). He defeated Edom in the Valley of Salt, and hence it is
conceivable that Amaziah's kingdom extended over both Edom and
Philistia. A vaunting challenge to Joash (of Israel) gave rise to one of
the two fables that are preserved in the Old Testament (Judg. ix. 8
sqq.; see ABIMELECH). It was followed by a battle at Beth-shemesh; the
scene would suggest that Philistia also was involved. The result was the
route of Judah, the capture of Amaziah, the destruction of the northern
wall of Jerusalem, the sacking of the temple and palace, and the removal
of hostages to Samaria (2 Kings xiv. 12 sqq.). Only a few words are
preserved, but the details, when carefully weighed, are extremely
significant. This momentous event for the southern kingdom was scarcely
the outcome of a challenge to a trial of strength; it was rather the
sequel to a period of smouldering jealousy and hostility.
The Judaean records have obscured the history since the days of Omri's
dynasty, when Israel and Judah were as one, when they were moved by
common aims and by a single reforming zeal, and only Israel's
vengeance gives the measure of the injuries she had received. That the
Judaean compiler has not given fuller information is not surprising;
the wonder is that he should have given so much. It is one of those
epoch-making facts in the light of which the course of the history of
the preceding and following years must be estimated. It is taken,
strangely enough, from an Israelite source, but the tone of the whole
is quite dispassionate and objective. It needs little reflection to
perceive that the position of Jerusalem and Judah was now hardly one
of independence, and the conflicting chronological notices betray the
attempt to maintain intact the thread of Judaean history. So, on the
one hand, the year of the disaster sees the death of the Israelite
king, and Amaziah survives for fifteen years, while, on the other,
twenty-seven years elapse between the battle and the accession of
Uzziah, the next king of Judah.[19]
The importance of the historical questions regarding relations between
Damascus, Israel and Judah is clear. The defeat of Syria by Joash (of
Israel) was not final. The decisive victories were gained by Jeroboam
II. He saved Israel from being blotted out, and through his successes
"the children of Israel dwelt in their tents as of old" (2 Kings xiii.
5, xiv. 26 seq.). Syria must have resumed warfare with redoubled
energy, and a state of affairs is presupposed which can be pictured
with the help of narratives that deal with similar historical
situations. In particular, the overthrow of Israel as foreshadowed in
1 Kings xxii. implies an Aramaean invasion (cf. vv. 17, 25), after a
treaty (xx. 35 sqq.), although this can scarcely be justified by the
events which followed the death of Ahab, in whose time they are now
placed.
For the understanding of these great wars between Syria and Israel
(which the traditional chronology spreads over eighty years), for the
significance of the crushing defeats and inspiring victories, and for
the alternations of despair and hope, a careful study of all the
records of relations between Israel and the north is at least
instructive, and it is important to remember that, although the
present historical outlines are scanty and incomplete, some--if not
all--of the analogous descriptions in their present form are certainly
later than the second half of the 9th century B.C., the period in
which these great events fall.[20]
13. _Political Development._--Under Jeroboam II. the borders of Israel
were restored, and in this political revival the prophets again took
part.[21] The defeat of Ben-hadad by the king of Hamath and the
quiescence of Assyria may have encouraged Israelite ambitions, but until
more is known of the campaigns of Hadad-nirari and of Shalmaneser III.
(against Damascus, 773 B.C.) the situation cannot be safely gauged. Moab
was probably tributary; the position of Judah and Edom is involved with
the chronological problems. According to the Judaean annals, the "people
of Judah" set Azariah (Uzziah) upon his father's throne; and to his long
reign of fifty-two years are ascribed conquests over Philistia and Edom,
the fortification of Jerusalem and the reorganization of the army. As
the relations with Israel are not specified, the sequel to Amaziah's
defeat is a matter for conjecture; although, when at the death of
Jeroboam Israel hastened to its end amid anarchy and dissension, it is
hardly likely that the southern kingdom was unmoved. All that can be
recognized from the biblical records, however, is the period of internal
prosperity which Israel and Judah enjoyed under Jeroboam and Uzziah
(qq.v.) respectively.
It is difficult to trace the biblical history century by century as it
reaches these last years of bitter conflict and of renewed prosperity.
The northern kingdom at the height of its power included Judah, it
extended its territory east of the Jordan towards the north and the
south, and maintained close relations with Phoenicia and the Aramaean
states. It had a national history which left its impress upon the
popular imagination, and sundry fragments of tradition reveal the pride
which the patriot felt in the past. An original close connexion is felt
with the east of the Jordan and with Gilead; stories of invasion and
conquest express themselves in varied forms. In so far as internal
wealth and luxury presuppose the control of the trade-routes, periodical
alliances are implied in which Judah, willingly or unwillingly, was
included. But the Judaean records do not allow us to trace its
independent history with confidence, and our estimate can scarcely base
itself solely upon the accidental fulness or scantiness of political
details. In the subsequent disasters of Israel (§ 15) we may perceive
the growing supremacy of Judah, and the Assyrian inscriptions clearly
indicate the dependence of Judaean politics upon its relations with Edom
and Arab tribes on the south-east and with Philistia on the west.
Whatever had been the effect of the movement of the Purasati some
centuries previously, the Philistines (i.e. the people of Philistia) are
now found in possession of a mature organization, and the Assyrian
evidence is of considerable value for an estimate of the stories of
conflict and covenant, of hostility and friendship, which were current
in south Palestine. The extension of the term "Judah" (cf. that of
"Israel" and "Samaria") is involved with the incorporation of
non-Judaean elements. The country for ten miles north of Jerusalem was
the exposed and highly debatable district ascribed to the young tribe of
Benjamin (the favourite "brother" of both Judah and Joseph; Gen.
xxxvii., xxxix. sqq.); the border-line between the rival kingdoms
oscillated, and consequently the political position of the smaller and
half-desert Judaean state depended upon the attitude of its neighbours.
It is possible that tradition is right in supposing that "Judah went
down from his brethren" (Gen. xxxviii. 1; cf. Judg. i. 3). Its monarchy
traced its origin to Hebron in the south, and its growth is contemporary
with a decline in Israel (§ 7). It is at least probable that when Israel
was supreme an independent Judah would centre around a more southerly
site than Jerusalem. It is naturally uncertain how far the traditions of
David can be utilized; but they illustrate Judaean situations when they
depict intrigues with Israelite officials, vassalage under Philistia,
and friendly relations with Moab, or when they suggest how enmity
between Israel and Ammon could be turned to useful account. Tradition,
in fact, is concentrated upon the rise of the Judaean dynasty under
David, but there are significant periods before the rise of both Jehoash
and Uzziah upon which the historical records maintain a perplexing
silence.
The Hebrews of Israel and Judah were, political history apart, men of
the same general stamp, with the same cult and custom; for the study of
religion and social usages, therefore, they can be treated as a single
people. The institution of the monarchy was opposed to the simpler
local forms of government, and a military régime had distinct
disadvantages (cf. 1 Sam. viii. 11-18). The king stood at the head, as
the court of final appeal, and upon him and his officers depended the
people's welfare. A more intricate social organization caused internal
weakness, and Eastern history shows with what rapidity peoples who have
become strong by discipline and moderation pass from the height of their
glory into extreme corruption and disintegration.[22] This was Israel's
fate. Opposition to social abuses and enmity towards religious
innovations are regarded as the factors which led to the overthrow of
Omri's dynasty by Jehu, and when Israel seemed to be at the height of
its glory under Jeroboam II. warning voices again made themselves heard.
The two factors are inseparable, for in ancient times no sharp
dividing-line was drawn between religious and civic duties:
righteousness and equity, religious duty and national custom were one.
Elaborate legal enactments codified in Babylonia by the 20th century
B.C. find striking parallels in Hebrew, late Jewish (Talmudic), Syrian
and Mahommedan law, or in the unwritten usages of all ages; for even
where there were neither written laws nor duly instituted lawgivers,
there was no lawlessness, since custom and belief were, and still are,
almost inflexible. Various collections are preserved in the Old
Testament; they are attributed to the time of Moses the lawgiver, who
stands at the beginning of Israelite national and religious history.
But many of the laws were quite unsuitable for the circumstances of
his age, and the belief that a body of intricate and even
contradictory legislation was imposed suddenly upon a people newly
emerged from bondage in Egypt raises insurmountable objections, and
underestimates the fact that legal usage existed in the earliest
stages of society, and therefore in pre-Mosaic times. The more
important question is the date of the laws in their present form and
content. Collections of laws are found in Deuteronomy and in exilic
and post-exilic writings; groups of a relatively earlier type are
preserved in Exod. xxxiv. 14-26, xx. 23-xxiii., and (of another stamp)
in Lev. xvii.-xxvi. (now in post-exilic form). For a useful conspectus
of details, see J. E. Carpenter and G. Harford-Battersby. _The
Hexateuch_ (vol. i., appendix); C. F. Kent, _Israel's Laws and Legal
Enactments_ (1907); and in general I. Benzinger, articles
"Government," "Family" and "Law and Justice," _Ency. Bib._, and G. B.
Gray, "Law Literature," ib. (the literary growth of legislation).
Reference may also be made, for illustrative material, to W. R. Smith,
_Kinship and Marriage_, _Religion of the Semites_; to E. Day, _Social
Life of the Hebrews_; and, for some comparison of customary usage in
the Semitic field, to S. A. Cook, _Laws of Moses and Code of
Hammurabi_.
14. _Religion and the Prophets._--The elements of the thought and
religion of the Hebrews do not sever them from their neighbours; similar
features of cult are met with elsewhere under different names. Hebrew
religious institutions can be understood from the biblical evidence
studied in the light of comparative religion; and without going afield
to Babylonia, Assyria or Egypt, valuable data are furnished by the cults
of Phoenicia, Syria and Arabia, and these in turn can be illustrated
from excavation and from modern custom. Every religion has its customary
cult and ritual, its recognized times, places and persons for the
observance. Worship is simpler at the smaller shrines than at the more
famous temples; and, as the rulers are the patrons of the religion and
are brought into contact with the religious personnel, the character of
the social organization leaves its mark upon those who hold religious
and judicial functions alike. The Hebrews shared the paradoxes of
Orientals, and religious enthusiasm and ecstasy were prominent features.
Seers and prophets of all kinds ranged from those who were consulted for
daily mundane affairs to those who revealed the oracles in times of
stress, from those who haunted local holy sites to those high in royal
favour, from the quiet domestic communities to the austere mountain
recluse. Among these were to be found the most sordid opportunism and
the most heroic self-effacement, the crassest supernaturalism and--the
loftiest conceptions of practical morality. A development of ideals and
a growth of spirituality can be traced which render the biblical
writings with their series of prophecies a unique phenomenon.[23] The
prophets taught that the national existence of the people was bound up
with religious and social conditions; they were in a sense the
politicians of the age, and to regard them simply as foretellers of the
future is to limit their sphere unduly. They took a keen interest in all
the political vicissitudes of the Oriental world. Men of all standards
of integrity, they were exposed to external influences, but whether
divided among themselves in their adherence to conflicting parties, or
isolated in their fierce denunciation of contemporary abuses, they
shared alike in the worship of Yahweh whose inspiration they claimed. A
recollection of the manifold forms which religious life and thought have
taken in Christendom or in Islam, and the passions which are so easily
engendered among opposing sects, will prevent a one-sided estimate of
the religious standpoints which the writings betray; and to the
recognition that they represent lofty ideals it must be added that the
great prophets, like all great thinkers, were in advance of their age.
The prophets are thoroughly Oriental figures, and the interpretation of
their profound religious experiences requires a particular sympathy
which is not inherent in Western minds. Their writings are to be
understood in the light of their age and of the conditions which gave
birth to them. With few exceptions they are preserved in fragmentary
form, with additions and adjustments which were necessary in order to
make them applicable to later conditions. When, as often, the great
figures have been made the spokesmen of the thought of subsequent
generations, the historical criticism of the prophecies becomes one of
peculiar difficulty.[24] According to the historical traditions it is
precisely in the age of Jeroboam II. and Uzziah that the first of the
extant prophecies begin (see AMOS and HOSEA). Here it is enough to
observe that the highly advanced doctrines of the distinctive character
of Yahweh, as ascribed to the 8th century B.C., presuppose a foundation
and development. But the evidence does not allow us to trace the earlier
progress of the ideas. Yahwism presents itself under a variety of
aspects, and the history of Israel's relations to the God Yahweh (whose
name is not necessarily of Israelite origin) can hardly be disentangled
amid the complicated threads of the earlier history. The view that the
seeds of Yahwism were planted in the young Israelite nation in the days
of the "exodus" conflicts with the belief that the worship of Yahweh
began in the pre-Mosaic age. Nevertheless, it implies that religion
passed into a new stage through the influence of Moses, and to this we
find a relatively less complete analogy in the specific north Israelite
traditions of the age of Jehu. The change from the dynasty of Omri to
that of Jehu has been treated by several hands, and the writers, in
their recognition of the introduction of a new tendency, have obscured
the fact that the cult of Yahweh had flourished even under such a king
as Ahab. While the influence of the great prophets Elijah and Elisha is
clearly visible, it is instructive to find that the south, too, has its
share in the inauguration of the new era. At Horeb, the mount of God,
was located the dramatic theophany which heralded to Elijah the advent
of the sword, and Jehu's supporter in his sanguinary measures belongs to
the Rechabites, a sect which felt itself to be the true worshipping
community of Yahweh and is closely associated with the Kenites, the kin
of Moses. It was at the holy well of Kadesh, in the sacred mounts of
Sinai and Horeb, and in the field of Edom that the Yahweh of Moses was
found, and scattered traces survive of a definite belief in the entrance
into Palestine of a movement uncompromisingly devoted to the purer
worship of Yahweh. The course of the dynasty of Jehu--the reforms, the
disastrous Aramaean wars, and, at length, Yahweh's "arrow of
victory"--constituted an epoch in the Israelite history, and it is
regarded as such.[25]
The problem of the history of Yahwism depends essentially upon the
view adopted as to the date and origin of the biblical details and
their validity for the various historical and religious conditions
they presuppose. Yahwism is a religion which appears upon a soil
saturated with ideas and usages which find their parallel in
extra-biblical sources and in neighbouring lands. The problem cannot
be approached from modern preconceptions because there was much
associated with the worship of Yahweh which only gradually came to be
recognized as repugnant, and there was much in earlier ages and in
other lands which reflects an elevated and even complex religious
philosophy. In the south of the Sinaitic peninsula, remains have been
found of an elaborate half-Egyptian, half-Semitic cultus (Petrie,
_Researches in Sinai_, xiii.), and not only does Edom possess some
reputation for "wisdom," but, where this district is concerned, the
old Arabian religion (whose historical connexion with Palestine is
still imperfectly known) claims some attention. The characteristic
denunciations of corruption and lifeless ritual in the writings of the
prophets and the emphasis which is laid upon purity and simplicity of
religious life are suggestive of the influence of the nomadic spirit
rather than of an internal evolution on Palestinian soil. Desert
pastoral life does not necessarily imply any intellectual inferiority,
and its religious conceptions, though susceptible of modification, are
not artificially moulded through the influence of other civilizations.
Nomadic life is recognized by Arabian writers themselves as possessing
a relative superiority, and its characteristic purity of manner and
its reaction against corruption and luxury are not incompatible with a
warlike spirit. If nomadism may be recognized as one of the factors in
the growth of Yahwism, there is something to be said for the
hypothesis which associates it with the clans connected with the
Levites (see E. Meyer, _Israeliten_, pp. 82 sqq.; B. Luther, ib. 138).
It is, however, obvious that the influence due to immigrants could be,
and doubtless was, exerted at more than one period (see §§ 18, 20;
also HEBREW RELIGION; PRIEST).
15. _The Fall of the Israelite Monarchy._--The prosperity of Israel was
its undoing. The disorders that hastened its end find an analogy in the
events of the more obscure period after the death of the earlier
Jeroboam. Only the briefest details are given. Zechariah was slain after
six months by Shallum ben Jabesh in Ibleam; but the usurper fell a month
later to Menahem (q.v.), who only after much bloodshed established his
position. Assyria again appeared upon the scene under Tiglath-pileser
IV. (745-728 B.C.).[26] His approach was the signal for the formation of
a coalition, which was overthrown in 738. Among those who paid tribute
were Rasun (the biblical Rezin) of Damascus, Menahem of Samaria, the
kings of Tyre, Byblos and Hamath and the queen of Aribi (Arabia, the
Syrian desert). Israel was once more in league with Damascus and
Phoenicia, and the biblical records must be read in the light of
political history. Judah was probably holding aloof. Its king, Uzziah,
was a leper in his latter days, and his son and regent, Jotham, claims
notice for the circumstantial reference (2 Chron. xxvii.; cf. xxvi. 8)
to his subjugation of Ammon--the natural allies of Damascus--for three
years. Scarcely had Assyria withdrawn before Menahem lost his life in a
conspiracy, and Pekah with the help of Gilead made himself king. The new
movement was evidently anti-Assyrian, and strenuous endeavours were made
to present a united front. It is suggestive to find Judah the centre of
attack.[27] Rasun and Pekah directed their blows from the north,
Philistia threatened the west flank, and the Edomites who drove out the
Judaeans from Elath (on the Gulf of 'Akaba) were no doubt only taking
their part in the concerted action. A more critical situation could
scarcely be imagined. The throne of David was then occupied by the young
Ahaz, Jotham's son. In this crisis we meet with Isaiah (q.v.), one of
the finest of Hebrew prophets. The disorganized state of Egypt and the
uncertain allegiance of the desert tribes left Judah without direct aid;
on the other hand, opposition to Assyria among the conflicting interests
of Palestine and Syria was rarely unanimous. Either in the natural
course of events--to preserve the unity of his empire--or influenced by
the rich presents of gold and silver with which Ahaz accompanied his
appeal for help, Tiglath-pileser intervened with campaigns against
Philistia (734 B.C.) and Damascus (733-732). Israel was punished by the
ravaging of the northern districts, and the king claims to have carried
away the people of "the house of Omri." Pekah was slain and one Hoshea
(q.v.) was recognized as his successor. Assyrian officers were placed in
the land and Judah thus gained its deliverance at the expense of Israel.
But the proud Israelites did not remain submissive for long; Damascus
had indeed fallen, but neither Philistia nor Edom had yet been crushed.
At this stage a new problem becomes urgent. A number of petty peoples,
of whom little definite is known, fringed Palestine from the south of
Judah and the Delta to the Syrian desert. They belong to an area which
merges itself in the west into Egypt, and Egypt in fact had a hereditary
claim upon it. Continued intercourse between Egypt, Gaza and north
Arabia is natural in view of the trade-routes which connected them, and
on several occasions joint action on the part of Edomites (with allied
tribes) and the Philistines is recorded, or may be inferred. The part
played by Egypt proper in the ensuing anti-Assyrian combinations is not
clearly known; with a number of petty dynasts fomenting discontent and
revolt, there was an absence of cohesion in that ancient empire previous
to the rise of the Ethiopian dynasty. Consequently the references to
"Egypt" (Heb. _Misrayim_, Ass. _Musri_) sometimes suggest that the
geographical term was really extended beyond the bounds of Egypt proper
towards those districts where Egyptian influence or domination was or
had been recognized (see further MIZRAIM).
When Israel began to recover its prosperity and regained confidence, its
policy halted between obedience to Assyria and reliance upon this
ambiguous "Egypt." The situation is illustrated in the writings of Hosea
(q.v.). When at length Tiglath-pileser died, in 727, the slumbering
revolt became general; Israel refused the usual tribute to its overlord,
and definitely threw in its lot with "Egypt." In due course Samaria was
besieged for three years by Shalmaneser IV. The alliance with So (Seveh,
Sibi) of "Egypt," upon whom hopes had been placed, proved futile, and
the forebodings of keen-sighted prophets were justified. Although no
evidence is at hand, it is probable that Ahaz of Judah rendered service
to Assyria by keeping the allies in check; possible, also, that the
former enemies of Jerusalem had now been induced to turn against
Samaria. The actual capture of the Israelite capital is claimed by
Sargon (722), who removed 27,290 of its inhabitants and fifty chariots.
Other peoples were introduced, officers were placed in charge, and the
usual tribute re-imposed. Another revolt was planned in 720 in which the
province of Samaria joined with Hamath and Damascus, with the Phoenician
Arpad and Simura, and with Gaza and "Egypt." Two battles, one at Karkar
in the north, another at Rapih (Raphia) on the border of Egypt, sufficed
to quell the disturbance. The desert peoples who paid tribute on this
occasion still continued restless, and in 715 Sargon removed men of
Tamud, Ibadid, Marsiman, Hayapa, "the remote Arabs of the desert," and
placed them in the land of Beth-Omri. Sargon's statement is significant
for the internal history; but unfortunately the biblical historians take
no further interest in the fortunes of the northern kingdom after the
fall of Samaria, and see in Judah the sole survivor of the Israelite
tribes (see 2 Kings xvii. 7-23). Yet the situation in this neglected
district must continue to provoke inquiry.
16. _Judah and Assyria._--Amid these changes Judah was intimately
connected with the south Palestinian peoples (see further PHILISTINES).
Ahaz had recognized the sovereignty of Assyria and visited
Tiglath-pileser at Damascus. The Temple records describe the innovations
he introduced on his return. Under his son Hezekiah there were fresh
disturbances in the southern states, and anti-Assyrian intrigues began
to take a more definite shape among the Philistine cities. Ashdod openly
revolted and found support in Moab, Edom, Judah, and the still ambiguous
"Egypt." This step may possibly be connected with the attempt of Marduk
(Merodach)-baladan in south Babylonia to form a league against Assyria
(cf. 2 Kings xx. 12); at all events Ashdod fell after a three years'
siege (711) and for a time there was peace. But with the death of Sargon
in 705 there was another great outburst; practically the whole of
Palestine and Syria was in arms, and the integrity of Sennacherib's
empire was threatened. In both Judah and Philistia the anti-Assyrian
party was not without opposition, and those who adhered or favoured
adherence to the great power were justified by the result. The
inevitable lack of cohesion among the petty states weakened the national
cause. At Sennacherib's approach, Ashdod, Ammon, Moab and Edom
submitted; Ekron, Ascalon, Lachish and Jerusalem held out strenuously.
The southern allies (with "Egypt") were defeated at Eltekeh (Josh. xix.
44). Hezekiah was besieged and compelled to submit (701). The small
kings who had remained faithful were rewarded by an extension of their
territories, and Ashdod, Ekron and Gaza were enriched at Judah's
expense. These events are related in Sennacherib's inscription; the
biblical records preserve their own traditions (see HEZEKIAH). If the
impression left upon current thought can be estimated from certain of
the utterances of the court-prophet Isaiah and the Judaean countryman
Micah (q.v.), the light which these throw upon internal conditions must
also be used to gauge the real extent of the religious changes ascribed
to Hezekiah. A brazen serpent, whose institution was attributed to
Moses, had not hitherto been considered out of place in the cult; its
destruction was perhaps the king's most notable reform.
In the long reign of his son Manasseh later writers saw the deathblow to
the Judaean kingdom. Much is related of his wickedness and enmity to the
followers of Yahweh, but few political details have come down. It is
uncertain whether Sennacherib invaded Judah again shortly before his
death, nevertheless the land was practically under the control of
Assyria. Both Esar-haddon (681-668) and Assur-bani-pal (668-c. 626)
number among their tributaries Tyre, Ammon, Moab, Edom, Ascalon, Gaza
and Manasseh himself,[28] and cuneiform dockets unearthed at Gezer
suggest the presence of Assyrian garrisons there (and no doubt also
elsewhere) to ensure allegiance. The situation was conducive to the
spread of foreign customs, and the condemnation passed upon Manasseh
thus perhaps becomes more significant. Precisely what form his worship
took is a matter of conjecture; but it is possible that the religion
must not be judged too strictly from the standpoint of the late
compiler, and that Manasseh merely assimilated the older Yahweh-worship
to new Assyrian forms.[29] Politics and religion, however, were
inseparable, and the supremacy of Assyria meant the supremacy of the
Assyrian pantheon.
If Judah was compelled to take part in the Assyrian campaigns against
Egypt, Arabia (the Syrian desert) and Tyre, this would only be in
accordance with a vassal's duty. But when tradition preserves some
recollection of an offence for which Manasseh was taken to Babylon to
explain his conduct (2 Chron. xxxiii.), also of the settling of foreign
colonists in Samaria by Esar-haddon (Ezra iv. 2), there is just a
possibility that Judah made some attempt to gain independence. According
to Assur-bani-pal all the western lands were inflamed by the revolt of
his brother Samas-sum-ukin. What part Judah took in the Transjordanic
disturbances, in which Moab fought invading Arabian tribes on behalf of
Assyria, is unknown (see MOAB). Manasseh's son Amon fell in a court
intrigue and "the people of the land," after avenging the murder, set up
in his place the infant Josiah (637). The circumstances imply a regency,
but the records are silent upon the outlook. The assumption that the
decay of Assyria awoke the national feeling of independence is perhaps
justified by those events which made the greatest impression upon the
compiler, and an account is given of Josiah's religious reforms, based
upon a source apparently identical with that which described the work of
Jehoash. In an age when the oppression and corruption of the ruling
classes had been such that those who cherished the old worship of Yahweh
dared not confide in their most intimate companions (Mic. vii. 5, 6), no
social reform was possible; but now the young Josiah, the popular
choice, was upon the throne. A roll, it is said, was found in the
Temple, its contents struck terror into the hearts of the priests and
king, and it led to a solemn covenant before Yahweh to observe the
provisions of the law-book which had been so opportunely recovered.
That the writer (2 Kings xxii. seq.) meant to describe the discovery
of Deuteronomy is evident from the events which followed; and this
identification of the roll, already made by Jerome, Chrysostom and
others, has been substantiated by modern literary criticism since De
Wette (1805). (See DEUTERONOMY; JOSIAH.) Some very interesting
parallels have been cited from Egyptian and Assyrian records where
religious texts, said to have been found in temples, or oracles from
the distant past, have come to light at the very time when "the days
were full."[30] There is, however, no real proof for the traditional
antiquity of Deuteronomy. The book forms a very distinctive landmark
in the religious history by reason of its attitude to cult and ritual
(see HEBREW RELIGION, § 7). In particular it is aimed against the
worship at the numerous minor sanctuaries and inculcates the sole
pre-eminence of the one great sanctuary--the Temple of Jerusalem. This
centralization involved the removal of the local priests and a
modification of ritual and legal observance. The fall of Samaria,
Sennacherib's devastation of Judah, and the growth of Jerusalem as the
capital, had tended to raise the position of the Temple, although
Israel itself, as also Judah, had famous sanctuaries of its own. From
the standpoint of the popular religion, the removal of the local
altars, like Hezekiah's destruction of the brazen serpent, would be an
act of desecration, an iconoclasm which can be partly appreciated from
the sentiments of 2 Kings xviii. 22, and partly also from the modern
Wahhabite reformation (of the 19th century). But the details and
success of the reforms, when viewed in the light of the testimony of
contemporary prophets, are uncertain. The book of Deuteronomy
crystallizes a doctrine; it is the codification of teaching which
presupposes a carefully prepared soil. The account of Josiah's work,
like that of Hezekiah, is written by one of the Deuteronomic school:
that is to say, the writer describes the promulgation of the teaching
under which he lives. It is part of the scheme which runs through the
book of Kings, and its apparent object is to show that the Temple
planned by David and founded by Solomon ultimately gained its true
position as the only sanctuary of Yahweh to which his worshippers
should repair. Accordingly, in handling Josiah's successors the writer
no longer refers to the high places. But if Josiah carried out the
reforms ascribed to him they were of no lasting effect. This is
conclusively shown by the writings of Jeremiah (xxv. 3-7, xxxvi. 2
seq.) and Ezekiel. Josiah himself is praised for his justice, but
faithless Judah is insincere (Jer. iii. 10), and those who claim to
possess Yahweh's law are denounced (viii. 8). If Israel could appear
to be better than Judah (iii. 11; Ezek. xvi., xxiii.), the religious
revival was a practical failure, and it was not until a century later
that the opportunity again came to put any new teaching into effect (§
20). On the other hand, the book of Deuteronomy has a characteristic
social-religious side; its humanity, philanthropy and charity are the
distinctive features of its laws, and Josiah's reputation (Jer. xxii.
15 seq.) and the circumstances in which he was chosen king may suggest
that he, like Jehoash (2 Kings xi. 17; cf. xxiii. 3), had entered into
a reciprocal covenant with a people who, as Micah's writings would
indicate, had suffered grievous oppression and misery.[31]
17. _The Fall of the Judaean Monarchy._--In Josiah's reign a new era was
beginning in the history of the world. Assyria was rapidly decaying and
Egypt had recovered from the blows of Assur-bani-pal (to which the
Hebrew prophet Nahum alludes, iii. 8-10). Psammetichus (Psamtek) I., one
of the ablest of Egyptian rulers for many centuries, threw off the
Assyrian yoke with the help of troops from Asia Minor and employed
these to guard his eastern frontiers at Defneh. He also revived the old
trading-connexions between Egypt and Phoenicia. A Chaldean prince,
Nabopolassar, set himself up in Babylonia, and Assyria was compelled to
invoke the aid of the Askuza. It was perhaps after this that an inroad
of Scythians (q.v.) occurred (c. 626 B.C.); if it did not actually touch
Judah, the advent of the people of the north appears to have caused
great alarm (Jer. iv.-vi.: Zephaniah). Bethshean in Samaria has perhaps
preserved in its later (though temporary) name Scythopolis an echo of
the invasion.[32] Later, Necho, son of Psammetichus, proposed to add to
Egypt some of the Assyrian provinces, and marched through Palestine.
Josiah at once interposed; it is uncertain whether, in spite of the
power of Egypt, he had hopes of extending his kingdom, or whether the
famous reformer was, like Manasseh, a vassal of Assyria. The book of
Kings gives the standpoint of a later Judaean writer, but Josiah's
authority over a much larger area than Judah alone is suggested by
xxiii. 19 (part of an addition), and by the references to the border at
Riblah in Ezek. vi. 14, xi. 10 seq. He was slain at Megiddo in 608, and
Egypt, as in the long-distant past, again held Palestine and Syria. The
Judaeans made Jehoahaz (or Shallum) their king, but the Pharaoh banished
him to Egypt three months later and appointed his brother Jehoiakim.
Shortly afterwards Nineveh fell, and with it the empire which had
dominated the fortunes of Palestine for over two centuries (see § 10).
Nabonidus (Nabunaid) king of Babylonia (556 B.C.) saw in the disaster
the vengeance of the gods for the sacrilege of Sennacherib; the Hebrew
prophets, for their part, exulted over Yahweh's far-reaching judgment.
The newly formed Chaldean power at once recognized in Necho a dangerous
rival and Nabopolassar sent his son Nebuchadrezzar, who overthrew the
Egyptian forces at Carchemish (605). The battle was the turning-point of
the age, and with it the succession of the new Chaldean or Babylonian
kingdom was assured. But the relations between Egypt and Judah were not
broken off. The course of events is not clear, but Jehoiakim (q.v.) at
all events was inclined to rely upon Egypt. He died just as
Nebuchadrezzar, seeing his warnings disregarded, was preparing to lay
siege to Jerusalem. His young son Jehoiachin surrendered after a three
months' reign, with his mother and the court; they were taken away to
Babylonia, together with a number of the artisan class (596).
Jehoiakim's brother, Mattaniah or Zedekiah, was set in his place under
an oath of allegiance, which he broke, preferring Hophra the new king of
Egypt. A few years later the second siege took place. It began on the
tenth day of the tenth month, January 587. The looked-for intervention
of Egypt was unavailing, although a temporary raising of the siege
inspired wild hopes. Desertion, pestilence and famine added to the usual
horrors of a siege, and at length on the ninth day of the fourth month
586, a breach was made in the walls. Zedekiah fled towards the Jordan
valley but was seized and taken to Nebuchadrezzar at Riblah (45 m. south
of Hamath). His sons were slain before his eyes, and he himself was
blinded and carried off to Babylon after a reign of eleven years. The
Babylonian Nebuzaradan was sent to take vengeance upon the rebellious
city, and on the seventh day of the fifth month 586 B.C. Jerusalem was
destroyed. The Temple, palace and city buildings were burned, the walls
broken down, the chief priest Seraiah, the second priest Zephaniah, and
other leaders were put to death, and a large body of people was again
carried away. The disaster became the great epoch-making event for
Jewish history and literature.
Throughout these stormy years the prophet Jeremiah (q.v.) had realized
that Judah's only hope lay in submission to Babylonia. Stigmatized as a
traitor, scorned and even imprisoned, he had not ceased to utter his
warnings to deaf ears, although Zedekiah himself was perhaps open to
persuasion. Now the penalty had been paid, and the Babylonians, whose
policy was less destructive than that of Assyria, contented themselves
with appointing as governor a certain Gedaliah. The new centre was
Mizpah, a commanding eminence and sanctuary, about 5 m. N.W. of
Jerusalem; and here Gedaliah issued an appeal to the people to be loyal
to Babylonia and to resume their former peaceful occupations. The land
had not been devastated, and many gladly returned from their
hiding-places in Moab, Edom and Ammon. But discontented survivors of the
royal family under Ishmael intrigued with Baalis, king of Ammon. The
plot resulted in the murder of Gedaliah and an unsuccessful attempt to
carry off various princesses and officials who had been left in the
governor's care. This new confusion and a natural fear of Babylonia's
vengeance led many to feel that their only safety lay in flight to
Egypt, and, although warned by Jeremiah that even there the sword would
find them, they fled south and took refuge in Tahpanhes (Daphnae, q.v.),
afterwards forming small settlements in other parts of Egypt. But the
thread of the history is broken, and apart from an allusion to the
favour shown to the captive Jehoiachin (with which the books of Jeremiah
and Kings conclude), there is a gap in the records, and subsequent
events are viewed from a new standpoint (§ 20).
The last few years of the Judaean kingdom present several difficult
problems.
(a) That there was some fluctuation of tradition is evident in the
case of Jehoiakim, with whose quiet end (2 Kings xxiv. 6 [see also
Lucian]; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 8 [Septuagint]) contrast the fate
foreshadowed in Jer. xxii. 18 seq., xxxvi. 30 (cf. Jos. _Ant._ x. 6, 2
seq.). The tradition of his captivity (2 Chron. xxxvi. 6; Dan. i. 2)
has apparently confused him with Jehoiachin, and the latter's reign is
so brief that some overlapping is conceivable. Moreover, the prophecy
in Jer. xxxiv. 5 that Zedekiah would die in peace is not borne out by
the history, nor does Josiah's fate agree with the promise in 2 Kings
xxii. 20. There is also an evident relation between the pairs:
Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah (e.g. length of
reigns), and the difficulty felt in regard to the second and third is
obvious in the attempts of the Jewish historian Josephus to provide a
compromise. The contemporary prophecies ascribed to Jeremiah and
Ezekiel require careful examination in this connexion, partly as
regards their traditional background (especially the headings and
setting), and partly for their contents, the details of which
sometimes do not admit of a literal interpretation in accordance with
our present historical material (cf. Ezek. xix. 3-9, where the two
brothers carried off to Egypt and Babylon respectively would seem to
be Jehoahaz and his nephew Jehoiachin).
(b) Some fluctuation is obvious in the number, dates and extent of the
deportations. Jer. lii. 28-30 gives a total of 4600 persons, in
contrast to 2 Kings xxiv. 14, 16 (the numbers are not inclusive), and
reckons three deportations in the 7th (? 17th), 18th and 23rd years of
Nebuchadrezzar. Only the second is specifically said to be from
Jerusalem (the remaining are of Judaeans), and the last has been
plausibly connected with the murder of Gedaliah, an interval of five
years being assumed. For this twenty-third year Josephus (_Ant._ x. 9,
7) gives an invasion of Egypt and an attack upon Ammon, Moab and
Palestine (see NEBUCHADREZZAR).
(c) That the exile lasted seventy years (? from 586 B.C. to the
completion of the second temple) is the view of the canonical history
(2 Chron. xxxvi. 21; Jer. xxv. 11, xxix. 10; Zech. i. 12; cf. Tyre,
Isa. xxiii. 15), but it is usually reckoned from the first
deportation, which was looked upon as of greater significance than the
second (Jer. xxiv. xxix.), and it may be a round number. Another
difficulty is the interpretation of the 40 years in Ezek. iv. 6 (cf.
Egypt, xxix. 11), and the 390 in _v._ 5 (Septuagint 150 or 190; 130 in
Jos. x. 9, 7 end). A period of fifty years is allowed by the
chronological scheme (1 Kings vi. 1; cf. Jos. c. _Ap._ i. 21), and the
late book of Baruch (vi. 3) even speaks of seven generations. Varying
chronological schemes may have been current and some weight must be
laid upon the remarkable vagueness of the historical information in
later writings (see DANIEL).
(d) The attitude of the neighbouring peoples constitutes another
serious problem (cf. 2 Kings xxiv. 2 and 2 Chron. xxxvi. 5, where
Lucian's recension and the Septuagint respectively add the
Samaritans!), in view of the circumstances of Gedaliah's appointment
(Jer. xl. 11, see above) as contrasted with the frequent prophecies
against Ammon, Moab and Edom which seem to be contemporary (see EDOM;
MOAB).
(e) Finally, the recurrence of similar historical situations in
Judaean history must be considered. The period under review, with its
relations between Judah and Egypt, can be illustrated by prophecies
ascribed to a similar situation in the time of Hezekiah. But the
destruction of Jerusalem is not quite unique, and somewhat later we
meet with indirect evidence for at least one similar disaster upon
which the records are silent. There are a number of apparently related
passages which, however, on internal grounds, are unsuitable to the
present period, and when they show independent signs of a later date
(in their present form), there is a very strong probability that they
refer to such subsequent disasters. The scantiness of historical
tradition makes a final solution impossible, but the study of these
years has an important bearing on the history of the later Judaean
state, which has been characteristically treated from the standpoint
of exiles who returned from Babylonia and regard themselves as the
kernel of "Israel." From this point of view, the desire to intensify
the denudation of Palestine and the fate of its remnant, and to look
to the Babylonian exiles for the future, can probably be recognized in
the writings attributed to contemporary prophets.[33]
18. _Internal Conditions and the Exile._--Many of the exiles accepted
their lot and settled down in Babylonia (cf. Jer. xxix. 4-7); Jewish
colonies, too, were being founded in Egypt. The agriculturists and
herdsmen who had been left in Palestine formed, as always, the staple
population, and it is impossible to imagine either Judah or Israel as
denuded of its inhabitants. The down-trodden peasants were left in peace
to divide the land among them, and new conditions arose as they took
over the ownerless estates. But the old continuity was not entirely
broken; there was a return to earlier conditions, and life moved more
freely in its wonted channels. The fall of the monarchy involved a
reversion to a pre-monarchical state. It had scarcely been otherwise in
Israel. The Israelites who had been carried off by the Assyrians were
also removed from the cult of the land (cf. 1 Sam. xxvi. 19; Ruth i. 15
seq.). It is possible that some had escaped by taking timely refuge
among their brethren in Judah; indeed, if national tradition availed,
there were doubtless times when Judah cast its eye upon the land with
which it had been so intimately connected. It would certainly be unwise
to draw a sharp boundary line between the two districts; kings of Judah
could be tempted to restore the kingdom of their traditional founder, or
Assyria might be complaisant towards a faithful Judaean vassal. The
character of the Assyrian domination over Israel must not be
misunderstood; the regular payment of tribute and the provision of
troops were the main requirements, and the position of the masses
underwent little change if an Assyrian governor took the place of an
unpopular native ruler. The two sections of the Hebrews who had had so
much in common were scarcely severed by a border-line only a few miles
to the north of Jerusalem. But Israel after the fall of Samaria is
artificially excluded from the Judaean horizon, and lies as a foreign
land, although Judah itself had suffered from the intrusion of
foreigners in the preceding centuries of war and turmoil, and strangers
had settled in her midst, had formed part of the royal guard, or had
even served as janissaries (§ 15, end).
Samaria had experienced several changes in its original population,[34]
and an instructive story tells how the colonists, in their ignorance of
the religion of their new home, incurred the divine wrath. _Cujus regio
ejus religio_--settlement upon a new soil involved dependence upon its
god, and accordingly priests were sent to instruct the Samaritans in the
fear of Yahweh. Thenceforth they continued the worship of the Israelite
Yahweh along with their own native cults (2 Kings xvii. 24-28, 33).
Their descendants claimed participation in the privileges of the
Judaeans (cf. Jer. xli. 5), and must have identified themselves with the
old stock (Ezra iv. 2). Whatever recollection they preserved of their
origin and of the circumstances of their entry would be retold from a
new standpoint; the ethnological traditions would gain a new meaning;
the assimilation would in time become complete. In view of subsequent
events it would be difficult to find a more interesting subject of
inquiry than the internal religious and sociological conditions in
Samaria at this age.
To the prophets the religious position was lower in Judah than in
Samaria, whose iniquities were less grievous (Jer. iii. 11 seq., xxiii.
11 sqq.; Ezek. xvi. 51). The greater prevalence of heathen elements in
Jerusalem, as detailed in the reforms of Josiah or in the writings of
the prophets (cf. Ezek. viii.), would at least suggest that the
destruction of the state was not entirely a disaster. To this
catastrophe may be due the fragmentary character of old Judaean
historical traditions. Moreover, the land was purified when it became
divorced from the practices of a luxurious court and lost many of its
worst inhabitants. In Israel as in Judah the political disasters not
only meant a shifting of population, they also brought into prominence
the old popular and non-official religion, the character of which is not
to be condemned because of the attitude of lofty prophets in advance of
their age. When there were sects like the Rechabites (Jer. xxxv.), when
the Judaean fields could produce a Micah or a Zephaniah, and when Israel
no doubt had men who inherited the spirit of a Hosea, the nature of the
underlying conditions can be more justly appreciated. The writings of
the prophets were cherished, not only in the unfavourable atmosphere of
courts (see Jer. xxxvi., 21 sqq.), but also in the circles of their
followers (Isa. viii. 16). In the quiet smaller sanctuaries the old-time
beliefs were maintained, and the priests, often perhaps of the older
native stock (cf. 2 Kings xvii. 28 and above), were the recognized
guardians of the religious cults. The old stories of earlier days
encircle places which, though denounced for their corruption, were not
regarded as illegitimate, and in the form in which the dim traditions of
the past are now preserved they reveal an attempt to purify popular
belief and thought. In the domestic circles of prophetic communities the
part played by their great heads in history did not suffer in the
telling, and it is probable that some part at least of the extant
history of the Israelite kingdom passed through the hands of men whose
interest lay in the pre-eminence of their seers and their beneficent
deeds on behalf of these small communities. This interest and the
popular tone of the history may be combined with the fact that the
literature does not take us into the midst of that world of activity in
which the events unfolded themselves.
Although the records preserve complete silence upon the period now
under review, it is necessary to free oneself from the narrow outlook
of the later Judaean compilers. It is a gratuitous assumption that the
history of (north) Israel ceased with the fall of Samaria or that
Judah then took over Israelite literature and inherited the old
Israelite spirit: the question of the preservation of earlier writings
is of historical importance. It is true that the situation in Israel
or Samaria continues obscure, but a careful study of literary
productions, evidently not earlier than the 7th century B.C., reveals
a particular loftiness of conception and a tendency which finds its
parallels in Hosea and approximates the peculiar characteristics of
the Deuteronomic school of thought. But the history which the Judaean
writers have handed down is influenced by the later hostility between
Judah and Samaria. The traditional bond between the north and south
which nothing could efface (cf. Jos. _Ant._, xi. 8, 6) has been
carried back to the earliest ages; yet the present period, after the
age of rival kingdoms, Judah and Israel, and before the foundation of
Judaism, is that in which the historical background for the inclusion
of Judah among the "sons" of Israel is equally suitable (§§ 5, 20,
end). The circumstances favoured a closer alliance between the people
of Palestine, and a greater prominence of the old holy places (Hebron,
Bethel, Shechem, &c.), of which the ruined Jerusalem would not be one,
and the existing condition of Judah and Israel from internal and
non-political points of view--not their condition in the
pre-monarchical ages--is the more crucial problem in biblical
history.[35]
19. _Persian Period._[36]--The course of events from the middle of the
6th century B.C. to the close of the Persian period is lamentably
obscure, although much indirect evidence indicates that this age holds
the key to the growth of written biblical history. It was an age of
literary activity which manifested itself, not in contemporary
historical records--only a few of which have survived--but rather in the
special treatment of previously existing sources. The problems are of
unusual intricacy and additional light is needed from external
evidence. It will be convenient to turn to this first. Scarcely 40 years
after the destruction of Jerusalem, a new power appeared in the east in
the person of Cyrus the Great. Babylon speedily fell (539 B.C.) and a
fresh era opened. To the petty states this meant only a change of
masters; they now became part of one of the largest empires of
antiquity. The prophets who had marked in the past the advent of
Assyrians and Chaldeans now fixed their eyes upon the advance of Cyrus,
confident that the fall of Babylon would bring the restoration of their
fortunes. Cyrus was hailed as the divinely appointed saviour, the
anointed one of Yahweh. The poetic imagery in which the prophets clothed
the doom of Babylon, like the romantic account of Herodotus (i. 191),
falls short of the simple contemporary account of Cyrus himself. He did
not fulfil the detailed predictions, and the events did not reach the
ideals of Hebrew writers; but these anticipations may have influenced
the form which the Jewish traditions subsequently took. Nevertheless, if
Cyrus was not originally a Persian and was not a worshipper of Yahweh
(Isa. xli. 25), he was at least tolerant towards subject races and their
religions, and the persistent traditions unmistakably point to the
honour in which his memory was held. Throughout the Persian supremacy
Palestine was necessarily influenced by the course of events in
Phoenicia and Egypt (with which intercourse was continual), and some
light may thus be indirectly thrown on its otherwise obscure political
history. Thus, when Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, made his great
expedition against Egypt, with the fleets of Phoenicia and Cyprus and
with the camels of the Arabians, it is highly probable that Palestine
itself was concerned. Also, the revolt which broke out in the Persian
provinces at this juncture may have extended to Palestine; although the
usurper Darius encountered his most serious opposition in the north and
north-east of his empire. An outburst of Jewish religious feeling is
dated in the second year of Darius (520), but whether Judah was making a
bold bid for independence or had received special favour for abstaining
from the above revolts, external evidence alone can decide. Towards the
close of the reign of Darius there was a fresh revolt in Egypt; it was
quelled by Xerxes (485-465), who did not imitate the religious tolerance
of his predecessors. Artaxerxes I. Longimanus (465-425), attracts
attention because the famous Jewish reformers Ezra and Nehemiah
flourished under a king of this name. Other revolts occurred in Egypt,
and for these and also for the rebellion of the Persian satrap Megabyzos
(c. 448-447), independent evidence for the position of Judah is needed,
since a catastrophe apparently befell the unfortunate state before
Nehemiah appears upon the scene. Little is known of the mild and
indolent Artaxerxes II. Mnemon (404-359). With the growing weakness of
the Persian empire Egypt reasserted its independence for a time. In the
reign of Artaxerxes III. Ochus (359-338), Egypt, Phoenicia and Cyprus
were in revolt; the rising was quelled without mercy, and the details of
the vengeance are valuable for the possible fate of Palestine itself.
The Jewish historian Josephus (_Ant._ xi. 7) records the enslavement of
the Jews, the pollution of the Temple by a certain Bagoses (see BAGOAS),
and a seven years' punishment. Other late sources narrate the
destruction of Jericho and a deportation of the Jews to Babylonia and to
Hyrcania (on the Caspian Sea). The evidence for the catastrophes under
Artaxerxes I. and III. (see ARTAXERXES), exclusively contained in
biblical and in external tradition respectively, is of particular
importance, since several biblical passages refer to disasters similar
to those of 586 but presuppose different conditions and are apparently
of later origin.[37] The murder of Artaxerxes III. by Bagoses gave a
set-back to the revival of the Persian Empire. Under Darius Codomannus
(336-330) the advancing Greek power brought matters to a head, and at
the battle of Issus in 333 Alexander settled its fate. The overthrow of
Tyre and Gaza secured the possession of the coast and the Jewish state
entered upon the Greek period. (See § 25.)
During these two centuries the Jews in Palestine had been only one of
an aggregate of subject peoples enjoying internal freedom provided in
return for a regular tribute. They lived in comparative quietude;
although Herodotus knows the Palestinian coast he does not mention the
Jews. The earlier Persian kings acknowledged the various religions of
the petty peoples; they were also patrons of their temples and would
take care to preserve an ancient right of asylum or the privileges of
long-established cults.[38] Cyrus on entering Babylon had even
restored the gods to the cities to which they belonged.[39]
Consequently much interest attaches to the evidence which illustrates
the environment of the Jews during this period. Those who had been
scattered from Palestine lived in small colonies, sometimes mingling
and intermarrying with the natives, sometimes strictly preserving
their own individuality. Some took root in the strange lands, and, as
later popular stories indicate, evidently reached high positions;
others, retaining a more vivid tradition of the land of their fathers,
cherished the ideal of a restored Jerusalem. Excavation at Nippur
(q.v.) in Babylonia has brought to light numerous contract tablets of
the 5th century B.C. with Hebrew proper names (Haggai, Hanani,
Gedaliah, &c.). Papyri from Elephantine in Upper Egypt, of the same
age, proceed from Jewish families who carry on a flourishing business,
live among Egyptians and Persians, and take their oaths in courts of
law in the name of the god "Yahu," the "God of Heaven," whose temple
dated from the last Egyptian kings. Indeed, it was claimed that
Cambyses had left the sanctuary unharmed but had destroyed the temples
of the Egyptians. In Elephantine, as in Nippur, the legal usages show
that similar elements of Babylonio-Assyrian culture prevailed, and the
evidence from two such widely separated fields is instructive for
conditions in Palestine itself.[40]
20. _The Restoration of Judah._--The biblical history for the Persian
period is contained in a new source--the books of Ezra and Nehemiah,
whose standpoint and period are that of Chronicles, with which they are
closely joined. After a brief description of the fall of Jerusalem the
"seventy years" of the exile are passed over, and we are plunged into a
history of the return (2 Chron. xxxvi.; Ezra i.). Although Palestine had
not been depopulated, and many of the exiled Jews remained in Persia,
the standpoint is that of those who returned from Babylon. Settled in
and around Jerusalem, they look upon themselves as the sole community,
the true Israel, even as it was believed that once before Israel entered
and developed independently in the land of its ancestors. They look back
from the age when half-suppressed hostility with Samaria had broken out,
and when an exclusive Judaism had been formed. The interest of the
writers is as usual in the religious history; they were indifferent to,
or perhaps rather ignorant of, the strict order of events. Their
narratives can be partially supplemented from other sources (Haggai;
Zechariah i.-viii.; Isa. xl.-lxvi.; Malachi), but a consecutive sketch
is impossible.[41]
In 561 B.C. the captive Judaean king, Jehoiachin, had received special
marks of favour from Nebuchadrezzar's son Amil-marduk. So little is
known of this act of recognition that its significance can only be
conjectured. A little later Tyre received as its king Merbaal (555-552)
who had been fetched from Babylonia. Babylonia was politically
unsettled, the representative of the Davidic dynasty had descendants; if
Babylon was assured of the allegiance of Judah further acts of clemency
may well have followed. But the later recension of Judaean history--our
sole source--entirely ignores the elevation of Jehoiachin (2 Kings xxv.
27 sqq.; Jer. lii. 31-34), and proceeds at once to the first year of
Cyrus, who proclaims as his divine mission the rebuilding of the Temple
(538). The Judaean Sheshbazzar (a corruption of some Babylonian name)
brought back the Temple vessels which Nebuchadrezzar had carried away
and prepared to undertake the work at the expense of the royal purse. An
immense body of exiles is said to have returned at this time to
Jerusalem under Zerubbabel, who was of Davidic descent, and the priest
Jeshua or Joshua, the grandson of the murdered Seraiah (Ezra i.-iii.; v.
13-vi. 5). When these refused the proffered help of the people of
Samaria, men of the same faith as themselves (iv. 2), their troubles
began, and the Samaritans retaliated by preventing the rebuilding. The
next historical notice is dated in the second year of Darius (520) when
two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, came forward to kindle the Judaeans
to new efforts, and in spite of opposition the work went steadily
onwards, thanks to the favour of Darius, until the Temple was completed
four years later (Ezra v. 2, vi. 13 sqq.). On the other hand, from the
independent writings ascribed to these prophets, it appears that no
considerable body of exiles could have returned--it is still an event of
the future (Zech. ii. 7, vi. 15); little, if anything, had been done to
the Temple (Hag. ii. 15); and Zerubbabel is the one to take in hand and
complete the great undertaking (Zech. iv. 9). The prophets address
themselves to men living in comfortable abodes with olive-fields and
vineyards, suffering from bad seasons and agricultural depression, and
though the country is unsettled there is no reference to any active
opposition on the part of Samaritans. So far from drawing any lesson
from the brilliant event in the reign of Cyrus, the prophets imply that
Yahweh's wrath is still upon the unfortunate city and that Persia is
still the oppressor. Consequently, although small bodies of individuals
no doubt came back to Judah from time to time, and some special mark of
favour may have been shown by Cyrus, the opinion has gained ground since
the early arguments of E. Schrader (_Stud. u. Krit._, 1867, pp.
460-504), that the compiler's representation of the history is
untrustworthy. His main object is to make the new Israel, the
post-exilic community at Jerusalem, continuous, as a society, with the
old Israel.[42] Greater weight must be laid upon the independent
evidence of the prophetical writings, and the objection that Palestine
could not have produced the religious fervency of Haggai or Zechariah
without an initial impulse from Babylonia begs the question.
Unfortunately the internal conditions in the 6th century B.C. can be
only indirectly estimated (§ 18), and the political position must remain
for the present quite uncertain. In Zerubbabel the people beheld once
more a ruler of the Davidic race. The new temple heralded a new future;
the mournful fasts commemorative of Jerusalem's disasters would become
feasts; Yahweh had left the Temple at the fall of Jerusalem, but had now
returned to sanctify it with his presence; the city had purged its
iniquity and was fit once more to become the central sanctuary. So
Haggai sees in Zerubbabel the representative of the ideal kingdom, the
trusted and highly favoured minister who was the signet-ring upon
Yahweh's hand (contrast Hag. ii. 24 with Jer. xxii. 23). Zechariah, in
his turn, proclaims the overthrow of all difficulties in the path of the
new king, who shall rule in glory supported by the priest (Zech. vi.).
What political aspirations were revived, what other writers were
inspired by these momentous events are questions of inference.
A work which inculcates the dependence of the state upon the purity of
its ruler is the unfinished book of Kings with its history of the
Davidic dynasty and the Temple. Its ideals culminate in Josiah (§ 16,
end), and there is a strong presumption that it is intended to impress
upon the new era the lessons drawn from the past. Its treatment of the
monarchy is only part of a great and now highly complicated literary
undertaking (traceable in the books Joshua to Kings), inspired with
the thought and coloured by language characteristic of Deuteronomy
(especially the secondary portions), which forms the necessary
introduction. Whatever reforms Josiah actually accomplished, the
restoration afforded the opportunity of bringing the Deuteronomic
teaching into action; though it is more probable that Deuteronomy
itself in the main is not much earlier than the second half of the 6th
century B.C.[43] It shows a strong nationalist feeling which is not
restricted to Judah alone, but comprises a greater Israel from Kadesh
in Naphtali in the north to Hebron in the south, and even extends
beyond the Jordan. Distinctive non-Judaean features are included, as
in the Samaritan liturgical office (Deut. xxvii. 14-26), and the
evidence for the conclusion that traditions originally of (north)
Israelite interest were taken over and adapted to the later standpoint
of Judah and Jerusalem (viz. in the Deuteronomic book of Kings)
independently confirms the inferences drawn from Deuteronomy itself.
The absence of direct testimony can be partially supplied by later
events which presuppose the break-up of no inconsiderable state, and
imply relations with Samaria which had been by no means so unfriendly
as the historians represent. A common ground for Judaism and
Samaritanism is obvious, and it is in this obscure age that it is to
be sought. But the curtain is raised for too brief an interval to
allow of more than a passing glimpse at the restoration of Judaean
fortunes; not until the time of Nehemiah, about 140 years after the
fall of Jerusalem, does the historical material become less imperfect.
Upon this blank period before the foundation of Judaism (§§ 21, 23)
much light is also thrown by another body of evidence. It has long
been recognized that 1 Chron. ii. and iv. represent a Judah composed
mainly of groups which had moved up from the south (Hebron) to the
vicinity of Jerusalem. It includes Caleb and Jerahmeel, Kenite or
Rechabite families, scribes, &c., and these, as "sons" of Hezron,
claim some relationship with Gilead. The names point generally to an
affinity with south Palestine and north Arabia (Edom, Midian, &c.; see
especially the lists in Gen. xxxvi.), and suggest that certain members
of a closely related collection of groups had separated from the main
body and were ultimately enrolled as Israelites. It is also recognized
by many scholars that in the present account of the exodus there are
indications of the original prominence of traditions of Kadesh, and
also of a journey northwards in which Caleb, Kenites and others took
part (§ 5). On these and on other grounds besides, it has long been
felt that south Palestine, with its north Arabian connexions, is of
real importance in biblical research, and for many years efforts have
been made to determine the true significance of the evidence. The
usual tendency has been to regard it in the light of the criticism of
early Israelite history, which demands some reconstruction (§ 8), and
to discern distinct tribal movements previous to the union of Judah
and Israel under David. On the other hand, the elaborate theory of T.
K. Cheyne involves the view that a history dealing with the south
actually underlies our sources and can be recovered by emendation of
the text. Against the former is the fact that although certain groups
are ultimately found in Judah (Judg. i.), the evidence for the
movement--a conquest north of Kadesh, almost at the gate of the
promised land--explicitly mentions Israel; and against the latter the
evidence again shows that this representation has been deliberately
subordinated to the entrance of Israel from beyond the Jordan.[44] In
either case the history of separate sections of people may have been
extended to Israel as a whole, but there is no evidence for any
adequate reconstruction. Yet the presence of distinct representations
of the history may be recognized, and since the Judaean compilers of
the Old Testament have incorporated non-Judaean sources (e.g. the
history of the northern monarchy), it is obvious that, apart from
indigenous Judaean tradition, the southern groups which were
ultimately enrolled in Judah would possess their own stock of oral and
written lore. Hence it is noteworthy that the late editor of Judges
has given the first place to Othniel, a Kenizzite, and therefore of
Edomite affinity, though subsequently reckoned as a Judaean (Judg i.
13, iii. 9; cf. Gen. xxxvi. 11; 1 Chron. iv. 13). Of Kenite interest
is the position of Cain, ancestor of heroes of culture and of the
worship of Yahweh (Gen. iv. 17 sqq.). One fragmentary source alludes
to a journey to the Midianite or Kenite father-in-law of Moses with
the Ark (q.v.); another knows of its movements with David and the
priest Abiathar (a name closely related to Jether or Jethro; cf. also
1 Chron. iv. 17). Distinctively Calebite are the stories of the eponym
who, fearless of the "giants" of Palestine, gained striking divine
promises (Num. xiv. 11-24); Caleb's overthrow of the Hebronite giants
finds a parallel in David's conflicts before the capture of Jerusalem,
and may be associated with the belief that these primitive giants once
filled the land (Josh. xi. 21 seq.; see § 7, and DAVID; SAMUEL, BOOKS
OF). Calebite, too, are Hebron and its patron Abraham, and both
increase in prominence in the patriarchal narratives, where, moreover,
an important body of tradition can have emanated only from outside
Israel and Judah (see GENESIS). Although Judah was always closely
connected with the south, these "southern" features (once clearly more
extensive and complete) are found in the Deuteronomic and priestly
compilations, and their presence in the historical records can hardly
be severed from the prominence of "southern" families in the vicinity
of Jerusalem, some time after the fall of Jerusalem. The background in
1 Chron. ii. presupposes the desolation after that disaster, and some
traces of these families are found in Nehemiah's time; and while the
traditions know of a separation from Edom (viz. stories of Jacob and
his "brother" Esau), elsewhere Edom is frequently denounced for
unbrotherly conduct in connexion with some disaster which befell
Jerusalem, apparently long after 586 B.C. (see § 22).[45] The true
inwardness of this movement, its extent and its history, can hardly be
recovered at present, but it is noteworthy that the evidence generally
involves the Levites, an ecclesiastical body which underwent an
extremely intricate development. To a certain extent it would seem
that even as Chronicles (q.v.) has passed through the hands of one who
was keenly interested in the Temple service, so the other historical
books have been shaped not only by the late priestly writers
(symbolized in literary criticism by P), but also by rather earlier
writers, also of priestly sympathies, but of "southern" or
half-Edomite affinity. This is independently suggested by the contents
and vicissitudes of the purely ecclesiastical traditions.[46]
Recent criticism goes to show that there is a very considerable body
of biblical material, more important for its attitude to the history
than for its historical accuracy, the true meaning of which cannot as
yet be clearly perceived. It raises many serious problems which
concentrate upon that age which is of the greatest importance for the
biblical and theological student. The perplexing relation between the
admittedly late compilations and the actual course of the early
history becomes still more intricate when one observes such a feature
as the late interest in the Israelite tribes. No doubt there is much
that is purely artificial and untrustworthy in the late (post-exilic)
representations of these divisions, but it is almost incredible that
the historical foundation for their early career is severed from the
written sources by centuries of warfare, immigration and other
disturbing factors. On the one hand, conservative scholars insist upon
the close material relation between the constituent sources; critical
scholars, on the other hand, while recognizing much that is relatively
untrustworthy, refrain from departing from the general outlines of the
canonical history more than is absolutely necessary. Hence the various
reconstructions of the earlier history, with all their inherent
weaknesses. But historical criticism is faced with the established
literary conclusions which, it should be noticed, place the
Deuteronomic and priestly compilations posterior to the great changes
at and after the fall of the northern monarchy, and, to some extent,
contemporary with the equally serious changes in Judah. There were
catastrophes detrimental to the preservation of older literary
records, and vicissitudes which, if they have not left their mark on
contemporary history--which is singularly blank--may be traced on the
representations of the past. There are external historical
circumstances and internal literary features which unite to show that
the application of the literary hypotheses of the Old Testament to the
course of Israelite history is still incomplete, and they warn us that
the intrinsic value of religious and didactic writings should not
depend upon the accuracy of their history.[47] Future research may not
be able to solve the problems which arise in the study of the period
now under discussion; it is the more necessary, therefore, that all
efforts should be tested in the light of purely external evidence (see
further § 24; and PALESTINE: _History_).
21. _Nehemiah and Ezra._--There is another remarkable gap in the
historical traditions between the time of Zerubbabel and the reign of
Artaxerxes I. In obscure circumstances the enthusiastic hopes have
melted away, the Davidic scion has disappeared, and Jerusalem has been
the victim of another disaster. The country is under Persian officials,
the nobles and priests form the local government, and the ground is
being prepared for the erection of a hierocracy. It is the work of
rebuilding and reorganization, of social and of religious reforms, which
we encounter in the last pages of biblical history, and in the records
of Ezra and Nehemiah we stand in Jerusalem in the very centre of
epoch-making events. Nehemiah, the cup-bearer of Artaxerxes at Susa,
plunged in grief at the news of the desolation of Jerusalem, obtained
permission from the king to rebuild the ruins. Provided with an escort
and with the right to obtain supplies of wood for the buildings, he
returned to the city of his fathers' sepulchres (the allusion may
suggest his royal ancestry). His zeal is represented in a twofold
aspect. Having satisfied himself of the extent of the ruins, he aroused
the people to the necessity of fortifying and repopulating the city, and
a vivid account is given in his name of the many dangers which beset the
rebuilding of the walls. Sanballat of Horon, Tobiah the Ammonite, and
Gashmu the Arabian (? Edomite) unceasingly opposed him. Tobiah and his
son Johanan were related by marriage to Judaean secular and priestly
families, and active intrigues resulted, in which nobles and prophets
took their part. It was insinuated that Nehemiah had his prophets to
proclaim that Judah had again its own king; it was even suggested that
he was intending to rebel against Persia! Nehemiah naturally gives us
only his version, and the attitude of Haggai and Zechariah to Zerubbabel
may illustrate the feeling of his partisans. But Tobiah and Johanan
themselves were worshippers of Yahweh (as their names also show), and
consequently, with prophets taking different sides and with the
Samaritan claims summarily repudiated (Neh. ii. 20; cf. Ezra iv. 3), all
the facts cannot be gathered from the narratives. Nevertheless the
undaunted Judaean pressed on unmoved by the threatening letters which
were sent around, and succeeded in completing the walls within fifty-two
days.[48]
In the next place, Nehemiah appears as governor of the small district of
Judah and Benjamin. Famine, the avarice of the rich, and the necessity
of providing tribute had brought the humbler classes to the lowest
straits. Some had mortgaged their houses, fields and vineyards to buy
corn; others had borrowed to pay the taxes, and had sold their children
to their richer brethren to repay the debt. Nehemiah was faced with old
abuses, and vehemently contrasted the harshness of the nobles with the
generosity of the exiles who would redeem their poor countrymen from
slavery. He himself had always refrained from exacting the usual
provision which other governors had claimed; indeed, he had readily
entertained over 150 officials and dependants at his table, apart from
casual refugees (Neh. v.). We hear something of a twelve-years'
governorship and of a second visit, but the evidence does not enable us
to determine the sequence (xiii. 6). Neh. v. is placed in the middle of
the building of the walls in fifty-two days; the other reforms during
the second visit are closely connected with the dedication of the walls
and with the events which immediately follow his first arrival when he
had come to rebuild the city. Nehemiah also turns his attention to
religious abuses. The sabbath, once a festival, had become more strictly
observed, and when he found the busy agriculturists and traders (some of
them from Tyre) pursuing their usual labours on that day, he pointed to
the disasters which had resulted in the past from such profanation, and
immediately took measures to put down the evil (Neh. xiii. 18; cf. Jer.
xvii. 20 sqq.; Ezek. xx. 13-24; Isa. lvi. 2, 6; lviii. 13). Moreover,
the maintenance of the Temple servants called for supervision; the
customary allowances had not been paid to the Levites who had come to
Jerusalem after the smaller shrines had been put down, and they had now
forsaken the city. His last acts were the most conspicuous of all. Some
of the Jews had married women of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab, and the
impetuous governor indignantly adjured them to desist from a practice
which was the historic cause of national sin. Even members of the
priestly families had intermarried with Tobiah and Sanballat; the former
had his own chamber in the precincts of the Temple, the daughter of the
latter was the wife of a son of Joiada the son of the high priest
Eliashib. Again Nehemiah's wrath was kindled. Tobiah was cast out, the
offending priest expelled, and a general purging followed, in which all
the foreign element was removed. With this Nehemiah brings the account
of his reforms to a conclusion, and the words "Remember me, O my God,
for good" (xiii. 31) are not meaningless. The incidents can be
supplemented from Josephus. According to this writer (_Ant._ xi. 7, 2),
a certain Manasseh, the brother of Jaddua and grandson of Joiada,
refused to divorce his wife, the daughter of Sanballat. For this he was
driven out, and, taking refuge with the Samaritans, founded a rival
temple and priesthood upon Mt Gerizim, to which repaired other priests
and Levites who had been guilty of mixed marriages. There is little
doubt that Josephus refers to the same events; but there is considerable
confusion in his history of the Persian age, and when he places the
schism and the foundation of the new Temple in the time of Alexander the
Great (after the obscure disasters of the reign of Artaxerxes III.), it
is usually supposed that he is a century too late.[49] At all events,
there is now a complete rupture with Samaria, and thus, in the
concluding chapter of the last of the historical books of the Old
Testament, Judah maintains its claim to the heritage of Israel and
rejects the right of the Samaritans to the title[50] (see § 5).
In this separation of the Judaeans from religious and social intercourse
with their neighbours, the work of Ezra (q.v.) requires notice. The
story of this scribe (now combined with the memoirs of Nehemiah)
crystallizes the new movement inaugurated after a return of exiles from
Babylonia. The age can also be illustrated from Isa. lvi.-lxvi. and
Malachi (q.v.). There was a poor and weak Jerusalem, its Temple stood in
need of renovation, its temple-service was mean, its priests unworthy of
their office. On the one side was the grinding poverty of the poor; on
the other the abuses of the governors. There were two leading religious
parties: one of oppressive formalists, exclusive, strict and
ritualistic; the other, more cosmopolitan, extended a freer welcome to
strangers, and tolerated the popular elements and the superstitious
cults which are vividly depicted (Isa. lxv. seq.). But the former gained
the day, and, realizing that the only hope of maintaining a pure worship
of Yahweh lay in a forcible isolation from foreign influence, its
adherents were prepared to take measures to ensure the religious
independence of their assembly. It is related that Ezra, the scribe and
priest, returned to Jerusalem with priests and Levites, lay exiles, and
a store of vessels for the Temple. He was commissioned to inquire into
the religious condition of the land and to disseminate the teaching of
the Law to which he had devoted himself (Ezra vii.). On his arrival the
people were gathered together, and in due course he read the "book of
the Law of Moses" dally for seven days (Neh. viii.). They entered into
an agreement to obey its teaching, undertaking in particular to avoid
marriages with foreigners (x. 28 sqq.). A special account is given of
this reform (Ezra ix. seq.) and the description of Ezra's horror at the
prevalence of intermarriage, which threatened to destroy the distinctive
character of the community, sufficiently indicates the attitude of the
stricter party. The true seed of Israel separated themselves from all
foreigners (not, however, without some opposition) and formed an
exclusively religious body or "congregation." Dreams of political
freedom gave place to hopes of religious independence, and "Israel"
became a church, the foundation of which it sought in the desert of
Sinai a thousand years before.
22. _Post-exilic History._--The biblical history for the period in the
books of Ezra and Nehemiah is exceptionally obscure, and it is
doubtful how far the traditions can be trusted before we reach the
reign of Artaxerxes (Ezra vii. sqq., Neh.). The records belonging to
this reign represent four different stages: (a) The Samaritans
reported that the Jews who had returned from the king to Jerusalem
were rebuilding the city and completing its walls, an act calculated
to endanger the integrity of the province. Artaxerxes accordingly
instructed them to stop the work until he should give the necessary
decree, and this was done by force (Ezra iv. 7-23, undated; 1 Esdras
ii. 16 sqq. mentions a building of the Temple!). (b) It was in the 7th
year (i.e. 458 B.C.) that Ezra returned with a small body of exiles to
promulgate the new laws he had brought and to set the Temple service
in order.[51] Fortified with remarkable powers, some of which far
exceed the known tolerance of Persian kings, he began wide-sweeping
marriage reforms; but the record ceases abruptly (vii.-x.). (c) In the
20th year (445 B.C.) Nehemiah returned with permission to rebuild the
walls, the citadel and the governor's house (Neh. ii. 5, 8; see § 21
above). But (d), whilst as governor he accomplishes various needed
reforms, there is much confusion in the present narratives, due partly
to the resumption of Ezra's labours after an interval of twelve years,
and partly to the closely related events of Nehemiah's activity in
which room must be found for his twelve-years' governorship and a
second visit. The internal literary and historical questions are
extremely intricate, and the necessity for some reconstruction is very
generally felt (for preliminary details, see EZRA AND NEHEMIAH). The
disaster which aroused Nehemiah's grief was scarcely the fall of
Jerusalem in 586 B.C., but a more recent one, and it has been
conjectured that it followed the work of Ezra (in _b_ above). On the
other hand, a place can hardly be found for the history of Ezra before
the appearance of Nehemiah; he moves in a settled and peaceful
community such as Nehemiah had helped to form, his reforms appear to
be more mature and schematic than those of Nehemiah; and, whilst
Josephus handles the two separately, giving Ezra the priority, many
recent scholars incline to place Nehemiah's first visit before the
arrival of Ezra.[52] That later tradition should give the pre-eminence
to the priestly reforms of Ezra is in every way natural, but it has
been found extremely difficult to combine the two in any
reconstruction of the period. Next, since there are three distinct
sources, for (a) above, and for the work of Nehemiah and of Ezra,
implicit reliance cannot be placed upon the present sequence of
narratives. Thus (a), with its allusion to a further decree, forms a
plausible prelude to the return of either Ezra (vii. 13) or Nehemiah
(i. 3, ii. 3); and if it is surprising that the Samaritans and other
opponents, who had previously waited to address Artaxerxes (Ezra iv.
14 sqq., v. 5, 17), should now interfere when Nehemiah was armed with
a royal mandate (Neh. ii. 7-9), it is very difficult not to conclude
that the royal permits, as now detailed, have been coloured by Jewish
patriotism and the history by enmity to Samaria. Finally, the
situation in the independent and undated record (a) points to a
return, a rebuilding (apparently after some previous destruction), and
some interference. This agrees substantially with the independent
records of Nehemiah, and unless we assume two disasters not widely
separated in date--viz. those presupposed in (a) and (c)--the record
in (a), may refer to that stage in the history where the other source
describes the intrigues of the Samaritans and the letters sent by
Tobiah (cf. Tabeel in Ezra iv. 7) to frighten Nehemiah (Neh. vi.
19).[53] Their insinuations that Nehemiah was seeking to be ruler and
their representations to Artaxerxes would be enough to alarm the king
(cf. Neh. vi. 5-9, 19, and Ezra iv. 15 seq., 20 seq.), and it may
possibly be gathered that Nehemiah at once departed to justify himself
(Neh. vii. 2, xiii. 4, 6). Nevertheless, since the narratives are no
longer in their original form or sequence, it is impossible to trace
the successive steps of the sequel; although if the royal favour was
endorsed (cf. the account ascribed to the time of Darius, Ezra v.
seq.), Nehemiah's position as a reformer would be more secure.
Although there was a stock of tradition for the post-exilic age (cf.
Daniel, Esther, 1 Esdras, Josephus), the historical narratives are of
the scantiest and vaguest until the time of Artaxerxes, when the
account of a return (Ezra iv. 12), which otherwise is quite ignored,
appears to have been used for the times of Darius (1 Esdras iv. seq.)
and subsequently of Cyrus (Ezra i.-iii.). Moreover, although general
opinion identifies our Artaxerxes with the first of that name, certain
features suggest that there has been some confusion with the
traditions of the time of Artaxerxes II. and III. (§ 19). But the
problems are admittedly complicated, and since one is necessarily
dependent upon scanty narratives arranged and rearranged by later
hands in accordance with their own historical theories, it is
difficult to lay stress upon internal evidence which appears to be
conclusive for this or that reconstruction.[54] The main facts,
however, are clear. Jerusalem had suffered some serious catastrophe
before Nehemiah's return; a body of exiles returned, and in spite of
interference the work of rebuilding was completed; through their
influence the Judaean community underwent reorganization, and
separated itself from its so-called heathen neighbours. How many years
elapsed from beginning to end can hardly be said. Tradition
concentrated upon Ezra and his age many events and changes of
fundamental importance. The canonical history has allowed only one
great destruction of Jerusalem, and the disaster of 586 B.C. became
the type for similar disasters, but how many there were criticism can
scarcely decide.[55] Allusions to Judah's sufferings at the hands of
Edom, Moab and Ammon often imply conditions which are not applicable
to 586. A definite series knows of an invasion and occupation by Edom
(q.v. end), a people with whom Judah, as the genealogies show, had
once been intimately connected. The unfriendliness of the "brother"
people, which added so much to the bitterness of Judah, although
associated with the events of 586 (so especially 1 Esdras iv. 45),
probably belongs to a much later date.[56] The tradition that Edomites
burned the Temple and occupied part of Judah (ib. _vv._ 45, 50) is
partially confirmed by Ezek. xxxv. 5, 10, xxxvi. 5; Ps. cxxxvii. 7;
but the assumption that Darius, as in 1 Esdras, helped the Jews
against them can with difficulty be maintained. The interesting
conjecture that the second Temple suffered another disaster in the
obscure gap which follows the time of Zerubbabel has been urged, after
Isa. lxiii. 7-lxiv. 12, by Kuenen (afterwards withdrawn) and by
Sellin, and can be independently confirmed. In the records of Nehemiah
the ruins of the city are extensive (ii. 8, 17, iii.; cf. Ecclus.
xlix. 13), and the tradition that Nehemiah rebuilt this Temple (Jos.
_Ant._ xi. 5, 6; 2 Macc. i. 18) is supported (a) by the explicit
references to the rebuilding of the Temple in the reign of Artaxerxes
(1 Esdras ii. 18, not in Ezra iv. 12; but both in a context relating
to the history of the Temple), and (b) by the otherwise inaccurate
statement that the Temple was finished according to the decree of
"Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes king of Persia" (Ezra vi. 14).
The untrustworthy account of the return in the time of Cyrus (Ezra i.
sqq.) or Darius (1 Esdras iv. seq.; probably the older form) is
curiously indebted to material which seems to have belonged to the
history of the work of Nehemiah (cf. Ezra ii. with Neh. vii.), and the
important return in the reign of Artaxerxes (Ezra iv. 12) seems to be
connected with other references to some new settlement (Neh. xi. 20,
23, 25, especially xii. 29). The independent testimony of the names in
Neh. iii. is against any previous large return from Babylon, and
clearly illustrates the strength of the groups of "southern" origin
whose presence is only to be expected (p. 285). Moreover, the late
compiler of 1 Chronicles distinguishes a Judah composed almost wholly
of "southern" groups (1 Chron. ii. and iv.) from a subsequent stage
when the first inhabitants of Jerusalem correspond in the main to the
new population after Nehemiah had repaired the ruins (1 Chron. ix. and
Neh. xi.). Consequently, underlying the canonical form of post-exilic
history, one may perhaps recognize some fresh disaster, after the
completion of Zerubbabel's temple, when Judah suffered grievously at
the hands of its Edomite brethren (in Malachi, date uncertain,
vengeance has at last been taken); Nehemiah restored the city, and the
traditions of the exiles who returned at this period have been thrown
back and focussed upon the work of Zerubbabel. The criticism of the
history of Nehemiah, which leads to this conjecture, suggests also
that if Nehemiah repulsed the Samaritan claims (ii. 20; cf. Ezra iv.
3, where the building of the Temple is concerned) and refused a
compromise (vi. 2), it is extremely unlikely that Samaria had hitherto
been seriously hostile; see also C. C. Torrey, _Ezra Studies_, pp.
321-333.
Biblical history ends with the triumph of the Judaean community, the
true "Israel," the right to which title is found in the distant past.
The Judaean view pervades the present sources, and whilst its David
and Solomon ruled over a united land, the separation under Jeroboam is
viewed as one of calf-worshipping northern tribes from Jerusalem with
its one central temple and the legitimate priesthood of the Zadokites.
It is from this narrower standpoint of an exclusive and confined Judah
(and Benjamin) that the traditions as incorporated in the late
recensions gain fresh force, and in Israel's renunciation of the
Judaean yoke the later hostility between the two may be read between
the lines. The history in Kings was not finally settled until a very
late date, as is evident from the important variations in the
Septuagint, and it is especially in the description of the time of
Solomon and the disruption that there continued to be considerable
fluctuations.[57] The book has no finale and the sudden break may not
be accidental. It is replaced by Chronicles, which, confining itself
to Judaean history from a later standpoint (after the Persian age),
includes new characteristic traditions wherein some recollection of
more recent events may be recognized. Thus, the south Judaean or south
Palestinian element shows itself in Judaean genealogies and lists;
there are circumstantial stories of the rehabilitation of the Temple
and the reorganization of cultus; there are fuller traditions of
inroads upon Judah by southern peoples and their allies. There is also
a more definite subordination of the royal authority to the priesthood
(so too in the writings of Ezekiel, q.v.); and the stories of
punishment inflicted upon kings who dared to contend against the
priests (Jehoash, Uzziah) point to a conflict of authority, a hint of
which is already found in the reconciliation of Zerubbabel and the
priest Joshua in a passage ascribed to Zechariah (ch. vi.).
23. _Post-exilic Judaism._--With Nehemiah and Ezra we enter upon the era
in which a new impulse gave to Jewish life and thought that form which
became the characteristic orthodox Judaism. It was not a new religion
that took root; older tendencies were diverted into new paths, the
existing material was shaped to new ends. Judah was now a religious
community whose representative was the high priest of Jerusalem. Instead
of sacerdotal kings, there were royal priests, anointed with oil,
arrayed with kingly insignia, claiming the usual royal dues in addition
to the customary rights of the priests. With his priests and Levites,
and with the chiefs and nobles of the Jewish families, the high priest
directs this small state, and his death marks an epoch as truly as did
that of the monarchs in the past. This hierarchical government, which
can find no foundation in the Hebrew monarchy, is the forerunner of the
Sanhedrin (q.v.); it is an institution which, however inaugurated, set
its stamp upon the narratives which have survived. Laws were recast in
accordance with the requirements of the time, with the result that, by
the side of usages evidently of very great antiquity, details now appear
which were previously unknown or wholly unsuitable. The age, which the
scanty historical traditions themselves represent as one of supreme
importance for the history of the Jews, once seemed devoid of interest,
and it is entirely through the laborious scholarship of the 19th century
that it now begins to reveal its profound significance. The
Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis, that the hierarchical law in its complete
form in the Pentateuch stands at the close and not at the beginning of
biblical history, that this mature Judaism was the fruit of the 5th
century B.C. and not a divinely appointed institution at the exodus
(nearly ten centuries previously), has won the recognition of almost all
Old Testament scholars. It has been substantiated by numerous subsidiary
investigations in diverse departments, from different standpoints, and
under various aspects, and can be replaced only by one which shall more
adequately explain the literary and historical evidence (see further, p.
289).
The post-exilic priestly spirit represents a tendency which is absent
from the Judaean Deuteronomic book of Kings but is fully mature in the
later, and to some extent parallel, book of Chronicles (q.v.). The
"priestly" traditions of the creation and of the patriarchs mark a very
distinct advance upon the earlier narratives, and appear in a further
developed form in the still later book of Jubilees, or "Little Genesis,"
where they are used to demonstrate the pre-Mosaic antiquity of the
priestly or Levitical institutions. There is also an unmistakable
development in the laws; and the priestly legislation, though ahead of
both Ezekiel and Deuteronomy, not to mention still earlier usage, not
only continues to undergo continual internal modification, but finds a
further distinct development, in the way of definition and
interpretation, outside the Old Testament--in the Talmud (q.v.). Upon
the characteristics of the post-exilic priestly writings we need not
dwell.[58] Though one may often be repelled by their lifelessness, their
lack of spontaneity and the externalization of the ritual, it must be
recognized that they placed a strict monotheism upon a legal basis. "It
was a necessity that Judaism should incrust itself in this manner;
without those hard and ossified forms the preservation of its essential
elements would have proved impossible. At a time when all nationalities,
and at the same time all bonds of religion and national customs, were
beginning to be broken up in the seeming cosmos and real chaos of the
Graeco-Roman Empire, the Jews stood out like a rock in the midst of the
ocean. When the natural conditions of independent nationality all failed
them, they nevertheless artificially maintained it with an energy truly
marvellous, and thereby preserved for themselves, and at the same time
for the whole world, an eternal good."[59]
If one is apt to acquire too narrow a view of Jewish legalism, the whole
experience of subsequent history, through the heroic age of the
Maccabees (q.v.) and onwards, only proves that the minuteness of ritual
procedure could not cramp the heart. Besides, this was only one of the
aspects of Jewish literary activity. The work represented in Nehemiah
and Ezra, and put into action by the supporters of an exclusive Judaism,
certainly won the day, and their hands have left their impress upon the
historical traditions. But Yahwism, like Islam, had its sects and
tendencies, and the opponents to the stricter ritualism always had
followers. Whatever the predominant party might think of foreign
marriages, the tradition of the half-Moabite origin of David serves, in
the beautiful idyll of Ruth (q.v.), to suggest the debt which Judah and
Jerusalem owed to one at least of its neighbours. Again, although some
may have desired a self-contained community opposed to the heathen
neighbours of Jerusalem, the story of Jonah implicitly contends against
the attempt of Judaism to close its doors. The conflicting tendencies
were incompatible, but Judaism retained the incompatibilities within
its limits, and the two tendencies, prophetical and priestly, continue,
the former finding its further development in Christianity.[60]
The Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis (§ 4) does not pretend to be complete
in all its details and it is independent of its application to the
historical criticism of the Old Testament. No alternative hypothesis
prevails, mere desultory criticism of the internal intricacies being
quite inadequate. Maintaining that the position of the Pentateuch
alone explains the books which follow, conservative writers concede
that it is composite, has had some literary history, and has suffered
some revision in the post-exilic age. Their concessions continue to
become ever more significant, and all that follows from them should be
carefully noticed by those who are impressed by their arguments. They
identify with Deuteronomy the law-roll which explains the noteworthy
reforms of Josiah (§ 16); but since it is naturally admitted that
religious conditions had become quite inconsistent with Mosaism, the
conservative view implies that the "long-lost" Deuteronomy must have
differed profoundly from any known Mosaic writings to which earlier
pious kings and prophets had presumably adhered. Similarly, the "book
of the Law of Moses," brought from Babylon by Ezra (Ezra vii.; Neh.
viii.), clearly contained much of which the people were ignorant, and
conservative writers, who oppose the theory that a new Law was then
introduced, emphasize (a) the previous existence of legislation (to
prove that Ezra's book was not entirely a novelty), and (b) the gross
wickedness in Judah (as illustrated by the prophets) from the time of
Josiah to the strenuous efforts of the reformers on behalf of the most
fundamental principles of the national religion. This again simply
means that the Mosaism of Ezra or Nehemiah must have differed
essentially from the priestly teaching prior to their arrival. The
arguments of conservative writers involve concessions which, though
often overlooked by their readers, are very detrimental to the
position they endeavour to support, and the objections they bring
against the theory of the introduction of new law-books (under a
Josiah or an Ezra) apply with equal force to the promulgation of
Mosaic teaching which had been admittedly ignored or forgotten. Their
arguments have most weight, however, when they show the hazardous
character of reconstructions which rely upon the trustworthiness of
the historical narratives. What book Ezra really brought from Babylon
is uncertain; the writer, it seems, is merely narrating the
introduction of the Law ascribed to Moses, even as a predecessor has
recounted the discovery of the Book of the Law, the Deuteronomic code
subsequently included in the Pentateuch.
The importance which the biblical writers attach to the return from
Babylon in the reign of Artaxerxes forms a starting-point for several
interesting inquiries. Thus, in any estimate of the influence of
Babylonia upon the Old Testament, it is obviously necessary to ask
whether certain features (a) are of true Babylonian origin, or (b)
merely find parallels or analogies in its stores of literature;
whether the indebtedness goes back to very early times or to the age
of the Assyrian domination or to the exiles who now returned. Again,
there were priestly and other families--some originally of "southern"
origin--already settled around Jerusalem, and questions inevitably
arise concerning their relation to the new-comers and the literary
vicissitudes which gave us the Old Testament in its present form. To
this age we may ascribe the literature of the Priestly writers
(symbolized by P), which differs markedly from the other sources. Yet
it is clear from the book of Genesis alone that in the age of Priestly
writers and compilers there were other phases of thought. Popular
stories with many features of popular religion were current. They
could be, and indeed had been made more edifying; but the very
noteworthy conservatism of even the last compiler or editor, in
contrast to the re-shaping and re-writing of the material in the book
of Jubilees, indicates that the Priestly spirit was not that of the
whole community. But through the Priestly hands the Old Testament
history passed, and their standpoint colours its records. This is
especially true of the history of the exilic and post-exilic periods,
where the effort is made to preserve the continuity of Israel and the
Israelite community (Chronicles--Ezra--Nehemiah). The bitterness
aroused by the ardent and to some extent unjust zeal of the reforming
element can only be conjectured. The traditions reveal a tendency to
legitimate new circumstances. Priesthoods, whose traditions connect
them with the south, are subordinated; the ecclesiastical records are
re-shaped or re-adjusted; and a picture is presented of hierarchical
jealousies and rivalries which (it was thought) were settled once and
for all in the days of the exodus from Egypt. Many features gain in
significance as the account of the Exodus, the foundation of Israel,
is read in the light of the age when, after the advent of a new
element from Babylonia, the Pentateuch assumed its present shape; it
must suffice to mention the supremacy of the Aaronite priests and the
glorification of uncompromising hostility to foreign marriages.[61]
The most "unhistorical" tradition has some significance for the
development of thought or of history-writing, and thus its internal
features are ultimately of historical value. Only from an exhaustive
comparison of controlling data can the scattered hints be collected
and classified. There is much that is suggestive, for example, in the
relation between the "post-exilic" additions to the prophecies and
their immediately earlier form; or in the singular prominence of the
Judaean family of Perez (its elevation over Zerah, a half-Edomite
family, Gen. xxxviii.; its connexion with the Davidic dynasty, Ruth
iv.; its position as head of all the Judaean sub-divisions, 1 Chron.
ii. 5 sqq.); or in the late insertion of local tradition encircling
Jerusalem; or in the perplexing attitude of the histories towards the
district of Benjamin and its famous sanctuary of Bethel (only about 10
m. north of Jerusalem). Although these and other phenomena cannot yet
be safely placed in a historical frame, the methodical labours of past
scholars have shed much light upon the obscurities of the exilic and
post-exilic ages, and one must await the more comprehensive study of
the two or three centuries which are of the first importance for
biblical history and theology.
24. _Old Testament History and External Evidence._--Thus the Old
Testament, the history of the Jews during the first great period,
describes the relation of the Hebrews to surrounding peoples, the
superiority of Judah over the faithless (north) Israelite tribes, and
the reorganization of the Jewish community in and around Jerusalem at
the arrival of Ezra with the Book of the Law. The whole gives an
impression of unity, which is designed, and is to be expected in a
compilation. But closer examination reveals remarkable gaps and
irreconcilable historical standpoints. For all serious biblical study,
the stages in the growth of the written traditions and the historical
circumstances which they imply, must inevitably be carefully
considered, and upon the result depends, directly or indirectly,
almost every subject of Old Testament investigation. Yet it is
impossible to recover with confidence or completeness the development
of Hebrew history from the pages of the Old Testament alone. The keen
interest taken by the great prophets in the world around them is not
prominent in the national records; political history has been
subordinated, and the Palestine which modern discovery is revealing is
not conspicuous in the didactic narratives. To external evidence one
must look, therefore, for that which did not fall within the scope or
the horizon of the religious historians. They do not give us the
records of the age of the Babylonian monarch Khammurabi (perhaps
Amraphel, Gen. xiv.), of the Egyptian conquests in the XVIIIth and
following dynasties, or of the period illustrated by the Amarna
tablets (§ 3). They treat with almost unique fullness a few years in
the middle of the 9th century B.C., but ignore Assyria; yet only the
Assyrian inscriptions explain the political situation (§ 10 seq.), and
were it not for them the true significance of the 8th-7th centuries
could scarcely be realized (§ 15 seq.). It would be erroneous to
confuse the extant sources with the historical material which might or
must have been accessible, or to assume that the antiquity of the
elements of history proves or presupposes the antiquity of the records
themselves, or even to deny the presence of some historical kernel
merely on account of unhistorical elements or the late dress in which
the events are now clothed. External research constantly justifies the
cautious attitude which has its logical basis in the internal
conflicting character of the written traditions or in their divergence
from ascertained facts; at the same time it has clearly shown that the
internal study of the Old Testament has its limits. Hence, in the
absence of more complete external evidence one is obliged to recognize
the limitations of Old Testament historical criticism, even though
this recognition means that positive reconstructions are more
precarious than negative conclusions.
The naïve impression that each period of history was handled by some
more or less contemporary authority is not confirmed by a criticism
which confines itself strictly to the literary evidence. An interest
in the past is not necessarily confined to any one age, and the
critical view that the biblical history has been compiled from
relatively late standpoints finds support in the still later treatment
of the events--in Chronicles as contrasted with Samuel--Kings or in
Jubilees as contrasted with Genesis.[62] It is instructive to observe
in Egypt the form which old traditions have taken in Manetho (Maspero,
_Rec. de travaux_, xxvii., 1905, l. 22 seq.); cf. also the late story
of Rameses II. and the Hittites (J. H. Breasted, _Anc. Rec. of Egypt_,
iii. 189 seq.); while in Babylonia one may note the didactic
treatment, after the age of Cyrus, of the events of the time of
Khammurabi (A. H. Sayce, _Proc. Soc. Biblical Archaeol._, 1907, pp. 13
sqq.).
The links which unite the traditional heroes with Babylonia (e.g.
Abraham, Ezra), Mesopotamia (e.g. Jacob), Egypt (e.g. Joseph,
Jeroboam), Midian (e.g. Moses, Jethro), &c., like the intimate
relationship between Israel and surrounding lands, have a significance
in the light of recent research. Israel can no longer be isolated from
the politics, culture, folk-lore, thought and religion of western Asia
and Egypt. Biblical, or rather Palestinian, thought has been brought
into the world of ancient Oriental life, and this life, in spite of
the various forms in which it has from time to time been shaped, still
rules in the East. This has far-reaching consequences for the
traditional attitude to Israelite history and religion. Research is
seriously complicated by the growing stores of material, which
unfortunately are often utilized without attention to the principles
of the various departments of knowledge or aspects of study. The
complexity of modern knowledge and the interrelation of its different
branches are often insufficiently realized, and that by writers who
differ widely in the application of such material as they use to their
particular views of the manifold problems of the Old Testament. It has
been easy to confuse the study of the Old Testament in its relation to
modern religious needs with the technical scientific study of the much
edited remains of the literature of a small part of the ancient East.
If there was once a tendency to isolate the Old Testament and ignore
comparative research, it is now sometimes found possible to exaggerate
its general agreement with Oriental history, life and thought.
Difficulties have been found in the supernatural or marvellous stories
which would be taken as a matter of course by contemporary readers,
and efforts are often made to recover historical facts or to adapt the
records to modern theology without sufficient attention to the
historical data as a whole or to their religious environment. The
preliminary preparation for research of any value becomes yearly more
exacting.
Many traces of myth, legend and "primitive" thought survive in the Old
Testament, and on the most cautious estimate they presuppose a
vitality which is not a little astonishing. But they are now softened
and often bereft of their earlier significance, and it is this and
their divergence from common Oriental thought which make Old Testament
thought so profound and unique. The process finds its normal
development in later and non-biblical literature; but one can
recognize earlier, cruder and less distinctive stages, and, as surely
as writings reflect the mentality of an author or of his age, the
peculiar characteristics of the extant sources, viewed in the light of
a comprehensive survey of Palestinian and surrounding culture, demand
a reasonable explanation. The differences between the form of the
written history and the conditions which prevailed have impressed
themselves variously upon modern writers, and efforts have been made
to recover from the Old Testament earlier forms more in accordance
with the external evidence. It may be doubted, however, whether the
material is sufficient for such restoration or reconstruction.[63] In
the Old Testament we have the outcome of specific developments, and
the stage at which we see each element of tradition or belief is not
always isolated or final (cf. Kings and Chronicles). The early myths,
legends and traditions which can be traced differ profoundly from the
canonical history, and the gap is wider than that between the latter
and the subsequent apocalyptical and pseudepigraphical literature.
Where it is possible to make legitimate and unambiguous comparisons,
the ethical and spiritual superiority of Old Testament thought has
been convincingly demonstrated, and to the re-shaping and re-writing
of the older history and the older traditions the Old Testament owes
its permanent value. While the history of the great area between the
Nile and the Tigris irresistibly emphasizes the insignificance of
Palestine, this land's achievements for humanity grow the more
remarkable as research tells more of its environment. Although the
light thrown upon ancient conditions of life and thought has destroyed
much that sometimes seems vital for the Old Testament, it has brought
into relief a more permanent and indisputable appreciation of its
significance, and it is gradually dispelling that pseudo-scientific
literalism which would fetter the greatest of ancient Oriental
writings with an insistence upon the verity of historical facts. Not
internal criticism, but the incontestable results of objective
observation have shown once and for all that the relationship between
the biblical account of the earliest history (Gen. i.-xi.) and its
value either as an authentic record (which requires unprejudiced
examination) _or_ as a religious document (which remains untouched) is
typical. If, as seems probable, the continued methodical
investigation, which is demanded by the advance of modern knowledge,
becomes more drastic in its results, it will recognize ever more
clearly that there were certain unique influences in the history of
Palestine which cannot be explained by purely historical research. The
change from Palestinian polytheism to the pre-eminence of Yahweh and
the gradual development of ethical monotheism are _facts_ which
external evidence continues to emphasize, which biblical criticism
must investigate as completely as possible. And if the work of
criticism has brought a fuller appreciation of the value of these
facts, the debt which is owed to the Jews is enhanced when one
proceeds to realize the immense difficulties against which those who
transmitted the Old Testament had to contend in the period of Greek
domination. The growth of the Old Testament into its present form,
and its preservation despite hostile forces, are the two remarkable
phenomena which most arrest the attention of the historian; it is for
the theologian to interpret their bearing upon the history of
religious thought. (S. A. C.)
II.--GREEK DOMINATION
25. _Alexander the Great._--The second great period of the history of
the Jews begins with the conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great,
disciple of Aristotle, king of Macedon and captain-general of the
Greeks. It ends with the destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of the
Roman Empire, which was, like Alexander, at once the masterful pupil and
the docile patron of Hellenism. The destruction of Jerusalem might be
regarded as an event of merely domestic importance; for the Roman
cosmopolitan it was only the removal of the titular metropolis of a
national and an Oriental religion. But, since a derivative of that
religion has come to be a power in the world at large, this event has to
be regarded in a different light. The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.
70 concludes the period of four centuries, during which the Jews as a
nation were in contact with the Greeks and exposed to the influence of
Hellenism, not wholly of their own will nor yet against it. Whether the
master of the provinces, in which there were Jews, be an Alexander, a
Ptolemy, a Seleucid or a Roman, the force by which he rules is the force
of Greek culture. These four centuries are the Greek period of Jewish
history.
The ancient historians, who together cover this period, are strangely
indifferent to the importance of the Jews, upon which Josephus is at
pains to insist. When Alexander invaded the interior of the Eastern
world, which had hitherto remained inviolable, he came as the champion
of Hellenism. His death prevented the achievement of his designs; but he
had broken down the barrier, he had planted the seed of the Greek's
influence in the four quarters of the Persian Empire. His successors,
the Diadochi, carried on his work, but Antiochus Epiphanes was the first
who deliberately took in hand to deal with the Jews. Daniel (viii. 8)
describes the interval between Alexander and Antiochus thus: "The
he-goat (the king of Greece) did very greatly: and when he was strong
the great horn (Alexander) was broken; and instead of it came up four
other ones--four kingdoms shall stand up out of his nation but not with
his power. And out of one of them came forth a little horn (Antiochus
Epiphanes) which waxed exceeding great towards the south (Egypt) and
towards the East (Babylon) and towards the beauteous land (the land of
Israel)." The insignificance of the Jewish community in Palestine was
their salvation. The reforms of Nehemiah were directed towards the
establishment of a religious community at Jerusalem, in which the rigour
of the law should be observed. As a part of the Persian Empire the
community was obscure and unimportant. But the race whose chief
sanctuary it guarded and maintained was the heir of great traditions and
ideals. In Egypt, moreover, in Babylon and in Persia individual Jews had
responded to the influences of their environment and won the respect of
the aliens whom they despised. The law which they cherished as their
standard and guide kept them united and conscious of their unity. And
the individuals, who acquired power or wisdom among those outside
Palestine shed a reflected glory upon the nation and its Temple.
In connexion with Alexander's march through Palestine Josephus gives a
tradition of his visit to Jerusalem. In Arrian's narrative of
Alexander's exploits, whose fame had already faded before the greater
glory of Rome, there is no mention of the visit or the city or the
Jews. Only Tyre and Gaza barred the way to Egypt. He took, presumably,
the coast-road in order to establish and retain his command of the
sea. The rest of Palestine, which is called Coele-Syria, made its
submission and furnished supplies. Seven days after the capture of
Gaza Alexander was at Pelusium. According to the tradition which
Josephus has preserved the high priest refused to transfer his
allegiance and Alexander marched against Jerusalem after the capture
of Gaza. The high priest dressed in his robes went out to meet him,
and at the sight Alexander remembered a dream, in which such a man had
appeared to him as the appointed leader of his expedition. So the
danger was averted: Alexander offered sacrifice and was shown the
prophecy of Daniel, which spoke of him. It is alleged, further, that
at this time certain Jews who could not refrain from intermarriage
with the heathen set up a temple on Mt Gerizim and became the
Samaritan schism (§ 21 above). The combination is certainly artificial
and not historical. But it has a value of its own inasmuch as it
illustrates the permanent tendencies which mould the history of the
Jews. It is true that Alexander was subject to dreams and visited
shrines in order to assure himself or his followers of victory. But it
is not clear that he had such need of the Jews or such regard for the
Temple of Jerusalem that he should turn aside on his way to Egypt for
such a purpose.
However this may be, Alexander's tutor had been in Asia and had met a
Jew there, if his disciple Clearchus of Soli is to be trusted. "The
man," Aristotle says, "was by race a Jew out of Coele-Syria. His
people are descendants of the Indian philosophers. It is reported that
philosophers are called Calani among the Indians and Jews among the
Syrians. The Jews take their name from their place of abode, which is
called Judaea. The name of their city is very difficult; they call it
Hierusaleme. This man, then, having been a guest in many homes and
having come down gradually from the highlands to the sea-coast, was
Hellenic not only in speech but also in soul. And as we were staying
in Asia at the time, the man cast up at the same place and interviewed
us and other scholars, making trial of their wisdom. But inasmuch as
he had come to be at home with many cultured persons he imparted more
than he got." The date of this interview is probably determined by the
fact that Aristotle visited his friend Hermias, tyrant of Atarneus, in
347-345 B.C. There is no reason to doubt the probability or even the
accuracy of the narrative. Megasthenes also describes the Jews as the
philosophers of Syria and couples them with the Brahmins of India.
This hellenized Jew who descended from the hills to the coast is a
figure typical of the period.
26. _The Ptolemies._--After the death of Alexander Palestine fell in the
end to Ptolemy (301 B.C.) and remained an Egyptian province until 198
B.C. For a century the Jews in Palestine and in Alexandria had no
history--or none that Josephus knew. But two individuals exemplify the
different attitudes which the nation adopted towards its new environment
and its wider opportunities, Joseph the tax-farmer and Jesus the sage.
The wisdom of Jesus ben Sira (Sirach) is contained in the book
commonly called _Ecclesiasticus_ (q.v.). At a time when men were
attracted by the wisdom and science of the Greeks, he taught that all
wisdom came from Yahweh who had chosen Israel to receive it in trust.
He discouraged inquiries into the nature and purpose of things: it was
enough for him that Yahweh had created and ruled the universe. If a
man had leisure to be wise--and this is not for many--he should study
the Scriptures which had come down, and so become a scribe. For the
scribe, as for the man at the plough-tail, the Law was the rule of
life. All, however much or little preoccupied with worldly business,
must fear God, from whom come good things and evil, life, death,
poverty and riches. It was not for men to meddle with secrets which
are beyond human intelligence. Enough that the individual did his duty
in the state of life in which he was set and left behind him a good
name at his death. The race survives--"the days of Israel are
unnumbered." Every member of the congregation of Israel must labour,
as God has appointed, at some handicraft or profession to provide for
his home. It is his sacred duty and his private interest to beget
children and to train them to take his place. The scholar is apt to
pity the smith, the potter, the carpenter and the farmer: with better
reason he is apt to condemn the trader who becomes absorbed in greed
of gain and so deserts the way of righteousness and fair dealing. As a
teacher Jesus gave his own services freely. For the soldier he had no
commendation. There were physicians who understood the use of herbs,
and must be rewarded when their help was invited. But, whatever means
each head of a family adopted to get a livelihood, he must pay the
priest's dues. The centre of the life of Israel was the Temple, over
which the high priest presided and which was inhabited by Yahweh, the
God of Israel. The scribe could train the individual in morals and in
manners; but the high priest was the ruler of the nation.
As ruler of the nation the high priest paid its tribute to Egypt, its
overlord. But Josephus reports of one Onias that for avarice he
withheld it. The sequel shows how a Jew might rise to power in the
civil service of the Egyptian Empire and yet remain a hero to some of
the Jews--provided that he did not intermarry with a Gentile. For
Joseph, the son of Tobiah and nephew of Onias, went to court and
secured the taxes of Palestine, when they were put up to auction. As
tax-farmer he oppressed the non-Jewish cities and so won the
admiration of Josephus.
But while such men went out into the world and brought back wealth of
one kind or another to Palestine, other Jews were content to make their
homes in foreign parts. At Alexandria in particular Alexander provided
for a Jewish colony which soon became Hellenic enough in speech to
require a translation of the Law. It is probable that, as in Palestine
an Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew text was found to be necessary, so
in Alexandria the Septuagint grew up gradually, as need arose. The
legendary tradition which even Philo accepts gives it a formal nativity,
a royal patron and inspired authors. From the text which Philo uses, it
is probable that the translation had been transmitted in writing; and
his legend probably fixes the date of the commencement of the
undertaking for the reign of Ptolemy Lagus.
The apology for the necessary defects of a translation put forward by
the translator of _Ecclesiasticus_ in his Prologue shows that the work
was carried on beyond the limits of the Law. Apparently it was in
progress at the time of his coming to Egypt in the reign of Ptolemy
Euergetes I. or II. He seems to regard this body of literature as the
answer to the charge that the Jews had contributed nothing useful for
human life. Once translated into Greek, the Scriptures became a bond
of union for the Jews of the dispersion and were at least capable of
being used as an instrument for the conversion of the world to
Judaism. So far as the latter function is concerned Philo confesses
that the Law in his day shared the obscurity of the people, and seems
to imply that the proselytes adopted little more than the monotheistic
principle and the observance of the Sabbath. According to Juvenal the
sons of such proselytes were apt to go farther and to substitute the
Jewish Law for the Roman--
Romanas autem soliti contemnere leges;
Judaicum ediscunt et servant ac metuunt ius
Tradidit arcano quodcunque volumine Moyses.
27. _The Seleucids._--Toward the end of the 3rd century the Palestinian
Jews became involved in the struggle between Egypt and Syria. In
Jerusalem there were partisans of both the combatants. The more orthodox
or conservative Jews preferred the tolerant rule of the Ptolemies: the
rest, who chafed at the isolation of the nation, looked to the
Seleucids, who inherited Alexander's ideal of a united empire based on a
universal adoption of Hellenism. At this point Josephus cites the
testimony of Polybius:--"Scopas, the general of Ptolemy, advanced into
the highlands and subdued the nation of the Jews in the winter. After
the defeat of Scopas, Antiochus gained Batanaea and Samaria and Abila
and Gadara, and a little later those of the Jews who live round the
Temple called Jerusalem adhered to him." From this it appears that the
pro-Syrian faction of the Jews had been strong and active enough to
bring an Egyptian army upon them (199-198 B.C.). Josephus adds that an
Egyptian garrison was left in Jerusalem. This act of oppression
presumably strengthened the Syrian faction of the Jews and led to the
transference of the nation's allegiance. The language of Polybius
suggests that he was acquainted with other Jewish communities and with
the fame of the Temple: in his view they are not an organized state.
They were not even a pawn in the game which Antiochus proposed to play
with Rome for the possession of Greece and Asia Minor. His defeat left
the resources of his kingdom exhausted and its extent diminished; and so
the Jews became important to his successors for the sake of their wealth
and their position on the frontier. To pay his debt to Rome he was
compelled to resort to extraordinary methods of raising money; he
actually met his death (187 B.C.) in an attempt to loot the temple of
Elymais.
The pro-Syrian faction of the Palestinian Jews found their opportunity
in this emergency and informed the governor of Coele-Syria that the
treasury in Jerusalem contained untold sums of money. Heliodorus, prime
minister of Seleucus Philopator, who succeeded Antiochus, arrived at
Jerusalem in his progress through Coele-Syria and Phoenicia and declared
the treasure confiscate to the royal exchequer. According to the Jewish
legend Heliodorus was attacked when he entered the Temple by a horse
with a terrible rider and by two young men. He was scourged and only
escaped with his life at the intercession of Onias the high priest, who
had pleaded with him vainly that the treasure included the deposits of
widows and orphans and also some belonging to Hyrcanus, "a man in very
high position." Onias was accused by his enemies of having given the
information which led to this outrage and when, relying upon the support
of the provincial governor, they proceeded to attempt assassination, he
fled to Antioch and appealed to the king.
When Seleucus was assassinated by Heliodorus, Antiochus IV., his
brother, who had been chief magistrate at Athens, came back secretly
"to seize the kingdom by guile" (Dan. xi. 21 seq.). On his accession he
appointed Jesus, the brother of Onias, to the high-priesthood, and
sanctioned his proposals for the conversion of Jerusalem into a Greek
city. The high priest changed his name to Jason and made a gymnasium
near the citadel. The principle of separation was abandoned. The priests
deserted the Temple for the palaestra and the young nobles wore the
Greek cap. The Jews of Jerusalem were enrolled as citizens of Antioch.
Jason sent money for a sacrifice to Heracles at Tyre; and the only
recorded opposition to his policy came from his envoys, who pleaded that
the money might be applied to naval expenditure. Thus Jason stripped the
high-priesthood of its sacred character and did what he could to stamp
out Judaism.
Menelaus supplanted Jason, obtaining his appointment from the king by
the promise of a larger contribution. In order to secure his position,
he contrived the murder of Onias, who had taken sanctuary at Daphne.
This outrage, coupled with his appropriation of temple vessels, which he
used as bribes, raised against Menelaus the senate and the people of
Jerusalem. His brother and deputy was killed in a serious riot, and an
accusation was laid against Menelaus before Antiochus. At the inquiry he
bought his acquittal from a courtier and his accusers were executed.
Antiochus required peace in Jerusalem and probably regarded Onias as the
representative of the pro-Egyptian faction, the allies of his enemy.
During his second Egyptian campaign a rumour came that Antiochus was
dead, and Jason made a raid upon Jerusalem. Menelaus held the citadel
and Jason was unable to establish himself in the city. The people were
presumably out of sympathy with Hellenizers, whether they belonged to
the house of Onias or that of Tobiah. When Antiochus finally evacuated
Egypt in obedience to the decree of Rome, he thought that Judaea was in
revolt. Though Jason had fled, it was necessary to storm the city; the
drastic measures which Menelaus advised seem to indicate that the poorer
classes had been roused to defend the Temple from further sacrilege. A
massacre took place, and Antiochus braved the anger of Yahweh by
entering and pillaging the Temple with impunity. The author of 2
Maccabees infers from his success that the nation had forfeited all
right to divine protection for the time (2 Macc. v. 18-20).
The policy which Antiochus thus inaugurated he carried on rigorously and
systematically. His whole kingdom was to be unified; Judaism was an
eccentricity and as such doomed to extinction. The Temple of Jerusalem
was made over to Zeus Olympius: the temple of Gerizim to Zeus Xenius.
All the religious rites of Judaism were proscribed and the neighbouring
Greek cities were requested to enforce the prohibition upon their Jewish
citizens. Jerusalem was occupied by an army which took advantage of the
Sabbath and proceeded to suppress its observance. An Athenian came to be
the missionary of Hellenism and to direct its ceremonies, which were
established by force up and down the country.
28. _The Maccabees._--Jerusalem and Gerizim were purged and converted to
the state religion with some ease. Elsewhere, as there, some conformed
and some became martyrs for the faith. And the passive resistance of
those who refused to conform at length gave rise to active opposition.
"The king's officers who were enforcing the apostasy came into the city
of Modein to sacrifice, and many of Israel went over to them, but
Mattathias ... slew a Jew who came to sacrifice and the king's officer
and pulled down the altar" (1 Macc. ii. 15 sqq.). Whether led by this
Mattathias or not, certain Jews fled into the wilderness and found a
leader in Judas Maccabaeus his reputed son, the first of the five
Asmonean (Hasmonean) brethren. The warfare which followed was like that
which Saul and David waged against the Philistines. Antiochus was
occupied with his Parthian campaign and trusted that the Hellenized Jews
would maintain their ascendancy with the aid of the provincial troops.
In his last illness he wrote to express his confidence in their loyalty.
But the rebels collected adherents from the villages; and, when they
resolved to violate the sabbath to the extent of resisting attack, they
were joined by the company of the Assideans (Hasidim). Such a breach of
the sabbath was necessary if the whole Law was to survive at all in
Palestine. But the transgression is enough to explain the disfavour into
which the Maccabees seem to fall in the judgment of later Judaism, as,
in that judgment, it is enough to account for the instability of their
dynasty. Unstable as it was, their dynasty was soon established. In the
country-side of Judaea, Judaism--and no longer Hellenism--was propagated
by force. Apollonius, the commander of the Syrian garrison in Jerusalem,
and Seron the commander of the army in Syria, came in turn against Judas
and his bands and were defeated. The revolt thus became important enough
to engage the attention of the governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, if
not of Lysias the regent himself. Nicanor was despatched with a large
army to put down the rebels and to pay the tribute due to Rome by
selling them as slaves. Judas was at Emmaus; "the men of the citadel"
guided a detachment of the Syrian troops to his encampment by night. The
rebels escaped in time, but not into the hills, as their enemies
surmised. At dawn they made an unexpected attack upon the main body and
routed it. Next year (165 B.C.) Lysias himself entered the Idumaean
country and laid siege to the fortress of Bethsura. Judas gathered what
men he could and joined battle. The siege was raised, more probably in
consequence of the death of Antiochus Epiphanes than because Judas had
gained any real victory. The proscription of the Jewish religion was
withdrawn and the Temple restored to them. But it was Menelaus who was
sent by the king "to encourage" (2 Macc. xi. 32) the Jews, and in the
official letters no reference is made to Judas. Such hints as these
indicate the impossibility of recovering a complete picture of the Jews
during the sovereignty of the Greeks, which the Talmudists regard as the
dark age, best left in oblivion.
Judas entered Jerusalem, the citadel of which was still occupied by a
Syrian garrison, and the Temple was re-dedicated on the 25th of Kislev
(164 B.C.). So "the Pious" achieved the object for which presumably they
took up arms. The re-establishment of Judaism, which alone of current
religions was intolerant of a rival, seems to have excited the jealousy
of their neighbours who had embraced the Greek way of life. The
hellenizers had not lost all hope of converting the nation and were
indisposed to acquiesce in the concordat. Judas and his zealots were
thus able to maintain their prominence and gradually to increase their
power. At Joppa, for example, the Jewish settlers--two hundred in
all--"were invited to go into boats provided in accordance with the
common decree of the city." They accepted the invitation and were
drowned. Judas avenged them by burning the harbour and the shipping, and
set to work to bring into Judaea all such communities of Jews who had
kept themselves separate from their heathen neighbours. In this way he
became strong enough to deal with the apostates of Judaea.
In 163 Lysias led another expedition against these disturbers of the
king's peace and defeated Judas at Bethzachariah. But while the forces
were besieging Bethzur and the fortress on Mount Zion, a pretender arose
in Antioch, and Lysias was compelled to come to terms--and now with
Judas. The Jewish refugees had turned the balance, and so Judas became
strategus of Judaea, whilst Menelaus was put to death.
In 162 Demetrius escaped from Rome and got possession of the kingdom of
Syria. Jakim, whose name outside religion was Alcimus, waited upon the
new king on behalf of the loyal Jews who had hellenized. He himself was
qualified to be the legitimate head of a united state, for he was of the
tribe of Aaron. Judas and the Asmoneans were usurpers, who owed their
title to Lysias. So Alcimus-Jakim was made high priest and Bacchides
brought an army to instal him in his office. The Assideans made their
submission at once. Judas had won for them religious freedom: but the
Temple required a descendant of Aaron for priest and he was come. But
his first act was to seize and slay sixty of them: so it was clear to
Judas at any rate, if not also to the Assideans who survived, that
political independence was necessary if the religion was to be secure.
In face of his active opposition Alcimus could not maintain himself
without the support of Bacchides and was forced to retire to Antioch.
In response to his complaints Nicanor was appointed governor of Judaea
with power to treat with Judas. It appears that the two became friends
at first, but fresh orders from Antioch made Nicanor guilty of treachery
in the eyes of Judas's partisans. Warned by the change of his friend's
manner Judas fled. Nicanor threatened to destroy the Temple if the
priests would not deliver Judas into his hands. Soon it came to his
knowledge that Judas was in Samaria, whither he followed him on a
sabbath with Jews pressed into his service. The day was known afterwards
as Nicanor's day, for he was found dead on the field (Capharsalama) by
the victorious followers of Judas (13th of Adar, March 161 B.C.). After
this victory Judas made an alliance with the people of Rome, who had no
love for Demetrius his enemy, nor any intention of putting their
professions of friendship into practice. Bacchides and Alcimus returned
meanwhile into the land of Judah; at Elasa "Judas fell and the rest
fled" (1 Macc. ix. 18). Bacchides occupied Judaea and made a chain of
forts. Jonathan, who succeeded his brother Judas, was captain of a band
of fugitive outlaws. But on the death of Alcimus Bacchides retired and
Jonathan with his followers settled down beyond the range of the Syrian
garrisons. The Hellenizers still enjoyed the royal favour and Jonathan
made no attempt to dispossess them. After an interval of two years they
tried to capture him and failed. This failure seems to have convinced
Bacchides that it would be well to recognize Jonathan and to secure a
balance of parties. In 158 Jonathan began to rule as a judge in Michmash
and he destroyed the godless out of Israel--so far, that is, as his
power extended. In 153 Alexander Balas withdrew Jonathan from his
allegiance to Demetrius by the offer of the high-priesthood. He had
already made Jerusalem his capital and fortified the Temple mount: the
Syrian garrisons had already been withdrawn with the exception of those
of the Akra and Bethzur. In 147 Jonathan repaid his benefactor by
destroying the army of the governor of Coele-Syria, who had espoused the
cause of Demetrius. The fugitives took sanctuary in the temple of Dagon
at Azotus. "But Jonathan burned the temple of Dagon and those who fled
into it." After the death of Balas he laid siege to the Akra; and "the
apostates, who hated their own nation," appealed to Demetrius. Jonathan
was summoned to Antioch, made his peace and apparently relinquished his
attempt in return for the addition of three Samaritan districts to his
territory. Later, when the people of Antioch rose against the king,
Jonathan despatched a force of 3000 men who played a notable part in the
merciless suppression of the insurrection. 1 Maccabees credits them with
100,000 victims. Trypho, the regent of Antiochus VI., put even greater
political power into the hands of Jonathan and his brother Simon, but
finally seized Jonathan on the pretext of a conference. Simon was thus
left to consolidate what had been won in Palestine for the Jews and the
family whose head he had become. The weakness of the king enabled him to
demand and to secure immunity from taxation. The Jewish aristocracy
became peers of the Seleucid kingdom. Simon was declared high priest:
Rome and Sparta rejoiced in the elevation of their friend and ally. In
the hundred and seventieth year (142 B.C.) the yoke of the heathen was
taken away from Israel and the people began to date their legal
documents "in the first year of Simon the great high priest and
commander and leader of the Jews." The popular verdict received official
and formal sanction. Simon was declared by the Jews and the priests
their governor and high priest for ever, until there should arise a
faithful prophet. The garrison of the Akra had been starved by a close
blockade into submission, and beyond the boundaries of Judaea "he took
Joppa for a haven and made himself master of Gazara and Bethsura."
29. _John Hyrcanus and the Sadducees._--But in 138 B.C. Antiochus
Sidetes entered Seleucia and required the submission of all the petty
states, which had taken advantage of the weakness of preceding kings.
From Simon he demanded an indemnity of 1000 talents for his oppression
and invasion of non-Jewish territory: Simon offered 100 talents. At
length Antiochus appeared to enforce his demand in 134. Simon was dead
(135 B.C.) and John Hyrcanus had succeeded his father. The Jewish forces
were driven back upon Jerusalem and the city was closely invested. At
the feast of tabernacles of 132 Hyrcanus requested and Antiochus granted
a week's truce. The only hope of the Jews lay in the clemency of their
victorious suzerain, and it did not fail them. Some of his advisers
urged the demolition of the nation on the ground of their exclusiveness,
but he sent a sacrifice and won thereby the name of "Pious." In
subsequent negotiations he accepted the disarmament of the besieged and
a tribute as conditions of peace, and in response to their entreaty left
Jerusalem without a garrison. When he went on his last disastrous
campaign, Hyrcanus led a Jewish contingent to join his army, partly
perhaps a troop of mercenaries (for Hyrcanus was the first of the Jewish
kings to hire mercenaries, with the treasure found in David's tomb).
After his death Hyrcanus took advantage of the general confusion to
extend Jewish territory with the countenance of Rome. He destroyed the
temple of Gerizim and compelled the Idumaeans to submit to circumcision
and embrace the laws of the Jews on pain of deportation.
In Jerusalem and in the country, in Alexandria, Egypt and Cyprus, the
Jews were prosperous (Jos. _Ant._ xiii. 284). This prosperity and the
apparent security of Judaism led to a breach between Hyrcanus and his
spiritual directors, the Pharisees. His lineage was (in the opinion of
one of them at least) of doubtful purity; and so it was his duty to lay
down the high-priesthood and be content to rule the nation. That one man
should hold both offices was indeed against the example of Moses, and
could only be admitted as a temporary concession to necessity. Hyrcanus
could not entertain the proposal that he should resign the sacred office
to which he owed much of his authority. The allegation about his mother
was false: the Pharisee who retailed it was guilty of no small offence.
A Sadducean friend advised Hyrcanus to ask the whole body of the
Pharisees to prescribe the penalty. Their leniency, which was notorious,
alienated the king or probably furnished him with a pretext for breaking
with them. The Pharisees were troublesome counsellors and doubtful
allies for an ambitious prince. They were all-powerful with the people,
but Hyrcanus with his mercenaries was independent of the people, and the
wealthy belonged to the sect of the Sadducees. The suppression of the
Pharisaic ordinances and the punishment of those who observed them led
to some disturbance. But Hyrcanus "was judged worthy of the three great
privileges, the rule of the nation, the high-priestly dignity, and
prophecy." This verdict suggests that the Sadducees, with whom he allied
himself, had learned to affect some show of Judaism in Judaea. If the
poor were ardent nationalists who would not intermingle with the Greeks,
the rich had long outgrown and now could humour such prejudices; and the
title of their party was capable of recalling at any rate the sound of
the national ideal of righteousness, i.e. _Sadaqah_.
The successor of Hyrcanus (d. 105) was Judas Aristobulus, "the friend of
the Greeks," who first assumed the title of king. According to Strabo he
was a courteous man and in many ways useful to the Jews. His great
achievement was the conquest of a part of Ituraea, which he added to
Judaea and whose inhabitants he compelled to accept Judaism.
The Sadducean nobility continued in power under his brother and
successor Alexander Jannaeus (103-78); and the breach between the king
and the mass of the people widened. But Salome Alexandra, his brother's
widow, who released him from prison on the death of her husband and
married him, was connected with the Pharisees through her brother Simon
ben Shetach. If his influence or theirs dictated her policy, there is no
evidence of any objection to the union of the secular power with the
high-priesthood. The party may have thought that Jannaeus was likely to
bring the dynasty to an end. His first action was to besiege Ptolemais.
Its citizens appealed to Ptolemy Lathyrus, who had been driven from the
throne of Egypt by his mother Cleopatra and was reigning in Cyprus.
Alexander raised the siege, made peace with Ptolemy and secretly sent to
Cleopatra for help against her son. The result of this double-dealing
was that his army was destroyed by Ptolemy, who advanced into Egypt
leaving Palestine at the mercy of Cleopatra. But Cleopatra's generals
were Jews and by their protests prevented her from annexing it. Being
thus freed from fear on the side of Ptolemy, Alexander continued his
desultory campaigns across the Jordan and on the coast without any
apparent policy and with indifferent success. Finally, when he
officiated as high priest at the feast of tabernacles he roused the fury
of the people by a derisive breach of the Pharisaic ritual. They cried
out that he was unworthy of his office, and pelted him with the citrons
which they were carrying as the Law prescribed. Alexander summoned his
mercenaries, and 6000 Jews were killed before he set out on his
disastrous campaign against an Arabian king. He returned a fugitive to
find the nation in armed rebellion. After six years of civil war he
appealed to them to state the conditions under which they would lay
aside their hostility. They replied by demanding his death and called in
the Syrians. But when the Syrians chased him into the mountains, 6000
Jews went over to him and, with their aid, he put down the rebellion.
Eight hundred Jews who had held a fortress against him were crucified;
8000 Pharisees fled to Egypt and remained there. Offering an ineffectual
resistance to the passage of the Syrian troops, Alexander was driven
back by Aretas, king of Arabia, against whom they had marched. His later
years brought him small victories over isolated cities.
On his deathbed it is said that Alexander advised his wife to reverse
this policy and rely upon the Pharisees. According to the Talmud, he
warned her "to fear neither the Pharisees nor their opponents but the
hypocrites who do the deed of Zimri and claim the reward of Phinehas:"
the warning indicates his justification of his policy in the matter of
the crucifixions. In any case the Pharisees were predominant under
Alexandra, who became queen (78-69) under her husband's will. Hyrcanus
her elder son was only high priest, as the stricter Pharisees required.
All the Pharisaic ordinances which Hyrcanus had abolished were
reaffirmed as binding. Simon ben Shatach stood beside the queen: the
exiles were restored and among them his great colleague Jehudah ben
Tabai. The great saying of each of these rabbis is concerned with the
duties of a judge; the selection does justice to the importance of the
Sanhedrin, which was filled with Pharisees. The legal reforms which they
introduced tended for the most part to mercy, but the Talmud refers to
one case which is an exception: false witnesses were condemned to suffer
the penalty due to their victim, even if he escaped. This ruling may be
interpreted as part of a campaign directed against the counsellors of
Alexander or as an instance of their general principle that intention is
equivalent to commission in the eye of the Law. The queen interposed to
prevent the execution of those who had counselled the crucifixion of the
rebels and permitted them to withdraw with her younger son Aristobulus
to the fortresses outside Jerusalem. Against their natural desire for
revenge may be set the fact that the Pharisees did much to improve the
status of women among the Jews.
On the death of Alexandra (69 B.C.) Aristobulus disputed the succession
of Hyrcanus. When their forces met at Jericho, Hyrcanus, finding that
the bulk of his following deserted to Aristobulus, fled with those who
remained to the tower Antonia and seized Aristobulus's wife and children
as hostages for his own safety. Having this advantage, he was able to
abdicate in favour of Aristobulus and to retire into private life. But
he was not able to save his friends, who were also the enemies of the
reigning king. In fear of reprisals Antipas (or Antipater), the
Idumaean, his counsellor, played on the fears of Hyrcanus and persuaded
him to buy the aid of the Nabataean Arabs with promises. Aristobulus
could not withstand the army of Aretas: he was driven back upon
Jerusalem and there besieged. The Jews deserted to the victorious
Hyrcanus: only the priests remained loyal to their accepted king; many
fled to Egypt.
30. _The Romans and the Idumaeans._--At this point the power of Rome
appeared upon the scene in the person of M. Aemilius Scaurus (stepson of
Sulla) who had been sent into Syria by Pompey (65 B.C.). Both brothers
appealed to this new tribunal and Aristobulus bought a verdict in his
favour. The siege was raised. Aretas retired from Judaea; and
Aristobulus pursued the retreating army. But, when Pompey himself
arrived at Damascus, Antipater, who pulled the strings and exploited the
claims of Hyrcanus, realized that Rome and not the Arabs, who were cowed
by the threats of Scaurus, was the ruler of the East. To Rome,
therefore, he must pay his court. Others shared this conviction: Strabo
speaks of embassies from Egypt and Judaea bearing presents--one
deposited in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus bore the inscription of
Alexander, the king of the Jews. From Judaea there were three embassies
pleading, for Aristobulus, for Hyrcanus, and for the nation, who would
have no king at all but their God.
Pompey deferred his decision until he should have inquired into the
state of the Nabataeans, who had shown themselves to be capable of
dominating the Jews in the absence of the Roman army. In the interval
Aristobulus provoked him by his display of a certain impatience. The
people had no responsible head, of whom Rome could take cognisance: so
Pompey decided in favour of Hyrcanus and humoured the people by
recognizing him, not as king, but as high priest. Antipater remained
secure, in power if not in place. The Roman supremacy was established:
the Jews were once more one of the subject states of Syria, now a Roman
province. Their national aspirations had received a contemptuous
acknowledgment, when their Temple had been desecrated by the entry of a
foreign conqueror.
Aristobulus himself had less resolution than his partisans. When he
repented of his attempted resistance and treated with Pompey for peace,
his followers threw themselves into Jerusalem, and, when the faction of
Hyrcanus resolved to open the gates, into the Temple. There they held
out for three months, succumbing finally because in obedience to the Law
(as interpreted since the time of Antiochus Epiphanes) they would only
defend themselves from actual assault upon the sabbath day. The Romans
profited by this inaction to push on the siege-works, without provoking
resistance by actual assaults until the very end. Pompey finally took
the stronghold by choosing the day of the fast, when the Jews abstain
from all work, that is the sabbath (Strabo). Dio Cassius calls it the
day of Cronos. On this bloody sabbath the priests showed a devotion to
their worship which matched the inaction of the fighting men. Though
they saw the enemy advancing upon them sword in hand they remained at
worship untroubled and were slaughtered as they poured libation and
burned incense, for they put their own safety second to the service of
God. And there were Jews among the murderers of the 12,000 Jews who
fell.
The Jews of Palestine thus became once more a subject state, stripped of
their conquests and confined to their own borders. Aristobulus and his
children were conveyed to Rome to grace their conqueror's triumphal
procession. But his son Alexander escaped during the journey, gathered
some force, and overran Judaea. The Pharisees decided that they could
not take action on either side, since the elder son of Alexandra was
directed by the Idumaean Antipater; and the people had an affection for
such Asmonean princes as dared to challenge the Roman domination of
their ancestral kingdom. The civil war was renewed; but Aulus Gabinius,
the proconsul, soon crushed the pretender and set up an aristocracy in
Judaea with Hyrcanus as guardian of the Temple. The country was divided
into five districts with five synods; and Josephus asserts that the
people welcomed the change from the monarchy. In spite of this,
Aristobulus (56 B.C.) and Alexander (55 B.C.) found loyalists to follow
them in their successive raids. But Antipater found supplies for the
army of Gabinius, who, despite Egyptian and Parthian distractions,
restored order according to the will of Antipater. M. Crassus, who
succeeded him, plundered the Temple of its gold and the treasure (54
B.C.) which the Jews of the dispersion had contributed for its
maintenance. It is said that Eleazar, the priest who guarded the
treasure, offered Crassus the golden beam as ransom for the whole,
knowing, what no one else knew, that it was mainly composed of wood. So
Crassus departed to Parthia and died. When the Parthians, elated by
their victory over Crassus (53 B.C.) advanced upon Syria, Cassius
opposed them. Some of the Jews, presumably the partisans of Aristobulus,
were ready to co-operate with the Parthians. At any rate Antipater was
ready to aid Cassius with advice; Taricheae was taken and 30,000 Jews
were sold into slavery (51 B.C.). In spite of this vigorous coercion
Cassius came to terms with Alexander, before he returned to the
Euphrates to hold it against the Parthians.
Two years later Julius Caesar made himself master of Rome and despatched
the captive Aristobulus with two legions to win Judaea (49 B.C.). But
Pompey's partisans were beforehand with him: he was taken off by poison
and got not so much as a burial in his fatherland. At the same time his
son Alexander was beheaded at Antioch by Pompey's order as an enemy of
Rome. After the defeat and death of Pompey (48 B.C.) Antipater
transferred his allegiance to Caesar and demonstrated its value during
Caesar's Egyptian campaign. He carried with him the Arabs and the
princes of Syria, and through Hyrcanus he was able to transform the
hostility of the Egyptian Jews into active friendliness. These services,
which incidentally illustrate the solidarity and unity of the Jewish
nation and the respect of the communities of the dispersion for the
metropolis, were recognized and rewarded. Before his assassination in 44
B.C. Julius Caesar had confirmed Hyrcanus in the high-priesthood and
added the title of ethnarch. Antipater had been made a Roman citizen and
procurator of the reunited Judaea. Further, as confederates of the
senate and people of Rome, the Jews had received accession of territory,
including the port of Joppa and, with other material privileges, the
right of observing their religious customs not only in Palestine but
also in Alexandria and elsewhere. Idumaean or Philistine of Ascalon,
Antipater had displayed the capacity of his adoptive or adopted nation
for his own profit and theirs. And when Caesar died Suetonius notes that
he was mourned by foreign nations, especially by the Jews (_Caes._ 84).
In the midst of all this civil strife the Pharisees and all who were
preoccupied with religion found it almost impossible to discern what
they should do to please God. The people whom they directed were called
out to fight, at the bidding of an alien, for this and that foreigner
who seemed most powerful and most likely to succeed. In Palestine few
could command leisure for meditation; as for opportunities of effective
intervention in affairs, they had none, it would seem, once Alexander
was dead.
There is a story of a priest named Onias preserved both by Josephus
and in the Talmud, which throws some light upon the indecision of the
religious in the period just reviewed. When Aretas intervened in the
interest of Hyrcanus and defeated Aristobulus, the usurper of his
brother's inheritance, the people accepted the verdict of battle,
sided with the victor's client, and joined in the siege of Jerusalem.
The most reputable of the Jews fled to Egypt; but Onias, a righteous
man and dear to God, who had hidden himself, was discovered by the
besiegers. He had a name for power in prayer; for once in a drought he
prayed for rain and God had heard his prayer. His captors now required
of him that he should put a curse upon Aristobulus and his faction. On
compulsion he stood in their midst and said: "O God, king of the
universe, since these who stand with me are thy people and the
besieged are thy priests, I pray thee that thou hearken not to those
against these, nor accomplish what these entreat against those." So he
prayed--and the wicked Jews stoned him.
Unrighteous Jews were in the ascendant. There were only Asmonean
princes, degenerate and barely titular sons of Levi, to serve as
judges of Israel--and they were at feud and both relied upon foreign
aid. The righteous could only flee or hide, and so wait dreaming of
the mercy of God past and to come. As yet our authorities do not
permit us to follow them to Egypt with any certainty, but the _Psalms
of Solomon_ express the mind of one who survived to see Pompey the
Great brought low. Although Pompey had spared the temple treasure, he
was the embodiment of the power of Rome, which was not always so
considerately exercised. And so the psalmist exults in his death and
dishonour (Ps. ii.): he prayed that the pride of the dragon might be
humbled and God shewed him the dead body lying upon the waves--and
there was none to bury it. As one of those who fear the Lord in truth
and in patience, he looks forward to the punishment of all sinners who
oppress the righteous and profane the sanctuary. For the sins of the
rulers God had rejected his people; but the remnant could not but
inherit the promises, which belong to the chosen people. For the Lord
is faithful unto those who walk in the righteousness of his
commandments (xiv. 1): in the exercise of their freewill and with
God's help they will attain salvation. As God's servant, Pompey
destroyed their rulers and every wise councillor: soon the righteous
and sinless king of David's house shall reign over them and over all
the nations (xvii.).
31. _Herod the Great._--After the departure of Caesar, Antipater warned
the adherents of Hyrcanus against taking part in any revolutionary
attempts, and his son Herod, who, in spite of his youth, had been
appointed governor of Galilee, dealt summarily with Hezekiah, the robber
captain who was overrunning the adjacent part of Syria. The gratitude of
the Syrians brought him to the knowledge of Sextus Caesar the governor
of Syria; but his action inspired the chief men of the Jews with
apprehension. Complaint was made to Hyrcanus that Herod had violated the
law which prohibited the execution of even an evil man, unless he had
been first condemned to death by the Sanhedrin. At the same time the
mothers of the murdered men came to the Temple to demand vengeance. So
Herod was summoned to stand his trial. He came in answer to the
summons--but attended by a bodyguard and protected by the word of
Sextus. Of all the Sanhedrin only Sameas "a righteous man and therefore
superior to fear" dared to speak. Being a Pharisee he faced the facts of
Herod's power and warned the tribunal of the event, just as later he
counselled the people to receive him, saying that for their sins they
could not escape him. Herod put his own profit above the Law, acting
after his kind, and he also was God's instrument. The effect of the
speech was to goad the Sanhedrin into condemning Herod: Hyrcanus
postponed their decision and persuaded him to flee. Sextus Caesar made
him lieutenant-governor of Coele Syria, and only his father restrained
him from returning to wreak his revenge upon Hyrcanus.
It is to be remembered that, in this and all narratives of the life of
Herod, Josephus was dependent upon the history of Herod's client,
Nicolaus of Damascus, and was himself a supporter of law and order.
The action of the Sanhedrin and the presence of the women suppliants
in the Temple suggest, if they do not prove, that this Hezekiah who
harassed the Syrians was a Jewish patriot, who could not acquiesce and
wait with Sameas.
Malichus also, the murderer or reputed murderer of Antipater, appears to
have been a partisan of Hyrcanus, who had a zeal for Judaism. When
Cassius demanded a tribute of 700 talents from Palestine, Antipater set
Herod, Phasael and this Malichus, his enemy, to collect it. Herod
thought it imprudent to secure the favour of Rome by the sufferings of
others. But some cities defaulted, and they were apparently among those
assigned to Malichus. If he had been lenient for their sakes or in the
hope of damaging Antipater, he was disappointed; for Cassius sold four
cities into slavery and Hyrcanus made up the deficit. Soon after this
(43 B.C.) Malichus succeeded, it is said, in poisoning Antipater as he
dined with Hyrcanus, and was assassinated by Herod's bravoes.
After the departure of Cassius, Antipater being dead, there was
confusion in Judaea. Antigonus, the son of Aristobulus, made a raid and
was with difficulty repulsed by Herod. The prince of Tyre occupied part
of Galilee. When Antony assumed the dominion of the East after the
defeat of Cassius at Philippi, an embassy of the Jews, amongst other
embassies, approached him in Bithynia and accused the sons of Antipater
as usurpers of the power which rightly belonged to Hyrcanus. Another
approached him at Antioch. But Hyrcanus was well content to forgo the
title to political power, which he could not exercise in practice, and
Antony had been a friend of Antipater. So Herod and Phasael continued to
be virtually kings of the Jews: Antony's court required large
remittances and Palestine was not exempt.
In 40 B.C. Antony was absent in Egypt or Italy; and the Parthians swept
down upon Syria with Antigonus in their train. Hyrcanus and Phasael were
trapped: Herod fled by way of Egypt to Rome. Hyrcanus, who was
Antigonus' only rival, was mutilated and carried to Parthia. So he could
no more be high priest, and his life was spared only at the
intercession of the Parthian Jews, who had a regard for the Asmonean
prince. Thus Antigonus succeeded his uncle as "King Antigonus" in the
Greek and "Mattathiah the high priest" in the Hebrew by grace of the
Parthians.
The senate of Rome under the influence of Antony and Octavian ratified
the claims of Herod, and after some delay lent him the armed force
necessary to make them good. In the hope of healing the breach, which
his success could only aggravate, and for love, he took to wife
Mariamne, grandniece of Hyrcanus. Galilee was pacified, Jerusalem taken
and Antigonus beheaded by the Romans. From this point to the end of the
period the Jews were dependents of Rome, free to attend to their own
affairs, so long as they paid taxes to the subordinate rulers, Herodian
or Roman, whom they detested equally. If some from time to time dared to
hope for political independence their futility was demonstrated. One by
one the descendants of the Asmoneans were removed. The national hope was
relegated to an indefinite future and to another sphere. At any rate the
Jews were free to worship their God and to study his law: their religion
was recognized by the state and indeed established.
This development of Judaism was eminently to the mind of the rulers; and
Herod did much to encourage it. More and more it became identified with
the synagogue, in which the Law was expounded: more and more it became a
matter for the individual and his private life. This was so even in
Palestine--the land which the Jews hoped to possess--and in Jerusalem
itself, the holy city, in which the Temple stood. Herod had put down
Jewish rebels and Herod appointed the high priests. In his appointments
he was careful to avoid or to suppress any person who, being popular,
might legitimize a rebellion by heading it. The Pharisees, who regarded
his rule as an inevitable penalty for the sins of the people, he
encouraged. Pollio the Pharisee and Sameas his disciple were in special
honour with him, Josephus says, when he re-entered Jerusalem and put to
death the leaders of the faction of Antigonus. How well their teaching
served his purpose is shown by the sayings of two rabbis who, if not
identical with these Pharisees, belong to their period and their party.
Shemaiah said, "Love work and hate lordship and make not thyself known
to the government." Abtalion said, "Ye wise, be guarded in your words:
perchance ye may incur the debt of exile." Precepts such as these could
hardly fall to effect some modification of the reckless zeal of the
Galileans in the pupils of the synagogue. Many if not all of the
professed rabbis had travelled outside Palestine: some were even members
of the dispersion, like Hillel the Babylonian, who with Shammai forms
the second of the pairs. Through them the experience of the dispersion
was brought to bear upon the Palestinian Jews. Herod's nominees were not
the men to extend the prestige of the high-priesthood at the expense of
these rabbis: even in Jerusalem the synagogue became of more importance
than the Temple. Hillel also inculcated the duty of making converts to
Judaism. He said, "Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace, and
pursuing peace, loving mankind and bringing them nigh to the Law." But
even he reckoned the books of Daniel and Esther as canonical, and these
were dangerous food for men who did not realize the full power of Rome.
So long as Herod lived there was no insurrection. Formally he was an
orthodox Jew and set his face against intermarriage with the
uncircumcised. He was also ready and able to protect the Jews of the
dispersion. But that ability was largely due to his whole-hearted
Hellenism, which was shown by the Greek cities which he founded in
Palestine and the buildings he erected in Jerusalem. In its material
embodiments Greek civilization became as much a part of Jewish life in
Palestine as it was in Alexandria or Antioch; and herein the rabbis
could not follow him.
When all the Jewish people swore to be loyal to Caesar and the king's
policy, the Pharisees--above 6000--refused to swear. The king imposed a
fine upon them, and the wife of Pheroras--Herod's brother--paid it on
their behalf. In return for her kindness, being entrusted with
foreknowledge by the visitation of God, they prophesied that God had
decreed an end of rule for Herod and his line and that the sovereignty
devolved upon her and Pheroras and their children.
From the sequel it appears that the prophecy was uttered by one Pharisee
only, and that it was in no way endorsed by the party. When it came to
the ears of the king he slew the most responsible of the Pharisees and
every member of his household who accepted what the Pharisee said. An
explanation of this unwarrantable generalization may be found in the
fact that the incident is derived from a source which was unfavourable
to the Pharisees: they are described as a Jewish section of men who
pretend to set great store by the exactitude of the ancestral tradition
and the laws in which the deity delights--as dominant over
women-folk--and as sudden and quick in quarrel.
Towards the end of Herod's life two rabbis attempted to uphold by
physical force the cardinal dogma of Judaism, which prohibited the use
of images. Their action is intelligible enough. Herod was stricken with
an incurable disease. He had sinned against the Law; and at last God had
punished him. At last the law-abiding Jews might and must assert the
majesty of the outraged Law. The most conspicuous of the many symbols
and signs of his transgression was the golden eagle which he had placed
over the great gate of the Temple; its destruction was the obvious means
to adopt for the quickening and assertion of Jewish principles.
By their labours in the education of the youth of the nation, these
rabbis, Judas and Matthias, had endeared themselves to the populace and
had gained influence over their disciples. A report that Herod was dead
co-operated with their exhortations to send the iconoclasts to their
appointed work. And so they went to earn the rewards of their practical
piety from the Law. If they died, death was inevitable, the rabbis said,
and no better death would they ever find. Moreover, their children and
kindred would benefit by the good name and fame belonging to those who
died for the Law. Such is the account which Josephus gives in the
_Antiquities_; in the _Jewish War_ he represents the rabbis and their
disciples as looking forward to greater happiness for themselves after
such a death. But Herod was not dead yet, and the instigators and the
agents of this sacrilege were burned alive.
32. _The Settlement of Augustus._--On the death of Herod in 4 B.C.
Archelaus kept open house for mourners as the Jewish custom, which
reduced many Jews to beggary, prescribed. The people petitioned for the
punishment of those who were responsible for the execution of Matthias
and his associates and for the removal of the high priest. Archelaus
temporized; the loyalty of the people no longer constituted a valid
title to the throne; his succession must first be sanctioned by
Augustus. Before he departed to Rome on this errand, which was itself an
insult to the nation, there were riots in Jerusalem at the Passover
which he needed all his soldiery to put down. When he presented himself
before the emperor--apart from rival claimants of his own family--there
was an embassy from the Jewish people who prayed to be rid of a monarchy
and rulers such as Herod. As part of the Roman province of Syria and
under its governors they would prove that they were not really
disaffected and rebellious. During the absence of Archelaus, who
would--the Jews feared--prove his legitimacy by emulating his father's
ferocity, and to whom their ambassadors preferred Antipas, the Jews of
Palestine gave the lie to their protestations of loyalty and
peaceableness. At the Passover the pilgrims attacked the Roman troops.
After hard fighting the procurator, whose cruelty provoked the attack,
captured the Temple and robbed the treasury. On this the insurgents were
joined by some of Herod's army and besieged the Romans in Herod's
palace. Elsewhere the occasion tempted many to play at being
king--Judas, son of Hezekiah, in Galilee; Simon, one of the king's
slaves, in Peraea. Most notable of all perhaps was the shepherd
Athronges, who assumed the pomp of royalty and employed his four
brothers as captains and satraps in the war which he waged upon Romans
and king's men alike--not even Jews escaped him unless they brought him
contributions. Order was restored by Varus the governor of Syria in a
campaign which Josephus describes as the most important war between that
of Pompey and that of Vespasian.
At length Augustus summoned the representatives of the nation and
Nicholaus of Damascus, who spoke for Archelaus, to plead before him in
the temple of Apollo. Augustus apportioned Herod's dominions among his
sons in accordance with the provisions of his latest will. Archelaus
received the lion's share: for ten years he was ethnarch of Idumaea,
Judaea and Samaria, with a yearly revenue of 600 talents. Antipas became
tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, with a revenue of 200 talents. Philip,
who had been left in charge of Palestine pending the decision and had
won the respect of Varus, became tetrarch of Batanaea, Trachonitis and
Auranitis, with 100 talents. His subjects included only a sprinkling of
Jews. Up to his death (A.D. 34) he did nothing to forfeit the favour of
Rome. His coins bore the heads of Augustus and Tiberius, and his
government was worthy of the best Roman traditions--he succeeded where
proconsuls had failed. His capital was Caesarea Philippi, where Pan had
been worshipped from ancient times, and where Augustus had a temple
built by Herod the Great.
33. _Archelaus._--Augustus had counselled Archelaus to deal gently with
his subjects. But there was an outstanding feud between him and them;
and his first act as ethnarch was to remove the high priest on the
ground of his sympathy with the rebels. In violation of the Law he
married a brother's widow, who had already borne children, and in
general he showed himself so fierce and tyrannical that the Jews joined
with the Samaritans to accuse him before the emperor. Archelaus was
summoned to Rome and banished to Gaul; his territory was entrusted to a
series of procurators (A.D. 6-41), among whom was an apostate Jew, but
none with any pretension even to a semi-legitimate authority. Each
procurator represented not David but Caesar. The Sanhedrin had its
police and powers to safeguard the Jewish religion; but the procurator
had the appointment of the high priests, and no capital sentence could
be executed without his sanction.
34. _The Procurators._--So the Jews of Judaea obtained the settlement
for which they had pleaded at the death of Herod; and some of them began
to regret it at once. The first procurator Coponius was accompanied by
P. Sulpicius Quirinius, legate of Syria, who came to organize the new
Roman province. As a necessary preliminary a census (A.D. 6-7) was taken
after the Roman method, which did not conform to the Jewish Law. The
people were affronted, but for the most part acquiesced, under the
influence of Joazar the high priest. But Judas the Galilean, with a
Pharisee named Sadduc (Sadduk), endeavoured to incite them to rebellion
in the name of religion. The result of this alliance between a
revolutionary and a Pharisee was the formation of the party of Zealots,
whose influence--according to Josephus--brought about the great revolt
and so led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. So far as this
influence extended, the Jewish community was threatened with the danger
of suicide, and the distinction drawn by Josephus between the Pharisees
and the Zealots is a valid one. Not all Pharisees were prepared to take
such action, in order that Israel might "tread on the neck of the eagle"
(as is said in _The Assumption of Moses_). So long as the Law was not
deliberately outraged and so long as the worship was established, most
of the religious leaders of the Jews were content to wait.
It seems that the Zealots made more headway in Galilee than in
Judaea--so much so that the terms Galilean and Zealot are practically
interchangeable. In Galilee the Jews predominated over the heathen and
their ruler Herod Antipas had some sort of claim upon their allegiance.
His marriage with the daughter of the Arabian king Aretas (which was at
any rate in accordance with the general policy of Augustus) seems to
have preserved his territory from the incursions of her people, so long
as he remained faithful to her. He conciliated his subjects by his
deference to the observances of Judaism, and--the case is probably
typical of his policy--he joined in protesting, when Pilate set up a
votive shield in the palace of Herod within the sacred city. He seems
to have served Tiberius as an official scrutineer of the imperial
officials and he commemorated his devotion by the foundation of the city
of Tiberias. But he repudiated the daughter of Aretas in order to marry
Herodias and so set the Arabians against him. Disaster overtook his
forces (A.D. 36) and Tiberius, his patron, died before the Roman power
was brought in full strength to his aid. Caligula was not predisposed to
favour the favourites of Tiberius; and Antipas, having petitioned him
for the title of king at the instigation of Herodias, was banished from
his tetrarchy and (apparently) was put to death in 39.
Antipas is chiefly known to history in connexion with John the Baptist,
who reproached him publicly for his marriage with Herodias. According to
the earliest authority, he seems to have imprisoned John to save him
from the vengeance of Herodias. But--whatever his motive--Antipas
certainly consented to John's death. If the Fourth Gospel is to be
trusted, John had already recognized and acclaimed Jesus of Nazareth as
the Messiah for whom the Jews were looking. By common consent of
Christendom, John was the forerunner of the founder of the Christian
Church. It was, therefore, during the reign of Antipas, and partly if
not wholly within his territory, that the Gospel was first preached by
the rabbi or prophet whom Christendom came to regard as the one true
Christ, the Messiah of the Jews. Josephus' history of the Jews contains
accounts of John the Baptist and Jesus, the authenticity of which has
been called in question for plausible but not entirely convincing
reasons. However this may be, the Jews who believed Jesus to be the
Christ play no great part in the history of the Jews before 70, as we
know it. Many religious teachers and many revolutionaries were crucified
within this period; and the early Christians were outwardly
distinguished from other Jews only by their scrupulous observance of
religious duties.
The crucifixion of Jesus was sanctioned by Pontius Pilate, who was
procurator of Judaea A.D. 26-36. Of the Jews under his predecessors
little enough is known. Speaking generally, they seem to have avoided
giving offence to their subjects. But Pilate so conducted affairs as to
attract the attention not only of Josephus but also of Philo, who
represents for us the Jewish community of Alexandria. Pilate inaugurated
his term of office by ordering his troops to enter Jerusalem at night
and to take their standards with them. There were standards and
standards in the Roman armies: those which bore the image of the
emperor, and therefore constituted a breach of the Jewish Law, had
hitherto been kept aloof from the holy city. On learning of this, the
Jews repaired to Caesarea and besought Pilate to remove these offensive
images. Pilate refused; and, when they persisted in their petition for
six days, he surrounded them with soldiers and threatened them with
instant death. They protested that they would rather die than dare to
transgress the wisdom of the laws; and Pilate yielded. But he proceeded
to expend the temple treasure upon an aqueduct for Jerusalem; and some
of the Jews regarded the devotion of sacred money to the service of man
as a desecration. Pilate came up to Jerusalem and dispersed the
petitioners by means of disguised soldiers armed with clubs. So the
revolt was put down, but the excessive zeal of the soldiers and Pilate's
obstinate adherence to his policy widened the breach between Rome and
the stricter Jews. But the death of Sejanus in 31 set Tiberius free from
prejudice against the Jews; and, when Pilate put up the votive shields
in Herod's palace at Jerusalem, the four sons of Herod came forward in
defence of Jewish principles and he was ordered to remove them. In 35 he
dispersed a number of Samaritans, who had assembled near Mt Gerizim at
the bidding of an impostor, in order to see the temple vessels buried
there by Moses. Complaint was made to Vitellius, then legate of Syria,
and Pilate was sent to Rome to answer for his shedding of innocent
blood. At the passover of 36 Vitellius came to Jerusalem and pacified
the Jews by two concessions: he remitted the taxes on fruit sold in the
city, and he restored to their custody the high priest's vestments,
which Herod Archelaus and the Romans had kept in the tower Antonia. The
vestments had been stored there since the time of the first high priest
named Hyrcanus, and Herod had taken them over along with the tower,
thinking that his possession of them would deter the Jews from rebellion
against his rule. At the same time Vitellius vindicated the Roman
supremacy by degrading Caiaphas from the high-priesthood, and appointing
a son of Annas in his place. The motive for this change does not appear,
and we are equally ignorant of the cause which prompted his transference
of the priesthood from his nominee to another son of Annas in 37. But it
is quite clear that Vitellius was concerned to reconcile the Jews to the
authority of Rome. When he marched against Aretas, his army with their
standards did not enter Judaea at all; but he himself went up to
Jerusalem for the feast and, on receipt of the news that Tiberius was
dead, administered to the Jews the oath of allegiance to Caligula.
35. _Caligula and Agrippa I._--The accession of Caligula (A.D. 37-41)
was hailed by his subjects generally as the beginning of the Golden Age.
The Jews in particular had a friend at court. Agrippa, the grandson of
Herod the Great, was an avowed partisan of the new emperor and had paid
penalty for a premature avowal of his preference. But Caligula's favour,
though lavished upon Agrippa, was not available for pious Jews. His
foible was omnipotence, and he aped the gods of Greece in turn. In the
provinces and even in Italy his subjects were ready to acknowledge his
divinity--with the sole exception of the Jews. So we learn something of
the Palestinian Jews and more of the Jewish community in Alexandria. The
great world (as we know it) took small note of Judaism even when Jews
converted its women to their faith; but now the Jews as a nation refused
to bow before the present god of the civilized world. The new
Catholicism was promulgated by authority and accepted with deference.
Only the Jews protested: they had a notion of the deity which Caligula
at all events did not fulfil.
The people of Alexandria seized the opportunity for an attack upon the
Jews. Images of Caligula were set up in the synagogues, an edict
deprived the Jews of their rights as citizens, and finally the governor
authorized the mob to sack the Jewish quarter, as if it had been a
conquered city (38). Jewesses were forced to eat pork and the elders
were scourged in the theatre. But Agrippa had influence with the emperor
and secured the degradation of the governor. The people and the Jews
remained in a state of civil war, until each side sent an embassy (40)
to wait upon the emperor. The Jewish embassy was headed by Philo, who
has described its fortunes in a tract dealing with the divine punishment
of the persecutors. Their opponents also had secured a friend at court
and seem to have prevented any effective measure of redress. While the
matter was still pending, news arrived that the emperor had commanded
Publius Petronius, the governor of Syria, to set up his statue in the
temple of Jerusalem. On the intervention of Agrippa the order was
countermanded, and the assassination of the emperor (41) effectually
stopped the desecration.
36. _Claudius and the Procurators._--Claudius, the new emperor, restored
the civic rights of the Alexandrian Jews and made Agrippa I. king over
all the territories of Herod the Great. So there was once more a king of
Judaea, and a king who observed the tradition of the Pharisees and
protected the Jewish religion. There is a tradition in the Talmud which
illustrates his popularity. As he was reading the Law at the feast of
tabernacles he burst into tears at the words "Thou mayest not set a
stranger over thee which is not thy brother"; and the people cried out,
"Fear not, Agrippa; thou art our brother." The fact that he began to
build a wall round Jerusalem may be taken as further proof of his
patriotism. But the fact that he summoned five vassal-kings of the
empire to a conference at Tiberias suggests rather a policy of
self-aggrandisement. Both projects were prohibited by the emperor on the
intervention of the legate. In 44 he died. The Christian records treat
his death as an act of divine vengeance upon the persecutor of the
Christian Church. The Jews prayed for his recovery and lamented him. The
Gentile soldiers exulted in the downfall of his dynasty, which they
signalized after their own fashion. Claudius intended that Agrippa's
young son should succeed to the kingdom; but he was overruled by his
advisers, and Judaea was taken over once more by Roman procurators. The
success of Agrippa's brief reign had revived the hopes of the Jewish
nationalists, and concessions only retarded the inevitable insurrection.
Cuspius Fadus, the first of these procurators, purged the land of
bandits. He also attempted to regain for the Romans the custody of the
high priest's vestments; but the Jews appealed to the emperor against
the revival of this advertisement of their servitude. The emperor
granted the petition, which indeed the procurator had permitted them to
make, and further transferred the nomination of the high priest and the
supervision of the temple from the procurator to Agrippa's brother,
Herod of Chalcis. But these concessions did not satisfy the hopes of the
people. During the government of Fadus, Theudas, who claimed to be a
prophet and whom Josephus describes as a wizard, persuaded a large
number to take up their possessions and follow him to the Jordan, saying
that he would cleave the river asunder with a word of command and so
provide them with an easy crossing. A squadron of cavalry despatched by
Fadus took them alive, cut off the head of Theudas and brought it to
Jerusalem.
Under the second procurator Tiberius Alexander, an apostate Jew of
Alexandria, nephew of Philo, the Jews suffered from a great famine and
were relieved by the queen of Adiabene, a proselyte to Judaism, who
purchased corn from Egypt. The famine was perhaps interpreted by the
Zealots as a punishment for their acquiescence in the rule of an
apostate. At any rate Alexander crucified two sons of Simon the
Galilean, who had headed a revolt in the time of the census. They had
presumably followed the example of their father.
Under Ventidius Cumanus (48-52) the mutual hatred of Jews and Romans,
Samaritans and Jews, found vent in insults and bloodshed. At the
passover, on the fourth day of the feast, a soldier mounting guard at
the porches of the Temple provoked an uproar, which ended in a massacre,
by indecent exposure of his person. Some of the rebels intercepted a
slave of the emperor on the high-road near the city and robbed him of
his possessions. Troops were sent to pacify the country, and in one
village a soldier found a copy of Moses' laws and tore it up in public
with jeers and blasphemies. At this the Jews flocked to Caesarea, and
were only restrained from a second outbreak by the execution of the
soldier. Finally, the Samaritans attacked certain Galileans who were (as
the custom was) travelling through Samaria to Jerusalem for the
passover. Cumanus was bribed and refused to avenge the death of the Jews
who were killed. So the Galileans with some of the lower classes of "the
Jews" allied themselves with a "robber" and burned some of the Samaritan
villages. Cumanus armed the Samaritans, and, with them and his own
troops, defeated these Jewish marauders. The leading men of Jerusalem
prevailed upon the rebels who survived the defeat to disperse. But the
quarrel was referred first to the legate of Syria and then to the
emperor. The emperor was still disposed to conciliate the Jews; and, at
the instance of Agrippa, son of Agrippa I., Cumanus was banished.
37. _Felix and the Revolutionaries._--Under Antonius Felix (52-60) the
revolutionary movement grew and spread. The country, Josephus says, was
full of "robbers" and "wizards." The high priest was murdered in the
Temple by pilgrims who carried daggers under their cloaks. Wizards and
impostors persuaded the multitude to follow them into the desert, and an
Egyptian, claiming to be a prophet, led his followers to the Mount of
Olives to see the walls of Jerusalem fall at his command. Such
deceivers, according to Josephus, did no less than the murderers to
destroy the happiness of the city. Their hands were cleaner but their
thoughts were more impious, for they pretended to divine inspiration.
Felix the procurator--a king, as Tacitus says, in power and in mind a
slave--tried in vain to put down the revolutionaries. The "chief-robber"
Eleazar, who had plundered the country for twenty years, was caught and
sent to Rome; countless robbers of less note were crucified. But this
severity cemented the alliance of religious fanatics with the
physical-force party and induced the ordinary citizens to join them, in
spite of the punishments which they received when captured. Agrippa II.
received a kingdom--first Chalcis, and then the tetrarchies of Philip
and Lysanias--but, though he had the oversight of the Temple and the
nomination of the high priest, and enjoyed a reputation for knowledge of
Jewish customs and questions, he was unable to check the growing power
of the Zealots. His sister Drusilla had broken the Law by her marriage
with Felix; and his own notorious relations with his sister Berenice,
and his coins which bore the images of the emperors, were an open
affront to the conscience of Judaism. When Felix was recalled by Nero in
60 the nation was divided against itself, the Gentiles within its gates
were watching for their opportunity, and the chief priests robbed the
lower priests with a high hand.
In Caesarea there had been for some time trouble between the Jewish and
the Syrian inhabitants. The Jews claimed that the city was theirs,
because King Herod had founded it. The Syrians admitted the fact, but
insisted that it was a city for Greeks, as its temples and statues
proved. Their rivalry led to street-fighting: the Jews had the advantage
in respect of wealth and bodily strength, but the Greek party had the
assistance of the soldiers who were stationed there. On one occasion
Felix sent troops against the victorious Jews; but neither this nor the
scourge and the prison, to which the leaders of both factions had been
consigned, deterred them. The quarrel was therefore referred to the
emperor Nero, who finally gave his decision in favour of the Syrians or
Greeks. The result of this decision was that the synagogue at Caesarea
was insulted on a Sabbath and the Jews left the city taking their books
of the Law with them. So--Josephus says--the war began in the twelfth
year of the reign of Nero (A.D. 66).
38. _Festus, Albinus and Florus._--Meanwhile the procurators who
succeeded Felix--Porcius Festus (60-62), Albinus (62-64) and Gessius
Florus (64-66)--had in their several ways brought the bulk of the nation
into line with the more violent of the Jews of Caesarea. Festus found
Judaea infested with robbers and the Sicarii, who mingled with the
crowds at the feasts and stabbed their enemies with the daggers
(_sicae_) from which their name was derived. He also, had to deal with a
wizard, who deceived many by promising them salvation and release from
evils, if they would follow him into the desert. His attempts to crush
all such disturbers of the peace were cut short by his death in his
second year of office.
In the interval which elapsed before the arrival of Albinus, Ananus son
of Annas was made high priest by Agrippa. With the apparent intention of
restoring order in Jerusalem, he assembled the Sanhedrin, and being, as
a Sadducee, cruel in the matter of penalties, secured the condemnation
of certain lawbreakers to death by stoning. For this he was deposed by
Agrippa. Albinus fostered and turned to his profit the struggles of
priests with priests and of Zealots with their enemies. The general
release of prisoners, with which he celebrated his impending recall, is
typical of his policy. Meanwhile Agrippa gave the Levites the right to
wear the linen robe of the priests and sanctioned the use of the temple
treasure to provide work--the paving of the city with white stones--for
the workmen who had finished the Temple (64) and now stood idle. But
everything pointed to the destruction of the city, which one Jesus had
prophesied at the feast of tabernacles in 62. The Zealots' zeal for the
Law and the Temple was flouted by their pro-Roman king.
By comparison with Florus, Albinus was, in the opinion of Josephus, a
benefactor. When the news of the troubles at Caesarea reached Jerusalem,
it became known also that Florus had seized seventeen talents of the
temple treasure (66). At this the patience of the Jews was exhausted.
The sacrilege, as they considered it, may have been an attempt to
recover arrears of tribute; but they were convinced that Florus was
providing for himself and not for Caesar. The revolutionaries went about
among the excited people with baskets, begging coppers for their
destitute and miserable governor. Stung by this insult, he neglected the
fire of war which had been lighted at Caesarea, and hastened to
Jerusalem. His soldiers sacked the upper city and killed 630
persons--men, women and children. Berenice, who was fulfilling a
Nazarite vow, interposed in vain. Florus actually dared to scourge and
crucify Jews who belonged to the Roman order of knights. For the moment
the Jews were cowed, and next day they went submissively to greet the
troops coming from Caesarea. Their greetings were unanswered, and they
cried out against Florus. On this the soldiers drew their swords and
drove the people into the city; but, once inside the city, the people
stood at bay and succeeded in establishing themselves upon the
temple-hill. Florus withdrew with all his troops, except one cohort, to
Caesarea. The Jews laid complaint against him, and he complained against
the Jews before the governor of Syria, Cestius Gallus, who sent an
officer to inquire into the matter. Agrippa, who had hurried from
Alexandria, entered Jerusalem with the governor's emissary. So long as
he counselled submission to the overwhelming power of Rome the people
complied, but when he spoke of obedience to Florus he was compelled to
fly. The rulers, who desired peace, and upon whom Florus had laid the
duty of restoring peace, asked him for troops; but the civil war ended
in their complete discomfiture. The rebels abode by their decision to
stop the daily sacrifice for the emperor; Agrippa's troops capitulated
and marched out unhurt; and the Romans, who surrendered on the same
condition and laid down their arms, were massacred. As if to emphasize
the spirit and purpose of the rebellion, one and only one of the Roman
soldiers was spared, because he promised to become a Jew even to the
extent of circumcision.
39. _Josephus and the Zealots._--Simultaneously with this massacre the
citizens of Caesarea slaughtered the Jews who still remained there; and
throughout Syria Jews effected--and suffered--reprisals. At length the
governor of Syria approached the centre of the disturbance in Jerusalem,
but retreated after burning down a suburb. In the course of his retreat
he was attacked by the Jews and fled to Antioch, leaving them his
engines of war. Some prominent Jews fled from Jerusalem--as from a
sinking ship--to join him and carried the news to the emperor. The rest
of the pro-Roman party were forced or persuaded to join the rebels and
prepared for war on a grander scale. Generals were selected by the
Sanhedrin from the aristocracy, who had tried to keep the peace and
still hoped to make terms with Rome. Ananus the high priest, their
leader, remained in command at Jerusalem; Galilee, where the first
attack was to be expected, was entrusted to Josephus, the historian of
the war. The revolutionary leaders, who had already taken the field,
were superseded.
Josephus set himself to make an army of the inhabitants of Galilee, many
of whom had no wish to fight, and to strengthen the strongholds. His
organization of local government and his efforts to maintain law and
order brought him into collision with the Zealots and especially with
John of Giscala, one of their leaders. The people, whom he had tried to
conciliate, were roused against him; John sent assassins and finally
procured an order from Jerusalem for his recall. In spite of all this
Josephus held his ground and by force or craft put down those who
resisted his authority.
In the spring of 67 Vespasian, who had been appointed by Nero to crush
the rebellion, advanced from his winter quarters at Antioch. The
inhabitants of Sepphoris--whom Josephus had judged to be so eager for
the war that he left them to build their wall for themselves--received a
Roman garrison at their own request. Joined by Titus, Vespasian advanced
into Galilee with three legions and the auxiliary troops supplied by
Agrippa and other petty kings. Before his advance the army of Josephus
fled. Josephus with a few stalwarts took refuge in Tiberias, and sent a
letter to Jerusalem asking that he should be relieved of his command or
supplied with an adequate force to continue the war. Hearing that
Vespasian was preparing to besiege Jotapata, a strong fortress in the
hills, which was held by other fugitives, Josephus entered it just
before the road approaching it was made passable for the Roman horse and
foot. A deserter announced his arrival to Vespasian, who rejoiced
(Josephus says) that the cleverest of his enemies had thus voluntarily
imprisoned himself. After some six weeks' siege the place was stormed,
and its exhausted garrison were killed or enslaved. Josephus, whose
pretences had postponed the final assault, hid in a cave with forty men.
His companions refused to permit him to surrender and were resolved to
die. At his suggestion they cast lots, and the first man was killed by
the second and so on, until all were dead except Josephus and (perhaps)
one other. So Josephus saved them from the sin of suicide and gave
himself up to the Romans. He had prophesied that the place would be
taken--as it was--on the forty-seventh day, and now he prophesied that
both Vespasian and his son Titus would reign over all mankind. The
prophecy saved his life, though many desired his death, and the rumour
of it produced general mourning in Jerusalem. By the end of the year
(67) Galilee was in the hands of Vespasian, and John of Giscala had
fled. Agrippa celebrated the conquest at Caesarea Philippi with
festivities which lasted twenty days.
In accordance with ancient custom Jerusalem welcomed the fugitive
Zealots. The result was civil war and famine. Ananus incited the people
against these robbers, who arrested, imprisoned and murdered prominent
friends of Rome, and arrogated to themselves the right of selecting the
high priest by lot. The Zealots took refuge in the Temple and summoned
the Idumaeans to their aid. Under cover of a storm, they opened the
city-gates to their allies and proceeded to murder Ananus the high
priest, and, against the verdict of a formal tribunal, Zacharias the son
of Baruch in the midst of the Temple. The Idumaeans left, but John of
Giscala remained master of Jerusalem.
40. _The Fall of Jerusalem._--Vespasian left the rivals to consume one
another and occupied his army with the subjugation of the country. When
he had isolated the capital and was preparing to besiege it, the news of
Nero's death reached him at Caesarea. For a year (June 68-June 69) he
held his hand and watched events, until the robber-bands of Simon
Bar-Giora (son of the proselyte) required his attention. But, before
Vespasian took action to stop his raids, Simon had been invited to
Jerusalem in the hope that he would act as a counterpoise to the tyrant
John. And so, when Vespasian was proclaimed emperor in fulfilment of
Josephus' prophecy, and deputed the command to Titus, there were three
rivals at war in Jerusalem--Eleazar, Simon and John. The temple
sacrifices were still offered and worshippers were admitted; but John's
catapults were busy, and priest and worshippers at the altar were
killed, because Eleazar's party occupied the inner courts of the Temple.
A few days before the passover of 70 Titus advanced upon Jerusalem, but
the civil war went on. When Eleazar opened the temple-gates to admit
those who wished to worship God, John of Giscala introduced some of his
own men, fully armed under their garments, and so got possession of the
Temple. Titus pressed the attack, and the two factions joined hands at
last to repel it. In spite of their desperate sallies, Jerusalem was
surrounded by a wall, and its people, whose numbers were increased by
those who had come up for the passover, were hemmed in to starve. The
famine affected all alike--the populace, who desired peace, and the
Zealots, who were determined to fight to the end. At last John of
Giscala portioned out the sacred wine and oil, saying that they who
fought for the Temple might fearlessly use its stores for their
sustenance. Steadily the Romans forced their way through wall after
wall, until the Jews were driven back to the Temple and the daily
sacrifices came to an end on the 17th of July for lack of men. Once more
Josephus appealed in vain to John and his followers to cease from
desecrating and endangering the Temple. The siege proceeded and the
temple-gates were burned. According to Josephus, Titus decided to spare
the Temple, but--whether this was so or not--on the 10th of August it
was fired by a soldier after a sortie of the Jews had been repelled. The
legions set up their standards in the temple-court and hailed Titus as
imperator.
Some of the Zealots escaped with John and Simon to the upper city and
held it for another month. But Titus had already earned the triumph
which he celebrated at Rome in 71. The Jews, wherever they might be,
continued to pay the temple-tax; but now it was devoted to Jupiter
Capitolinus. The Romans had taken their holy place, and the Law was all
that was left to them.
41. _From_ A.D. 70 _to_ A.D. 135.--The destruction of the Temple
carried with it the destruction of the priesthood and all its power.
The priests existed to offer sacrifices, and by the Law no sacrifice
could be offered except at the Temple of Jerusalem. Thenceforward the
remnant of the Jews who survived the fiery ordeal formed a church
rather than a nation or a state, and the Pharisees exercised an
unchallenged supremacy. With the Temple and its Sadducean high priests
perished the Sanhedrin in which the Sadducees had competed with the
Pharisees for predominance. The Sicarii or Zealots who had appealed to
the arm of flesh were exterminated. Only the teachers of the Law
survived to direct the nation and to teach those who remained loyal
Jews, how they should render to Caesar what belonged to Caesar, and to
God what belonged to God. Here and there hot-headed Zealots rose up to
repeat the errors and the disasters of their predecessors. But their
fate only served to deepen the impression already stamped upon the
general mind of the nation. The Temple was gone, but they had the Law.
Already the Jews of the Dispersion had learned to supplement the
Temple by the synagogue, and even the Jews of Jerusalem had not been
free to spend their lives in the worship of the Temple. There were
still, as always, rites which were independent of the place and of the
priest; there had been a time when the Temple did not exist. So
Judaism survived once more the destruction of its central sanctuary.
When Jerusalem was taken, the Sicarii still continued to hold three
strongholds: one--Masada--for three years. But the commander of Masada
realized at length that there was no hope of escaping captivity except
by death, and urged his comrades to anticipate their fate. Each man
slew his wife and children; ten men were selected by lot to slay the
rest; one man slew the nine executioners, fired the palace and fell
upon his sword. When the place was stormed the garrison consisted of
two old women and five children who had concealed themselves in caves.
So Vespasian obtained possession of Palestine--the country which Nero
had given him--and for a time it was purged of revolutionaries. Early
Christian writers assert that he proceeded to search out and to
execute all descendants of David who might conceivably come forward as
claimants of the vacant throne.
In Egypt and in Cyrene fugitive Zealots endeavoured to continue their
rebellion against the emperor, but there also with disastrous results.
The doors of the Temple in Egypt were closed, and its sacrifices which
had been offered for 243 years were prohibited. Soon afterwards this
temple also was destroyed. Apart from these local outbreaks, the Jews
throughout the empire remained loyal citizens and were not molested.
The general hope of the nation was not necessarily bound up with the
house of David, and its realization was not incompatible with the yoke
of Rome. They still looked for a true prophet, and meanwhile they had
their rabbis.
Under Johanan ben Zaccai (q.v.) the Pharisees established themselves
at Jamnia. A new Sanhedrin was formed there under the presidency of a
ruler, who received yearly dues from all Jewish communities. The
scribes through the synagogues preserved the national spirit and
directed it towards the religious life which was prescribed by
Scripture. The traditions of the elders were tested and gradually
harmonized in their essentials. The canon of Scripture was decided in
accordance with the touchstone of the Pentateuch. Israel had retired
to their tents to study their Bible.
Under Vespasian and Titus the Jews enjoyed freedom of conscience and
equal political rights with non-Jewish subjects of Rome. But Domitian,
according to pagan historians, bore hardly on them. The temple-tax was
strictly exacted; Jews who lived the Jewish life without openly
confessing their religion and Jews who concealed their nationality
were brought before the magistrates. Proselytes to Judaism were
condemned either to death or to forfeiture of their property. Indeed
it would seem that Domitian instituted a persecution of the Jews, to
which Nerva his successor put an end. Towards the end of Trajan's
reign (114-117) the Jews of Egypt and Cyrene rose against their Greek
neighbours and set up a king. The rebellion spread to Cyprus; and when
Trajan advanced from Mesopotamia into Parthia the Jews of Mesopotamia
revolted. The massacres they perpetrated were avenged in kind and all
the insurrections were quelled when Hadrian succeeded Trajan.
In 132 the Jews of Palestine rebelled again. Hadrian had forbidden
circumcision as illegal mutilation: he had also replaced Jerusalem by
a city of his own, Aelia Capitolina, and the temple of Yahweh by a
temple of Jupiter. Apart from these bitter provocations--the
prohibition of the sign of the covenant and the desecration of the
sacred place--the Jews had a leader who was recognized as Messiah by
the rabbi Aqiba. Though the majority of the rabbis looked for no such
deliverer and refused to admit his claims, Barcochebas (q.v.) drew the
people after him to struggle for their national independence. For
three years and a half he held his own and issued coins in the name of
Simon, which commemorate the liberation of Jerusalem. Some attempt was
apparently made to rebuild the Temple; and the Jews of the Dispersion,
who had perhaps been won over by Aqiba, supported the rebellion.
Indeed even Gentiles helped them, so that the whole world (Dio Cassius
says) was stirred. Hadrian sent his best generals against the rebels,
and at length they were driven from Jerusalem to Bethar (135). The
Jews were forbidden to enter the new city of Jerusalem on pain of
death.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The most comprehensive of modern books dealing with the
period is Emil Schürer, _Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter
Jesu Christi_ (3 vols., Leipzig, 1901 foll.). Exception has been taken
to a certain lack of sympathy with the Jews, especially the rabbis,
which has been detected in the author. But at least the book remains
an indispensable storehouse of references to ancient and modern
authorities. An earlier edition was translated into English under the
title _History of the Jewish People_ (Edinburgh, 1890, 1891). Of
shorter histories, D. A. Schlatter's _Geschichte Israel's von
Alexander dem Grossen bis Hadrian_ (2nd ed., 1906) is perhaps the
least dependent upon Schürer and attempts more than others to
interpret the fragmentary evidence available. Dr R. H. Charles has
done much by his editions to restore to their proper prominence in
connexion with Jewish history the _Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs_, _The Book of Jubilees_, _Enoch_, &c. But Schürer gives a
complete bibliography to which it must suffice to refer. For the
Sanhedrin see SYNEDRIUM. (J. H. A. H.)
III.--FROM THE DISPERSION TO MODERN TIMES
42. _The Later Empire._--With the failure in 135 of the attempt led by
Barcochebas to free Judaea from Roman domination a new era begins in the
history of the Jews. The direct consequence of the failure was the
annihilation of political nationality. Large numbers fell in the actual
fighting. Dio Cassius puts the total at the incredible figure of
580,000, besides the incalculable number who succumbed to famine,
disease and fire (Dio-Xiphilin lxix. 11-15). Jerusalem was rebuilt by
Hadrian, orders to this effect being given during the emperor's first
journey through Syria in 130, the date of his foundations at Gaza,
Tiberias and Petra (Reinach, _Textes relatifs au Judaïsme_, p. 198). The
new city was named Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of
Jehovah there arose another temple dedicated to Jupiter. To Eusebius the
erection of a temple of Venus over the sepulchre of Christ was an act of
mockery against the Christian religion. Rome had been roused to unwonted
fury, and the truculence of the rebels was matched by the cruelty of
their masters. The holy city was barred against the Jews; they were
excluded, under pain of death, from approaching within view of the
walls. Hadrian's policy in this respect was matched later on by the
edict of the caliph Omar (c. 638), who, like his Roman prototype,
prevented the Jews from settling in the capital of their ancient
country. The death of Hadrian and the accession of Antoninus Pius (138),
however, gave the dispersed people of Palestine a breathing-space. Roman
law was by no means intolerant to the Jews. Under the constitution of
Caracalla (198-217) all inhabitants of the Roman empire enjoyed the
civil rights of the _Cives Romani_ (Scherer, _Die Rechtsverhältnisse der
Juden_, p. 10).
Moreover, a spiritual revival mitigated the crushing effects of material
ruin. The synagogue had become a firmly established institution, and the
personal and social life of the masses had come under the control of
communal law. The dialectic of the school proved stronger to preserve
than the edge of the sword to destroy. Pharisaic Judaism, put to the
severest test to which a religious system has ever been subject, showed
itself able to control and idealize life in all its phases. Whatever
question may be possible as to the force or character of Pharisaism in
the time of Christ, there can be no doubt that it became both
all-pervading and ennobling among the successors of Aqiba (q.v.),
himself one of the martyrs to Hadrian's severity. Little more than half
a century after the overthrow of the Jewish nationality, the Mishnah was
practically completed, and by this code of rabbinic law--and law is here
a term which includes the social, moral and religious as well as the
ritual and legal phases of human activity--the Jewish people were
organized into a community, living more or less autonomously under the
Sanhedrin or Synedrium (q.v.) and its officials.
Judah the prince, the patriarch or _nasi_ who edited the Mishnah, died
early in the 3rd century. With him the importance of the Palestinian
patriarchate attained its zenith. Gamaliel II. of Jamnia (Jabne Yebneh)
had been raised to this dignity a century before, and, as members of the
house of Hillel and thus descendants of David, the patriarchs enjoyed
almost royal authority. Their functions were political rather than
religious, though their influence was by no means purely secular. They
were often on terms of intimate friendship with the emperors, who
scarcely interfered with their jurisdiction. As late as Theodosius I.
(379-395) the internal affairs of the Jews were formally committed to
the patriarchs, and Honorius (404) authorized the collection of the
patriarch's tax (_aurum coronarium_), by which a revenue was raised from
the Jews of the diaspora. Under Theodosius II. (408-450) the
patriarchate was finally abolished after a régime of three centuries and
a half (Graetz, _History of the Jews_, Eng. trans. vol. ii. ch. xxii.),
though ironically enough the last holder of the office had been for a
time elevated by the emperor to the rank of prefect. The real
turning-point had been reached earlier, when Christianity became the
state religion under Constantine I. in 312.
Religion under the Christian emperors became a significant source of
discrimination in legal status, and non-conformity might reach so far
as to produce complete loss of rights. The laws concerning the Jews
had a repressive and preventive object: the repression of Judaism and
the prevention of inroads of Jewish influences into the state
religion. The Jews were thrust into a position of isolation, and the
Code of Theodosius and other authorities characterize the Jews as a
lower order of depraved beings (_inferiores_ and _perversi_), their
community as a godless, dangerous sect (_secta nefaria, feralis_),
their religion a superstition, their assemblies for religious worship
a blasphemy (_sacrilegi coetus_) and a contagion (Scherer, _op. cit._
pp. 11-12). Yet Judaism under Roman Christian law was a lawful
religion (_religio licita_), Valentinian I. (364-375) forbade the
quartering of soldiers in the synagogues, Theodosius I. prohibited
interference with the synagogue worship ("Judaeorum sectam nulla lege
prohibitam satis constat"), and in 412 a special edict of protection
was issued. But the admission of Christians into the Jewish fold was
punished by confiscation of goods (357), the erection of new
synagogues was arrested by Theodosius II. (439) under penalty of a
heavy fine, Jews were forbidden to hold Christian slaves under pain of
death (423). A similar penalty attached to intermarriage between Jews
and Christians, and an attempt was made to nullify all Jewish
marriages which were not celebrated in accordance with Roman law. But
Justinian (527-565) was the first to interfere directly in the
religious institutions of the Jewish people. In 553 he interdicted the
use of the Talmud (which had then not long been completed), and the
Byzantine emperors of the 8th and 9th centuries passed even more
intolerant regulations. As regards civil law, Jews were at first
allowed to settle disputes between Jew and Jew before their own
courts, but Justinian denied to them and to heretics the right to
appear as witnesses in the public courts against orthodox Christians.
To Constantine V. (911-959) goes back the Jewish form of oath which in
its later development required the Jew to gird himself with thorns;
stand in water; and, holding the scroll of the Torah in his hand,
invoke upon his person the leprosy of Naaman, the curse of Eli and the
fate of Korah's sons should he perjure himself. This was the original
of all the medieval forms of oath _more judaico_, which still
prevailed in many European lands till the 19th century, and are even
now maintained by some of the Rumanian courts. Jews were by the law of
Honorius excluded from the army, from public offices and dignities
(418), from acting as advocates (425); only the curial offices were
open to them. Justinian gave the finishing touch by proclaiming in 537
the Jews absolutely ineligible for any honour whatsoever ("honore
fruantur nullo").
43. _Judaism in Babylonia._--The Jews themselves were during this period
engaged in building up a system of isolation on their own side, but they
treated Roman law with greater hospitality than it meted out to them.
The Talmud shows the influence of that law in many points, and may
justly be compared to it as a monument of codification based on great
principles. The Palestinian Talmud was completed in the 4th century, but
the better known and more influential version was compiled in Babylonia
about 500. The land which, a millennium before, had been a prison for
the Jewish exiles was now their asylum of refuge. For a long time it
formed their second fatherland. Here, far more than on Palestinian soil,
was built the enduring edifice of rabbinism. The population of the
southern part of Mesopotamia--the strip of land enclosed between the
Tigris and the Euphrates--was, according to Graetz, mainly Jewish; while
the district extending for about 70 m. on the east of the Euphrates,
from Nehardea in the north to Sura in the south, became a new Palestine
with Nehardea for its Jerusalem. The Babylonian Jews were practically
independent, and the exilarch (_resh-galutha_) or prince of the
captivity was an official who ruled the community as a vassal of the
Persian throne. The exilarch claimed, like the Palestinian patriarch,
descent from the royal house of David, and exercised most of the
functions of government. Babylonia had risen into supreme importance
for Jewish life at about the time when the Mishnah was completed. The
great rabbinic academies at Sura and Nehardea, the former of which
retained something of its dominant rôle till the 11th century, had been
founded, Sura by Abba Arika (q.v.) (c. 219), but Nehardea, the more
ancient seat of the two, famous in the 3rd century for its association
with Abba Arika's renowned contemporary Samuel, lost its Jewish
importance in the age of Mahomet.
To Samuel of Nehardea (q.v.) belongs the honour of formulating the
principle which made it possible for Jews to live under alien laws.
Jeremiah had admonished his exiled brothers: "Seek ye the peace of the
city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray
unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace"
(Jer. xxix. 7). It was now necessary to go farther, and the rabbis
proclaimed a principle which was as influential with the synagogue as
"Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" became with the Church. "The
law of the government is law" (_Baba Qama_ 113 b.), said Samuel, and
ever since it has been a religious duty for the Jews to obey and
accommodate themselves as far as possible to the laws of the country in
which they are settled or reside. In 259 Odenathus, the Palmyrene
adventurer whose memory has been eclipsed by that of his wife Zenobia,
laid Nehardea waste for the time being, and in its neighbourhood arose
the academy of Pumbedita (Pombeditha) which became a new focus for the
intellectual life of Israel in Babylonia. These academies were organized
on both scholastic and popular lines; their constitution was democratic.
An outstanding feature was the _Kallah_ assemblage twice a year (in Elul
at the close of the summer, and in Adar at the end of the winter), when
there were gathered together vast numbers of outside students of the
most heterogeneous character as regards both age and attainments.
Questions received from various quarters were discussed and the final
decision of the _Kallah_ was signed by the _Resh-Kallah_ or president of
the general assembly, who was only second in rank to the _Resh-Metibta_,
or president of the scholastic sessions. Thus the Babylonian academies
combined the functions of specialist law-schools, universities and
popular parliaments. They were a unique product of rabbinism; and the
authors of the system were also the compilers of its literary
expression, the Talmud.
44. _Judaism in Islam._--Another force now appears on the scene. The new
religion inaugurated by Mahomet differed in its theory from the Roman
Catholic Church. The Church, it is true, in council after council,
passed decisions unfriendly to the Jews. From the synod at Elvira in the
4th century this process began, and it was continued in the West-Gothic
Church legislation, in the Lateran councils (especially the fourth in
1215), and in the council of Trent (1563). The anti-social tendency of
these councils expressed itself in the infliction of the badge, in the
compulsory domicile of Jews within ghettos, and in the erection of
formidable barriers against all intercourse between church and
synagogue. The protective instinct was responsible for much of this
interference with the natural impulse of men of various creeds towards
mutual esteem and forbearance. The church, it was conceived, needed
defence against the synagogue at all hazards, and the fear that the
latter would influence and dominate the former was never absent from the
minds of medieval ecclesiastics. But though this defensive zeal led to
active persecution, still in theory Judaism was a tolerated religion
wherever the Church had sway, and many papal bulls of a friendly
character were issued throughout the middle ages (Scherer, p. 32 seq.).
Islam, on the other hand, had no theoretic place in its scheme for
tolerated religions; its principle was fundamentally intolerant. Where
the mosque was erected, there was no room for church or synagogue. The
caliph Omar initiated in the 7th century a code which required
Christians and Jews to wear peculiar dress, denied them the right to
hold state offices or to possess land, inflicted a poll-tax on them, and
while forbidding them to enter mosques, refused them the permission to
build new places of worship for themselves. Again and again these
ordinances were repeated in subsequent ages, and intolerance for
infidels is still a distinct feature of Mahommedan law. But Islam has
often shown itself milder in fact than in theory, for its laws were made
to be broken. The medieval Jews on the whole lived, under the crescent,
a fuller and freer life than was possible to them under the cross.
Mahommedan Babylonia (Persia) was the home of the gaonate (see GAON),
the central authority of religious Judaism, whose power transcended that
of the secular exilarchate, for it influenced the synagogue far and
wide, while the exilarchate was local. The gaonate enjoyed a practical
tolerance remarkable when contrasted with the letter of Islamic law. And
as the Bagdad caliphate tended to become more and more supreme in Islam,
so the gaonate too shared in this increased influence. Not even the
Qaraite schism was able to break the power of the geonim. But the
dispersion of the Jews was proceeding in directions which carried masses
from the Asiatic inland to the Mediterranean coasts and to Europe.
45. _In Medieval Europe: Spain._--This dispersion of the Jews had begun
in the Hellenistic period, but it was after the Barcochebas war that it
assumed great dimensions in Europe. There were Jews in the Byzantine
empire, in Rome, in France and Spain at very early periods, but it is
with the Arab conquest of Spain that the Jews of Europe began to rival
in culture and importance their brethren of the Persian gaonate. Before
this date the Jews had been learning the rôle they afterwards filled,
that of the chief promoters of international commerce. Already under
Charlemagne this development is noticeable; in his generous treatment of
the Jews this Christian emperor stood in marked contrast to his
contemporary the caliph Harun al-Rashid, who persecuted Jews and
Christians with equal vigour. But by the 10th century Judaism had
received from Islam something more than persecution. It caught the
contagion of poetry, philosophy and science.[64] The schismatic Qaraites
initiated or rather necessitated a new Hebrew philology, which later on
produced Qimhi, the gaon Saadiah founded a Jewish philosophy, the
statesman Hasdai introduced a new Jewish culture--and all this under
Mahommedan rule. It is in Spain that above all the new spirit manifested
itself. The distinctive feature of the Spanish-Jewish culture was its
comprehensiveness. Literature and affairs, science and statecraft,
poetry and medicine, these various expressions of human nature and
activity were so harmoniously balanced that they might be found in the
possession of one and the same individual. The Jews of Spain attained to
high places in the service of the state from the time of the Moorish
conquest in 711. From Hasdai ibn Shaprut in the 10th century and Samuel
the nagid in the 11th the line of Jewish scholar-statesmen continued
till we reach Isaac Abrabanel in 1492, the date of the expulsion of the
Jews from Spain. This last-named event synchronized with the discovery
of America; Columbus being accompanied by at least one Jewish navigator.
While the Spanish period of Jewish history was thus brilliant from the
point of view of public service, it was equally notable on the literary
side. Hebrew religious poetry was revived for synagogue hymnology, and,
partly in imitation of Arabian models, a secular Hebrew poetry was
developed in metre and rhyme. The new Hebrew _Piyut_ found its first
important exponent in Kalir, who was not a Spaniard. But it is to Spain
that we must look for the best of the medieval poets of the synagogue,
greatest among them being Ibn Gabirol and Halevi. So, too, the greatest
Jew of the middle ages, Maimonides, was a Spaniard. In him culminates
the Jewish expression of the Spanish-Moorish culture; his writings had
an influence on European scholasticism and contributed significant
elements to the philosophy of Spinoza. But the reconquest of Andalusia
by the Christians associated towards the end of the 15th century with
the establishment of the Inquisition, introduced a spirit of intolerance
which led to the expulsion of the Jews and Moors. The consequences of
this blow were momentous; it may be said to inaugurate the ghetto
period. In Spain Jewish life had participated in the general life, but
the expulsion--while it dispersed the Spanish Jews in Poland, Turkey,
Italy and France, and thus in the end contributed to the Jewish
emancipation at the French Revolution--for the time drove the Jews
within their own confines and barred them from the outside world.[65]
46. _In France, Germany, England, Italy._--In the meantime Jewish life
had been elsewhere subjected to other influences which produced a result
at once narrower and deeper. Under Charlemagne, the Jews, who had begun
to settle in Gaul in the time of Caesar, were more than tolerated. They
were allowed to hold land and were encouraged to become--what their
ubiquity qualified them to be--the merchant princes of Europe. The reign
of Louis the Pious (814-840) was, as Graetz puts it, "a golden era for
the Jews of his kingdom, such as they had never enjoyed, and were
destined never again to enjoy in Europe"--prior, that is, to the age of
Mendelssohn. In Germany at the same period the feudal system debarred
the Jews from holding land, and though there was as yet no material
persecution they suffered moral injury by being driven exclusively into
finance and trade. Nor was there any widening of the general horizon
such as was witnessed in Spain. The Jewries of France and Germany were
thus thrown upon their own cultural resources. They rose to the
occasion. In Mainz there settled in the 10th century Gershom, the "light
of the exile," who, about 1000, published his ordinance forbidding
polygamy in Jewish law as it had long been forbidden in Jewish practice.
This ordinance may be regarded as the beginning of the Synodal
government of Judaism, which was a marked feature of medieval life in
the synagogues of northern and central Europe from the 12th century.
Soon after Gershom's death, Rashi (1040-1106) founded at Troyes a new
school of learning. If Maimonides represented Judaism on its rational
side, Rashi was the expression of its traditions.
French Judaism was thus in a sense more human if less humane than the
Spanish variety; the latter produced thinkers, statesmen, poets and
scientists; the former, men with whom the Talmud was a passion, men of
robuster because of more naïve and concentrated piety. In Spain and North
Africa persecution created that strange and significant phenomenon
Maranism or crypto-Judaism, a public acceptance of Islam or Christianity
combined with a private fidelity to the rites of Judaism. But in England,
France and Germany persecution altogether failed to shake the courage of
the Jews, and martyrdom was borne in preference to ostensible apostasy.
The crusades subjected the Jews to this ordeal. The evil was wrought, not
by the regular armies of the cross who were inspired by noble ideals, but
by the undisciplined mobs which, for the sake of plunder, associated
themselves with the genuine enthusiasts. In 1096 massacres of Jews
occurred in many cities of the Rhineland. During the second crusade
(1145-1147) Bernard of Clairvaux heroically protested against similar
inhumanities. The third crusade, famous for the participation of Richard
I., was the occasion for bloody riots in England, especially in York,
where 150 Jews immolated themselves to escape baptism. Economically and
socially the crusades had disastrous effects upon the Jews (see J.
Jacobs, _Jewish Encyclopedia_, iv. 379). Socially they suffered by the
outburst of religious animosity. One of the worst forms taken by this
ill-will was the oft-revived myth of ritual murder (q.v.), and later on
when the Black Death devastated Europe (1348-1349) the Jews were the
victims of an odious charge of well-poisoning. Economically the results
were also injurious. "Before the crusades the Jews had practically a
monopoly of trade in Eastern products, but the closer connexion between
Europe and the East brought about by the crusades raised up a class of
merchant traders among the Christians, and from this time onwards
restrictions on the sale of goods by Jews became frequent" (_op. cit._).
After the second crusade the German Jews fell into the class of _servi
camerae_, which at first only implied that they enjoyed the immunity of
imperial servants, but afterwards made of them slaves and pariahs. At the
personal whim of rulers, whether royal or of lower rank, the Jews were
expelled from states and principalities and were reduced to a condition
of precarious uncertainty as to what the morrow might bring forth. Pope
Innocent III. gave strong impetus to the repression of the Jews,
especially by ordaining the wearing of a badge. Popular animosity was
kindled by the enforced participation of the Jews in public disputations.
In 1306 Philip IV. expelled the Jews from France, nine years later Louis
X. recalled them for a period of twelve years. Such vicissitudes were the
ordinary lot of the Jews for several centuries, and it was their own
inner life--the pure life of the home, the idealism of the synagogue, and
the belief in ultimate Messianic redemption--that saved them from utter
demoralization and despair. Curiously enough in Italy--and particularly
in Rome--the external conditions were better. The popes themselves,
within their own immediate jurisdiction, were often far more tolerant
than their bulls issued for foreign communities, and Torquemada was less
an expression than a distortion of the papal policy. In the early 14th
century, the age of Dante, the new spirit of the Renaissance made Italian
rulers the patrons of art and literature, and the Jews to some extent
shared in this gracious change. Robert of Aragon--vicar-general of the
papal states--in particular encouraged the Jews and supported them in
their literary and scientific ambitions. Small coteries of Jewish minor
poets and philosophers were formed, and men like Kalonymos and
Immanuel--Dante's friend--shared the versatility and culture of Italy.
But in Germany there was no echo of this brighter note. Persecution was
elevated into a system, a poll-tax was exacted, and the rabble was
allowed (notably in 1336-1337) to give full vent to its fury. Following
on this came the Black Death with its terrible consequences in Germany;
even in Poland, where the Jews had previously enjoyed considerable
rights, extensive massacres took place.
In effect the Jews became outlaws, but their presence being often
financially necessary, certain officials were permitted to "hold Jews,"
who were liable to all forms of arbitrary treatment, on the side of
their "owners." The Jews had been among the first to appreciate the
commercial advantages of permitting the loan of money on interest, but
it was the policy of the Church that drove the Jews into money-lending
as a characteristic trade. Restrictions on their occupations were
everywhere common, and as the Church forbade Christians to engage in
usury, this was the only trade open to the Jews. The excessive demands
made upon the Jews forbade a fair rate of interest. "The Jews were
unwilling sponges by means of which a large part of the subjects' wealth
found its way into the royal exchequer" (Abrahams, _Jewish Life in the
Middle Ages_, ch. xii.). Hence, though this procedure made the Jews
intensely obnoxious to the peoples, they became all the more necessary
to the rulers. A favourite form of tolerance was to grant a permit to
the Jews to remain in the state for a limited term of years; their
continuance beyond the specified time was illegal and they were
therefore subject to sudden banishment. Thus a second expulsion of the
Jews of France occurred in 1394. Early in the 15th century John
Hus--under the inspiration of Wycliffe--initiated at Prague the revolt
against the Roman Catholic Church. The Jews suffered in the persecution
that followed, and in 1420 all the Austrian Jews were thrown into
prison. Martin V. published a favourable bull, but it was ineffectual.
The darkest days were nigh. Pope Eugenius (1442) issued a fiercely
intolerant missive; the Franciscan John of Capistrano moved the masses
to activity by his eloquent denunciations; even Casimir IV. revoked the
privileges of the Jews in Poland, when the Turkish capture of
Constantinople (1453) offered a new asylum for the hunted Jews of
Europe. But in Europe itself the catastrophe was not arrested. The
Inquisition in Spain led to the expulsion of the Jews (1492), and this
event involved not only the latter but the whole of the Jewish people.
"The Jews everywhere felt as if the temple had again been destroyed"
(Graetz). Nevertheless, the result was not all evil. If fugitives are
for the next half-century to be met with in all parts of Europe, yet,
especially in the Levant, there grew up thriving Jewish communities
often founded by Spanish refugees. Such incidents as the rise of Joseph
Nasi (q.v.) to high position under the Turkish government as duke of
Naxos mark the coming change. The reformation as such had no favourable
influence on Jewish fortunes in Christian Europe, though the
championship of the cause of toleration by Reuchlin had considerable
value. But the age of the ghetto (q.v.) had set in too firmly for
immediate amelioration to be possible. It is to Holland and to the 17th
century that we must turn for the first real steps towards Jewish
emancipation.
47. _Period of Emancipation._--The ghetto, which had prevailed more or
less rigorously for a long period, was not formally prescribed by the
papacy until the beginning of the 16th century. The same century was not
ended before the prospect of liberty dawned on the Jews. Holland from
the moment that it joined the union of Utrecht (1579) deliberately set
its face against religious persecution (_Jewish Encyclopedia_, i. 537).
Maranos, fleeing to the Netherlands, were welcomed; the immigrants were
wealthy, enterprising and cultured. Many Jews, who had been compelled to
conceal their faith, now came into the open. By the middle of the 17th
century the Jews of Holland had become of such importance that Charles
II. of England (then in exile) entered into negotiations with the
Amsterdam Jews (1656). In that same year the Amsterdam community was
faced by a serious problem in connexion with Spinoza. They brought
themselves into notoriety by excommunicating the philosopher--an act of
weak self-defence on the part of men who had themselves but recently
been admitted to the country, and were timorous of the suspicion that
they shared Spinoza's then execrated views. It is more than a mere
coincidence that this step was taken during the absence in England of
one of the ablest and most notable of the Amsterdam rabbis. At the time,
Menasseh ben Israel (q.v.) was in London, on a mission to Cromwell. The
Jews had been expelled from England by Edward I., after a sojourn in the
country of rather more than two centuries, during which they had been
the licensed and oppressed money-lenders of the realm, and had--through
the special exchequer of the Jews--been used by the sovereign as a means
of extorting a revenue from his subjects. In the 17th century a
considerable number of Jews had made a home in the English colonies,
where from the first they enjoyed practically equal rights with the
Christian settlers. Cromwell, upon the inconclusive termination of the
conference summoned in 1655 at Whitehall to consider the Jewish
question, tacitly assented to the return of the Jews to this country,
and at the restoration his action was confirmed. The English Jews
"gradually substituted for the personal protection of the crown, the
sympathy and confidence of the nation" (L. Wolf, _Menasseh ben Israel's
Mission to Cromwell_, p. lxxv.). The city of London was the first to be
converted to the new attitude. "The wealth they brought into the
country, and their fruitful commercial activity, especially in the
colonial trade, soon revealed them as an indispensable element of the
prosperity of the city. As early as 1668, Sir Josiah Child, the
millionaire governor of the East India company, pleaded for their
naturalization on the score of their commercial utility. For the same
reason the city found itself compelled at first to connive at their
illegal representation on 'Change, and then to violate its own rules by
permitting them to act as brokers without previously taking up the
freedom. At this period they controlled more of the foreign and colonial
trade than all the other alien merchants in London put together. The
momentum of their commercial enterprise and stalwart patriotism proved
irresistible. From the exchange to the city council chamber, thence to
the aldermanic court, and eventually to the mayoralty itself, were
inevitable stages of an emancipation to which their large interests in
the city and their high character entitled them. Finally the city of
London--not only as the converted champion of religious liberty but as
the convinced apologist of the Jews--sent Baron Lionel de Rothschild to
knock at the door of the unconverted House of Commons as parliamentary
representative of the first city in the world" (Wolf, loc. cit.).
The pioneers of this emancipation in Holland and England were Sephardic
(or Spanish) Jews--descendants of the Spanish exiles. In the meantime
the Ashkenazic (or German) Jews had been working out their own
salvation. The chief effects of the change were not felt till the 18th
century. In England emancipation was of democratic origin and concerned
itself with practical questions. On the Continent, the movement was more
aristocratic and theoretical; it was part of the intellectual
renaissance which found its most striking expression in the principles
of the French Revolution. Throughout Europe the 18th century was less an
era of stagnation than of transition. The condition of the European Jews
seems, on a superficial examination, abject enough. But, excluded though
they were from most trades and occupations, confined to special quarters
of the city, disabled from sharing most of the amenities of life, the
Jews nevertheless were gradually making their escape from the ghetto and
from the moral degeneration which it had caused. Some ghettos (as in
Moravia) were actually not founded till the 18th century, but the
careful observer can perceive clearly that at that period the ghetto was
a doomed institution. In the "dark ages" Jews enjoyed neither rights nor
privileges; in the 18th century they were still without rights but they
had privileges. A grotesque feature of the time in Germany and Austria
was the class of court Jews, such as the Oppenheims, the personal
favourites of rulers and mostly their victims when their usefulness had
ended. These men often rendered great services to their fellow-Jews, and
one of the results was the growth in Jewish society of an aristocracy of
wealth, where previously there had been an aristocracy of learning. Even
more important was another privileged class--that of the _Schutz-Jude_
(protected Jew). Where there were no rights, privileges had to be
bought. While the court Jews were the favourites of kings, the protected
Jews were the protégés of town councils. Corruption is the frequent
concomitant of privilege, and thus the town councils often connived for
a price at the presence in their midst of Jews whose admission was
illegal. Many Jews found it possible to evade laws of domicile by
residing in one place and trading in another. Nor could they be
effectually excluded from the fairs, the great markets of the 18th
century. The Sephardic Jews in all these respects occupied a superior
position, and they merited the partiality shown to them. Their personal
dignity and the vast range of their colonial enterprises were in
striking contrast to the retail traffic of the Ashkenazim and their
degenerate bearing and speech. Peddling had been forced on the latter by
the action of the gilds which were still powerful in the 18th century on
the Continent. Another cause may be sought in the Cossack assaults on
the Jews at an earlier period. Crowds of wanderers were to be met on
every road; Germany, Holland and Italy were full of Jews who, pack on
shoulder, were seeking a precarious livelihood at a time when peddling
was neither lucrative nor safe.
But underneath all this were signs of a great change. The 18th century
has a goodly tale of Jewish artists in metal-work, makers of pottery,
and (wherever the gilds permitted it) artisans and wholesale
manufacturers of many important commodities. The last attempts at
exclusion were irritating enough; but they differed from the earlier
persecution. Such strange enactments as the _Familianten-Gesetz_, which
prohibited more than one member of a family from marrying, broke up
families by forcing the men to emigrate. In 1781 Dohm pointed to the
fact that a Jewish father could seldom hope to enjoy the happiness of
living with his children. In that very year, however, Joseph II.
initiated in Austria a new era for the Jews. This Austrian reformation
was so typical of other changes elsewhere, and so expressive of the
previous disabilities of the Jews, that, even in this rapid summary,
space must be spared for some of the details supplied by Graetz. "By
this new departure (19th of October 1781) the Jews were permitted to
learn handicrafts, arts and sciences, and with certain restrictions to
devote themselves to agriculture. The doors of the universities and
academies, hitherto closed to them, were thrown open.... An ordinance of
November 2 enjoined that the Jews were everywhere considered fellow-men,
and all excesses against them were to be avoided. The Leibzoll
(body-tax) was also abolished, in addition to the special law-taxes, the
passport duty, the night-duty and all similar imposts which had stamped
the Jews as outcast, for they were now (Dec. 19) to have equal rights
with the Christian inhabitants." The Jews were not, indeed, granted
complete citizenship, and their residence and public worship in Vienna
and other Austrian cities were circumscribed and even penalized. "But
Joseph II. annulled a number of vexatious, restrictive regulations, such
as the compulsory wearing of beards, the prohibition against going out
in the forenoon on Sundays or holidays, or frequenting public pleasure
resorts. The emperor even permitted Jewish wholesale merchants, notables
and their sons, to wear swords (January 2, 1782), and especially
insisted that Christians should behave in a friendly manner towards
Jews."
48. _The Mendelssohn Movement._--This notable beginning to the removal
of "the ignominy of a thousand years" was causally connected with the
career of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786; q.v.). He found on both sides an
unreadiness for approximation: the Jews had sunk into apathy and
degeneration, the Christians were still moved by hereditary antipathy.
The failure of the hopes entertained of Sabbatai Zebi (q.v.) had plunged
the Jewries of the world into despair. This Smyrnan pretender not only
proclaimed himself Messiah (c. 1650) but he was accepted in that rôle by
vast numbers of his brethren. At the moment when Spinoza was publishing
a system which is still a dominating note of modern philosophy, this
other son of Israel was capturing the very heart of Jewry. His miracles
were reported and eagerly believed everywhere; "from Poland, Hamburg and
Amsterdam treasures poured into his court; in the Levant young men and
maidens prophesied before him; the Persian Jews refused to till the
fields. 'We shall pay no more taxes,' they said, 'our Messiah is come.'"
The expectation that he would lead Israel in triumph to the Holy Land
was doomed to end in disappointment. Sabbatai lacked one quality without
which enthusiasm is ineffective; he failed to believe in himself. At the
critical moment he embraced Islam to escape death, and though he was
still believed in by many--it was not Sabbatai himself but a phantom
resemblance that had assumed the turban!--his meteoric career did but
colour the sky of the Jews with deeper blackness. Despite all this, one
must not fall into the easy error of exaggerating the degeneration into
which the Jewries of the world fell from the middle of the 17th till the
middle of the 18th century. For Judaism had organized itself; the
_Shulhan aruch_ of Joseph Qaro (q.v.), printed in 1564 within a decade
of its completion, though not accepted without demur, was nevertheless
widely admitted as the code of Jewish life. If in more recent times
progress in Judaism has implied more or less of revolt against the
rigors and fetters of Qaro's code, yet for 250 years it was a powerful
safeguard against demoralization and stagnation. No community living in
full accordance with that code could fail to reach a high moral and
intellectual level.
It is truer to say that on the whole the Jews began at this period to
abandon as hopeless the attempt to find a place for themselves in the
general life of their country. Perhaps they even ceased to desire it.
Their children were taught without any regard to outside conditions,
they spoke and wrote a jargon, and their whole training, both by what it
included and by what it excluded, tended to produce isolation from their
neighbours. Moses Mendelssohn, both by his career and by his propaganda,
for ever put an end to these conditions; he more than any other man.
Born in the ghetto of Dessau, he was not of the ghetto. At the age of
fourteen he found his way to Berlin, where Frederick the Great, inspired
by the spirit of Voltaire, held the maxim that "to oppress the Jews
never brought prosperity to any government." Mendelssohn became a warm
friend of Lessing, the hero of whose drama _Nathan the Wise_ was drawn
from the Dessau Jew. Mendelssohn's _Phaedo_, on the immortality of the
soul, brought the author into immediate fame, and the simple home of the
"Jewish Plato" was sought by many of the leaders of Gentile society in
Berlin. Mendelssohn's translation of the Pentateuch into German with a
new commentary by himself and others introduced the Jews to more modern
ways of thinking. Two results emanated from Mendelssohn's work. A new
school of scientific study of Judaism emerged, to be dignified by the
names of Leopold Zunz (q.v.), H. Graetz (q.v.) and many others. On the
other hand Mendelssohn by his pragmatic conception of religion
(specially in his _Jerusalem_) weakened the belief of certain minds in
the absolute truth of Judaism, and thus his own grandchildren (including
the famous musician Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy) as well as later Heine,
Börne, Gans and Neander, embraced Christianity. Within Judaism itself
two parties were formed, the Liberals and the Conservatives, and as time
went on these tendencies definitely organized themselves. Holdheim
(q.v.) and Geiger (q.v.) led the reform movement in Germany and at the
present day the effects of the movement are widely felt in America on
the Liberal side and on the opposite side in the work of the
neo-orthodox school founded by S. R. Hirsch (q.v.). Modern seminaries
were established first in Breslau by Zacharias Fränkel (q.v.) and later
in other cities. Brilliant results accrued from all this participation
in the general life of Germany. Jews, engaged in all the professions and
pursuits of the age, came to the front in many branches of public life,
claiming such names as Riesser (d. 1863) and Lasker in politics,
Auerbach in literature, Rubinstein and Joachim in music, Traube in
medicine, and Lazarus in psychology. Especially famous have been the
Jewish linguists, pre-eminent among them Theodor Benfey (1809-1881), the
pioneer of modern comparative philology; and the Greek scholar and
critic Jakob Bernays (1824-1881).
49. _Effect of the French Revolution._--In close relation to the German
progress in Mendelssohn's age, events had been progressing in France,
where the Revolution did much to improve the Jewish condition, thanks
largely to the influence of Mirabeau. In 1807 Napoleon convoked a Jewish
assembly in Paris. Though the decisions of this body had no binding
force on the Jews generally, yet in some important particulars its
decrees represent principles widely adopted by the Jewish community.
They proclaim the acceptance of the spirit of Mendelssohn's
reconciliation of the Jews to modern life. They assert the citizenship
and patriotism of Jews, their determination to accommodate themselves to
the present as far as they could while retaining loyalty to the past.
They declare their readiness to adapt the law of the synagogue to the
law of the land, as for instance in the question of marriage and
divorce. No Jew, they decided, may perform the ceremony of marriage
unless civil formalities have been fulfilled; and divorce is allowed to
the Jews only if and so far as it is confirmatory of a legal divorce
pronounced by the civil law of the land. The French assembly did not
succeed in obtaining formal assent to these decisions (except from
Frankfort and Holland), but they gained the practical adhesion of the
majority of Western and American Jews. Napoleon, after the report of the
assembly, established the consistorial system which remained in force,
with its central consistory in the capital, until the recent separation
of church and state. Many French Jews acquired fame, among them the
ministers Crémieux (1796-1879), Fould, Gondchaux and Raynal; the
archaeologists and philologians Oppert, Halévy, Munk, the Derenbourgs,
Darmesteters and Reinachs; the musicians Halévy, Waldteufel and
Meyerbeer; the authors and dramatists Catulle Mendès and A. d'Ennery,
and many others, among them several distinguished occupants of civil and
military offices.
50. _Modern Italy._--Similar developments occurred in other countries,
though it becomes impossible to treat the history of the Jews, from this
time onwards, in general outline. We must direct our attention to the
most important countries in such detail as space permits. And first as
to Italy, where the Jews in a special degree have identified themselves
with the national life. The revolutions of 1848, which greatly affected
the position of the Jews in several parts of Europe, brought
considerable gain to the Jews of Italy. During the war against Austria
in the year named, Isaac Pesaro Marogonato was finance minister in
Venice. Previously to this date the Jews were still confined to the
ghetto, but in 1859, in the Italy united under Victor Emanuel II., the
Jews obtained complete rights, a privilege which was extended also to
Rome itself in 1870. The Italian Jews devoted themselves with ardour to
the service of the state. Isaac Artom was Cavour's secretary, L' Olper a
counsellor of Mazzini. "The names of the Jewish soldiers who died in the
cause of Italian liberty were placed along with those of their Christian
fellow soldiers on the monuments erected in their honour" (_Jewish
Encyclopedia_, vii. 10). More recently men like Wollemberg, Ottolenghi
and Luzzatti rose to high positions as ministers of state. Most noted of
recent Jewish scholars in Italy was S. D. Luzzatto (q.v.).
51. _Austria._--From Italy we may turn to the country which so much
influenced Italian politics, Austria, which had founded the system of
"Court Jews" in 1518, had expelled the Jews from Vienna as late as 1670,
when the synagogue of that city was converted into a church. But
economic laws are often too strong for civil vagaries or sectarian
fanaticism, and as the commerce of Austria suffered by the absence of
the Jews, it was impossible to exclude the latter from the fairs in the
provinces or from the markets of the capital. As has been pointed out
above, certain protected Jews were permitted to reside in places where
the expulsion of the Jews had been decreed. But Maria Theresa
(1740-1780) was distinguished for her enmity to the Jews, and in 1744
made a futile attempt to secure their expulsion from Bohemia. "In 1760
she issued an order that all unbearded Jews should wear a yellow badge
on their left arm" (_Jewish Encyclopedia_, ii. 330). The most petty
limitations of Jewish commercial activity continued; thus at about this
period the community of Prague, in a petition, "complain that they are
not permitted to buy victuals in the market before a certain hour,
vegetables not before 9 and cattle not before 11 o'clock; to buy fish is
sometimes altogether prohibited; Jewish druggists are not permitted to
buy victuals at the same time with Christians" (_op. cit._). So, too,
with taxation. It was exorbitant and vexatious. To pay for rendering
inoperative the banishment edict of 1744, the Jews were taxed 3,000,000
florins annually for ten years. In the same year it was decreed that the
Jews should pay "a special tax of 40,000 florins for the right to import
their citrons for the feast of booths." Nevertheless, Joseph II.
(1780-1790) inaugurated a new era for the Jews of his empire. Soon after
his accession he abolished the distinctive Jewish dress, abrogated the
poll-tax, admitted the Jews to military service and their children to
the public schools, and in general opened the era of emancipation by the
_Toleranzpatent_ of 1782. This enlightened policy was not continued by
the successors of Joseph II. Under Francis II. (1792-1835) economic and
social restrictions were numerous. Agriculture was again barred; indeed
the Vienna congress of 1815 practically restored the old discriminations
against the Jews. As time went on, a more progressive policy intervened,
the special form of Jewish oath was abolished in 1846, and in 1848, as a
result of the revolutionary movement in which Jews played an active
part, legislation took a more liberal turn. Francis Joseph I. ascended
the throne in that year, and though the constitution of 1849 recognized
the principle of religious liberty, an era of reaction supervened,
especially when "the concordat of 1855 delivered Austria altogether into
the hands of the clericals." But the day of medieval intolerance had
passed, and in 1867 the new constitution "abolished all disabilities on
the ground of religious differences," though anti-Semitic manipulation
of the law by administrative authority has led to many instances of
intolerance. Many Jews have been members of the Reichsrath, some have
risen to the rank of general in the army, and Austrian Jews have
contributed their quota to learning, the arts and literature. Löw,
Jellinek, Kaufmann, as scholars in the Jewish field; as poets and
novelists, Kompert, Franzos, L. A. Frankl; the pianist Moscheles, the
dramatist Mosenthal, and the actor Sonnenthal, the mathematician Spitzer
and the chess-player Steinitz are some of the most prominent names. The
law of 1890 makes it "compulsory for every Jew to be a member of the
congregation of the district in which he resides, and so gives to every
congregation the right to tax the individual members" (_op. cit._). A
similar obligation prevails in parts of Germany. A Jew can avoid the
communal tax only by formally declaring himself as outside the Jewish
community. The Jews of Hungary shared with their brethren in Austria the
same alternations of expulsion and recall. By the law "De Judaeis"
passed by the Diet in 1791 the Jews were accorded protection, but half a
century passed before their tolerated condition was regularized. The
"toleration-tax" was abolished in 1846. During the revolutionary
outbreak of 1848, the Jews suffered severely in Hungary, but as many as
20,000 Jews are said to have joined the army. Kossuth succeeded in
granting them temporary emancipation, but the suppression of the War of
Independence led to an era of royal autocracy which, while it advanced
Jewish culture by enforcing the establishment of modern schools,
retarded the obtaining of civic and political rights. As in Austria, so
in Hungary, these rights were granted by the constitution of 1867. But
one step remained. The Hungarian Jews did not consider themselves fully
emancipated until the Synagogue was "duly recognized as one of the
legally acknowledged religions of the country." This recognition was
granted by the law of 1895-1896. In the words of Büchler (_Jewish
Encyclopedia_, vi. 503): "Since their emancipation the Jews have taken
an active part in the political, industrial, scientific and artistic
life of Hungary. In all these fields they have achieved prominence. They
have also founded great religious institutions. Their progress has not
been arrested even by anti-Semitism, which first developed in 1883 at
the time of the Tisza-Eslar accusation of ritual murder."
52. _Other European Countries._--According to M. Caimi the present
Jewish communities of Greece are divisible into five groups: (1) Arta
(Epirus); (2) Chalcis (Euboea); (3) Athens (Attica); (4) Volo, Larissa
and Trikala (Thessaly); and (5) Corfu and Zante (Ionian Islands). The
Greek constitution admits no religious disabilities, but anti-Semitic
riots in Corfu and Zante in 1891 caused much distress and emigration. In
Spain there has been of late a more liberal attitude towards the Jews,
and there is a small congregation (without a public synagogue) in
Madrid. In 1858 the edict of expulsion was repealed. Portugal, on the
other hand, having abolished the Inquisition in 1821, has since 1826
allowed Jews freedom of religion, and there are synagogues in Lisbon and
Faro. In Holland the Jews were admitted to political liberty in 1796. At
present more than half of the Dutch Jews are concentrated in Amsterdam,
being largely engaged in the diamond and tobacco trades. Among famous
names of recent times foremost stands that of the artist Josef Israels.
In 1675 was consecrated in Amsterdam the synagogue which is still the
most noted Jewish edifice in Europe. Belgium granted full freedom to the
Jews in 1815, and the community has since 1808 been organized on the
state consistorial system, which till recently also prevailed in France.
It was not till 1874 that full religious equality was granted to the
Jews of Switzerland. But there has been considerable interference
(ostensibly on humanitarian grounds) with the Jewish method of
slaughtering animals for food (_Shehitah_) and the method was prohibited
by a referendum in 1893. In the same year a similar enactment was passed
in Saxony, and the subject is a favourite one with anti-Semites, who
have enlisted on their side some scientific authorities, though the bulk
of expert opinion is in favor of _Shehitah_ (see Dembo, _Das
Schlachten_, 1894). In Sweden the Jews have all the rights which are
open to non-Lutherans; they cannot become members of the council of
state. In Norway there is a small Jewish settlement (especially in
Christiania) who are engaged in industrial pursuits and enjoy complete
liberty. Denmark has for long been distinguished for its liberal policy
towards the Jews. Since 1814 the latter have been eligible as
magistrates, and in 1849 full equality was formally ratified. Many
Copenhagen Jews achieved distinction as manufacturers, merchants and
bankers, and among famous Jewish men of letters may be specially named
Georg Brandes.
The story of the Jews in Russia and Rumania remains a black spot on the
European record. In Russia the Jews are more numerous and more harshly
treated than in any other part of the world. In the remotest past Jews
were settled in much of the territory now included in Russia, but they
are still treated as aliens. They are restricted to the pale of
settlement which was first established in 1791. The pale now includes
fifteen governments, and under the May laws of 1892 the congestion of
the Jewish population, the denial of free movement, and the exclusion
from the general rights of citizens were rendered more oppressive than
ever before. The right to leave the pale is indeed granted to merchants
of the first gild, to those possessed of certain educational diplomas,
to veteran soldiers and to certain classes of skilled artisans. But
these concessions are unfavourably interpreted and much extortion
results. Despite a huge emigration of Jews from Russia, the congestion
within the pale is the cause of terrible destitution and misery. Fierce
massacres occurred in Nizhniy-Novgorod in 1882, and in Kishinev in 1903.
Many other pogroms have occurred, and the condition of the Jews has been
reduced to one of abject poverty and despair. Much was hoped from the
duma, but this body has proved bitterly opposed to the Jewish claim for
liberty. Yet in spite of these disabilities there are amongst the
Russian Jews many enterprising contractors, skilful doctors, and
successful lawyers and scientists. In Rumania, despite the Berlin
Treaty, the Jews are treated as aliens, and but a small number have been
naturalized. They are excluded from most of the professions and are
hampered in every direction.
53. _Oriental Countries._--In the Orient the condition of the Jews has
been much improved by the activity of Western organizations, of which
something is said in a later paragraph. Modern schools have been set up
in many places, and Palestine has been the scene of a notable
educational and agricultural revival, while technical schools--such as
the agricultural college near Jaffa and the schools of the alliance and
the more recent Bezalel in Jerusalem--have been established. Turkey has
always on the whole tolerated the Jews, and much is hoped from the new
régime. In Morocco the Jews, who until late in the 19th century were
often persecuted, are still confined to a _mellah_ (separate quarter),
but at the coast-towns there are prosperous Jewish communities mostly
engaged in commerce. In other parts of the same continent, in Egypt and
in South Africa, many Jews have settled, participating in all industrial
and financial pursuits. Recently a mission has been sent to the Falashas
of Abyssinia, and much interest has been felt in such outlying branches
of the Jewish people as the Black Jews of Cochin and the Bene Israel
community of Bombay. In Persia Jews are often the victims of popular
outbursts as well as of official extortion, but there are fairly
prosperous communities at Bushire, Isfahan, Teheran and Kashan (in
Shiraz they are in low estate). The recent advent of constitutional
government may improve the condition of the Jews.
54. _The United Kingdom._--The general course of Jewish history in
England has been indicated above. The Jews came to England at least as
early as the Norman Conquest; they were expelled from Bury St Edmunds in
1190, after the massacres at the coronation of Richard I.; they were
required to wear badges in 1218. At the end of the 12th century was
established the "exchequer of the Jews," which chiefly dealt with suits
concerning money-lending, and arranged a "continual flow of money from
the Jews to the royal treasury," and a so-called "parliament of the
Jews" was summoned in 1241; in 1275 was enacted the statute _de
Judaismo_ which, among other things, permitted the Jews to hold land.
But this concession was illusory, and as the statute prevented Jews from
engaging in finance--the only occupation which had been open to them--it
was a prelude to their expulsion in 1290. There were few Jews in England
from that date till the Commonwealth, but Jews settled in the American
colonies earlier in the 17th century, and rendered considerable services
in the advancement of English commerce. The Whitehall conference of 1655
marks a change in the status of the Jews in England itself, for though
no definite results emerged it was clearly defined by the judges that
there was no legal obstacle to the return of the Jews. Charles II. in
1664 continued Cromwell's tolerant policy. No serious attempt towards
the emancipation of the Jews was made till the Naturalization Act of
1753, which was, however, immediately repealed. Jews no longer attached
to the Synagogue, such as the Herschels and Disraelis, attained to fame.
In 1830 the first Jewish emancipation bill was brought in by Robert
Grant, but it was not till the legislation of 1858-1860 that Jews
obtained full parliamentary rights. In other directions progress was
more rapid. The office of sheriff was thrown open to Jews in 1835 (Moses
Montefiore, sheriff of London was knighted in 1837); Sir I. L. Goldsmid
was made a baronet in 1841, Baron Lionel de Rothschild was elected to
Parliament in 1847 (though he was unable to take his seat), Alderman
(Sir David) Salomons became lord mayor of London in 1855 and Francis
Goldsmid was made a Q.C. in 1858. In 1873 Sir George Jessel was made a
judge, and Lord Rothschild took his seat in the House of Lords as the
first Jewish peer in 1886. A fair proportion of Jews have been elected
to the House of Commons, and Mr Herbert Samuel rose to cabinet rank in
1909. Sir Matthew Nathan has been governor of Hong-Kong and Natal, and
among Jewish statesmen in the colonies Sir Julius Vogel and V. L.
Solomon have been prime ministers (HYAMSON: _A History of the Jews in
England_, p. 342). It is unnecessary to remark that in the British
colonies the Jews everywhere enjoy full citizenship. In fact, the
colonies emancipated the Jews earlier than did the mother country. Jews
were settled in Canada from the time of Wolfe, and a congregation was
founded at Montreal in 1768, and since 1832 Jews have been entitled to
sit in the Canadian parliament. There are some thriving Jewish
agricultural colonies in the same dominion. In Australia the Jews from
the first were welcomed on perfectly equal terms. The oldest
congregation is that of Sydney (1817); the Melbourne community dates
from 1844. Reverting to incidents in England itself, in 1870 the
abolition of university tests removed all restrictions on Jews at Oxford
and Cambridge, and both universities have since elected Jews to
professorships and other posts of honour. The communal organization of
English Jewry is somewhat inchoate. In 1841 an independent reform
congregation was founded, and the Spanish and Portuguese Jews have
always maintained their separate existence with a Haham as the
ecclesiastical head. In 1870 was founded the United Synagogue, which is
a metropolitan organization, and the same remark applies to the more
recent Federation of Synagogues. The chief rabbi, who is the
ecclesiastical head of the United Synagogue, has also a certain amount
of authority over the provincial and colonial Jewries, but this is
nominal rather than real. The provincial Jewries, however, participate
in the election of the chief rabbi. At the end of 1909 was held the
first conference of Jewish ministers in London, and from this is
expected some more systematic organization of scattered communities.
Anglo-Jewry is rich, however, in charitable, educational and literary
institutions; chief among these respectively may be named the Jewish
board of guardians (1859), the Jews' college (1855), and the Jewish
historical society (1893). Besides the distinctions already noted,
English Jews have risen to note in theology (C. G. Montefiore), in
literature (Israel Zangwill and Alfred Sutro), in art (S. Hart, R.A.,
and S. J. Solomon, R.A.) in music (Julius Benedict and Frederick Hymen
Cowen). More than 1000 English and colonial Jews participated as active
combatants in the South African War. The immigration of Jews from Russia
was mainly responsible for the ineffective yet oppressive Aliens Act of
1905. (Full accounts of Anglo-Jewish institutions are given in the
_Jewish Year-Book_ published annually since 1895.)
55. _The American Continent._--Closely parallel with the progress of the
Jews in England has been their steady advancement in America. Jews made
their way to America early in the 16th century, settling in Brazil prior
to the Dutch occupation. Under Dutch rule they enjoyed full civil
rights. In Mexico and Peru they fell under the ban of the Inquisition.
In Surinam the Jews were treated as British subjects; in Barbadoes,
Jamaica and New York they are found as early as the first half of the
17th century. During the War of Independence the Jews of America took a
prominent part on both sides, for under the British rule many had risen
to wealth and high social position. After the Declaration of
Independence, Jews are found all over America, where they have long
enjoyed complete emancipation, and have enormously increased in numbers,
owing particularly to immigration from Russia. The American Jews bore
their share in the Civil War (7038 Jews were in the two armies), and
have always identified themselves closely with national movements such
as the emancipation of Cuba. They have attained to high rank in all
branches of the public service, and have shown most splendid instances
of far-sighted and generous philanthropy. Within the Synagogue the
reform movement began in 1825, and soon won many successes, the central
conference of American rabbis and Union College (1875) at Cincinnati
being the instruments of this progress. At the present time orthodox
Judaism is also again acquiring its due position and the Jewish
theological seminary of America was founded for this purpose. In 1908 an
organization, inclusive of various religious sections, was founded under
the description "the Jewish community of New York." There have been four
Jewish members of the United States senate, and about 30 of the national
House of Representatives. Besides filling many diplomatic offices, a Jew
(O. S. Straus) has been a member of the cabinet. Many Jews have filled
professorial chairs at the universities, others have been judges, and in
art, literature (there is a notable Jewish publication society),
industry and commerce have rendered considerable services to national
culture and prosperity. American universities have owed much to Jewish
generosity, a foremost benefactor of these (as of many other American
institutions) being Jacob Schiff. Such institutions as the Gratz and
Dropsie colleges are further indications of the splendid activity of
American Jews in the educational field. The Jews of America have also
taken a foremost place in the succour of their oppressed brethren in
Russia and other parts of the world. (Full accounts of American Jewish
institutions are given in the _American Jewish Year-Book_, published
annually since 1899.)
56. _Anti-Semitism._--It is saddening to be compelled to close this
record with the statement that the progress of the European Jews
received a serious check by the rise of modern anti-Semitism in the last
quarter of the 19th century. While in Russia this took the form of
actual massacre, in Germany and Austria it assumed the shape of social
and civic ostracism. In Germany Jews are still rarely admitted to the
rank of officers in the army, university posts are very difficult of
access, Judaism and its doctrines are denounced in medieval language,
and a tone of hostility prevails in many public utterances. In Austria,
as in Germany, anti-Semitism is a factor in the parliamentary elections.
The legend of ritual murder (q.v.) has been revived, and every obstacle
is placed in the way of the free intercourse of Jews with their
Christian fellow-citizens. In France Edouard Adolphe Drumont led the way
to a similar animosity, and the popular fury was fanned by the Dreyfus
case. It is generally felt, however, that this recrudescence of
anti-Semitism is a passing phase in the history of culture (see
ANTI-SEMITISM).
57. _The Zionist Movement._--The Zionist movement (see ZIONISM), founded
in 1895 by Theodor Herzl (q.v.) was in a sense the outcome of
anti-Semitism. Its object was the foundation of a Jewish state in
Palestine, but though it aroused much interest it failed to attract the
majority of the emancipated Jews, and the movement has of late been
transforming itself into a mere effort at colonization. Most Jews not
only confidently believe that their own future lies in progressive
development _within_ the various nationalities of the world, but they
also hope that a similar consummation is in store for the as yet
unemancipated branches of Israel. Hence the Jews are in no sense
internationally organized. The influence of the happier communities has
been exercised on behalf of those in a worse position by individuals
such as Sir Moses Montefiore (q.v.) rather than by societies or leagues.
From time to time incidents arise which appeal to the Jewish sympathies
everywhere and joint action ensues. Such incidents were the Damascus
charge of ritual murder (1840), the forcible baptism of the Italian
child Mortara (1858), and the Russian pogroms at various dates. But all
attempts at an international union of Jews, even in view of such
emergencies as these, have failed. Each country has its own local
organization for dealing with Jewish questions. In France the Alliance
Israélite (founded in 1860), in England the Anglo-Jewish Association
(founded in 1871), in Germany the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, and
in Austria the Israelitische Allianz zu Wien (founded 1872), in America
the American Jewish Committee (founded 1906), and similar organizations
in other countries deal only incidentally with political affairs. They
are concerned mainly with the education of Jews in the Orient, and the
establishment of colonies and technical institutions. Baron Hirsch
(q.v.) founded the Jewish colonial association, which has undertaken
vast colonizing and educational enterprises, especially in Argentina,
and more recently the Jewish territorial organization has been started
to found a home for the oppressed Jews of Russia. All these institutions
are performing a great regenerative work, and the tribulations and
disappointments of the last decades of the 19th century were not all
loss. The gain consisted in the rousing of the Jewish consciousness to
more virile efforts towards a double end, to succour the persecuted and
ennoble the ideals of the emancipated.
58. _Statistics._--Owing to the absence of a religious census in
several important countries, the Jewish population of the world can
only be given by inferential estimate. The following approximate
figures are taken from the _American Jewish Year-Book_ for 1909-1910
and are based on similar estimates in the English _Jewish Year-Book_,
the _Jewish Encyclopedia_, Nossig's _Jüdische Statistik_ and the
_Reports_ of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. According to these
estimates the total Jewish population of the world in the year named
was approximately 11,500,000. Of this total there were in the British
Empire about 380,000 Jews (British Isles 240,000, London accounts for
150,000 of these; Canada and British Columbia 60,000; India 18,000;
South Africa 40,000). The largest Jewish populations were those of
Russia (5,215,000), Austria-Hungary (2,084,000), United States of
America (1,777,000), Germany (607,000, of whom 409,000 were in
Prussia), Turkey (463,000, of whom some 78,000 resided in Palestine),
Rumania (250,000), Morocco (109,000) and Holland (106,000). Others of
the more important totals are: France 95,000 (besides Algeria 63,000
and Tunis 62,000); Italy 52,000; Persia 49,000; Egypt 39,000; Bulgaria
36,000; Argentine Republic 30,000; Tripoli 19,000; Turkestan and
Afghanistan 14,000; Switzerland and Belgium each 12,000; Mexico 9000;
Greece 8000; Servia 6000; Sweden and Cuba each 4000; Denmark 3500;
Brazil and Abyssinia (Falashas) each 3000; Spain and Portugal 2500;
China and Japan 2000. There are also Jews in Curaçoa, Surinam,
Luxemburg, Norway, Peru, Crete and Venezuela; but in none of these
does the Jewish population much exceed 1000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--H. GRAETZ, _Geschichte der Juden_ (11 vols., 1853-1875;
several subsequent editions of separate volumes; Eng. trans. 5 vols.,
1891-1892); the works of L. Zunz; _Jewish Encyclopedia passim_;
publications of Jewish societies, such as _Études Juives_, Jewish
historical societies of England and America, German historical
commission, Julius Barasch society (Rumania), Societas Litteraria
Hungarico-Judaica, the Viennese communal publications, and many others
to which may be added the 20 vols. of the _Jewish Quarterly Review_;
Scherer, _Rechtsverhältnisse der Juden_ (1901); M. Güdemann
_Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der Cultur der Juden_ (1880,
&c.); A. Leroy-Beaulieu, _Israel among the Nations_ (1895); I.
Abrahams, _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_ (1896); G. F. Abbott,
_Israel in Europe_ (1905); G. Caro, _Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Juden_
(1908); M. Philippson, _Neueste Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes_
(1907, &c.); Nossig, _Jüdische Statistik_ (1903); and such special
works as H. Gross, _Gallia Judaica_ (1897), &c. (I. A.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] On the homogeneity of the population, see further, W. R. Smith,
_Religion of the Semites_ (2nd ed., chaps, i.-iii.); T. Nöldeke,
_Sketches from Eastern History_, pp. 1-20 (on "Some Characteristics
of the Semitic Race"); and especially E. Meyer, _Gesch. d. Altertums_
(2nd ed., i. §§ 330, sqq.). For the relation between the geographical
characteristics and the political history, see G. A. Smith,
_Historical Geography of the Holy Land_.
[2] For fuller information on this section see PALESTINE: _History_,
and the related portions of BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA, EGYPT, HITTITES,
SYRIA.
[3] Or _land_ Israel, W. Spiegelberg, _Orient. Lit. Zeit._ xi.
(1908), cols. 403-405.
[4] It is useful to compare the critical study of the Koran (q.v.),
where, however, the investigation of its various "revelations" is
simpler than that of the biblical "prophecies" on account of the
greater wealth of independent historical tradition. See also G. B.
Gray, _Contemporary Review_ (July 1907); A. A. Bevan, _Cambridge
Biblical Essays_ (ed. Swete, 1909), pp. 1-19.
[5] See primarily BIBLE: _Old Testament_; the articles on the
contents and literary structure of the several books; the various
biographical, topographical and ethnical articles, and the separate
treatment of the more important subjects (e.g. LEVITES, PROPHET,
SACRIFICE).
[6] On the bearing of external evidence upon the internal biblical
records, see especially S. R. Driver's essay in Hogarth's _Authority
and Archaeology_; cf. also A. A. Bevan, _Critical Review_ (1897, p.
406 sqq., 1898, pp. 131 sqq.); G. B. Gray, _Expositor_, May 1898; W.
G. Jordan, _Bib. Crit. and Modern Thought_ (1909), pp. 42 sqq.
[7] For the sections which follow the present writer may be permitted
to refer to his introductory contributions in the _Expositor_ (June,
1906; "The Criticism of the O.T."); the _Jewish Quarterly Review_
(July 1905-January 1907 = _Critical Notes on O.T. History_,
especially sections vii.-ix.); July and October 1907, April 1908;
_Amer. Journ. Theol._ (July 1909, "Simeon and Levi: the Problem of
the Old Testament"); and Swete's _Cambridge Bib. Essays_, pp. 54-89
("The Present Stage of O.T. Research").
[8] On the name see JEHOVAH, TETRAGRAMMATON.
[9] The story of Joseph has distinctive internal features of its own,
and appears to be from an independent cycle, which has been used to
form a connecting link between the Settlement and the Exodus; see
also Ed. Meyer, _Die Israeliten u. ihre Nachbarstämme_ (1906), pp.
228, 433; B. Luther, ibid. pp. 108 seq., 142 sqq. Neither of the
poems in Deut. xxxii. seq. alludes to an escape from Egypt; Israel is
merely a desert tribe inspired to settle in Palestine. Apparently
even the older accounts of the exodus are not of very great
antiquity; according to Jeremiah ii. 2, 7 (cf. Hos. ii. 15) some
traditions of the wilderness must have represented Israel in a very
favourable light; for the "canonical" view, see Ezekiel xvi., xx.,
xxiii.
[10] The capture of central Palestine itself is not recorded;
according to its own traditions the district had been seized by Jacob
(Gen. xlviii. 22; cf. the late form of the tradition in Jubilees
xxxiv.). This conception of a conquering hero is entirely distinct
from the narratives of the descent of Jacob into Egypt, &c. (see
Meyer and Luther, _op. cit._ pp. 110, 227 seq., 415, 433).
[11] This is especially true of the various ingenious attempts to
combine the invasion of the Israelites with the movements of the
Habiru in the Amarna period (§ 3).
[12] Cf. Winckler, _Keil. u. das Alte Test._ p. 212 seq.; also his
"Der alte Orient und die Geschichtsforschung" in _Mitteilungen der
Vorderasiat. Gesellschaft_ (Berlin, 1906) and
_Religionsgeschichtlicher u. gesch. Orient_ (Leipzig, 1906); A.
Jeremias, _Alte Test._ (p. 464 seq.); B. Baentsch, _Altorient. u.
Israel. Monotheismus_ (pp. 53, 79, 105, &c.); also _Theolog. Lit.
Blatt_ (1907) No. 19. On the reconstructions of the tribal history,
see especially T. K. Cheyne, _Ency. Bib._ art. "Tribes." The most
suggestive study of the pre-monarchical narratives is that of E.
Meyer and B. Luther (above; see the former's criticisms on the
reconstructions, pp. 50, 251 sqq., 422, n. 1 and _passim_).
[13] 2 Chron. xii. 8, which is independent of the chronicler's
artificial treatment of his material, apparently points to some
tradition of Egyptian suzerainty.
[14] See for chronology, BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA, §§ v. and viii.
[15] See _Jew. Quart. Rev._ (1908), pp. 597-630. The independent
Israelite traditions which here become more numerous have points of
contact with those of Saul in 1 Samuel, and the relation is highly
suggestive for the study of their growth, as also for the perspective
of the various writers.
[16] See W. R. Smith (after Kuenen), _Ency. Bib._, col. 2670; also W.
E. Addis, ib., 1276, the commentaries of Benzinger (p. 130) and
Kittel (pp. 153 seq.) on Kings; J. S. Strachan, Hastings's _Dict.
Bible_, i. 694; G. A. Smith, _Hist. Geog. of Holy Land_, p. 582;
König and Hirsch, _Jew. Ency._ v. 137 seq. ("legend ... as
indifferent to accuracy in dates as it is to definiteness of places
and names"); W. R. Harper, _Amos and Hosea_, p. xli. seq. ("the lack
of chronological order ... the result is to create a wrong impression
of Elisha's career"). The bearing of this displacement upon the
literary and historical criticism of the narratives has never been
worked out.
[17] Careful examination shows that no a priori distinction can be
drawn between "trustworthy" books of Kings and "untrustworthy books"
of Chronicles. Although the latter have special late and unreliable
features, they agree with the former in presenting the same general
trend of past history. The "canonical" history in Kings is further
embellished in Chronicles, but the gulf between them is not so
profound as that between the former and the underlying and
half-suppressed historical traditions which can still be recognized.
(See also PALESTINE: _History_.)
[18] For the former (2 Kings xii. 17 seq.) cf. Hezekiah and
Sennacherib (xviii. 13-15), and for the latter, cf. Asa and Baasha (1
Kings xv. 18-20; above).
[19] It is possible that Hadad-nirari's inscription refers to
conditions in the latter part of his reign (812-783 B.C.), when Judah
apparently was no longer independent and when Jeroboam II. was king
of Israel. The accession of the latter has been placed between 785
and 782. It is now known, also, that Ben-hadad and a small coalition
were defeated by the king of Hamath; but the bearing of this upon
Israelite history is uncertain.
[20] Cf. generally, 1 Sam. iv., xxxi.; 2 Sam. ii. 8; 1 Kings xx.,
xxii.; 2 Kings vi. 8-vii. 20; also Judges v. (see DEBORAH).
[21] Special mention is made of Jonah, a prophet of Zebulun in
(north) Israel (2 Kings xiv. 25). Nothing is known of him, unless the
very late prophetical writing with the account of his visit to
Nineveh rests upon some old tradition, which, however, can scarcely
be recovered (see JONAH).
[22] This is philosophically handled by the Arabian historian Ibn
Khaldun, whose Prolegomena is well worthy of attention; see De Slane,
_Not. et extraits_, vols. xix.-xxi., with Von Kremer's criticisms in
the _Sitz. d. Kais. Akad._ of Vienna (vol. xciii., 1879); cf. also R.
Flint, _History of the Philosophy of History_, i. 157 sqq.
[23] Cf. J. G. Frazer, _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_ (1907), p. 67:
"Prophecy of the Hebrew type has not been limited to Israel; it is
indeed a phenomenon of almost world-wide occurrence; in many lands
and in many ages the wild, whirling words of frenzied men and women
have been accepted as the utterances of an in-dwelling deity. What
does distinguish Hebrew prophecy from all others is that the genius
of a few members of the profession wrested this vulgar but powerful
instrument from baser uses, and by wielding it in the interest of a
high morality rendered a service of incalculable value to humanity.
That is indeed the glory of Israel...."
[24] The use which was made in Apocalyptic literature of the
traditions of Moses, Isaiah and others finds its analogy within the
Old Testament itself; cf. the relation between the present late
prophecies of Jonah and the unknown prophet of the time of Jeroboam
II. (see § 13, note 5). To condemn re-shaping or adaptation of this
nature from a modern Western standpoint is to misunderstand entirely
the Oriental mind and Oriental usage.
[25] The condemnation passed upon the impetuous and fiery zeal of the
adherents of the new movement (cf. Hos. i. 4), like the remarkable
vicissitudes in the traditions of Moses, Aaron and the Levites
(qq.v.), represents changing situations of real significance, whose
true place in the history can with difficulty be recovered.
[26] Formerly thought to be the third of the name.
[27] Perhaps Judah had come to an understanding with Tiglath-pileser
(H. M. Haydn, _Journ. Bib. Lit._, xxviii. 1909, pp. 182-199); see
UZZIAH.
[28] The fact that these lists are of the kings of the "land Hatti"
would suggest that the term "Hittite" had been extended to Palestine.
[29] So K. Budde, _Rel. of Israel to Exile_, pp. 165-167. For an
attempt to recover the character of the cults, see W. Erbt, _Hebräer_
(Leipzig, 1906), pp. 150 sqq.
[30] See G. Maspero, _Gesch. d. morgenländ. Völker_ (1877), p. 446;
E. Naville, _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archaeol._ (1907), pp. 232 sqq., and T.
K. Cheyne, _Decline and Fall of Judah_ (1908), p. 13, with
references. [The genuineness of such discoveries is naturally a
matter for historical criticism to decide. Thus the discovery of
Numa's laws in Rome (Livy xl. 29), upon which undue weight has
sometimes been laid (see Klostermann, _Der Pentateuch_ (1906), pp.
155 sqq., was not accepted as genuine by the senate (who had the laws
destroyed), and probably not by Pliny himself. Only the later
antiquaries clung to the belief in their
trustworthiness.--(_Communicated._)]
[31] Both kings came to the throne after a conspiracy aimed at
existing abuses, and other parallels can be found (see KINGS).
[32] But see N. Schmidt, _Ency. Bib._, "Scythians," § 1.
[33] So also one can now compare the estimate taken of the Jews in
Egypt in Jer. xliv. with the actual religious conditions which are
known to have prevailed later at Elephantine, where a small Jewish
colony worshipped Yahu (Yahweh) at their own temple (see E. Sachau,
"Drei aram. Papyrusurkunde," in the _Abhandlungen_ of the Prussian
Academy, Berlin, 1907).
[34] Sargon had removed Babylonians into the land of Hatti (Syria and
Palestine), and in 715 B.C. among the colonists were tribes
apparently of desert origin (Tamud, Hayapa, &c.); other settlements
are ascribed to Esar-haddon and perhaps Assur-bani-pal (Ezra iv. 2,
10). See for the evidence, A. E. Cowley, _Ency. Bib._, col. 4257; J.
A. Montgomery, _The Samaritans_, pp. 46-57 (Philadelphia, 1907).
[35] The growing recognition that the land was not depopulated after
586 is of fundamental significance for the criticism of "exilic" and
"post-exilic" history. G. A. Smith thus sums up a discussion of the
extent of the deportations: "... A large majority of the Jewish
people remained on the land. This conclusion may startle us with our
generally received notions of the whole nation as exiled. But there
are facts which support it" (_Jerusalem_, ii. 268).
[36] On the place of Palestine in Persian history see PERSIA:
_History, ancient_, especially § 5 ii.; also ARTAXERXES; CAMBYSES;
CYRUS; DARIUS, &c.
[37] The evidence for Artaxerxes III., accepted by Ewald and others
(see W. R. Smith, _Old Testament in Jewish Church_, p. 438 seq.; W.
Judeich, _Kleinasiat. Stud._, p. 170; T. K. Cheyne, _Ency. Bib._,
col. 2202; F. C. Kent, _Hist._ [1899], pp. 230 sqq.) has however been
questioned by Willrich, _Judaica_, 35-39 (see Cheyne, _Ency. Bib._,
col. 3941). The account of Josephus (above) raises several
difficulties, especially the identity of Bagoses. It has been
supposed that he has placed the record too late, and that this
Bagoses is the Judaean governor who flourished about 408 B.C. (See p.
286, n. 3.)
[38] Thus a decree of Darius I. takes the part of his subjects
against the excessive zeal of the official Gadatas, and grants
freedom of taxation and exemption from forced labour to those
connected with a temple of Apollo in Asia Minor (_Bulletin de
correspondance hellénique_, xiii. 529; E. Meyer, _Entstehung des
Judenthums_, p. 19 seq.; cf. id. _Forschungen_, ii. 497).
[39] In addition to this, the Egyptian story of the priest Uza-hor at
the court of Cambyses and Darius reflects a policy of religious
tolerance which illustrates the biblical account of Ezra and Nehemiah
(Brugsch, _Gesch. Aeg._ pp. 784 sqq.; see Cheyne, _Jew. Relig. Life
after the Exile_, pp. 40-43).
[40] From Têma in north Arabia, also, there is monumental evidence of
the 5th century B.C. for Babylonian and Assyrian influence upon the
language, cult and art. For Nippur, see _Bab. Exped. of Univ. of
Pennsylvania_, series A., vol. ix. (1898), by H. V. Hilprecht; for
Elephantine, the Mond papyri, A. H. Sayce and A. E. Cowley, _Aramaic
Papyri Discovered at Assuan_ (1906), and those cited above (p. 282,
n. 1). For the Jewish colonies in general, see H. Guthe, _Ency.
Bib._, art. "Dispersion" (with references); also below, § 25 sqq.
[41] See EZRA AND NEHEMIAH with bibliographical references, also T.
K. Cheyne, _Introd. to Isaiah_ (1895); _Jew. Religious Life after the
Exile_ (1898); E. Sellin, _Stud. z. Entstehungsgesch. d. jüd.
Gemeinde_ (1901); R. H. Kennett in Swete's _Cambridge Biblical
Essays_ (pp. 92 sqq.); G. Jahn, _Die Bücher Esra u. Nehemja_ (1909);
and C. C. Torrey, _Ezra Studies_ (1910).
[42] There is an obvious effort to preserve the continuity of
tradition (a) in Ezra ii. which gives a list of families who returned
from exile each to its own city, and (b) in the return of the holy
vessels in the time of Cyrus (contrast 1 Esdras iv. 43 seq.), a view
which, in spite of Dan. i. 2, v. 2 seq., conflicts with 2 Kings xxiv.
13 and xxv. 13 (see, however, v. 14). That attempts have been made to
adjust contradictory representations is suggested by the prophecy
ascribed to Jeremiah (xxvii. 16 sqq.) where the restoration of the
holy vessels finds no place in the shorter text of the Septuagint
(see W. R. Smith, _Old Test. and Jew. Church_, pp. 104 sqq.).
[43] The view that Deuteronomy is later than the 7th century has been
suggested by M. Vernes, _Nouvelle hypothèse sur la comp. et l'origine
du Deut._ (1887); Havet, _Christian. et ses origines_ (1878); Horst,
in _Rev. de l'hist. des relig._, 1888; and more recently by E. Day,
_Journ. Bib. Lit._ (1902), pp. 202 sqq.; and R. H. Kennett, _Journ.
Theol. Stud._ (1906), pp. 486 sqq. The strongest counter-arguments
(see W. E. Addis, _Doc. of Hexat._ ii. 2-9) rely upon the historical
trustworthiness of 2 Kings xxii. seq. Weighty reasons are brought
also by conservative writers against the theory that Deuteronomy
dates from or about the age of Josiah, and their objections to the
"discovery" of a new law-roll apply equally to the "re-discovery" and
promulgation of an old and authentic code.
[44] See, for Cheyne's view, his _Decline and Fall of Judah.
Introduction_ (1908). The former tendency has many supporters; see,
among recent writers, N. Schmidt, _Hibbert Journal_ (1908), pp. 322
sqq.; C. F. Burney, _Journ. Theol. Stud._ (1908), pp. 321 sqq.; O. A.
Toffteen, _The Historic Exodus_ (1909), pp. 120 sqq.; especially
Meyer and Luther, _Die Israeliten_, pp. 442-440, &c. For the early
recognition of the evidence in question, see J. Wellhausen, _De
gentibus et familiis Judaeis_ (Göttingen, 1870); _Prolegomena_ (Eng.
trans.), pp. 216 sqq., 342 sqq., and 441-443 (from art. "Israel," §
2, _Ency. Brit._ 9th ed.); also A. Kuenen, _Relig. of Israel_ (i. 135
seq., 176-182); W. R. Smith, _Prophets of Israel_, pp. 28 seq., 379.
[45] For the prominence of the "southern" element in Judah see E.
Meyer, _Entstehung d. Judenthums_ (1896), pp. 119, 147, 167, 177, 183
n. 1; _Israeliten_, pp. 352 n. 5, 402, 429 seq.
[46] See § 23 end, and LEVITES. When Edom is renowned for wisdom and
a small Judaean family boasts of sages whose names have south
Palestinian affinity (1 Chron. ii. 6), and when such names as Korah,
Heman, Ethan and Obed-edom, are associated with psalmody, there is no
inherent improbability in the conjecture that the "southern" families
settled around Jerusalem may have left their mark in other parts of
the Old Testament. It is another question whether such literature can
be identified (for Cheyne's views, see _Ency. Bib._ "Prophetic
Literature," "Psalms," and his recent studies).
[47] One may recall, in this connexion, Caxton's very interesting
prologue to Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_ and his remarks on the
permanent value of the "histories" of this British hero. [Cf. also
Horace, _Ep._ 1. ii. and R. Browning, "Development."]
[48] It is noteworthy that Josephus, who has his own representation
of the post-exilic age, allows two years and four months for the work
(_Ant._ xi. 5, 8).
[49] The papyri from Elephantine (p. 282, n. 1, above) mention as
contemporaries the Jerusalem priest Johanan (cf. the son of Joiada
and father of Jaddua, Neh. xii. 22), Bagohi (Bagoas), governor of
Judah, and Delaiah and Shelemiah sons of Sanballat (408-407 B.C.)
They ignore any strained relations between Samaria and Judah, and
Delaiah and Bagohi unite in granting permission to the Jewish colony
to rebuild their place of worship. If this fixes the date of
Sanballat and Nehemiah in the time of the first Artaxerxes, the
probability of confusion in the later written sources is enhanced by
the recurrence of identical names of kings, priests, &c., in the
history.
[50] The Samaritans, for their part, claimed the traditions of their
land and called themselves the posterity of Joseph, Ephraim and
Manasseh. But they were ready to deny their kinship with the Jews
when the latter were in adversity, and could have replied to the
tradition that they were foreigners with a _tu quoque_ (Josephus,
_Ant._ ix. 14, 3; xi. 8, 6; xii. 5, 5) (see SAMARITANS).
[51] The statement that the king desired to avoid the divine wrath
may possibly have some deeper meaning (e.g. some recent revolt, Ezra
vii. 23).
[52] It must suffice to refer to the opinions of Bertholet, Buhl,
Cheyne, Guthe, Van Hoonacker, Jahn, Kennett, Kent, Kosters, Marquart,
Torrey, and Wildeboer.
[53] C. F. Kent, _Israel's Hist. and Biog. Narratives_ (1905), p. 358
seq. The objections against this very probable view undervalue Ezra
iv. 7-23 and overlook the serious intricacies in the book of
Nehemiah.
[54] There are three inquiries: (a) the critical value of 1 Esdras,
(b) the character of the different representations of post-exilic
internal and external history, and (c) the recovery of the historical
facts. To start with the last before considering (a) and (b) would be
futile.
[55] For example, to the sufferings under Artaxerxes III. (§ 19) have
been ascribed such passages as Isa. lxiii. 7-lxiv. 12; Ps. xliv.,
lxxiv., lxxix., lxxx., lxxxiii. (see also LAMENTATIONS). In their
present form they are not of the beginning of the 6th century and, if
the evidence for Artaxerxes III. proves too doubtful, they may belong
to the history preceding Nehemiah's return, provided the internal
features do not stand in the way (e.g. prior or posterior to the
formation of the exclusive Judaean community, &c.). Since the book of
Baruch (named after Jeremiah's scribe) is now recognized to be
considerably later (probably after the destruction of Jerusalem A.D.
70), it will be seen that the recurrence of similar causes leads to a
similarity in the contemporary literary productions (with a reshaping
of earlier tradition), the precise date of which depends upon
delicate points of detail and not upon the apparently obvious
historical elements.
[56] See H. Winckler, _Keil. u. Alte Test._, 295, and Kennett,
_Journ. Theol. Stud._ (1906), p. 487; _Camb. Bib. Essays_, p. 117.
The Chaldeans alone destroyed Jerusalem (2 Kings xxv.); Edom was
friendly or at least neutral (Jer. xxvii. 3, xl. 11 seq.). The
proposal to read "Edomites" for "Syrians" in the list of bands which
troubled Jehoiakim (2 Kings xxiv. 2) is not supported by the
contemporary reference, Jer. xxxv. 11.
[57] It is at least a coincidence that the prophet who took the part
of Tobiah and Sanballat against Nehemiah (vi. 10 seq.) bears the same
name as the one who advised Rehoboam to acquiesce in the disruption
(1 Kings xii. 21-24), or announced the divine selection of Jeroboam
(ib. v. 24, Septuagint only).
[58] See HEBREW RELIGION, § 8 seq., and the relevant portions of the
histories of Israel.
[59] J. Wellhausen, art. "Israel," _Ency. Brit._ 9th ed., vol. xiii.
p. 419; or his _Prolegomena_, pp. 497 seq.
[60] An instructive account of Judaism in the early post-exilic age
on critical lines (from the Jewish standpoint) is given by C. G.
Montefiore, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1892), pp. 355 sqq.; cf. also the
sketch by I. Abrahams, _Judaism_ (1907).
[61] Cf. the story of Phinehas, Num. xxv. 6 sqq.; on Gen. xxxiv., see
SIMEON. Apropos of hostility towards Samaria, it is singular that the
term of reproach, "Cutheans," applied to the Samaritans is derived
from Cutha, the famous seat of the god Nergal, only some 25 m. N.E.
of Babylon itself (see above, p. 286, n. 4).
[62] The various tendencies which can be observed in the later
pseudepigraphical and apocalyptical writings are of considerable
value in any consideration of the development of thought illustrated
in the Old Testament itself.
[63] Reference may be made to H. Winckler, _Gesch. Israels_, ii.
(1900); W. Erbt, _Die Hebräer_ (1906); and T. K. Cheyne, _Traditions
and Beliefs of Ancient Israel_ (1907).
[64] On the writers mentioned below see articles s.v.
[65] For the importance of the Portuguese Jews, see PORTUGAL:
_History_.
JEWSBURY, GERALDINE ENDSOR (1812-1880), English writer, daughter of
Thomas Jewsbury, a Manchester merchant, was born in 1812 at Measham,
Derbyshire. Her first novel, _Zoe: the History of Two Lives_, was
published in 1845, and was followed by _The Half Sisters_ (1848),
_Marian Withers_ (1851), _Constance Herbert_ (1855), _The Sorrows of
Gentility_ (1856), _Right or Wrong_ (1859). In 1850 she was invited by
Charles Dickens to write for _Household Words_; for many years she was a
frequent contributor to the _Athenaeum_ and other journals and
magazines. It is, however, mainly on account of her friendship with
Thomas Carlyle and his wife that her name is remembered. Carlyle
described her, after their first meeting in 1841, as "one of the most
interesting young women I have seen for years; clear delicate sense and
courage looking out of her small sylph-like figure." From this time till
Mrs Carlyle's death in 1866, Geraldine Jewsbury was the most intimate of
her friends. The selections from Geraldine Jewsbury's letters to Jane
Welsh Carlyle (1892, ed. Mrs Alexander Ireland) prove how confidential
were the relations between the two women for a quarter of a century. In
1854 Miss Jewsbury removed from Manchester to London to be near her
friend. To her Carlyle turned for sympathy when his wife died; and at
his request she wrote down some "biographical anecdotes" of Mrs
Carlyle's childhood and early married life. Carlyle's comment was that
"few or none of these narratives are correct in details, but there is a
certain mythical truth in all or most of them;" and he added, "the
Geraldine accounts of her (Mrs Carlyle's) childhood are substantially
correct." He accepted them as the groundwork for his own essay on "Jane
Welsh Carlyle," with which they were therefore incorporated by Froude
when editing Carlyle's _Reminiscences_. Miss Jewsbury was consulted by
Froude when he was preparing Carlyle's biography, and her recollection
of her friend's confidences confirmed the suspicion that Carlyle had on
one occasion used physical violence towards his wife. Miss Jewsbury
further informed Froude that the secret of the domestic troubles of the
Carlyles lay in the fact that Carlyle had been "one of those persons who
ought never to have married," and that Mrs Carlyle had at one time
contemplated having her marriage legally annulled (see _My Relations
with Carlyle_, by James Anthony Froude, 1903). The endeavour has been
made to discredit Miss Jewsbury in relation to this matter, but there
seems to be no sufficient ground for doubting that she accurately
repeated what she had learnt from Mrs Carlyle's own lips. Miss Jewsbury
died in London on the 23rd of September 1880.
JEW'S EARS, the popular name of a fungus, known botanically as _Hirneola
auricula-judae_, so called from its shape, which somewhat resembles a
human ear. It is very thin, flexible, flesh-coloured to dark brown, and
one to three inches broad. It is common on branches of elder, which it
often kills, and is also found on elm, willow, oak and other trees. It
was formerly prescribed as a remedy for dropsy.
JEW'S HARP, or JEW'S TRUMP (Fr. _guimbarde_, O. Fr. _trompe_, _gronde_;
Ger. _Mundharmonica_, _Maultrommel_, _Brummeisen_; Ital.
_scaccia-pensieri_ or _spassa-pensiero_), a small musical instrument of
percussion, known for centuries all over Europe. "Jew's trump" is the
older name, and "trump" is still used in parts of Great Britain.
Attempts have been made to derive "Jew's" from "jaws" or Fr. _jeu_, but,
though there is no apparent reason for associating the instrument with
the Jews, it is certain that "Jew's" is the original form (see the _New
English Dictionary_ and C. B. Mount in _Notes and Queries_ (Oct. 23,
1897, p. 322). The instrument consists of a slender tongue of steel
riveted at one end to the base of a pear-shaped steel loop; the other
end of the tongue, left free and passing out between the two branches of
the frame, terminates in a sharp bend at right angles, to enable the
player to depress it by an elastic blow and thus set it vibrating while
firmly pressing the branches of the frame against his teeth. The
vibrations of the steel tongue produce a compound sound composed of a
fundamental and its harmonics. By using the cavity of the mouth as a
resonator, each harmonic in succession can be isolated and reinforced,
giving the instrument the compass shown. The lower harmonics of the
series cannot be obtained, owing to the limited capacity of the
resonating cavity. The black notes on the stave show the scale which may
be produced by using two harps, one tuned a fourth above the other. The
player on the Jew's harp, in order to isolate the harmonics, frames his
mouth as though intending to pronounce the various vowels. At the
beginning of the 19th century, when much energy and ingenuity were being
expended in all countries upon the invention of new musical instruments,
the _Maultrommel_, re-christened _Mundharmonica_ (the most rational of
all its names), attracted attention in Germany. Heinrich Scheibler
devised an ingenious holder with a handle, to contain five Jew's harps,
all tuned to different notes; by holding one in each hand, a large
compass, with duplicate notes, became available; he called this complex
Jew's harp _Aura_[1] and with it played themes with variations, marches,
Scotch reels, &c. Other virtuosi, such as Eulenstein, a native of
Würtemberg, achieved the same result by placing the variously tuned
Jew's harps upon the table in front of him, taking them up and setting
them down as required. Eulenstein created a sensation in London in 1827
by playing on no fewer than sixteen Jew's harps. In 1828 Sir Charles
Wheatstone published an essay on the technique of the instrument in the
_Quarterly Journal of Science_. (K. S.)
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTE:
[1] See _Allg. musik. Ztg._ (Leipzig, 1816), p. 506, and Beilage 5,
where the construction of the instruments is described and
illustrated and the system of notation shown in various pieces of
music.
JEZEBEL (Heb. _i-zebel_, perhaps an artificial form to suggest
"un-exalted," a divine name or its equivalent would naturally be
expected instead of the first syllable), wife of Ahab, king of Israel (1
Kings xvi. 31), and mother of Athaliah, in the Bible. Her father
Eth-baal (Ithobal, Jos., _contra Ap._ i. 18) was king of Tyre and priest
of the goddess Astarte. He had usurped the throne and was the first
important Phoenician king after Hiram (see PHOENICIA). Jezebel, a true
daughter of a priest of Astarte, showed herself hostile to the worship
of Yahweh, and to his prophets, whom she relentlessly pursued (1 Kings
xviii. 4-13; see ELIJAH). She is represented as a woman of virile
character, and became notorious for the part she took in the matter of
Naboth's vineyard. When the Jezreelite[1] sheikh refused to sell the
family inheritance to the king, Jezebel treacherously caused him to be
arrested on a charge of treason, and with the help of false witnesses he
was found guilty and condemned to death. For this the prophet Elijah
pronounced a solemn curse upon Ahab and Jezebel, which was fulfilled
when Jehu, who was anointed king at Elisha's instigation, killed the son
Jehoram, massacred all the family, and had Jezebel destroyed (1 Kings
xxi.; 2 Kings ix. 11-28). What is told of her comes from sources written
under the influence of strong religious bias; among the exaggerations
must be reckoned 1 Kings xviii. 13, which is inconsistent with xix. 18
and xxii. 6. A literal interpretation of the reference to Jezebel's
idolatry (2 Kings ix. 22) has made her name a byword for a false
prophetess in Rev. ii. 20. Her name is often used in modern English as a
synonym for an abandoned woman or one who paints her face. (S. A. C.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] According to another tradition Naboth lived at Samaria (xxi. 1
[LXX.], 18 seq.; cf. xxii. 38). A similar confusion regarding the
king's home appears in 2 Kings x. 11 compared with vv. 1, 17.
JEZREEL (Heb. "God sows"), the capital of the Israelite monarchy under
Ahab, and the scene of stirring Biblical events (1 Sam. xxix. 1; 1 Kings
xxi.; 2 Kings ix. 21-37). The name was also applied to the great plain
(Esdraelon) dominated by the city ("valley of Jezreel," Josh. xvii. 16,
&c.). The site has never been lost, and the present village _Zercin_
retains the name radically unchanged. In Greek (e.g. Judith) the name
appears under the form [Greek: Esdraêla]; it is _Stradela_ in the
_Bordeaux Pilgrim_, and to the Crusaders the place was known as _Parvum
Gerinum_. The modern stone village stands on a bare rocky knoll, 500 ft.
above the broad northern valley, at the north extremity of a long ledge,
terminating in steep cliffs, forming part of the chain of Mt Gilboa. The
buildings are modern, but some scanty remains of rock-hewn wine presses
and a few scattered sarcophagi mark the antiquity of the site. The view
over the plains is fine and extensive. It is vain now to look for Ahab's
palace or Naboth's vineyard. The fountain mentioned in 1 Sam. xxix. 1 is
perhaps the fine spring _'Ain el Meiyyita_, north of the village, a
shallow pool of good water full of small fish, rising between black
basalt boulders: or more probably the copious _'Ain Jalud_.
A second city named Jezreel lay in the hill country of Judah, somewhere
near Hebron (Josh. xv. 56). This was the native place of David's wife
Abinoam (1 Sam. xxv. 43).
See, for an excellent description of the scenery and history of the
Israelite Jezreel, G. A. Smith, _Hist. Geog._ xix.
JHABUA, a native state of Central India, in the Bhopawar agency. Area,
with the dependency of Rutanmal, 1336 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 80,889. More
than half the inhabitants belong to the aboriginal Bhils. Estimated
revenue, £7000; tribute, £1000. Manganese and opium are exported. The
chief, whose title is raja, is a Rajput of the Rathor clan, descended
from a branch of the Jodhpur family. Raja Udai Singh was invested in
1898 with the powers of administration.
The town of JHABUA (pop. 3354) stands on the bank of a lake, and is
surrounded by a mud wall. A dispensary and a guesthouse were constructed
to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
JHALAWAR, a native state of India, in the Rajputana agency, pop. (1901),
90,175; estimated revenue, £26,000; tribute, £2000. Area, 810 sq. m. The
ruling family of Jhalawar belongs to the Jhala clan of Rajputs, and
their ancestors were petty chiefs of Halwad in the district of Jhalawar,
in Kathiawar. About 1709 one of the younger sons of the head of the clan
left his country with his son to try his fortunes at Delhi. At Kotah he
left his son Madhu Singh, who soon became a favourite with the maharaja,
and received from him an important post, which became hereditary. On the
death of one of the Kotah rajas (1771), the country was left to the
charge of Zalim Singh, a descendant of Madhu Singh. From that time Zalim
Singh was the real ruler of Kotah. He brought it to a wonderful state of
prosperity, and under his administration, which lasted over forty-five
years, the Kotah territory was respected by all parties. In 1838 it was
resolved, with the consent of the chief of Kotah, to dismember the
state, and to create the new principality of Jhalawar as a separate
provision for the descendants of Zalim Singh. The districts then severed
from Kotah were considered to represent one-third (£120,000) of the
income of Kotah; by treaty they acknowledged the supremacy of the
British, and agreed to pay an annual tribute of £8000. Madan Singh
received the title of maharaja rana, and was placed on the same footing
as the other chiefs in Rajputana. He died in 1845. An adopted son of his
successor took the name of Zalim Singh in 1875 on becoming chief of
Jhalawar. He was a minor and was not invested with governing powers till
1884. Owing to his maladministration, his relations with the British
government became strained, and he was finally deposed in 1896, "on
account of persistent misgovernment and proved unfitness for the powers
of a ruling chief." He went to live at Benares, on a pension of £2000;
and the administration was placed in the hands of the British resident.
After much consideration, the government resolved in 1897 to break up
the state, restoring the greater part to Kotah, but forming the two
districts of Shahabad and the Chaumahla into a new state, which came
into existence in 1899, and of which Kunwar Bhawani Singh, a descendant
of the original Zalim Singh, was appointed chief.
The chief town is PATAN, or JHALRAPATAN (pop. 7955), founded close to an
old site by Zalim Singh in 1796, by the side of an artificial lake. It
is the centre of trade, the chief exports of the state being opium,
oil-seeds and cotton. The palace is at the cantonment or chhaoni, 4 m.
north. The ancient site near the town was occupied by the city of
Chandrawati, said to have been destroyed in the time of Aurangzeb. The
finest feature of its remains is the temple of Sitaleswar Mahadeva (c.
600).
JHANG, a town and district of British India, in the Multan division of
the Punjab. The town, which forms one municipality with the newer and
now more important quarter of Maghiana, is about 3 m. from the right
bank of the river Chenab. Founded by Mal Khan, a Sial chieftain, in
1462, it long formed the capital of a Mahommedan state. Pop. (1901),
24,382. Maghiana has manufactures of leather, soap and metal ware.
The DISTRICT OF JHANG extends along both sides of the Chenab, including
its confluences with the Jhelum and the Ravi. Area, 3726 sq. m. Pop.
(1901), 378,695, showing an apparent decrease of 13% in the decade, due
to the creation of the district of Lyallpur in 1904. But actually the
population increased by 132% on the old area, owing to the opening of
the Chenab canal and the colonization of the tract irrigated by it.
Within Jhang many thousands of acres of government waste have been
allotted to colonists, who are reported to be flourishing. A branch of
the North-Western railway enters the district in this quarter, extending
throughout its entire length. The Southern Jech Doab railway serves the
south. The principal industries are the ginning, pressing and weaving of
cotton.
Jhang contains the ruins of Shorkot, identified with one of the towns
taken by Alexander. In modern times the history of Jhang centres in the
famous clan of Sials, who exercised an extensive sway over a large tract
between Shahpur and Multan, with little dependence on the imperial court
at Delhi, until they finally fell before the all-absorbing power of
Ranjit Singh. The Sials of Jhang are Mahommedans of Rajput descent,
whose ancestor, Rai Shankar of Daranagar, emigrated early in the 13th
century from the Gangetic Doab. In the beginning of the 19th century
Maharaja Ranjit Singh invaded Jhang, and captured the Sial chieftain's
territory. The latter recovered a small portion afterwards, which he was
allowed to retain on payment of a yearly tribute. In 1847, after the
establishment of the British agency at Lahore, the district came under
the charge of the British government; and in 1848 Ismail Khan, the Sial
leader, rendered important services against the rebel chiefs, for which
he received a pension. During the Mutiny of 1857 the Sial leader again
proved his loyalty by serving in person on the British side. His pension
was afterwards increased, and he obtained the title of khan bahadur,
with a small _jagir_ for life.
JHANSI, a city and district of British India, in the Allahabad division
o£ the United Provinces. The city is the centre of the Indian Midland
railway system, whence four lines diverge to Agra, Cawnpore, Allahabad
and Bhopal. Pop. (1901), 55,724. A stone fort crowns a neighbouring
rock. Formerly the capital of a Mahratta principality, which lapsed to
the British in 1853, it was during the Mutiny the scene of disaffection
and massacre. It was then made over to Gwalior, but has been taken back
in exchange for other territory. Even when the city was within Gwalior,
the civil headquarters and the cantonment were at Jhansi Naoabad, under
its walls. Jhansi is the principal centre for the agricultural trade of
the district, but its manufactures are small.
The DISTRICT OF JHANSI was enlarged in 1891 by the incorporation of the
former district of Lalitpur, which extends farther into the hill
country, almost entirely surrounded by native states. Combined area,
3628 sq.m. Pop. (1901), 616,759 showing a decrease of 10% in the decade,
due to the results of famine. The main line and branches of the Indian
Midland railway serve the district, which forms a portion of the hill
country of Bundelkhand, sloping down from the outliers of the Vindhyan
range on the south to the tributaries of the Jumna on the north. The
extreme south is composed of parallel rows of long and narrow-ridged
hills. Through the intervening valleys the rivers flow down impetuously
over ledges of granite or quartz. North of the hilly region, the rocky
granite chains gradually lose themselves in clusters of smaller hills.
The northern portion consists of the level plain of Bundelkhand,
distinguished for its deep black soil, known as _mar_, and admirably
adapted for the cultivation of cotton. The district is intersected or
bounded by three principal rivers--the Pahuj, Betwa and Dhasan. The
district is much cut up, and portions of it are insulated by the
surrounding native states. The principal crops are millets, cotton,
oil-seeds, pulses, wheat, gram and barley. The destructive _kans_ grass
has proved as great a pest here as elsewhere in Bundelkhand. Jhansi is
especially exposed to blights, droughts, floods, hailstorms, epidemics,
and their natural consequence--famine.
Nothing is known with certainty as to the history of this district
before the period of Chandel rule, about the 11th century of our era. To
this epoch must be referred the artificial reservoirs and architectural
remains of the hilly region. The Chandels were succeeded by their
servants the Khangars, who built the fort of Karar, lying just outside
the British border. About the 14th century the Bundelas poured down upon
the plains, and gradually spread themselves over the whole region which
now bears their name. The Mahommedan governors were constantly making
irruptions into the Bundela country; and in 1732 Chhatar Sal, the
Bundela chieftain, called in the aid of the Mahrattas. They came to his
assistance with their accustomed promptitude, and were rewarded on the
raja's death in 1734, by the bequest of one-third of his dominions.
Their general founded the city of Jhansi, and peopled it with
inhabitants from Orchha state. In 1806 British protection was promised
to the Mahratta chief, and in 1817 the peshwa ceded to the East India
Company all his rights over Bundelkhand. In 1853 the raja died
childless, and his territories lapsed to the British. The Jhansi state
and the Jalaun and Chanderi districts were then formed into a
superintendency. The widow of the raja considered herself aggrieved
because she was not allowed to adopt an heir, and because the slaughter
of cattle was permitted in the Jhansi territory. Reports were spread
which excited the religious prejudices of the Hindus. The events of 1857
accordingly found Jhansi ripe for mutiny. In June a few men of the 12th
native infantry seized the fort containing the treasure and magazine,
and massacred the European officers of the garrison. Everywhere the
usual anarchic quarrels rose among the rebels, and the country was
plundered mercilessly. The rani put herself at the head of the rebels,
and died bravely in battle. It was not till November 1858, after a
series of sharp contests with various guerilla leaders, that the work of
reorganization was fairly set on foot.
JHELUM, or JEHLAM (_Hydaspes_ of the Greeks), a river of northern India.
It is the most westerly of the "five rivers" of the Punjab. It rises in
the north-east of the Kashmir state, flows through the city of Srinagar
and the Wular lake, issues through the Pir Panjal range by the narrow
pass of Baramula, and enters British territory in the Jhelum district.
Thence it flows through the plains of the Punjab, forming the boundary
between the Jech Doab and the Sind Sagar Doab, and finally joins the
Chenab at Timmu after a course of 450 miles. The Jhelum colony, in the
Shahpur district of the Punjab, formed on the example of the Chenab
colony in 1901, is designed to contain a total irrigable area of
1,130,000 acres. The Jhelum canal is a smaller work than the Chenab
canal, but its silt is noted for its fertilizing qualities. Both
projects have brought great prosperity to the cultivators.
JHELUM, or JEHLAM, a town and district of British India, in the
Rawalpindi division of the Punjab. The town is situated on the right
bank of the river Jhelum, here crossed by a bridge of the North-Western
railway, 103 m. N. of Lahore. Pop. (1901), 14,951. It is a modern town
with river and railway trade (principally in timber from Kashmir),
boat-building and cantonments for a cavalry and four infantry regiments.
The DISTRICT OF JEHLUM stretches from the river Jhelum almost to the
Indus. Area, 2813 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 501,424, showing a decrease of 2%
in the decade. Salt is quarried at the Mayo mine in the Salt Range.
There are two coal-mines, the only ones worked in the province, from
which the North-Western railway obtains part of its supply of coal. The
chief centre of the salt trade is Pind Dadan Khan (pop. 13,770). The
district is crossed by the main line of the North-Western railway, and
also traversed along the south by a branch line. The river Jhelum is
navigable throughout the district, which forms the south-eastern portion
of a rugged Himalayan spur, extending between the Indus and Jhelum to
the borders of the Sind Sagar Doab. Its scenery is very picturesque,
although not of so wild a character as the mountain region of Rawalpindi
to the north, and is lighted up in places by smiling patches of
cultivated valley. The backbone of the district is formed by the Salt
Range, a treble line of parallel hills running in three long forks from
east to west throughout its whole breadth. The range rises in bold
precipices, broken by gorges, clothed with brushwood and traversed by
streams which are at first pure, but soon become impregnated with the
saline matter over which they pass. Between the line of hills lies a
picturesque table-land, in which the beautiful little lake of Kallar
Kahar nestles amongst the minor ridges. North of the Salt Range, the
country extends upwards in an elevated plateau, diversified by countless
ravines and fissures, until it loses itself in tangled masses of
Rawalpindi mountains. In this rugged tract cultivation is rare and
difficult, the soil being choked with saline matter. At the foot of the
Salt Range, however, a small strip of level soil lies along the banks of
the Jhelum, and is thickly dotted with prosperous villages. The drainage
of the district is determined by a low central watershed running north
and south at right angles to the Salt Range. The waters of the western
portion find their way into the Sohan, and finally into the Indus; those
of the opposite slope collect themselves into small torrents, and empty
themselves into the Jhelum.
The history of the district dates back to the semi-mythical period of
the _Mahabharata_. Hindu tradition represents the Salt Range as the
refuge of the five Pandava brethren during the period of their exile,
and every salient point in its scenery is connected with some legend of
the national heroes. Modern research has fixed the site of the conflict
between Alexander and Porus as within Jhelum district, although the
exact point at which Alexander effected the passage of the Jhelum (or
Hydaspes) is disputed. After this event, we have little information with
regard to the condition of the district until the Mahommedan conquest
brought back literature and history to Upper India. The Janjuahs and
Jats, who now hold the Salt Range and its northern plateau respectively,
appear to have been the earliest inhabitants. The Ghakkars seem to
represent an early wave of conquest from the east, and they still
inhabit the whole eastern slope of the district; while the Awans, who
now cluster in the western plain, are apparently later invaders from the
opposite quarter. The Ghakkars were the dominant race at the period of
the first Mahommedan incursions, and long continued to retain their
independence. During the flourishing period of the Mogul dynasty, the
Ghakkar chieftains were prosperous and loyal vassals of the house of
Baber; but after the collapse of the Delhi Empire Jhelum fell, like its
neighbours, under the sway of the Sikhs. In 1765 Gujar Singh defeated
the last independent Ghakkar prince, and reduced the wild mountaineers
to subjection. His son succeeded to his dominions, until 1810, when he
fell before the irresistible power of Ranjit Singh. In 1849 the district
passed, with the rest of the Sikh territories, into the hands of the
British.
JHERING, RUDOLF VON (1818-1892), German jurist, was born on the 22nd of
August 1818 at Aurich in East Friesland, where his father practised as a
lawyer. Young Jhering entered the university of Heidelberg in 1836 and,
after the fashion of German students, visited successively Göttingen and
Berlin. G. F. Puchta, the author of _Geschichte des Rechts bei dem
römischen Volke_, alone of all his teachers appears to have gained his
admiration and influenced the bent of his mind. After graduating _doctor
juris_, Jhering established himself in 1844 at Berlin as _privatdocent_
for Roman law, and delivered public lectures on the _Geist des römischen
Rechts_, the theme which may be said to have constituted his life's
work. In 1845 he became an ordinary professor at Basel, in 1846 at
Rostock, in 1849 at Kiel, and in 1851 at Giessen. Upon all these seats
of learning he left his mark; beyond any other of his contemporaries he
animated the dry bones of Roman law. The German juristic world was still
under the dominating influence of the Savigny cult, and the older school
looked askance at the daring of the young professor, who essayed to
adapt the old to new exigencies and to build up a system of natural
jurisprudence. This is the keynote of his famous work, _Geist des
römischen Rechts auf den verschiedenen Stufen seiner Entwickelung_
(1852-1865), which for originality of conception and lucidity of
scientific reasoning placed its author in the forefront of modern Roman
jurists. It is no exaggeration to say that in the second half of the
19th century the reputation of Jhering was as high as that of Savigny in
the first. Their methods were almost diametrically opposed. Savigny and
his school represented the conservative, historical tendency. In Jhering
the philosophical conception of jurisprudence, as a science to be
utilized for the further advancement of the moral and social interests
of mankind, was predominant. In 1868 Jhering accepted the chair of Roman
Law at Vienna, where his lecture-room was crowded, not only with regular
students but with men of all professions and even of the highest ranks
in the official world. He became one of the lions of society, the
Austrian emperor conferring upon him in 1872 a title of hereditary
nobility. But to a mind constituted like his, the social functions of
the Austrian metropolis became wearisome, and he gladly exchanged its
brilliant circles for the repose of Göttingen, where he became professor
in 1872. In this year he had read at Vienna before an admiring audience
a lecture, published under the title of _Der Kampf um's Recht_ (1872;
Eng. trans., _Battle for Right_, 1884). Its success was extraordinary.
Within two years it attained twelve editions, and it has been translated
into twenty-six languages. This was followed a few years later by _Der
Zweck im Recht_ (2 vols., 1877-1883). In these two works is clearly seen
Jhering's individuality. The _Kampf um's Recht_ shows the firmness of
his character, the strength of his sense of justice, and his juristic
method and logic: "to assert his rights is the duty that every
responsible person owes to himself." In the _Zweck im Recht_ is
perceived the bent of the author's intellect. But perhaps the happiest
combination of all his distinctive characteristics is to be found in his
_Jurisprudenz des täglichen Lebens_ (1870; Eng. trans., 1904). A great
feature of his lectures was his so-called _Praktika_, problems in Roman
law, and a collection of these with hints for solution was published as
early as 1847 under the title _Civilrechtsfälle ohne Entscheidungen_. In
Göttingen he continued to work until his death on the 17th of September
1892. A short time previously he had been the centre of a devoted crowd
of friends and former pupils, assembled at Wilhelmshöhe near Cassel to
celebrate the jubilee of his doctorate. Almost all countries were
worthily represented, and this pilgrimage affords an excellent
illustration of the extraordinary fascination and enduring influence
that Jhering commanded. In appearance he was of middle stature, his face
clean-shaven and of classical mould, lit up with vivacity and beaming
with good nature. He was perhaps seen at his best when dispensing
hospitality in his own house. With him died the best beloved and the
most talented of Roman-law professors of modern times. It was said of
him by Professor Adolf Merkel in a memorial address, _R. v. Jhering_
(1893), that he belonged to the happy class of persons to whom Goethe's
lines are applicable: "Was ich in der Jugend gewünscht, das habe ich im
Alter die Fülle," and this may justly be said of him, though he did not
live to complete his _Geist des römischen Rechts_ and his
_Rechtsgeschichte_. For this work the span of a single life would have
been insufficient, but what he has left to the world is a monument of
vigorous intellectual power and stamps Jhering as an original thinker
and unrivalled exponent (in his peculiar interpretation) of the spirit
of Roman law.
Among others of his works, all of them characteristic of the author
and sparkling with wit, may be mentioned the following: _Beiträge zur
Lehre von Besitz_, first published in the _Jahrbücher für die Dogmatik
des heutigen römischen und deutschen Privat-rechts_, and then
separately; _Der Besitzwille_, and an article entitled "Besitz" in the
_Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften_ (1891), which aroused at the
time much controversy, particularly on account of the opposition
manifested to Savigny's conception of the subject. See also _Scherz
und Ernst in der Jurisprudenz_ (1885); _Das Schuldmoment im römischen
Privat-recht_ (1867); _Das Trinkgeld_ (1882); and among the papers he
left behind him his _Vorgeschichte der Indoeuropäer_, a fragment, has
been published by v. Ehrenberg (1894). See for an account of his life
also M. de Jonge, _Rudolf v. Jhering_ (1888); and A. Merkel, _Rudolf
von Jhering_ (1893). (P. A. A.)
JIBITOS, a tribe of South American Indians, first met with by the
Franciscans in 1676 in the forest near the Huallaga river, in the
Peruvian province of Loreto. After their conversion they settled in
villages on the western bank of the river.
JIBUTI (DJIBOUTI), the chief port and capital of French Somaliland, in
11° 35´ N., 43° 10´ E. Jibuti is situated at the entrance to and on the
southern shore of the Gulf of Tajura about 150 m. S.W. of Aden. The town
is built on a horseshoe-shaped peninsula partly consisting of mud flats,
which are spanned by causeways. The chief buildings are the governor's
palace, customs-house, post office, and the terminal station of the
railway to Abyssinia. The houses in the European quarter are built of
stone, are flat-roofed and provided with verandas. There is a good water
supply, drawn from a reservoir about 2½ m. distant. The harbour is
land-locked and capacious. Ocean steamers are able to enter it at all
states of wind and tide. Adjoining the mainland is the native town,
consisting mostly of roughly made wooden houses with well thatched
roofs. In it is held a large market, chiefly for the disposal of live
stock, camels, cattle, &c. The port is a regular calling-place and also
a coaling station for the steamers of the Messageries Maritimes, and
there is a local service to Aden. Trade is confined to coaling passing
ships and to importing goods for and exporting goods from southern
Abyssinia via Harrar, there being no local industries. (For statistics
see SOMALILAND, FRENCH.) The inhabitants are of many races--Somali,
Danakil, Gallas, Armenians, Jews, Arabs, Indians, besides Greeks,
Italians, French and other Europeans. The population, which in 1900 when
the railway was building was about 15,000, had fallen in 1907 to some
5000 or 6000, including 300 Europeans.
Jibuti was founded by the French in 1888 in consequence of its
superiority to Obok both in respect to harbour accommodation and in
nearness to Harrar. It has been the seat of the governor of the colony
since May 1896. Order is maintained by a purely native police force. The
port is not fortified.
JICARILLA, a tribe of North American Indians of Athapascan stock. Their
former range was in New Mexico, about the headwaters of the Rio Grande
and the Pecos, and they are now settled in a reservation on the northern
border of New Mexico. Originally a scourge of the district, they are now
subdued, but remain uncivilized. They number some 800 and are steadily
decreasing. The name is said to be from the Spanish _jicara_, a basket
tray, in reference to their excellent basket-work.
JIDDA (also written JEDDAH, DJIDDAH, DJEDDEH), a town in Arabia on the
Red Sea coast in 21° 28´ N. and 39° 10´ E. It is of importance mainly as
the principal landing place of pilgrims to Mecca, from which it is about
46 m. distant. It is situated in a low sandy plain backed by a range of
hills 10 m. to the east, with higher mountains behind. The town extends
along the beach for about a mile, and is enclosed by a wall with towers
at intervals, the seaward angles being commanded by two forts, in the
northern of which are the prison and other public buildings. There are
three gates, the Medina gate on the north, the Mecca gate on the east,
and the Yemen gate (rarely opened) on the south; there are also three
small posterns on the west side, the centre one leading to the quay. In
front of the Mecca gate is a rambling suburb with shops, coffee houses,
and an open market place; before the Medina gate are the Turkish
barracks, and beyond them the holy place of Jidda, the tomb of "our
mother Eve," surrounded by the principal cemetery.
The tomb is a walled enclosure said to represent the dimensions of the
body, about 200 paces long and 15 ft. broad. At the head is a small
erection where gifts are deposited, and rather more than half-way down
a whitewashed dome encloses a small dark chapel within which is the
black stone known as _El Surrah_, the navel. The grave of Eve is
mentioned by Edrisi, but except the black stone nothing bears any
aspect of antiquity (see Burton's _Pilgrimage_, vol. ii.).
The sea face is the best part of the town; the houses there are lofty
and well built of the rough coral that crops out all along the shore.
The streets are narrow and winding. There are two mosques of
considerable size and a number of smaller ones. The outer suburbs are
merely collections of brushwood huts. The bazaars are well supplied with
food-stuffs imported by sea, and fruit and vegetables from Taif and Wadi
Fatima. The water supply is limited and brackish; there are, however,
two sweet wells and a spring 7½ m. from the town, and most of the houses
have cisterns for storing rain-water. The climate is hot and damp, but
fever is not so prevalent as at Mecca. The harbour though inconvenient
of access is well protected by coral reefs; there are, however, no
wharves or other dock facilities and cargo is landed in small Arab
boats, _sambuks_.
The governor is a Turkish kaimakam under the vali of Hejaz, and there is
a large Turkish garrison; the sharif of Mecca, however, through his
agent at Jidda exercises an authority practically superior to that of
the sultan's officials. Consulates are maintained by Great Britain,
France, Austria, Russia, Holland, Belgium and Persia. The permanent
population is estimated at 20,000, of which less than half are Arabs,
and of these a large number are foreigners from Yemen and Hadramut, the
remainder are negroes and Somali with a few Indian and Greek traders.
Jidda is said to have been founded by Persian merchants in the caliphate
of Othman, but its great commercial prosperity dates from the beginning
of the 15th century when it became the centre of trade between Egypt and
India. Down to the time of Burckhardt (1815) the Suez ships went no
farther than Jidda, where they were met by Indian vessels. The
introduction of steamers deprived Jidda of its place as an emporium, not
only for Indian goods but for the products of the Red Sea, which
formerly were collected here, but are now largely exported direct by
steamer from Hodeda, Suakin, Jibuti and Aden. At the same time it gave a
great impulse to the pilgrim traffic which is now regarded as the annual
harvest of Jidda. The average number of pilgrims arriving by sea exceeds
50,000, and in 1903-1904 the total came to 74,600. The changed status of
the port is shown in its trade returns, for while its exports decreased
from £250,000 in 1880 to £25,000 in 1904, its imports in the latter year
amounted to over £1,400,000. The adverse balance of trade is paid by a
very large export of specie, collected from the pilgrims during their
stay in the country.
JIG, a brisk lively dance, the quick and irregular steps of which have
varied at different times and in the various countries in which it has
been danced (see DANCE). The music of the "jig," or such as is written
in its rhythm, is in various times and has been used frequently to
finish a suite, e.g. by Bach and Handel. The word has usually been
derived from or connected with Fr. _gigue_, Ital. _giga_, Ger. _Geige_,
a fiddle. The French and Italian words are now chiefly used of the dance
or dance rhythm, and in this sense have been taken by etymologists as
adapted from the English "jig," which may have been originally an
onomatopoeic word. The idea of jumping, jerking movement has given rise
to many applications of "jig" and its derivative "jigger" to mechanical
and other devices, such as the machine used for separating the heavier
metal-bearing portions from the lighter parts in ore-dressing, or a
tackle consisting of a double and single block and fall, &c. The word
"jigger," a corruption of the West Indian _chigoe_, is also used as the
name of a species of flea, the _Sarcopsylla penetrans_, which burrows
and lays its eggs in the human foot, generally under the toe nails, and
causes great swelling and irritation (see FLEA).
JIHAD (also written JEHAD, JAHAD, DJEHAD), an Arabic word of which the
literal meaning is an effort or a contest. It is used to designate the
religious duty inculcated in the Koran on the followers of Mahomet to
wage war upon those who do not accept the doctrines of Islam. This duty
is laid down in five suras--all of these suras belonging to the period
after Mahomet had established his power. Conquered peoples who will
neither embrace Islam nor pay a poll-tax (_jizya_) are to be put to the
sword. (See further MOHAMMEDAN INSTITUTIONS.) By Mahommedan commentators
the commands in the Koran are not interpreted as a general injunction on
all Moslems constantly to make war on the infidels. It is generally
supposed that the order for a general war can only be given by the
caliph (an office now claimed by the sultans of Turkey). Mahommedans who
do not acknowledge the spiritual authority of the Ottoman sultan, such
as the Persians and Moors, look to their own rulers for the proclamation
of a jihad; there has been in fact no universal warfare by Moslems on
unbelievers since the early days of Mahommedanism. Jihads are generally
proclaimed by all persons who claim to be mahdis, e.g. Mahommed Ahmad
(the Sudanese mahdi) proclaimed a jihad in 1882. In the belief of
Moslems every one of their number slain in a jihad is taken straight to
paradise.
JIMENES (or XIMENES) DE CISNEROS, FRANCISCO (1436-1517), Spanish
cardinal and statesman, was born in 1436 at Torrelaguna in Castile, of
good but poor family. He studied at Alcalá de Henares and afterwards at
Salamanca; and in 1459, having entered holy orders, he went to Rome.
Returning to Spain in 1465, he brought with him an "expective" letter
from the pope, in virtue of which he took possession of the
archpriestship of Uzeda in the diocese of Toledo in 1473. Carillo,
archbishop of Toledo, opposed him, and on his obstinate refusal to give
way threw him into prison. For six years Jimenes held out, and at length
in 1480 Carillo restored him to his benefice. This Jimenes exchanged
almost at once for a chaplaincy at Siguenza, under Cardinal Mendoza,
bishop of Siguenza, who shortly appointed him vicar-general of his
diocese. In that position Jimenes won golden opinions from ecclesiastic
and layman; and he seemed to be on the sure road to distinction among
the secular clergy, when he abruptly resolved to become a monk. Throwing
up all his benefices, and changing his baptismal name Gonzales for that
of Francisco, he entered the Franciscan monastery of San Juan de los
Reyes, recently founded by Ferdinand and Isabella at Toledo. Not content
with the ordinary severities of the noviciate, he added voluntary
austerities. He slept on the bare ground, wore a hair-shirt, doubled his
fasts, and scourged himself with much fervour; indeed throughout his
whole life, even when at the acme of his greatness, his private life was
most rigorously ascetic. The report of his sanctity brought crowds to
confess to him; but from them he retired to the lonely monastery of Our
Lady of Castañar; and he even built with his own hands a rude hut in the
neighbouring woods, in which he lived at times as an anchorite. He was
afterwards guardian of a monastery at Salzeda. Meanwhile Mendoza (now
archbishop of Toledo) had not forgotten him; and in 1492 he recommended
him to Isabella as her confessor. The queen sent for Jimenes, was
pleased with him, and to his great reluctance forced the office upon
him. The post was politically important, for Isabella submitted to the
judgment of her father-confessor not only her private affairs but also
matters of state. Jimenes's severe sanctity soon won him considerable
influence over Isabella; and thus it was that he first emerged into
political life. In 1494 the queen's confessor was appointed provincial
of the order of St Francis, and at once set about reducing the laxity of
the conventual to the strictness of the observantine Franciscans.
Intense opposition was continued even after Jimenes became archbishop of
Toledo. The general of the order himself came from Rome to interfere
with the archbishop's measures of reform, but the stern inflexibility of
Jimenes, backed by the influence of the queen, subdued every obstacle.
Cardinal Mendoza had died in 1495, and Isabella had secretly procured a
papal bull nominating her confessor to his diocese of Toledo, the
richest and most powerful in Spain, second perhaps to no other dignity
of the Roman Church save the papacy. Long and sincerely Jimenes strove
to evade the honour; but his _nolo episcopari_ was after six months
overcome by a second bull ordering him to accept consecration. With the
primacy of Spain was associated the lofty dignity of high chancellor of
Castile; but Jimenes still maintained his lowly life; and, although a
message from Rome required him to live in a style befitting his rank,
the outward pomp only concealed his private asceticism. In 1499 Jimenes
accompanied the court to Granada, and there eagerly joined the mild and
pious Archbishop Talavera in his efforts to convert the Moors. Talavera
had begun with gentle measures, but Jimenes preferred to proceed by
haranguing the _fakihs_, or doctors of religion, and loading them with
gifts. Outwardly the latter method was successful; in two months the
converts were so numerous that they had to be baptized by aspersion. The
indignation of the unconverted Moors swelled into open revolt. Jimenes
was besieged in his house, and the utmost difficulty was found in
quieting the city. Baptism or exile was offered to the Moors as a
punishment for rebellion. The majority accepted baptism; and Isabella,
who had been momentarily annoyed at her archbishop's imprudence, was
satisfied that he had done good service to Christianity.
On the 24th of November 1504 Isabella died. Ferdinand at once resigned
the title of king of Castile in favour of his daughter Joan and her
husband the archduke Philip, assuming instead that of regent. Philip
was keenly jealous of Ferdinand's pretensions to the regency; and it
required all the tact of Jimenes to bring about a friendly interview
between the princes. Ferdinand finally retired from Castile; and, though
Jimenes remained, his political weight was less than before. The sudden
death of Philip in September 1506 quite overset the already tottering
intellect of his wife; his son and heir Charles was still a child; and
Ferdinand was at Naples. The nobles of Castile, mutually jealous, agreed
to entrust affairs to the archbishop of Toledo, who, moved more by
patriotic regard for his country's welfare than by special friendship
for Ferdinand, strove to establish the final influence of that king in
Castile. Ferdinand did not return till August 1507; and he brought a
cardinal's hat for Jimenes. Shortly afterwards the new cardinal of Spain
was appointed grand inquisitor-general for Castile and Leon.
The next great event in the cardinal's life was the expedition against
the Moorish city of Oran in the north of Africa, in which his religious
zeal was supported by the prospect of the political and material gain
that would accrue to Spain from the possession of such a station. A
preliminary expedition, equipped, like that which followed, at the
expense of Jimenes, captured the port of Mers-el-Kebir in 1505; and in
1509 a strong force, accompanied by the cardinal in person, set sail for
Africa, and in one day the wealthy city was taken by storm. Though the
army remained to make fresh conquests, Jimenes returned to Spain, and
occupied himself with the administration of his diocese, and in
endeavouring to recover from the regent the expenses of his Oran
expedition. On the 28th of January 1516 Ferdinand died, leaving Jimenes
as regent of Castile for Charles (afterwards Charles V.), then a youth
of sixteen in the Netherlands. Though Jimenes at once took firm hold of
the reins of government, and ruled in a determined and even autocratic
manner, the haughty and turbulent Castilian nobility and the jealous
intriguing Flemish councillors of Charles combined to render his
position peculiarly difficult; while the evils consequent upon the
unlimited demands of Charles for money threw much undeserved odium upon
the regent. In violation of the laws, Jimenes acceded to Charles's
desire to be proclaimed king; he secured the person of Charles's younger
brother Ferdinand; he fixed the seat of the cortes at Madrid; and he
established a standing army by drilling the citizens of the great towns.
Immediately on Ferdinand's death, Adrian, dean of Louvain, afterwards
pope, produced a commission from Charles appointing him regent. Jimenes
admitted him to a nominal equality, but took care that neither he nor
the subsequent commissioners of Charles ever had any real share of
power. In September 1517 Charles landed in the province of Asturias, and
Jimenes hastened to meet him. On the way, however, he fell ill, not
without a suspicion of poison. While thus feeble, he received a letter
from Charles coldly thanking him for his services, and giving him leave
to retire to his diocese. A few hours after this virtual dismissal,
which some, however, say the cardinal never saw, Francisco Jimenes died
at Roa, on the 8th of November 1517.
Jimenes was a bold and determined statesman. Sternly and inflexibly,
with a confidence that became at times overbearing, he carried through
what he had decided to be right, with as little regard for the
convenience of others as for his own. In the midst of a corrupt clergy
his morals were irreproachable. He was liberal to all, and founded and
maintained very many benevolent institutions in his diocese. His whole
time was devoted either to the state or to religion; his only recreation
was in theological or scholastic discussion. Perhaps one of the most
noteworthy points about the cardinal is the advanced period of life at
which he entered upon the stage where he was to play such leading parts.
Whether his abrupt change from the secular to the regular clergy was the
fervid outcome of religious enthusiasm or the far-seeing move of a wily
schemer has been disputed; but the constant austerity of his life, his
unvarying superiority to small personal aims, are arguments for the
former alternative that are not to be met by merely pointing to the
actual honours and power he at last attained.
In 1500 was founded, and in 1508 was opened, the university of Alcalá
de Henares, which, fostered by Cardinal Jimenes, at whose sole expense
it was raised, attained a great pitch of outward magnificence and
internal worth. At one time 7000 students met within its walls. In
1836 the university was removed to Madrid, and the costly buildings
were left vacant. In the hopes of supplanting the romances generally
found in the hands of the young, Jimenes caused to be published
religious treatises by himself and others. He revived also the
Mozarabic liturgy, and endowed a chapel at Toledo, in which it was to
be used. But his most famous literary service was the printing at
Alcalá (in Latin _Complutum_) of the Complutensian Polyglott, the
first edition of the Christian Scriptures in the original text. In
this work, on which he is said to have expended half a million of
ducats, the cardinal was aided by the celebrated Stunica (D. Lopez de
Zuñiga), the Greek scholar Nuñez de Guzman (Pincianus), the Hebraist
Vergara, and the humanist Nebrija, by a Cretan Greek Demetrius Ducas,
and by three Jewish converts, of whom Zamora edited the Targum to the
Pentateuch. The other Targums are not included. In the Old Testament
Jerome's version stands between the Greek and Hebrew. The synagogue
and the Eastern church, as the preface expresses it, are set like the
thieves on this side and on that, with Jesus (that is, the Roman
Church) in the midst. The text occupies five volumes, and a sixth
contains a Hebrew lexicon, &c. The work commenced in 1502. The New
Testament was finished in January 1514, and the whole in April 1517.
It was dedicated to Leo X., and was reprinted in 1572 by the Antwerp
firm of Plantin, after revision by Benito Arias Montano at the expense
of Philip II. The second edition is known as the _Biblia Regia_ or
_Filipina_.
The work by Alvaro Gomez de Castro, _De Rebus Gestis Francisci
Ximenii_ (folio, 1659, Alcalá), is the quarry whence have come the
materials for biographies of Jimenes--in Spanish by Robles (1604) and
Quintanilla (1633); in French by Baudier (1635), Marsollier (1684),
Flèchier (1694) and Richard (1704); in German by Hefele (1844,
translated into English by Canon Dalton, 1860) and Havemann (1848);
and in English by Barrett (1813). See also Prescott's _Ferdinand and
Isabella_; _Revue des Deux Mondes_ (May 1841) and _Mém. de l'Acad.
d'hist. de Madrid_, vol. iv.
JIND, a native state of India, within the Punjab. It ranks as one of the
Cis-Sutlej states, which came under British influence in 1809. The
territory consists of three isolated tracts, amid British districts.
Total area, 1332 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 282,003, showing a decrease of 1%
in the decade. Estimated gross revenue £109,000; there is no tribute.
Grain and cotton are exported, and there are manufactures of gold and
silver ornaments, leather and wooden wares and cloth. The chief, whose
title is raja, is a Sikh of the Sidhu Jat clan and of the Phulkian
family. The principality was founded in 1763, and the chief was
recognized by the Mogul emperor in 1768. The dynasty has always been
famous for its loyalty to the British, especially during the Mutiny,
which has been rewarded with accessions of territory. In 1857 the raja
of Jind was actually the first man, European or native, who took the
field against the mutineers; and his contingent collected supplies in
advance for the British troops marching upon Delhi, besides rendering
excellent service during the siege. Raja Ranbir Singh succeeded as a
minor in 1887, and was granted full powers in 1899. During the Tirah
expedition of 1897-98 the Jind imperial service infantry specially
distinguished themselves. The town of Jind, the former capital, has a
station on the Southern Punjab railway, 80 m. N.W. of Delhi. Pop.
(1901), 8047. The present capital and residence of the raja since 1827
is Sangrur; pop. (1901), 11,852.
JINGO, a legendary empress of Japan, wife of Chuai, the 14th mikado
(191-200). On her husband's death she assumed the government, and fitted
out an army for the invasion of Korea (see JAPAN, § 9). She returned to
Japan completely victorious after three years' absence. Subsequently her
son Ojen Tenno, afterwards 15th mikado, was born, and later was
canonized as Hachiman, god of war. The empress Jingo ruled over Japan
till 270. She is still worshipped.
As regards the English oath, usually "By Jingo," or "By the living
Jingo," the derivation is doubtful. The identification with the name of
Gingulph or Gengulphus, a Burgundian saint who was martyred on the 11th
of May 760, was a joke on the part of R. H. Barham, author of the
_Ingoldsby Legends_. Some explain the word as a corruption of Jainko,
the Basque name for God. It has also been derived from the Persia _jang_
(war), St Jingo being the equivalent of the Latin god of war, Mars; and
is even explained as a corruption of "Jesus, Son of God," Je-n-go. In
support of the Basque derivation it is alleged that the oath was first
common in Wales, to aid in the conquest of which Edward I. imported a
number of Basque mercenaries. The phrase does not, however, appear in
literature before the 17th century, first as conjurer's jargon. Motteux,
in his "Rabelais," is the first to use "by jingo," translating _par
dieu_. The political use of the word as indicating an aggressive
patriotism (Jingoes and Jingoism) originated in 1877 during the weeks of
national excitement preluding the despatch of the British Mediterranean
squadron to Gallipoli, thus frustrating Russian designs on
Constantinople. While the public were on the tiptoe of expectation as to
what policy the government would pursue, a bellicose music-hall song
with the refrain "We don't want to fight, but by Jingo if we do," &c.,
was produced in London by a singer known as "the great MacDermott," and
instantly became very popular. Thus the war-party came to be called
Jingoes, and Jingoism has ever since been the term applied to those who
advocate a national policy of arrogance and pugnacity.
For a discussion of the etymology of Jingo see _Notes and Queries_,
(August 25, 1894), 8th series, p. 149.
JINN (DJINN), the name of a class of spirits (_genii_) in Arabian
mythology. They are the offspring of fire, but in their form and the
propagation of their kind they resemble human beings. They are ruled by
a race of kings named "Suleyman," one of whom is considered to have
built the pyramids. Their central home is the mountain Kaf, and they
manifest themselves to men under both animal and mortal form and become
invisible at will. There are good and evil jinn, and these in each case
reach the extremes of beauty and ugliness.
JIRECEK, JOSEF (1825-1888), Czech scholar, was born at Vysoké Mýto in
Bohemia on the 9th of October 1825. He entered the Prague bureau of
education in 1850, and became minister of the department in the
Hohenwart cabinet in 1871. His efforts to secure equal educational
privileges for the Slav nationalities in the Austrian dominions brought
him into disfavour with the German element. He became a member of the
Bohemian Landtag in 1878, and of the Austrian Reichsrat in 1879. His
merits as a scholar were recognized in 1875 by his election as president
of the royal Bohemian academy of sciences. He died in Prague on the 25th
of November 1888.
With Hermenegild Jirecek he defended in 1862 the genuineness of the
Königinhof MS. discovered by Wenceslaus Hanka. He published in the
Czech language an anthology of Czech literature (3 vols., 1858-1861),
a biographical dictionary of Czech writers (2 vols., 1875-1876), a
Czech hymnology, editions of Blahoslaw's Czech grammar and of some
Czech classics, and of the works of his father-in-law Pavel Josef
Safarik (1795-1861).
His brother HERMENEGILD JIRECEK, Ritter von Samakow (1827- ), Bohemian
jurisconsult, who was born at Vysoké Mýto on the 13th of April 1827, was
also an official in the education department.
Among his important works on Slavonic law were _Codex juris bohemici_
(11 parts, 1867-1892), and a _Collection of Slav Folk-Law_ (Czech,
1880), _Slav Law in Bohemia and Moravia down to the 14th Century_
(Czech, 3 vols. 1863-1873).
JIRECEK, KONSTANTIN JOSEF (1854- ), son of Josef, taught history at
Prague. He entered the Bulgarian service in 1879, and in 1881 became
minister of education at Sofia. In 1884 he became professor of universal
history in Czech at Prague, and in 1893 professor of Slavonic
antiquities at Vienna.
The bulk of Konstantin's writings deal with the history of the
southern Slavs and their literature. They include a _History of the
Bulgars_ (Czech and German, 1876), _The Principality of Bulgaria_
(1891), _Travels in Bulgaria_ (Czech, 1888), &c.
JIZAKH, a town of Russian Central Asia, in the province of Samarkand, on
the Transcaspian railway, 71 m. N.E. of the city of Samarkand. Pop.
(1897), 16,041. As a fortified post of Bokhara it was captured by the
Russians in 1866.
JOAB (Heb. "Yah[weh] is a father"), in the Bible, the son of Zeruiah,
David's sister (1 Chron. ii. 16). His brothers were Asahel and Abishai.
All three were renowned warriors and played a prominent part in David's
history. Abishai on one occasion saved the king's life from a Philistine
giant (2 Sam. xxi. 17), and Joab as warrior and statesman was directly
responsible for much of David's success. Joab won his spurs, according
to one account, by capturing Jerusalem (1 Chron. xi. 4-9); with Abishai
and Ittai of Gath he led a small army against the Israelites who had
rebelled under Absalom (2 Sam. xviii. 2); and he superintended the
campaign against Ammon and Edom (2 Sam. xi. 1, xii. 26; 1 Kings xi. 15).
He showed his sturdy character by urging the king after the death of
Absalom to place his duty to his people before his grief for the loss of
his favourite son (2 Sam. xix. 1-8), and by protesting against David's
proposal to number the people, an innovation which may have been
regarded as an infringement of their liberties (2 Sam. xxiv.; 1 Chron.
xxi. 6).
The hostility of the "sons of Zeruiah" towards the tribe of Benjamin
is characteristically contrasted with David's own generosity towards
Saul's fallen house. Abishai proposed to kill Saul when David
surprised him asleep (1 Sam. xxvi. 8), and was anxious to slay Shimei
when he cursed the king (2 Sam. xvi. 9). But David was resigned to the
will of Yahweh and refused to entertain the suggestions. After Asahel
met his death at the hands of Abner, Joab expostulated with David for
not taking revenge upon the guilty one, and indeed the king might be
considered bound in honour to take up his nephew's cause. But when
Joab himself killed Abner, David's imprecation against him and his
brother Abishai showed that he dissociated himself from the act of
vengeance, although it brought him nearer to the throne of all Israel
(2 Sam. iii.). Fear of a possible rival may have influenced Joab, and
this at all events led him to slay Amasa of Judah (2 Sam. xx. 4-13).
The two deeds are similar, and the impression left by them is
expressed in David's last charges to Solomon (1 Kings ii.). But here
Joab had taken the side of Adonijah against Solomon, and was put to
death by Benaiah at Solomon's command, and it is possible that the
charges are the fruit of a later tradition to remove all possible
blame from Solomon (q.v.). It is singular that Joab is not blamed for
killing Absalom, but it would indeed be strange if the man who helped
to reconcile father and son (2 Sam. xiv.) should have perpetrated so
cruel an act in direct opposition to the king's wishes (xviii. 5,
10-16). A certain animus against Joab's family thus seems to underlie
some of the popular narratives of the life of David (q.v.).
(S. A. C.)
JOACHIM OF FLORIS (c. 1145-1202), so named from the monastery of San
Giovanni in Fiore, of which he was abbot, Italian mystic theologian, was
born at Celico, near Cosenza, in Calabria. He was of noble birth and was
brought up at the court of Duke Roger of Apulia. At an early age he went
to visit the holy places. After seeing his comrades decimated by the
plague at Constantinople he resolved to change his mode of life, and, on
his return to Italy, after a rigorous pilgrimage and a period of ascetic
retreat, became a monk in the Cistercian abbey of Casamari. In August
1177 we know that he was abbot of the monastery of Corazzo, near
Martirano. In 1183 he went to the court of Pope Lucius III. at Veroli,
and in 1185 visited Urban III. at Verona. There is extant a letter of
Pope Clement III., dated the 8th of June 1188, in which Clement alludes
to two of Joachim's works, the _Concordia_ and the _Expositio in
Apocalypsin_, and urges him to continue them. Joachim, however, was
unable to continue his abbatial functions in the midst of his labours in
prophetic exegesis, and, moreover, his asceticism accommodated itself
but ill with the somewhat lax discipline of Corazzo. He accordingly
retired into the solitudes of Pietralata, and subsequently founded with
some companions under a rule of his own creation the abbey of San
Giovanni in Fiore, on Monte Nero, in the _massif_ of La Sila. The pope
and the emperor befriended this foundation; Frederick II. and his wife
Constance made important donations to it, and promoted the spread of
offshoots of the parent house; while Innocent III., on the 21st of
January 1204, approved the "ordo Florensis" and the "institutio" which
its founder had bestowed upon it. Joachim died in 1202, probably on the
20th of March.
Of the many prophetic and polemical works that were attributed to
Joachim in the 13th and following centuries, only those enumerated in
his will can be regarded as absolutely authentic. These are the
_Concordia novi et veteris Testamenti_ (first printed at Venice in
1519), the _Expositio in Apocalypsin_ (Venice, 1527), the _Psalterium
decem chordarum_ (Venice, 1527), together with some "libelli" against
the Jews or the adversaries of the Christian faith. It is very
probable that these "libelli" are the writings entitled _Concordia
Evangeliorum_, _Contra Judaeos_, _De articulis fidei_, _Confessio
fidei_ and _De unitate Trinitatis_. The last is perhaps the work which
was condemned by the Lateran council in 1215 as containing an
erroneous criticism of the Trinitarian theory of Peter Lombard. This
council, though condemning the book, refrained from condemning the
author, and approved the order of Floris. Nevertheless, the monks
continued to be subjected to insults as followers of a heretic, until
they obtained from Honorius III. in 1220 a bull formally recognizing
Joachim as orthodox and forbidding anyone to injure his disciples.
It is impossible to enumerate here all the works attributed to
Joachim. Some served their avowed object with great success, being
powerful instruments in the anti-papal polemic and sustaining the
revolted Franciscans in their hope of an approaching triumph. Among
the most widely circulated were the commentaries on Jeremiah, Isaiah
and Ezekiel, the _Vaticinia pontificum_ and the _De oneribus
ecclesiae_. Of his authentic works the doctrinal essential is very
simple. Joachim divides the history of humanity, past, present and
future, into three periods, which, in his _Expositio in Apocalypsin_
(bk. i. ch. 5), he defines as the age of the Law, or of the Father;
the age of the Gospel, or of the Son; and the age of the Spirit, which
will bring the ages to an end. Before each of these ages there is a
period of incubation, or initiation: the first age begins with
Abraham, but the period of initiation with the first man Adam. The
initiation period of the third age begins with St Benedict, while the
actual age of the Spirit is not to begin until 1260, the
Church--_mulier amicta sole_ (Rev. xii. 1)--remaining hidden in the
wilderness 1260 days. We cannot here enter into the infinite details
of the other subdivisions imagined by Joachim, or into his system of
perpetual concordances between the New and the Old Testaments, which,
according to him, furnish the prefiguration of the third age. Far more
interesting as explaining the diffusion and the religious and social
importance of his doctrine is his conception of the second and third
ages. The first age was the age of the Letter, the second was
intermediary between the Letter and the Spirit, and the third was to
be the age of the Spirit. The age of the Son is the period of study
and wisdom, the period of striving towards mystic knowledge. In the
age of the Father all that was necessary was obedience; in the age of
the Son reading is enjoined; but the age of the Spirit was to be
devoted to prayer and song. The third is the age of the _plena
spiritus libertas_, the age of contemplation, the monastic age _par
excellence_, the age of a monachism wholly directed towards ecstasy,
more Oriental than Benedictine. Joachim does not conceal his
sympathies with the ideal of Basilian monachism. In his opinion--which
is, in form at least, perfectly orthodox--the church of Peter will be,
not abolished, but purified; actually, the hierarchy effaces itself in
the third age before the order of the monks, the _viri spirituales_.
The entire world will become a vast monastery in that day, which will
be the resting-season, the sabbath of humanity. In various passages in
Joachim's writings the clerical hierarchy is represented by Rachel and
the contemplative order by her son Joseph, and Rachel is destined to
efface herself before her son. Similarly, the teaching of Christ and
the Apostles on the sacraments is considered, implicitly and
explicitly, as transitory, as representing that passage from the
_significantia_ to the _significata_ which Joachim signalizes at every
stage of his demonstration. Joachim was not disturbed during his
lifetime. In 1200 he submitted all his writings to the judgment of the
Holy See, and unreservedly affirmed his orthodoxy; the Lateran
council, which condemned his criticism of Peter Lombard, made no
allusion to his eschatological temerities; and the bull of 1220 was a
formal certificate of his orthodoxy.
The Joachimite ideas soon spread into Italy and France, and especially
after a division had been produced in the Franciscan order. The
rigorists, who soon became known as "Spirituals," represented St
Francis as the initiator of Joachim's third age. Certain convents
became centres of Joachimism. Around the hermit of Hyères, Hugh of
Digne, was formed a group of Franciscans who expected from the advent
of the third age the triumph of their ascetic ideas. The Joachimites
even obtained a majority in the general chapter of 1247, and elected
John of Parma, one of their number, general of the order. Pope
Alexander IV., however, compelled John of Parma to renounce his
dignity, and the Joachimite opposition became more and more vehement.
Pseudo-Joachimite treatises sprang up on every hand, and, finally, in
1254, there appeared in Paris the _Liber introductorius ad Evangelium
aeternum_, the work of a Spiritual Franciscan, Gherardo da Borgo San
Donnino. This book was published with, and as an introduction to, the
three principal works of Joachim, in which the Spirituals had made
some interpolations.[1] Gherardo, however, did not say, as has been
supposed, that Joachim's books were the new gospel, but merely that
the Calabrian abbot had supplied the key to Holy Writ, and that with
the help of that _intelligentia mystica_ it would be possible to
extract from the Old and New Testaments the eternal meaning, the
gospel according to the Spirit, a gospel which would never be written;
as for this eternal sense, it had been entrusted to an order set
apart, to the Franciscan order announced by Joachim, and in this order
the ideal of the third age was realized. These affirmations provoked
very keen protests in the ecclesiastical world. The secular masters of
the university of Paris denounced the work to Pope Innocent IV., and
the bishop of Paris sent it to the pope. It was Innocent's successor,
Alexander IV., who appointed a commission to examine it; and as a
result of this commission, which sat at Anagni, the destruction of the
_Liber introductorius_ was ordered by a papal breve dated the 23rd of
October 1255. In 1260 a council held at Arles condemned Joachim's
writings and his supporters, who were very numerous in that region.
The Joachimite ideas were equally persistent among the Spirituals, and
acquired new strength with the publication of the commentary on the
Apocalypse. This book, probably published after the death of its
author and probably interpolated by his disciples, contains, besides
Joachimite principles, an affirmation even clearer than that of
Gherardo da Borgo of the elect character of the Franciscan order, as
well as extremely violent attacks on the papacy. The Joachimite
literature is extremely vast. From the 14th century to the middle of
the 16th, Ubertin of Casale (in his _Arbor Vitae crucifixae_),
Bartholomew of Pisa (author of the _Liber Conformitatum_), the
Calabrian hermit Telesphorus, John of La Rochetaillade, Seraphin of
Fermo, Johannes Annius of Viterbo, Coelius Pannonius, and a host of
other writers, repeated or complicated _ad infinitum_ the exegesis of
Abbot Joachim. A treatise entitled _De ultima aetate ecclesiae_, which
appeared in 1356, has been attributed to Wycliffe, but is undoubtedly
from the pen of an anonymous Joachimite Franciscan. The heterodox
movements in Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries, such as those of
the Segarellists, Dolcinists, and Fraticelli of every description,
were penetrated with Joachimism; while such independent spirits as
Roger Bacon, Arnaldus de Villa Nova and Bernard Délicieux often
comforted themselves with the thought of the era of justice and peace
promised by Joachim. Dante held Joachim in great reverence, and has
placed him in Paradise (_Par._, xii. 140-141).
See _Acta Sanctorum, Boll._ (May), vii. 94-112; W. Preger in _Abhandl.
der kgl. Akad. der Wissenschaften_, hist, sect., vol. xii., pt. 3
(Munich, 1874); idem, _Gesch. d. deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter_,
vol. i. (Leipzig, 1874); E. Renan, "Joachim de Flore et l'Évangile
éternel" in _Nouvelles études d'histoire religieuse_ (Paris, 1884); F.
Tocco, _L'Eresia nel medio evo_ (Florence, 1884); H. Denifle, "Das
Evangelium aeternum und die Commission zu Anagni" in _Archiv für
Literatur- und Kirchengesch. des Mittelalters_, vol. i.; Paul
Fournier, "Joachim de Flore, ses doctrines, son influence" in _Revue
des questions historiques_, t. i. (1900); H. C. Lea, _History of the
Inquisition of the Middle Ages_, vol. iii. ch. i. (London, 1888); F.
Ehrle's article "Joachim" in Wetzer and Welte's _Kirchenlexikon_. On
Joachimism see E. Gebhardt, "Recherches nouvelles sur l'histoire du
Joachimisme" in _Revue historique_, vol. xxxi. (1886); H. Haupt, "Zur
Gesch. des Joachimismus" in _Briegers Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch._,
vol. vii. (1885). (P. A.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Preger is the only writer who has maintained that the three books
in their primitive form date from 1254.
JOACHIM I. (1484-1535), surnamed Nestor, elector of Brandenburg, elder
son of John Cicero, elector of Brandenburg, was born on the 21st of
February 1484. He received an excellent education, became elector of
Brandenburg on his father's death in January 1499, and soon afterwards
married Elizabeth, daughter of John, king of Denmark. He took some part
in the political complications of the Scandinavian kingdoms, but the
early years of his reign were mainly spent in the administration of his
electorate, where by stern and cruel measures he succeeded in restoring
some degree of order (see BRANDENBURG). He also improved the
administration of justice, aided the development of commerce, and was a
friend to the towns. On the approach of the imperial election of 1519,
Joachim's vote was eagerly solicited by the partisans of Francis I.,
king of France, and by those of Charles, afterwards the emperor Charles
V. Having treated with, and received lavish promises from, both parties,
he appears to have hoped for the dignity for himself; but when the
election came he turned to the winning side and voted for Charles. In
spite of this step, however, the relations between the emperor and the
elector were not friendly, and during the next few years Joachim was
frequently in communication with the enemies of Charles. Joachim is best
known as a pugnacious adherent of Catholic orthodoxy. He was one of the
princes who urged upon the emperor the necessity of enforcing the Edict
of Worms, and at several diets was prominent among the enemies of the
Reformers. He was among those who met at Dessau in July 1525, and was a
member of the league established at Halle in November 1533. But his wife
adopted the reformed faith, and in 1528 fled for safety to Saxony; and
he had the mortification of seeing these doctrines also favoured by
other members of his family. Joachim, who was a patron of learning,
established the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder in 1506. He died at
Stendal on the 11th of July 1535.
See T. von Buttlar, _Der Kampf Joachims I. von Brandenburg gegen den
Adel_ (1889); J. G. Droysen, _Geschichte der Preussischen Politik
(1855-1886)._
JOACHIM II. (1505-1571), surnamed Hector, elector of Brandenburg, the
elder son of Joachim I., elector of Brandenburg, was born on the 13th of
January 1505. Having passed some time at the court of the emperor
Maximilian I., he married in 1524 a daughter of George, duke of Saxony.
In 1532 he led a contingent of the imperial army on a campaign against
the Turks; and soon afterwards, having lost his first wife, married
Hedwig, daughter of Sigismund I., king of Poland. He became elector of
Brandenburg on his father's death in July 1535, and undertook the
government of the old and middle marks, while the new mark passed to his
brother John. Joachim took a prominent part in imperial politics as an
advocate of peace, though with a due regard for the interests of the
house of Habsburg. He attempted to make peace between the Protestants
and the emperor Charles V. at Frankfort in 1539, and subsequently at
other places; but in 1542 he led the German forces on an unsuccessful
campaign against the Turks. When the war broke out between Charles and
the league of Schmalkalden in 1546 the elector at first remained
neutral; but he afterwards sent some troops to serve under the emperor.
With Maurice, elector of Saxony, he persuaded Philip, landgrave of
Hesse, to surrender to Charles after the imperial victory at Mühlberg in
April 1547, and pledged his word that the landgrave would be pardoned.
But, although he felt aggrieved when the emperor declined to be bound by
this promise, he refused to join Maurice in his attack on Charles. He
supported the _Interim_, which was issued from Augsburg in May 1548, and
took part in the negotiations that resulted in the treaty of Passau
(1552), and the religious peace of Augsburg (1555). In domestic politics
he sought to consolidate and strengthen the power of his house by
treaties with neighbouring princes, and succeeded in secularizing the
bishoprics of Brandenburg, Havelberg and Lebus. Although brought up as a
strict adherent of the older religion, he showed signs of wavering soon
after his accession, and in 1539 allowed free entrance to the reformed
teaching in the electorate. He took the communion himself in both kinds,
and established a new ecclesiastical organization in Brandenburg, but
retained much of the ceremonial of the Church of Rome. His position was
not unlike that of Henry VIII. in England, and may be partly explained
by a desire to replenish his impoverished exchequer with the wealth of
the Church (see BRANDENBURG). After the peace of Augsburg the elector
mainly confined his attention to Brandenburg, where he showed a keener
desire to further the principles of the Reformation. By his luxurious
habits and his lavish expenditure on public buildings he piled up a
great accumulation of debt, which was partly discharged by the estates
of the land in return for important concessions. He cast covetous eyes
upon the archbishopric of Magdeburg and the bishopric of Halberstadt,
both of which he secured for his son Frederick in 1551. When Frederick
died in the following year, the elector's son Sigismund obtained the two
sees; and on Sigismund's death in 1566 Magdeburg was secured by his
nephew, Joachim Frederick, afterwards elector of Brandenburg. Joachim,
who was a prince of generous and cultured tastes, died at Köpenick on
the 3rd of January 1571, and was succeeded by his son, John George. In
1880 a statue was erected to his memory at Spandau.
See Steinmüller, _Einführung der Reformation in die Kurmark
Brandenburg durch Joachim II._ (1903); S. Isaacsohn, "Die Finanzen
Joachims II." in the _Zeitschrift für Preussische Geschichte und
Landeskunde_ (1864-1883); J. G. Droysen, _Geschichte der Preussischen
Politik_ (1855-1886).
JOACHIM, JOSEPH (1831-1907), German violinist and composer, was born at
Kittsee, near Pressburg, on the 28th of June 1831, the son of Jewish
parents. His family moved to Budapest when he was two years old, and he
studied there under Serwaczynski, who brought him out at a concert when
he was only eight years old. Afterwards he learnt from the elder
Hellmesberger and Joseph Böhm in Vienna, the latter instructing him in
the management of the bow. In 1843 he went to Leipzig to enter the newly
founded conservatorium. Mendelssohn, after testing his musical powers,
pronounced that the regular training of a music school was not needed,
but recommended that he should receive a thorough general education in
music from Ferdinand David and Moritz Hauptmann. In 1844 he visited
England, and made his first appearance at Drury Lane Theatre, where his
playing of Ernst's fantasia on _Otello_ made a great sensation; he also
played Beethoven's concerto at a Philharmonic concert conducted by
Mendelssohn. In 1847-1849 and 1852 he revisited England, and after the
foundation of the popular concerts in 1859, up to 1899, he played there
regularly in the latter part of the season. On Liszt's invitation he
accepted the post of _Konzertmeister_ at Weimar, and was there from 1850
to 1853. This brought Joachim into close contact with the advanced
school of German musicians, headed by Liszt; and he was strongly tempted
to give his allegiance to what was beginning to be called the "music of
the future"; but his artistic convictions forced him to separate himself
from the movement, and the tact and good taste he displayed in the
difficult moment of explaining his position to Liszt afford one of the
finest illustrations of his character.
His acceptance of a similar post at Hanover brought him into a different
atmosphere, and his playing at the Düsseldorf festival of 1853 procured
him the intimate friendship of Robert Schumann. His introduction of the
young Brahms to Schumann is a famous incident of this time. Schumann and
Brahms collaborated with Albert Dietrich in a joint sonata for violin
and piano, as a welcome on his arrival in Düsseldorf. At Hanover he was
_königlicher Konzertdirektor_ from 1853 to 1868, when he made Berlin his
home. He married in 1863 the mezzo soprano singer, Amalie Weiss, who
died in 1899. In 1869 Joachim was appointed head of the newly founded
_königliche Hochschule für Musik_ in Berlin. The famous "Joachim
quartet" was started in the _Sing-Akademie_ in the following year. Of
his later life, continually occupied with public performances, there is
little to say except that he remained, even in a period which saw the
rise of numerous violinists of the finest technique, the acknowledged
master of all. He died on the 15th of August 1907.
Besides the consummate manual skill which helped to make him famous in
his youth, Joachim was gifted with the power of interpreting the
greatest music in absolute perfection: while Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and
Brahms were masters, whose works he played with a degree of insight that
has never been approached, he was no less supreme in the music of
Mendelssohn and Schumann; in short, the whole of the classical repertory
has become identified with his playing. No survey of Joachim's artistic
career would be complete which omitted mention of his absolute freedom
from tricks or mannerism, his dignified bearing, and his unselfish
character. His devotion to the highest ideals, combined with a certain
austerity and massivity of style, brought against him an accusation of
coldness from admirers of a more effusive temperament. But the answer to
this is given by the depth and variety of expression which his mastery
of the resources of his instrument put at his command. His biographer
(1898), Andreas Moser, expressed his essential characteristic in the
words, "He plays the violin, not for its own sake, but in the service of
an ideal."
As a composer Joachim did but little in his later years, and the works
of his earlier life never attained the public success which, in the
opinion of many, they deserve (see MUSIC). They undoubtedly have a
certain austerity of character which does not appeal to every hearer,
but they are full of beauty of a grave and dignified kind; and in such
things as his "Hungarian concerto" for his own instrument the utmost
degree of difficulty is combined with great charm of melodic treatment.
The "romance" in B flat for violin and the variations for violin and
orchestra are among his finest things, and the noble overture in memory
of Kleist, as well as the scena for mezzo soprano from Schiller's
_Demetrius_, show a wonderful degree of skill in orchestration as well
as originality of thought. Joachim's place in musical history as a
composer can only be properly appreciated in the light of his intimate
relations with Brahms, with whom he studiously refrained from putting
himself into independent rivalry, and to whose work as a composer he
gave the co-operation of one who might himself have ranked as a master.
There are admirable portraits of Joachim by G. F. Watts (1866) and by
J. S. Sargent (1904), the latter presented to him on the 16th of May
1904, at the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of his first
appearance in England.
JOAN, a mythical female pope, who is usually placed between Leo IV.
(847-855) and Benedict III. (855-858). One account has it that she was
born in England, another in Germany of English parents. After an
education at Cologne, she fell in love with a Benedictine monk and fled
with him to Athens disguised as a man. On his death she went to Rome
under the alias of Joannes Anglicus (John of England), and entered the
priesthood, eventually receiving a cardinal's hat. She was elected pope
under the title of John VIII., and died in childbirth during a papal
procession.
A French Dominican, Steven of Bourbon (d. c. 1261) gives the legend in
his _Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit_. He is believed to have derived
it from an earlier writer. More than a hundred authors between the
13th and 17th centuries gave circulation to the myth. Its explosion
was first seriously undertaken by David Blondel, a French Calvinist,
in his _Éclaircissement de la question si une femme a été assise au
siège papal de Rome_ (1647); and _De Joanna Papissa_ (1657). The
refutation was completed by Johann Dollinger in his _Papstfabeln des
Mittelalters_ (1863; Eng. trans. 1872).
JOAN OF ARC, more properly JEANNETON DARC, afterwards known in France as
JEANNE D'ARC[1] (1411-1431), the "Maid of Orleans," was born between
1410 and 1412, the daughter of Jacques Darc, peasant proprietor, of
Domremy, a small village in the Vosges, partly in Champagne and partly
in Lorraine, and of his wife Isabeau, of the village of Vouthon, who
from having made a pilgrimage to Rome had received the usual surname of
Romée. Although her parents were in easy circumstances, Joan never
learned to read or write, and received her sole religious instruction
from her mother, who taught her to recite the Pater Noster, Ave Maria,
and Credo. She sometimes guarded her father's flocks, but at her trial
in 1431 she strongly resented being referred to as a shepherd girl. In
all household work she was specially proficient, her skill in the use of
the needle not being excelled (she said) by that of any matron even of
Rouen. In her childhood she was noted for her abounding physical energy;
but her vivacity, so far from being tainted by any coarse or unfeminine
trait, was the direct outcome of an abnormally sensitive nervous
temperament. Towards her parents her conduct was uniformly exemplary,
and the charm of her unselfish kindness made her a favourite in the
village. As she grew to womanhood she became inclined to silence, and
spent much of her time in solitude and prayer. She repelled all attempts
of the young men of her acquaintance to win her favour; and while active
in the performance of her duties, and apparently finding her life quite
congenial, inwardly she was engrossed with thoughts reaching far beyond
the circle of her daily concerns.
At this time, through the alliance and support of Philip of Burgundy,
the English had extended their conquest over the whole of France north
of the Loire in addition to their possession of Guienne; and while the
infant Henry VI. of England had in 1422 been proclaimed king of France
at his father's grave at St Denis, Charles the dauphin (still uncrowned)
was forced to watch the slow dismemberment of his kingdom. Isabella, the
dauphin's mother, had favoured Henry V. of England, the husband of her
daughter Catherine; and under Charles VI. a visionary named Marie
d'Avignon declared that France was being ruined by a woman and would be
restored by an armed virgin from the marches of Lorraine. To what extent
this idea worked in Joan's mind is doubtful. In Geoffrey of Monmouth's
tract, _De prophetiis Merlini_, there is a reference to an ancient
prophecy of the enchanter Merlin concerning a virgin _ex nemore canuto_,
and it appears that this _nemus canutum_ had been identified in
folk-lore with the oak wood of Domremy. Joan's knowledge of the prophecy
does not, however, appear till 1429; and already before that, from 1424,
according to her account at her trial, she had become imbued with a
sense of having a mission to free France from the English. She heard the
voices of St Michael, St Catherine and St Margaret urging her on. In May
1428 she tried to obtain from Robert de Baudricourt, governor of
Vaucouleurs, an introduction to the dauphin, saying that God would send
him aid, but she was rebuffed. When, however, in September the English
(under the earl of Salisbury) invested Orleans, the key to the south of
France, she renewed her efforts with Baudricourt, her mission being to
relieve Orleans and crown the dauphin at Reims. By persistent
importunity, the effect of which was increased by the simplicity of her
demeanour and her calm assurance of success, she at last prevailed on
the governor to grant her request; and in February 1429, accompanied by
six men-at-arms, she set out on her perilous journey to the court of the
dauphin at Chinon. At first Charles refused to see her, but popular
feeling in her favour induced his advisers to persuade him after three
days to grant her an interview. She is said to have persuaded him of the
divine character of her commission by discovering him though disguised
in the crowd of his courtiers, and by reassuring him regarding his
secret doubts as to his legitimacy. And Charles was impressed by her
knowledge of a secret prayer, which (he told Dunois) could only be known
to God and himself. Accordingly, after a commission of doctors had
reported that they had found in her nothing of evil or contrary to the
Catholic faith, and a council of matrons had reported on her chastity,
she was permitted to set forth with an army of 4000 or 5000 men designed
for the relief of Orleans. At the head of the army she rode clothed in a
coat of mail, armed with an ancient sword, said to be that with which
Charles Martel had vanquished the Saracens, the hiding-place of which,
under the altar of the parish church of the village of Ste Catherine de
Fierbois, the "voices" had revealed to her; she carried a white standard
of her own design embroidered with lilies, and having on the one side
the image of God seated on the clouds and holding the world in His hand,
and on the other a representation of the Annunciation. Joan succeeded in
entering Orleans on the 29th of April 1429, and through the vigorous and
unremitting sallies of the French the English gradually became so
discouraged that on the 8th of May they raised the siege. It is admitted
that her extraordinary pluck and sense of leadership were responsible
for this result. In a single week (June 12 to 19), by the capture of
Jargeau and Beaugency, followed by the great victory of Patay, where
Talbot was taken prisoner, the English were driven beyond the Loire.
With some difficulty the dauphin was then persuaded to set out towards
Reims, which he entered with an army of 12,000 men on the 16th of July,
Troyes having yielded on the way. On the following day, holding the
sacred banner, Joan stood beside Charles at his coronation in the
cathedral.
The king then entered into negotiations with a view to detaching
Burgundy from the English cause. Joan, at his importunity, remained with
the army, but the king played her false when she attempted the capture
of Paris; and after a failure on the 8th of September, when Joan was
wounded,[2] his troops were disbanded. Joan went into Normandy to assist
the duke of Alençon, but in December returned to the court, and on the
29th she and her family were ennobled with the surname of du Lis.
Unconsoled by such honours, she rode away from the court in March, to
assist in the defence of Compiègne against the duke of Burgundy; and on
the 24th of May she led an unsuccessful sortie against the besiegers,
when she was surrounded and taken prisoner. Charles, partly perhaps on
account of his natural indolence, partly on account of the intrigues at
the court, made no effort to effect her ransom, and never showed any
sign of interest in her fate. By means of negotiations instigated and
prosecuted with great perseverance by the university of Paris and the
Inquisition, and through the persistent scheming of Pierre Cauchon, the
bishop of Beauvais--a Burgundian partisan, who, chased from his own see,
hoped to obtain the archbishopric of Rouen--she was sold in November by
John of Luxemburg and Burgundy to the English, who on the 3rd of January
1431, at the instance of the university of Paris, delivered her over to
the Inquisition for trial. After a public examination, begun on the 9th
of January and lasting six days, and another conducted in the prison,
she was, on the 20th of March, publicly accused as a heretic and witch,
and, being in the end found guilty, she made her submission at the
scaffold on the 24th of May, and received pardon. She was still,
however, the prisoner of the English, and, having been induced by those
who had her in charge to resume her male clothes, she was on this
account judged to have relapsed, was sentenced to death, and burned at
the stake on the streets of Rouen on the 30th of May 1431. In 1436 an
impostor appeared, professing to be Joan of Arc escaped from the flames,
who succeeded in inducing many people to believe in her statement, but
afterwards confessed her imposture. The sentence passed on Joan of Arc
was revoked by the pope on the 7th of July 1456, and since then it has
been the custom of Catholic writers to uphold the reality of her divine
inspiration.
During the latter part of the 19th century a popular cult of the Maid of
Orleans sprang up in France, being greatly stimulated by the clerical
party, which desired to advertise, in the person of this national
heroine, the intimate union between patriotism and the Catholic faith,
and for this purpose ardently desired her enrolment among the Saints. On
the 27th of January 1894 solemn approval was given by Pope Leo XIII.,
and in February 1903 a formal proposal was entered for her canonization.
The Feast of the Epiphany (Jan. 6), 1904 was made the occasion for a
public declaration by Pope Pius X. that she was entitled to the
designation Venerable. On the 13th of December 1908 the decree of
beatification was published in the Consistory Hall of the Vatican.
As an historical figure, it is impossible to dogmatize concerning the
personality of Joan of Arc. The modern clerical view has to some extent
provoked what appears, in Anatole France's learned account, ably
presented as it is, to be a retaliation, in regarding her as a clerical
tool in her own day. But her character was in any case exceptional. She
undoubtedly nerved the French at a critical time, and inspired an army
of laggards and pillagers with a fanatical enthusiasm, comparable with
that of Cromwell's Puritans. Moreover, as regards her genuine military
qualities we have the testimony of Dunois and d'Alençon; and Captain
Marin, in his _Jeanne d'Arc, tacticien et stratégiste_ (1891), takes a
high view of her achievements. The nobility of her purpose and the
genuineness of her belief in her mission, combined with her purity of
character and simple patriotism, stand clear. As to her "supranormal"
faculties, a matter concerning which belief largely depends on the point
of view, it is to be remarked that Quicherat, a freethinker wholly
devoid of clerical influences, admits them (_Aperçus nouveaux_, 1850),
saying that the evidence is as good as for any facts in her history. See
also A. Lang on "the voices" in _Proc. Soc. Psychical Research_, vol.
xi.
AUTHORITIES.--For bibliography see _Le Livre d'or de Jeanne d'Arc_
(1894), and A. Molinier, _Sources de l'histoire de France_ (1904).
Until the 19th century the history of Joan of Arc was almost entirely
neglected; Voltaire's scurrilous satire _La Pucelle_, while indicative
of the attitude of his time, may be compared with the very fair
praises in the _Encyclopédie_. The first attempt at a study of the
sources was that of L'Averdy in 1790, published in the third volume of
_Mémoires_ of the Academy of Inscriptions, which served as the base
for all lives until J. Quicherat's great work, _Le Procès de Jeanne
d'Arc_ (1841-1849), a collection of the texts so full and so vivid
that they reveal the character and life of the heroine with great
distinctness. Michelet's sketch of her work in his _Histoire de
France_, one of the best sections of the history, is hardly more vivid
than these sources, upon which all the later biographies (notably that
of H. A. Wallon, 1860) are based. See also A. Marty, _L'Histoire de
Jeanne d'Arc d'après des documents originaux_, with introduction by M.
Sepet (1907); P. H. Dunand, _Jeanne d'Arc et l'église_ (1908); and
especially Andrew Lang, _The Maid of France_ (1908). The _Vie de
Jeanne d'Arc_, by Anatole France (2 vols., 1908), is brilliant and
erudite, but in some respects open to charges of inaccuracy and
prejudice in its handling of the sources (see the criticism by Andrew
Lang in _The Times_, Lit. Suppl., May 28, 1908). The attempt to
establish the reality of the "revelations" and consequently to obtain
the canonization of Joan of Arc led the Catholic party in France to
publish lives (such as Sepet's, 1869) in support of their claims.
Excellent works worth special mention are: Siméon Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc
à Domremy_; L. Jarry, _L'Armée anglaise au siège d'Orleans_ (1892);
J. J. Bourassé, _Miracles de Madame Sainte Kathérine de Fierbois_
(1858, trans. by A. Lang); Boucher de Molandon and A. de Beaucorps,
_L'Armée anglaise vaincue par Jeanne d'Arc_ (1892); R. P. Agroles,
S.J., _La Vraie Jeanne d'Arc_. For the "false Pucelle" see A. Lang's
article in his _Valet's Tragedy_ (1903). Of the numerous dramas and
poems of which Joan of Arc has been the subject, mention can only be
made of _Die Jungfrau von Orleans_ of Schiller, and of the _Joan of
Arc_ of Southey. A drama in verse by Jules Barbier was set to music by
C. Gounod (1873). (J. T. S.*; H. Ch.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In the act of ennoblement the name is spelt Day, due probably to
the peculiar pronunciation. It has been disputed whether the name was
written originally d'Arc or Darc. It is beyond doubt that the father
of Joan was not of noble origin, but Bouteiller suggests that at that
period the apostrophe did not indicate nobility. Her mother, it may
be noted, is called "de Vouthon."
[2] The Porte St Honoré where Joan was wounded stood where the
Comédie Française now stands.
JOANES (or JUANES), VICENTE (1506-1579), head of the Valencian school of
painters, and often called "the Spanish Raphael," was born at Fuente de
la Higuera in the province of Valencia in 1506. He is said to have
studied his art for some time in Rome, with which school his affinities
are closest, but the greater part of his professional life was spent in
the city of Valencia, where most of the extant examples of his work are
now to be found. All relate to religious subjects, and are characterized
by dignity of conception, accuracy of drawing, truth and beauty of
colour, and minuteness of finish. He died at Bocairente (near Jativa)
while engaged upon an altarpiece in the church there, on the 21st of
December 1579.
JOANNA (1479-1555), called the Mad (_la Loca_), queen of Castile and
mother of the emperor Charles V., was the second daughter of Ferdinand
and Isabella, king and queen of Spain, and was born at Toledo on the 6th
of November 1479. Her youngest sister was Catherine of Aragon, the first
wife of Henry VIII. In 1496 at Lille she was married to the archduke
Philip the Handsome, son of the German King Maximilian I., and at Ghent,
in February 1500, she gave birth to the future emperor. The death of her
only brother John, of her eldest sister Isabella, queen of Portugal, and
then of the latter's infant son Miguel, made Joanna heiress of the
Spanish kingdoms, and in 1502 the cortes of Castile and of Aragon
recognized her and her husband as their future sovereigns. Soon after
this Joanna's reason began to give way. She mourned in an extravagant
fashion for her absent husband, whom at length she joined in Flanders;
in this country her passionate jealousy, although justified by Philip's
conduct, led to deplorable scenes. In November 1504 her mother's death
left Joanna queen of Castile, but as she was obviously incapable of
ruling, the duties of government were undertaken by her father, and then
for a short time by her husband. The queen was with Philip when he was
wrecked on the English coast and became the guest of Henry VII. at
Windsor; soon after this event, in September 1506, he died and Joanna's
mind became completely deranged, it being almost impossible to get her
away from the dead body of her husband. The remaining years of her
miserable existence were spent at Tordesillas, where she died on the
11th of April 1555. In spite of her afflictions the queen was sought in
marriage by Henry VII. just before his death. Nominally Joanna remained
queen of Castile until her death, her name being joined with that of
Charles in all public documents, but of necessity she took no part in
the business of state. In addition to Charles she had a son Ferdinand,
afterwards the emperor Ferdinand I., and four daughters, among them
being Maria (1505-1558), wife of Louis II., king of Hungary, afterwards
governor-general of the Netherlands.
See R. Villa, _La Reina doña Juana la Loca_ (Madrid, 1892); Rösler,
_Johanna die Wahnsinnige_ (Vienna, 1890); W. H. Prescott, _Hist. of
Ferdinand and Isabella_ (1854); and H. Tighe, _A Queen of Unrest_
(1907).
JOANNA I. (c. 1327-1382), queen of Naples, was the daughter of Charles
duke of Calabria (d. 1328), and became sovereign of Naples in succession
to her grandfather King Robert in 1343. Her first husband was Andrew,
son of Charles Robert, king of Hungary, who like the queen herself was a
member of the house of Anjou. In 1345 Andrew was assassinated at Aversa,
possibly with his wife's connivance, and at once Joanna married Louis,
son of Philip prince of Taranto. King Louis of Hungary then came to
Naples to avenge his brother's death, and the queen took refuge in
Provence--which came under her rule at the same time as
Naples--purchasing pardon from Pope Clement VI. by selling to him the
town of Avignon, then part of her dominions. Having returned to Naples
in 1352 after the departure of Louis, Joanna lost her second husband in
1362, and married James, king of Majorca (d. 1375), and later Otto of
Brunswick, prince of Taranto. The queen had no sons, and as both her
daughters were dead she made Louis I. duke of Anjou, brother of Charles
V. of France, her heir. This proceeding so angered Charles, duke of
Durazzo, who regarded himself as the future king of Naples, that he
seized the city. Joanna was captured and was put to death at Aversa on
the 22nd of May 1382. The queen was a woman of intellectual tastes, and
was acquainted with some of the poets and scholars of her time,
including Petrarch and Boccaccio.
See Crivelli, _Della prima e della seconda Giovanna, regine di Napoli_
(1832); G. Battaglia, _Giovanna I., regina di Napoli_ (1835); W. St C.
Baddeley, _Queen Joanna I. of Naples_ (1893); Scarpetta, _Giovanna I.
di Napoli_ (1903); and Francesca M. Steele, _The Beautiful Queen
Joanna I. of Naples_ (1910).
JOANNA II. (1371-1435), queen of Naples, was descended from Charles II.
of Anjou through his son John of Durazzo. She had been married to
William, son of Leopold III. of Austria, and at the death of her brother
King Ladislaus in 1414 she succeeded to the Neapolitan crown. Her life
had always been very dissolute, and although now a widow of forty-five,
she chose as her lover Pandolfo Alopo, a youth of twenty-six, whom she
made seneschal of the kingdom. He and the constable Muzio Attendolo
Sforza completely dominated her, and the turbulent barons wished to
provide her with a husband who would be strong enough to break her
favourites yet not make himself king. The choice fell on James of
Bourbon, a relative of the king of France, and the marriage took place
in 1415. But James at once declared himself king, had Alopo killed and
Sforza imprisoned, and kept his wife in a state of semi-confinement;
this led to a counter-agitation on the part of the barons, who forced
James to liberate Sforza, renounce his kingship, and eventually to quit
the country. The queen now sent Sforza to re-establish her authority in
Rome, whence the Neapolitans had been expelled after the death of
Ladislaus; Sforza entered the city and obliged the _condottiere_ Braccio
da Montone, who was defending it in the pope's name, to depart (1416).
But when Oddo Colonna was elected pope as Martin V., he allied himself
with Joanna, who promised to give up Rome, while Sforza returned to
Naples. The latter found, however, that he had lost all influence with
the queen, who was completely dominated by her new lover Giovanni
(Sergianni) Caracciolo. Hoping to re-establish his position and crush
Caracciolo, Sforza favoured the pretensions of Louis III. of Anjou, who
wished to obtain the succession of Naples at Joanna's death, a course
which met with the approval of the pope. Joanna refused to adopt Louis
owing to the influence of Caracciolo, who hated Sforza; she appealed for
help instead to Alphonso of Aragon, promising to make him her heir. War
broke out between Joanna and the Aragonese on one side and Louis and
Sforza, supported by the pope, on the other. After much fighting by land
and sea, Alphonso entered Naples, and in 1422 peace was made. But
dissensions broke out between the Aragonese and Catalans and the
Neapolitans, and Alphonso had Caracciolo arrested; whereupon Joanna,
fearing for her own safety, invoked the aid of Sforza, who with
difficulty carried her off to Aversa. There she was joined by Louis whom
she adopted as her successor instead of the ungrateful Alphonso. Sforza
was accidentally drowned, but when Alphonso returned to Spain, leaving
only a small force in Naples, the Angevins with the help of a Genoese
fleet recaptured the city. For a few years there was peace in the
kingdom, but in 1432 Caracciolo, having quarrelled with the queen, was
seized and murdered by his enemies. Internal disorders broke out, and
Gian Antonio Orsini, prince of Taranto, led a revolt against Joanna in
Apulia; Louis of Anjou died while conducting a campaign against the
rebels (1434), and Joanna herself died on the 11th of February 1435,
after having appointed his son René her successor. Weak, foolish and
dissolute, she made her reign one long scandal, which reduced the
kingdom to the lowest depths of degradation. Her perpetual intrigues and
her political incapacity made Naples a prey to anarchy and foreign
invasions, destroying all sense of patriotism and loyalty both in the
barons and the people.
AUTHORITIES.--A. von Platen, _Storia del reame di Napoli dal 1414 al
1423_ (1864). C. Cipolla, _Storia, della signoria Italiana_ (1881),
where the original authorities are quoted. (See also NAPLES; SFORZA.)
JOASH, or JEHOASH (Heb. "Yahweh is strong, _or_ hath given"), the name
of two kings of Palestine in the Bible.
1. Son of Ahaziah (see JEHORAM, 2) and king of Judah. He obtained the
throne by means of a revolt in which Athaliah (q.v.) perished, and his
accession was marked by a solemn covenant, and by the overthrow of the
temple of Baal and of its priest Mattan(-Baal). In this the priest
Jehoiada (who must have continued to act as regent) took the leading
part. The account of Joash's reign is not from a contemporary source (2
Kings xi. 4-xii. 16), and 2 Chronicles adds several new details,
including a tradition of a conflict between the king and priests after
the death of Jehoiada (xxii. 11; xxiv. 3, 15 sqq.).[1] At an unstated
period, the Aramaeans under Hazael captured Gath, and Jerusalem only
escaped by buying off the enemy (2 Kings xii. 17 sqq.). This may perhaps
be associated with the Aramaean attacks upon Israel (2 below), but the
tradition recorded in 2 Chron. xxiv. 23 seq. differs widely and cannot
be wholly rejected. The king perished in a conspiracy, the origin of
which is not clear; it may have been for his attack upon the priests, it
was scarcely for the course he took to save Jerusalem. He was succeeded
by his son Amaziah, whose moderation in avenging his father's death
receives special mention. After defeating the Edomites, Amaziah turned
his attention to Israel.
2. Son of Jehoahaz and king of Israel. Like his grandfather Jehu, he
enjoyed the favour of the prophet Elisha, who promised him a triple
defeat of the Aramaeans at Aphek (2 Kings xiii. 14 sqq. 22-25). The
cities which had been taken from his father by Hazael the father of
Ben-hadad were recovered (cf. 1 Kings xx. 34, time of Ahab) and the
relief gained by Israel from the previous blows of Syria prepared the
way for its speedy extension of power. When challenged by Amaziah of
Judah, Joash uttered the famous fable of the thistle and cedar (for
another example see Judg. ix. 8-15; see also ABIMELECH), and a battle
was fought at Beth-shemesh, in which Israel was completely successful.
An obscure statement in 2 Chron. xxv. 13 would show that this was not
the only conflict; at all events, Amaziah was captured, the
fortifications of Jerusalem were partially destroyed, the treasures of
the Temple and palace were looted, and hostages were carried away to
Samaria. According to one statement, Amaziah survived the disaster
fifteen years, and lost his life in a conspiracy; but there is a gap in
the history of Judah which the narratives do not enable us to fill (1
Kings xv. 1; see xiv. 17, 23). See further UZZIAH; JEROBOAM (2); and
JEWS. (S. A. C.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] That the murder of Zechariah the son of Jehoiada (2 Chron.
_l.c._) is referred to in Matt. xxiii. 35, Luke xi. 51 is commonly
held; but see Cheyne, _Ency. Bib._ col. 5373.
JOB. The book of Job (Heb. [Hebrew: Iyyob] _'Iyyob_, Gr. [Greek: Iôb]),
in the Bible, the most splendid creation of Hebrew poetry, is so called
from the name of the man whose history and afflictions and sayings form
the theme of it.
_Contents._--As it now lies before us it consists of five parts. 1.
The prologue, in prose, chr. i.-ii., describes in rapid and dramatic
steps the history of this man, his prosperity and greatness
corresponding to his godliness; then how his life is drawn in under
the operation of the sifting providence of God, through the suspicion
suggested by the Satan, the minister of this aspect of God's
providence, that his godliness is selfish and only the natural return
for unexampled prosperity, and the insinuation that if stripped of his
prosperity he will curse God to His face. These suspicions bring down
two severe calamities on Job, one depriving him of children and
possessions alike, and the other throwing the man himself under a
painful malady. In spite of these afflictions Job retains his
integrity and ascribes no wrong to God. Then is described the advent
of Job's three friends--Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and
Zophar the Naamathite--who, having heard of Job's calamities, come to
condole with him. 2. The body of the book, in poetry, ch. iii.-xxxi.,
contains a series of speeches in which the problem of Job's
afflictions and the relation of external evil to the righteousness of
God and the conduct of men are brilliantly discussed. This part, after
Job's passionate outburst in ch. iii., is divided into three cycles,
each containing six speeches, one by each of the friends, and three by
Job, one in reply to each of theirs (ch. iv.-xiv.; xv.-xxi.;
xxii.-xxxi.), although in the last cycle the third speaker Zophar
fails to answer (unless his answer is to be found in ch. xxvii.). Job,
having driven his opponents from the field, carries his reply through
a series of discourses in which he dwells in pathetic words upon his
early prosperity, contrasting with it his present humiliation, and
ends with a solemn repudiation of all the offences that might be
suggested against him, and a challenge to God to appear and put His
hand to the charge which He had against him and for which He afflicted
him. 3. Elihu, the representative of a younger generation, who has
been a silent observer of the debate, intervenes to express his
dissatisfaction with the manner in which both Job and his friends
conducted the cause, and offers what is in some respects a new
solution of the question (xxxii.-xxxvii.). 4. In answer to Job's
repeated demands that God would appear and solve the riddle of his
life, the Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind. The divine speaker
does not condescend to refer to Job's individual problem, but in a
series of ironical interrogations asks him, as he thinks himself
capable of fathoming all things, to expound the mysteries of the
origin and subsistence of the world, the phenomena of the atmosphere,
the instincts of the creatures that inhabit the desert, and, as he
judges God's conduct of the world amiss, invites him to seize the
reins, gird himself with the thunder and quell the rebellious forces
of evil in the universe (xxxviii.-xlii. 6). Job is humbled and
abashed, lays his hand upon his mouth, and repents his hasty words in
dust and ashes. No solution of his problem is vouchsafed; but God
Himself effects that which neither the man's own thoughts of God nor
the representations of the friends could accomplish: he had heard of
him with the hearing of the ear without effect, but now his eye sees
Him. This is the profoundest religious deep in the book. 5. The
epilogue, in prose, xlii. 7-17, describes Job's restoration to a
prosperity double that of his former estate, his family felicity and
long life.
_Design._--With the exception of the episode of Elihu, the connexion of
which with the original form of the poem may be doubtful, all five parts
of the book are essential elements of the work as it came from the hand
of the first author, although some parts of the second and fourth
divisions may have been expanded by later writers. The idea of the
composition is to be derived not from any single element of the book,
but from the teaching and movement of the whole piece. Job is
unquestionably the hero of the work, and in his ideas and his history
combined we may assume that we find the author himself speaking and
teaching. The discussion between Job and his friends of the problem of
suffering occupies two-thirds of the book, or, if the space occupied by
Elihu be not considered, nearly three-fourths, and in the direction
which the author causes this discussion to take we may see revealed the
main didactic purpose of the book. When the three friends, the
representatives of former theories of providence, are reduced to
silence, we may be certain that it was the author's purpose to discredit
the ideas which they represent. Job himself offers no positive
contribution to the doctrine of evil; his position is negative, merely
antagonistic to that of the friends. But this negative position
victoriously maintained by him has the effect of clearing the ground,
and the author himself supplies in the prologue the positive truth, when
he communicates the real explanation of his hero's calamities, and
teaches that they were a trial of his righteousness. It was therefore
the author's main purpose in his work to widen men's views of the
providence of God and set before them a new view of suffering. This
purpose, however, was in all probability subordinate to some wider
practical design. No Hebrew writer is merely a poet or a thinker. He is
always a teacher. He has men before him in their relations to God,[1]
and usually not men in their individual relations, but members of the
family of Israel, the people of God. It is consequently scarcely to be
doubted that the book has a national scope. The author considered his
new truth regarding the meaning of affliction as of national interest,
and as the truth then needful for the heart of his people. But the
teaching of the book is only half its contents. It contains also a
history--deep and inexplicable affliction, a great moral struggle, and a
victory. The author meant his new truth to inspire new conduct, new
faith, and new hopes. In Job's sufferings, undeserved and inexplicable
to him, yet capable of an explanation most consistent with the goodness
and faithfulness of God, and casting honour upon his faithful servants;
in his despair bordering on unbelief, at last overcome; and in the happy
issue of his afflictions--in all this Israel may see itself, and from
the sight take courage, and forecast its own history. Job, however, is
not to be considered Israel, the righteous servant of the Lord, under a
feigned name; he is no mere parable (though such a view is found as
early as the Talmud); he and his history have both elements of reality
in them. It is these elements of reality common to him with Israel in
affliction, common even to him with humanity as a whole, confined within
the straitened limits set by its own ignorance, wounded to death by the
mysterious sorrows of life, tortured by the uncertainty whether its cry
finds an entrance into God's ear, alarmed and paralysed by the
irreconcilable discrepancies which it seems to discover between its
necessary thoughts of Him and its experience of Him in His providence,
and faint with longing that it might come into His place, and behold
him, not girt with His majesty, but in human form, as one looketh upon
his fellow--it is these elements of truth that make the history of Job
instructive to Israel in the times of affliction when it was set before
them, and to men of all races in all ages. It would probably be a
mistake, however, to imagine that the author consciously stepped outside
the limits of his nation and assumed a human position antagonistic to
it. The chords he touches vibrate through all humanity--but this is
because Israel is the religious kernel of humanity, and because from
Israel's heart the deepest religious music of mankind is heard, whether
of pathos or of joy.
Two threads requiring to be followed, therefore, run through the
book--one the discussion of the problem of evil between Job and his
friends, and the other the varying attitude of Job's mind towards God,
the first being subordinate to the second. Both Job and his friends
advance to the discussion of his sufferings and of the problem of
evil, ignorant of the true cause of his calamities--Job strong in his
sense of innocence, and the friends armed with their theory of the
righteousness of God, who giveth to every man according to his works.
With fine psychological instinct the poet lets Job altogether lose his
self-control first when his three friends came to visit him. His
bereavements and his malady he bore with a steady courage, and his
wife's direct instigations to godlessness he repelled with severity
and resignation. But when his equals and the old associates of his
happiness came to see him, and when he read in their looks and in
their seven days' silence the depth of his own misery, his
self-command deserted him, and he broke out into a cry of despair,
cursing his day and crying for death (iii.). Job had somewhat
misinterpreted the demeanour of his friends. It was not all pity that
it expressed. Along with their pity they had also brought their
theology, and they trusted to heal Job's malady with this. Till a few
days before, Job would have agreed with them on the sovereign virtues
of this remedy. But he had learned through a higher teaching, the
events of God's providence, that it was no longer a specific in his
case. His violent impatience, however, under his afflictions and his
covert attacks upon the divine rectitude only served to confirm the
view of his sufferings which their theory of evil had already
suggested to his friends. And thus commences the high debate which
continues through twenty-nine chapters.
The three friends of Job came to the consideration of his history with
the principle that calamity is the result of evil-doing, as prosperity
is the reward of righteousness. Suffering is not an accident or a
spontaneous growth of the soil; man is born unto trouble as the sparks
fly upwards; there is in human life a tendency to do evil which draws
down upon men the chastisement of God (v. 6). The principle is thus
enunciated by Eliphaz, from whom the other speakers take their cue:
where there is suffering there has been sin in the sufferer. Not
suffering in itself, but the effect of it on the sufferer is what
gives insight into his true character. Suffering is not always
punitive; it is sometimes disciplinary, designed to wean the good man
from his sin. If he sees in his suffering the monition of God and
turns from his evil, his future shall be rich in peace and happiness,
and his latter estate more prosperous than his first. If he murmurs or
resists, he can only perish under the multiplying chastisements which
his impenitence will provoke. Now this principle is far from being a
peculiar crotchet of the friends; its truth is undeniable, though they
erred in supposing that it would cover the wide providence of God. The
principle is the fundamental idea of moral government, the expression
of the natural conscience, a principle common more or less to all
peoples, though perhaps more prominent in the Semitic mind, because
all religious ideas are more prominent and simple there--not suggested
to Israel first by the law, but found and adopted by the law, though
it may be sharpened by it. It is the fundamental principle of prophecy
no less than of the law, and, if possible, of the wisdom of philosophy
of the Hebrews more than of either. Speculation among the Hebrews had
a simpler task before it than it had in the West or in the farther
East. The Greek philosopher began his operations upon the sum of
things; he threw the universe into his crucible at once. His object
was to effect some analysis of it, so that he could call one element
cause and another effect. Or, to vary the figure, his endeavour was to
pursue the streams of tendency which he could observe till he reached
at last the central spring which sent them all forth. God, a single
cause and explanation, was the object of his search. But to the Hebrew
of the later time this was already found. The analysis resulting in
the distinction of God and the world had been effected for him so long
ago that the history and circumstances of the process had been
forgotten, and only the unchallengeable result remained. His
philosophy was not a quest of God whom he did not know, but a
recognition on all hands of God whom he knew. The great primary idea
to his mind was that of God, a Being wholly just, doing all. And the
world was little more than the phenomena that revealed the mind and
the presence and the operations of God. Consequently the nature of God
as known to him and the course of events formed a perfect equation.
The idea of what God was in Himself was in complete harmony with His
manifestation of Himself in providence, in the events of individual
human lives, and in the history of nations. The philosophy of the wise
did not go behind the origin of sin, or referred it to the freedom of
man; but, sin existing, and God being in immediate personal contact
with the world, every event was a direct expression of His moral will
and energy; calamity fell on wickedness, and success attended
right-doing. This view of the moral harmony between the nature of God
and the events of providence in the fortunes of men and nations is the
view of the Hebrew wisdom in its oldest form, during what might be
called the period of principles, to which belong Prov. x. seq.; and
this is the position maintained by Job's three friends. And the
significance of the book of Job in the history of Hebrew thought
arises in that it marks the point when such a view was definitely
overcome, closing the long period when this principle was merely
subjected to questionings, and makes a new positive addition to the
doctrine of evil.
Job agreed that afflictions came directly from the hand of God, and
also that God afflicted those whom He held guilty of sins. But his
conscience denied the imputation of guilt, whether insinuated by his
friends or implied in God's chastisement of him. Hence he was driven
to conclude that God was unjust. The position of Job appeared to his
friends nothing else but impiety; while theirs was to him mere
falsehood and the special pleading of sycophants on behalf of God
because He was the stronger. Within these two iron walls the debate
moves, making little progress, but with much brilliancy, if not of
argument, of illustration. A certain advance indeed is perceptible. In
the first series of speeches (iv.-xiv.), the key-note of which is
struck by Eliphaz, the oldest and most considerate of the three, the
position is that affliction is caused by sin, and is chastisement
designed for the sinner's good; and the moral is that Job should
recognize it and use it for the purpose for which it was sent. In the
second (xv.-xxi.) the terrible fate of the sinner is emphasized, and
those brilliant pictures of a restored future, thrown in by all the
speakers in the first series, are absent. Job's demeanour under the
consolations offered him afforded little hope of his repentance. In
the third series (xxii. seq.) the friends cast off all disguise, and
openly charge Job with a course of evil life. That their armoury was
now exhausted is shown by the brevity of the second speaker, and the
failure of the third (at least in the present text) to answer in any
form. In reply Job disdains for a time to touch what he well knew lay
under all their exhortations; he laments with touching pathos the
defection of his friends, who were like the winter torrents looked for
in vain by the perishing caravan in the summer heat; he meets with
bitter scorn their constant cry that God will not cast off the
righteous man, by asking: How can one be righteous with God? what can
human weakness, however innocent, do against infinite might and
subtlety? they are righteous whom an omnipotent and perverse will
thinks fit to consider so; he falls into a hopeless wail over the
universal misery of man, who has a weary campaign of life appointed
him; then, rising up in the strength of his conscience, he upbraids
the Almighty with His misuse of His power and His indiscriminate
tyranny--righteous and innocent He destroys alike--and challenges Him
to lay aside His majesty and meet His creature as a man, and then he
would not fear Him. Even in the second series Job can hardly bring
himself to face the personal issue raised by the friends. His
relations to God absorb him almost wholly--his pitiable isolation, the
indignities showered on his once honoured head, the loathsome
spectacle of his body; abandoned by all, he turns for pity from God to
men and from men to God. Only in the third series of debates does he
put out his hand and grasp firmly the theory of his friends, and their
"defences of mud" fall to dust in his hands. Instead of that roseate
moral order on which they are never weary of insisting, he finds only
disorder and moral confusion. When he thinks of it, trembling takes
hold of him. It is not the righteous but the wicked that live, grow
old, yea, wax mighty in strength, that send forth their children like
a flock and establish them in their sight. Before the logic of facts
the theory of the friends goes down; and with this negative result,
which the author skilfully reaches through the debate, has to be
combined his own positive doctrine of the uses of adversity advanced
in the prologue.
To a modern reader it appears strange that both parties were so
entangled in the meshes of their preconceptions regarding God as to be
unable to break through the broader views. The friends, while
maintaining that injustice on the part of God is inconceivable, might
have given due weight to the persistent testimony of Job's conscience
as that behind which it is impossible to go, and found refuge in the
reflection that there might be something inexplicable in the ways of
God, and that affliction might have some other meaning than to punish
the sinner or even to wean him from his sin. And Job, while
maintaining his innocence from overt sins, might have confessed that
there was such sinfulness in every human life as was sufficient to
account for the severest chastisement from heaven, or at least he
might have stopped short of charging God foolishly. Such a position
would certainly be taken up by an afflicted saint now, and such an
explanation of his sufferings would suggest itself to the sufferer,
even though it might be in truth a false explanation. Perhaps here,
where an artistic fault might seem to be committed, the art of the
writer, or his truth to nature, and the extraordinary freedom with
which he moves among his materials, as well as the power and
individuality of his dramatic creations, are most remarkable. The rôle
which the author reserved for himself was to teach the truth on the
question in dispute, and he accomplishes this by allowing his
performers to push their false principles to their proper extreme.
There is nothing about which men are usually so sure as the character
of God. They are ever ready to take Him in their own hand, to
interpret His providence in their own sense, to say what things are
consistent or not with His character and word, and beat down the
opposing consciences of other men by His so-called authority, which is
nothing but their own. The friends of Job were religious Orientals,
men to whom God was a being in immediate contact with the world and
life, to whom the idea of second causes was unknown, on whom science
had not yet begun to dawn, nor the conception of a divine scheme
pursuing a distant end by complicated means, in which the individual's
interest may suffer for the larger good. The broad sympathies of the
author and his sense of the truth lying in the theory of the friends
are seen in the scope which he allows them, in the richness of the
thought and the splendid luxuriance of the imagery--drawn from the
immemorial moral consent of mankind, the testimony of the living
conscience, and the observation of life--with which he makes them
clothe their views. He remembered the elements of truth in the theory
from which he was departing, that it was a national heritage, which he
himself perhaps had been constrained not without a struggle to
abandon; and, while showing its insufficiency, he sets it forth in its
most brilliant form.
The extravagance of Job's assertions was occasioned greatly by the
extreme position of his friends, which left no room for his conscious
innocence along with the rectitude of God. Again, the poet's purpose,
as the prologue shows, was to teach that afflictions may fall on a man
out of all connexion with any offence of his own, and merely as the
trial of his righteousness; and hence he allows Job, as by a true
instinct of the nature of his sufferings, to repudiate all connexion
between them and sin in himself. And further, the terrible conflict
into which the suspicions of the Satan brought Job could not be
exhibited without pushing him to the verge of ungodliness. These are
all elements of the poet's art; but art and nature are one. In ancient
Hebrew life the sense of sin was less deep than it is now. In the
desert, too, men speak boldly of God. Nothing is more false than to
judge the poet's creation from our later point of view, and construct
a theory of the book according to a more developed sense of sin and a
deeper reverence for God than belonged to antiquity. In complete
contradiction to the testimony of the book itself, some critics, as
Hengstenberg and Budde, have assumed that Job's spiritual pride was
the cause of his afflictions, that this was the root of bitterness in
him which must be killed down ere he could become a true saint. The
fundamental position of the book is that Job was already a true saint;
this is testified by God Himself, is the radical idea of the author in
the prologue, and the very hypothesis of the drama. We might be ready
to think that Job's afflictions did not befall him out of all
connexion with his own condition of mind, and we might be disposed to
find a vindication of God's ways in this. There is no evidence that
such an idea was shared by the author of the book. It is remarkable
that the attitude which we imagine it would have been so easy for Job
to assume, namely, while holding fast his integrity, to fall back upon
the inexplicableness of providence, of which there are such imposing
descriptions in his speeches, is just the attitude which is taken up
in ch. xxviii. It is far from certain, however, that this chapter is
an integral part of the original book.
The other line running through the book, the varying attitude of Job's
mind towards God, exhibits dramatic action and tragic interest of the
highest kind, though the movement is internal. That the exhibition of
this struggle in Job's mind was a main point in the author's purpose
is seen from the fact that at the end of each of his great trials he
notes that Job sinned not, nor ascribed wrong to God (i. 22; ii. 10),
and from the effect which the divine voice from the whirlwind is made
to produce upon him (xl. 3). In the first cycle of debate (iv.-xiv.)
Job's mind reaches the deepest limit of estrangement. There he not
merely charges God with injustice, but, unable to reconcile His former
goodness with His present enmity, he regards the latter as the true
expression of God's attitude towards His creatures, and the former,
comprising all his infinite creative skill in weaving the delicate
organism of human nature and the rich endowments of His providence,
only as the means of exercising His mad and immoral cruelty in the
time to come. When the Semitic skin of Job is scratched, we find a
modern pessimist beneath. Others in later days have brought the keen
sensibility of the human frame and the torture which it endures
together, and asked with Job to whom at last all this has to be
referred. Towards the end of the cycle a star of heavenly light seems
to rise on the horizon; the thought seizes the sufferer's mind that
man might have another life, that God's anger pursuing him to the
grave might be sated, and that He might call him out of it to Himself
again (xiv. 13). This idea of a resurrection, unfamiliar to Job at
first, is one which he is allowed to reach out of the necessities of
the moral complications around him, but from the author's manner of
using the idea we may judge that it was familiar to himself. In the
second cycle the thought of a future reconciliation with God is more
firmly grasped. That satisfaction or at least composure which, when we
observe calamities that we cannot morally account for, we reach by
considering that providence is a great scheme moving according to
general laws, and that it does not always truly reflect the relation
of God to the individual, Job reached in the only way possible to a
Semitic mind. He drew a distinction between an outer God whom events
obey, pursuing him in His anger, and an inner God whose heart was with
him, who was aware of his innocence; and he appeals from God to God,
and beseeches God to pledge Himself that he shall receive justice from
God (xvi. 19; xvii. 3). And so high at last does this consciousness
that God is at one with him rise that he avows his assurance that He
will yet appear to do him justice before men, and that he shall see
Him with his own eyes, no more estranged but on his side, and for this
moment he faints with longing (xix. 25 seq.).[2]
After this expression of faith Job's mind remains calm, though he ends
by firmly charging God with perverting his right, and demanding to
know the cause of his afflictions (xxvii. 2 seq.; xxxi. 35, where
render: "Oh, that I had the indictment which mine adversary has
written!"). In answer to this demand the Divine voice answers Job out
of the tempest: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without
knowledge?" The word "counsel" intimates to Job that God does not act
without a design, large and beyond the comprehension of man; and to
impress this is the purpose of the Divine speeches. The speaker does
not enter into Job's particular cause; there is not a word tending to
unravel his riddle; his mind is drawn away to the wisdom and majesty
of God Himself. His own words and those of his friends are but
re-echoed, but it is God Himself who now utters them. Job is in
immediate nearness to the majesty of heaven, wise, unfathomable,
ironical over the littleness of man, and he is abased; God Himself
effects what neither the man's own thoughts of God nor the
representations of his friends could accomplish, though by the same
means. The religious insight of the writer sounds here the profoundest
deeps of truth.
_Integrity._--Doubts whether particular portions of the present book
belonged to the original form of it have been raised by many. M. L. De
Wette expressed himself as follows: "It appears to us that the present
book of Job has not all flowed from one pen. As many books of the Old
Testament have been several times written over, so has this also" (Ersch
and Gruber, _Ency._, sect. ii. vol. viii.). The judgment formed by De
Wette has been adhered to more or less by most of those who have studied
the book. Questions regarding the unity of such books as this are
difficult to settle; there is not unanimity among scholars regarding the
idea of the book, and consequently they differ as to what parts are in
harmony or conflict with unity; and it is dangerous to apply modern
ideas of literary composition and artistic unity to the works of
antiquity and of the East. The problem raised in the book of Job has
certainly received frequent treatment in the Old Testament; and there is
no likelihood that all efforts in this direction have been preserved to
us. It is probable that the book of Job was but a great effort amidst or
after many smaller. It is scarcely to be supposed that one with such
poetic and literary power as the author of chap. iii-xxxi.,
xxxviii.-xli. would embody the work of any other writer in his own. If
there be elements in the book which must be pronounced foreign, they
have been inserted in the work of the author by a later hand. It is not
unlikely that our present book may, in addition to the great work of the
original author, contain some fragments of the thoughts of other
religious minds upon the same question, and that these, instead of being
loosely appended, have been fitted into the mechanism of the first work.
Some of these fragments may have originated at first quite independently
of our book, while others may be expansions and insertions that never
existed separately. At the same time it is scarcely safe to throw out
any portion of the book merely because it seems to us out of harmony
with the unity of the main part of the poem, or unless several distinct
lines of consideration conspire to point it out as an extraneous
element.
The arguments against the originality of the prologue--as, that it is
written in prose, that the name Yahweh appears in it, that sacrifice
is referred to, and that there are inconsistencies between it and the
body of the book--are of little weight. There must have been some
introduction to the poem explaining the circumstances of Job,
otherwise the poetical dispute would have been unintelligible, for it
is improbable that the story of Job was so familiar that a poem in
which he and his friends figured as they do here would have been
understood. And there is no trace of any other prologue or
introduction having ever existed. The prologue, too, is an essential
element of the work, containing the author's positive contribution to
the doctrine of suffering, for which the discussion in the poem
prepares the way. The intermixture of prose and poetry is common in
Oriental works containing similar discussions; the reference to
sacrifice is to primitive not to Mosaic sacrifice; and the author,
while using the name Yahweh freely himself, puts the patriarchal
Divine names into the mouth of Job and his friends because he regards
them as belonging to the patriarchal age and to a country outside of
Israel. That the observance of this rule had a certain awkwardness for
the writer appears perhaps from his allowing the name Yahweh to slip
in once or twice (xii. 9, cf. xxviii. 28) in familiar phrases in the
body of the poem. The discrepancies, such as Job's references to his
children as still alive (xix. 17, the interpretation is doubtful), and
to his servants, are trivial, and even if real imply nothing in a book
admittedly poetical and not historical. The objections to the epilogue
are equally unimportant--as that the Satan is not mentioned in it, and
that Job's restoration is in conflict with the main idea of the
poem--that earthly felicity does not follow righteousness. The
epilogue confirms the teaching of the poem when it gives the divine
sanction to Job's doctrine regarding God in opposition to that of the
friends (xlii. 7). And it is certainly not the intention of the poem
to teach that earthly felicity does not follow righteousness; its
purpose is to correct the exclusiveness with which the friends of Job
maintained that principle. The Satan is introduced in the prologue,
exercising his function as minister of God in heaven; but it is to
misinterpret wholly the doctrine of evil in the Old Testament to
assign to the Satan any such personal importance or independence of
power as that he should be called before the curtain to receive the
hisses that accompany his own discomfiture. The Satan, though he here
appears with the beginnings of a malevolent will of his own, is but
the instrument of the sifting providence of God. His work was to try;
that done he disappears, his personality being too slight to have any
place in the result.
Much graver are the suspicions that attach to the speeches of Elihu.
Most of those who have studied the book carefully hold that this part
does not belong to the original cast, but has been introduced at a
considerably later time. The piece is one of the most interesting
parts of the book; both the person and the thoughts of Elihu are
marked by a strong individuality. This individuality has indeed been
very diversely estimated. The ancients for the most part passed a very
severe judgment on Elihu: he is a buffoon, a boastful youth whose
shallow intermeddling is only to be explained by the fewness of his
years, the incarnation of folly, or even the Satan himself gone
a-mumming. Some moderns on the other hand have regarded him as the
incarnation of the voice of God or even of God himself. The main
objections to the connexion of the episode of Elihu with the original
book are: that the prologue and epilogue know nothing of him; that on
the cause of Job's afflictions he occupies virtually the same position
as the friends; that his speeches destroy the dramatic effect of the
divine manifestation by introducing a lengthened break between Job's
challenge and the answer of God; that the language and style of the
piece are marked by an excessive mannerism, too great to have been
created by the author of the rest of the poem; that the allusions to
the rest of the book are so minute as to betray a reader rather than a
hearer; and that the views regarding sin, and especially the scandal
given to the author by the irreverence of Job, indicate a religious
advance which marks a later age. The position taken by Elihu is almost
that of a critic of the book. Regarding the origin of afflictions he
is at one with the friends, although he dwells more on the general
sinfulness of man than on actual sins, and his reprobation of Job's
position is even greater than theirs. His anger was kindled against
Job because he made himself righteous before God, and against his
friends because they found no answer to Job. His whole object is to
refute Job's charge of injustice against God. What is novel in Elihu,
therefore, is not his position but his arguments. These do not lack
cogency, but betray a kind of thought different from that of the
friends. Injustice in God, he argues, can only arise from selfishness
in Him; but the very existence of creation implies unselfish love on
God's part, for if He thought only of Himself, He would cease actively
to uphold creation, and it would fall into death. Again, without
justice mere earthly rule is impossible; how then is injustice
conceivable in Him who rules over all? It is probable that the
original author found his three interlocutors a sufficient medium for
expression, and that this new speaker is the creation of another. To a
devout and thoughtful reader of the original book, belonging perhaps
to a more reverential age, it appeared that the language and bearing
of Job had scarcely been sufficiently reprobated by the original
speakers, and that the religious reason, apart from any theophany,
could suggest arguments sufficient to condemn such demeanour on the
part of any man. (For an able though hardly convincing argument for
the originality of the discourses of Elihu see Budde's _Commentary_.)
It is more difficult to come to a decision in regard to some other
portions of the book, particularly ch. xxvii. 7-xxviii. In the latter
part of ch. xxvii. Job seems to go over to the camp of his opponents,
and expresses sentiments in complete contradiction to his former
views. Hence some have thought the passage to be the missing speech of
Zophar. Others, as Hitzig, believe that Job is parodying the ideas of
the friends; while others, like Ewald, consider that he is recanting
his former excesses, and making such a modification as to express
correctly his views on evil. None of these opinions is quite
satisfactory, though the last probably expresses the view with which
the passage was introduced, whether it be original or not. The meaning
of ch. xxviii. can only be that "Wisdom," that is, a theoretical
comprehension of providence, is unattainable by man, whose only wisdom
is the fear of the Lord or practical piety. But to bring Job to the
feeling of this truth was just the purpose of the theophany and the
divine speeches; and, if Job had reached it already through his own
reflection, the theophany becomes an irrelevancy. It is difficult,
therefore, to find a place for these two chapters in the original
work. The hymn on Wisdom is a most exquisite poem, which probably
originated separately, and was brought into our book with a purpose
similar to that which suggested the speeches of Elihu. Objections have
also been raised to the descriptions of leviathan and behemoth (ch.
xl. 15-xli.). Regarding these it may be enough to say that in meaning
these passages are in perfect harmony with other parts of the Divine
words, although there is a breadth and detail in the style unlike the
sharp, short, ironical touches otherwise characteristic of this part
of the poem. (Other longer passages, the originality of which has been
called into question, are: xvii. 8 seq.; xxi. 16-18; xxii. 17 seq.;
xxiii. 8 seq.; xxiv. 9, 18-24; xxvi. 5-14. On these see the
commentaries.)
_Date._--The age of such a book as Job, dealing only with principles
and having no direct references to historical events can be fixed only
approximately. Any conclusion can be reached only by an induction
founded on matters which do not afford perfect certainty, such as the
comparative development of certain moral ideas in different ages, the
pressing claims of certain problems for solution at particular epochs
of the history of Israel, and points of contact with other writings of
which the age may with some certainty be determined. The Jewish
tradition that the book is Mosaic, and the idea that it is a production
of the desert, written in another tongue and translated into Hebrew,
want even a shadow of probability. The book is a genuine outcome of the
religious life and thought of Israel, the product of a religious
knowledge and experience that were possible among no other people. That
the author lays the scene of the poem outside his own nation and in the
patriarchal age is a proceeding common to him with other dramatic
writers, who find freer play for their principles in a region removed
from the present, where they are not hampered by the obtrusive forms of
actual life, but are free to mould occurrences into the moral form that
their ideas require.
It is the opinion of some scholars, e.g. Delitzsch, that the book
belongs to the age of Solomon. It cannot be earlier than this age, for
Job (vii. 17) travesties the ideas of Ps. viii. in a manner which shows
that this hymn was well known. To infer the date from a comparison of
literary coincidences and allusions is however a very delicate
operation. For, first, owing to the unity of thought and language which
pervades the Old Testament, in which, regarded merely as a national
literature, it differs from all other national literatures, we are apt
to be deceived, and to take mere similarities for literary allusions and
quotations; and, secondly, even when we are sure that there is
dependence, it is often uncommonly difficult to decide which is the
original source. The reference to Job in Ezek. xiv. 14 is not to our
book, but to the man (a legendary figure) who was afterwards made the
hero of it. The affinities on the other hand between Job and Isa.
xl.-lv. are very close. The date, however, of this part of Isaiah is
uncertain, though it cannot have received its final form, if it be
composite, long before the return. Between Job iii. and Jer. xx. 14 seq.
there is, again, certainly literary connexion. But the judgment of
different minds differs on the question which passage is dependent on
the other. The language of Jeremiah, however, has a natural pathos and
genuineness of feeling in it, somewhat in contrast with the elaborate
poetical finish of Job's words, which might suggest the originality of
the former.
The tendency among recent scholars is to put the book of Job not earlier
than the 5th century B.C. There are good reasons for putting it in the
4th century. It stands at the beginning of the era of Jewish
philosophical inquiry--its affinities are with Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus,
Ecclesiastes, and the Wisdom of Solomon, a body of writings that belongs
to the latest period of pre-Christian Jewish literary development (see
WISDOM LITERATURE). Its points of connexion with Isa. xl.-lv. relate
only to the problem of the suffering of the righteous, and that it is
later than the Isaiah passage appears from the fact that this latter is
national and ritual in scope, while Job is universal and ethical.
The book of Job is not literal history, though it reposes on historical
tradition. To this tradition belong probably the name of Job and his
country, and the names of his three friends, and perhaps also many other
details impossible to specify particularly. The view that the book is
entirely a literary creation with no basis in historical tradition is as
old as the Talmud (_Baba Bathra_, xv. 1), in which a rabbi is cited who
says: Job was not, and was not created, but is an allegory. This view is
supported by Hengstenberg and others. But pure poetical creations on so
extensive a scale are not probable in the East and at so early an age.
_Author._--The author of the book is wholly unknown. The religious life
of Israel was at certain periods very intense, and at those times the
spiritual energy of the nation expressed itself almost impersonally,
through men who forgot themselves and were speedily forgotten in name by
others. Hitzig conjectures that the author was a native of the north on
account of the free criticism of providence which he allows himself.
Others, on account of some affinities with the prophet Amos, infer that
he belonged to the south of Judah, and this is supposed to account for
his intimate acquaintance with the desert. Ewald considers that he
belonged to the exile in Egypt, on account of his minute acquaintance
with that country. But all these conjectures localize an author whose
knowledge was not confined to any locality, who was a true child of the
East and familiar with life and nature in every country there, who was
at the same time a true Israelite and felt that the earth was the Lord's
and the fullness thereof, and whose sympathies and thought took in all
God's works.
LITERATURE.--Commentaries by Ewald (1854); Renan (1859); Delitzsch
(1864); Zöckler in Lange's _Bibelwerk_ (1872); F. C. Cook in
_Speaker's Comm._ (1880); A. B. Davidson in _Cambridge Bible_ (1884);
Dillmann (1891); K. Budde (1896); Duhm (1897). See also Hoekstra, "Job
de Knecht van Jehovah" in _Theol. Tijdschr._ (1871), and, in reply, A.
Kuenen, "Job en de leidende Knecht van Jahveh," ibid. (1873); C. H. H.
Wright in _Bib. Essays_ (1886); G. G. Bradley, _Lects. on Job_ (2nd
ed., 1888); Cheyne, _Job and Solomon_ (1887); Dawson, _Wisd. Lit._
(1893); D. B. Macdonald, "The Original Form of the Legend of Job" in
_Journ. Bib. Lit._ (1895); E. Hatch, _Essays in Bib. Gk._ (1889); A.
Dillmann, in _Trans. of Roy. Pruss. Acad._ (1890).
(A. B. D., C. H. T.*)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Exceptions must be made in the cases of Esther and the Song of
Songs, which do not mention God, and the original writer in
Ecclesiastes who is a philosopher.
[2] This remarkable passage reads thus: "_But I know that my redeemer
liveth, and afterwards he shall arise upon the dust, and after my
skin, even this body, is destroyed, without my flesh shall I see God;
whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a
stranger; my reins within me are consumed_ with longing." The
redeemer who liveth and shall arise or stand upon the earth is God
whom he shall see with his own eyes, on his side. The course of
exegesis was greatly influenced by the translation of Jerome, who,
departing from the Itala, rendered: "In novissimo die de terra
surrecturus sum ... et rursum circumdabor pelle mea et in carne mea
videbo deum meum." The only point now in question is whether: (a) Job
looks for this manifestation of God to him while he is still alive,
or (b) after death, and therefore in the sense of a spiritual vision
and union with God in another life; that is, whether the words
"destroyed" and "without my flesh" are to be taken relatively only,
of the extremest effects of his disease upon him, or literally, of
the separation of the body in death. A third view which assumes that
the words rendered "without my flesh," which run literally, "out of
my flesh," mean _looking_ out from my flesh, that is, clothed with a
new body, and finds the idea of resurrection repeated, perhaps
imports more into the language than it will fairly bear. In favour of
(b) may be adduced the persistent refusal of Job throughout to
entertain the idea of a restoration in this life: the word
"afterwards"; and perhaps the analogy of other passages where the
same situation appears, as Ps. xlix. and lxxiii., although the actual
dénouement of the tragedy supports (a). The difference between the
two senses is not important, when the Old Testament view of
immortality is considered. To the Hebrew the life beyond was not what
it is to us, a freedom from sin and sorrow and admission to an
immediate divine fellowship not attainable here. To him the life
beyond was at best a prolongation of the life here; all he desired
was that his fellowship with God here should not be interrupted in
death, and that Sheol, the place into which deceased persons
descended and where they remained, cut off from all life with God,
might be overleapt. On this account the theory of Ewald, which throws
the centre of gravity of the book into this passage in ch. xix.,
considering its purpose to be to teach that the riddles of this life
shall be solved and its inequalities corrected in a future life,
appears one-sided. The point of the passage does not lie in any
distinction which it draws between this life and a future life; it
lies in the assurance which Job expresses that God, who even now
knows his innocence, will vindicate it in the future, and that,
though estranged now, He will at last take him to His heart.
JOBST, or JODOCUS (c. 1350-1411), margrave of Moravia, was a son of John
Henry of Luxemburg, margrave of Moravia, and grandson of John, the blind
king of Bohemia. He became margrave of Moravia on his father's death in
1375, and his clever and unscrupulous character enabled him to amass a
considerable amount of wealth, while his ambition led him into constant
quarrels with his brother Procop, his cousins, the German king
Wenceslaus and Sigismund, margrave of Brandenburg, and others. By taking
advantage of their difficulties he won considerable power, and the
record of his life is one of warfare and treachery, followed by broken
promises and transitory reconciliations. In 1385 and 1388 he purchased
Brandenburg from Sigismund, and the duchy of Luxemburg from Wenceslaus;
and in 1397 he also became possessed of upper and lower Lusatia. For
some time he had entertained hopes of the German throne and had
negotiated with Wenceslaus and others to this end. When, however, King
Rupert died in 1410 he maintained at first that there was no vacancy, as
Wenceslaus, who had been deposed in 1400, was still king; but changing
his attitude, he was chosen German king at Frankfort on the 1st of
October 1410 in opposition to Sigismund, who had been elected a few days
previously. Jobst however was never crowned, and his death on the 17th
of January 1411 prevented hostilities between the rival kings.
See F. M. Pelzel, _Lebensgeschichte des römischen und böhmischen
Königs Wenceslaus_ (1788-1790); J. Heidemann, _Die Mark Brandenburg
unter Jobst von Mähren_ (1881); J. Aschbach, _Geschichte Kaiser
Sigmunds_ (1838-1845); F. Palacky, _Geschichte von Böhmen_, iii.
(1864-1874); and T. Lindner, _Geschichte des Deutschen Reiches vom
Ende des 14 Jahrhunderts bis zur Reformation_, i. (1875-1880).
JOB'S TEARS, in botany, the popular name for _Coix Lachryma-Jobi_, a
species of grass, of the tribe _maydeae_, which also includes the maize
(see GRASSES). The seeds, or properly fruits, are contained singly in a
stony involucre or bract, which does not open until the enclosed seed
germinates. The young involucre surrounds the female flower and the
stalk supporting the spike of male flowers, and when ripe has the
appearance of bluish-white porcelain. Being shaped somewhat like a large
drop of fluid, the form has suggested the name. The fruits are esculent,
but the involucres are the part chiefly used, for making necklaces and
other ornaments. The plant is a native of India, but is now widely
spread throughout the tropical zone. It grows in marshy places; and is
cultivated in China, the fruit having a supposed value as a diuretic and
anti-phthisic. It was cultivated by John Gerard, author of the famous
_Herball_, at the end of the 16th century as a tender annual.
JOCASTA, or IOCASTA ([Greek: Iokastê]; in Homer, [Greek: Epikastê]), in
Greek legend, wife of Laïus, mother (afterwards wife) of Oedipus (q.v.),
daughter of Menoeceus, sister (or daughter) of Creon. According to Homer
(_Od._ xi. 271) and Sophocles (_Oed. Tyr._ 1241), on learning that
Oedipus was her son she immediately hanged herself; but in Euripides
(_Phoenissae_, 1455) she stabs herself over the bodies of her sons
Eteocles and Polynices, who had slain each other in single combat before
the walls of Thebes.
JOCKEY, a professional rider of race-horses, now the current usage (see
HORSE-RACING). The word is by origin a diminutive of "Jock," the
Northern or Scots colloquial equivalent of the name "John" (cf. JACK). A
familiar instance of the use of the word as a name is in "Jockey of
Norfolk" in Shakespeare's _Richard III._ v. 3, 304. In the 16th and 17th
centuries the word was applied to horse-dealers, postilions, itinerant
minstrels and vagabonds, and thus frequently bore the meaning of a
cunning trickster, a "sharp," whence "to jockey," to outwit, or "do" a
person out of something. The current usage is found in John Evelyn's
_Diary_, 1670, when it was clearly well known. George Borrow's attempt
to derive the word from the gipsy _chukni_, a heavy whip used by
horse-dealing gipsies, has no foundation.
JODELLE, ÉTIENNE, seigneur de Limodin (1532-1573), French dramatist and
poet, was born in Paris of a noble family. He attached himself to the
poetic circle of the Pléiade (see DAURAT) and proceeded to apply the
principles of the reformers to dramatic composition. Jodelle aimed at
creating a classical drama that should be in every respect different
from the moralities and _soties_ that then occupied the French stage.
His first play, _Cléopâtre captive_, was represented before the court at
Reims in 1552. Jodelle himself took the title rôle, and the cast
included his friends Remy Belleau and Jean de la Péruse. In honour of
the play's success the friends organized a little fête at Arcueil when a
goat garlanded with flowers was led in procession and presented to the
author--a ceremony exaggerated by the enemies of the Ronsardists into a
renewal of the pagan rites of the worship of Bacchus. Jodelle wrote two
other plays. _Eugène_, a comedy satirizing the superior clergy, had less
success than it deserved. Its preface poured scorn on Jodelle's
predecessors in comedy, but in reality his own methods are not so very
different from theirs. _Didon se sacrifiant_, a tragedy which follows
Virgil's narrative, appears never to have been represented. Jodelle died
in poverty in July 1573. His works were collected the year after his
death by Charles de la Mothe. They include a quantity of miscellaneous
verse dating chiefly from Jodelle's youth. The intrinsic value of his
tragedies is small. _Cléopâtre_ is lyric rather than dramatic.
Throughout the five acts of the piece nothing actually happens. The
death of Antony is announced by his ghost in the first act; the story of
Cleopatra's suicide is related, but not represented, in the fifth. Each
act is terminated by a chorus which moralizes on such subjects as the
inconstancy of fortune and the judgments of heaven on human pride. But
the play was the starting-point of French classical tragedy, and was
soon followed by the _Médée_ (1553) of Jean de la Péruse and the _Aman_
(1561) of André de Rivaudeau. Jodelle was a rapid worker, but idle and
fond of dissipation. His friend Ronsard said that his published poems
gave no adequate idea of his powers.
Jodelle's works are collected (1868) in the _Pléiade française_ of
Charles Marty-Laveaux. The prefatory notice gives full information of
the sources of Jodelle's biography, and La Mothe's criticism is
reprinted in its entirety.
JODHPUR, or MARWAR, a native state of India, in the Rajputana agency.
Area, 34,963 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 1,935,565, showing a decrease of 23% in
the decade, due to the results of famine. Estimated revenue, £373,600;
tribute, £14,000. The general aspect of the country is that of a sandy
plain, divided into two unequal parts by the river Luni, and dotted with
picturesque conical hills, attaining in places an elevation of 3000 ft.
The river Luni is the principal feature in the physical aspects of
Jodhpur. One of its head-streams rises in the sacred lake of Pushkar in
Ajmere, and the main river flows through Jodhpur in a south-westerly
direction till it is finally lost in the marshy ground at the head of
the Runn of Cutch. It is fed by numerous tributaries and occasionally
overflows its banks, fine crops of wheat and barley being grown on the
saturated soil. Its water is, as a rule, saline or brackish, but
comparatively sweet water is obtained from wells sunk at a distance of
20 or 30 yds. from the river bank. The famous salt-lake of Sambhar is
situated on the borders of Jodhpur and Jaipur, and two smaller lakes of
the same description lie within the limits of the state, from which
large quantities of salt are extracted. Marble is mined in the north of
the state and along the south-east border.
The population consists of Rathor Rajputs (who form the ruling class),
Brahmans, Charans, Bhats, Mahajans or traders, and Jats. The Charans, a
sacred race, hold large religious grants of land, and enjoy peculiar
immunities as traders in local produce. The Bhats are by profession
genealogists, but also engage in trade. Marwari traders are an
enterprising class to be found throughout the length and breadth of
India.
The principal crops are millets and pulses, but wheat and barley are
largely produced in the fertile tract watered by the Luni river. The
manufactures comprise leather boxes and brass utensils; and turbans and
scarfs and a description of embroidered silk knotted thread are
specialities of the country.
The Maharaja belongs to the Rathor clan of Rajputs. The family
chronicles relate that after the downfall of the Rathor dynasty of
Kanauj in 1194, Sivaji, the grandson of Jai Chand, the last king of
Kanauj, entered Marwar on a pilgrimage to Dwarka, and on halting at the
town of Pali he and his followers settled there to protect the Brahman
community from the constant raids of marauding bands. The Rathor chief
thus laid the foundation of the state, but it was not till the time of
Rao Chanda, the tenth in succession from Sivaji, that Marwar was
actually conquered. His grandson Jodha founded the city of Jodhpur,
which he made his capital. In 1561 the country was invaded by Akbar, and
the chief was forced to submit, and to send his son as a mark of homage
to take service under the Mogul emperor. When this son Udai Singh
succeeded to the chiefship, he gave his sister Jodhbai in marriage to
Akbar, and was rewarded by the restoration of most of his former
possessions. Udai Singh's son, Gaj Singh, held high service under Akbar,
and conducted successful expeditions in Gujarat and the Deccan. The
bigoted and intolerant Aurangzeb invaded Marwar in 1679, plundered
Jodhpur, sacked all the large towns, and commanded the conversion of the
Rathors to Mahommedanism. This cemented all the Rajput clans into a bond
of union, and a triple alliance was formed by the three states of
Jodhpur, Udaipur and Jaipur, to throw off the Mahommedan yoke. One of
the conditions of this alliance was that the chiefs of Jodhpur and
Jaipur should regain the privilege of marriage with the Udaipur family,
which they had forfeited by contracting alliances with the Mogul
emperors, on the understanding that the offspring of Udaipur princesses
should succeed to the state in preference to all other children. The
quarrels arising from this stipulation lasted through many generations,
and led to the invitation of Mahratta help from the rival aspirants to
power, and finally to the subjection of all the Rajput states to the
Mahrattas. Jodhpur was conquered by Sindhia, who levied a tribute of
£60,000, and took from it the fort and town of Ajmere. Internecine
disputes and succession wars disturbed the peace of the early years of
the century, until in January 1818 Jodhpur was taken under British
protection. In 1839 the misgovernment of the raja led to an insurrection
which compelled the interference of the British. In 1843, the chief
having died without a son, and without having adopted an heir, the
nobles and state officials were left to select a successor from the
nearest of kin. Their choice fell upon Raja Takht Sinh, chief of
Ahmednagar. This chief, who did good service during the Mutiny, died in
1873. Maharaja Jaswant Singh, who died in 1896, was a very enlightened
ruler. His brother, Sir Pertab Singh (q.v.), conducted the
administration until his nephew, Sardar Singh, came of age in 1898. The
imperial service cavalry formed part of the reserve brigade during the
Tirah campaign.
The state maintains a railway running to Bikanir, and there is also a
branch railway into Sind. Gold, silver and copper money is coined. The
state emblems are a _jhar_ or sprig of seven branches and a _khanda_ or
sword. Jodhpur practically escaped the plague, but it suffered more
severely than any other part of Rajputana from the famine of 1899-1900.
In February 1900 more than 110,000 persons were in receipt of famine
relief.
The city of JODHPUR is 64 m. by rail N.W. of Marwar junction, on the
Rajputana railway. Pop. (1901), 60,437. It was built by Rao Jodha in
1459, and from that time has been the seat of government. It is
surrounded by a strong wall nearly 6 m. in extent, with seventy gates.
The fort, which stands on an isolated rock, contains the maharaja's
palace, a large and handsome building, completely covering the crest of
the hill on which it stands, and overlooking the city, which lies
several hundred feet below. The city contains palaces of the maharaja,
and town residences of the _thakurs_ or nobles, besides numerous fine
temples and tanks. Building stone is plentiful and close at hand, and
the architecture is solid and handsome. Three miles north of Jodhpur are
the ruins of Mandor, the site of the ancient capital of the Parihar
princes of Marwar, before its conquest by the Rathors. Mills for
grinding flour and crushing grain have been constructed for the imperial
service troops. The Jaswant college is affiliated to the B.A. standard
of the Allahabad university. To the Hewson hospital a wing for eye
diseases was added in 1898, and the Jaswant hospital for women is under
an English lady doctor.
JOEL. The second book among the minor prophets in the Bible is entitled
_The word of Yahweh that came to Joel the son of Pethuel_, or, as the
Septuagint, Latin, Syriac and other versions read, _Bethuel_. Nothing is
recorded as to the date or occasion of the prophecy. Most Hebrew
prophecies contain pointed references to the foreign politics and social
relations of the nation at the time. In the book of Joel there are only
scanty allusions to Phoenicians, Philistines, Egypt and Edom, couched in
terms applicable to very different ages, while the prophet's own people
are exhorted to repentance without specific reference to any of those
national sins of which other prophets speak. The occasion of the
prophecy, described with great force of rhetoric, is no known historical
event, but a plague of locusts, perhaps repeated in successive seasons;
and even here there are features in the description which have led many
expositors to seek an allegorical interpretation. The most remarkable
part of the book is the eschatological picture with which it closes; and
the way in which the plague of locusts appears to be taken as
foreshadowing the final judgment--the great day or assize of Yahweh, in
which Israel's enemies are destroyed--is so unique as greatly to
complicate the exegetical problem. It is not therefore surprising that
the most various views are still held as to the date and meaning of the
book. Allegorists and literalists still contend over the first and still
more over the second chapter, and, while the largest number of recent
interpreters accept Credner's view that the prophecy was written in the
reign of Joash of Judah (835-796 B.C.?), a powerful school of critics
(including A. B. Davidson) follow the view suggested by Vatke (_Bib.
Theol._ p. 462 seq.), and reckon Joel among the post-exile prophets.
Other scholars give yet other dates: see the particulars in the
elaborate work of Merx. The followers of Credner are literalists; the
opposite school of moderns includes some literalists (as Duhm), while
others (like Hilgenfeld, and in a modified sense Merx) adopt the old
allegorical interpretation which treats the locusts as a figure for the
enemies of Jerusalem.
There are cogent reasons for placing Joel either earlier or later than
the great series of prophets extending from the time when Amos first
proclaimed the approach of the Assyrian down to the Babylonian exile.
In Joel the enemies of Israel are the nations collectively, and among
those specified by name neither Assyria nor Chaldaea finds a place.
This circumstance might, if it stood alone, be explained by placing
Joel with Zephaniah in the brief interval between the decline of the
empire of Nineveh and the advance of the Babylonians. But it is
further obvious that Joel has no part in the internal struggle between
spiritual Yahweh-worship and idolatry which occupied all the prophets
from Amos to the captivity. He presupposes a nation of
Yahweh-worshippers, whose religion has its centre in the temple and
priesthood of Zion, which is indeed conscious of sin, and needs
forgiveness and an outpouring of the Spirit, but is not visibly
divided, as the kingdom of Judah was between the adherents of
spiritual prophecy and a party whose national worship of Yahweh
involved for them no fundamental separation from the surrounding
nations. The book, therefore, must have been written before the
ethico-spiritual and the popular conceptions of Yahweh came into
conscious antagonism, or else after the fall of the state and the
restoration of the community of Jerusalem to religious rather than
political existence had decided the contest in favour of the
prophets, and of the Law in which their teaching was ultimately
crystallized.
The considerations which have given currency to an early date for Joel
are of various kinds. The absence of all mention of one great
oppressing world-power seems most natural before the westward march of
Assyria involved Israel in the general politics of Asia. The purity of
the style is also urged, and a comparison of Amos i. 2, Joel iii. 16
(Heb. iv. 16), and Amos ix. 13, Joel iii. 18 (iv. 18), has been taken
as proving that Amos knew our book. The last argument might be
inverted with much greater probability, and numerous points of contact
between Joel and other parts of the Old Testament (e.g. Joel ii. 2,
Exod. x. 14; Joel ii. 3, Ezek. xxxvi. 35; Joel iii. 10, Mic. iv. 3)
make it not incredible that the purity of his style--which is rather
elegant than original and strongly marked--is in large measure the
fruit of literary culture. The absence of allusion to a hostile or
oppressing empire may be fairly taken in connexion with the fact that
the prophecy gives no indication of political life at Jerusalem. When
the whole people is mustered in ch. i., the elders or sheikhs of the
municipality and the priests of the temple are the most prominent
figures. The king is not mentioned--which on Credner's view is
explained by assuming that the plague fell in the minority of Joash,
when the priest Jehoiada held the reins of power--and the princes,
councillors and warriors necessary to an independent state, and so
often referred to by the prophets before the exile, are altogether
lacking. The nation has only a municipal organization with a priestly
aristocracy, precisely the state of things that prevailed under the
Persian empire. That the Persians do not appear as enemies of Yahweh
and his people is perfectly natural. They were hard masters but not
invaders, and under them the enemies of the Jews were their
neighbours, just as appears in Joel.[1] Those, however, who place our
prophet in the minority of King Joash draw a special argument from the
mention of Phoenicians, Philistines and Edomites (iii. 4 seq., 19),
pointing to the revolt of Edom under Joram (2 Kings viii. 20) and the
incursion of the Philistines in the same reign (2 Chron. xxi. 16,
xxii. 1). These were recent events in the time of Joash, and in like
manner the Phoenician slave trade in Jewish children is carried back
to an early date by the reference in Amos i. 9. This argument is
rather specious than sound. Edom's hostility to Judah was incessant,
but the feud reached its full intensity only after the time of
Deuteronomy (xxiii. 7), when the Edomites joined the Chaldaeans, drew
profit from the overthrow of the Jews, whose land they partly
occupied, and exercised barbarous cruelty towards the fugitives of
Jerusalem (Obad. _passim_; Mal. i. 2 seq.; Isa. lxiii.). The offence
of shedding innocent blood charged on them by Joel is natural after
these events, but hardly so in connexion with the revolt against
Joram.
As regards the Philistines, it is impossible to lay much weight on the
statement of Chronicles, unsupported as it is by the older history,
and in Joel the Philistines plainly stand in one category with the
Phoenicians, as slave dealers, not as armed foes. Gaza in fact was a
slave emporium as early as the time of Amos (i. 6), and continued so
till Roman times.
Thus, if any inference as to date can be drawn from ch. iii., it must
rest on special features of the trade in slaves, which was always an
important part of the commerce of the Levant. In the time of Amos the
slaves collected by Philistines and Tyrians were sold _en masse_ to
Edom, and presumably went to Egypt or Arabia. Joel complains that they
were sold to the Grecians (Javan, Ionians).[2] It is probable that
some Hebrew and Syrian slaves were exported to the Mediterranean
coasts from a very early date, and Isa. xi. 11 already speaks of
Israelites captive in these districts as well as in Egypt, Ethiopia
and the East. But the traffic in this direction hardly became
extensive till a later date. In Deut. xxviii. 68, Egypt is still the
chief goal of the maritime slave trade, and in Ezek. xxvii. 13 Javan
exports slaves to Tyre, not conversely. Thus the allusion to Javan in
Joel better suits a later date, when Syrian slaves were in special
request in Greece.[3] And the name of Javan is not found in any part
of the Old Testament certainly older than Ezekiel. In Joel it seems to
stand as a general representative of the distant countries reached by
the Mediterranean (in contrast with the southern Arabians, _Sabaeans_,
ch. iii. 8), the farthest nation reached by the fleets of the Red Sea.
This is precisely the geographical standpoint of the post-exile author
of Gen. x. 4, where (assuming that Elishah = Carthage and Tarshish =
Tartessus) Javan includes Carthage and Tartessus.
Finally, the allusion to Egypt in Joel iii. 19 must on Credner's
theory be explained of the invasion of Shishak a century before
Joash. From this time down to the last period of the Hebrew monarchy
Egypt was not the enemy of Judah.
If the arguments chiefly relied on for an early date are so precarious
or can even be turned against their inventors, there are others of an
unambiguous kind which make for a date in the Persian period. It
appears from ch. iii. 1, 2, that Joel wrote after the exile. The
phrase "to bring again the captivity" would not alone suffice to prove
this, for it is used in a wide sense, and perhaps means rather to
"reverse the calamity,"[4] but the dispersion of Israel among the
nations, and the allotment of the Holy Land to new occupants, cannot
fairly be referred to any calamity less than that of the captivity.
With this the whole standpoint of the prophecy agrees. To Joel Judah
and the people of Yahweh are synonyms; northern Israel has
disappeared. Now it is true that those who take their view of the
history from Chronicles, where the kingdom of Ephraim is always
treated as a sect outside the true religion, can reconcile this fact
with an early date. But in ancient times it was not so; and under
Joash, the contemporary of Elisha, such a limitation of the people of
Yahweh is wholly inconceivable. The earliest prophetic books have a
quite different standpoint; otherwise indeed the books of northern
prophets and historians could never have been admitted into the Jewish
canon. Again, the significant fact that there is no mention of a king
and princes, but only of sheikhs and priests, has a force not to be
invalidated by the ingenious reference of the book to the time of
Joash's minority and the supposed regency of Jehoiada.[5] And the
assumption that there was a period before the prophetic conflicts of
the 8th century B.C. when spiritual prophecy had unchallenged sway,
when there was no gross idolatry or superstition, when the priests of
Jerusalem, acting in accord with prophets like Joel, held the same
place as heads of a pure worship which they occupied after the exile
(cf. Ewald, _Propheten_, i. 89), is not consistent with history. It
rests on the old theory of the antiquity of the Levitical legislation,
so that in fact all who place that legislation later than Ezekiel are
agreed that the book of Joel is also late. In this connexion one point
deserves special notice. The religious significance of the plague of
drought and locusts is expressed in ch. i. 9 in the observation that
the daily meat and drink offering are cut off, and the token of new
blessing is the restoration of this service, ch. ii. 14. In other
words, the daily offering is the continual symbol of gracious
intercourse between Yahweh and his people and the main office of
religion. This conception, which finds its parallel in Dan. viii. 11,
xi. 31, xii. 11, is quite in accordance with the later law. But under
the monarchy the daily oblation was the king's private offering, and
not till Ezra's reformation did it become the affair of the community
and the central act of national worship (Neh. x. 33 seq.).[6] That
Joel wrote not only after the exile but after the work of Ezra and
Nehemiah may be viewed as confirmed by the allusions to the walls of
Jerusalem in ch. ii. 7, 9. Such is the historical basis which we seem
to be able to lay for the study of the exegetical problems of the
book.
The style of Joel is clear (which hardly favours an early date), and his
language presents peculiarities which are evidences of a late origin.
But the structure of the book, the symbolism and the connexion of the
prophet's thoughts have given rise to much controversy. It seems safest
to start from the fact that the prophecy is divided into two well-marked
sections by ch. ii. 18, 19a. According to the Massoretic vocalization,
which is in harmony with the most ancient exegetical tradition as
contained in the LXX, these words are historical: "Then the Lord was
jealous,... and answered and said unto his people, Behold," &c. Such is
the natural meaning of the words as pointed.
Thus the book falls into two parts. In the first the prophet speaks in
his own name, addressing himself to the people in a lively description
of a present calamity caused by a terrible plague of locusts which
threatens the entire destruction of the country, and appears to be the
vehicle of a final consuming judgment (the day of Yahweh). There is no
hope save in repentance and prayer; and in ch. ii. 12 the prophet,
speaking now for the first time in Yahweh's name, calls the people to a
solemn fast at the sanctuary, and invites the intercession of the
priests. The calamity is described in the strongest colours of Hebrew
hyperbole, and it seems arbitrary to seek too literal an interpretation
of details, e.g. to lay weight on the four names of locusts, or to take
ch. i. 20 of a conflagration produced by drought, when it appears from
ii. 3 that the ravages of the locusts themselves are compared to those
of fire. But when due allowance is made for Eastern rhetoric, there is
no occasion to seek in this section anything else than literal locusts.
Nay, the allegorical interpretation, which takes the locusts to be
hostile invaders, breaks through the laws of all reasonable writing; for
the poetical hyperbole which compares the invading swarms to an army
(ii. 4 seq.) would be inconceivably lame if a literal army was already
concealed under the figure of the locusts. Nor could the prophet so far
forget himself in his allegory as to speak of a victorious host as
entering the conquered city like a thief (ii. 9). The second part of the
book is Yahweh's answer to the people's prayer. The answer begins with a
promise of deliverance from famine, and of fruitful seasons compensating
for the ravages of the locusts. In the new prosperity of the land the
union of Yahweh and his people shall be sealed anew, and so the Lord
will proceed to pour down further and higher blessings. The aspiration
of Moses (Num. xi. 29) and the hope of earlier prophets (Isa. xxxii. 15,
lix. 21; Jer. xxxi. 33) shall be fully realized in the outpouring of the
Spirit on all the Jews and even upon their servants (Isa. lxi. 5 with
lvi. 6, 7); and then the great day of judgment, which had seemed to
overshadow Jerusalem in the now averted plague, shall draw near with
awful tokens of blood and fire and darkness. But the terrors of that day
are not for the Jews but for their enemies. The worshippers of Yahweh on
Zion shall be delivered (cf. Obad. v. 17, whose words Joel expressly
quotes in ch. ii. 32), and it is their heathen enemies, assembled before
Jerusalem to war against Yahweh, who shall be mowed down in the valley
of Jehoshaphat ("Yahweh judgeth") by no human arm, but by heavenly
warriors. Thus definitively freed from the profane foot of the stranger
(Isa. lii. 1), Jerusalem shall abide a holy city for ever. The fertility
of the land shall be such as was long ago predicted in Amos ix. 13, and
streams issuing from the Temple, as Ezekiel had described in his picture
of the restored Jerusalem (Ezek. xlvii.), shall fertilize the barren
Wadi of Acacias. Egypt and Edom, on the other hand, shall be desolate,
because they have shed the blood of Yahweh's innocents. Compare the
similar predictions against Edom, Isa. xxxiv. 9 seq. (Mal. i. 3), and
against Egypt, Isa. xix. 5 seq., Ezek. xxix. Joel's eschatological
picture appears indeed to be largely a combination of elements from
older unfulfilled prophecies. Its central feature, the assembling of the
nations to judgment, is already found in Zeph. iii. 8, and in Ezekiel's
prophecy concerning Gog and Magog, where the wonders of fire and blood
named in Joel ii. 30 are also mentioned (Ezek. xxxviii. 22). The other
physical features of the great day, the darkening of the lights of
heaven, are a standing figure of the prophets from Amos v. 6, viii. 9,
downwards. It is characteristic of the prophetic eschatology that images
suggested by one prophet are adopted by his successors, and gradually
become part of the permanent scenery of the last times; and it is a
proof of the late date of Joel that almost his whole picture is made up
of such features. In this respect there is a close parallelism,
extending to minor details, between Joel and the last chapters of
Zechariah.
That Joel's delineation of the final deliverance and glory attaches
itself directly to the deliverance of the nation from a present calamity
is quite in the manner of the so-called prophetic perspective. But the
fact that the calamity which bulks so largely is natural and not
political is characteristic of the post-exile period. Other prophets of
the same age speak much of dearth and failure of crops, which in
Palestine then as now were aggravated by bad government, and were far
more serious to a small and isolated community than they could ever have
been to the old kingdom. It was indeed by no means impossible that
Jerusalem might have been altogether undone by the famine caused by the
locusts; and so the conception of these visitants as the destroying
army, executing Yahweh's final judgment, is really much more natural
than appears to us at first sight, and does not need to be explained
away by allegory. The chief argument relied upon by those who still find
allegory at least in ch. ii. is the expression _hassephoni_, "the
northerner"[7] [if this rendering is correct], in ii. 20. In view of the
other points of affinity between Joel and Ezekiel, this word inevitably
suggests Gog and Magog, and it is difficult to see how a swarm of
locusts could receive such a name, or if they came from the north could
perish, as the verse puts it, in the desert between the Mediterranean
and the Dead Sea. The verse remains a _crux interpretum_, and no
exegesis hitherto given can be deemed thoroughly satisfactory; but the
interpretation of the whole book must not be made to hinge on a single
word in a verse which might be altogether removed without affecting the
general course of the prophet's argument.
The whole verse is perhaps the addition of an allegorizing glossator.
The prediction in _v._ 19, that the seasons shall henceforth be
fruitful, is given after Yahweh has shown his zeal and pity for Israel,
not of course by mere words, but by acts, as appears in verses 20, 21,
where the verbs are properly perfects recording that Yahweh hath already
done great things, and that vegetation has already revived. In other
words, the mercy already experienced in the removal of the plague is
taken as a pledge of future grace not to stop short till all God's old
promises are fulfilled. In this context v. 20 is out of place. Observe
also that in v. 25 the locusts are spoken of in the plain language of
chap. i.
See the separate commentaries on Joel by Credner (1831), Wünsche
(1872), Merx (1879). The last-named gives an elaborate history of
interpretation from the Septuagint down to Calvin, and appends the
Ethiopic text edited by Dillmann. Nowack and Marti should also be
consulted (see their respective series of commentaries); also G. A.
Smith, in _The Book of the Twelve Prophets_, vol. i. (1896), and S. R.
Driver, _Joel and Amos_ (1897). On the language of Joel, see
Holzinger, _Z. A. T. W._ (1889), pp. 89-131. Of older commentaries the
most valuable is Pocock's (Oxford, 1691). Bochart's _Hierozoïcon_ may
also be consulted. (W. R. S.; T. K. C.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In the A.V. of ii. 17 it appears that subjection to a foreign
power is not a present fact but a thing feared. But the parallelism
and v. 19 justify the rendering in margin of R.V. "use a byword
against them."
[2] The hypothesis of an Arabian Javan, applied to Joel iii. 6 by
Credner, Hitzig, and others, may be viewed as exploded (see Stade,
"Das Volk Javan," 1880, reprinted in his _Akad. Reden u.
Abhandlungen_, 1899, pp. 123-142). The question, however, has to be
re-examined; later interpreters, e.g. the LXX translators, may have
misunderstood. The text of the passages has to be critically treated
anew. See Cheyne, _Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel_ (on Gen.
x. 2).
[3] Compare Movers, _Phönizisches Alterthum_, iii. i. 70 seq.
[4] See Ewald on Jer. xlviii. 47, Kuenen, _Theol. Tijdschrift_
(1873), p. 519; Schwally, _Z. A. T. W._, viii. 200, and Briggs on Ps.
xiv. 7.
[5] Stade not unreasonably questions whether 2 Kings xii. 1-3 implies
the paramount political influence of Jehoiada.
[6] See Wellhausen, _Geschichte Israels_, p. 78 seq.; _Prolegomena
zur Gesch. Israels_ (1883), p. 82 seq.
[7] It has been suggested that _Saphon_, which is often rather
troublesome if rendered "the north," may be a weakened form of
_sib'on_, a current popular corruption of _shimo'n_ = Ishmael. In
Ezek. xxxviii. 15 it is distinctly said that Gog is to come from the
recesses of Saphon. "Meshech" and "Tubal" are no hindrance to this
view, if the names of the so-called "sons of Japheth" are critically
examined. For they, too, as well as Saphon, can be plausibly shown to
represent regions of North Arabia. See Cheyne, _Traditions and
Beliefs of Anc. Israel_, on Gen. x. 2-4.
JOEL, MANUEL (1826-1890), Jewish philosopher and preacher. After
teaching for several years at the Breslau rabbinical seminary, founded
by Z. Frankel, he became the successor of Abraham Geiger in the
rabbinate of Breslau. He made important contributions to the history of
the school of Aqiba (q.v.) as well as to the history of Jewish
philosophy, his essays on Ibn Gabirol and Maimonides being of permanent
worth. But his most influential work was connected with the relations
between Jewish philosophy and the medieval scholasticism. He showed how
Albertus Magnus derived some of his ideas from Maimonides and how
Spinoza was indebted to the same writer, as well as to Hasdai Crescas.
These essays were collected in two volumes of _Beiträge zur Geschichte
der Philosophie_ (1876), while another two volumes of _Blicke in die
Religionsgeschichte_ (1880-1883) threw much light on the development of
religious thought in the early centuries of the Christian era. Equally
renowned were Joel's pulpit addresses. Though he was no orator, his
appeal to the reason was effective, and in their published form his
three volumes of _Predigten_ (issued posthumously) have found many
readers. (I. A.)
JOFFRIN, JULES FRANÇOIS ALEXANDRE (1846-1890), French politician, was
born at Troyes on the 16th of March 1846. He served in the Franco-German
War, was involved in the Commune, and spent eleven years in England as a
political exile. He attached himself to the "possibilist" group of the
socialist party, the section opposed to the root-and-branch measures of
Jules Guesde. He became a member of the municipal council of Paris in
1882, and vice-president in 1888-1889. Violently attacked by the
Boulangist organs, _L'Intransigeant_ and _La France_, he won a suit
against them for libel, and in 1889 he contested the 18th arrondissement
of Paris with General Boulanger, who obtained a majority of over 2000
votes, but was declared ineligible. Joffrin was only admitted to the
Chamber after a heated discussion, and continued to be attacked by the
nationalists. He died in Paris on the 17th of September 1890.
JOGUES, ISAAC (1607-1646), French missionary in North America, was born
at Orleans on the 10th of January 1607. He entered the Society of Jesus
at Rouen in 1624, and in 1636 was ordained and sent, by his own wish, to
the Huron mission. In 1639 he went among the Tobacco Nation, and in 1641
journeyed to Sault Sainte Marie, where he preached to the Algonquins.
Returning from an expedition to Three Rivers he was captured by Mohawks,
who tortured him and kept him as a slave until the summer of 1643, when,
aided by some Dutchmen, he escaped to the manor of Rensselaerwyck and
thence to New Amsterdam. After a brief visit to France, where he was
treated with high honour, he returned to the Mohawk country in May 1646
and ratified a treaty between that tribe and the Canadian government.
Working among them as the founder of the Mission of the Martyrs, he
incurred their enmity, was tortured as a sorcerer, and finally killed at
Ossernenon, near Auriesville, N.Y.
See Parkman, _The Jesuits in North America_ (1898).
JOHANAN BEN ZACCAI, Palestinian rabbi, contemporary of the Apostles. He
was a disciple of Hillel (q.v.), and after the destruction of the Temple
of Jerusalem by Titus was the main instrument in the preservation of the
Jewish religion. During the last decades of the Temple Johanan was a
member of the Sanhedrin and a skilled controversialist against the
Sadducees. He is also reported to have been head of a great school in
the capital. In the war with Rome he belonged to the peace party, and
finding that the Zealots were resolved on carrying their revolt to its
inevitable sequel, Johanan had himself conveyed out of Jerusalem in a
coffin. In the Roman camp the rabbi was courteously received, and
Vespasian (whose future elevation to the imperial dignity Johanan, like
Josephus, is said to have foretold) agreed to grant him any boon he
desired. Johanan obtained permission to found a college at Jamnia
(Jabneh), which became the centre of Jewish culture. It practically
exercised the judicial functions of the Sanhedrin (see JEWS, § 40 ad
fin.). That chief literary expression of Pharisaism, the Mishnah, was
the outcome of the work begun at Jamnia. Johanan solaced his disciples
on the fall of the Temple by the double thought that charity could
replace sacrifice, and that a life devoted to the religious law could
form a fitting continuation of the old theocratic state. "Johanan felt
the fall of his people more deeply than anyone else, but--and in this
lies his historical importance--he did more than any one else to prepare
the way for Israel to rise again" (Bacher).
See Graetz, _History of the Jews_ (Eng. trans.), vol. ii. ch. xiii.;
Weiss, _Dor dor ve-doreshav_, ii. 36; Bacher, _Die Agada der
Tannaiten_, vol. i. ch. iii. (I. A.)
JOHANNESBURG, a city of the Transvaal and the centre of the Rand
gold-mining industry. It is the most populous city and the commercial
capital of South Africa. It is built on the southern slopes of the
Witwatersrand in 26° 11´ S. 28° 2´ E., at an elevation of 5764 ft. above
the sea. The distances by rail from Johannesburg to the following
seaports are: Lourenço Marques, 364 m.; Durban, 483 m.; East London, 659
m.; Port Elizabeth, 714 m.; Cape Town, 957 m. Pretoria is, by rail, 46
m. N. by E.
The town lies immediately north of the central part of the main gold
reef. The streets run in straight lines east and west or north and
south. The chief open spaces are Market Square in the west and
Government Square in the south of the town. Park railway station lies
north of the business quarter, and farther north are the Wanderers'
athletic sports ground and Joubert's Park. The chief business streets,
such as Commissioner Street, Market Street, President Street and
Pritchard Street, run east and west. In these thoroughfares and in
several of the streets which intersect them are the offices of the
mining companies, the banks, clubs, newspaper offices, hotels and shops,
the majority being handsome stone or brick buildings, while the survival
of some wooden shanties and corrugated iron buildings recalls the early
character of the town.
_Chief Buildings, &c._--In the centre of Market Square are the market
buildings, and at its east end the post and telegraph offices, a
handsome block of buildings with a façade 200 ft. long and a tower 106
ft. high. The square itself, a quarter of a mile long, is the largest in
South Africa. The offices of the Witwatersrand chamber of mines face the
market buildings. The stock exchange is in Marshall Square. The
telephone exchange is in the centre of the city, in Von Brandis Square.
The law courts are in the centre of Government Square. The Transvaal
university college is in Plein Square, a little south of Park station.
In the vicinity is St Mary's (Anglican) parish hall (1905-1907), the
first portion of a large building planned to take the place of "Old" St
Mary's Church, the "mother" church of the Rand, built in 1887. The chief
Jewish synagogue is in the same neighbourhood. In Kerk Street, on the
outskirts of central Johannesburg, is the Roman Catholic Church of the
Immaculate Conception, the headquarters of the vicar apostolic of the
Transvaal. North of Joubert's Park is the general hospital, and beyond,
near the crest of the hills, commanding the town and the road to
Pretoria, is a fort built by the Boer government and now used as a gaol.
On the hills, some 3 m. E.N.E. of the town, is the observatory, built in
1903. Johannesburg has several theatres and buildings adapted for public
meetings. There is a race-course 2 m. south of the town under the
control of the Johannesburg Turf Club.
_The Suburbs._--North, east and west of the city proper are suburbs,
laid out on the same rectangular plan. The most fashionable are to the
east and north--Jeppestown, Belgravia, Doornfontein, the Berea,
Hillbrow, Parktown, Yeoville and Bellevue. Braamfontein (with a large
cemetery) lies north-west and Fordsburg due west of the city. At
Fordsburg are the gas and electric light and power works, and north of
Doornfontein there is a large reservoir. There are also on the Rand, and
dependent on the gold-mining, three towns possessing separate
municipalities--Germiston and Boksburg (q.v.), respectively 9 m. and 15
m. E. of Johannesburg, and Krugersdorp (q.v.), 21 m. W.
_The Mines and other Industries._--South, east and west of the city are
the gold mines, indicated by tall chimneys, battery houses and the
compounds of the labourers. The bare veld is dotted with these unsightly
buildings for a distance of over fifty miles. The mines are worked on
the most scientific lines. Characteristic of the Rand is the fine white
dust arising from the crushing of the ore, and, close to the batteries,
the incessant din caused by the stamps employed in that operation. The
compounds in general, especially those originally made for Chinese
labourers, are well built, comfortable, and fulfil every hygienic
requirement. Besides the buildings, the compounds include wide stretches
of veld. To enter and remain in the district, Kaffirs require a monthly
pass for which the employer pays 2s. (For details of gold-mining, see
GOLD.) A railway traverses the Rand, going westward past Krugersdorp to
Klerksdorp and thence to Kimberley, and eastward past Springs to Delagoa
Bay. From Springs, 25 m. E. of Johannesburg, is obtained much of the
coal used in the Rand mines.
The mines within the municipal area produce nearly half the total gold
output of the Transvaal. The other industries of Johannesburg include
brewing; printing and bookbinding, timber sawing, flour milling, iron
and brass founding, brick making and the manufacture of tobacco.
_Health, Education and Social Conditions._--The elevation of
Johannesburg makes it, despite its nearness to the tropics, a healthy
place for European habitation. Built on open undulating ground, the town
is, however, subject to frequent dust storms and to considerable
variations in the temperature. The nights in winter are frosty and snow
falls occasionally. The average day temperature in winter is 53° F., in
summer 75°; the average annual rainfall is 28 in. The death-rate among
white inhabitants averages about 17 per thousand. The principal causes
of death, both among the white and coloured inhabitants, are diseases of
the lungs--including miners' phthisis and pneumonia--diarrhoea,
dysentery and enteric. The death-rate among young children is very high.
Education is provided in primary and secondary schools maintained by the
state. In the primary schools education is free but not compulsory. The
Transvaal university college, founded in 1904 as the technical institute
(the change of title being made in 1906), provides full courses in
science, mining, engineering and law. In 1906 Alfred Beit (q.v.)
bequeathed £200,000 towards the cost of erecting and equipping
university buildings.
In its social life Johannesburg differs widely from Cape Town and
Durban. The white population is not only far larger but more
cosmopolitan, less stationary and more dependent on a single industry;
it has few links with the past, and both city and citizens bear the
marks of youth. The cost of living is much higher than in London or New
York. House rent, provisions, clothing, are all very dear, and more than
counter-balance the lowness of rates. The customary unit of expenditure
is the threepenny-bit or "tickey."
_Sanitary and other Services._--There is an ample supply of water to the
town and mines, under a water board representing all the Rand
municipalities and the mining companies. A water-borne sewerage system
began to be introduced in 1906. The general illuminant is electricity,
and both electrical and gas services are owned by the municipality. The
tramway service, opened in 1891, was taken over by the municipality in
1904. Up to 1906 the trams were horse-drawn; in that year electric cars
began running. Rickshaws are also a favourite means of conveyance. The
police force is controlled by the government.
_Area, Government and Rateable Value._--The city proper covers about 6
sq. m. The municipal boundary extends in every direction some 5 m. from
Market Square, encloses about 82 sq. m. and includes several of the
largest mines. The local government is carried on by an elected
municipal council, the franchise being restricted to white British
subjects (men and women) who rent or own property of a certain value. In
1908 the rateable value of the municipality was £36,466,644, the rate
2¼d. in the £, and the town debt £5,500,000.
_Population._--In 1887 the population was about 3000. By the beginning
of 1890 it had increased to over 25,000. A census taken in July 1896
showed a population within a radius of 3 m. from Market Square of
102,078, of whom 50,907 were whites. At the census of April 1904 the
inhabitants of the city proper numbered 99,022, the population within
the municipal area being 155,642, of whom 83,363 were whites. Of the
white inhabitants, 35% were of British origin, 51,629 were males, and
31,734 females. Of persons aged sixteen or over, the number of males was
almost double the number of females. The coloured population included
about 7000 British Indians--chiefly small traders. A municipal census
taken in August 1908 gave the following result: whites 95,162; natives
and coloured 78,781; Asiatics 6780--total 180,687.
_History._--Johannesburg owes its existence to the discovery of gold in
the Witwatersrand reefs. The town, named after Johannes Rissik, then
surveyor-general of the Transvaal, was founded in September 1886, the
first buildings being erected on the part of the reef where are now the
Ferreira and Wemmer mines. These buildings were found to cover valuable
ore, and in December following the Boer government marked out the site
of the city proper, and possession of the plots was given to purchasers
on the 1st of January 1887. The exploitation of the mines led to a rapid
development of the town during the next three years. The year 1890 was
one of great depression following the exhaustion of the surface ore, but
the provision of better machinery and cheaper coal led to a revival in
1891. By 1892 the leading mines had proved their dividend-earning
capacity, and in 1895 there was a great "boom" in the shares of the
mining companies. The linking of the town to the seaports by railways
during 1892-1895 gave considerable impetus to the gold-mining industry.
Material prosperity was accompanied, however, by political, educational
and other disadvantages, and the desire of the Johannesburgers--most of
whom were foreigners or "Uitlanders"--to remedy the grievances under
which they suffered led, in January 1896, to an abortive rising against
the Boer government (see TRANSVAAL: _History_). One result of this
movement was a slight advance in municipal self-government. Since 1887
the management of the town had been entrusted to a nominated sanitary
board, under the chairmanship of the mining commissioner appointed by
the South African Republic. In 1890 elected members had been admitted to
this board, but at the end of 1897 an elective _stadsraad_ (town
council) was constituted, though its functions were strictly limited.
There was a great development in the mining industry during 1897-1898
and 1899, the value of the gold extracted in 1898 exceeding £15,000,000,
but the political situation grew worse, and in September 1899, owing to
the imminence of war between the Transvaal and Great Britain, the
majority of the Uitlanders fled from the city. Between October 1899,
when war broke out, and the 31st of May 1900, when the city was taken by
the British, the Boer government worked certain mines for their own
benefit. After a period of military administration and of government by
a nominated town council, an ordinance was passed in June 1903 providing
for elective municipal councils, and in December following the first
election to the new council took place. In 1905 the town was divided
into wards. In that year the number of municipal voters was 23,338. In
1909 the proportional representation system was adopted in the election
of town councillors.
During 1901-1903, while the war was still in progress or but recently
concluded, the gold output was comparatively slight. The difficulty in
obtaining sufficient labour for the mines led to a successful agitation
for the importation of coolies from China (see TRANSVAAL: _History_).
During 1904-1906 over 50,000 coolies were brought to the mines, a
greatly increased output being the result, the value of the gold
extracted in 1905 exceeding £20,000,000. Notwithstanding the increased
production of gold, Johannesburg during 1905-1907 passed through a
period of severe commercial depression, the result in part of the
unsettled political situation. In June 1907 the repatriation of the
Chinese coolies began; it was completed in February 1910.
An excellent compilation, entitled _Johannesburg Statistics_, dealing
with almost every phase of the city's life, is issued monthly (since
January 1905) by the town council. See also the _Post Office
Directory, Transvaal_ (Johannesburg, annually), which contains
specially prepared maps, and the annual reports of the Johannesburg
chamber of commerce. For the political history of Johannesburg, see
the bibliography under TRANSVAAL.
JOHANNISBERG, a village of Germany, in the Prussian province of
Hesse-Nassau, in the Rheingau, on the right bank of the Rhine, 6 m. S.
of Rüdesheim by railway. The place is mainly celebrated for the
beautiful Schloss which crowns a hill overlooking the Rhine valley, and
is surrounded by vineyards yielding the famous Johannisberger wine. The
Schloss, built in 1757-1759 by the abbots of Fulda on the site of a
Benedictine monastery founded in 1090, was bestowed, in 1807, by
Napoleon upon Marshal Kellermann. In 1814 it was given by Francis,
emperor of Austria, to Prince Metternich, in whose family it still
remains.
JOHN (Heb. [Hebrew: Yohanan]), _Yohanan_, "Yahweh has been gracious,"
Gr. [Greek: Iôannês], Lat. _Joannes_, Ital. _Giovanni_, Span. _Juan_,
Port. _João_, Fr. _Jean_, Ger. _Johannes_, _Johann_ [abbr. _Hans_],
Gael. _Ian_, Pol. and Czech _Jan_, Hung. _János_), a masculine proper
name common in all Christian countries, its popularity being due to its
having been borne by the "Beloved Disciple" of Christ, St John the
Evangelist, and by the forerunner of Christ, St John the Baptist. It has
been the name of twenty-two popes--the style of Popes John XXII. and
XXIII. being due to an error in the number assumed by John XXI.
(q.v.)--and of many sovereigns, princes, &c. The order followed in the
biographical notices below is as follows: (1) the Apostle, (2) the
Baptist, (3) popes, (4) Roman emperors, (5) kings; John of England
first, the rest in the alphabetical order of their countries, (6) other
sovereign princes, (7) non-sovereign princes, (8) saints, (9)
theologians, chroniclers, &c. These princes who are known by a name in
addition to John (John Albert, &c.) will be found after the article
JOHN, GOSPEL OF.
JOHN, THE APOSTLE, in the Bible, was the son of Zebedee, a Galilean
fisherman, and Salome. It is probable that he was born at Bethsaida,
where along with his brother James he followed his father's occupation.
The family appears to have been in easy circumstances; at least we find
that Zebedee employed hired servants, and that Salome was among those
women who contributed to the maintenance of Jesus (Mark i. 20, xv. 40,
41, xvi. 1). John's "call" to follow our Lord occurred simultaneously
with that addressed to his brother, and shortly after that addressed to
the brothers Andrew and Simon Peter (Mark i. 19, 20). John speedily took
his place among the twelve apostles, sharing with James the title of
Boanerges ("sons of thunder," perhaps strictly "sons of anger," i.e. men
readily angered), and became a member of that inner circle to which, in
addition to his brother, Peter alone belonged (Mark v. 37, ix. 2, xiv.
33). John appears throughout the synoptic record as a zealous, fiery
Jew-Christian. It is he who indignantly complains to Jesus, "We saw one
casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us," and tells Him,
"We forbade him" for that reason (Mark ix. 38); and who with his
brother, when a Samaritan village will not receive Jesus, asks Him,
"Wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume
them?" (Luke ix. 54). The book of Acts confirms this tradition. After
the departure of Jesus, John appears as present in Jerusalem with Peter
and the other apostles (i. 13); is next to Peter the most prominent
among those who bear testimony to the fact of the resurrection (iii.
12-26, iv. 13, 19-22); and is sent with Peter to Samaria, to confirm the
newly converted Christians there (viii. 14, 25). St Paul tells us
similarly that when, on his second visit to Jerusalem, "James," the
Lord's brother, "and Cephas and John, who were considered pillars,
perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas
the right hand of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen, and
they unto the circumcision" (Gal. ii. 9). John thus belonged in 46-47 to
the Jewish-Christian school; but we do not know whether to the stricter
group of James or to the milder group of Peter (ibid. ii. 11-14).
The subsequent history of the apostle is obscure. Polycrates, bishop of
Ephesus (in Euseb., _H. E._ iii. 31; v. 24), attests in 196 that John
"who lay on the bosom of the Lord rests at Ephesus"; but previously in
this very sentence he has declared that "Philip one of the twelve
apostles rests in Hierapolis," although Eusebius (doubtless rightly)
identifies this Philip not with the apostle but with the
deacon-evangelist of Acts xxi. 8. Polycrates also declares that John was
a priest wearing the [Greek: petalon] (gold plate) that distinguished
the high-priestly mitre. Irenaeus in various passages of his works,
181-191, holds a similar tradition. He says that John lived up to the
time of Trajan and published his gospel in Ephesus, and identifies the
apostle with John the disciple of the Lord, who wrote the Apocalypse
under Domitian, whom Irenaeus's teacher Polycarp had known personally
and of whom Polycarp had much to tell. These traditions are accepted and
enlarged by later authors, Tertullian adding that John was banished to
Patmos after he had miraculously survived the punishment of immersion in
burning oil. As it is evident that legend was busy with John as early as
the time of Polycrates, the real worth of these traditions requires to
be tested by examination of their ultimate source. This inquiry has been
pressed upon scholars since the apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse
or of the Fourth Gospel, or of both these works, has been disputed. (See
JOHN, GOSPEL OF, and REVELATION, BOOK OF.) The question has not been
strictly one between advanced and conservative criticism, for the
Tübingen school recognized the Apocalypse as apostolic, and found in it
a confirmation of John's residence in Ephesus. On the other hand,
Lützelberger (1840), Th. Keim (_Jesus v. Naz._, vol. i., 1867), J. H.
Scholten (1872), H. J. Holtzmann (esp. in _Einl. in d. N. T._, 3rd ed.,
1902), and other recent writers, wholly reject the tradition. It has had
able defenders in Steitz (_Stud. u. Krit._, 1868), Hilgenfeld (_Einl._,
1875) and Lightfoot (_Essays on Supernatural Religion_, collected 1889).
W. Sanday (_Criticism of Fourth Gospel_, 1905) makes passing admissions
eloquent as to the strength of the negative position; whilst amongst
Roman Catholic scholars, A. Loisy (_Le 4me. Ev._, 1903) stands with
Holtzmann, and Th. Calmes (_Ev. selon S. Jean_, 1904, 1906) and L.
Duchesne (_Hist. anc. de l'Egl._, 1906) exhibit, with papal
approbation, the inconclusiveness of the conservative arguments.
The opponents of the tradition lay weight on the absence of positive
evidence before the latter part of the 2nd century, especially in Papias
and in the epistles of Ignatius and of Irenaeus's authority, Polycarp.
They find it necessary to assume that Irenaeus mistook Polycarp; but
this is not a difficult task, since already Eusebius (c. 310-313) is
compelled to point out that Papias testifies to two Johns, the Apostle
and a presbyter, and that Irenaeus is mistaken in identifying those two
Johns, and in holding that Papias had seen John the Apostle (_H. E._
iii. 39, 5, 2). Irenaeus tells us, doubtless correctly, that Papias was
"the companion of Polycarp": this fact alone would suffice, given his
two mistakes concerning Papias, to make Irenaeus decide that Polycarp
had seen John the Apostle. The chronicler George the Monk (Hamartolus)
in the 9th century, and an epitome dating from the 7th or 8th century
but probably based on the _Chronicle_ of Philip of Side (c. 430),
declare, on the authority of the second book of Papias, that John the
Zebedean was killed by Jews (presumably in 60-70). Adolf Harnack,
_Chron. d. altchr. Litt._ (1897), pp. 656-680), rejects the assertion;
but the number of scholars who accept it as correct is distinctly on the
increase. (F. v. H.)
JOHN THE BAPTIST, in the Bible, the "forerunner" of Jesus Christ in the
Gospel story. By his preaching and teaching he evidently made a great
impression upon his contemporaries (cf. Josephus, _Ant._ xviii., § 5).
According to the birth-narrative embodied in Luke i. and ii., he was
born in "a city of Judah" in "the hill country" (possibly Hebron[1]) of
priestly parentage. His father Zacharias was a priest "of the course of
Abijah," and his mother Elizabeth, who was also of priestly descent, was
related to Mary, the mother of Jesus, whose senior John was by six
months. This narrative of the Baptist's birth seems to embody some very
primitive features, Hebraic and Palestinian in character, and possibly
at one time independent of the Christian tradition. In the apocryphal
gospels John is sometimes made the subject of special miraculous
experiences (e.g. in the _Protevangelium Jacobi_, ch. xxii., where
Elizabeth fleeing from Herod's assassins cried: "Mount of God, receive a
mother with her child," and suddenly the mountain was divided and
received her).
In his 30th year (15th year of the emperor Tiberius, ? A.D. 25-26) John
began his public life in the "wilderness of Judaea," the wild district
that lies between the Kedron and the Dead Sea, and particularly in the
neighbourhood of the Jordan, where multitudes were attracted by his
eloquence. The central theme of his preaching was, according to the
Synoptic Gospels, the nearness of the coming of the Messianic kingdom,
and the consequent urgency for preparation by repentance. John was
evidently convinced that he himself had received the divine commission
to bring to a close and complete the prophetic period, by inaugurating
the Messianic age. He identified himself with the "voice" of Isa. xl. 3.
Noteworthy features of his preaching were its original and prophetic
character, and its high ethical tone, as shown e.g. in its
anti-Pharisaic denunciation of trust in mere racial privilege (Matt.
iii. 9). Herein also lay, probably, the true import of the baptism which
he administered to those who accepted his message and confessed their
sins. It was an act symbolizing moral purification (cf. Ezek. xxxvi. 25;
Zech. xiii. 1) by way of preparation for the coming "kingdom of heaven,"
and implied that the Jew so baptized no longer rested in his privileged
position as a child of Abraham. John's appearance, costume and habits of
life, together with the tone of his preaching, all suggest the prophetic
character. He was popularly regarded as a prophet, more especially as a
second Elijah. His preaching awoke a great popular response,
particularly among the masses of the people, "the people of the land."
He had disciples who fasted (Mark ii. 18, &c.), who visited him
regularly in prison (Matt. xi. 2, xiv. 12), and to whom he taught
special forms of prayer (Luke v. 33, xi. 1). Some of these afterwards
became followers of Christ (John i. 37). John's activity indeed had
far-reaching effects. It profoundly influenced the Messianic movement
depicted in the Gospels. The preaching of Jesus shows traces of this,
and the Fourth Gospel (as well as the Synoptists) displays a marked
interest in connecting the Johannine movement with the beginnings of
Christianity. The fact that after the lapse of a quarter of a century
there were Christians in Ephesus who accepted John's baptism (Acts
xviii. 25, xix. 3) is highly significant. This influence also persisted
in later times. Christ's estimate of John (Matt. xi. 7 seq.) was a very
high one. He also pointedly alludes to John's work and the people's
relation to it, in many sayings and parables (sometimes in a tone of
irony). The duration of John's ministry cannot be determined with
certainty: it terminated in his imprisonment in the fortress of
Machaerus, to which he had been committed by Herod Antipas, whose
incestuous marriage with Herodias, the Baptist had sternly rebuked. His
execution cannot with safety be placed later than A.D. 28.
In the church calendar this event is commemorated on the 29th of August.
According to tradition he was buried at Samaria (Theodoret, _H. E._ iii.
3). (G. H. Bo.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] There is no reason to suppose that Jutta is intended by the
[Greek: polis Iouda] of Luke i. 39: the tradition which makes 'Ain
Karim, near Jerusalem, the birthplace of the Baptist only dates from
the crusading period.
JOHN I., pope from 523 to 526, was a Tuscan by birth, and was
consecrated pope on the death of Hormisdas. In 525 he was sent by
Theodoric at the head of an embassy to Constantinople to obtain from the
emperor Justin toleration for the Arians; but he succeeded so
imperfectly in his mission that Theodoric on his return, suspecting that
he had acted only half-heartedly, threw him into prison, where he
shortly afterwards died, Felix IV. succeeding him. He was enrolled among
the martyrs, his day being May 27.
JOHN II., pope from 533 to 535, also named Mercurius, was elevated to
the papal chair on the death of Boniface II. During his pontificate a
decree against simony was engraven on marble and placed before the altar
of St Peter's. At the instance of the emperor Justinian he adopted the
proposition _unus de Trinitate passus est in carne_ as a test of the
orthodoxy of certain Scythian monks accused of Nestorian tendencies. He
was succeeded by Agapetus I.
JOHN III., pope from 561 to 574, successor to Pelagius, was descended
from a noble Roman family. He is said to have been successful in
preventing an invasion of Italy by the recall of the deposed exarch
Narses, but the Lombards still continued their incursions, and,
especially during the pontificate of his successor Benedict I.,
inflicted great miseries on the province.
JOHN IV., pope from 640 to 642, was a Dalmatian by birth, and succeeded
Severinus after the papal chair had been vacant four months. While he
adhered to the repudiation of the Monothelitic doctrine by Severinus, he
endeavoured to explain away the connexion of Honorius I. with the
heresy. His successor was Theodorus I.
JOHN V., pope from 685 to 686, was a Syrian by birth, and on account of
his knowledge of Greek had in 680 been named papal legate to the sixth
ecumenical council at Constantinople. He was the successor of Benedict
II., and after a pontificate of little more than a year, passed chiefly
in bed, was followed by Conon.
JOHN VI., pope from 701 to 705, was a native of Greece, and succeeded to
the papal chair two months after the death of Sergius I. He assisted the
exarch Theophylact, who had been sent into Italy by the emperor
Justinian II., and prevented him from using violence against the Romans.
Partly by persuasion and partly by means of a bribe, John succeeded in
inducing Gisulf, duke of Benevento, to withdraw from the territories of
the empire.
JOHN VII., pope from 705 to 707, successor of John VI., was also of
Greek nationality. He seems to have acceded to the request of the
emperor Justinian II. that he should give his sanction to the decrees of
the Quinisext or Trullan council of 692. There are several monuments of
John in the church of St Maria Antiqua at the foot of the Palatine hill;
others were formerly in the chapel of the Virgin, built by him in the
basilica of St Peter. He was succeeded by Sisinnius.
JOHN VIII., pope from 872 to 882, successor of Adrian II., was a Roman
by birth. His chief aim during his pontificate was to defend the Roman
state and the authority of the Holy See at Rome from the Saracens, and
from the nascent feudalism which was represented outside by the dukes of
Spoleto and the marquises of Tuscany and within by a party of Roman
nobles. Events, however, were so fatally opposed to his designs that no
sooner did one of his schemes begin to realize itself in fact than it
was shattered by an unlooked-for chance. To obtain an influential
alliance against his enemies, he agreed in 875, after death had deprived
him of his natural protector, the emperor Louis II., to bestow the
imperial crown on Charles the Bald; but that monarch was too much
occupied in France to grant him much effectual aid, and about the time
of the death of Charles he found it necessary to come to terms with the
Saracens, who were only prevented from entering Rome by the promise of
an annual tribute. Carloman, the opponent of Charles's son Louis, soon
after invaded northern Italy, and, securing the support of the bishops
and counts, demanded from the pope the imperial crown. John attempted to
temporize, but Lambert, duke of Spoleto, a partisan of Carloman, whom
sickness had recalled to Germany, entered Rome in 878 with an
overwhelming force, and for thirty days virtually held John a prisoner
in St Peter's. Lambert was, however, unsuccessful in winning any
concession from the pope, who after his withdrawal carried out a
previous purpose of going to France. There he presided at the council of
Troyes, which promulgated a ban of excommunication against the
supporters of Carloman--amongst others Adalbert of Tuscany, Lambert of
Spoleto, and Formosus, bishop of Porto, who was afterwards elevated to
the papal chair. In 879 John returned to Italy accompanied by Boso, duke
of Provence, whom he adopted as his son, and made an unsuccessful
attempt to get recognized as king of Italy. In the same year he was
compelled to give a promise of his sanction to the claims of Charles the
Fat, who received from him the imperial crown in 881. Before this, in
order to secure the aid of the Greek emperor against the Saracens, he
had agreed to sanction the restoration of Photius to the see of
Constantinople, and had withdrawn his consent on finding that he reaped
from the concession no substantial benefit. Charles the Fat, partly from
unwillingness, partly from natural inability, gave him also no effectual
aid, and the last years of John VIII. were spent chiefly in hurling vain
anathemas against his various political enemies. According to the
annalist of Fulda, he was murdered by members of his household. His
successor was Marinus.
JOHN IX., pope from 898 to 900, not only confirmed the judgment of his
predecessor Theodore II. in granting Christian burial to Formosus, but
at a council held at Ravenna decreed that the records of the synod which
had condemned him should be burned. Finding, however, that it was
advisable to cement the ties between the empire and the papacy, John
gave unhesitating support to Lambert in preference to Arnulf, and also
induced the council to determine that henceforth the consecration of the
popes should take place only in the presence of the imperial legates.
The sudden death of Lambert shattered the hopes which this alliance
seemed to promise. John was succeeded by Benedict IV.
JOHN X., pope from 914 to 928, was deacon at Bologna when he attracted
the attention of Theodora, the wife of Theophylact, the most powerful
noble in Rome, through whose influence he was elevated first to the see
of Bologna and then to the archbishopric of Ravenna. In direct
opposition to a decree of council, he was also at the instigation of
Theodora promoted to the papal chair as the successor of Lando. Like
John IX. he endeavoured to secure himself against his temporal enemies
through a close alliance with Theophylact and Alberic, marquis of
Camerino, then governor of the duchy of Spoleto. In December 915 he
granted the imperial crown to Berengar, and with the assistance of the
forces of all the princes of the Italian peninsula he took the field in
person against the Saracens, over whom he gained a great victory on the
banks of the Garigliano. The defeat and death of Berengar through the
combination of the Italian princes, again frustrated the hopes of a
united Italy, and after witnessing several years of anarchy and
confusion John perished through the intrigues of Marozia, daughter of
Theodora. His successor was Leo VI.
JOHN XI., pope from 931 to 935, was the son of Marozia and the reputed
son of Sergius III. Through the influence of his mother he was chosen to
succeed Stephen VII. at the early age of twenty-one. He was the mere
exponent of the purposes of his mother, until her son Alberic succeeded
in 933 in overthrowing their authority. The pope was kept a virtual
prisoner in the Lateran, where he is said to have died in 935, in which
year Leo VII. was consecrated his successor.
JOHN XII., pope from 955 to 964, was the son of Alberic, whom he
succeeded as patrician of Rome in 954, being then only sixteen years of
age. His original name was Octavian, but when he assumed the papal tiara
as successor to Agapetus II., he adopted the apostolic name of John, the
first example, it is said, of the custom of altering the surname in
connexion with elevation to the papal chair. As a temporal ruler John
was devoid of the vigour and firmness of his father, and his union of
the papal office--which through his scandalous private life he made a
byword of reproach--with his civil dignities proved a source of weakness
rather than of strength. In order to protect himself against the
intrigues in Rome and the power of Berengar II. of Italy, he called to
his aid Otto the Great of Germany, to whom he granted the imperial crown
in 962. Even before Otto left Rome the pope had, however, repented of
his recognition of a power which threatened altogether to overshadow his
authority, and had begun to conspire against the new emperor. His
intrigues were discovered by Otto, who, after he had defeated and taken
prisoner Berengar, returned to Rome and summoned a council which deposed
John, who was in hiding in the mountains of Campania, and elected Leo
VIII. in his stead. An attempt at an insurrection was made by the
inhabitants of Rome even before Otto left the city, and on his departure
John returned at the head of a formidable company of friends and
retainers, and caused Leo to seek safety in immediate flight. Otto
determined to make an effort in support of Leo, but before he reached
the city John had died, in what manner is uncertain, and Benedict V. had
mounted the papal chair.
JOHN XIII., pope from 965 to 972, was descended from a noble Roman
family, and at the time of his election as successor to Leo VIII. was
bishop of Narni. He had been somewhat inconsistent in his relations with
his predecessor Leo, but his election was confirmed by the emperor Otto,
and his submissive attitude towards the imperial power was so
distasteful to the Romans that they expelled him from the city. On
account of the threatening procedure of Otto, they permitted him shortly
afterwards to return, upon which, with the sanction of Otto, he took
savage vengeance on those who had formerly opposed him. Shortly after
holding a council along with the emperor at Ravenna in 967, he gave the
imperial crown to Otto II. at Rome in assurance of his succession to his
father; and in 972 he also crowned Theophano as empress immediately
before her marriage. On his death in the same year he was followed by
Benedict VI.
JOHN XIV., pope from 983 to 984, successor to Benedict VII., was born at
Pavia, and before his elevation to the papal chair was imperial
chancellor of Otto II. Otto died shortly after his election, when
Boniface VII., on the strength of the popular feeling against the new
pope, returned from Constantinople and placed John in prison, where he
died either by starvation or poison.
JOHN XV., pope from 985 to 996, generally recognized as the successor of
Boniface VII., the pope John who was said to have ruled for four months
after John XIV., being now omitted by the best authorities. John XV. was
the son of Leo, a Roman presbyter. At the time he mounted the papal
chair Crescentius was patrician of Rome, but, although his influence was
on this account very much hampered, the presence of the empress
Theophano in Rome from 989 to 991 restrained also the ambition of
Crescentius. On her departure the pope, whose venality and nepotism had
made him very unpopular with the citizens, died of fever before the
arrival of Otto III., who elevated his own kinsman Bruno to the papal
dignity under the name of Gregory V.
JOHN XVI.,, pope or antipope from 997 to 998, was a Calabrian Greek by
birth, and a favourite of the empress Theophano, from whom he had
received the bishopric of Placentia. His original name was Philagathus.
In 995 he was sent by Otto III. on an embassy to Constantinople to
negotiate a marriage with a Greek princess. On his way back he either
accidentally or at the special request of Crescentius visited Rome. A
little before this Gregory V., at the end of 996, had been compelled to
flee from the city; and the wily and ambitious Greek had now no scruple
in accepting the papal tiara from the hands of Crescentius. The arrival
of Otto at Rome in the spring of 998 put a sudden end to the treacherous
compact. John sought safety in flight, but was discovered in his place
of hiding and brought back to Rome, where after enduring cruel and
ignominious tortures he was immured in a dungeon.
JOHN XVII., whose original name was Sicco, succeeded Silvester II. as
pope in June 1003, but died less than five months afterwards.
JOHN XVIII., pope from 1003 to 1009, was, during his whole pontificate,
the mere creature of the patrician John Crescentius, and ultimately he
abdicated and retired to a monastery, where he died shortly afterwards.
His successor was Sergius IV.
JOHN XIX., pope from 1024 to 1033, succeeded his brother Benedict VIII.,
both being members of the powerful house of Tusculum. He merely took
orders to enable him to ascend the papal chair, having previously been a
consul and senator. He displayed his freedom from ecclesiastical
prejudices, if also his utter ignorance of ecclesiastical history, by
agreeing, on the payment of a large bribe, to grant to the patriarch of
Constantinople the title of an ecumenical bishop, but the general
indignation which the proposal excited throughout the church compelled
him almost immediately to withdraw from his agreement. On the death of
the emperor Henry II. in 1024 he gave his support to Conrad II., who
along with his consort was crowned with great pomp at St Peter's in
Easter of 1027. John died in 1033, in the full possession of his
dignities. A successor was found for him in his nephew Benedict IX., a
boy of only twelve years of age. (L. D.*)
JOHN XXI. (Pedro Giuliano-Rebulo), pope from the 8th of September 1276
to the 20th of May 1277 (should be named John XX., but there is an error
in the reckoning through the insertion of an antipope), a native of
Portugal, educated for the church, became archdeacon and then archbishop
of Braga, and so ingratiated himself with Gregory X. at the council of
Lyons (1274) that he was taken to Rome as cardinal-bishop of Frascati,
and succeeded Gregory after an interregnum of twenty days. As pope he
excommunicated Alphonso III. of Portugal for interfering with episcopal
elections and sent legates to the Great Khan. He was devoted to secular
science, and his small affection for the monks awakened the distrust of
a large portion of the clergy. His life was brought to a premature close
through the fall of the roof in the palace he had built at Viterbo. His
successor was Nicholas III.
JOHN XXI. has been identified since the 14th century, most probably
correctly, with Petrus Hispanus, a celebrated Portuguese physician and
philosopher, author of several medical works--notably the curious _Liber
de oculo_, trans. into German and well edited by A. M. Berger (Munich,
1899), and of a popular textbook in logic, the _Summulae logicales_.
John XXI. is constantly referred to as a magician by ignorant
chroniclers.
See _Les Registres de Grégoire X. et Jean XXI._, published by J.
Guiraud and E. Cadier in _Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d'Athènes
et de Rome_ (Paris, 1898); A. Potthast, _Regesta pontif. Roman._, vol.
2 (Berlin, 1875); F. Gregorovius, _Rome in the Middle Ages_, vol. v.,
trans. by Mrs G. W. Hamilton (London, 1900-1902); R. Stapper, _Papst
Johann XXI._ (Münster, 1898); J. T. Köhler, _Vollständige Nachricht
von Papst Johann XXI._ (Göttingen, 1760). (C. H. Ha.)
JOHN XXII., pope from 1316 to 1334, was born at Cahors, France, in 1249.
His original name was Jacques Duèse, and he came either of a family of
petty nobility or else of well-to-do middle-class parents, and was not,
as has been popularly supposed, the son of a shoemaker. He began his
education with the Dominicans at Cahors, subsequently studied law at
Montpellier, and law and medicine in Paris, and finally taught at Cahors
and Toulouse. At Toulouse he became intimate with the bishop Louis, son
of Charles II., king of Naples. In 1300 he was elevated to the episcopal
see of Fréjus by Pope Boniface VIII. at the instance of the king of
Naples, and in 1308 was made chancellor of Naples by Charles, retaining
this office under Charles's successor, Robert of Anjou. In 1310 Pope
Clement V. summoned Jacques to Avignon and instructed him to advise upon
the affair of the Templars and also upon the question of condemning the
memory of Boniface VIII. Jacques decided on the legality of suppressing
the order of the Templars, holding that the pope would be serving the
best interests of the church by pronouncing its suppression; but he
rejected the condemnation of Boniface as a sacrilegious affront to the
church and a monstrous abuse of the lay power. On the 23rd of December
1312 Clement appointed him cardinal-bishop of Porto, and it was while
cardinal of Porto that he was elected pope, on the 7th of August 1316.
Clement had died in April 1314, but the cardinals assembled at
Carpentras were unable to agree as to his successor. As the two-thirds
majority requisite for an election could not be obtained, the cardinals
separated, and it was not until the 28th of June 1316 that they
reassembled in the cloister of the Dominicans at Lyons, and then only in
deference to the pressure exerted upon them by Philip V. of France.
After deliberating for more than a month they elected Robert of Anjou's
candidate, Jacques Duèse, who was crowned on the 5th of September, and
on the 2nd of October arrived at Avignon, where he remained for the rest
of his life.
More jurist than theologian, John defended the rights of the papacy with
rigorous zeal and as rigorous logic. For the restoration of the papacy
to its old independence, which had been so gravely compromised under his
immediate predecessors, and for the execution of the vast enterprises
which the papacy deemed useful for its prestige and for Christendom,
considerable sums were required; and to raise the necessary money John
burdened Christian Europe with new taxes and a complicated fiscal
system, which was fraught with serious consequences. For his personal
use, however, he retained but a very small fraction of the sums thus
acquired, and at his death his private fortune amounted to scarce a
million florins. The essentially practical character of his
administration has led many historians to tax him with avarice, but
later research on the fiscal system of the papacy of the period,
particularly the joint work of Samaran and Mollat, enables us very
sensibly to modify the severe judgment passed on John by Gregorovius and
others.
John's pontificate was continually disturbed by his conflict with Louis
of Bavaria and by the theological revolt of the Spiritual Franciscans.
In October 1314 Louis of Bavaria and Frederick of Austria had each been
elected German king by the divided electors. Louis was gradually
recognized by the whole of Germany, especially after his victory at
Mühldorf (1322), and gained numerous adherents in Italy, where he
supported the Visconti, who had been condemned as heretics by the pope.
John affected to ignore the successes of Louis, and on the 8th of
October 1323 forbade his recognition as king of the Romans. After
demanding a respite, Louis abruptly appealed at Nuremberg from the
future sentence of the pope to a general council (December 8, 1323). The
conflict then assumed a grave doctrinal character. The doctrine of the
rights of the lay monarchy sustained by Occam and John of Paris, by
Marsilius of Padua, John of Jandun and Leopold of Bamberg, was affirmed
by the jurists and theologians, penetrated into the parlements and the
universities, and was combated by the upholders of papal absolutism,
such as Alvaro Pelayo and Alonzo Trionfo. Excommunicated on the 21st of
March 1324, Louis retorted by appealing for a second time to a general
council, which was held on the 22nd of May 1324, and accused John of
being an enemy to the peace and the law, stigmatizing him as a heretic
on the ground that he opposed the principle of evangelical poverty as
professed by the strict Franciscans. From this moment Louis appeared in
the character of the natural ally and even the protector of the
Spirituals against the persecution of the pope. On the 11th of July 1324
the pope laid under an interdict the places where Louis or his adherents
resided, but this bull had no effect in Germany. Equally futile was
John's declaration (April 3, 1327) that Louis had forfeited his crown
and abetted heresy by granting protection to Marsilius of Padua. Having
reconciled himself with Frederick of Austria, Louis penetrated into
Italy and seized Rome on the 7th of January 1328, with the help of the
Roman Ghibellines led by Sciarra Colonna. After installing himself in
the Vatican, Louis got himself crowned by the deputies of the Roman
people; instituted proceedings for the deposition of John, whom the
Roman people, displeased by the spectacle of the papacy abandoning Rome,
declared to have forfeited the pontificate (April 18, 1328); and finally
caused a Minorite friar, Pietro Rainalucci da Corvara, to be elected
pope under the name of Nicholas V. John preached a platonic crusade
against Louis, who burned the pope's effigy at Pisa and in Amelia. Soon,
however, Louis felt his power waning, and quitted Rome and Italy (1329).
Incapable of independent action, the antipope was abandoned by the
Romans and handed over to John, who forced him to make a solemn
submission with a halter round his neck (August 15, 1330). Nicholas was
condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and died in obscurity at Avignon;
while the Roman people submitted to King Robert, who governed the church
through his vicars. In 1317, in execution of a bull of Clement V., the
royal vicariate in Italy had been conferred by John on Robert of Anjou,
and this appointment was renewed in 1322 and 1324, with threats of
excommunication against any one who should seize the vicariate of Italy
without the authorization of the pope. One of John's last acts was his
decision to separate Italy from the Empire, but this bull was of no
avail and fell into oblivion. After his death, however, the interdict
was not removed from Germany, and the resistance of Louis and his
theologians continued.
A violent manifestation of this resistance took place in connexion with
the accusation of heresy brought against the pope. On the third Sunday
in Advent 1329, and afterwards in public consistory, John had preached
that the souls of those who have died in a state of grace go into
Abraham's bosom, _sub altari Dei_, and do not enjoy the beatific vision
(_visio facie ad faciem_) of the Lord until after the Last Judgment and
the Resurrection; and he had even instructed a Minorite friar, Gauthier
of Dijon, to collect the passages in the Fathers which were in favour of
this doctrine. On the 27th of December 1331 a Dominican, Thomas of
England, preached against this doctrine at Avignon itself and was thrown
into prison. When news of this affair had reached Paris, the pope sent
the general of the Minorites, Gerard Odonis, accompanied by a Dominican,
to sustain his doctrine in that city, but King Philip VI., perhaps at
the instigation of the refugee Spirituals in Paris, referred the
question to the faculty of theology, which, on the 2nd of January 1333,
declared that the souls of the blessed were elevated to the beatific
vision immediately after death; the faculty, nevertheless, were of
opinion that the pope should have propounded his erroneous doctrine only
"_recitando_," and not "_determinando, asserendo, seu etiam opinando_."
The king notified this decision to the pope, who assembled his
consistory in November 1333, and gave a haughty reply. The theologians
in Louis's following who were opposed to papal absolutism already spoke
of "the new heretic, Jacques de Cahors," and reiterated with increasing
insistency their demands for the convocation of a general council to try
the pope. John appears to have retracted shortly before his death, which
occurred on the 4th of December 1334.[1]
John had kindled very keen animosity, not only among the upholders of
the independence of the lay power, but also among the upholders of
absolute religious poverty, the exalted Franciscans. Clement V., at the
council of Vienne, had attempted to bring back the Spirituals to the
common rule by concessions; John, on the other hand, in the bull
_Quorundam exigit_ (April 13, 1317), adopted an uncompromising and
absolute attitude, and by the bull _Gloriosam ecclesiam_ (January 23,
1318) condemned the protests which had been raised against the bull
_Quorundam_ by a group of seventy-four Spirituals and conveyed to
Avignon by the monk Bernard Délicieux. Shortly afterwards four
Spirituals were burned at Marseilles. These were immediately hailed as
martyrs, and in the eyes of the exalted Franciscans at Naples and in
Sicily and the south of France the pope was regarded as antichrist. In
the bull _Sancta Romana et universa ecclesia_ (December 28, 1318) John
definitively excommunicated them and condemned their principal book, the
_Postil_ (commentary) on the Apocalypse (February 8, 1326). The bull
_Quia nonnunquam_ (March 26, 1322) defined the derogations from the rule
punished by the pope, and the bull _Cum inter nonnullos_ (November 12,
1323) condemned the proposition which had been admitted at the general
chapter of the Franciscans held at Perugia in 1322, according to which
Christ and the Apostles were represented as possessing no property,
either personal or common. The minister general, Michael of Cesena,
though opposed to the exaggerations of the Spirituals, joined with them
in protesting against the condemnation of the fundamental principle of
evangelical poverty, and the agitation gradually gained ground. The
pope, by the bull _Quia quorundam_ (November 10, 1324), cited Michael to
appear at Avignon at the same time as Occam and Bonagratia. All three
fled to the court of Louis of Bavaria (May 26, 1328), while the majority
of the Franciscans made submission and elected a general entirely
devoted to the pope. But the resistance, aided by Louis and merged as it
now was in the cause sustained by Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun,
became daily bolder. Treatises on poverty appeared on every side; the
party of Occam clamoured with increasing imperiousness for the
condemnation of John by a general council; and the Spirituals,
confounded in the persecution with the Beghards and with Fraticelli of
every description, maintained themselves in the south of France in spite
of the reign of terror instituted in that region by the Inquisition.
See M. Souchon, _Die Papstwahlen von Bonifaz VIII. bis Urban VI._
(Brunswick, 1888); Abbé Albe, _Autour de Jean XXII._ (Rome, 1904); K.
Müller, _Der Kampf Ludwigs des Bayern mit der Curie_ (Tübingen, 1879
seq.); W. Preger, "Mémoires sur la lutte entre Jean XXII. et Louis de
Bavière" in _Abhandl. der bayr. Akad._, hist. sec., xv., xvi., xvii.;
S. Riezler, _Die litterar. Widersacher der Päpste zur Zeit Ludwigs des
Baiers_ (Leipzig, 1874); F. Ehrle, "Die Spiritualen" in _Archiv für
Litteratur-und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters_ (vols. i. and ii.);
C. Samaran and G. Mollat, _La Fiscalité pontificale en France au xiv^e
siècle_ (Paris, 1905); A. Coulon and G. Mollat, _Lettres secrètes et
curiales de Jean XXII. se rapportant à la France_ (Paris, 1899, seq.).
(P. A.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] On the 29th of January 1336 Pope Benedict XII. pronounced a long
judgment on this point of doctrine, a judgment which he declared had
been included by John in a bull which death had prevented him from
sealing.
JOHN XXIII. (Baldassare Cossa), pope, or rather antipope from 1410 to
1415, was born of a good Neapolitan family, and began by leading the
life of a corsair before entering the service of the Church under the
pontificate of Boniface IX. His abilities, which were mainly of an
administrative and military order, were soon rewarded by the cardinal's
hat and the legation of Bologna. On the 29th of June 1408 he and seven
of his colleagues broke away from Gregory XII., and together with six
cardinals of the obedience of Avignon, who had in like manner separated
from Benedict XIII., they agreed to aim at the assembling of a general
council, setting aside the two rival pontiffs, an expedient which they
considered would put an end to the great schism of the Western Church,
but which resulted in the election of yet a third pope. This act was
none the less decisive for Baldassare Cossa's future. Alexander V., the
first pope elected at Pisa, was not perhaps, as has been maintained,
merely a man of straw put forward by the ambitious cardinal of Bologna;
but he reigned only ten months, and on his death, which happened rather
suddenly on the 4th of May 1410, Baldassare Cossa succeeded him.
Whether the latter had bought his electors by money and promises, or
owed his success to his dominant position in Bologna, and to the support
of Florence and of Louis II. of Anjou, he seems to have received the
unanimous vote of all the seventeen cardinals gathered together at
Bologna (May 17). He took the name of John XXIII., and France, England,
and part of Italy and Germany recognized him as head of the Catholic
church.
The struggle in which he and Louis II. of Anjou engaged with Ladislaus
of Durazzo, king of Sicily, and Gregory XII.'s chief protector in Italy,
at first went in John's favour. After the brilliant victory of
Roccasecca (May 19, 1411) he had the satisfaction of dragging the
standards of Pope Gregory and King Ladislaus through the streets of
Rome. But the dispersion of Louis of Anjou's troops and his
carelessness, together with the lack of success which attended the
preaching of a crusade in Germany, France and England, finally decided
John XXIII. to abandon the French claimant to the throne of Sicily; he
recognized Ladislaus, his former enemy, as king of Naples, and Ladislaus
did not fail to salute John XXIII. as pope, abandoning Gregory XII.
(June 15, 1412). This was a fatal step: John XXIII. was trusting in a
dishonest and insatiable prince; he would have acted more wisely in
remaining the ally of the weak but loyal Louis of Anjou. However, it
seemed desirable that the reforms announced by the council of Pisa,
which the popes set up by this synod seemed in no hurry to carry into
effect, should be further discussed in the new council which it had been
agreed should be summoned about the spring of 1412. But John was anxious
that this council should be held in Rome, a city where he alone was
master; the few prelates and ambassadors who very slowly gathered there
held only a small number of sessions, in which John again condemned the
writings of Wycliffe. John was attacked by the representatives of the
various nations and reprimanded even for his private conduct, but
endeavoured to extricate himself from this uncomfortable position by
gratifying their desires, if not by reforming abuses. It is, however,
only fair to add that he took various half-measures and gave many
promises which, if they had been put into execution, would have
confirmed or completed the reforms inaugurated at Pisa. But on the 3rd
of March 1413 John adjourned the council of Rome till December, without
even fixing the place where the next session should be held. It was held
at Constance in Germany, and John could only have resigned himself to
accepting such an uncertain meeting-place because he was forced by
distress, isolation and fear to turn towards the head of the empire.
Less than a year after the treaty concluded with Ladislaus of Durazzo,
the latter forced his way into Rome (June 8, 1413), which he sacked,
expelling John, to whom even the Florentines did not dare to throw open
their gates for fear of the king of Sicily. Sigismund, king of the
Romans, not only extorted, it is said, a sum of 50,000 florins from the
pontiff in his extremity, but insisted upon his summoning the council at
Constance (December 9). It was in vain that, on the death of Ladislaus,
which took place unexpectedly (August 6, 1414), John was inspired with
the idea of breaking his compact with Sigismund and returning to Rome,
at the same time appealing to Louis of Anjou. It was too late. The
cardinals forced him towards Germany by the most direct road, without
allowing him to go by way of Avignon as he had projected, in order to
make plans with the princes of France.
On the 5th of November 1414 John opened the council of Constance, where,
on Christmas Day, he received the homage of the head of the empire, but
where his lack of prestige, the defection of his allies, the fury of his
adversaries, and the general sense of the necessity for union soon
showed only too clearly how small was the chance of his retaining the
tiara. He had to take a solemn oath to abdicate if his two rivals would
do the same, and this concession, which was not very sincere, gained him
for the last time the honour of seeing Sigismund prostrate at his feet
(March 2, 1415). But on the night of the 20th-21st of March, having
donned the garments of a layman, with a cross-bow slung at his side, he
succeeded in making his escape from Constance, accompanied only by a
single servant, and took refuge first in the castle of Schaffhausen,
then in that of Laufenburg, then at Freiburg-im-Breisgau, and finally at
Brisach, whence he hoped to reach Alsace, and doubtless ultimately
Avignon, under the protection of an escort sent by the duke of Burgundy.
The news of the pope's escape was received at Constance with an
extraordinary outburst of rage, and led to the subversive decrees of the
4th and 5th sessions, which proclaimed the superiority of the council
over the pope. Duke Frederick of Austria had hitherto sheltered John's
flight; but, laid under the ban of the empire, attacked by powerful
armies, and feeling that he was courting ruin, he preferred to give up
the pontiff who had trusted to him. John was brought back to Freiburg
(April 27), and there in vain attempted to appease the wrath which he
had aroused by more or less vague promises of resignation. His trial,
however, was already beginning. The three cardinals whom he charged with
his defence hastily declined this compromising task. Seventy-four
charges were drawn up, only twenty of which were set aside after the
witnesses had been heard. The accusation of having poisoned Alexander V.
and his doctor at Bologna was not maintained. But enough deeds of
immorality, tyranny, ambition and simony were found proved to justify
the severest judgment. He was suspended from his functions as pope on
the 14th of May 1415, and deposed on the following 29th of May.
However irregular this sentence may have been from the canonical point
of view (for the accusers do not seem to have actually proved the crime
of heresy, which was necessary, according to most scholars of the
period, to justify the deposition of a sovereign pontiff), the condemned
pope was not long in confirming it. Baldassare Cossa, now as humble and
resigned as he had before been energetic and tenacious, on his
transference to the castle of Rudolfzell admitted the wrong which he had
done by his flight, refused to bring forward anything in his defence,
acquiesced entirely in the judgment of the council which he declared to
be infallible, and finally, as an extreme precaution, ratified _motu
proprio_ the sentence of deposition, declaring that he freely and
willingly renounced any rights which he might still have in the papacy.
This fact has subsequently been often quoted against those who have
appealed to the events of 1415 to maintain that a council can depose a
pope who is _scandalizator ecclesiae_.
Cossa kept his word never to appeal against the sentence which stripped
him of the pontificate. He was held prisoner for three years in Germany,
but in the end bought his liberty from the count palatine. He used this
liberty only to go to Florence, in 1419, and throw himself on the mercy
of the legitimate pope. Martin V. appointed him cardinal-bishop of
Tusculum, a dignity which Cossa only enjoyed for a few months. He died
on the 22nd of December 1419, and all visitors to the Baptistery at
Florence may admire, under its high baldacchino, the sombre figure
sculptured by Donatello of the dethroned pontiff, who had at least the
merit of bowing his head under his chastisement, and of contributing by
his passive resignation to the extinction of the series of popes which
sprang from the council of Pisa. (N. V.)
JOHN I. (925-976), surnamed Tzimisces, East Roman emperor, was born of a
distinguished Cappadocian family. After helping his uncle Nicephorus
Phocas (q.v.) to obtain the throne and to restore the empire's eastern
provinces he was deprived of his command by an intrigue, upon which he
retaliated by conspiring with Nicephorus' wife Theophania to assassinate
him. Elected ruler in his stead, John proceeded to justify his
usurpation by the energy with which he repelled the foreign invaders of
the empire. In a series of campaigns against the newly established
Russian power (970-973) he drove the enemy out of Thrace, crossed Mt
Haemus and besieged the fortress of Dorystolon on the Danube. In several
hard-fought battles he broke the strength of the Russians so completely
that they left him master of eastern Bulgaria. He further secured his
northern frontier by transplanting to Thrace some colonies of Paulicians
whom he suspected of sympathising with their Saracen neighbours in the
east. In 974 he turned against the Abassid empire and easily recovered
the inland parts of Syria and the middle reaches of the Euphrates. He
died suddenly in 976 on his return from his second campaign against the
Saracens. John's surname was apparently derived from the Armenian
_tshemshkik_ (red boot).
See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vol. vi.
(ed. Bury, 1896); G. Finlay, _History of Greece_, ii. 334-360 (ed.
1877); G. Schlumberger, _L'Épopée Byzantine_, i. 1-326 (1896).
JOHN II. (1088-1143), surnamed Comnenus and also Kalojoannes (John the
Good), East Roman emperor, was the eldest son of the East Roman emperor
Alexius, whom he succeeded in 1118. On account of his mild and just
reign he has been called the Byzantine Marcus Aurelius. By the personal
purity of his character he effected a notable improvement in the manners
of his age, but he displayed little vigour in internal administration or
in extirpating the long-standing corruptions of the government. Nor did
his various successes against the Hungarians, Servians and Seljuk Turks,
whom he pressed hard in Asia Minor and proposed to expel from Jerusalem,
add much to the stability of his empire. He was accidentally killed
during a wild-boar hunt on Mt Taurus, on the 8th of April 1143.
See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, v. 228 seq.
(ed. Bury, 1896).
JOHN III. (1193-1254), surnamed Vatatzes and also Ducas, East Roman
emperor, earned for himself such distinction as a soldier that in 1222
he was chosen to succeed his father-in-law Theodore I. Lascaris. He
reorganized the remnant of the East Roman empire, and by his
administrative skill made it the strongest and richest principality in
the Levant. Having secured his eastern frontier by an agreement with the
Turks, he set himself to recover the European possessions of his
predecessors. While his fleet harassed the Latins in the Aegean Sea and
extended his realm to Rhodes, his army, reinforced by Frankish
mercenaries, defeated the Latin emperor's forces in the open field.
Though unsuccessful in a siege of Constantinople, which he undertook in
concert with the Bulgarians (1235), he obtained supremacy over the
despotats of Thessalonica and Epirus. The ultimate recovery of
Constantinople by the Rhomaic emperors is chiefly due to his exertions.
See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vi. 431-462
(ed. Bury, 1896); G. Finlay, _History of Greece_, iii. 196-320 (ed.
1877); A. Meliarakes, [Greek: Historia tou Basileiou tês Nikaias kai
tou Despotatou tês Êpeirou], pp. 155-421 (1898).
JOHN IV. (c. 1250-c. 1300), surnamed Lascaris, East Roman emperor, son
of Theodore II. His father dying in 1258, Michael Palaeologus conspired
shortly after to make himself regent, and in 1261 dethroned and blinded
the boy monarch, and imprisoned him in a remote castle, where he died a
long time after.
See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vi. 459-466
(ed. Bury, 1896); A. Meliarakes, [Greek: Historia tou Basileiou tês
Nikaias] (Athens, 1898), pp. 491-528.
JOHN V. or VI. (1332-1391), surnamed Palaeologus, East Roman emperor,
was the son of Andronicus III., whom he succeeded in 1341. At first he
shared his sovereignty with his father's friend John Cantacuzene, and
after a quarrel with the latter was practically superseded by him for a
number of years (1347-1355). His reign was marked by the gradual
dissolution of the imperial power through the rebellion of his son
Andronicus and by the encroachments of the Ottomans, to whom in 1381
John acknowledged himself tributary, after a vain attempt to secure the
help of the popes by submitting to the supremacy of the Roman Church.
See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vi. 495
seq., vii. 38 seq. (ed. Bury, 1896); E. Pears, _The Destruction of the
Greek Empire_, pp. 70-96 (1903).
JOHN VI. or V. (c. 1292-1383), surnamed Cantacuzene, East Roman emperor,
was born at Constantinople. Connected with the house of Palaeologus on
his mother's side, on the accession of Andronicus III. (1328) he was
entrusted with the supreme administration of affairs. On the death of
the emperor in 1341, Cantacuzene was left regent, and guardian of his
son John Palaeologus, who was but nine years of age. Being suspected by
the empress and opposed by a powerful party at court, he rebelled, and
got himself crowned emperor at Didymoteichos in Thrace, while John
Palaeologus and his supporters maintained themselves at Constantinople.
The civil war which ensued lasted six years, during which the rival
parties called in the aid of the Servians and Turks, and engaged
mercenaries of every description. It was only by the aid of the Turks,
with whom he made a disgraceful bargain, that Cantacuzene brought the
war to a termination favourable to himself. In 1347 he entered
Constantinople in triumph, and forced his opponents to an arrangement by
which he became joint emperor with John Palaeologus and sole
administrator during the minority of his colleague. During this period,
the empire, already broken up and reduced to the narrowest limits, was
assailed on every side. There were wars with the Genoese, who had a
colony at Galata and had money transactions with the court; and with the
Servians, who were at that time establishing an extensive empire on the
north-western frontiers; and there was a hazardous alliance with the
Turks, who made their first permanent settlement in Europe, at
Callipolis in Thrace, towards the end of the reign (1354). Cantacuzene
was far too ready to invoke the aid of foreigners in his European
quarrels; and as he had no money to pay them, this gave them a ready
pretext for seizing upon a European town. The financial burdens imposed
by him had long been displeasing to his subjects, and a strong party had
always favoured John Palaeologus. Hence, when the latter entered
Constantinople at the end of 1354, his success was easy. Cantacuzene
retired to a monastery (where he assumed the name of Joasaph
Christodulus) and occupied himself in literary labours. He died in the
Peloponnese and was buried by his sons at Mysithra in Laconia. His
_History_ in four books deals with the years 1320-1356. Really an
apologia for his own actions, it needs to be read with caution;
fortunately it can be supplemented and corrected by the work of a
contemporary, Nicephorus Gregoras. It possesses the merit of being well
arranged and homogeneous, the incidents being grouped round the chief
actor in the person of the author, but the information is defective on
matters with which he is not directly concerned.
Cantacuzene was also the author of a commentary on the first five
books of Aristotle's _Ethics_, and of several controversial
theological treatises, one of which (_Against Mohammedanism_) is
printed in Migne (_Patrologia Graeca_, cliv.). _History_, ed. pr. by
J. Pontanus (1603); in Bonn, _Corpus scriptorum hist. Byz._, by J.
Schopen (1828-1832) and Migne, cliii., cliv. See also Val Parisot,
_Cantacuzène, homme d'état et historien_ (1845); E. Gibbon, _Decline
and Fall_, ch. lxiii.; and C. Krumbacher, _Geschichte der
byzantinischen Litteratur_ (1897).
JOHN VI. or VII. (1390-1448), surnamed Palaeologus, East Roman emperor,
son of Manuel II., succeeded to the throne in 1425. To secure protection
against the Turks he visited the pope and consented to the union of the
Greek and Roman churches, which was ratified at Florence in 1439. The
union failed of its purpose, but by his prudent conduct towards the
Ottomans he succeeded in holding possession of Constantinople, and in
1432 withstood a siege by Sultan Murad I.
See TURKEY: _History_; and also E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire_, vi. 97-107 (ed. Bury, 1896); E. Pears, _The
Destruction of the Greek Empire_, pp. 115-130 (1903).
JOHN (1167-1216), king of England, the youngest son of Henry II. by
Eleanor of Aquitaine, was born at Oxford on the 24th of December 1167.
He was given at an early age the nickname of Lackland because, unlike
his elder brothers, he received no apanage in the continental provinces.
But his future was a subject of anxious thought to Henry II. When only
five years old John was betrothed (1173) to the heiress of Maurienne and
Savoy, a principality which, as dominating the chief routes from France
and Burgundy to Italy, enjoyed a consequence out of all proportion to
its area. Later, when this plan had fallen through, he was endowed with
castles, revenues and lands on both sides of the channel; the vacant
earldom of Cornwall was reserved for him (1175); he was betrothed to
Isabella the heiress of the earldom of Gloucester (1176); and he was
granted the lordship of Ireland with the homage of the Anglo-Irish
baronage (1177). Henry II. even provoked a civil war by attempting to
transfer the duchy of Aquitaine from the hands of Richard Coeur de Lion
to those of John (1183). In spite of the incapacity which he displayed
in this war, John was sent a little later to govern Ireland (1185); but
he returned in a few months covered with disgrace, having alienated the
loyal chiefs by his childish insolence and entirely failed to defend the
settlers from the hostile septs. Remaining henceforth at his father's
side he was treated with the utmost indulgence. But he joined with his
brother Richard and the French king Philip Augustus in the great
conspiracy of 1189, and the discovery of his treason broke the heart of
the old king (see HENRY II.).
Richard on his accession confirmed John's existing possessions; married
him to Isabella of Gloucester; and gave him, besides other grants, the
entire revenues of six English shires; but excluded him from any share
in the regency which was appointed to govern England during the third
crusade; and only allowed him to live in the kingdom because urged to
this concession by their mother. Soon after the king's departure for the
Holy Land it became known that he had designated his nephew, the young
Arthur of Brittany, as his successor. John at once began to intrigue
against the regents with the aim of securing England for himself. He
picked a quarrel with the unpopular chancellor William Longchamp (q.v.),
and succeeded, by the help of the barons and the Londoners, in expelling
this minister, whose chief fault was that of fidelity to the absent
Richard. Not being permitted to succeed Longchamp as the head of the
administration, John next turned to Philip Augustus for help. A bargain
was struck; and when Richard was captured by Leopold, duke of Austria
(December 1192), the allies endeavoured to prevent his release, and
planned a partition of his dominions. They were, however, unable to win
either English or Norman support and their schemes collapsed with
Richard's return (March 1194). He magnanimously pardoned his brother,
and they lived on not unfriendly terms for the next five years. On his
deathbed Richard, reversing his former arrangements, caused his barons
to swear fealty to John (1199), although the hereditary claim of Arthur
was by the law of primogeniture undoubtedly superior.
England and Normandy, after some hesitation, recognized John's title;
the attempt of Anjou and Brittany to assert the rights of Arthur ended
disastrously by the capture of the young prince at Mirebeau in Poitou
(1202). But there was no part of his dominions in which John inspired
personal devotion. Originally accepted as a political necessity, he soon
came to be detested by the people as a tyrant and despised by the nobles
for his cowardice and sloth. He inherited great difficulties--the feud
with France, the dissensions of the continental provinces, the growing
indifference of England to foreign conquests, the discontent of all his
subjects with a strict executive and severe taxation. But he cannot be
acquitted of personal responsibility for his misfortunes. Astute in
small matters, he had no breadth of view or foresight; his policy was
continually warped by his passions or caprices; he flaunted vices of the
most sordid kind with a cynical indifference to public opinion, and
shocked an age which was far from tender-hearted by his ferocity to
vanquished enemies. He treated his most respectable supporters with base
ingratitude, reserved his favour for unscrupulous adventurers, and gave
a free rein to the licence of his mercenaries. While possessing
considerable gifts of mind and a latent fund of energy, he seldom acted
or reflected until the favourable moment had passed. Each of his great
humiliations followed as the natural result of crimes or blunders. By
his divorce from Isabella of Gloucester he offended the English baronage
(1200); by his marriage with Isabella of Angoulême, the betrothed of
Hugh of Lusignan, he gave an opportunity to the discontented Poitevins
for invoking French assistance and to Philip Augustus for pronouncing
against him a sentence of forfeiture. The murder of Arthur (1203) ruined
his cause in Normandy and Anjou; the story that the court of the peers
of France condemned him for the murder is a fable, but no legal process
was needed to convince men of his guilt. In the later quarrel with
Innocent III. (1207-1213; see LANGTON, STEPHEN) he prejudiced his case
by proposing a worthless favourite for the primacy and by plundering
those of the clergy who bowed to the pope's sentences. Threatened with
the desertion of his barons he drove all whom he suspected to
desperation by his terrible severity towards the Braose family (1210);
and by his continued misgovernment irrevocably estranged the lower
classes. When submission to Rome had somewhat improved his position he
squandered his last resources in a new and unsuccessful war with France
(1214), and enraged the feudal classes by new claims for military
service and scutages. The barons were consequently able to exact, in
Magna Carta (June 1215), much more than the redress of legitimate
grievances; and the people allowed the crown to be placed under the
control of an oligarchical committee. When once the sovereign power had
been thus divided, the natural consequence was civil war and the
intervention of the French king, who had long watched for some such
opportunity. John's struggle against the barons and Prince Louis (1216),
afterwards King Louis VIII., was the most creditable episode of his
career. But the calamitous situation of England at the moment of his
death, on the 19th of October 1216, was in the main his work; and while
he lived a national reaction in favour of the dynasty was out of the
question.
John's second wife, Isabella of Angoulême (d. 1246), who married her
former lover, Hugh of Lusignan, after the English king's death, bore the
king two sons, Henry III. and Richard, earl of Cornwall; and three
daughters, Joan (1210-1238), wife of Alexander II., king of Scotland,
Isabella (d. 1241), wife of the emperor Frederick II., and Eleanor (d.
1274), wife of William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, and then of Simon de
Montfort, earl of Leicester. John had also two illegitimate sons,
Richard and Oliver, and a daughter, Joan or Joanna, who married Llewelyn
I. ab Iorwerth, prince of North Wales, and who died in 1236 or 1237.
AUTHORITIES.--The chief chronicles for the reign are Gervase of
Canterbury's _Gesta regum_, Ralf of Coggeshall's _Chronicon_, Walter
of Coventry's _Memoriale_, Roger of Wendover's _Flores historiarum_,
the Annals of Burton, Dunstaple and Margan--all these in the Rolls
Series. The French chronicle of the so-called "Anonyme de Béthune"
(Bouquet, _Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France_, vol.
xxiv.), the _Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d'Angleterre_
(ed. F. Michel, Paris, 1840) and the metrical biography of William the
Marshal (_Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal_, ed. Paul Meyer, 3 vols.,
Paris, 1891, &c.) throw valuable light on certain episodes. H. S.
Sweetman's _Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland_, vol. i. (Rolls
Series); W. H. Bliss's _Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers_,
vol. i. (Rolls Series); Potthast's _Regesta pontificum_, vol. i.
(Berlin, 1874); Sir T. D. Hardy's _Rotuli litterarum clausarum_ (Rec.
Commission, 1835) and _Rotuli litterarum patentium_ (Rec. Commission,
1835) and L. Delisle's _Catalogue des actes de Philippe Auguste_
(Paris, 1856) are the most important guides to the documents. Of
modern works W. Stubbs's _Constitutional history_, vol. i. (Oxford,
1897); the same writer's preface to _Walter of Coventry_, vol. ii.
(Rolls Series); Miss K. Norgate's _John Lackland_ (London, 1902); C.
Petit-Dutaillis' _Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII._ (Paris,
1894) and W. S. McKechnie's _Magna Carta_ (Glasgow, 1905) are among
the most useful. (H. W. C. D.)
JOHN I. (1350-1395), king of Aragon, was the son of Peter IV. and his
third wife Eleanor of Sicily. He was born on the 27th of December 1350,
and died by a fall from his horse, like his namesake, cousin and
contemporary of Castile. He was a man of insignificant character, with a
taste for artificial verse.
JOHN II. (1397-1479), king of Aragon, son of Ferdinand I. and of his
wife Eleanor of Albuquerque, born on the 29th of June 1397, was one of
the most stirring and most unscrupulous kings of the 15th century. In
his youth he was one of the _infantes_ (princes) of Aragon who took part
in the dissensions of Castile during the minority and reign of John II.
Till middle life he was also lieutenant-general in Aragon for his
brother and predecessor Alphonso V., whose reign was mainly spent in
Italy. In his old age he was engaged in incessant conflicts with his
Aragonese and Catalan subjects, with Louis XI. of France, and in
preparing the way for the marriage of his son Ferdinand with Isabella of
Castile, which brought about the union of the crowns. His troubles with
his subjects were closely connected with the tragic dissensions in his
own family. John was first married to Blanche of Navarre, of the house
of Evreux. By right of Blanche he became king of Navarre, and on her
death in 1441 he was left in possession of the kingdom for his life. But
a son Charles, called, as heir of Navarre, prince of Viana, had been
born of the marriage. John from the first regarded his son with
jealousy, which after his second marriage with Joan Henriquez, and under
her influence, grew into absolute hatred. He endeavoured to deprive his
son of his constitutional right to act as lieutenant-general of Aragon
during his father's absence. The cause of the son was taken up by the
Aragonese, and the king's attempt to join his second wife in the
lieutenant-generalship was set aside. There followed a long conflict,
with alternations of success and defeat, which was not terminated till
the death of the prince of Viana, perhaps by poison given him by his
stepmother, in 1461. The Catalans, who had adopted the cause of Charles
and who had grievances of their own, called in a succession of foreign
pretenders. In conflict with these the last years of King John were
spent. He was forced to pawn Rousillon, his possession on the north-east
of the Pyrenees, to Louis XI., who refused to part with it. In his old
age he was blinded by cataract, but recovered his eyesight by the
operation of couching. The Catalan revolt was pacified in 1472, but John
had war, in which he was generally unfortunate, with his neighbour the
French king till his death on the 20th of January 1479. He was succeeded
by Ferdinand, his son by his second marriage, who was already associated
with his wife Isabella as joint sovereign of Castile.
For the history, see Rivadeneyra, "Cronicás de los reyes de Castilla,"
_Biblioteca de antares españoles_, vols. lxvi, lxviii (Madrid, 1845,
&c.); G. Zurita, _Anales de Aragon_ (Saragossa, 1610). The reign of
John II. of Aragon is largely dealt with in W. H. Prescott's _History
of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella_ (1854).
JOHN (1296-1346), king of Bohemia, was a son of the emperor Henry VII.
by his wife Margaret, daughter of John I., duke of Brabant, and was a
member of the family of Luxemburg. Born on the 10th of August 1296, he
became count of Luxemburg in 1309, and about the same time was offered
the crown of Bohemia, which, after the death of Wenceslas III., the last
king of the Premyslides dynasty in 1306, had passed to Henry, duke of
Carinthia, under whose weak rule the country was in a very disturbed
condition. The emperor accepted this offer on behalf of his son, who
married Elizabeth (d. 1330), a sister of Wenceslas, and after Henry's
departure for Italy, John was crowned king of Bohemia at Prague in
February 1311. Henry of Carinthia was driven from the land, where a
certain measure of order was restored, and Moravia was again united with
Bohemia. As imperial vicar John represented his father at the diet of
Nuremberg in January 1313, and was leading an army to his assistance in
Italy when he heard of the emperor's death, which took place in August
1313. John was now a candidate for the imperial throne; but, on account
of his youth, his claim was not regarded seriously, and he was persuaded
to give his support to Louis, duke of Upper Bavaria, afterwards the
emperor Louis the Bavarian. At Esslingen and elsewhere he aided Louis in
his struggle with Frederick the Fair, duke of Austria, who also claimed
the Empire; but his time was mainly passed in quelling disturbances in
Bohemia, where his German followers were greatly disliked and where he
himself soon became unpopular, especially among the nobles; or in
Luxemburg, the borders of which county he was constantly and
successfully striving to extend. Restless, adventurous and warlike, John
had soon tired of governing his kingdom, and even discussed exchanging
it with the emperor Louis for the Palatinate; and while Bohemia was
again relapsing into a state of anarchy, her king was winning fame as a
warrior in almost every part of Europe. He fought against the citizens
of Metz and against his kinsman, John III., duke of Brabant; he led the
knights of the Teutonic Order against the heathen in Lithuania and
Pomerania and promised Pope John XXII. to head a crusade; and claiming
to be king of Poland he attacked the Poles and brought Silesia under his
rule. He obtained Tirol by marrying his son, John Henry, to Margaret
Maultasch, the heiress of the county, assisted the emperor to defeat and
capture Frederick the Fair at the battle of Mühldorf in 1322, and was
alternately at peace and at war with the dukes of Austria and with his
former foe, Henry of Carinthia. He was a frequent and welcome visitor to
France, in which country he had a personal and hereditary interest; and
on several occasions his prowess was serviceable to his brother-in-law
King Charles IV., and to Charles's successor Philip VI., whose son John,
afterwards King John II., married a daughter of the Bohemian king. Soon
after the battle of Mühldorf, the relations between John and the emperor
became somewhat strained, partly owing to the king's growing friendship
with the Papacy and with France, and partly owing to territorial
disputes. An agreement, however, was concluded, and John undertook his
invasion of Italy, which was perhaps the most dazzling of his exploits.
Invited by the citizens of Brescia, he crossed the Alps with a meagre
following in 1331, quickly received the homage of many of the cities of
northern Italy, and soon found himself the ruler of a great part of the
peninsula. But his soldiers were few and his enemies were many, and a
second invasion of Italy in 1333 was followed by the dissipation of his
dreams of making himself king of Lombardy and Tuscany, and even of
supplanting Louis on the imperial throne. The fresh trouble between king
and emperor, caused by this enterprise, was intensified by a quarrel
over the lands left by Henry of Carinthia, and still later by the
interference of Louis in Tirol; and with bewildering rapidity John was
allying himself with the kings of Hungary and Poland, fighting against
the emperor and his Austrian allies, defending Bohemia, governing
Luxemburg, visiting France and negotiating with the pope. About 1340 the
king was overtaken by blindness, but he continued to lead an active
life, successfully resisting the attacks of Louis and his allies, and
campaigning in Lithuania. In 1346 he made a decisive move against the
emperor. Acting in union with Pope Clement VI. he secured the formal
deposition of Louis and the election of his own son Charles, margrave of
Moravia, as German king, or king of the Romans, in July 1346. Then
journeying to help Philip of France against the English, he fought at
the battle of Crécy, where his heroic death on the 26th of August 1346
was a fitting conclusion to his adventurous life.
John was a chivalrous and romantic personage, who enjoyed a great
reputation for valour both before and after his death; but as a ruler he
was careless and extravagant, interested only in his kingdom when
seeking relief from his constant pecuniary embarrassments. After the
death of his first wife, who bore him two sons, Charles, afterwards the
emperor Charles IV., and John Henry (d. 1375), and who had been
separated from her husband for some years, the king married Beatrice (d.
1383), daughter of Louis I., duke of Bourbon, by whom he had a son,
Wenceslas (d. 1383). According to Camden the crest or badge of three
ostrich feathers, with the motto _Ich dien_, borne by the prince of
Wales was originally that of John of Bohemia and was first assumed by
Edward the Black Prince after the battle of Crécy. There is no proof,
however, that this badge was ever worn by John--it certainly was not his
crest--and its origin must be sought elsewhere.
See J. Schötter, _Johann, Graf von Luxemburg and König von Böhmen_
(Luxemburg, 1865); F. von Weech, _Kaiser Ludwig der Bayer und König
Johann von Böhmen_ (Munich, 1860), and U. Chevalier, _Répertoire des
sources historiques_, tome v. (Paris, 1905).
JOHN I. (1358-1390), king of Castile, was the son of Henry II., and of
his wife Joan, daughter of John Manuel of Villena, head of a younger
branch of the royal house of Castile. In the beginning of his reign he
had to contend with the hostility of John of Gaunt, who claimed the
crown by right of his wife Constance, daughter of Peter the Cruel. The
king of Castile finally bought off the claim of his English competitor
by arranging a marriage between his son Henry and Catherine, daughter of
John of Gaunt, in 1387. Before this date he had been engaged in
hostilities with Portugal which was in alliance with John of Gaunt. His
first quarrel with Portugal was settled by his marriage, in 1382, with
Beatrix, daughter of the Portuguese king Ferdinand. On the death of his
father-in-law in 1383, John endeavoured to enforce the claims of his
wife, Ferdinand's only child, to the crown of Portugal. He was resisted
by the national sentiment of the people, and was utterly defeated at
the battle of Aljubarrota, on the 14th of August 1385. King John was
killed at Alcalá on the 9th of October 1390 by the fall of his horse,
while he was riding in a _fantasia_ with some of the light horsemen
known as the _farfanes_, who were mounted and equipped in the Arab
style.
JOHN II. (1405-1454), king of Castile, was born on the 6th of March
1405, the son of Henry III. of Castile and of his wife Catherine,
daughter of John of Gaunt. He succeeded his father on the 25th of
December 1406 at the age of a year and ten months. It was one of the
many misfortunes of Castile that the long reign of John II.--forty-nine
years--should have been granted to one of the most incapable of her
kings. John was amiable, weak and dependent on those about him. He had
no taste except for ornament, and no serious interest except in
amusements, verse-making, hunting and tournaments. He was entirely under
the influence of his favourite, Alvaro de Luna, till his second wife,
Isabella of Portugal, obtained control of his feeble will. At her
instigation he threw over his faithful and able favourite, a meanness
which is said to have caused him well-deserved remorse. He died on the
20th of July 1454 at Valladolid. By his second marriage he was the
father of Isabella "the Catholic."
JOHN I. (b. and d. 1316), king of France, son of Louis X. and Clemence,
daughter of Charles Martel, who claimed to be king of Hungary, was born,
after his father's death, on the 15th of November 1316, and only lived
seven days. His uncle, afterwards Philip V. has been accused of having
caused his death, or of having substituted a dead child in his place;
but nothing was ever proved. An impostor calling himself John I.,
appeared in Provence, in the reign of John II., but he was captured and
died in prison.
JOHN II. (1319-1364), surnamed the Good, king of France, son of Philip
VI. and Jeanne of Burgundy, succeeded his father in 1350. At the age of
13 he married Bona of Luxemburg, daughter of John, king of Bohemia. His
early exploits against the English were failures and revealed in the
young prince both avarice and stubborn persistence in projects obviously
ill-advised. It was especially the latter quality which brought about
his ruin. His first act upon becoming king was to order the execution of
the constable, Raoul de Brienne. The reasons for this are unknown, but
from the secrecy with which it was carried out and the readiness with
which the honour was transferred to the king's close friend Charles of
La Cesda, it has been attributed to the influence and ambition of the
latter. John surrounded himself with evil counsellors, Simon de Buci,
Robert de Lorris, Nicolas Braque, men of low origin who robbed the
treasury and oppressed the people, while the king gave himself up to
tournaments and festivities. In imitation of the English order of the
Garter, he established the knightly order of the Star, and celebrated
its festivals with great display. Raids of the Black Prince in Languedoc
led to the states-general of 1355, which readily voted money, but
sanctioned the right of resistance against all kinds of pillage--a
distinct commentary on the incompetence of the king. In September 1356
John gathered the flower of his chivalry and attacked the Black Prince
at Poitiers. The utter defeat of the French was made the more
humiliating by the capture of their king, who had bravely led the third
line of battle. Taken to England to await ransom, John was at first
installed in the Savoy Palace, then at Windsor, Hertford, Somerton, and
at last in the Tower. He was granted royal state with his captive
companions, made a guest at tournaments, and supplied with luxuries
imported by him from France. The treaty of Brétigny (1360), which fixed
his ransom at 3,000,000 crowns, enabled him to return to France, but
although he married his daughter Isabella to Gian Galeazzo Visconti of
Milan, for a gift of 600,000 golden crowns, imposed a heavy feudal "aid"
on merchandise, and various other taxes, John was unable to pay more
than 400,000 crowns to Edward III. His son Louis of Anjou, who had been
left as hostage, escaped from Calais in the summer of 1363, and John,
far in arrears in the payments of the ransom, surrendered himself again
"to maintain his royal honour which his son had sullied." He landed in
England in January 1364 and was received with great honour, lodged again
in the Savoy, and was a frequent guest of Edward at Westminster. He
died on the 8th of April, and the body was sent back to France with
royal honours.
See Froissart's _Chronicles_; Duc d'Aumale, _Notes et documents
relatifs à Jean, roi de France, et à sa captivité_ (1856); A. Coville,
in Lavisse's _Histoire de France_, vol. iv., and authorities cited
there.
JOHN (ZAPOLYA) (1487-1540), king of Hungary, was the son of the palatine
Stephen Zapolya and the princess Hedwig of Teschen, and was born at the
castle of Szepesvár. He began his public career at the famous Rákos diet
of 1505, when, on his motion, the assembly decided that after the death
of the reigning king, Wladislaus II., no foreign prince should be
elected king of Hungary. Henceforth he became the national candidate for
the throne, which his family had long coveted. As far back as 1491 his
mother had proposed to the sick king that his daughter Anne should be
committed to her care in order, subsequently, to be married to her son;
but Wladislaus frustrated this project by contracting a matrimonial
alliance with the Habsburgs. In 1510 Zapolya sued in person for the hand
of the Princess Anne in vain, and his appointment to the voivody of
Transylvania (1511) was with the evident intention of removing him far
from court. In 1513, after a successful raid in Turkish territory, he
hastened to Buda at the head of 1000 horsemen and renewed his suit,
which was again rejected. In 1514 he stamped out the dangerous peasant
rising under Dozsa (q.v.) and the infernal torments by means of which
the rebel leader was slowly done to death were the invention of Zapolya.
With the gentry, whose hideous oppression had moved the peasantry to
revolt, he was now more than ever popular, and, on the death of
Wladislaus II., the second diet of Rákos (1516) appointed him the
governor of the infant king Louis II. He now aimed at the dignity of
palatine also, but the council of state and the court party combined
against him and appointed István Báthory instead (1519). The strife of
factions now burnt more fiercely than ever at the very time when the
pressure of the Turk demanded the combination of all the national forces
against a common danger. It was entirely due to the dilatoriness and
dissensions of Zapolya and Báthory that the great fortress of Belgrade
was captured in 1521, a loss which really sealed the fate of Hungary. In
1522 the diet would have appointed both Zapolya and Báthory
captains-general of the realm, but the court set Zapolya aside and chose
Báthory only. At the diets of Hátvan and Rákos in 1522, Zapolya placed
himself at the head of a confederation to depose the palatine and the
other great officers of state, but the attempt failed. In the following
year, however, the revolutionary Hátvan diet drove out all the members
of the council of state and made István Verböczy, the great jurist, and
a friend of Zapolya, palatine. In the midst of this hopeless anarchy,
Suleiman I., the Magnificent, invaded Hungary with a countless army, and
the young king perished on the field of Mohács in a vain attempt to stay
his progress, the contradictory orders of Louis II. preventing Zapolya
from arriving in time to turn the fortunes of the day. The court party
accused him of deliberate treachery on this occasion; but the charge
must be pronounced groundless. His younger brother George was killed at
Mohács, where he was second commander-in-chief. Zapolya was elected king
of Hungary at the subsequent diet of Tokaj (Oct. 14), the election was
confirmed by the diet of Székesfehérvár (10th of November), and he was
crowned on the following day with the holy crown.
A struggle with the rival candidate, the German king Ferdinand I., at
once ensued (see HUNGARY: _History_) and it was only with the aid of the
Turks that king John was able to exhaust his opponent and compel him to
come to terms. Finally, in 1538, by the compact of Nagyvárad, Ferdinand
recognized John as king of Hungary, but secured the right of succession
on his death. Nevertheless John broke the compact by bequeathing the
kingdom to his infant son John Sigismund under Turkish protection. John
was the last national king of Hungary. His merit, as a statesman, lies
in his stout vindication of the national independence, though without
the assistance of his great minister György Utiesenovich, better known
as "Frater George" (Cardinal Martinuzzi (q.v.)), this would have been
impossible. Indirectly he contributed to the subsequent conquest of
Hungary by admitting the Turk as a friend.
See Vilmos Fraknoi, _Ungarn vor der Schlacht bei Mohács_ (Budapest,
1886); L. Kupelwieser, _Die Kämpfe Ungarns mit den Osmanen bis zur
Schlacht bei Mohács_ (Vienna, 1895); Ignacz Acsády, _History of the
Hungarian Realm_, vol. i. (Hung.) (Budapest, 1902-1904).
JOHN OF BRIENNE (c. 1148-1237), king of Jerusalem and Latin emperor of
Constantinople, was a man of sixty years of age before he began to play
any considerable part in history. Destined originally for the Church, he
had preferred to become a knight, and in forty years of tournaments and
fights he had won himself a considerable reputation, when in 1208 envoys
came from the Holy Land to ask Philip Augustus, king of France, to
select one of his barons as husband to the heiress, and ruler of the
kingdom, of Jerusalem. Philip selected John of Brienne, and promised to
support him in his new dignity. In 1210 John married the heiress Mary
(daughter of Isabella and Conrad of Montferrat), assuming the title of
king in right of his wife. In 1211, after some desultory operations, he
concluded a six years' truce with Malik-el-Adil; in 1212 he lost his
wife, who left him a daughter, Isabella; soon afterwards he married an
Armenian princess. In the fifth crusade (1218-1221) he was a prominent
figure. The legate Pelagius, however, claimed the command; and insisting
on the advance from Damietta, in spite of the warnings of King John, he
refused to accept the favourable terms of the sultan, as the king
advised, until it was too late. After the failure of the crusade, King
John came to the West to obtain help for his kingdom. In 1223 he met
Honorius III. and the emperor Frederick II. at Ferentino, where, in
order that he might be connected more closely with the Holy Land,
Frederick was betrothed to John's daughter Isabella, now heiress of the
kingdom. After the meeting at Ferentino, John went to France and
England, finding little consolation; and thence he travelled to
Compostella, where he married a new wife, Berengaria of Castile. After a
visit to Germany he returned to Rome (1225). Here he received a demand
from Frederick II. (who had now married Isabella) that he should abandon
his title and dignity of king, which--so Frederick claimed--had passed
to himself along with the heiress of the kingdom. John was now a
septuagenarian "king in exile," but he was still vigorous enough to
revenge himself on Frederick, by commanding the papal troops which
attacked southern Italy during the emperor's absence on the sixth
crusade (1228-1229). In 1229 John, now eighty years of age, was invited
by the barons of the Latin empire of Constantinople to become emperor,
on condition that Baldwin of Courtenay should marry his second daughter
and succeed him. For nine years he ruled in Constantinople, and in 1235,
with a few troops, he repelled a great siege of the city by Vataces of
Nicaea and Azen of Bulgaria. After this last feat of arms, which has
perhaps been exaggerated by the Latin chroniclers, who compare him to
Hector and the Maccabees, John died in the habit of a Franciscan friar.
An aged paladin, somewhat uxorious and always penniless, he was a
typical knight errant, whose wanderings led him all over Europe, and
planted him successively on the thrones of Jerusalem and Constantinople.
The story of John's career must be sought partly in histories of the
kingdom of Jerusalem and of the Latin Empire of the East, partly in
monographs. Among these, of which R. Röhricht gives a list
(_Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem_, p. 699, n. 3), see especially
that of E. de Montcarmet, _Un chevalier du temps passé_ (Limoges, 1876
and 1881).
JOHN III. (SOBIESKI) (1624-1696), king of Poland, was the eldest son of
James Sobieski, castellan of Cracow, and Theofila Danillowiczowna,
grand-daughter of the great Hetman Zolkiewski. After being educated at
Cracow, he made the grand tour with his brother Mark and returned to
Poland in 1648. He served against Chmielnicki and the Cossacks and was
present at the battles of Beresteczko (1651) and Batoka (1652), but was
one of the first to desert his unhappy country when invaded by the
Swedes in 1654, and actually assisted them to conquer the Prussian
provinces in 1655. He returned to his lawful allegiance in the
following year and assisted Czarniecki in his difficult task of
expelling Charles X. of Sweden from the central Polish provinces. For
his subsequent services to King John Casimir, especially in the Ukraine
against the Tatars and Cossacks, he received the grand bâton of the
crown, or commandership-in-chief (1668). He had already (1665) succeeded
Czarniecki as acting commander-in-chief. Sobieski had well earned these
distinctions by his extraordinary military capacity, but he was now to
exhibit a less pleasing side of his character. He was in fact a typical
representative of the unscrupulous self-seeking Polish magnates of the
17th century who were always ready to sacrifice everything, their
country included, to their own private ambition. At the election diet of
1669 he accepted large bribes from Louis XIV. to support one of the
French candidates; after the election of Michael Wisniowiecki (June 19,
1669) he openly conspired, again in the French interest, against his
lawful sovereign, and that too at the very time when the Turk was
ravaging the southern frontier of the republic. Michael was the feeblest
monarch the Poles could have placed upon the throne, and Sobieski
deliberately attempted to make government of any kind impossible. He
formed a league with the primate Prazmowski and other traitors to
dethrone the king; when (1670) the plot was discovered and participation
in it repudiated by Louis XIV., the traitors sought the help of the
elector of Brandenburg against their own justly indignant countrymen.
Two years later the same traitors again conspired against the king, at
the very time when the Turks had defeated Sobieski's unsupported
lieutenant, Luzecki, at Czertwertyworska and captured the fortress of
Kamieniec (Kamenetz-Podolskiy), the key of south-eastern Poland, while
Lemberg was only saved by the valour of Elias Lancki. The unhappy king
did the only thing possible in the circumstances. He summoned the
_tuszenia pospolite_, or national armed assembly; but it failed to
assemble in time, whereupon Michael was constrained to sign the
disgraceful peace of Buczacz (Oct. 17, 1672) whereby Poland ceded to the
Porte the whole of the Ukraine with Podolia and Kamieniec. Aroused to
duty by a series of disasters for which he himself was primarily
responsible, Sobieski now hastened to the frontier, and won four
victories in ten days. But he could not recover Kamieniec, and when the
_tuszenia pospolite_ met at Golenba and ordered an inquiry into the
conduct of Sobieski and his accomplices he frustrated all their efforts
by summoning a counter confederation to meet at Szczebrzeszyn. Powerless
to oppose a rebel who was at the same time commander-in-chief, both the
king and the diet had to give way, and a compromise was come to whereby
the peace of Buczacz was repudiated and Sobieski was given a chance of
rehabilitating himself, which he did by his brilliant victory over an
immense Turkish host at Khotin (Nov. 10, 1673). The same day King
Michael died and Sobieski, determined to secure the throne for himself,
hastened to the capital, though Tatar bands were swarming over the
frontier and the whole situation was acutely perilous. Appearing at the
elective diet of 1674 at the head of 6000 veterans he overawed every
other competitor, and despite the persistent opposition of the
Lithuanians was elected king on the 21st of May. By this time, however,
the state of things in the Ukraine was so alarming that the new king had
to hasten to the front. Assisted by French diplomacy at the Porte (Louis
XIV. desiring to employ Poland against Austria), and his own skilful
negotiations with the Tatar khan, John III. now tried to follow the
example of Wladislaus IV. by leaving the guardianship of the Ukraine
entirely in the hands of the Cossacks, while he assembled as many
regulars and militiamen as possible at Lemberg, whence he might hasten
with adequate forces to defend whichever of the provinces of the
Republic might be in most danger. But the appeal of the king was like
the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and not one gentleman in a
hundred hastened to the assistance of the fatherland. Even at the end of
August Sobieski had but 3000 men at his disposal to oppose to 60,000
Turks. Only his superb strategy and the heroic devotion of his
lieutenants--notably the converted Jew, Jan Samuel Chrzanowski, who held
the Ottoman army at bay for eleven days behind the walls of
Trembowla--enabled the king to remove "the pagan yoke from our
shoulders"; and he returned to be crowned at Cracow on the 14th of
February 1676. In October 1676, in his entrenched camp at Zaravno, he
with 13,000 men withstood 80,000 Turks for three weeks, and recovered by
special treaty two-thirds of the Ukraine, but without Kamieniec (treaty
of Zaravno, Oct. 16, 1676).
Having now secured peace abroad Sobieski was desirous of strengthening
Poland at home by establishing absolute monarchy; but Louis XIV. looked
coldly on the project, and from this time forth the old familiar
relations between the republic and the French monarchy were strained to
breaking point, though the final rupture did not come till 1682 on the
arrival of the Austrian minister, Zerowski, at Warsaw. After resisting
every attempt of the French court to draw him into the anti-Habsburg
league, Sobieski signed the famous treaty of alliance with the emperor
Leopold against the Turks (March 31, 1683), which was the prelude to the
most glorious episode of his life, the relief of Vienna and the
liberation of Hungary from the Ottoman yoke. The epoch-making victory of
the 12th of September 1683 was ultimately decided by the charge of the
Polish cavalry led by Sobieski in person. Unfortunately Poland profited
little or nothing by this great triumph, and now that she had broken the
back of the enemy she was left to fight the common enemy in the Ukraine
with whatever assistance she could obtain from the unwilling and unready
Muscovites. The last twelve years of the reign of John III. were a
period of unmitigated humiliation and disaster. He now reaped to the
full the harvest of treason and rebellion which he himself had sown so
abundantly during the first forty years of his life. A treasonable
senate secretly plotting his dethronement, a mutinous diet rejecting the
most necessary reforms for fear of "absolutism," ungrateful allies who
profited exclusively by his victories--these were his inseparable
companions during the remainder of his life. Nay, at last his evil
destiny pursued him to the battlefield and his own home. His last
campaign (in 1690) was an utter failure, and the last years of his life
were embittered by the violence and the intrigues of his dotingly
beloved wife, Marya Kazimiera d'Arquien, by whom he had three sons,
James, Alexander and Constantine. He died on the 17th of June 1696, a
disillusioned and broken-hearted old man.
See Tadeusz Korzon, _Fortunes and Misfortunes of John Sobieski_ (Pol.)
(Cracow, 1898); E. H. R. Tatham, _John Sobieski_ (Oxford, 1881);
Kazimierz Waliszewski, _Archives of French Foreign Affairs_,
1674-1696, v. (Cracow, 1881); Ludwik Piotr Leliwa, _John Sobieski and
His Times_ (Pol.) (Cracow, 1882-1885); Kazimierz Waliszewski,
_Marysienka Queen of Poland_ (London, 1898); Georg Rieder, _Johann
Sobieski_ in Wien (Vienna, 1882). (R. N. B.)
JOHN I. (1357-1433), king of Portugal, the natural son of Pedro I. (_el
Justicieiro_), was born at Lisbon on the 22nd of April 1357, and in 1364
was created grand-master of Aviz. On the death of his lawful brother
Ferdinand I., without male issue, in October 1383, strenuous efforts
were made to secure the succession for Beatrice, the only child of
Ferdinand I., who as heiress-apparent had been married to John I. of
Castile (Spain), but the popular voice declared against an arrangement
by which Portugal would virtually have become a Spanish province, and
John was after violent tumults proclaimed protector and regent in the
following December. In April 1385 he was unanimously chosen king by the
estates of the realm at Coimbra. The king of Castile invaded Portugal,
but his army was compelled by pestilence to withdraw, and subsequently
by the decisive battle of Aljubarrota (Aug. 14, 1385) the stability of
John's throne was permanently secured. Hostilities continued
intermittently until John of Castile died, without leaving issue by
Beatrice, in 1390. Meanwhile the king of Portugal went on consolidating
the power of the crown at home and the influence of the nation abroad.
In 1415 Ceuta was taken from the Moors by his sons who had been born to
him by his wife Philippa, daughter of John, duke of Lancaster; specially
distinguished in the siege was Prince Henry (q.v.) afterwards generally
known as "the Navigator." John I., sometimes surnamed "the Great," and
sometimes "father of his country," died on the 11th of August 1433, in
the forty-eighth year of a reign which had been characterized by great
prudence, ability and success; he was succeeded by his son Edward or
Duarte, so named out of compliment to Edward III. of England.
See J. P. Oliveira Martins, _Os filhos de D. João I._ and _A vida de
Nun' Alvares_ (Lisbon, 2nd ed. 1894).
JOHN II. (1455-1495), the Perfect, king of Portugal, succeeded his
father, Alphonso V., in August 1481. His first business was to curtail
the overgrown power of his aristocracy; noteworthy incidents in the
contest were the execution (1483) of the duke of Braganza for
correspondence with Castile, and the murder, by the king's own hand, of
the youthful duke of Viseu for conspiracy. This reign was signalized by
Bartholomeu Diaz's discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Maritime
rivalry led to disputes between Portugal and Castile until their claims
were adjusted by the famous treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494). John
II. died, without leaving male issue, in October 1495, and was succeeded
by his brother-in-law Emmanuel (Manoel) I.
See J. P. Oliveira Martins, _O principe perfeito_ (Lisbon, 1895).
JOHN III. (1502-1557), king of Portugal, was born at Lisbon, on the 6th
of June 1502, and ascended the throne as successor of his father
Emmanuel I. in December 1521. In 1524 he married Catherine, sister to
the Emperor Charles V., who shortly afterwards married the infanta
Isabella, John's sister. Succeeding to the crown at a time when Portugal
was at the height of its political power, and Lisbon in a position of
commercial importance previously unknown, John III., unfortunately for
his dominions, became subservient to the clerical party among his
subjects, with disastrous consequences to the commercial and social
prosperity of his kingdom. He died of apoplexy on the 6th of June 1557,
and was succeeded by his grandson Sebastian, then a child of only three
years.
JOHN IV. (1603-1656), the Fortunate, king of Portugal, was born at
Villaviciosa in March 1603, succeeded to the dukedom of Braganza in
1630, and married Luisa de Guzman, eldest daughter of the duke of Medina
Sidonia, in 1633. By the unanimous voice of the people he was raised to
the throne of Portugal (of which he was held to be the legitimate heir)
at the revolution effected in December 1640 against the Spanish king,
Philip IV. His accession led to a protracted war with Spain, which only
ended with the recognition of Portuguese independence in a subsequent
reign (1668). He died on the 6th of November 1656, and was succeeded by
his son Alphonso VI.
JOHN V. (1689-1750), king of Portugal, was born at Lisbon on the 22nd of
October 1689, and succeeded his father Pedro II. in December 1706, being
proclaimed on the 1st of January 1707. One of his first acts was to
intimate his adherence to the Grand Alliance, which his father had
joined in 1703. Accordingly his general Das Minas, along with Lord
Galway, advanced into Castile, but sustained the defeat of Almanza
(April 14). In October 1708 he married Maria Anna, daughter of Leopold
I., thus strengthening the alliance with Austria; the series of
unsuccessful campaigns which ensued ultimately terminated in a
favourable peace with France in 1713 and with Spain in 1715. The rest of
his long reign was characterized by royal subservience to the clergy,
the kingdom being administered by ecclesiastical persons and for
ecclesiastical objects to an extent that gave him the best of rights to
the title "Most Faithful King," bestowed upon him and his successors by
a bull of Pope Benedict XIV. in 1748. John V. died on the 31st of July
1750, and was succeeded by his son Joseph.
JOHN VI. (1769-1826), king of Portugal, was born at Lisbon on the 13th
of May 1769, and received the title of prince of Brazil in 1788. In 1792
he assumed the reins of government in name of his mother Queen Mary I.,
who had become insane. He had been brought up in an ecclesiastical
atmosphere, and, being naturally of a somewhat weak and helpless
character, was but ill adapted for the responsibilities he was thus
called on to undertake. In 1799 he assumed the title of regent, which he
retained until his mother's death in 1816. (For the political history of
his regency, see PORTUGAL.) In 1816 he was recognized as king of
Portugal but he continued to reside in Brazil; the consequent spread of
dissatisfaction resulted in the peaceful revolution of 1820, and the
proclamation of a constitutional government, to which he swore fidelity
on his return to Portugal in 1822. In the same year, and again in 1823,
he had to suppress a rebellion led by his son Dom Miguel, whom he
ultimately was compelled to banish in 1824. He died at Lisbon on the
26th of March 1826, and was succeeded by Pedro IV.
JOHN (1801-1873), king of Saxony, son of Prince Maximilian of Saxony and
his wife Caroline of Parma (d. 1804), was born at Dresden on the 12th of
December 1801. As a boy he took a keen interest in literature and art
(also in history, law, and political science), and studied with the
greatest ardour classical and German literature (Herder, Schiller,
Goethe). He soon began to compose poetry himself, and drew great
inspiration from a journey in Italy (1821-1822), the pleasure of which
was however darkened by the death of his brother Clemens. In Pavia the
prince met with Biagioli's edition of Dante, and this gave rise to his
lifelong and fruitful studies of Dante. The first part of his German
translation of Dante was published in 1828, and in 1833 appeared the
complete work, with a valuable commentary, which met with a great
success. Several new editions appeared under his constant supervision,
and he collected a complete library of works on Dante.
On his return from Italy he was betrothed to Princess Amalia of Bavaria,
daughter of King Maximilian Joseph. He thus became the brother-in-law of
Frederick William IV., king of Prussia, with whom he had a deep and
lasting friendship. His wife Amalia died on the 8th of November 1877,
having borne him nine children, two of whom, Albert and George, later
became kings of Saxony.
On his return to Dresden, John was called in 1822 to the privy board of
finance (_Geheimes Finanzkollegium_) and in 1825 became its
vice-president. Under the leadership of the president, Freiherr von
Manteuffel, he acquired a thorough knowledge of administration and of
political economy, and laid the foundations of that conservatism which
he retained throughout life. These new activities did not, however,
interrupt his literary and artistic studies. He came into still closer
relations with politics and government after his entry into the privy
council in 1830. During the revolution in Saxony he helped in the
pacification of the country, became commandant of the new national
guard, the political tendencies of which he tried to check, and took an
exceptionally active part in the organization of the constitution of the
4th of September 1831 and especially in the deliberations of the upper
chamber, where he worked with unflagging energy and great ability.
Following the example of his father, he taught his children in person,
and had a great influence on their education. On the 12th of August
1845, during a stay at Leipzig, the prince was the object of hostile
public demonstrations, the people holding him to be the head of an
alleged ultramontane party at court, and the revolution of 1848
compelled him to interrupt his activities in the upper chamber.
Immediately after the suppression of the revolution he resumed his place
and took part chiefly in the discussion of legal questions. He was also
interested in the amalgamation of the German historical and
archaeological societies. On the death of his brother Frederick Augustus
II., John became, on the 9th of August 1854, king of Saxony. As king he
soon won great popularity owing to his simplicity, graciousness and
increasingly evident knowledge of affairs. In his policy as regards the
German confederation he was entirely on the side of Austria. Though not
opposed to a reform of the federal constitution, he held that its
maintenance under the presidency of Austria was essential. This view he
supported at the assembly of princes at Frankfort in August and
September 1863. He was unable to uphold his views against Prussia, and
in the war of 1866 fought on the side of Austria. It was with difficulty
that, on the conclusion of peace, Austrian diplomacy succeeded in
enabling the king to retain his crown. After 1866 King John gradually
became reconciled to the new state of affairs. He entered the North
German confederation, and in the war of 1870-71 with France his troops
fought with conspicuous courage. He died at Dresden on the 29th of
October 1873.
See J. Petzholdt, "Zur Litteratur des Königs Johann," _Neuer Anzeiger
für Bibliographie_ (1858, 1859, 1871, 1873, 1874); "Aphorismen über
unsern König J.," _Bote von Geising_ (1866-1869); _Das Büchlein vom
König Johann_ (Leipzig, 1867); H. v. Treitschke, _Preussische
Jahrbücher_ 23 (1869); A. Reumont, "Elogio di Giovanni, Rè di
Sassonia," _Dagli Atti della Accademia della Crusca_ (Florence, 1874);
J. P. von Winterstein, _Johann, König von Sachsen_ (Dresden, 1878),
and in _Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie_ (1881); H. Ermisch, _Die
Wettiner und die Landesgeschichte_ (Leipzig, 1902); O. Kaemmel,
_Sächsische Geschichte_ (Leipzig, 1899, Sammlung Göschen). (J. Hn.)
JOHN I. (d. 1294), duke of Brabant and Lorraine, surnamed the
Victorious, one of the most gifted and chivalrous princes of his time,
was the second son of Duke Henry III. and Aleidis of Burgundy. In 1267
his elder brother Henry, being infirm of mind and body, was deposed in
his favour. In 1271 John married Margaret, daughter of Louis IX. of
France, and on her death in childbirth he took as his second wife (1273)
Margaret of Flanders, daughter of Guy de Dampierre. His sister Marie was
espoused in 1275 to Philip III. (the Bold) of France, and during the
reign of Philip and his son Philip IV. there were close relations of
friendship and alliance between Brabant and France. In 1285 John
accompanied Philip III. in his expedition against Peter III., king of
Aragon, but the duchy of Limburg was the scene of his chief activity and
greatest successes. After the death of Waleran IV. in 1279 the
succession to this duchy was disputed. His heiress, Ermengarde, had
married Reinald I. count of Gelderland. She died childless, but her
husband continued to rule in Limburg, although his rights were disputed
by Count Adolph of Berg, nephew to Waleran IV. (see Limburg). Not being
strong enough to eject his rival, Adolph sold his rights to John of
Brabant, and hostilities broke out in 1283. Harassed by desultory
warfare and endless negotiations, and seeing no prospect of holding his
own against the powerful duke of Brabant, Reinald made over his rights
to Henry III. count of Luxemburg, who was a descendant of Waleran III.
of Limburg. Henry III. was sustained by the archbishop of Cologne and
other allies, as well as by Reinald of Gelderland. The duke of Brabant
at once invaded the Rhineland and laid siege to the castle of Woeringen
near Bonn. Here he was attacked by the forces of the confederacy on the
5th of June 1288. After a bloody struggle John of Brabant, though at the
head of far inferior numbers, was completely victorious. Limburg was
henceforth attached to the duchy of Brabant. John consolidated his
conquest by giving his daughter in marriage to Henry of Luxemburg
(1291). John the Victorious was a perfect model of a feudal prince in
the days of chivalry, brave, adventurous, excelling in every form of
active exercise, fond of display, generous in temper. He delighted in
tournaments, and was always eager personally to take part in jousts. On
the 3rd of May 1294, on the occasion of some marriage festivities at
Bar, he was wounded in the arm in an encounter by Pierre de Bausner, and
died from the effects of the hurt.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--H. Barlandus, _Rerum gestarum a Brabantiae ducibus
historia usque in annum 1526_ (Louvain, 1566); G. C. van der Berghe,
_Jean le Victorieux, duc de Brabant_ (1259-1294), (Louvain, 1857); K.
F. Stallaert, _Gesch. v. Jan I. van Braband en zijne tijdvak_
(Brussels, 1861); A. Wauters, _Le Duc Jean I^er et le Brabant sous le
règne de ce prince_ (Brussels, 1859).
JOHN, or HANS (1513-1571), margrave of Brandenburg-Cüstrin, was the
younger son of Joachim I., elector of Brandenburg, and was born at
Tangermünde on the 3rd of August 1513. In spite of the _dispositio
Achillea_ which decreed the indivisibility of the electorate, John
inherited the new mark of Brandenburg on his father's death in July
1535. He had been brought up as a strict Catholic, but soon wavered in
his allegiance, and in 1538 ranged himself definitely on the side of the
Reformers. About the same time he joined the league of Schmalkalden; but
before the war broke out between the league and the emperor Charles V.
the promises of the emperor had won him over to the imperial side. After
the conclusion of the war, the relations between John and Charles became
somewhat strained. The margrave opposed the _Interim_, issued from
Augsburg in May 1548; and he was the leader of the princes who formed a
league for the defence of the Lutheran doctrines in February 1550. The
alliance of these princes, however, with Henry II., king of France, does
not appear to have commended itself to him and after some differences of
opinion with Maurice, elector of Saxony, he returned to the emperor's
side. His remaining years were mainly spent in the new mark, which he
ruled carefully and economically. He added to its extent by the purchase
of Beeskow and Storkow, and fortified the towns of Cüstrin and Peitz. He
died at Cüstrin on the 13th of January 1571. His wife Catherine was a
daughter of Henry II., duke of Brunswick, and as he left no sons the new
mark passed on his death to his nephew John George, elector of
Brandenburg.
See Berg, _Beiträge zur Geschichte des Markgrafen Johann von Küstrin_
(Landsberg, 1903).
JOHN (1371-1419), called the Fearless (_Sans Peur_), duke of Burgundy,
son of Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and Margaret of Flanders, was
born at Dijon on the 28th of May 1371. On the death of his maternal
grandfather in 1384 he received the title of count of Nevers, which he
bore until his father's death. Though originally destined to be the
husband of Catherine, sister of Charles VI. of France, he married in
1385 Margaret, daughter of Duke Albert of Bavaria, an alliance which
consolidated his position in the Netherlands. In the spring of 1396 he
took arms for Hungary against the Turks and on the 28th of September was
taken prisoner by the Sultan Bayezid I. at the bloody battle of
Nicopolis, where he earned his surname of "the Fearless." He did not
recover his liberty until 1397, and then only by paying an enormous
ransom. He succeeded his father in 1404, and immediately found himself
in conflict with Louis of Orleans, the young brother of Charles VI. The
history of the following years is filled with the struggles between
these two princes and with their attempts to seize the authority in the
name of the demented king. John endeavoured to strengthen his position
by marrying his daughter Margaret to the dauphin Louis, and by
betrothing his son Philip to a daughter of Charles VI. Like his father,
he looked for support to the popular party, to the tradesmen,
particularly the powerful gild of the butchers, and also to the
university of Paris. In 1405 he opposed in the royal council a scheme of
taxation proposed by the duke of Orleans, which was nevertheless
adopted. Louis retaliated by refusing to sanction the duke of Burgundy's
projected expedition against Calais, whereupon John quitted the court in
chagrin on the pretext of taking up his mother's heritage. He was,
however, called back to the council to find that the duke of Orleans and
the queen had carried off the dauphin. John succeeded in bringing back
the dauphin to Paris, and open war seemed imminent between the two
princes. But an arrangement was effected in October 1405, and in 1406
John was made by royal decree guardian of the dauphin and the king's
children.
The struggle, however, soon revived with increased force. Hostilities
had been resumed with England; the duke of Orleans had squandered the
money raised for John's expedition against Calais; and the two rivals
broke out into open threats. On the 20th of November 1407 their uncle,
the duke of Berry, brought about a solemn reconciliation, but three days
later Louis was assassinated by John's orders in the Rue Barbette,
Paris. John at first sought to conceal his share in the murder, but
ultimately decided to confess to his uncles, and abruptly left Paris.
His vassals, however, showed themselves determined to support him in his
struggle against the avengers of the duke of Orleans. The court decided
to negotiate, and called upon the duke to return. John entered Paris in
triumph, and instructed the Franciscan theologian Jean Petit (d. 1411)
to pronounce an apology for the murder. But he was soon called back to
his estates by a rising of the people of Liége against his
brother-in-law, the bishop of that town. The queen and the Orleans party
took every advantage of his absence and had Petit's discourse solemnly
refuted. John's victory over the Liégeois at Hasbain on the 23rd of
September 1408, enabled him to return to Paris, where he was reinstated
in his ancient privileges. By the peace of Chartres (March 9, 1409) the
king absolved him from the crime, and Valentina Visconti, the widow of
the murdered duke, and her children pledged themselves to a
reconciliation; while an edict of the 27th of December 1409 gave John
the guardianship of the dauphin. Nevertheless, a new league was formed
against the duke of Burgundy in the following year, principally at the
instance of Bernard, count of Armagnac, from whom the party opposed to
the Burgundians took its name. The peace of Bicêtre (Nov. 2, 1410)
prevented the outbreak of hostilities, inasmuch as the parties were
enjoined by its terms to return to their estates; but in 1411, in
consequence of ravages committed by the Armagnacs in the environs of
Paris, the duke of Burgundy was called back to Paris. He relied more
than ever on the support of the popular party, which then obtained the
reforming _Ordonnance Cabochienne_ (so called from Simon Caboche, a
prominent member of the gild of the butchers). But the bloodthirsty
excesses of the populace brought a change. John was forced to withdraw
to Burgundy (August 1413), and the university of Paris and John Gerson
once more censured Petit's propositions, which, but for the lavish
bribes of money and wines offered by John to the prelates, would have
been solemnly condemned at the council of Constance. John's attitude was
undecided; he negotiated with the court and also with the English, who
had just renewed hostilities with France. Although he talked of helping
his sovereign, his troops took no part in the battle of Agincourt
(1415), where, however, two of his brothers, Anthony, duke of Brabant,
and Philip, count of Nevers, fell fighting for France.
In 1417 John made an attack on Paris, which failed through his loitering
at Lagny;[1] but on the 30th of May 1418 a traitor, one Perrinet
Leclerc, opened the gates of Paris to the Burgundian captain, Villiers
de l'Isle Adam. The dauphin, afterwards King Charles VI., fled from the
town, and John betook himself to the king, who promised to forget the
past. John, however, did nothing to prevent the surrender of Rouen,
which had been besieged by the English, and on which the fate of the
kingdom seemed to depend; and the town was taken in 1419. The dauphin
then decided on a reconciliation, and on the 11th of July the two
princes swore peace on the bridge of Pouilly, near Melun. On the ground
that peace was not sufficiently assured by the Pouilly meeting, a fresh
interview was proposed by the dauphin and took place on the 10th of
September 1419 on the bridge of Montereau, when the duke of Burgundy was
felled with an axe by Tanneguy du Chastel, one of the dauphin's
companions, and done to death by the other members of the dauphin's
escort. His body was first buried at Montereau and afterwards removed to
the Chartreuse of Dijon and placed in a magnificent tomb sculptured by
Juan de la Huerta; the tomb was afterwards transferred to the museum in
the _hôtel de ville_.
By his wife, Margaret of Bavaria, he had one son, Philip the Good, who
succeeded him; and seven daughters--Margaret, who married in 1404 Louis,
son of Charles VI., and in 1423 Arthur, earl of Richmond and afterwards
duke of Brittany; Mary, wife of Adolph of Cleves; Catherine, promised in
1410 to a son of Louis of Anjou; Isabella, wife of Olivier de Châtillon,
count of Penthièvre; Joanna, who died young; Anne, who married John,
duke of Bedford, in 1423; and Agnes, who married Charles I., duke of
Bourbon, in 1425.
See A. G. P. Baron de Barante, _Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne_,
(Brussels, 1835-1836); B. Zeller, _Louis de France et Jean sans Peur_
(Paris, 1886); and E. Petit, _Itinéraire de Philippe le Hardi et de
Jean sans Peur_ (Paris, 1888). (R. Po.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This incident earned for him among the Parisians the contemptuous
nickname of "John of Lagny, who does not hurry."
JOHN (1468-1532), called the Steadfast, elector of Saxony, fourth son of
the elector Ernest, was born on the 30th of June 1468. In 1486, when his
eldest brother became elector as Frederick III., John received a part of
the paternal inheritance and afterwards assisted his kinsman, the German
king Maximilian I., in several campaigns. He was an early adherent of
Luther, and, becoming elector of Saxony by his brother's death in May
1525, was soon prominent among the Reformers. Having assisted to
suppress the rising led by Thomas Munzer in 1525, he helped Philip,
landgrave of Hesse, to found the league of Gotha, formed in 1526 for the
protection of the Reformers. He was active at the diet of Spires in
1526, and the "recess" of this diet gave him an opportunity to reform
the church in Saxony, where a plan for divine service was drawn up by
Luther. The assertions of Otto von Pack that a league had been formed
against the elector and his friends induced John to ally himself again
with Philip of Hesse in March 1528, but he restrained Philip from making
an immediate attack upon their opponents. He signed the protest against
the "recess" of the diet of Spires in 1529, being thus one of the
original Protestants, and was actively hostile to Charles V. at the diet
of Augsburg in 1530. Having signed the confession of Augsburg, he was
alone among the electors in objecting to the election of Ferdinand,
afterwards the emperor Ferdinand I., as king of the Romans. He was among
the first members of the league of Schmalkalden, assented to the
religious peace of Nuremberg in 1532, and died at Schweidnitz on the
16th of August 1532. John was twice married and left two sons and two
daughters. His elder son, John Frederick, succeeded him as elector, and
his younger son was John Ernest (d. 1553). He rendered great services to
the Protestant cause in its infancy, but as a Lutheran resolutely
refused to come to any understanding with other opponents of the older
faith.
See J. Becker, _Kurfürst Johann von Sachsen und seine Beziehungen zu
Luther_ (Leipzig, 1890); J. Janssen, _History of the German People_
(English translation), vol. v. (London, 1903); L. von Ranke, _Deutsche
Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation_ (Leipzig, 1882).
JOHN, DON (1545-1578), of Austria, was the natural son of the emperor
Charles V. by Barbara Blomberg, the daughter of an opulent citizen of
Regensburg. He was born in that free imperial city on the 24th of
February 1545, the anniversary of his father's birth and coronation and
of the battle of Pavia, and was at first confided under the name of
Geronimo to foster parents of humble birth, living at a village near
Madrid; but in 1554 he was transferred to the charge of Madalena da
Ulloa, the wife of Don Luis de Quijada, and was brought up in ignorance
of his parentage at Quijada's castle of Villagarcia not far from
Valladolid. Charles V. in a codicil of his will recognized Geronimo as
his son, and recommended him to the care of his successor. In September
1559 Philip II. of Spain publicly recognized the boy as a member of the
royal family, and he was known at court as Don Juan de Austria. For
three years he was educated at Alcalá, and had as school companions his
nephews, the infante Don Carlos and Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma.
With Don Carlos his relations were especially friendly. It had been
Philip's intention that Don John should become a monk, but he showed a
strong inclination for a soldier's career and the king yielded. In 1568
Don John was appointed to the command of a squadron of 33 galleys, and
his first operations were against the Algerian pirates. His next
services were (1560-70) against the rebel Moriscos in Granada. In 1571 a
nobler field of action was opened to him. The conquest of Cyprus by the
Turks had led the Christian powers of the Mediterranean to fear for the
safety of the Adriatic. A league between Spain and Venice was effected
by the efforts of Pope Pius V. to resist the Turkish advance to the
west, and Don John was named admiral in chief of the combined fleets. At
the head of 208 galleys, 6 galleasses and a number of smaller craft, Don
John encountered the Turkish fleet at Lepanto on the 7th of October
1571, and gained a complete victory. Only forty Turkish vessels effected
their escape, and it was computed that 35,000 of their men were slain or
captured while 15,000 Christian galley slaves were released.
Unfortunately, through divisions and jealousies between the allies, the
fruits of one of the most decisive naval victories in history were to a
great extent lost.
This great triumph aroused Don John's ambition and filled his
imagination with schemes of personal aggrandizement. He thought of
erecting first a principality in Albania and the Morea, and then a
kingdom in Tunis. But the conclusion by Venice of a separate peace with
the sultan put an end to the league, and though Don John captured Tunis
in 1573, it was again speedily lost. The schemes of Don John found no
support in Philip II., who refused to entertain them, and even withheld
from his half-brother the title of infante of Spain. At last, however,
he was appointed (1576) governor-general of the Netherlands, in
succession to Luis de Requesens. The administration of the latter had
not been successful, the revolt headed by the prince of Orange had
spread, and at the time of Don John's nomination the Pacification of
Ghent appeared to have united the whole of the seventeen provinces of
the Netherlands in determined opposition to Spanish rule and the policy
of Philip II. The magic of Don John's name, and the great qualities of
which he had given proof, were to recover what had been lost. He was,
however, now brought into contact with an adversary of a very different
calibre from himself. This was William of Orange, whose influence was
now supreme throughout the Netherlands. The Pacification of Ghent, which
was really a treaty between Holland and Zeeland and the other provinces
for the defence of their common interests against Spanish oppression,
had been followed by an agreement between the southern provinces, known
as the Union of Brussels, which, though maintaining the Catholic
religion and the king's authority, aimed at the expulsion of the Spanish
soldiery and officials from the Netherlands. Confronted by the refusal
of the states general to accept him as governor unless he assented to
the conditions of the Pacification of Ghent, swore to maintain the
rights and privileges of the provinces, and to employ only Netherlanders
in his service, Don John, after some months of fruitless negotiations,
saw himself compelled to give way. At Huey on the 12th of February 1577
he signed a treaty, known as the "Perpetual Edict," in which he complied
with these terms. On the 1st of May he made his entry into Brussels, but
he found himself governor-general only in name, and the prince of Orange
master of the situation. In July he suddenly betook himself to Namur and
withdrew his concessions. William of Orange forthwith took up his
residence at Brussels, and gave his support to the archduke Matthias,
afterwards emperor, whom the states-general accepted as their sovereign.
Meanwhile Philip had sent large reinforcements to Don John under the
leadership of his cousin Alexander Farnese. At the head of a powerful
force Don John now suddenly attacked the patriot army at Gemblours,
where, chiefly by the skill and daring of Farnese, a complete victory
was gained on the 31st of January 1578. He could not, however, follow up
his success for lack of funds, and was compelled to remain inactive all
the summer, chafing with impatience at the cold indifference with which
his appeals for the sinews of war were treated by Philip. His health
gave way, he was attacked with fever, and on the 1st of October 1578, at
the early age of 33, Don John died, heartbroken at the failure of all
his soaring ambitions, and at the repeated proofs that he had received
of the king his brother's jealousy and neglect.
See Sir W. Stirling Maxwell, _Don John of Austria 1547-1575_ (1883)
and the bibliography under PHILIP II. OF SPAIN.
JOHN, DON (1629-1679), of Austria, the younger, recognized as the
natural son of Philip IV., king of Spain, his mother, Maria Calderon, or
Calderona, being an actress. Scandal accused her of a prodigality of
favours which must have rendered the paternity of Don John very dubious.
He was, however, recognized by the king, received a princely education
at Ocaña, and was amply endowed with commanderies in the military
orders, and other forms of income. Don John was sent in 1647 to
Naples--then in the throes of the popular rising first led by
Masaniello--with a squadron and a military force, to support the
viceroy. The restoration of royal authority was due rather to the
exhaustion of the insurgents and the follies of their French leader, the
duke of Guise, than to the forces of Don John. He was next sent as
viceroy to Sicily, whence he was recalled in 1651 to complete the
pacification of Catalonia, which had been in revolt since 1640. The
excesses of the French, whom the Catalans had called in, had produced a
reaction, and Don John had not much more to do than to preside over the
final siege of Barcelona and the convention which terminated the revolt
in October 1652. On both occasions he had played the peacemaker, and
this sympathetic part, combined with his own pleasant manners and
handsome person with bright eyes and abundant raven-black hair--a
complete contrast to the fair complexions of the Habsburgs--made him a
popular favourite. In 1656 he was sent to command in Flanders, in
combination with the prince of Condé, then in revolt against his own
sovereign. At the storming of the French camp at Valenciennes in 1656,
Don John displayed brilliant personal courage at the head of a cavalry
charge. When, however, he took a part in the leadership of the army at
the Dunes in the battle fought against Turenne and the British forces
sent over by Cromwell in 1658, he was completely beaten, in spite of the
efforts of Condé, whose advice he neglected, and of the hard fighting of
English Royalist exiles. During 1661 and 1662 he commanded against the
Portuguese in Estremadura. The Spanish troops were ill-appointed,
irregularly paid and untrustworthy, but they were superior in numbers
and some successes were gained. If Don John had not suffered from the
indolence which Clarendon, who knew him, considered his chief defect,
the Portuguese would have been hard pressed. The greater part of the
south of Portugal was overrun, but in 1663 the Portuguese were
reinforced by a body of English troops, and were put under the command
of the Huguenot Schomberg. By him Don John was completely beaten at
Estremos. Even now he might not have lost the confidence of his father,
if Queen Mariana, mother of the sickly infante Carlos, the only
surviving legitimate son of the king, had not regarded the bastard with
distrust and dislike. Don John was removed from command and sent to his
commandery at Consuegra. After the death of Philip IV. in 1665 Don John
became the recognized leader of the opposition to the government of
Philip's widow, the queen regent. She and her favourite, the German
Jesuit Nithard, seized and put to death one of his most trusted
servants, Don José Malladas. Don John, in return, put himself at the
head of a rising of Aragon and Catalonia, which led to the expulsion of
Nithard on the 25th of February 1669. Don John was, however, forced to
content himself with the viceroyalty of Aragon. In 1677, the queen
mother having aroused universal opposition by her shameless favour for
Fernando de Valenzuela, Don John was able to drive her from court, and
establish himself as prime minister. Great hopes were entertained of his
administration, but it proved disappointing and short. Don John died on
the 17th of September 1679.
The career of Don John can be followed in J. C. Dunlop's _Memoirs of
Spain_ 1621-1700 (Edin. 1834).
JOHN OF BEVERLEY, ST (d. 721), English bishop, is said to have been born
of noble parents at Harpham, in the east riding of Yorkshire. He
received his education at Canterbury under Archbishop Theodore, the
statement that he was educated at Oxford being of course untrue. He was
for a time a member of the Whitby community, under St Hilda, and in 687
he was consecrated bishop of Hexham and in 705 was promoted to the
bishopric of York. He resigned the latter see in 718, and retired to a
monastery which he had founded at Beverley, where he died on the 7th of
May 721. He was canonized in 1037, and his feast is celebrated annually
in the Roman Church on the 7th of May. Many miracles of healing are
ascribed to John, whose pupils were numerous and devoted to him. He was
celebrated for his scholarship as well as for his virtues.
The following works are ascribed to John by J. Bale: _Pro Luca
exponendo_ (an exposition of Luke); _Homiliae in Evangelia_;
_Epistolae ad Herebaldum_, _Audenam, et Bertinum_; and _Epistolae ad
Hyldam abbatissam_. See life by Folcard, based on Bede, in _Acta SS.
Bolland_.; and J. Raine's _Fasti eboracenses_ (1863).
JOHN OF THE CROSS, ST (1542-1591), Spanish mystic, was born at Ontiveros
(Old Castile) on the 24th of June 1542. He became a professed Carmelite
in 1564, and was ordained priest at Salamanca in 1567. He met with much
opposition in his efforts to introduce the reforms proposed by St
Theresa, and was more than once imprisoned. His real name was Juan de
Yepez y Álvarez; in religion he was known as Juan de San Matias till
1568, when he adopted the name of Juan de la Cruz. Broken by
persecution, he was sent to the monastery of Ubeda, where he died in
1591; his _Obras espirituales_ were published posthumously in 1618. He
was beatified in 1674 and canonized on the 27th of December 1726. The
lofty symbolism of his prose is frequently obscure, but his lyrical
verses are distinguished for their rapturous ecstasy and beauty of
expression.
Some of his poems have been translated with great success by Arthur
Symons in _Images of Good and Evil_; the most convenient edition of
his works, which have been frequently reprinted, is that contained in
vol. xvi. of the _Biblioteca de autores españoles_.
JOHN OF ASIA (or OF EPHESUS), a leader of the Monophysite
Syriac-speaking Church in the 6th century, and one of the earliest and
most important of Syriac historians. Born at Amid (Diarbekr) about 505,
he was there ordained as a deacon in 529, but in 534 we find him in
Palestine, and in 535 he passed to Constantinople. The cause of his
leaving Amid was probably either the great pestilence which broke out
there in 534 or the furious persecution directed against the
Monophysites by Ephraim (patriarch of Antioch 529-544) and Abraham
(bishop of Amid c. 520-541). In Constantinople he seems to have early
won the notice of Justinian, one of the main objects of whose policy was
the consolidation of Eastern Christianity as a bulwark against the
heathen power of Persia. John is said by Barhebraeus (_Chron. eccl._ i.
195) to have succeeded Anthimus as Monophysite bishop of Constantinople,
but this is probably a mistake.[1] Anyhow he enjoyed the emperor's
favour until the death of the latter in 565 and (as he himself tells us)
was entrusted with the administration of the entire revenues of the
Monophysite Church. He was also sent, with the rank of bishop, on a
mission for the conversion of such heathen as remained in Asia Minor,
and informs us that the number of those whom he baptized amounted to
70,000. He also built a large monastery at Tralles on the hills skirting
the valley of the Meander, and more than 90 other monasteries. Of the
mission to the Nubians which he promoted, though he did not himself
visit their country, an interesting account is given in the 4th book of
the 3rd part of his _History_.[2] In 546 the emperor entrusted him with
the task of rooting out the secret practice of idolatry in
Constantinople and its neighbourhood. But his fortunes changed soon
after the accession of Justin II. About 571 Paul of Asia, the orthodox
or Chalcedonian patriarch, began (with the sanction of the emperor) a
rigorous persecution of the Monophysite Church leaders, and John was
among those who suffered most. He gives us a detailed account of his
sufferings in prison, his loss of civil rights, &c., in the third part
of his _History_. The latest events recorded are of the date 585, and
the author cannot have lived much longer; but of the circumstances of
his death nothing is known.
John's main work was his _Ecclesiastical History_, which covered more
than six centuries, from the time of Julius Caesar to 585. It was
composed in three parts, each containing six books. The first part
seems to have wholly perished. The second, which extended from
Theodosius II. to the 6th or 7th year of Justin II., was (as F. Nau
has recently proved)[3] reproduced in full or almost in full, in
John's own words, in the third part of the _Chronicle_ which was till
lately attributed to the patriarch Dionysius Telmaharensis, but is
really the work of an unknown compiler. Of this second division of
John's _History_, in which he had probably incorporated the so-called
_Chronicle_ of Joshua the Stylite, considerable portions are found in
the British Museum MSS. Add. 14647 and 14650, and these have been
published in the second volume of Land's _Anecdota Syriaca_. But the
whole is more completely presented in the Vatican MS. (clxii.), which
contains the third part of the _Chronicle_ of pseudo-Dionysius. The
third part of John's history, which is a detailed account of the
ecclesiastical events which happened in 571-585, as well as of some
earlier occurrences, survives in a fairly complete state in Add.
14640, a British Museum MS. of the 7th century. It forms a
contemporary record of great value to the historian. Its somewhat
disordered state, the want of chronological arrangement, and the
occasional repetition of accounts of the same events are due, as the
author himself informs us (ii. 50), to the work being almost entirely
composed during the times of persecution. The same cause may account
for the somewhat slovenly Syriac style. The writer claims to have
treated his subject impartially, and though written from the narrow
point of view of one to whom Monophysite "orthodoxy" was
all-important, it is evidently a faithful reproduction of events as
they occurred. This third part was edited by Cureton (Oxford, 1853),
and was translated into English by R. Payne-Smith (Oxford, 1860) and
into German by J. M. Schönfelder (Munich, 1862).
John's other known work was a series of _Biographies of Eastern
Saints_, compiled about 569. These have been edited by Land in
_Anecdota Syriaca_, ii. 1-288, and translated into Latin by Douwen and
Land (Amsterdam, 1889). An interesting estimate of John as an
ecclesiastic and author was given by the Abbé Duchesne in a memoir
read before the five French Academies on the 25th of October 1892.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Land, _Joannes Bischof von Ephesos_, pp. 57 seq.
[2] Cf. Land's Appendix (_op. cit._ 172-193).
[3] See _Bulletin critique_, 15th June and 25th Aug. 1896, and 25th
Jan. 1897; _Journal asiatique_, 9th series, vol. viii. (1896) pp. 346
sqq. and vol. ix. (1897) p. 529; also _Revue de l'Orient chrétien,
Suppl. trimestriel_ (1897), pp. 41-54, 455-493; and compare Nöldeke
in _Vienna Oriental Journal_ (1896), pp. 160 sqq. The facts are
briefly stated in Duval's _Littérature syriaque_, p. 192. A full
analysis of this second part of John's history has been given by M.
Nau.
JOHN OF DAMASCUS (JOHANNES DAMASCENUS) (d. before 754), an eminent
theologian of the Eastern Church, derives his surname from Damascus,
where he was born about the close of the 7th century. His Arabic name
was Mansur (the victor), and he received the epithet Chrysorrhoas
(gold-pouring) on account of his eloquence. The principal account of his
life is contained in a narrative of the 10th century, much of which is
obviously legendary. His father Sergius was a Christian, but
notwithstanding held a high office under the Saracen caliph, in which he
was succeeded by his son. John is said to have owed his education in
philosophy, mathematics and theology to an Italian monk named Cosmas,
whom Sergius had redeemed from a band of captive slaves. About the year
730 he wrote several treatises in defence of image-worship, which the
emperor, Leo the Isaurian, was making strenuous efforts to suppress.
Various pieces of evidence go to show that it was shortly after this
date that he resolved to forsake the world, divided his fortune among
his friends and the poor, and betook himself to the monastery of St
Sabas, near Jerusalem, where he spent the rest of his life. After the
customary probation he was ordained priest by the patriarch of
Jerusalem. In his last years he travelled through Syria contending
against the iconoclasts, and in the same cause he visited Constantinople
at the imminent risk of his life during the reign of Constantine
Copronymus. With him the "mysteries," the entire ritual, are an integral
part of the Orthodox system, and all dogma culminates in image-worship.
The date of his death is uncertain; it is probably about 752. John
Damascenus is a saint both in the Greek and in the Latin Churches, his
festival being observed in the former on the 29th of November and on the
4th of December, and in the latter on the 6th of May.
The works of Damascenus give him a foremost place among the
theologians of the early Eastern Church, and, according to Dorner, he
"remains in later times the highest authority in the theological
literature of the Greeks." This is not because he is an original
thinker but because he compiled into systematic form the scattered
teaching of his theological predecessors. Several treatises attributed
to him are probably spurious, but his undoubted works are numerous and
embrace a wide range. The most important contains three parts under
the general title [Greek: Pêgê gnôseôs] ("The Fountain of Knowledge").
The first part, entitled [Greek: Kephàlaia philosophika], is an
exposition and application of theology of Aristotle's Dialectic. The
second, entitled [Greek: Peri aireseôn] ("Of Heresies"), is a
reproduction of the earlier work of Epiphanius, with a continuation
giving an account of the heresies that arose after the time of that
writer. The third part, entitled [Greek: Hekdosis akribês tês
orthodoxou pisteos] ("An Accurate Exposition of the Orthodox Faith"),
is much the most important, containing as it does a complete system of
theology founded on the teaching of the fathers and church councils,
from the 4th to the 7th century. It thus embodies the finished result
of the theological thought of the early Greek Church. Through a Latin
translation made by Burgundio of Pisa in the 12th century, it was well
known to Peter Lombard and Aquinas, and in this way it influenced the
scholastic theology of the West. Another well-known work is the _Sacra
parallela_, a collection of biblical passages followed by
illustrations drawn from other scriptural sources and from the
fathers. There is much merit in his hymns and "canons"; one of the
latter is very familiar as the hymn "The Day of Resurrection, Earth
tell it out abroad." John of Damascus has sometimes been called the
"Father of Scholasticism," and the "Lombard of the Greeks," but these
epithets are appropriate only in a limited sense.
The Christological position of John may be summed up in the following
description:[1] "He tries to secure the unity of the two natures by
relegating to the divine Logos the formative and controlling agency.
It is not a human individual that the Logos assumes, nor is it
humanity, or human nature in general. It is rather a potential human
individual, a nature not yet developed into a person or hypostasis.
The hypostasis through which this takes place is the personal Logos
through whose union with this potential man, in the womb of Mary, the
potential man acquires a concrete reality, an individual existence. He
has, therefore, no hypostasis of himself but only in and through the
Logos. It is denied that he is _non-hypostatic_ ([Greek:
anypostatos]); it is affirmed that he is _en-hypostatic_ ([Greek:
enypostatos]). Two natures may form a unity, as the body and soul in
man. So man, both soul and body, is brought into unity with the Logos;
there being then one hypostasis for both natures." There is an
interchange of the divine and human attributes, a communication of the
former which deifies the receptive and passive human nature. In Christ
the human will has become the organ of the divine will. Thus while
John is an adherent of Chalcedon and a dyothelite, the drift of his
teaching is in the monophysite direction. "The Chalcedonian
_Definition_ is victorious, but Apollinaris is not overcome"; what
John gives with the one hand he takes away with the other. On the
question of the Atonement he regards the death of Christ as a
sacrifice offered to God and not a ransom paid to the devil.
LITERATURE.--The _Life_ of John of Damascus was written by John,
patriarch of Jerusalem in the 10th century (Migne, _Patrol. Graec._,
xciv. 429-489). The works were edited by Le Quien (2 vols., fol.,
Paris, 1712) and form vols. 94 to 96 in Migne's Greek series. A
monograph by J. Langen was published in 1879. A. Harnack's _History of
Dogma_ is very full (see especially vols. iii. and iv.; on the
image-worship controversy, iv. 322 seq.), and so are the similar works
of F. Loofs-Seeberg and A. Dorner. See also O. Bardenhewer's
_Patrologie_, and other literature cited in F. Kattenbusch's excellent
article in Hauck-Herzog, _Realencyklopädie_, vol. ix.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] G. P. Fisher, _Hist. of Chr. Doctrine_, 159 seq. More fully in R.
L. Ottley, _The Doctrine of the Incarnation_, ii. 138-146.
JOHN OF HEXHAM (c. 1160-1209), English chronicler, is known to us merely
as the author of a work called the _Historia XXV. annorum_, which
continues the _Historia regum_ of Simeon of Durham and contains an
account of English events 1130-1153. From the title, as given in the
only manuscript, we learn John's name and the fact that he was prior of
Hexham. It must have been between 1160 and 1209 that he held this
position; but the date at which he lived and wrote cannot be more
accurately determined. Up to the year 1139 he follows closely the
history written by his predecessor, Prior Richard; thenceforward he is
an independent though not a very valuable authority. He is best informed
as to the events of the north country; his want of care, when he
ventures farther afield, may be illustrated by the fact that he places
in 1145 King Stephen's siege of Oxford, which really occurred in 1142.
Even for northern affairs his chronology is faulty; from 1140 onwards
his dates are uniformly one year too late. Prior Richard is not the only
author to whom John is indebted; he incorporates in the annal of 1138
two other narratives of the battle of the Standard, one in verse by the
monk Serlo, another in prose by Abbot Ailred of Rievaux; and also a
poem, by a Glasgow clerk, on the death of Sumerled of the Isles.
The one manuscript of John's chronicle is a 13th century copy; MS. C.
C. C. Cambridge, cxxxix. 8. The best edition is that of T. Arnold in
_Symeonis monachi opera_, vol. ii. (Rolls Series, 1885). There is an
English translation in J. Stevenson's _Church Historians of England_,
vol. iv. (London, 1856). (H. W. C. D.)
JOHN OF IRELAND (JOHANNIS DE IRLANDIA), (_fl._ 1480), Scottish writer,
perhaps of Lowland origin, was resident for thirty years in Paris and
later a professor of theology. He was confessor to James IV. and also to
Louis XI. of France, and was rector of Yarrow (de Foresta) when he
completed, at Edinburgh, the work on which rests his sole claim as a
vernacular writer. This book, preserved in MS. in the Advocates'
Library, Edinburgh (MS. 18, 2, 8), and labelled "Johannis de Irlandia
opera theologica," is a treatise in Scots on the wisdom and discipline
necessary to a prince, especially intended for the use of the young
James IV. The book is the earliest extant example of original Scots
prose. It was still in MS. in 1910, but an edition was promised by the
Scottish Text Society. In this book John refers to two other vernacular
writings, one "of the commandementis and uthir thingis pretenand to the
salvacioune of man," the other, "of the tabill of confessioune." No
traces of these have been discovered. The author's name appears on the
registers of the university of Paris and on the rolls of the Scottish
parliaments, and he is referred to by the Scottish historians, Leslie
and Dempster.
See the notices in John Lyden's Introduction to his edition of the
_Complaynt of Scotlande_ (1801), pp. 85 seq.; _The Scottish
Antiquary_, xiii. 111-115 and xv. 1-14. Annotated extracts are given
in Gregory Smith's _Specimens of Middle Scots_ (1902).
JOHN OF RAVENNA. Two distinct persons of this name, formerly confused
and identified with a third (anonymous) Ravennese in Petrarch's letters,
lived at the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century.
1. A young Ravennese born about 1347, who in 1364 went to live with
Petrarch as secretary. In 1367 he set out to see the world and make a
name for himself, returned in a state of destitution, but, growing
restless again, left his employer for good in 1368. He is not mentioned
again in Petrarch's correspondence, unless a letter "to a certain
wanderer" (_vago cuidam_), congratulating him on his arrival at Rome in
1373, is addressed to him.
2. Son of Conversanus (Conversinus, Convertinus). He is first heard of
(Nov. 17, 1368) as appointed to the professorship of rhetoric at
Florence, where he had for some time held the post of notary at the
courts of justice. This differentiates him from (1). He entered (c.
1370) the service of the ducal house of Padua, the Carraras, in which he
continued at least until 1404, although the whole of that period was not
spent in Padua. From 1375 to 1379 he was a schoolmaster at Belluno, and
was dismissed as too good for his post and not adapted for teaching
boys. On the 22nd of March 1382, he was appointed professor of rhetoric
at Padua. During the struggle between the Carraras and Viscontis, he
spent five years at Udine (1387-1392). From 1395-1404 he was chancellor
of Francis of Carrara, and is heard of for the last time in 1406 as
living at Venice. His history of the Carraras, a tasteless production in
barbarous Latin, says little for his literary capacity; but as a teacher
he enjoyed a great reputation, amongst his pupils being Vittorino da
Feltre and Guarino of Verona.
3. Malpaghini (De Malpaghinis), the most important. Born about 1356, he
was a pupil of Petrarch from a very early age to 1374. On the 19th of
September 1397 he was appointed professor of rhetoric and eloquence at
Florence. On the 9th of June 1412, on the re-opening of the studio,
which had been shut from 1405 to 1411 owing to the plague, his
appointment was renewed for five years, before the expiration of which
period he died (May 1417). Although Malpaghini left nothing behind him,
he did much to encourage the study of Latin; among his pupils was Poggio
Bracciolini.
The local documents and other authorities on the subject will be found
in E. T. Klette, _Beiträge zur Geschichte und Litteratur der
italienischen Gelehrtenrenaissance_, vol. i. (1888); see also G.
Voigt, _Die Wiederbelebung des klassischen Altertums_, who, however,
identifies (1) and (2).
JOHN OF SALISBURY (c. 1115-1180), English author, diplomatist and
bishop, was born at Salisbury between the years 1115 and 1120. Beyond
the fact that he was of Saxon, not of Norman race, and applies to
himself the cognomen of _Parvus_, "short," or "small," few details are
known regarding his early life; but from his own statements it is
gathered that he crossed to France about 1136, and began regular studies
in Paris under Abelard, who had there for a brief period re-opened his
famous school on Mont St Geneviève. After Abelard's retirement, John
carried on his studies under Alberich of Reims and Robert of Melun. From
1138 to 1140 he studied grammar and the classics under William of
Conches and Richard l'Evêque, the disciples of Bernard of Chartres,
though it is still a matter of controversy whether it was in Chartres or
not (cf. A. Clerval, _Les Écoles de Chartres au moyen âge_, 1895).
Bernard's teaching was distinguished partly by its pronounced Platonic
tendency, partly by the stress laid upon literary study of the greater
Latin writers; and the influence of the latter feature is noticeable in
all John of Salisbury's works. About 1140 he was at Paris studying
theology under Gilbert de la Porrée, then under Robert Pullus and Simon
of Poissy. In 1148 he resided at Moûtiers la Celle in the diocese of
Troyes, with his friend Peter of Celle. He was present at the council of
Reims, presided over by Pope Eugenius III., and was probably presented
by Bernard of Clairvaux to Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, at whose
court he settled, probably about 1150. Appointed secretary to Theobald,
he was frequently sent on missions to the papal see. During this time he
composed his greatest works, published almost certainly in 1159, the
_Policraticus, sive de nugis curialium et de vestigiis philosophorum_
and the _Metalogicus_, writings invaluable as storehouses of information
regarding the matter and form of scholastic education, and remarkable
for their cultivated style and humanist tendency. After the death of
Theobald in 1161, John continued as secretary to Thomas Becket, and took
an active part in the long disputes between that primate and his
sovereign, Henry II. His letters throw light on the constitutional
struggle then agitating the English world. With Becket he withdrew to
France during the king's displeasure; he returned with him in 1170, and
was present at his assassination. In the following years, during which
he continued in an influential situation in Canterbury, but at what
precise date is unknown, he drew up the _Life of Thomas Becket_. In 1176
he was made bishop of Chartres, where he passed the remainder of his
life. In 1179 he took an active part in the council of the Lateran. He
died at or near Chartres on the 25th of October 1180.
John's writings enable us to understand with much completeness the
literary and scientific position of the 12th century. His views imply
a cultivated intelligence well versed in practical affairs, opposing
to the extremes of both nominalism and realism a practical common
sense. His doctrine is a kind of utilitarianism, with a strong leaning
on the speculative side to the modified literary scepticism of Cicero,
for whom he had unbounded admiration. He was a humanist before the
Renaissance, surpassing all other representatives of the school of
Chartres in his knowledge of the Latin classics, as in the purity of
his style, which was evidently moulded on that of Cicero. Of Greek
writers he appears to have known nothing at first hand, and very
little in translations. The _Timaeus_ of Plato in the Latin version of
Chalcidius was known to him as to his contemporaries and predecessors,
and probably he had access to translations of the _Phaedo_ and _Meno_.
Of Aristotle he possessed the whole of the _Organon_ in Latin; he is,
indeed, the first of the medieval writers of note to whom the whole
was known. Of other Aristotelian writings he appears to have known
nothing.
The collected editions of the works are by J. A. Giles (5 vols.,
Oxford, 1848), and by Migne, in the _Patrologiae cursus_, vol. 199:
neither accurate. The _Policraticus_ was edited with notes and
introductions by C. C. I. Webb, _Ioannis Saresberiensis episcopi
Carnotensis Policratici_ (Oxford, 1909), 2 vols. The most complete
study of John of Salisbury is the monograph by C. Schaarschmidt,
_Johannes Sarisberiensis nach Leben und Studien, Schriften und
Philosophie_, 1862, which is a model of accurate and complete
workmanship. See also the article in the _Dict. Nat. Biog._
JOHN (1290-c. 1320), surnamed the Parricide, and called also John of
Swabia, was a son of Rudolph II. count of Habsburg and Agnes daughter of
Ottakar II. king of Bohemia, and consequently a grandson of the German
king Rudolph I. Having passed his early days at the Bohemian court, when
he came of age he demanded a portion of the family estates from his
uncle, the German king Albert I. His wishes were not gratified, and with
three companions he formed a plan to murder the king. On the 1st of May
1308 Albert in crossing the river Reuss at Windisch became separated
from his attendants, and was at once attacked and killed by the four
conspirators. John escaped the vengeance of Albert's sons, and was
afterwards found in a monastery at Pisa, where in 1313 he is said to
have been visited by the emperor Henry VII., who had placed him under
the ban. From this time he vanishes from history. The character of John
is used by Schiller in his play _Wilhelm Tell_.
JOHN, THE EPISTLES OF. The so-called epistles of John, in the Bible, are
not epistles in the strict sense of the term, for the first is a homily,
and encyclical or pastoral (as has been recognized since the days of
Bretschneider and Michaelis), while the other two are brief notes or
letters. Nor are they John's, if John means the son of Zebedee. The
latter conclusion depends upon the particular hypothesis adopted with
regard to the general Johannine problem, yet even when it is held that
John the apostle (q.v.) survived to old age in Ephesus, the second and
third epistles may be fairly ascribed (with Erasmus, Grotius, Credner,
Bretschneider, Reuss, &c.) to John the presbyter[1], as several circles
in the early church held ("Opinio a plerisque tradita," Jerome: _De vir.
ill._ 18). An apostle indeed might call himself a presbyter (cf. 1 Pet.
v. 1). But these notes imply no apostolic claim on the part of the
author, and, although their author is anonymous, the likelihood is that
their composition by the great Asiatic presbyter John led afterwards to
their incorporation in the "instrumentum" of John the apostle's
writings, when the prestige of the latter had obscured the former. All
hypotheses as to their pseudonymity or composition by different hands
may be dismissed. They would never have floated down the stream of
tradition except on the support of some primitive authority. If this was
not connected with John the apostle the only feasible alternative is to
think of John the presbyter, for Papias refers to the latter in
precisely this fashion (Euseb. _H. E._ iii. 39, 15; [Greek: kai touto ho
p. elege]).
The period of all three lies somewhere within the last decade of the 1st
century and the first decade of the 2nd. No evidence is available to
determine in what precise order they were written, but it will be
convenient to take the two smaller notes before the larger. The
so-called Second Epistle of John is one of the excommunicating notes
occasionally despatched by early Christian leaders to a community (cf. 2
Cor. v. 9). The presbyter or elder warns a Christian community,
figuratively addressed as "the elect lady" (cf. 13 with 1 Pet. i. 1; v,
13; also the plural of 6, 8, 10 and 13), against some itinerant (cf.
_Didache_ xi. 1-2) teachers who were promulgating advanced Docetic views
(7) upon the person of Christ. The note is merely designed to serve (12)
until the writer arrives in person. He sends greetings to his
correspondents from some community in which he is residing at present
(13), and with which they had evidently some connexion.
The note was familiar to Irenaeus[2] who twice (i. 16, 3, iii. 16, 8)
cites 10-11, once quoting it from the first epistle by mistake, but no
tradition has preserved the name of the community in question, and all
opinions on the matter are guess-work. The reference to "all who know
the truth" (ver. 1) is, of course, to be taken relatively (cf. Rev. ii.
23); it does not necessarily imply a centre like Antioch or Rome
(Chapman). Whiston thought of Philadelphia, and probably it must have
been one of the Asiatic churches.
The so-called Third Epistle of John belongs to the [Greek: epistolai
systatikai] (2 Cor. iii. 1) of the early church, like Rom. xvi. It is a
private note addressed by the presbyter to a certain Gaius, a member of
the same community or house-church (9) as that to which 2 John is
written. A local errorist, Diotrephes (9-10) had repudiated the
authority of the writer and his party, threatening even to excommunicate
Gaius and others from the church (cf. Abbott's _Diatessarica_, § 2258).
With this opponent the writer promises (10) to deal sharply in person
before very long. Meantime (14) he despatches the present note, in
hearty appreciation of his correspondent's attitude and character.
The allusion in 9 ([Greek: egrapsa]) refers in all likelihood to the
"second" epistle (so Ewald, Wolf, Salmon, &c.). In order to avoid the
suggestion that it implied a lost epistle, [Greek: an] was inserted at
an early stage in the textual history of the note. If [Greek: ekklêsias]
could be read in 12, Demetrius would be a presbyter; in any case, he is
not to be identified with Demas (Chapman), nor is there any reason to
suppose (with Harnack)[3] that the note of 9 was written to, and
suppressed by, him. What the presbyter is afraid of is not so much that
his note would not be read (Ewald, Harnack), as that it would not be
acted upon.
These notes, written originally on small sheets of papyrus, reveal the
anonymous presbyter travelling (so Clem. Alex. _Quis dives salv._ xlii.)
in his circuit or diocese of churches, and writing occasional pastoral
letters, in which he speaks not only in his own name but in that of a
coterie of like-minded Christians.[4] It is otherwise with the brochure
or manifesto known as the "first epistle." This was written neither at
the request of its readers nor to meet any definite local emergency, but
on the initiative of its author (i. 4) who was evidently concerned about
the effect produced upon the Church in general by certain contemporary
phases of semi-gnostic teaching. The polemic is directed against a
dualism which developed theoretically into docetic views of Christ's
person (ii. 22, iv. 2, &c.), and practically into libertinism (ii. 4,
&c.).[5] It is natural to think, primarily, of the churches in Asia
Minor as the circle addressed, but all indications of date or place are
absent, except those which may be inferred from its inner connexion with
the Fourth Gospel.
The plan of the brochure is unstudied and unpremeditated, resembling a
series of variations upon one or two favourite themes rather than a
carefully constructed melody. Fellowship ([Greek: koinonía]) with God
and man is its dominant note. After defining the essence of Christian
[Greek: koinonía] (i. 1-3),[6] the writer passes on to its conditions
(i. 5-ii. 17), under the antithesis of light and darkness. These
conditions are twofold: (a) a sense of sin, which leads Christians to a
sense of forgiveness[7] through Jesus Christ, (b) and obedience to the
supreme law of brotherly love (cf. Ignat. _Ad Smyrn._ 6). If these
conditions are unfulfilled, moral darkness is the issue, a darkness
which spells ruin to the soul. This prompts the writer to explain the
dangers of [Greek: koinonía] (ii. 18-29), under the antithesis of truth
and falsehood, the immediate peril being a novel heretical view of the
person of Christ. The characteristics of the fellowship are then
developed (iii. 1-12), as sinlessness and brotherly love, under the
antithesis of children of God (cf. ii. 29, "born of Him") and children
of the devil. This brotherly love bulks so largely in the writer's mind
that he proceeds to enlarge upon its main elements of confidence towards
God (iii. 13-24), moral discernment (iv. 1-6), and assurance of union
with God (iv. 7-21), all these being bound up with a true faith in Jesus
as the Christ (v. 1-12).[8] A brief epilogue gives what is for the most
part a summary (v. 13-21) of the leading ideas of the homily.[9]
Disjointed as the cause of the argument may seem, a close scrutiny of
the context often reveals a subtle connexion between paragraphs which at
first sight appear unlinked. Thus the idea of the [Greek: kosmos]
passing away (ii. 17) suggests the following sentences upon the nearness
of the [Greek: parousia] (ii. 18 seq.), whose signs are carefully noted
in order to reassure believers, and whose moral demands are underlined
(ii. 28, iii. 3). Within this paragraph[10] even the abrupt mention of
the [Greek: chrysma] has its genetical place (ii. 20). The heretical
[Greek: antichristoi], it is implied, have no [Greek: chrisma] from God;
Christians have (note the emphasis on [Greek: hymeis]), owing to their
union with the true [Greek: Christos]. Again, the genetic relation of
iii. 4 seq. to what precedes becomes evident when we consider that the
norm of Christian purity (iii. 3) is the keeping of the divine
commandments, or conduct resembling Christ's on earth (iii. 3-ii. 4-6),
so that the Gnostic[11] breach of this law not only puts a man out of
touch with Christ (iii. 6 seq.), but defeats the very end of Christ's
work, i.e. the abolition of sin (iii. 8). Thus iii. 7-10 resumes and
completes the idea of ii. 29; the Gnostic is shown to be out of touch
with the righteous God, partly because he will not share the brotherly
love which is the expression of the righteousness, and partly because
his claims to sinlessness render God's righteous forgiveness (i. 9)
superfluous. Similarly the mention of the Spirit (iii. 24) opens
naturally into a discussion of the decisive test for the false claims of
the heretics or gnostic _illuminati_ to spiritual powers and gifts (iv.
1 seq.); and, as this test of the genuine Spirit of God is the
confession of Jesus Christ as really human and incarnate, the writer, on
returning (in iv. 17 seq.) to his cardinal idea of brotherly love,
expresses it in view of the incarnate Son (iv. 9), whose mission
furnishes the proof of God's love as well as the example and the energy
of man's (iv. 10 seq.). The same conception of the real humanity of
Jesus Christ as essential to faith's being and well-being is worked out
in the following paragraph (v. 1-12), while the allusion to eternal life
(v. 11-12) leads to the closing recapitulation (v. 13-21) of the
homily's leading ideas under this special category.
The curious idea, mentioned by Augustine (_Quaest. evang._ ii. 39), that
the writing was addressed _ad Parthos_, has been literally taken by
several Latin fathers and later writers (e.g. Grotius, Paulus, Hammond),
but this title probably was a corruption of _ad sparsos_ (Wetstein,
Wegschneider) or of [Greek: pròs parthénous] (Whiston: the Christians
addressed as virgin, i.e. free from heresy), if not of [Greek:
parthénos], as applied in early tradition to John the apostle. The
circle for which the homily was meant was probably, in the first
instance, that of the Fourth Gospel, but it is impossible to determine
whether the epistle preceded or followed the larger treatise. The
division of opinion on this point (cf. J. Moffat, _Historical New
Testament_, 1901, p. 534) is serious, but the evidence for either
position is purely subjective. There are sufficient peculiarities of
style and conception[12] to justify provisionally some hesitation on the
matter of the authorship. The epistle may have been written by a
different author, or, from a more popular standpoint, by the author of
the gospel, possibly (as some critics hold) by the author of John xxi.
But _res lubrica, opinio incerta_.
It is unsafe to lay much stress upon the apparent reminiscence of iv.
2-3 (or of 2 John 7) in Polycarp, _ad Phil._ 7 reading [Greek:
élêluthóta] instead of [Greek: èlêluthénai]), though, if a literary
filiation is assumed, the probability is that Polycarp is quoting from
the epistle, not vice versa (as Volkmar contends, in his _Ursprung d.
unseren Evglien_ 47 seq.). But Papias is said by Eusebius (_H. E._ iii.
39) to have used [Greek: ê 'Ioânnou protéra] (= [Greek: ê 'Ioánnou
protê], v. 8?), i.e. the anonymous tract, which, by the time of
Eusebius, had come to be known as 1 John, and we have no reason to
suspect or reject this statement, particularly as Justin Martyr, another
Asiatic writer, furnishes clear echoes of the epistle (_Dial._ 123). The
tract must have been in circulation throughout Asia Minor at any rate
before the end of the first quarter of the 2nd century.[13] The
_terminus a quo_ is approximately the period of the Fourth Gospel's
composition, but there is no valid evidence to indicate the priority of
either, even upon the hypothesis that both came from the same pen. The
aim of each is too special to warrant the conclusion that the epistle
was intended to accompany or to introduce the gospel.
LITERATURE.--The most adequate modern editions of the three epistles
are by Westcott (3rd ed., 1892), H. J. Holtzmann (_Hand-Commentar zum
N. T._, 3rd ed., 1908), B. Weiss (in Meyer, 6th ed., 1900), Baljon
(1904) and J. E. Belser (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1906). Briefer English
notes are furnished by W. Alexander (_Speaker's Commentary_, 1881), W.
H. Bennett (_Century Bible_, 1901) and H. P. Forbes (_Internat.
Handbooks to New Testament_, vol. iv. 1907), while Plummer has a
concise edition of the Greek text (in _The Cambridge Greek Testament_,
1886). Huther's edition (in Meyer, 1880) has been translated into
English (Edinburgh, 1882), like Rothe's (1878) invaluable commentary
on the first epistle (cf. _Expository Times_, vols. iii. v.). Otto
Baumgarten's popular edition in _Die Schriften des N. T._ (1907) is,
like that of Forbes, written from practically the same standpoint as
Holtzmann's. The earlier commentaries of Alford (2nd ed., 1862), C.
A. Wolf (2nd ed., 1885), Ewald (_Die Joh. Briefe übersetzt und
erklaert_, Göttingen, 1861-1862), and Lücke (3rd ed., revised by
Bertheau, 1856) still repay the reader, and among previous editions
those of W. Whiston (_Comm. on St John's Three Catholic Epistles_,
1719) and de Wette (1837, &c.) contain material of real exegetical
interest. Special editions of the first epistle have been published by
John Cotton (London, 1655), Neander (1851; Eng. trans. New York,
1853), E. Haupt (1869; Eng. trans. 1879), Lias (1887) and C. Watson
(1891, expository) among others. Special studies by F. H. Kern (_De
epistolae Joh. consilio_, Tübingen, 1830), Erdmann (_Primae Joh.
epistolae argumentum, nexus et consilium_, Berlin, 1855), C. E.
Luthardt (_De primae Joannis epistolae compositione_, 1860), J.
Stockmeyer (_Die Structur des ersten Joh. Briefes_, Basel, 1873) and,
most elaborately, by H. J. Holtzmann (_Jahrb. für protest. Theologie_,
1881, pp. 690 seq.; 1882, pp. 128 seq., 316 seq., 460 seq.). To the
monographs already noted in the course of this article may be added
the essays by Wiesinger (_Studien und Kritiken_, 1899, pp. 575 seq.)
and Wohlenberg ("Glossen zum ersten Johannisbrief," _Neue Kirchliche
Zeitschrift_, 1902, pp. 233 seq., 632 seq.). On 2 John there are
special commentaries and studies by Ritmeier (_De electa domina_,
1706), C. A. Kriegele (_De_ [Greek: kuria] _Johannis_, 1758), Carpzov
(_Theolog. exegetica_, pp. 105-208), H. G. B. Müller (_Comment. in
secundam epistolam Joannis_, 1783), C. Klug (_De authentia_, &c.,
1823), J. Rendel Harris (_Expositor_, 6th series, 1901, pp. 194 seq.),
W. M. Ramsay (ibid., pp. 354 seq.) and Gibbins (ibid., 1902, pp.
228-236), while, in addition to Hermann's _Comment, in Joan. ep. III._
(1778), P. L. Gachon (_Authenticité de la deuxième et troisième
épîtres de Jean_, 1851), Poggel (_Der zweite und dritte Briefe d.
Apostel Johannis_, 1896), and Chapman (_Journal of Theological
Studies_, 1904, "The Historical Setting of the Second and the Third
Epistles of St John"), have discussed both of the minor epistles
together. General studies of all three are furnished by H. J.
Holtzmann in Schenkel's _Bibel-Lexicon_, iii. 342-352, Sabatier
(_Encyclop. des sciences religieuses_, vii. 177 seq.), S. Cox (_The
Private Letters of St Paul and St John_, 1867), Farrar (_Early Days of
Christianity_, chs. xxxi., xxxiv. seq.), Gloag (_Introduction to
Catholic Epistles_, 1887, pp. 256-350), S. D. F. Salmond in Hasting's
_Dict. Bible_ (vol. ii), G. H. Gilbert (_The First Interpreters of
Jesus_, 1901, pp. 301-332), and V. Bartlet (_The Apostolic Age_, 1900,
pp. 418 seq.; from a more advanced critical position by Cone (_The
Gospel and its Earliest Interpretations_, 1893, pp. 320-327), P. W.
Schmiedel (_Ency. Bib._, 2556-2562, also in a pamphlet, _Evangelium,
Briefe, und Offenbarung des Johannes_, 1906; Eng. trans. 1908), J.
Réville (_Le Quatrième Evangile_, 1901, pp. 49 seq.) and Pfleiderer
(_Das Urchristentum_, 2nd ed., 1902, pp. 390 seq.). The problem of the
epistles is discussed incidentally by many writers on the Fourth
Gospel, as well as by writers on New Testament introduction like Zahn,
Jacquier, Barth and Belser, on the Conservative side, and Hilgenfeld,
Jülicher and von Soden on the Liberal. On the older Syriac version of
2 and 3 John, see Gwynn's article in _Hermathena_ (1890), pp. 281 seq.
On the general reception of the three epistles in the early Church,
Zahn's paragraphs (in his _Geschichte d. N. T. Kanons_, i. 209 seq.,
374 seq., 905 seq.; ii. 48 seq., 88 seq.) are the most adequate.
(J. Mt.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] So Selwyn, _Christian Prophets_ (pp. 133-145), Harnack, Heinrici
(_Das Urchristenthum_, 1902, pp. 129 seq.), and von Soden (_History
of Early Christian Literature_, pp. 445-446), after Renan (_L'Église
chrétienne_, pp. 78 seq.). Von Dobschütz (_Christian Life in the
Primitive Church_, pp. 218 seq.) and R. Knopf (_Das nachapost.
Zeitalter_, 1905, pp. 32 seq., &c.) are among the most recent critics
who ascribe all three epistles to the presbyter.
[2] On the early allusions to these brief notes, cf. Gregory: _The
Canon and Text of the New Testament_ (1907), pp. 131, 190 seq.,
Westcott's _Canon of the New Testament_, pp. 218 seq., 355, 357, 366,
&c., and Leipoldt's _Geschichte d. neut. Kanons_ (1907), i. pp. 66
seq., 78 seq., 99 seq., 151 seq., 192 seq., 232 seq.
[3] In his ingenious study (_Texte und Untersuchungen_, xv. 3), whose
main contention is adopted by von Dobschütz and Knopf. On this view
(for criticism see Belser in the _Tübing. Quartalschrift_, 1897, pp.
150 seq., Krüger in _Zeitschrift für die wiss. Theologie_, 1898, pp.
307-311, and Hilgenfeld: ibid. 316-320), Diotrephes was voicing a
successful protest of the local monarchical bishops against the older
itinerant authorities (cf. Schmiedel, _Ency. Bib._, 3146-3147). As
Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (_Hermes_, 1898, pp. 529 seq.) points out,
there is a close connexion between ver. 11 and ver. 10. The same
writer argues that, as the substitution of [Greek: âgapêtos] for
[Greek: philtatos] (ver. 1) "ist Schönrednerei und nicht vom besten
Geschmacke," the writer adds [Greek: ón égô ágapô én álêtheía].
[4] This is the force of the [Greek: êmeîs] in 3 John 9-10 (cf. 1
John iv. 6, 14) "The truth" (3 John 3-5) seems to mean a life
answering to the apostolic standard thus enforced and exemplified.
[5] Several of these traits were reproduced in the teaching of
Cerinthus, others may have been directly Jewish or Jewish Christian.
The opposition to the Messianic rôle of Jesus had varied adherents.
The denial of the Virgin-birth, which also formed part of the system
of Cerinthus, was met by anticipation in the stories of Matthew and
Luke, which pushed back the reception of the spirit from the baptism
to the birth, but the Johannine school evidently preferred to answer
this heresy by developing the theory of the Logos, with its implicate
of pre-existence.
[6] On the vexed question whether the language of this paragraph is
purely spiritual or includes a realistic reference, cf. G. E. Findlay
(_Expositor_, 1893, pp. 97 seq.), and Dr E. A. Abbott's recent study
in _Diatessarica_, §§ 1615-1620. The writer is controverting the
Docetic heresy, and at the same time keeping up the line of
communications with the apostolic base.
[7] The universal range (ii. 2) ascribed to the redeeming work of
Christ is directed against Gnostic dualism and the Ebionitic
narrowing of salvation to Israel; only [Greek: êmeîs] here denotes
Christians in general, not Jewish Christians. On the answer to the
Gnostic pride of perfectionism (i. 8), cf. Epict. iv. 12, 19. The
emphasis on "you all" (ii. 20) hints at the Gnostic aristocratic
system of degrees among believers, which naturally tended to break up
brotherly love (cf. 1 Cor. viii. 1 seq.). The Gnostics also held that
a spiritual seed (cf. iii. 9) was implanted in man, as the germ of
his higher development into the divine life; for the Valentinian idea
cf. Iren. _Adv. Haer._ i. 64, and Tertull. _De anima_, 11 [haeretici]
"nescio quod spiritale semen infulciunt animae". Cf. the general
discussions by Häring in _Theologische Abhandlungen C. von Weizsäcker
gewidmet_ (1892), pp. 188 seq., and Zahn in _Wanderungen durch
Schrift u. Geschichte_ (1892), pp. 3-74.
[8] Cf. Denney, _The Death of Christ_ (1902), pp. 269-281. The
polemical reference to Cerinthus is specially clear at this point.
The death of Jesus was not that of a phantom, nor was his ministry
from the baptism to the crucifixion that of a heavenly aeon which
suffered nothing: such is the writer's contention. "In every case the
historical is asserted, but care is taken that it shall not be
materialized: a primacy is given to the spiritual.... Except through
the historical, there is no Christianity at all, but neither is there
any Christianity till the historical has been spiritually
comprehended." The well-known interpolation of the three heavenly
witnesses (v. 7) has now been proved by Karl Künstle (_Das Comma
Johanneum_, 1905) to have originally come from the pen of the 4th
century Spaniard, Priscillian, who himself denied all distinctions of
person in the Godhead.
[9] On the "sin to death" (v. 16) cf. Jubilees xxi. 22, xxvi. 34 with
Karl's _Johann. Studien_ (1898), i. 97 seq. and M. Goguel's _La
Notion johannique de l'esprit_ (1902), pp. 147-153, for the general
theology of the epistle. The conceptions of light and life are best
handled by Grill in his _Untersuchungen über die Entstehung des
vierten Evgliums_ (1902), pp. 301 seq., 312 seq.
[10] In Preuschen's _Zeitschrift für die neutest. Wissenschaft_
(1907), pp. 1-8, von Dobschütz tries to show that the present text of
ii. 28-iii. 12 indicates a revision or rearrangement of an earlier
text. Cludius (_Uransichten des Christentums_, Altona, 1808) had
already conjectured that a Gnostic editor must have worked over a
Jewish Christian document.
[11] Dr Alois Wurm's attempt (_Die Irrlehrer im ersten
Johannesbriefe_, 1903) to read the references to errorists solely in
the light of Jewish Christianity ignores or underrates several of the
data. He is supported on the whole by Clemen, in Preuschen's
_Zeitschrift_ (1905), pp. 271-281. There is certainly an anti-Jewish
touch, e.g. in the claim of iii. 1 (note the emphatic [Greek:
hêmin]), when one recollects the saying of Aqiba (Aboth iii. 12) and
Philo's remark, [Greek: kai gar ei mêpô ikanoi theou paides
nomizesthai gegonamen, alla toi tês aeidous eikonos autou, logou tou
hierôt atou theou gar eikôn logos ho presbytatos] (_De conf. ling._
28). But the antithesis of John and Cerinthus, unlike that of Paul
and Cerinthus (Epiph. _Haer._ xxviii.), is too well based in the
tradition of the early Church to be dismissed as a later dogmatic
reflection, and the internal evidence of this manifesto corroborates
it clearly.
[12] "The style is not flowing and articulated; the sentences come
like minute-guns, as they would drop from a natural Hebrew. The
writer moves, indeed, amidst that order of religious ideas which
meets us in the Fourth Gospel, and which was that of the Greek world
wherein he found himself. He moves amongst these new ideas, however,
not with the practised felicity of the evangelist, but with something
of helplessness, although the depth and serene beauty of his spirit
give to all he says an infinite impressiveness and charm" (M. Arnold;
_God and the Bible_, ch. vi.).
[13] By the end of the 2nd century it appears to have been fairly
well-known, to judge from Origen, Irenaeus (iii. 16, 8), and Clement
of Alexandria (_Stran._ ii. 15, 66). In the Muratorian canon, which
mentions two epistles of John, it seems to be reckoned (cf. Kuhn,
_Das Murat. Fragment_, pp. 58 f.) as an appendix or sequel to the
Fourth Gospel. The apparent traces of its use in Ignatius (cf.
_Smyrn._ vi. 2 = 1 John iii. 17; _Smyrn._ vii = 1 John iii. 14, and
_Eph._ xviii. = 1 John v. 6) seem too insecure, of themselves, to
warrant any hypothesis of filiation.
JOHN, GOSPEL OF ST, the fourth and latest of the Gospels, in the Bible,
and, next to that of St Mark, the shortest. The present article will
first describe its general structure and more obvious contents; compare
it with the Synoptic Gospels; and draw out its leading characteristics
and final object. It will then apply the tests thus gained to the
narratives special to this Gospel; and point out the book's special
difficulties and limits, and its abiding appeal and greatness. And it
will finally consider the questions of its origin and authorship.
_Analysis of Contents._--The book's chief break is at xiii. 1, the
solemn introduction to the feet-washing: all up to here reports Jesus'
signs and apologetic or polemical discourses to the outer world; hence
onwards it pictures the manifestation of His glory to the inner circle
of His disciples. These two parts contain three sections each.
1. (i.) Introduces the whole work (i. 1-ii. 11). (a) The prologue, i.
1-18. The Logos existed before creation and time; was with the very
God and was God; and all things were made through Him. For in this
Logos is Life, and this Life is a Light which, though shining in
darkness, cannot be suppressed by it. This true Light became flesh and
tabernacled amongst us; and we beheld His glory, as of an
Only-Begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John the
Baptist testified concerning Him, the Logos-Light and Logos-Life
incarnate; but this Logos alone, who is in the bosom of the Father,
hath declared the very God. (b) The four days' work (i. 19-51). On the
first three days John declares that he is not the Christ, proclaims
Jesus to be the Christ, and sends his own disciples away to Jesus. On
the fourth day, Jesus Himself calls Philip and Nathanael. (c) The
seventh day's first manifestation of the Incarnate Light's glory (ii.
1-11 ); Jesus at Cana turns water into wine.
(ii.) Records the manifestations of the Light's and Life's glory and
power to friend and foe (ii. 22-vi. 71). (d) Solemn inauguration of
the Messianic ministry (ii. 12-iii. 21): cleansing of the Temple and
prophecy of His resurrection; discourse to Nicodemus on baptismal
regeneration. (e) Three scenes in Judea, Samaria, Galilee respectively
(iii. 32-iv. 54): the Baptist's second testimony; Jesus' discourse
with the woman at the well concerning the spiritual, universal
character of the new religion; and cure of the ruler's son, the reward
of faith in the simple word of Jesus. (f) Manifestation of Jesus as
the vivifying Life-Logos and its contradiction in Judea, v.: the
paralytic's cure. (g) Manifestation of Jesus as the heaven-descended
living Bread and its contradiction in Galilee, vi.: multiplication of
the loaves; walking on the waters; and His discourse on the holy
Eucharist.
(iii.) Acute conflict between the New Light and the old darkness
(vii.-xii). (h) Self-manifestation of the Logos-Light in the Temple
(vii. 1-x. 39). Journey to the feast of tabernacles; invitation to the
soul athirst to come to Him (the fountain of Life) and drink, and
proclamation of Himself as the Light of the world; cure of the man
born blind; allegory of the good shepherd. The allegory continued at
the feast of the dedication. They strive to stone or to take Him. (i)
The Logos-Life brings Lazarus to life; effects of the act (x. 40-xii.
50). Jesus withdraws beyond Jordan, and then comes to Bethany, His
friend Lazarus being buried three days; proclaims Himself the
Resurrection and the Life; and calls Lazarus back to life. Some who
saw it report the act to the Pharisees; the Sanhedrim meets, Caiaphas
declares that one man must die for the people, and henceforward they
ceaselessly plan His death. Jesus withdraws to the Judaean desert, but
soon returns, six days before Passover, to Bethany; Mary anoints Him,
a crowd comes to see Him and Lazarus, and the hierarchs then plan the
killing of Lazarus also. Next morning He rides into Jerusalem on an
ass's colt. Certain Greeks desire to see Him: He declares the hour of
His glorification to have come: "Now My soul is troubled.... Father,
save Me from this hour. But for this have I come unto this hour:
Father, glorify Thy Name." A voice answers, "I have glorified it and
will glorify it again": some think that an angel spoke; but Jesus
explains that this voice was not for His sake but for theirs. When
lifted up from earth, He will draw all men to Himself; they are to
believe in Him, the Light. The writer's concluding reflection: the
small success of Jesus' activity among the Jews. Once again He cries:
"I am come a Light into the world, that whoso believeth in Me should
not abide in darkness."
2. The Logos-Christ's manifestation of His life and love to His
disciples, during the last supper, the passion, the risen life
(xiii.-xx.).
(iv.) The Last Supper (xiii.-xvii.) (j) Solemn washing of the
disciples' feet; the beloved disciple; designates the traitor; Judas
goes forth, it is night (xiii. 1-30). (k) Last discourses, first
series (xiii. 31-xiv. 31): the new commandment, the other helper;
"Arise, let us go hence." Second series (xv. 1-xvi. 33): allegory of
the true vine; "Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down
his life for his friend"; the world's hatred; the spirit of truth
shall lead them into all truth; "I came forth from the Father and am
come into the world, again I leave the world and go to the Father";
"Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." (l) The high-priestly
prayer (xvii). "Father, glorify Thy Son ... with the glory which I had
with Thee before the world was ... that to as many as Thou hast given
Him, He should give eternal life." "I pray for them, I pray not for
the world. I pray also for them that shall believe in Me through their
word, that they may be all one, as Thou Father art in Me, and I in
Thee."
(v.) The Passion (xviii.-xix.). (m) In the garden: the Roman soldiers
come to apprehend Him, fall back upon the ground at His declaration "I
am He." Peter and Malchus. (n) Before Annas at night and Caiaphas at
dawn; Peter's denials (xviii. 12-27). (o) Before Pilate (xviii.
28-40). Jesus declares, "My kingdom is not of this world. I have come
into the world that I may bear witness to the truth: everyone that is
of the truth, heareth My voice"; Pilate asks sceptically "What is
truth?" and the crowd prefers Barabbas. (p) The true king presented to
the people as a mock-king; His rejection by the Jews and abandonment
to them (xix. 1-16). (q) Jesus carries His cross to Golgotha, and is
crucified there between two others; the cross's title and Pilate's
refusal to alter it (xix. 17-22). (r) The soldiers cast lots upon His
garments and seamless tunic; His mother with two faithful women and
the beloved disciple at the cross's foot; His commendation of His
mother and the disciple to each other; His last two sayings in
deliberate accomplishment of scripture "I thirst," "It is
accomplished." He gives up the spirit; His bones remain unbroken; and
from His spear-lanced side blood and water issue (xix. 23-37). (s) The
two nobles, Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus, bind the dead body in
a winding sheet with one hundred pounds of precious spices, and place
it in a new monument in a near garden, since the sabbath is at hand.
(vi.) The risen Jesus, Lord and God (xx.). (t) At early dawn on the
first day of the week, Mary Magdalen, finding the stone rolled away
from the monument, runs to tell Peter and the beloved disciple that
the Lord's body has been removed. Peter and the other disciple run to
the grave; the latter, arriving first, enters only after Peter has
gone in and noted the empty grave-clothes--enters and believes. After
their departure, Mary sees two angels where His body had lain and
turning away beholds Jesus standing, yet recognizes Him only when He
addresses her. He bids her "Do not touch Me, for I have not yet
ascended"; but to tell His brethren "I ascend to My Father and to your
Father, to My God and to your God." And she does so. (u) Second
apparition (xx. 19-23). Later on the same day, the doors being shut,
Jesus appears amongst His disciples, shows them His (pierced) hands
and side, and solemnly commissions and endows them for the apostolate
by the words, "As the Father hath sent Me, so I send you," and by
breathing upon them saying "Receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins ye
remit, they are remitted to them; whose sins ye retain, they are
retained." (v) Third apparition and culminating saying; conclusion of
entire book (xx. 24-31). Thomas, who had been absent, doubts the
resurrection; Jesus comes and submits to the doubter's tests. Thomas
exclaims, "My Lord and my God"; but Jesus declares "Blessed are they
that have not seen and yet have believed." "Now Jesus," concludes the
writer, "did many other signs, ... but these are written, that ye may
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing
ye may have life in His name."
The above analysis is rough, since even distantly placed sections,
indeed the two parts themselves, are interrelated by delicate complex
references on and back. And it omits the account of the adulteress
(vii. 53-viii. 11): (a valuable report of an actual occurrence which
probably belonged to some primitive document otherwise incorporated by
the Synoptists), because it is quite un-Johannine in vocabulary, style
and character, intercepts the Gospel's thread wherever placed, and is
absent from its best MSS. It also omits xxi. This chapter's first two
stages contain an important early historical document of Synoptic
type: Jesus' apparition to seven disciples by the Lake of Galilee and
the miraculous draught of fishes; and Peter's threefold confession and
Jesus' threefold commission to him. And its third stage, Jesus'
prophecies to Peter and to the beloved disciple concerning their
future, and the declaration "This is the disciple who testifies to
these things and who has written them, and we know that his testimony
is true," is doubtless written by the redactor of the previous two
stages. This writer imitates, but is different from, the great author
of the first twenty chapters.
_Comparison with the Synoptists._--The following are the most obvious
differences between the original book and the Synoptists. John has a
metaphysical prologue; Matthew and Luke have historical prologues; and
Mark is without any prologue. The earthly scene is here Judea, indeed
Jerusalem, with but five breaks (vi. 1-vii. 10) is the only long one;
whilst over two-thirds of each Synoptist deal with Galilee or Samaria.
The ministry here lasts about three and a half years (it begins some
months before the first Passover, ii. 13; the feast of v. 1 is
probably a second; the third occurs vi. 4; and on the fourth, xi. 55,
He dies): whilst the Synoptists have but the one Passover of His
death, after barely a year of ministry. Here Jesus' teaching contains
no parables and but three allegories, the Synoptists present it as
parabolic through and through. Here not one exorcism occurs; in the
Synoptists the exorcisms are as prominent as the cures and the
preaching, John has, besides the passion, seven accounts in common
with the Synoptists: the Baptist and Jesus, (i. 19-34); cleansing of
the Temple (ii. 13-16); cure of the centurion's (ruler's) servant
(son) (iv. 46-54); multiplication of the loaves (vi. 1-13); walking
upon the water (vi. 16-21); anointing at Bethany, (xii. 1-8); entry
into Jerusalem (xii. 12-16): all unique occurrences. In the first,
John describes how the Baptist, on Jesus' approach, cries "Behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world"; and how he says
"I saw the spirit descending upon Him, and I bore witness that this is
the Son of God." But the Synoptists, especially Mark, give the slow
steps in even the apostles' realization of Jesus' Messianic character;
only at Caesarea Philippi Simon alone, for the first time, clearly
discerns it, Jesus declaring that His Father has revealed it to Him,
and yet Simon is still scandalized at the thought of a suffering
Messiah (Mark viii. 28-34). Only some two weeks before the end is He
proclaimed Messiah at Jericho (x. 46-48); then in Jerusalem, five days
before dying for this upon the cross (xi. 1-10, xv. 37). As to the
Baptist, in all three Synoptists, he baptizes Jesus, and in Mark i.
10, 11 it is Jesus who sees the Spirit descending upon Himself on His
emerging from beneath the water, and it is to Himself that God's voice
is addressed; in John, Jesus' baptism is ignored, only the Spirit
remains hovering above Him, as a sign for the Baptist's instruction.
And in Matt. xi. 2-6, the Baptist, several months after the Jordan
scene, sends from his prison to ascertain if Jesus is indeed the
Messiah; in John, the Baptist remains at large so as again (iii.
22-36) to proclaim Jesus' heavenly provenance. The cleansing of the
Temple occurs in the Synoptists four days before His death, and
instantly determines the hierarchs to seek His destruction (Mark xi.
15-18); John puts it three years back, as an appropriate frontispiece
to His complete claims and work.
The passion-narratives reveal the following main differences. John
omits, at the last supper, its central point, the great historic act
of the holy eucharist, carefully given by the Synoptists and St Paul,
having provided a highly doctrinal equivalent in the discourse on the
living bread, here spoken by Jesus in Capernaum over a year before the
passion (vi. 4), the day after the multiplication of the loaves. This
transference is doubtless connected with the change in the relations
between the time of the Passover meal and that of His death: in the
Synoptists, the Thursday evening's supper is a true Passover meal, the
lamb had been slain that afternoon and Jesus dies some twenty-four
hours later; in John, the supper is not a Passover-meal, the Passover
is celebrated on Friday, and Jesus, proclaimed here from the first,
the Lamb of God, dies whilst the paschal lambs, His prototypes, are
being slain. The scene in the garden is without the agony of
Gethsemane; a faint echo of this historic anguish appears in the scene
with the Greeks four days earlier, and even that peaceful appeal to,
and answer of, the Father occurs only for His followers' sakes. In the
garden Jesus here Himself goes forth to meet His captors, and these
fall back upon the ground, on His revealing Himself as Jesus of
Nazareth. The long scenes with Pilate culminate in the great sayings
concerning His kingdom not being of this world and the object of this
His coming being to bear witness to the truth, thus explaining how,
though affirming kingship (Mark xv. 2) He could be innocent. In John
He does not declare Himself Messiah before the Jewish Sanhedrin (Mark
xiv. 61) but declares Himself supermundane regal witness to the truth
before the Roman governor. The scene on Calvary differs as follows: In
the Synoptists the soldiers divide His garments among them, casting
lots (Mark xv. 24); in John they make four parts of them and cast lots
concerning His seamless tunic, thus fulfilling the text, "They divided
My garments among them and upon My vesture they cast lots": the
parallelism of Hebrew poetry, which twice describes one fact, being
taken as witnessing to two, and the tunic doubtless symbolizing the
unity of the Church, as in Philo the high priest's seamless robe
symbolizes the indivisible unity of the universe, expressive of the
Logos (_De ebrietate_, xxi.). In the Synoptists, of His followers only
women--the careful, seemingly exhaustive lists do not include His
mother--remain, looking on "from afar" (Mark xv. 40); in John, His
mother stands with the two other Marys and the beloved disciple
beneath the cross, and "from that hour the disciple took her unto his
own (house)," while in the older literature His mother does not appear
in Jerusalem till just before Pentecost, and with "His brethren" (Acts
i. 14). And John alone tells how the bones of the dead body remained
unbroken, fulfilling the ordinance as to the paschal lamb (Exod. xii.
46) and how blood and water flow from His spear-pierced side: thus the
Lamb "taketh away the sins of the world" by shedding His blood which
"cleanseth us from every sin"; and "He cometh by water and blood,"
historically at His baptism and crucifixion, and mystically to each
faithful soul in baptism and the eucharist. The story of the risen
Christ (xx.) shows dependence on and contrast to the Synoptic
accounts. Its two halves have each a negative and a positive scene.
The empty grave (1-10) and the apparition to the Magdalen (11-18)
together correspond to the message brought by the women (Matt. xxviii.
1-10); and the apparition to the ten joyously believing apostles
(19-23) and then to the sadly doubting Thomas (24-29) together
correspond to Luke xxiv. 36-43, where the eleven apostles jointly
receive one visit from the risen One, and both doubt and believe,
mourn and rejoice.
The Johannine discourses reveal differences from the Synoptists so
profound as to be admitted by all. Here Jesus, the Baptist and the
writer speak so much alike that it is sometimes impossible to say
where each speaker begins and ends: e.g. in iii. 27-30, 31-36. The
speeches dwell upon Jesus' person and work, as we shall find, with a
didactic directness, philosophical terminology and denunciatory
exclusiveness unmatched in the Synoptist sayings. "This is eternal
life, that they may know Thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom
Thou hast sent" (xvii. 3), is part of the high-priestly prayer; yet
Père Calmes, with the papal censor's approbation, says, "It seems to
us impossible not to admit that we have here dogmatic developments
explicable rather by the evangelist's habits of mind than by the
actual words of Jesus." "I have told you of earthly things and you
believe not; how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?"
(iii. 12), and "Ye are from beneath, I am from above" (viii. 23), give
us a Plato-(Philo-) like upper, "true" world, and a lower, delusive
world. "Ye shall die in your sins" (viii. 21); "ye are from your
father the devil" (viii. 44); "I am the door of the sheep, all they
that came before Me are thieves and robbers," (x. 7, 8); "they have no
excuse for their sin" (xv. 22)--contrast strongly with the yearning
over Jerusalem: "The blood of Abel the just" and "the blood of
Zacharias son of Barachias" (Matt. xxiii. 35-37; and "Father, forgive
them; for they know not what they do" Luke xxiii. 34). And whilst the
Synoptist speeches and actions stand in loose and natural relation to
each other, the Johannine deeds so closely illustrate the sayings that
each set everywhere supplements the other: the history itself here
tends to become one long allegory. So with the woman at the well and
"the living water"; the multiplication of the loaves and "the living
Bread"; "I am the Light of the world" and the blind man's cure; "I am
the Resurrection and the Life" and the raising of Lazarus; indeed even
with the Temple-cleansing and the prophecy as to His resurrection,
Nicodemus's night visit and "men loved the darkness rather than the
light," the cure of the inoperative paralytic and "My Father and I
work hitherto," the walking phantom-like upon the waters (John vi.
15-21; Mark vi. 49), and the declaration concerning the eucharist,
"the spirit it is that quickeneth" (John vi. 63). Only some sixteen
Synoptic sayings reappear here; but we are given some great new
sayings full of the Synoptic spirit.
_Characteristics and Object._--The book's character results from the
continuous operation of four great tendencies. There is everywhere a
readiness to handle traditional, largely historical, materials with a
sovereign freedom, controlled and limited by doctrinal convictions and
devotional experiences alone. There is everywhere the mystic's deep love
for double, even treble meanings: e.g. the "again" in iii. 2, means,
literally, "from the beginning," to be physically born again; morally,
to become as a little child; mystically, "from heaven, God," to be
spiritually renewed. "Judgment" ([Greek: krisis]), in the popular sense,
condemnation, a future act; in the mystical sense, discrimination, a
present fact. There is everywhere the influence of certain central
ideas, partly identical with, but largely developments of, those less
reflectively operative in the Synoptists. Thus six great terms are
characteristic of, or even special to, this Gospel. "The Only-Begotten"
is most nearly reached by St Paul's term "His own Son." The "Word," or
"Logos," is a term derived from Heracleitus of Ephesus and the Stoics,
through the Alexandrian Jew Philo, but conceived here throughout as
definitely personal. "The Light of the World" the Jesus-Logos here
proclaims Himself to be; in the Synoptists He only declares His
disciples to be such. "The Paraclete," as in Philo, is a "helper,"
"intercessor"; but in Philo he is the intelligible universe, whilst here
He is a self-conscious Spirit. "Truth," "the truth," "to know," have
here a prominence and significance far beyond their Synoptic or even
their Pauline use. And above all stand the uses of "Life," "Eternal
Life." The living ever-working Father (vi. 57; v. 17) has a Logos in
whom is Life (i. 4), an ever-working Son (v. 17), who declares Himself
"the living Bread," "the Resurrection and the Life," "the Way, the Truth
and the Life" (vi. 51; xi. 25; xiv. 16): so that Father and Son quicken
whom they will (v. 21); the Father's commandment is life everlasting,
and Jesus' words are spirit and life (xii. 50; vi. 63, 68). The term,
already Synoptic, takes over here most of the connotations of the
"Kingdom of God," the standing Synoptic expression, which appears here
only in iii. 3-5; xviii. 36. Note that the term "the Logos" is peculiar
to the Apocalypse (xix. 13), and the prologue here; but that, as Light
and Life, the Logos-conception is present throughout the book. And thus
there is everywhere a striving to contemplate history _sub specie
aeternitatis_ and to englobe the successiveness of man in the
simultaneity of God.
_Narratives Peculiar to John._--Of his seven great symbolical,
doctrinally interpreted "signs," John shares three, the cure of the
ruler's son, the multiplication of the loaves, the walking on the
waters, with the Synoptists: yet here the first is transformed almost
beyond recognition; and the two others only typify and prepare the
eucharistic discourse. Of the four purely Johannine signs, two--the
cures of the paralytic (v. 1-16), and of the man born blind (ix.
1-34)--are, admittedly, profoundly symbolical. In the first case, the
man's physical and spiritual lethargy are closely interconnected and
strongly contrasted with the ever-active God and His Logos. In the
second case there is also the closest parallel between physical
blindness cured, and spiritual darkness dispelled, by the Logos-Light as
described in the accompanying discourse. Both narratives are doubtless
based upon actual occurrences--the cures narrated in Mark ii., iii.,
viii., x. and scenes witnessed by the writer in later times; yet here
they do but picture our Lord's spiritual work in the human soul achieved
throughout Christian history. We cannot well claim more than these three
kinds of reality for the first and the last signs, the miracle at Cana
and the resurrection of Lazarus.
For the marriage-feast sign yields throughout an allegorical meaning.
Water stands in this Gospel for what is still but symbol; thus the
water-pots serve here the external Jewish ablutions--old bottles which
the "new wine" of the Gospel is to burst (Mark ii. 22). Wine is the
blood of the new covenant, and He will drink the fruit of the vine new
in the Kingdom of God (Mark xiv. 23-25); the vineyard where He Himself
is the true Vine (Mark xii. 1; John xv. 1). And "the kingdom of heaven
is like to a marriage-feast" (Matt. xxii. 2); Jesus is the Bridegroom
(Mark ii. 19); "the marriage of the Lamb has come" (Rev. xix. 7). "They
have no wine": the hopelessness of the old conditions is announced here
by the true Israel, the Messiah's spiritual mother, the same "woman" who
in Rev. xii. 2, 5 "brought forth a man-child who was to rule all
nations." Cardinal Newman admits that the latter woman "represents the
church, this is the real or direct sense"; yet as her man-child is
certainly the Messiah, this church must be the faithful Jewish church.
Thus also the "woman" at the wedding and beneath the cross stands
primarily for the faithful Old Testament community, corresponding to the
beloved disciple, the typical New Testament follower of her Son, the
Messiah: in each case the devotional accommodation to His earthly mother
is equally ancient and legitimate. He answers her "My hour is not yet
come," i.e. in the symbolic story, the moment for working the miracle;
in the symbolized reality, the hour of His death, condition for the
spirit's advent; and "what is there between Me and thee?" i.e. "My
motives spring no more from the old religion," words devoid of
difficulty, if spoken thus by the Eternal Logos to the passing Jewish
church. The transformation is soon afterwards accomplished, but in
symbol only; the "hour" of the full sense is still over three years off.
Already Philo says "the Logos is the master of the spiritual
drinking-feast," and "let Melchisedeck"--the Logos--"in lieu of water
offer wine to souls and inebriate them" (_De somn._ ii. 37; _Legg. all._
iii. 26). But in John this symbolism figures a great historic fact, the
joyous freshness of Jesus' ministerial beginnings, as indicated in the
sayings of the Bridegroom and of the new wine, a freshness typical of
Jesus' ceaseless renovation of souls.
The raising of Lazarus, in appearance a massive, definitely localized
historical fact, requires a similar interpretation, unless we would, in
favour of the direct historicity of a story peculiar to a profoundly
allegorical treatise, ruin the historical trustworthiness of the largely
historical Synoptists in precisely their most complete and verisimilar
part. For especially in Mark, the passing through Jericho, the entry
into Jerusalem, the Temple-cleansing and its immediate effect upon the
hierarchs, their next day's interrogatory, "By what authority doest thou
these things?" i.e. the cleansing (x. 46-xi. 33), are all closely
interdependent and lead at once to His discussions with His Jerusalem
opponents (xii. xiii.), and to the anointing, last supper, and passion
(xiv. xv). John's last and greatest symbolic sign replaces those
historic motives, since here it is the raising of Lazarus which
determines the hierarchs to kill Jesus (xi. 46-52), and occasions the
crowds which accompany and meet Him on His entry (xii. 9-19). The
intrinsic improbabilities of the narrative, if taken as direct history,
are also great: Jesus' deliberate delay of two days to secure His
friend's dying, and His rejoicing at the death, since thus He can
revivify His friend and bring His disciples to believe in Himself as the
Life; His deliberate weeping over the death which He has thus let
happen, yet His anger at the similar tears of Lazarus's other friends;
and His praying, as He tells the Father in the prayer itself, simply to
edify the bystanders: all point to a doctrinal allegory. Indeed the
climax of the whole account is already reached in Jesus' great saying:
"I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me ... shall
not die for ever," and in Martha's answer: "I believe that Thou art the
Christ, the Son of God, who hast come into the world" (xi. 26, 27); the
sign which follows is but the pictorial representation of this abiding
truth. The materials for the allegory will have been certain Old
Testament narratives, but especially the Synoptic accounts of Jesus'
raisings of Jairus's daughter and of the widow's son (Mark v.; Luke
vii.). Mary and Martha are admittedly identical with the sisters in Luke
x. 38-42; and already some Greek fathers connect the Lazarus of this
allegory with the Lazarus of the parable (Luke xvi. 19-31). In the
parable Lazarus returns not to earth, since Abraham foresees that the
rich man's brethren would disbelieve even if one rose from the dead; in
the corresponding allegory, Lazarus does actually return to life, and
the Jews believe so little as to determine upon killing the very Life
Himself.
_Special Difficulties and Special Greatness._--The difficulties,
limitations and temporary means special to the book are closely
connected with its ready appeal and abiding power; let us take both sets
of things together, in three couples of interrelated price and gift.
The book's method and form are pervadingly allegorical; its instinct and
aim are profoundly mystical. Now from Philo to Origen we have a long
Hellenistic, Jewish and Christian application of that all-embracing
allegorism, where one thing stands for another and where no factual
details resist resolution into a symbol of religious ideas and forces.
Thus Philo had, in his life of Moses, allegorized the Pentateuchal
narratives so as to represent him as mediator, saviour, intercessor of
his people, the one great organ of revelation, and the soul's guide from
the false lower world into the upper true one. The Fourth Gospel is the
noblest instance of this kind of literature, of which the truth depends
not on the factual accuracy of the symbolizing appearances but on the
truth of the ideas and experiences thus symbolized. And Origen is still
full of spontaneous sympathy with its pervading allegorism. But this
method has lost its attraction; the Synoptists, with their rarer and
slighter pragmatic rearrangements and their greater closeness to our
Lord's actual words, deeds, experiences, environment, now come home to
us as indefinitely richer in content and stimulative appeal. Yet
mysticism persists, as the intuitive and emotional apprehension of the
most specifically religious of all truths, viz. the already full,
operative existence of eternal beauty, truth and goodness, of infinite
Personality and Spirit independently of our action, and not, as in
ethics, the simple possibility and obligation for ourselves to produce
such-like things. And of this elemental mode of apprehension and
root-truth, the Johannine Gospel is the greatest literary document and
incentive extant: its ultimate aim and deepest content retain all their
potency.
The book contains an intellectualist, static, determinist, abstractive
trend. In Luke x. 25-28, eternal life depends upon loving God and man;
here it consists in knowing the one true God and Christ whom He has
sent. In the Synoptists, Jesus "grows in favour with God and man,"
passes through true human experiences and trials, prays alone on the
mountain-side, and dies with a cry of desolation; here the Logos'
watchword is "I am," He has deliberately to stir up emotion in Himself,
never prays for Himself, and in the garden and on the cross shows but
power and self-possession. Here we find "ye cannot hear, cannot believe,
because ye are not from God, not of My sheep" (viii. 47, x. 26); "the
world cannot receive the spirit of truth" (xiv. 17). Yet the ethical
current appears here also strongly: "he who doeth the truth, cometh to
the light" (iii. 21), "if you love Me, keep My commandments" (xiv. 15).
Libertarianism is here: "the light came, but men loved the darkness
better than the light," "ye will not come to Me" (iii. 19, v. 40); hence
the appeal "abide in Me"--the branch can cease to be in Him the Vine
(xv. 4, 2). Indeed even those first currents stand here for the deepest
religious truths, the prevenience of God and man's affinity to Him. "Not
we loved God (first), but He (first) loved us"; "let us love Him,
because He first loved us" (1 John iv. 10, 19); "no man can come to Me,
unless the Father draw him" (vi. 44), a drawing which effects a hunger
and thirst for Christ and God (iv. 14, vi. 35). Thus man's spirit, ever
largely but potential, can respond actively to the historic Jesus,
because already touched and made hungry by the all-actual Spirit-God who
made that soul akin unto Himself.
The book has an outer protective shell of acutely polemical and
exclusive moods and insistences, whilst certain splendid Synoptic
breadths and reconciliations are nowhere reached; but this is primarily
because it is fighting, more consciously than they, for that inalienable
ideal of all deepest religion, unity, even external and corporate,
amongst all believers. The "Pneumatic" Gospel comes thus specially to
emphasize certain central historical facts; and, the most explicitly
institutional and sacramental of the four, to proclaim the most
universalistic and developmental of all Biblical sayings. Here indeed
Jesus will not pray for the world (xvii. 9); "ye shall die in your
sins," He insists to His opponents (viii. 44, 24); it is the Jews
generally who appear throughout as such; nowhere is there a word as to
forgiving our enemies; and the commandment of love is designated by
Jesus as His, as new, and as binding the disciples to "love one another"
within the community to which He gives His "example" (xv. 12, xiii. 34,
15). In the Synoptists, the disciples' intolerance is rebuked (Mark ix.
38-41); Jesus' opposition is everywhere restricted to the Pharisees and
the worldly Sadducees; He ever longs for the conversion of Jerusalem;
the great double commandment of love is proclaimed as already formulated
in the Mosaic law (Mark xii. 28-34); the neighbour to be thus loved and
served is simply any and every suffering fellow-man; and the pattern for
such perfect love is found in a schismatical Samaritan (Luke x. 25-37).
Yet the deepest strain here is more serenely universalist even than St
Paul, for here Jesus says: "God so loved the world, that He gave His
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should ... have
everlasting life" (iii. 16). True, the great prologue passage (i. 9)
probably reads "He was the true Light coming into the world, that
enlighteneth every man," so that the writer would everywhere concentrate
his mind upon the grace attendant upon explicit knowledge of the
incarnate, historic Christ. Yet Christian orthodoxy, which itself has,
all but uniformly, understood this passage of the spiritual radiation
throughout the world of the Word before His incarnation, has been aided
towards such breadth as to the past by the Johannine outlook into the
future. For, in contrast to the earliest Synoptic tradition, where the
full Christian truth and its first form remain undistinguished, and
where its earthly future appears restricted to that generation, in John
the Eternal Life conception largely absorbs the attention away from all
successiveness; Jesus' earthly life does not limit the religion's
assimilation of further truth and experience: "I have many things to
tell you, but you cannot bear them now," "the Father will give you
another Helper, the spirit of truth, who will abide with you for ever"
(xvi. 12, xiv. 15). This universalism is not simply spiritual; the
external element, presupposed in the Synoptists as that of the Jewish
church within which Jesus' earthly life was spent, is here that of the
now separate Christian community: He has other sheep not of this
fold--them also He must bring, there will be one fold, one shepherd; and
His seamless tunic, and Peter's net which, holding every kind of fish,
is not rent, are symbols of this visible unity. Ministerial gradations
exist in this church; Jesus begins the feet-washing with Peter, who
alone speaks and is spoken to; the beloved disciple outruns Peter to
Jesus' monument, yet waits to go in till Peter has done so first; and in
the appendix the treble pastoral commission is to Peter alone: a Petrine
pre-eminence which but echoes the Synoptists. And sacramentalism informs
the great discourses concerning rebirth by water and the spirit, and
feeding on the Living Bread, Jesus' flesh and blood, and the narrative
of the issue of blood and water from the dead Jesus' side. Indeed so
severe a stress is laid upon the explicitly Christian life and its
specific means, that orthodoxy itself interprets the rebirth by water
and spirit, and the eating the flesh and drinking the blood to which
entrance into the Kingdom and possession of interior life are here
exclusively attached, as often represented by a simple sincere desire
and will for spiritual purification and a keen hunger and thirst for
God's aid, together with such cultual acts as such souls can know or
find, even without any knowledge of the Christian rites. Thus there is
many "a pedagogue to Christ," and the Christian visible means and
expressions are the culmination and measure of what, in various degrees
and forms, accompanies every sincerely striving soul throughout all
human history.
_Origin and Authorship._--The question as to the book's origin has lost
its poignancy through the ever-increasing recognition of the book's
intrinsic character. Thus the recent defenders of the apostolic
authorship, the Unitarian James Drummond (1903), the Anglican William
Sanday (1905), the Roman Catholic Theodore Calmes (1904), can tell us,
the first, that "the evangelist did not aim at an illustrative picture
of what was most characteristic of Jesus"; the second, that "the author
sank into his own consciousness and at last brought to light what he
found there"; the third, that "the Gospel contains an entire theological
system," "history is seen through the intervening dogmatic development,"
"the Samaritan woman is ... a personification," "the behaviour of the
Greeks is entirely natural in such a book." We thus get at
cross-purposes with this powerful, profound work. Only some such
position as Abbé Loisy's critical summing up (1903) brings out its
specific greatness. "What the author was, his book, in spite of himself,
tells us to some extent: a Christian of Judeo-Alexandrine formation; a
believer without, apparently, any personal reminiscence of what had
actually been the life, preaching and death of Jesus; a theologian far
removed from every historical preoccupation, though he retains certain
principal facts of tradition without which Christianity would evaporate
into pure ideas; and a seer who has lived the Gospel which he
propounds." "To find his book beautiful and true, we need but take it as
it is and understand it." "The church, which has never discussed the
literary problem of this Gospel, in nowise erred as to its worth."
Several traditional positions have indeed been approximately maintained
or reconquered against the critics. As to the Gospel's date, critics
have returned from 160-170 (Baur), 150 (Zeller), 130 (Keim), to 110-115
(Renan) and 80-110 (Harnack): since Irenaeus says its author lived into
the times of Trajan (90-117), a date somewhere about 105 would satisfy
tradition. As to the place, the critics accept proconsular Asia with
practical unanimity, thus endorsing Irenaeus's declaration that the
Gospel was published in Ephesus. As to the author's antecedents, critics
have ceased to hold that he could not have been a Jew-Christian (so
Bretschneider, 1820), and admit (so Schmiedel, (1901) that he must have
been by birth a Jew of the Dispersion, or the son of Christian parents
who had been such Jews. And as to the vivid accuracy of many of his
topographical and social details, the predominant critical verdict now
is that he betrays an eye-witness's knowledge of the country between
Sichem and Jordan and as to Jerusalem; he will have visited these
places, say in 90, or may have lived in Jerusalem shortly before its
fall. But the reasons against the author being John the Zebedean or any
other eyewitness of Jesus' earthly life have accumulated to a practical
demonstration.
As to the external evidence for the book's early date, we must remember
that the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation, though
admittedly earlier, are of the same school, and, with the great Pauline
Epistles, show many preformations of Johannine phrases and ideas. Other
slighter prolusions will have circulated in that Philonian centre
Ephesus, before the great Gospel englobed and superseded them. Hence the
precariousness of the proofs derived from more or less close parallels
to Johannine passages in the apostolic fathers. Justin Martyr (163-167)
certainly uses the Gospel; but his conception of Jesus' life is so
strictly Synoptic that he can hardly have accepted it as from an
apostolic eyewitness. Papias of Hierapolis, in his _Exposition of the
Lord's Sayings_ (145-160) appears nowhere to have mentioned it, and
clearly distinguishes between "what Andrew, Peter, ... John or Matthew
or any other of the Lord's disciples spoke," and "what Aristion and the
presbyter John, the Lord's disciples, say." Thus Papias, as Eusebius
about 314 insists, knew two Johns, and the apostle was to him a far-away
figure; indeed early medieval chroniclers recount that Papias "in the
second book of the Lord's sayings" asserted that both the sons of
Zebedee were "slain by Jews," so that the apostle John would have died
before 70. Irenaeus's testimony is the earliest and admittedly the
strongest we possess for the Zebedean authorship; yet, as Calmes admits,
"it cannot be considered decisive." In his work against the Heresies and
in his letter to Florinus, about 185-191, he tells how he had himself
known Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, and how Polycarp "used to recount his
familiar intercourse with John and the others who had seen the Lord";
and explicitly identifies this John with the Zebedean and the
evangelist. But Irenaeus was at most fifteen when thus frequenting
Polycarp; writes thirty-five to fifty years later in Lyons, admitting
that he noted down nothing at the time; and, since his mistaken
description of Papias as "a hearer of John" the Zebedean was certainly
reached by mistaking the presbyter for the apostle, his additional words
"and a companion of Polycarp" point to this same mistaken identification
having also operated in his mind with regard to Polycarp. In any case,
the very real and important presbyter is completely unknown to
Irenaeus, and his conclusion as to the book's authorship resulted
apparently from a comparison of its contents with Polycarp's teaching.
If the presbyter wrote Revelation and was Polycarp's master, such a
mistake could easily arise. Certainly Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus,
made a precisely similar mistake when about 190 he described the Philip
"who rests in Hierapolis" as "one of the twelve apostles," since
Eusebius rightly identifies this Philip with the deacon of Acts xxi. A
positive testimony for the critical conclusion is derived from the
existence of a group of Asia Minor Christians who about 165 rejected the
Gospel as not by John but by Cerinthus. The attribution is doubtless
mistaken. But could Christians sufficiently numerous to deserve a long
discussion by St Epiphanius in 374-377, who upheld the Synoptists,
stoutly opposed the Gnostics and Montanists, and had escaped every
special designation till the bishop nicknamed them the "Alogoi"
(irrational rejectors of the Logos-Gospel), dare, in such a time and
country, to hold such views, had the apostolic origin been
incontestable? Surely not. The Alexandrian Clement, Tertullian, Origen,
Eusebius, Jerome and Augustine only tell of the Zebedean what is
traceable to stories told by Papias of others, to passages of Revelation
and the Gospel, or to the assured fact of the long-lived Asian
presbyter.
As to the internal evidence, if the Gospel typifies various imperfect or
sinful attitudes in Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman and Thomas; if even
the mother appears to symbolize faithful Israel: then, profoundly
spiritual and forward-looking as it is, a type of the perfect disciple,
not all unlike Clement's perfect "Gnostic," could hardly be omitted by
it; and the precise details of this figure may well be only ideally,
mystically true. The original work nowhere identifies this disciple with
any particular historic figure. "He who saw" the lance-thrust "hath
borne witness, and his witness is true," is asserted (xix. 35) of the
disciple. Yet "to see" is said also of intuitive faith, "whoso hath seen
Me, hath seen the Father" (xiv. 9); and "true" appears also in "the true
Light," "the true Bread from heaven," as characterizing the realities of
the upper, alone fully true world, and equals "heavenly" (iii. 12); thus
a "true witness" testifies to some heavenly reality, and appeals to the
reader's "pneumatic," i.e. allegorical, understanding.
Only in the appendix do we find any deliberate identification with a
particular historic person: "this is the disciple who witnessed to and
who wrote these things" (24) refers doubtless to the whole previous work
and to "the disciple whom Jesus loved," identified here with an unnamed
historic personage whose recent death had created a shock, evidently
because he was the last of that apostolic generation which had so keenly
expected the second coming (18-23). This man was so great that the
writer strives to win his authority for this Gospel; and yet this man
was not John the Zebedean, else why, now he is dead and gone, not
proclaim the fact? If the dead man was John the presbyter--if this John
had in youth just seen Jesus and the Zebedean, and in extreme old age
had still seen and approved the Gospel--to attribute this Gospel to him,
as is done here, would not violate the literary ethics of those times.
Thus the heathen philosopher Iamblichus (d. c. 330) declares: "this was
admirable" amongst the Neo-Pythagoreans "that they ascribed everything
to Pythagoras; but few of them acknowledge their own works as their own"
(_de Pythag. vita_, 198). And as to Christians, Tertullian about 210
tells how the presbyter who, in proconsular Asia, had "composed the
_Acts of Paul and Thecla_" was convicted and deposed, for how could it
be credible that Paul should confer upon women the power to "teach and
baptize" as these _Acts_ averred? The attribution as such, then, was not
condemned.
The facts of the problem would all appear covered by the hypothesis that
John the presbyter, the eleven being all dead, wrote the book of
Revelation (its more ancient Christian portions) say in 69, and died at
Ephesus say in 100; that the author of the Gospel wrote the first draft,
here, say in 97; that this book, expanded by him, first circulated
within a select Ephesian Christian circle; and that the Ephesian church
officials added to it the appendix and published it in 110-120. But
however different or more complicated may have been the actual origins,
three points remain certain. The real situation that confronts us is not
an unbroken tradition of apostolic eye-witnesses, incapable of
re-statement with any hope of ecclesiastical acceptance, except by
another apostolic eye-witness. On one side indeed there was the record,
underlying the Synoptists, of at least two eye-witnesses, and the
necessity of its preservation and transmission; but on the other side a
profound double change had come over the Christian outlook and
requirements. St Paul's heroic labours (30-64) had gradually gained full
recognition and separate organization for the universalist strain in our
Lord's teaching; and he who had never seen the earthly Jesus, but only
the heavenly Christ, could even declare that Christ "though from the
Jewish fathers according to the flesh" had died, "so that henceforth,
even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, now we no further
know Him thus," "the Lord is the Spirit," and "where the Spirit of the
Lord is, there is liberty." And the Jewish church, within which
Christianity had first lived and moved, ceased to have a visible centre.
Thus a super-spatial and super-temporal interpretation of that first
markedly Jewish setting and apprehension of the Christian truth became
as necessary as the attachment to the original contingencies. The Fourth
Gospel, inexplicable without St Paul and the fall of Jerusalem, is fully
understandable with them. The attribution of the book to an eye-witness
nowhere resolves, it everywhere increases, the real difficulties; and by
insisting upon having history in the same degree and way in John as in
the Synoptists, we cease to get it sufficiently anywhere at all. And the
Fourth Gospel's true greatness lies well within the range of this its
special character. In character it is profoundly "pneumatic"; Paul's
super-earthly Spirit-Christ here breathes and speaks, and invites a
corresponding spiritual comprehension. And its greatness appears in its
inexhaustibly deep teachings concerning Christ's sheep and fold; the
Father's drawing of souls to Christ; the dependence of knowledge as to
Christ's doctrine upon the doing of God's will; the fulfilling of the
commandment of love, as the test of true discipleship; eternal life,
begun even here and now; and God a Spirit, to be served in spirit and in
truth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--See also the independent discussion, under REVELATION,
BOOK OF, of the authorship of that work. Among the immense literature
of the subject, the following books will be found especially
instructive by the classically trained reader: Origen's commentary,
finished (only to John xiii. 33) in 235-237 (best ed. by Preuschen,
1903). St Augustine's _Tractatus in Joannis Ev. et Ep._, about 416.
The Spanish Jesuit Juan Maldonatus' Latin commentary, published 1596
(critical reprint, edited by Raich, 1874), a pathfinder on many
obscure points, is still a model for tenacious penetration of
Johannine ideas. Bretschneider's short _Probabilia de Evangelii ...
Joannis Apostoli indole et origine_ (1820), the first systematic
assault on the traditional attribution, remains unrefuted in its main
contention. The best summing up and ripest fruit of the critical
labour since then are Professor H. J. Holtzmann's _Handkommentar_ (2nd
ed., 1893) and the respective sections in his _Einleitung in d. N. T._
(3rd ed., 1892) and his _Lehrbuch der N. T. Theologie_ (1897), vol. 2.
Professor C. E. Luthardt's _St John, Author of the Fourth Gospel_
(Eng. trans., with admirable bibliography by C. R. Gregory, 1875),
still remains the best conservative statement. Among the few
critically satisfactory French books, Abbé Loisy's _Le Quatrième
évangile_ (1903) stands pre-eminent for delicate psychological
analysis and continuous sense of the book's closely knit unity; whilst
Père Th. Calmes' _Évangile selon S. Jean_ (1904) indicates how
numerous are the admissions as to the book's character and the
evidences for its authorship, made by intelligent Roman Catholic
apologists with Rome's explicit approbation. In England a considerably
less docile conservatism has been predominant. Bp Lightfoot's _Essays
on ... Supernatural Religion_ (1874-1877; collected 1889) are often
masterly conservative interpretations of the external evidence; but
they leave this evidence still inconclusive, and the formidable
contrary internal evidence remains practically untouched. Much the
same applies to Bp Westcott's _Gospel according to St John_ (1882),
devotionally so attractive, and in textual criticism excellent. Dr
James Drummond's _Inquiry into the Character and Authorship of the
Fourth Gospel_ (1903) does not, by its valuable survey of the external
evidence, succeed in giving credibility to the eyewitness origin of
such a book as this is admitted to be. Professor W. Sanday's slighter
_Criticism of the Fourth Gospel_ (1905) is in a similar position.
Professor P. W. Schmiedel's article "John s. of Zebedee" in the _Ency.
Bib._ (1901) is the work of a German of the advanced left. Dr E. A.
Abbott's laborious _From Letter to Spirit_ (1903), _Joannine
Vocabulary_ (1904) and _Grammar_ (1906) overflow with statistical
details and ever acute, often fanciful, conjecture. Professor F. C.
Burkitt's _The Gospel History_ (1906) vigorously sketches the book's
dominant characteristics and true function. E. F. Scott's _The Fourth
Gospel_ (1906) gives a lucid, critical and religiously tempered
account of the Gospel's ideas, aims, affinities, difficulties and
abiding significance. (F. v. H.)
JOHN ALBERT (1459-1501), king of Poland, third son of Casimir IV. king
of Poland and Elizabeth of Austria. As crown prince he distinguished
himself by his brilliant victory over the Tatars at Kopersztyn in 1487.
He succeeded his father in 1492. The loss of revenue consequent upon the
secession of Lithuania placed John Albert at the mercy of the Polish
Sejmiki or local diets, where the _szlachta_, or country gentry, made
their subsidies dependent upon the king's subservience. Primarily a
warrior with a strong taste for heroic adventure, John Albert desired to
pose as the champion of Christendom against the Turks. Circumstances
seemed, moreover, to favour him. In his brother Wladislaus, who as king
of Hungary and Bohemia possessed a dominant influence in Central Europe,
he found a counterpoise to the machinations of the emperor Maximilian,
who in 1492 had concluded an alliance against him with Ivan III. of
Muscovy, while, as suzerain of Moldavia, John Albert was favourably
situated for attacking the Turks. At the conference of Leutschau in 1494
the details of the expedition were arranged between the kings of Poland
and Hungary and the elector Frederick of Brandenburg, with the
co-operation of Stephen, hospodar of Moldavia, who had appealed to John
Albert for assistance. In the course of 1496 John Albert with great
difficulty collected an army of 80,000 men in Poland, but the crusade
was deflected from its proper course by the sudden invasion of Galicia
by the hospodar, who apparently--for the whole subject is still very
obscure--had been misled by reports from Hungary that John Albert was
bent upon placing his younger brother Sigismund on the throne of
Moldavia. Be that as it may, the Poles entered Moldavia not as friends,
but as foes, and, after the abortive siege of Suczawa, were compelled to
retreat through the Bukowina to Sniatyn, harassed all the way by the
forces of the hospodar. The insubordination of the _szlachta_ seems to
have been one cause of this disgraceful collapse, for John Albert
confiscated hundreds of their estates after his return; in spite of
which, to the end of his life he retained his extraordinary popularity.
When the new grand master of the Teutonic order, Frederic of Saxony,
refused to render homage to the Polish crown, John Albert compelled him
to do so. His intention of still further humiliating the Teutonic order
was frustrated by his sudden death in 1501. A valiant soldier and a man
of much enlightenment, John Albert was a poor politician, recklessly
sacrificing the future to the present.
See V. Czerny, _The Reigns of John Albert and Alexander Jagiello_
(Pol.) (Cracow, 1882).
JOHN ANGELUS (d. 1244), emperor of Thessalonica. In 1232 he received the
throne from his father Theodore, who, after a period of exile, had
re-established his authority, but owing to his loss of eyesight resolved
to make John the nominal sovereign. His reign is chiefly marked by the
aggressions of the rival emperor of Nicaea, John Vatatzes, who laid
siege to Thessalonica in 1243 and only withdrew upon John Angelus
consenting to exchange the title "emperor" for the subordinate one of
"despot."
See G. Finlay, _History of Greece_, vol. iii. (1877).
JOHN FREDERICK I. (1503-1554), called the Magnanimous, elector of
Saxony, was the elder son of the elector, John the Steadfast, and
belonged to the Ernestine branch of the Wettin family. Born at Torgau on
the 30th of June 1503 and educated as a Lutheran, he took some part in
imperial politics and in the business of the league of Schmalkalden
before he became elector by his father's death in August 1532. His lands
comprised the western part of Saxony, and included Thuringia, but in
1542 Coburg was surrendered to form an apanage for his brother, John
Ernest (d. 1553). John Frederick, who was an ardent Lutheran and had a
high regard for Luther, continued the religious policy of his father. In
1534 he assisted to make peace between the German king Ferdinand I. and
Ulrich, duke of Württemberg, but his general attitude was one of
vacillation between the emperor and his own impetuous colleague in the
league of Schmalkalden, Philip, landgrave of Hesse. He was often at
variance with Philip, whose bigamy he disliked, and his belief in the
pacific intentions of Charles V. and his loyalty to the Empire prevented
him from pursuing any definite policy for the defence of Protestantism.
In 1541 his kinsman Maurice became duke of Saxony, and cast covetous
eyes upon the electoral dignity. A cause of quarrel soon arose. In 1541
John Frederick forced Nicholas Amsdorf into the see of Naumburg in spite
of the chapter, who had elected a Roman Catholic, Julius von Pflug; and
about the same time he seized Wurzen, the property of the bishop of
Meissen, whose see was under the joint protection of electoral and ducal
Saxony. Maurice took up arms, and war was only averted by the efforts of
Philip of Hesse and Luther. In 1542 the elector assisted to drive Henry,
duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, from his duchy, but in spite of this his
relations with Charles V. at the diet of Spires in 1544 were very
amicable. This was, however, only a lull in the storm, and the emperor
soon began to make preparations for attacking the league of
Schmalkalden, and especially John Frederick and Philip of Hesse. The
support, or at least the neutrality, of Maurice was won by the hope of
the electoral dignity, and in July 1546 war broke out between Charles
and the league. In September John Frederick was placed under the
imperial ban, and in November Maurice invaded the electorate. Hastening
from southern Germany the elector drove Maurice from the land, took his
ally, Albert Alcibiades, prince of Bayreuth, prisoner at Rochlitz, and
overran ducal Saxony. His progress, however, was checked by the advance
of Charles V. Notwithstanding his valour he was wounded and taken
prisoner at Mühlberg on the 24th of April 1547, and was condemned to
death in order to induce Wittenberg to surrender. The sentence was not
carried out, but by the capitulation of Wittenberg (May 1547) he
renounced the electoral dignity and a part of his lands in favour of
Maurice, steadfastly refusing however to make any concessions on
religious matters, and remained in captivity until May 1552, when he
returned to the Thuringian lands which his sons had been allowed to
retain, his return being hailed with wild enthusiasm. During his
imprisonment he had refused to accept the _Interim_, issued from
Augsburg in May 1548, and had urged his sons to make no peace with
Maurice. After his release the emperor had restored his dignities to
him, and his assumption of the electoral arms and title prevented any
arrangement with Maurice. However, after the death of this prince in
July 1553, a treaty was made at Naumburg in February 1554 with his
successor Augustus. John Frederick consented to the transfer of the
electoral dignity, but retained for himself the title of "born elector,"
and received some lands and a sum of money. He was thus the last
Ernestine elector of Saxony. He died at Weimar on the 3rd of March 1554,
having had three sons by his wife, Sibylla (d. 1554), daughter of John
III., duke of Cleves, whom he had married in 1527, and was succeeded by
his eldest son, John Frederick. The elector was a great hunter and a
hard drinker, whose brave and dignified bearing in a time of misfortune
won for him his surname of Magnanimous, and drew eulogies from Roger
Ascham and Melanchthon. He founded the university of Jena and was a
benefactor to that of Leipzig.
See Mentz, _Johann Friedrich der Grossmütige_ (Jena, 1903); Rogge,
_Johann Friedrich der Grossmütige_ (Halle, 1902) and L. von Ranke,
_Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation_ (Leipzig, 1882).
JOHN FREDERICK (1529-1595), called _der Mittlere_, duke of Saxony, was
the eldest son of John Frederick, who had been deprived of the Saxon
electorate by the emperor Charles V. in 1547. Born at Torgau on the 8th
of January 1529, he received a good education, and when his father was
imprisoned in 1547 undertook the government of the remnant of electoral
Saxony which the emperor allowed the Ernestine branch of the Wettin
family to keep. Released in 1552 John Frederick the elder died two years
later, and his three sons ruled Ernestine Saxony together until 1557,
when John Frederick was made sole ruler. This arrangement lasted until
1565, when John Frederick shared his lands with his surviving brother,
John William (1530-1573), retaining for himself Gotha and Weimar. The
duke was a strong, even a fanatical, Lutheran, but his religious views
were gradually subordinated to the one idea of regaining the electoral
dignity then held by Augustus I. To attain this end he lent a willing
ear to the schemes of Wilhelm von Grumbach, who came to his court about
1557 and offered to regain the electoral dignity and even to acquire the
Empire for his patron. In spite of repeated warnings from the emperor
Ferdinand I., John Frederick continued to protect Grumbach, and in 1566
his obstinacy caused him to be placed under the imperial ban. Its
execution was entrusted to Augustus who, aided by the duke's brother,
John William, marched against Gotha with a strong force. In consequence
of a mutiny the town surrendered in April 1567, and John Frederick was
delivered to the emperor Maximilian II. He was imprisoned in Vienna, his
lands were given to his brother, and he remained in captivity until his
death at Steyer on the 6th of May 1595. These years were mainly occupied
with studying theology and in correspondence. John Frederick married
firstly Agnes (d. 1555) daughter of Philip, landgrave of Hesse, and
widow of Maurice, elector of Saxony, and secondly Elizabeth (d. 1594)
daughter of Frederick III., elector palatine of the Rhine, by whom he
left two sons, John Casimir (1564-1633) and John Ernest (1566-1638).
Elizabeth shared her husband's imprisonment for twenty-two years.
See A. Beck, _Johann Friedrich der Mittlere, Herzog zu Sachsen_
(Vienna, 1858); and F. Ortloff, _Geschichte der Grumbachischen Händel_
(Jena, 1868-1870).
JOHN GEORGE I. (1585-1656), elector of Saxony, second son of the elector
Christian I., was born on the 5th of March 1585, succeeding to the
electorate in June 1611 on the death of his elder brother, Christian II.
The geographical position of electoral Saxony hardly less than her high
standing among the German Protestants gave her ruler much importance
during the Thirty Years' War. At the beginning of his reign, however,
the new elector took up a somewhat detached position. His personal
allegiance to Lutheranism was sound, but he liked neither the growing
strength of Brandenburg nor the increasing prestige of the Palatinate;
the adherence of the other branches of the Saxon ruling house to
Protestantism seemed to him to suggest that the head of electoral Saxony
should throw his weight into the other scale, and he was prepared to
favour the advances of the Habsburgs and the Roman Catholic party. Thus
he was easily induced to vote for the election of Ferdinand, archduke of
Styria, as emperor in August 1619, an action which nullified the
anticipated opposition of the Protestant electors. The new emperor
secured the help of John George for the impending campaign in Bohemia by
promising that he should be undisturbed in his possession of certain
ecclesiastical lands. Carrying out his share of the bargain by occupying
Silesia and Lusatia, where he displayed much clemency, the Saxon elector
had thus some part in driving Frederick V., elector palatine of the
Rhine, from Bohemia and in crushing Protestantism in that country, the
crown of which he himself had previously refused. Gradually, however, he
was made uneasy by the obvious trend of the imperial policy towards the
annihilation of Protestantism, and by a dread lest the ecclesiastical
lands should be taken from him; and the issue of the edict of
restitution in March 1629 put the coping-stone to his fears. Still,
although clamouring vainly for the exemption of the electorate from the
area covered by the edict, John George took no decided measures to break
his alliance with the emperor. He did, indeed, in February 1631 call a
meeting of Protestant princes at Leipzig, but in spite of the appeals of
the preacher Matthias Hoë von Hohenegg (1580-1645) he contented himself
with a formal protest. Meanwhile Gustavus Adolphus had landed in
Germany, and the elector had refused to allow him to cross the Elbe at
Wittenberg, thus hindering his attempt to relieve Magdeburg. But John
George's reluctance to join the Protestants disappeared when the
imperial troops under Tilly began to ravage Saxony, and in September
1631 he concluded an alliance with the Swedish king. The Saxon troops
were present at the battle of Breitenfeld, but were routed by the
imperialists, the elector himself seeking safety in flight. Nevertheless
he soon took the offensive. Marching into Bohemia the Saxons occupied
Prague, but John George soon began to negotiate for peace and
consequently his soldiers offered little resistance to Wallenstein, who
drove them back into Saxony. However, for the present the efforts of
Gustavus Adolphus prevented the elector from deserting him, but the
position was changed by the death of the king at Lützen in 1632, and the
refusal of Saxony to join the Protestant league under Swedish
leadership. Still letting his troops fight in a desultory fashion
against the imperialists, John George again negotiated for peace, and in
May 1635 he concluded the important treaty of Prague with Ferdinand II.
His reward was Lusatia and certain other additions of territory; the
retention by his son Augustus of the archbishopric of Magdeburg; and
some concessions with regard to the edict of restitution. Almost at once
he declared war upon the Swedes, but in October 1636 he was beaten at
Wittstock; and Saxony, ravaged impartially by both sides, was soon in a
deplorable condition. At length in September 1645 the elector was
compelled to agree to a truce with the Swedes, who, however, retained
Leipzig; and as far as Saxony was concerned this ended the Thirty Years'
War. After the peace of Westphalia, which with regard to Saxony did
little more than confirm the treaty of Prague, John George died on the
8th of October 1656. Although not without political acumen, he was not a
great ruler; his character appears to have been harsh and unlovely, and
he was addicted to drink. He was twice married, and in addition to his
successor John George II. he left three sons, Augustus (1614-1680),
Christian (d. 1691) and Maurice (d. 1681) who were all endowed with
lands in Saxony, and who founded cadet branches of the Saxon house.
JOHN GEORGE II. (1613-1680), elector of Saxony, was born on the 31st of
May 1613. In 1657, just after his accession, he made an arrangement with
his three brothers with the object of preventing disputes over their
separate territories, and in 1664 he entered into friendly relations
with Louis XIV. He received money from the French king, but the
existence of a strong anti-French party in Saxony induced him
occasionally to respond to the overtures of the emperor Leopold I. The
elector's primary interests were not in politics, but in music and art.
He adorned Dresden, which under him became the musical centre of
Germany; welcoming foreign musicians and others he gathered around him a
large and splendid court, and his capital was the constant scene of
musical and other festivals. His enormous expenditure compelled him in
1661 to grant greater control over monetary matters to the estates, a
step which laid the foundation of the later system of finance in Saxony.
John George died at Freiberg on the 22nd of August 1680.
JOHN GEORGE III. (1647-1691), elector of Saxony, the only son of John
George II., was born on the 20th of June 1647. He forsook the
vacillating foreign policy of his father and in June 1683 joined an
alliance against France. Having raised the first standing army in the
electorate he helped to drive the Turks from Vienna in September 1680,
leading his men with great gallantry; but disgusted with the attitude of
the emperor Leopold I. after the victory, he returned at once to Saxony.
However, he sent aid to Leopold in 1685. When Louis XIV.'s armies
invaded Germany in September 1688 John George was one of the first to
take up arms against the French, and after sharing in the capture of
Mainz he was appointed commander-in-chief of the imperial forces. He had
not, however, met with any notable success when he died at Tübingen on
the 12th of September 1691. Like his father, he was very fond of music,
but he appears to have been less extravagant than John George II. His
wife was Anna Sophia, daughter of Frederick III. king of Denmark, and
both his sons, John George and Frederick Augustus, became electors of
Saxony, the latter also becoming king of Poland as Augustus II.
JOHN GEORGE IV. (1668-1694), elector of Saxony, was born on the 18th of
October 1668. At the beginning of his reign his chief adviser was Hans
Adam von Schöning (1641-1696), who counselled a union between Saxony and
Brandenburg and a more independent attitude towards the emperor. In
accordance with this advice certain proposals were put before Leopold I.
to which he refused to agree; and consequently the Saxon troops withdrew
from the imperial army, a proceeding which led the chagrined emperor to
seize and imprison Schöning in July 1692. Although John George was
unable to procure his minister's release, Leopold managed to allay the
elector's anger, and early in 1693 the Saxon soldiers rejoined the
imperialists. This elector is chiefly celebrated for his passion for
Magdalene Sibylle von Neidschütz (d. 1694), created in 1693 countess of
Rochlitz, whom on his accession he publicly established as his mistress.
John George left no legitimate issue when he died on the 27th of April
1694.
JOHN[1] MAURICE OF NASSAU (1604-1679), surnamed the Brazilian, was the
son of John the Younger, count of Nassau-Siegen-Dillenburg, and the
grandson of John, the elder brother of William the Silent and the chief
author of the Union of Utrecht. He distinguished himself in the
campaigns of his cousin, the stadtholder Frederick Henry of Orange, and
was by him recommended to the directors of the Dutch West India company
in 1636 to be governor-general of the new dominion in Brazil recently
conquered by the company. He landed at the Recife, the port of
Pernambuco, and the chief stronghold of the Dutch, in January 1637. By a
series of successful expeditions he gradually extended the Dutch
possessions from Sergipe on the south to S. Luis de Maranham in the
north. He likewise conquered the Portuguese possessions of St George del
Mina and St Thomas on the west coast of Africa. With the assistance of
the famous architect, Pieter Post of Haarlem, he transformed the Recife
by building a new town adorned with splendid public edifices and
gardens, which was called after his name Mauritstad. By his
statesmanlike policy he brought the colony into a most flourishing
condition and succeeded even in reconciling the Portuguese settlers to
submit quietly to Dutch rule. His large schemes and lavish expenditure
alarmed however the parsimonious directors of the West India company,
but John Maurice refused to retain his post unless he was given a free
hand, and he returned to Europe in July 1644. He was shortly afterwards
appointed by Frederick Henry to the command of the cavalry in the States
army, and he took part in the campaigns of 1645 and 1646. When the war
was ended by the peace of Münster in January 1648, he accepted from the
elector of Brandenburg the post of governor of Cleves, Mark and
Ravensberg, and later also of Minden. His success in the Rhineland was
as great as it had been in Brazil, and he proved himself a most able and
wise ruler. At the end of 1652 he was appointed head of the order of St
John and made a prince of the Empire. In 1664 he came back to Holland;
when the war broke out with England supported by an invasion from the
bishop of Münster, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Dutch
forces on land. Though hampered in his command by the restrictions of
the states-general, he repelled the invasion, and the bishop, Christoph
von Galen, was forced to conclude peace. His campaigning was not yet at
an end, for in 1673 he was appointed by the stadtholder William III. to
command the forces in Friesland and Groningen, and to defend the eastern
frontier of the Provinces. In 1675 his health compelled him to give up
active military service, and he spent his last years in his beloved
Cleves, where he died on the 20th of December 1679. The house which he
built at the Hague, named after him the Maurits-huis, now contains the
splendid collections of pictures so well known to all admirers of Dutch
art.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Caspar Barlaeus, _Rerum per octennium in Brasilia et
alibi nuper gestarum historia, sub praefectura illustrissimi comitis
J. Mauritii Nassoviae_ (Amsterdam, 1647); L. Driessen, _Leben des
Fürsten Johann Moritz von Nassau_ (Berlin, 1849); D. Veegens, _Leven
van Jaan Maurits_, Graaf van Nassau-Siegen (Haarlem, 1840).
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This name is usually written Joan, the form used by the man
himself in his signature--see the facsimile in Netscher's _Les
Hollandais en Brésil_.
JOHN O' GROAT'S HOUSE, a spot on the north coast of Caithness, Scotland,
14 m. N. of Wick and 1¾ m. W. of Duncansby Head. It is the mythical site
of an octagonal house said to have been erected early in the 16th
century by one John Groot, a Dutchman who had migrated to the north of
Scotland by permission of James IV. According to the legend, other
members of the Groot family followed John, and acquired lands around
Duncansby. When there were eight Groot families, disputes began to arise
as to precedence at annual feasts. These squabbles John Groot is said to
have settled by building an octagonal house which had eight entrances
and eight tables, so that the head of each family could enter by his own
door and sit at the head of his own table. Being but a few miles south
of Dunnet Head, John o' Groat's is a colloquial term for the most
northerly point of Scotland. The site of the traditional building is
marked by an outline traced in turf. Descendants of the Groot family,
now Groat, still live in the neighbourhood. The cowry-shell, _Cypraea
europaea_, is locally known as "John o' Groat's bucky."
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, an American educational institution at
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. Its trustees, chosen by Johns Hopkins
(1794-1873), a successful Baltimore merchant, were incorporated on the
24th of August 1867 under a general act "for the promotion of education
in the state of Maryland." But nothing was actually done until after the
death of Johns Hopkins (Dec. 24, 1873), when his fortune of $7,000,000
was equally divided between the projected university and a hospital,
also to bear his name, and intended to be an auxiliary to the medical
school of the university. The trustees of the university consulted with
many prominent educationists, notably Charles W. Eliot of Harvard,
Andrew D. White of Cornell, and James B. Angell of the university of
Michigan; on the 30th of December 1874 they elected Daniel Coit Gilman
(q.v.) president. The university was formally opened on the 3rd of
October 1876, when an address was delivered by T. H. Huxley. The first
year was largely given up to consultation among the newly chosen
professors, among whom were--in Greek, B. L. Gildersleeve; in
mathematics, J. J. Sylvester; in chemistry, Ira Remsen; in biology,
Henry Newell Martin (1848-1896); in zoology, William Keith Brooks
(1848-1908); and in physics, Henry Augustus Rowland (1848-1901).
Prominent among later teachers were Arthur Cayley in mathematics, the
Semitic scholar Paul Haupt (b. 1858), Granville Stanley Hall in
psychology, Maurice Bloomfield in Sanskrit and comparative philology,
James Rendel Harris in Biblical philology, James Wilson Bright in
English philology, Herbert B. Adams in history, and Richard T. Ely (b.
1854) in economics. The university at once became a pioneer in the
United States in teaching by means of seminary courses and laboratories,
and it has been eminently successful in encouraging research, in
scientific production, and in preparing its students to become
instructors in other colleges and universities. It includes a college in
which each of five parallel courses leads to the degree of Bachelor of
Arts, but its reputation has been established chiefly by its other two
departments, the graduate school and the medical school. The graduate
school offers courses in philosophy and psychology, physics, chemistry
and biology, historical and economic science, language and literature,
and confers the degree of Doctor of Philosophy after at least three
years' residence. From its foundation the university had novel features
and a liberal administration. Twenty annual fellowships of $500 each
were opened to the graduates of any college. Petrography and laboratory
psychology were among the new sciences fostered by the new university.
Such eminent outsiders were secured for brief residence and lecture
courses as J. R. Lowell, F. J. Child, Simon Newcomb, H. E. von Holst, F.
A. Walker, William James, Sidney Lanier, James Bryce, E. A. Freeman, W.
W. Goodwin, and Alfred Russel Wallace. President Gilman gave up his
presidential duties on the 1st of September 1901, Ira Remsen[1]
succeeding him in the office. The medical department, inaugurated in
1893, is closely affiliated with the excellently equipped Johns Hopkins
Hospital (opened in 1889), and is actually a graduate school, as it
admits only students holding the bachelor's degree or its equivalent.
The degree of Doctor of Medicine is conferred after four years of
successful study, and advanced courses are offered. The department's
greatest teachers have been William Osler (b. 1849) and William Henry
Welch (b. 1850).
The buildings of the university were in 1901 an unpretentious group on
crowded ground near the business centre of the city. In 1902 a new site
was secured, containing about 125 acres amid pleasant surroundings in
the northern suburbs, and new buildings were designed in accordance with
a plan formed with a view to secure harmony and symmetry. In 1907 the
library contained more than 133,000 bound volumes. Among the numerous
publications issued by the university press are: _American Journal of
Mathematics_, _Studies in Historical and Political Science_, _Reprint of
Economic Tracts, American Journal of Philology_, _Contributions to
Assyriology and Semitic Philology_, _Modern Language Notes_, _American
Chemical Journal_, _American Journal of Insanity_, _Terrestrial
Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity_, _Reports of the Maryland
Geological Survey_, and _Reports of the Maryland Weather Service_. The
institution is maintained chiefly with the proceeds of the endowment
fund. It also receives aid from the state, and charges tuition fees. Its
government is entrusted to a board of trustees, while the direction of
affairs of a strictly academic nature is delegated to an academic
council and to department boards. In 1907-1908 the regular faculty
numbered 175, and there was an enrolment of 683 students, of whom 518
were in post-graduate courses.
On the history of the university see Daniel C. Gilman, _The Launching of
a University_ (New York, 1906), and the annual reports of the president.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Ira Remsen was born in New York City on the 10th of February
1846, graduated at the college of the City of New York in 1865,
studied at the New York college of physicians and surgeons and at the
university of Göttingen, was professor of chemistry at Williams
College in 1872-1876, and in 1876 became professor cf chemistry at
Johns Hopkins University. He published many textbooks of chemistry,
organic and inorganic, which were republished in England and were
translated abroad. In 1879 he founded the _American Chemical
Journal_.
JOHNSON, ANDREW (1808-1875), seventeenth president of the United States,
was born at Raleigh, North Carolina, on the 29th of December 1808. His
parents were poor, and his father died when Andrew was four years old.
At the age of ten he was apprenticed to a tailor, his spare hours being
spent in acquiring the rudiments of an education. He learned to read
from a book which contained selected orations of great British and
American statesmen. The young tailor went to Laurens Court House, South
Carolina, in 1824, to work at his trade, but returned to Raleigh in 1826
and soon afterward removed to Greeneville in the eastern part of
Tennessee. He married during the same year Eliza McCardle (1810-1876),
much his superior by birth and education, who taught him the common
school branches of learning and was of great assistance in his later
career. In East Tennessee most of the people were small farmers, while
West Tennessee was a land of great slave plantations. Johnson began in
politics to oppose the aristocratic element and became the spokesman and
champion of the poorer and labouring classes. In 1828 he was elected an
alderman of Greeneville and in 1830-1834 was mayor. In 1834, in the
Tennessee constitutional convention he endeavoured to limit the
influence of the slaveholders by basing representation in the state
legislature on the white population alone. In 1835-1837 and 1839-1841
Johnson was a Democratic member of the state House of Representatives,
and in 1841-1843 of the state Senate; in both houses he uniformly upheld
the cause of the "common people," and, in addition, opposed legislation
for "internal improvements." He soon was recognized as the political
champion of East Tennessee. Though his favourite leaders became Whigs,
Johnson remained a Democrat, and in 1840 canvassed the state for Van
Buren for president.
In 1843 he was elected to the national House of Representatives and
there remained for ten years until his district was gerrymandered by the
Whigs and he lost his seat. But he at once offered himself as a
candidate for governor and was elected and re-elected, and was then sent
to the United States Senate, serving from 1857 to 1862. As governor
(1853-1857) he proved to be able and non-partisan. He championed popular
education and recommended the homestead policy to the national
government, and from his sympathy with the working classes and his
oft-avowed pride in his former calling he became known as the "mechanic
governor." In Congress he proved to be a tireless advocate of the claims
of the poorer whites and an opponent of the aristocracy. He favoured the
annexation of Texas, supported the Polk administration on the issues of
the Mexican War and the Oregon boundary controversy, and though voting
for the admission of free California demanded national protection for
slavery. He also advocated the homestead law and low tariffs, opposed
the policy of "internal improvements," and was a zealous worker for
budget economies. Though opposed to a monopoly of political power in the
South by the great slaveholders, he deprecated anti-slavery agitation
(even favouring denial of the right of petition on that subject) as
threatening abolition or the dissolution of the Union, and went with his
sectional leaders so far as to demand freedom of choice for the
Territories, and protection for slavery where it existed--this even so
late as 1860. He supported in 1860 the ultra-Democratic ticket of
Breckinridge and Lane, but he did not identify the election of Lincoln
with the ruin of the South, though he thought the North should give
renewed guarantees to slavery. But he followed Jackson rather than
Calhoun, and above everything else set his love of the Union, though
believing the South to be grievously wronged. He was the only Southern
member of Congress who opposed secession and refused to "go with his
state" when it withdrew from the Union in 1861. In the judgment of a
leading opponent (O. P. Morton) "perhaps no man in Congress exerted the
same influence on the public sentiment of the North at the beginning of
the war" as Johnson. During the war he suffered much for his loyalty to
the Union. In March 1862 Lincoln made him military governor of the part
of Tennessee captured from the Confederates, and after two years of
autocratic rule (with much danger to himself) he succeeded in organizing
a Union government for the state. In 1864, to secure the votes of the
war Democrats and to please the border states that had remained in the
Union, Johnson was nominated for vice-president on the ticket with
Lincoln.
A month after the inauguration the murder of Lincoln left him president,
with the great problem to solve of reconstruction of the Union. All his
past career and utterances seemed to indicate that he would favour the
harshest measures toward ex-Confederates, hence his acceptability to the
most radical republicans. But, whether because he drew a distinction
between the treason of individuals and of states, or was influenced by
Seward, or simply, once in responsible position, separated Republican
party politics from the question of constitutional interpretation, at
least he speedily showed that he would be influenced by no acrimony, and
adopted the lenient reconstruction policy of Lincoln. In this he had for
some time the cordial support of his cabinet. During the summer of 1865
he set up provisional civil governments in all the seceded states except
Texas, and within a few months all those states were reorganized and
applying for readmission to the Union. The radical congress (Republican
by a large majority) sharply opposed this plan of restoration, as they
had opposed Lincoln's plan: first, because the members of Congress from
the Southern States (when readmitted) would almost certainly vote with
the Democrats; secondly, because relatively few of the Confederates were
punished; and thirdly, because the newly organized Southern States did
not give political rights to the negroes. The question of the status of
the negro proved the crux of the issue. Johnson was opposed to general
or immediate negro suffrage. A bitter contest began in Feb. 1866,
between the president and the Congress, which refused to admit
representatives from the South and during 1866 passed over his veto a
number of important measures, such as the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the
Civil Rights Act, and submitted to the States the Fourteenth Amendment
to the Constitution. Johnson took a prominent and undignified part in
the congressional campaign of 1866, in which his policies were voted
down by the North. In 1867 Congress threw aside his work of restoration
and proceeded with its own plan, the main features of which were the
disfranchisement of ex-Confederates and the enfranchisement of negroes.
On the 2nd of March 1867 Congress passed over the president's veto the
Tenure of Office Act, prohibiting the president from dismissing from
office without the consent of the Senate any officer appointed by and
with the advice and consent of that body, and in addition a section was
inserted in the army appropriation bill of this session designed to
subordinate the president to the Senate and the general-in-chief of the
army in military matters. The president was thus deprived of practically
all power. Stanton and other members of his cabinet and General Grant
became hostile to him, the president attempted to remove Stanton without
regard to the Tenure of Office Act, and, finally, to get rid of the
president, Congress in 1868(February-May) made an attempt to impeach and
remove him, his disregard of the Tenure of Office Act being the
principal charge against him. The charges[1] were in part quite trivial,
and the evidence was ridiculously inadequate for the graver charges. A
two-thirds majority was necessary for conviction; and the votes being 35
to 19 (7 Republicans and 12 Democrats voting in his favour on the
crucial clauses) he was acquitted. The misguided animus of the
impeachment as a piece of partisan politics was soon very generally
admitted; and the importance of its failure, in securing the continued
power and independence of the presidential element in the constitutional
system, can hardly be over-estimated. The rest of his term as president
was comparatively quiet and uneventful. In 1869 he retired into private
life in Tennessee, and after several unsuccessful efforts was elected to
the United States Senate, free of party trammels, in 1875, but died at
Carter's Station, Tenn., on the 31st of July 1875. The only speech he
made was a skilful and temperate arraignment of President Grant's policy
towards the South.
President Johnson's leading political principles were a reverence of
Andrew Jackson, unlimited confidence in the people, and an intense
veneration for the constitution. Throughout his life he remained in some
respects a "backwoodsman." He lacked the finish of systematic education.
But his whole career sufficiently proves him to have been a man of
extraordinary qualities. He did not rise above untoward circumstances by
favour, nor--until after his election as senator--by fortunate and
fortuitous connexion with great events, but by strength of native
talents, persistent purpose, and an iron will. He had strong, rugged
powers, was a close reasoner and a forcible speaker. Unfortunately his
extemporaneous speeches were commonplace, in very bad taste, fervently
intemperate and denunciatory; and though this was probably due largely
to temperament and habits of stump-speaking formed in early life, it was
attributed by his enemies to drink. Resorting to stimulants after
illness, his marked excess in this respect on the occasion of his
inauguration as vice-president undoubtedly did him harm with the public.
Faults of personality were his great handicap. Though approachable and
not without kindliness of manner, he seemed hard and inflexible; and
while president, physical pain and domestic anxieties, added to the
struggles of public life, combined to accentuate a naturally somewhat
severe temperament. A lifelong Southern Democrat, he was forced to lead
(nominally at least) a party of Northern Republicans, with whom he had
no bond of sympathy save a common opposition to secession; and his
ardent, aggressive convictions and character, above all his complete
lack of tact, unfitted him to deal successfully with the passionate
partisanship of Congress. The absolute integrity and unflinching courage
that marked his career were always ungrudgingly admitted by his greatest
enemies.
See L. Foster, _The Life and Speeches of Andrew Johnson_ (1866); D. M.
De Witt, _The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson_ (1903); C. E.
Chadsey, _The Struggle between President Johnson and Congress over
Reconstruction_ (1896); and W. A. Dunning, _Essays on the Civil War
and Reconstruction_ (1898). Also see W. A. Dunning's paper "More Light
on Andrew Johnson" (in the _American Historical Review_, April 1906),
in which apparently conclusive evidence is presented to prove that
Johnson's first inaugural, a notable state paper, was written by the
historian George Bancroft.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The charges centred in the president's removal of Secretary
Stanton, his _ad interim_ appointment of Lorenzo Thomas, his campaign
speeches in 1866, and the relation of these three things to the
Tenure of Office Act. Of the eleven charges of impeachment the first
was that Stanton's removal was contrary to the Tenure of Office Act;
the second, that the appointment of Thomas was a violation of the
same law; the third, that the appointment violated the Constitution;
the fourth, that Johnson conspired with Thomas "to hinder and prevent
Edwin M. Stanton ... from holding ... office of secretary for the
department of war"; the fifth, that Johnson had conspired with Thomas
to "prevent and hinder the execution" of the Tenure of Office Act;
the sixth, that he had conspired with Thomas "to seize, take and
possess the property of the United States in the department of war,"
in violation of the Tenure of Office Act; the seventh, that this
action was "a high misdemeanour"; the eighth, that the appointment of
Thomas was "with intent unlawfully to control the disbursements of
the moneys appropriated for the military service and for the
department of war"; the ninth, that he had instructed Major-General
Emory, in command of the department of Washington, that an act of
1867 appropriating money for the army was unconstitutional; the
tenth, that his speeches in 1866 constituted "a high misdemeanour in
office"; and the eleventh, the "omnibus" article, that he had
committed high misdemeanours in saying that the 39th Congress was not
an authorized Congress, that its legislation was not binding upon
him, and that it was incapable of proposing amendments. The actual
trial began on the 30th of March (from the 5th of March it was
adjourned to the 23rd, and on the 24th of March to the 30th). On the
16th of May, after sessions in which the Senate repeatedly reversed
the rulings of the chief justice as to the admission of evidence, in
which the president's counsel showed that their case was excellently
prepared and the prosecuting counsel appealed in general to political
passions rather than to judicial impartiality, the eleventh article
was voted on and impeachment failed by a single vote (35 to 19; 7
republicans and 12 democrats voting "Not guilty") of the necessary
two-thirds. After ten days' interval, during which B. F. Butler of
the prosecuting counsel attempted to prove that corruption had been
practised on some of those voting "Not guilty," on the 26th of May a
vote was taken on the second and third articles with the same result
as on the eleventh article. There was no vote on the other articles.
JOHNSON, BENJAMIN (c. 1665-1742), English actor, was first a scene
painter, then acted in the provinces, and appeared in London in 1695 at
Drury Lane after Betterton's defection. He was the original Captain
Driver in _Oronooko_ (1696), Captain Fireball in Farquhar's _Sir Harry
Wildair_ (1701), Sable in Steele's _Funeral_ (1702), &c.; as the First
Gravedigger in _Hamlet_ and in several characters in the plays of Ben
Jonson he was particularly good. He succeeded, also, to Thomas Doggett's
rôles.
JOHNSON, EASTMAN (1824-1906), American artist, was born at Lovell,
Maine, on the 29th of July 1824. He studied at Düsseldorf, Paris, Rome
and The Hague, the last city being his home for four years. In 1860 he
was elected to the National Academy of Design, New York. A distinguished
portrait and genre painter, he made distinctively American themes his
own, depicting the negro, fisherfolk and farm life with unusual
interest. Such pictures as "Old Kentucky Home" (1867), "Husking Bee"
(1876), "Cranberry Harvest, Nantucket" (1880), and his portrait group
"The Funding Bill" (1881) achieved a national reputation. Among his
sitters were many prominent men, including Daniel Webster; Presidents
Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland and Harrison; William M. Evarts, Charles J.
Folger; Emerson, Longfellow, Hawthorne, James McCosh, Noah Porter and
Sir Edward Archbald. He died in New York City on the 5th of April 1906.
JOHNSON, REVERDY (1796-1876), American political leader and jurist, was
born at Annapolis, Maryland, on the 21st of May 1796. His father, John
Johnson (1770-1824), was a distinguished lawyer, who served in both
houses of the Maryland General Assembly, as attorney-general of the
state (1806-1811), as a judge of the court of appeals (1811-1821), and
as a chancellor of his state (1821-1824). Reverdy graduated from St
John's college in 1812. He then studied law in his father's office, was
admitted to the bar in 1815 and began to practise in Upper Marlborough,
Prince George's county. In 1817 he removed to Baltimore, where he became
the professional associate of Luther Martin, William Pinkney and Roger
B. Taney; with Thomas Harris he reported the decisions of the court of
appeals in _Harris and Johnson's Reports_ (1820-1827); and in 1818 he
was appointed chief commissioner of insolvent debtors. From 1821 to 1825
he was a state senator; from 1825 to 1845 he devoted himself to his
practice; from 1845 to 1849, as a Whig, he was a member of the United
States Senate; and from March 1849 to July 1850 he was attorney-general
of the United States. In 1856 he became identified with the conservative
wing of the Democratic party, and four years later supported Stephen A.
Douglas for the presidency. In 1861 he was a delegate from Maryland to
the peace convention at Washington; in 1861-1862 he was a member of the
Maryland House of Delegates. After the capture of New Orleans he was
commissioned by Lincoln to revise the decisions of the military
commandant, General B. F. Butler, in regard to foreign governments, and
reversed all those decisions to the entire satisfaction of the
administration. In 1863 he again took his seat in the United States
Senate. In 1868 he was appointed minister to Great Britain and soon
after his arrival in England negotiated the Johnson-Clarendon treaty for
the settlement of disputes arising out of the Civil War; this, however,
the Senate refused to ratify, and he returned home on the accession of
General U. S. Grant to the presidency. Again resuming his practice he
was engaged by the government in the prosecution of Ku-Klux cases. He
died on the 10th of February 1876 at Annapolis. He repudiated the
doctrine of secession, and pleaded for compromise and conciliation.
Opposed to the Reconstruction measures, he voted for them on the ground
that it was better to accept than reject them, since they were probably
the best that could be obtained. As a lawyer he was engaged during his
later years in most of the especially important cases in the Supreme
Court of the United States and in the courts of Maryland.
JOHNSON, RICHARD (1573-1659?), English romance writer, was baptized in
London on the 24th of May 1573. His most famous romance is The _Famous
Historie of the Seaven Champions of Christendom_ (1596?). The success of
this book was so great that the author added a second and a third part
in 1608 and 1616. His other stories include: _The Nine Worthies of
London_ (1592); _The Pleasant Walks of Moorefields_ (1607); _The
Pleasant Conceites of Old Hobson_ (1607), the hero being a well-known
haberdasher in the Poultry; _The Most Pleasant History of Tom a
Lincolne_ (1607); _A Remembrance of ... Robert Earle of Salisbury_
(1612); _Looke on Me, London_ (1613); _The History of Tom Thumbe_
(1621). _The Crown Garland of Golden Roses ... set forth in Many
Pleasant new Songs and Sonnets_ (1612) was reprinted for the Percy
Society (1842 and 1845).
JOHNSON, RICHARD MENTOR (1781-1850), ninth vice-president of the
United States, was born at Bryant's Station, Kentucky, on the 17th of
October 1781. He was admitted to the bar in 1800, and became prominent
as a lawyer and Democratic politician, serving in the Federal House of
Representatives and in the Senate for many years. From 1837 to 1841 he
was vice-president of the United States, to which position he was
elected over Francis Granger, by the Senate, none of the four candidates
for the vice-presidency having received a majority of the electoral
votes. The opposition to Johnson within the party greatly increased
during his term, and the Democratic national convention of 1840 adopted
the unprecedented course of refusing to nominate anyone for the
vice-presidency. In the ensuing election Johnson received most of the
Democratic electoral votes, but was defeated by the Whig candidate, John
Tyler. He died in Frankfort, Kentucky, on the 19th of November 1850.
JOHNSON, SAMUEL (1709-1784), English writer and lexicographer, was the
son of Michael Johnson (1656-1731), bookseller and magistrate of
Lichfield, who married in 1706 Sarah Ford (1669-1759). Michael's
abilities and attainments seem to have been considerable. He was so well
acquainted with the contents of the volumes which he exposed for sale
that the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him
an oracle on points of learning. Between him and the clergy, indeed,
there was a strong religious and political sympathy. He was a zealous
churchman, and, though he had qualified himself for municipal office by
taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession, was to the last a
Jacobite in heart. The social position of Samuel's paternal grandfather,
William Johnson, remains obscure; his mother was the daughter of
Cornelius Ford, "a little Warwickshire Gent."
At a house (now the Johnson Museum) in the Market Square, Lichfield,
Samuel Johnson was born on the 18th of September 1709 and baptized on
the same day at St Mary's, Lichfield. In the child the physical,
intellectual and moral peculiarities which afterwards distinguished the
man were plainly discernible: great muscular strength accompanied by
much awkwardness and many infirmities; great quickness of parts, with a
morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination; a kind and generous
heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. He had inherited from his
ancestors a scrofulous taint, and his parents were weak enough to
believe that the royal touch would cure him. In his third year he was
taken up to London, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by the
court chaplains and stroked and presented with a piece of gold by Queen
Anne. Her hand was applied in vain. The boy's features, which were
originally noble and not irregular, were distorted by his malady. His
cheeks were deeply scarred. He lost for a time the sight of one eye; and
he saw but very imperfectly with the other. But the force of his mind
overcame every impediment. Indolent as he was, he acquired knowledge
with such ease and rapidity that at every school (such as those at
Lichfield and Stourbridge) to which he was sent he was soon the best
scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided at home, and was left to
his own devices. He learned much at this time, though his studies were
without guidance and without plan. He ransacked his father's shelves,
dipped into a multitude of books, read what was interesting, and passed
over what was dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired little or no
useful knowledge in such a way; but much that was dull to ordinary lads
was interesting to Samuel. He read little Greek; for his proficiency in
that language was not such that he could take much pleasure in the
masters of Attic poetry and eloquence. But he had left school a good
Latinist, and he soon acquired an extensive knowledge of Latin
literature. He was peculiarly attracted by the works of the great
restorers of learning. Once, while searching for some apples, he found a
huge folio volume of Petrarch's works. The name excited his curiosity,
and he eagerly devoured hundreds of pages. Indeed, the diction and
versification of his own Latin compositions show that he had paid at
least as much attention to modern copies from the antique as to the
original models.
While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his family was sinking
into hopeless poverty. Old Michael Johnson was much better qualified to
pore over books, and to talk about them, than to trade in them. His
business declined; his debts increased; it was with difficulty that the
daily expenses of his household were defrayed. It was out of his power
to support his son at either university; but a wealthy neighbour offered
assistance; and, in reliance on promises which proved to be of very
little value, Samuel was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the
young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were
amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the
quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up
during many months of desultory but not unprofitable study. On the first
day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Macrobius; and
one of the most learned among them declared that he had never known a
freshman of equal attainments.
At Oxford Johnson resided barely over two years, possibly less. He was
poor, even to raggedness; and his appearance excited a mirth and a pity
which were equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. He was driven from
the quadrangle of Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members
of that aristocratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. Some
charitable person placed a new pair at his door; but he spurned them
away in a fury. Distress made him, not servile, but reckless and
ungovernable. No opulent gentleman commoner, panting for one-and-twenty,
could have treated the academical authorities with more gross
disrespect. The needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate of
Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle of
lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit
and audacity gave him an undisputed ascendancy. In every mutiny against
the discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was pardoned,
however, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and
acquirements. He had early made himself known by turning Pope's
"Messiah" into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not
exactly Virgilian; but the translation found many admirers, and was read
with pleasure by Pope himself.
The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordinary course of
things, have become a Bachelor of Arts; but he was at the end of his
resources. Those promises of support on which he had relied had not been
kept. His family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford tradesmen
were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. In the autumn of 1731
he was under the necessity of quitting the university without a degree.
In the following winter his father died. The old man left but a
pittance; and of that pittance almost the whole was appropriated to the
support of his widow. The property to which Samuel succeeded amounted to
no more than twenty pounds.
His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one hard struggle
with poverty. The misery of that struggle needed no aggravation, but was
aggravated by the sufferings of an unsound body and an unsound mind.
Before the young man left the university, his hereditary malady had
broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had become an incurable
hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all his life, or
at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange
than his have often been thought ground sufficient for absolving felons
and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings,
sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know him.
At a dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch
off a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating
a clause of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible
aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than
see the hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in
the streets through which he walked. If by any chance he missed a post,
he would go back a hundred yards and repair the omission. Under the
influence of his disease, his senses became morbidly torpid, and his
imagination morbidly active. At one time he would stand poring on the
town clock without being able to tell the hour. At another he would
distinctly hear his mother, who was many miles off, calling him by his
name. But this was not the worst. A deep melancholy took possession of
him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human nature and of human
destiny. Such wretchedness as he endured has driven many men to shoot
themselves or drown themselves. But he was under no temptation to commit
suicide. He was sick of life; but he was afraid of death; and he
shuddered at every sight or sound which reminded him of the inevitable
hour. In religion he found but little comfort during his long and
frequent fits of dejection; for his religion partook of his own
character. The light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a
direct line, or with its own pure splendour. The rays had to struggle
through a disturbing medium; they reached him refracted, dulled and
discoloured by the thick gloom which had settled on his soul, and,
though they might be sufficiently clear to guide him, were too dim to
cheer him.
With such infirmities of body and of mind, he was left, at
two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the world. He remained during
about five years in the midland counties. At Lichfield, his birthplace
and his early home, he had inherited some friends and acquired others.
He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a gay officer of noble family,
who happened to be quartered there. Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of the
ecclesiastical court of the diocese, a man of distinguished parts,
learning and knowledge of the world, did himself honour by patronizing
the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, unpolished manners and
squalid garb moved many of the petty aristocracy of the neighbourhood to
laughter or disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of
earning a livelihood. He became usher of a grammar school in
Leicestershire; he resided as a humble companion in the house of a
country gentleman; but a life of dependence was insupportable to his
haughty spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a few
guineas by literary drudgery. In that town he printed a translation,
little noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book about
Abyssinia. He then put forth proposals for publishing by subscription
the poems of Politian, with notes containing a history of modern Latin
verse; but subscriptions did not come in, and the volume never appeared.
While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell in love. The
object of his passion was Mrs Elizabeth Porter (1688-1752), widow of
Harry Porter (d. 1734), whose daughter Lucy was born only six years
after Johnson himself. To ordinary spectators the lady appeared to be a
short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy
colours, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which were
not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson, however,
whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish
rouge from natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been in the same
room with a woman of real fashion, his Tetty, as he called her, was the
most beautiful, graceful and accomplished of her sex. That his
admiration was unfeigned cannot be doubted; she had, however, a jointure
of £600 and perhaps a little more; she came of a good family, and her
son Jervis (d. 1763) commanded H.M.S. "Hercules." The marriage, in spite
of occasional wranglings, proved happier than might have been expected.
The lover continued to be under the illusions of the wedding-day (July
9, 1735) till the lady died in her sixty-fourth year. On her monument at
Bromley he placed an inscription extolling the charms of her person and
of her manners; and when, long after her decease, he had occasion to
mention her, he exclaimed with a tenderness half ludicrous, half
pathetic, "Pretty creature!"
His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself more strenuously
than he had hitherto done. He took a house at Edial near Lichfield and
advertised for pupils. But eighteen months passed away, and only three
pupils came to his academy. The "faces" that Johnson habitually made
(probably nervous contortions due to his disorder) may well have alarmed
parents. Good scholar though he was, these twitchings had lost him
usherships in 1735 and 1736. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils,
used, many years later, to throw the best company of London into
convulsions of laughter by mimicking the master and his lady.
At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, determined to
seek his fortune in London as a literary adventurer. He set out with a
few guineas, three acts of his tragedy of _Irene_ in manuscript, and two
or three letters of introduction from his friend Walmesley. Never since
literature became a calling in England had it been a less gainful
calling than at the time when Johnson took up his residence in London.
In the preceding generation a writer of eminent merit was sure to be
munificently rewarded by the Government. The least that he could expect
was a pension or a sinecure place; and, if he showed any aptitude for
politics, he might hope to be a member of parliament, a lord of the
treasury, an ambassador, a secretary of state. But literature had ceased
to flourish under the patronage of the great, and had not yet begun to
flourish under the patronage of the public. One man of letters, indeed,
Pope, had acquired by his pen what was then considered as a handsome
fortune, and lived on a footing of equality with nobles and ministers of
state. But this was a solitary exception. Even an author whose
reputation was established, and whose works were popular--such an author
as Thomson, whose _Seasons_ was in every library, such an author as
Fielding, whose _Pasquin_ had had a greater run than any drama since
_The Beggar's Opera_--was sometimes glad to obtain, by pawning his best
coat, the means of dining on tripe at a cookshop underground, where he
could wipe his hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a
Newfoundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what humiliations
and privations must have awaited the novice who had still to earn a
name. One of the publishers to whom Johnson applied for employment
measured with a scornful eye that athletic though uncouth frame, and
exclaimed, "You had better get a porter's knot and carry trunks." Nor
was the advice bad, for a porter was likely to be as plentifully fed,
and as comfortably lodged, as a poet.
Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was able to form any
literary connexion from which he could expect more than bread for the
day which was passing over him. He never forgot the generosity with
which Hervey, who was now residing in London, relieved his wants during
this time of trial. "Harry Hervey," said Johnson many years later, "was
a vicious man; but he was very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I
shall love him." At Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed feasts
which were made more agreeable by contrast. But in general he dined, and
thought that he dined well, on sixpennyworth of meat and a pennyworth of
bread at an alehouse near Drury Lane.
The effect of the privations and sufferings which he endured at this
time was discernible to the last in his temper and his deportment. His
manners had never been courtly. They now became almost savage. Being
frequently under the necessity of wearing shabby coats and dirty shirts,
he became a confirmed sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat down
to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with ravenous greediness.
Even to the end of his life, and even at the tables of the great, the
sight of food affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of prey.
His taste in cookery, formed in subterranean ordinaries and _à la mode_
beef shops, was far from delicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to
have near him a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie made
with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence that his veins
swelled and the moisture broke out on his forehead. The affronts which
his poverty emboldened stupid and low-minded men to offer to him would
have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but made him rude even to
ferocity. Unhappily the insolence which, while it was defensive, was
pardonable, and in some sense respectable, accompanied him into
societies where he was treated with courtesy and kindness. He was
repeatedly provoked into striking those who had taken liberties with
him. All the sufferers, however, were wise enough to abstain from
talking about their beatings, except Osborne, the most rapacious and
brutal of booksellers, who proclaimed everywhere that he had been
knocked down by the huge fellow whom he had hired to puff the Harleian
Library.
About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in London he was
fortunate enough to obtain regular employment from Edward Cave (q.v.) on
the _Gentleman's Magazine_. That periodical, just entering on the ninth
year of its long existence, was the only one in the kingdom which then
had what would now be called a large circulation. Johnson was engaged to
write the speeches in the "Reports of the Debates of the Senate of
Lilliput" (see REPORTING), under which thin disguise the proceedings of
parliament were published. He was generally furnished with notes, meagre
indeed and inaccurate, of what had been said; but sometimes he had to
find arguments and eloquence both for the ministry and for the
opposition. He was himself a Tory, not from rational conviction--for his
serious opinion was that one form of government was just as good or as
bad as another--but from mere passion, such as inflamed the Capulets
against the Montagues, or the Blues of the Roman circus against the
Greens. In his infancy he had heard so much talk about the villainies of
the Whigs, and the dangers of the Church, that he had become a furious
partisan when he could scarcely speak. Before he was three he had
insisted on being taken to hear Sacheverel preach at Lichfield
Cathedral, and had listened to the sermon with as much respect and
probably with as much intelligence, as any Staffordshire squire in the
congregation. The work which had been begun in the nursery had been
completed by the university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there, was the
most Jacobitical place in England; and Pembroke was one of the most
Jacobitical colleges in Oxford. The prejudices which he brought up to
London were scarcely less absurd than those of his own Tom Tempest.
Charles II. and James II. were two of the best kings that ever reigned.
Laud was a prodigy of parts and learning over whose tomb Art and Genius
still continued to weep. Hampden deserved no more honourable name than
that of the "zealot of rebellion." Even the ship-money Johnson would not
pronounce to have been an unconstitutional impost. Under a government
which allowed to the people an unprecedented liberty of speech and
action, he fancied that he was a slave. He hated Dissenters and
stock-jobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parliaments, and
Continental connexions. He long had an aversion to the Scots, an
aversion of which he could not remember the commencement, but which, he
owned, had probably originated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the
nation during the Great Rebellion. It is easy to guess in what manner
debates on great party questions were likely to be reported by a man
whose judgment was so much disordered by party spirit. A show of
fairness was indeed necessary to the prosperity of the _Magazine_. But
Johnson long afterwards owned that, though he had saved appearances, he
had taken care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it; and,
in fact, every passage which has lived, every passage which bears the
marks of his higher faculties, is put into the mouth of some member of
the opposition.
A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure labours, he
published a work which at once placed him high among the writers of his
age. It is probable that what he had suffered during his first year in
London had often reminded him of some parts of the satire in which
Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy man of
letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tottering garrets which
overhung the streets of Rome. Pope's admirable imitations of Horace's
_Satires and Epistles_ had recently appeared, were in every hand, and
were by many readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope had
done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal.
Johnson's _London_ appeared without his name in May 1738. He received
only ten guineas for this stately and vigorous poem; but the sale was
rapid and the success complete. A second edition was required within a
week. Those small critics who are always desirous to lower established
reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous satirist was
superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of literature. It
ought to be remembered, to the honour of Pope, that he joined heartily
in the applause with which the appearance of a rival genius was
welcomed. He made inquiries about the author of _London_. Such a man, he
said, could not long be concealed. The name was soon discovered; and
Pope, with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an academical
degree and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor young poet.
The attempt failed, and Johnson remained a bookseller's hack.
It does not appear that these two men, the most eminent writer of the
generation which was going out, and the most eminent writer of the
generation which was coming in, ever saw each other. They lived in very
different circles, one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by
starving pamphleteers and index-makers. Among Johnson's associates at
this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts were pledged,
scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with his arms through two holes
in his blanket, who composed very respectable sacred poetry when he was
sober, and who was at last run over by a hackney coach when he was
drunk; Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of
attending to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the
board where he sat cross-legged; and the penitent impostor, George
Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a humble lodging, on the
folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers, indulged himself at night
with literary and theological conversation at an alehouse in the City.
But the most remarkable of the persons with whom at this time Johnson
consorted was Richard Savage, an earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice,
who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted among blue ribands
in St James's Square, and had lain with fifty pounds weight of irons on
his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This man had, after many
vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty.
His pen had failed him. His patrons had been taken away by death, or
estranged by the riotous profusion with which he squandered their
bounty, and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their
advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison and champagne
whenever he had been so fortunate as to borrow a guinea. If his questing
had been unsuccessful, he appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps
of broken meat, and lay down to rest under the piazza of Covent Garden
in warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as he could get to the
furnace of a glass house. Yet in his misery he was still an agreeable
companion. He had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and
brilliant world from which he was now an outcast. He had observed the
great men of both parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the
leaders of opposition without the mask of patriotism, and had heard the
prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not over-decent.
During some months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson;
and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson remained in
London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the west of England, lived
there as he had lived everywhere, and in 1743 died, penniless and
heartbroken, in Bristol Gaol.
Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was strongly excited
about his extraordinary character and his not less extraordinary
adventures, a life of him appeared widely different from the catchpenny
lives of eminent men which were then a staple article of manufacture in
Grub Street. The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety; and the
writer was evidently too partial to the Latin element of our language.
But the little work, with all its faults, was a masterpiece. No finer
specimen of literary biography existed in any language, living or dead;
and a discerning critic might have confidently predicted that the author
was destined to be the founder of a new school of English eloquence.
The _Life of Savage_ was anonymous; but it was well known in literary
circles that Johnson was the writer. During the three years which
followed, he produced no important work; but he was not, and indeed
could not be, idle. The fame of his abilities and learning continued to
grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the praise
of Warburton was then no light thing. Such was Johnson's reputation
that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the
arduous work of preparing a _Dictionary of the English Language_, in two
folio volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen
hundred guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men of
letters who assisted him in the humbler parts of his task.
The prospectus of the _Dictionary_ he addressed to the earl of
Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been celebrated for the politeness
of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, and the delicacy of his
taste. He was acknowledged to be the finest speaker in the House of
Lords. He had recently governed Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture,
with eminent firmness, wisdom and humanity; and he had since become
secretary of state. He received Johnson's homage with the most winning
affability, and requited it with a few guineas, bestowed doubtless in a
very graceful manner, but was by no means desirous to see all his
carpets blackened with the London mud, and his soups and wines thrown to
right and left over the gowns of fine ladies and the waistcoats of fine
gentlemen, by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts and
uttered strange growls, who dressed like a scarecrow and ate like a
cormorant. During some time Johnson continued to call on his patron,
but, after being repeatedly told by the porter that his lordship was not
at home, took the hint, and ceased to present himself at the
inhospitable door.
Johnson had flattered himself that he should have completed his
_Dictionary_ by the end of 1750; but it was not till 1755 that he at
length gave his huge volumes to the world. During the seven years which
he passed in the drudgery of penning definitions and marking quotations
for transcription, he sought for relaxation in literary labour of a more
agreeable kind. In January 1749 he published _The Vanity of Human
Wishes_, an excellent imitation of the tenth satire of Juvenal, for
which he received fifteen guineas.
A few days after the publication of this poem, his tragedy of _Irene_,
begun many years before, was brought on the stage by his old pupil,
David Garrick, now manager of Drury Lane Theatre. The relation between
him and his old preceptor was of a very singular kind. They repelled
each other strongly, and yet attracted each other strongly. Nature had
made them of very different clay; and circumstances had fully brought
out the natural peculiarities of both. Sudden prosperity had turned
Garrick's head. Continued adversity had soured Johnson's temper. Johnson
saw with more envy than became so great a man the villa, the plate, the
china, the Brussels carpet, which the little mimic had got by repeating,
with grimaces and gesticulations, what wiser men had written; and the
exquisitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thought that,
while all the rest of the world was applauding him, he could obtain from
one morose cynic, whose opinion it was impossible to despise, scarcely
any compliment not acidulated with scorn. Yet the two Lichfield men had
so many early recollections in common, and sympathized with each other
on so many points on which they sympathized with nobody else in the vast
population of the capital, that, though the master was often provoked by
the monkey-like impertinence of the pupil, and the pupil by the bearish
rudeness of the master, they remained friends till they were parted by
death. Garrick now brought _Irene_ out, with alterations sufficient to
displease the author, yet not sufficient to make the piece pleasing to
the audience. After nine representations the play was withdrawn. The
poet however cleared by his benefit nights, and by the sale of the
copyright of his tragedy, about three hundred pounds, then a great sum
in his estimation.
About a year after the representation of _Irene_, he began to publish a
series of short essays on morals, manners and literature. This species
of composition had been brought into fashion by the success of the
_Tatler_, and by the still more brilliant success of the _Spectator_. A
crowd of small writers had vainly attempted to rival Addison. The _Lay
Monastery_, the _Censor_, the _Freethinker_, the _Plain Dealer_, the
_Champion_, and other works of the same kind had had their short day. At
length Johnson undertook the adventure in which so many aspirants had
failed. In the thirty-sixth year after the appearance of the last number
of the _Spectator_ appeared the first number of the _Rambler_. From
March 1750 to March 1752 this paper continued to come out every Tuesday
and Saturday.
From the first the _Rambler_ was enthusiastically admired by a few
eminent men. Richardson, when only five numbers had appeared, pronounced
it equal if not superior to the _Spectator_. Young and Hartley expressed
their approbation not less warmly. In consequence probably of the good
offices of Bubb Dodington, who was then the confidential adviser of
Prince Frederick, two of his royal highness's gentlemen carried a
gracious message to the printing office, and ordered seven copies for
Leicester House. But Johnson had had enough of the patronage of the
great to last him all his life, and was not disposed to haunt any other
door as he had haunted the door of Chesterfield.
By the public the _Rambler_ was at first very coldly received. Though
the price of a number was only twopence, the sale did not amount to five
hundred. The profits were therefore very small. But as soon as the
flying leaves were collected and reprinted they became popular. The
author lived to see thirteen thousand copies spread over England alone.
Separate editions were published for the Scotch and Irish markets. A
large party pronounced the style perfect, so absolutely perfect that in
some essays it would be impossible for the writer himself to alter a
single word for the better. Another party, not less numerous, vehemently
accused him of having corrupted the purity of the English tongue. The
best critics admitted that his diction was too monotonous, too obviously
artificial, and now and then turgid even to absurdity. But they did
justice to the acuteness of his observations on morals and manners, to
the constant precision and frequent brilliancy of his language, to the
weighty and magnificent eloquence of many serious passages, and to the
solemn yet pleasing humour of some of the lighter papers.
The last _Rambler_ was written in a sad and gloomy hour. Mrs Johnson had
been given over by the physicians. Three days later she died. She left
her husband almost broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised to see
a man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, and denying
himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of supplying a silly,
affected old woman with superfluities, which she accepted with but
little gratitude. But all his affection had been concentrated on her. He
had neither brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. Her opinion of
his writings was more important to him than the voice of the pit of
Drury Lane Theatre, or the judgment of the _Monthly Review_. The chief
support which had sustained him through the most arduous labour of his
life was the hope that she would enjoy the fame and the profit which he
anticipated from his _Dictionary_. She was gone; and in that vast
labyrinth of streets, peopled by eight hundred thousand human beings, he
was alone. Yet it was necessary for him to set himself, as he expressed
it, doggedly to work. After three more laborious years, the _Dictionary_
was at length complete.
It had been generally supposed that this great work would be dedicated
to the eloquent and accomplished nobleman to whom the prospectus had
been addressed. Lord Chesterfield well knew the value of such a
compliment; and therefore, when the day of publication drew near, he
exerted himself to soothe, by a show of zealous and at the same time of
delicate and judicious kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly
wounded. Since the _Rambler_ had ceased to appear, the town had been
entertained by a journal called the _World_, to which many men of high
rank and fashion contributed. In two successive numbers of the _World_,
the _Dictionary_ was, to use the modern phrase, puffed with wonderful
skill. The writings of Johnson were warmly praised. It was proposed that
he should be invested with the authority of a dictator, nay, of a pope,
over our language, and that his decisions about the meaning and the
spelling of words should be received as final. His two folios, it was
said, would of course be bought by everybody who could afford to buy
them. It was soon known that these papers were written by Chesterfield.
But the just resentment of Johnson was not to be so appeased. In a
letter written with singular energy and dignity of thought and language,
he repelled the tardy advances of his patron. The _Dictionary_ came
forth without a dedication. In the Preface the author truly declared
that he owed nothing to the great, and described the difficulties with
which he had been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically that the
ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, Horne Tooke,
never could read that passage without tears.
Johnson's _Dictionary_ was hailed with an enthusiasm such as no similar
work has ever excited. It was indeed the first dictionary which could be
read with pleasure. The definitions show so much acuteness of thought
and command of language, and the passages quoted from poets, divines and
philosophers are so skilfully selected, that a leisure hour may always
be very agreeably spent in turning over the pages. The faults of the
book resolve themselves, for the most part, into one great fault.
Johnson was a wretched etymologist. He knew little or nothing of any
Teutonic language except English, which indeed, as he wrote it, was
scarcely a Teutonic language; and thus he was absolutely at the mercy of
Junius and Skinner.
The _Dictionary_, though it raised Johnson's fame, added nothing to his
pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred guineas which the booksellers had
agreed to pay him had been advanced and spent before the last sheets
issued from the press. It is painful to relate that twice in the course
of the year which followed the publication of this great work he was
arrested and carried to sponging-houses, and that he was twice indebted
for his liberty to his excellent friend Richardson. It was still
necessary for the man who had been formerly saluted by the highest
authority as dictator of the English language to supply his wants by
constant toil. He abridged his _Dictionary_. He proposed to bring out an
edition of Shakespeare by subscription, and many subscribers sent in
their names and laid down their money; but he soon found the task so
little to his taste that he turned to more attractive employments. He
contributed many papers to a new monthly journal, which was called the
_Literary Magazine_. Few of these papers have much interest; but among
them was one of the best things that he ever wrote, a masterpiece both
of reasoning and of satirical pleasantry, the review of Jenyns' _Inquiry
into the Nature and Origin of Evil_.
In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a series of essays,
entitled the _Idler_. During two years these essays continued to appear
weekly. They were eagerly read, widely circulated, and indeed impudently
pirated, while they were still in the original form, and had a large
sale when collected into volumes. The _Idler_ may be described as a
second part of the _Rambler_, somewhat livelier and somewhat weaker than
the first part.
While Johnson was busied with his _Idlers_, his mother, who had
accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It was long since he
had seen her, but he had not failed to contribute largely out of his
small means to her comfort. In order to defray the charges of her
funeral, and to pay some debts which she had left, he wrote a little
book in a single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without
reading them over. A hundred pounds were paid him for the copyright, and
the purchasers had great cause to be pleased with their bargain, for the
book was _Rasselas_, and it had a great success.
The plan of _Rasselas_ might, however, have seemed to invite severe
criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakespeare for neglecting the
proprieties of time and place, and for ascribing to one age or nation
the manners and opinions of another. Yet Shakespeare has not sinned in
this way more grievously than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and
Pekuah, are evidently meant to be Abyssinians of the 18th century; for
the Europe which Imlac describes is the Europe of the 18th century, and
the inmates of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of that law of
gravitation which Newton discovered and which was not fully received
even at Cambridge till the 18th century. Johnson, not content with
turning filthy savages, ignorant of their letters, and gorged with raw
steaks cut from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent and
enlightened as himself or his friend Burke, and into ladies as highly
accomplished as Mrs Lennox or Mrs Sheridan, transferred the whole
domestic system of England to Egypt. Into a land of harems, a land of
polygamy, a land where women are married without ever being seen, he
introduced the flirtations and jealousies of our ball-rooms. In a land
where there is boundless liberty of divorce, wedlock is described as the
indissoluble compact. "A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought
together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home,
and dream of each other. Such," says Rasselas, "is the common process of
marriage." A writer who was guilty of such improprieties had little
right to blame the poet who made Hector quote Aristotle, and represented
Julio Romano as flourishing in the days of the Oracle of Delphi.
By such exertions as have been described Johnson supported himself till
the year 1762. In that year a great change in his circumstances took
place. He had from a child been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His
Jacobite prejudices had been exhibited with little disguise both in his
works and in his conversation. Even in his massy and elaborate
_Dictionary_ he had, with a strange want of taste and judgment, inserted
bitter and contumelious reflexions on the Whig party. The excise, which
was a favourite resource of Whig financiers, he had designated as a
hateful tax. He had railed against the commissioners of excise in
language so coarse that they had seriously thought of prosecuting him.
He had with difficulty been prevented from holding up the lord privy
seal by name as an example of the meaning of the word "renegade." A
pension he had defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray his
country; a pensioner as a slave of state hired by a stipend to obey a
master. It seemed unlikely that the author of these definitions would
himself be pensioned. But that was a time of wonders. George III. had
ascended the throne, and had, in the course of a few months, disgusted
many of the old friends, and conciliated many of the old enemies of his
house. The city was becoming mutinous; Oxford was becoming loyal.
Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring; Somersets and Wyndhams were
hastening to kiss hands. The head of the treasury was now Lord Bute, who
was a Tory, and could have no objection to Johnson's Toryism. Bute
wished to be thought a patron of men of letters; and Johnson was one of
the most eminent and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. A
pension of three hundred a year was graciously offered, and with very
little hesitation accepted.
This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way of life. For the
first time since his boyhood he no longer felt the daily goad urging him
to the daily toil. He was at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety and
drudgery, to indulge his constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till
two in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in the morning,
without fearing either the printer's devil or the sheriff's officer.
One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to perform. He had
received large subscriptions for his promised edition of Shakespeare; he
had lived on those subscriptions during some years; and he could not
without disgrace omit to perform his part of the contract. His friends
repeatedly exhorted him to make an effort, and he repeatedly resolved to
do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his resolutions,
month followed month, year followed year, and nothing was done. He
prayed fervently against his idleness; he determined, as often as he
received the sacrament, that he would no longer doze away and trifle
away his time; but the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and
sacrament. Happily for his honour, the charm which held him captive was
at length broken by no gentle or friendly hand. He had been weak enough
to pay serious attention to a story about a ghost which haunted a house
in Cock Lane, and had actually gone himself, with some of his friends,
at one in the morning, to St John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of
receiving a communication from the perturbed spirit. But the spirit,
though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately silent; and it
soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven had been amusing herself by
making fools of so many philosophers. Churchill, who, confident in his
powers, drunk with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was
looking for some man of established fame and Tory politics to insult,
celebrated the Cock Lane ghost in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson
Pomposo, asked where the book was which had been so long promised and so
liberally paid for, and directly accused the great moralist of cheating.
This terrible word proved effectual, and in October 1765 appeared, after
a delay of nine years, the new edition of Shakespeare.
This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, but added
nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning. The Preface, though
it contains some good passages, is not in his best manner. The most
valuable notes are those in which he had an opportunity of showing how
attentively he had during many years observed human life and human
nature. The best specimen is the note on the character of Polonius.
Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm Meister's admirable
examination of _Hamlet_. But here praise must end. It would be difficult
to name a more slovenly, a more worthless edition of any great
classic.[1] Johnson had, in his prospectus, told the world that he was
peculiarly fitted for the task which he had undertaken, because he had,
as a lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of
the English language than any of his predecessors. But, unfortunately,
he had altogether neglected that very part of our literature with which
it is especially desirable that an editor of Shakespeare should be
conversant. In the two folio volumes of the _English Dictionary_ there
is not a single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan age
except Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Even from Ben the quotations are few.
Johnson might easily in a few months have made himself well acquainted
with every old play that was extant. But it never seems to have occurred
to him that this was a necessary preparation for the work which he had
undertaken. He would doubtless have admitted that it would be the height
of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with the works of Aeschylus
and Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured to
publish an edition of Shakespeare, without having ever in his life, as
far as can be discovered, read a single scene of Massinger, Ford,
Dekker, Webster, Marlow, Beaumont or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy
and scurrilous. He had, however, acquitted himself of a debt which had
long lain heavy on his conscience and he sank back into the repose from
which the sting of satire had roused him. He long continued to live upon
the fame which he had already won. He was honoured by the university of
Oxford with a doctor's degree, by the Royal Academy with a
professorship, and by the king with an interview, in which his majesty
most graciously expressed a hope that so excellent a writer would not
cease to write. In the interval between 1765 and 1775 Johnson published
only two or three political tracts.
But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. The influence
exercised by his conversation, directly upon those with whom he lived,
and indirectly on the whole literary world, was altogether without a
parallel. His colloquial talents were indeed of the highest order. He
had strong sense, quick discernment, wit, humour, immense knowledge of
literature and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As
respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sentence which
dropped from his lips was as correct in structure as the most nicely
balanced period of the _Rambler_. But in his talk there were no pompous
triads, and little more than a fair proportion of words in -_osity_ and
-_ation_. All was simplicity, ease and vigour. He uttered his short,
weighty, and pointed sentences with a power of voice, and a justness and
energy of emphasis, of which the effect was rather increased than
diminished by the rollings of his huge form, and by the asthmatic
gaspings and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally
ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling to sit down to his
desk prevent him from giving instruction or entertainment orally. To
discuss questions of taste, of learning, of casuistry, in language so
exact and so forcible that it might have been printed without the
alteration of a word, was to him no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved,
as he said, to fold his legs and have his talk out. He was ready to
bestow the overflowings of his full mind on anybody who would start a
subject: on a fellow-passenger in a stage coach, or on the person who
sat at the same table with him in an eating-house. But his conversation
was nowhere so brilliant and striking as when he was surrounded by a few
friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled them, as he once
expressed it, to send him back every ball that he threw. Some of these,
in 1764, formed themselves into a club, which gradually became a
formidable power in the commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced
by this conclave on new books were speedily known over all London, and
were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, or to condemn the
sheets to the service of the trunkmaker and the pastrycook. Goldsmith
was the representative of poetry and light literature, Reynolds of the
arts, Burke of political eloquence and political philosophy. There, too,
were Gibbon the greatest historian and Sir William Jones the greatest
linguist of the age. Garrick brought to the meetings his inexhaustible
pleasantry, his incomparable mimicry, and his consummate knowledge of
stage effect. Among the most constant attendants were two high-born and
high-bred gentlemen, closely bound together by friendship, but of widely
different characters and habits--Bennet Langton, distinguished by his
skill in Greek literature, by the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the
sanctity of his life, and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his
knowledge of the gay world, his fastidious taste and his sarcastic wit.
Among the members of this celebrated body was one to whom it has owed
the greater part of its celebrity, yet who was regarded with little
respect by his brethren, and had not without difficulty obtained a seat
among them. This was James Boswell (q.v.), a young Scots lawyer, heir to
an honourable name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and a bore,
weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious to all who were
acquainted with him.
To a man of Johnson's strong understanding and irritable temper, the
silly egotism and adulation of Boswell must have been as teasing as the
constant buzz of a fly. Johnson hated to be questioned; and Boswell was
eternally catechizing him on all kinds of subjects, and sometimes
propounded such questions as, "What would you do, sir, if you were
locked up in a tower with a baby?" Johnson was a water-drinker and
Boswell was a wine-bibber, and indeed little better than an habitual
sot. It was impossible that there should be perfect harmony between two
such companions. Indeed, the great man was sometimes provoked into fits
of passion, in which he said things which the small man, during a few
hours, seriously resented. Every quarrel, however, was soon made up.
During twenty years the disciple continued to worship the master; the
master continued to scold the disciple, to sneer at him, and to love
him. The two friends ordinarily resided at a great distance from each
other. Boswell practised in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, and could
pay only occasional visits to London. During those visits his chief
business was to watch Johnson, to discover all Johnson's habits, to turn
the conversation to subjects about which Johnson was likely to say
something remarkable, and to fill quarto notebooks with minutes of what
Johnson had said. In this way were gathered the materials out of which
was afterwards constructed the most interesting biographical work in the
world.
Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a connexion less
important indeed to his fame, but much more important to his happiness,
than his connexion with Boswell. Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent
brewers in the kingdom, a man of sound and cultivated understanding,
rigid principles, and liberal spirit, was married to one of those
clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young women who are
perpetually doing or saying what is not exactly right, but who, do or
say what they may, are always agreeable. In 1765 the Thrales became
acquainted with Johnson, and the acquaintance ripened fast into
friendship. They were astonished and delighted by the brilliancy of his
conversation. They were flattered by finding that a man so widely
celebrated preferred their house to any other in London. Johnson soon
had an apartment at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more pleasant
apartment at the villa of his friends on Streatham Common. A large part
of every year he passed in those abodes, which must have seemed
magnificent and luxurious indeed, when compared with the dens in which
he had generally been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived from
what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called "the endearing
elegance of female friendship." Mrs Thrale rallied him, soothed him,
coaxed him, and if she sometimes provoked him by her flippancy, made
ample amends by listening to his reproofs with angelic sweetness of
temper. When he was diseased in body and in mind, she was the most
tender of nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no contrivance
that womanly ingenuity, set to work by womanly compassion, could devise,
was wanting to his sick room. It would seem that a full half of
Johnson's life during about sixteen years was passed under the roof of
the Thrales. He accompanied the family sometimes to Bath, and sometimes
to Brighton, once to Wales and once to Paris. But he had at the same
time a house in one of the narrow and gloomy courts on the north of
Fleet Street. In the garrets was his library, a large and miscellaneous
collection of books, falling to pieces and begrimed with dust. On a
lower floor he sometimes, but very rarely, regaled a friend with a plain
dinner--a veal pie, or a leg of lamb and spinach, and a rice pudding.
Nor was the dwelling uninhabited during his long absences. It was the
home of the most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that ever was
brought together. At the head of the establishment Johnson had placed an
old lady named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her blindness
and her poverty. But, in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave an
asylum to another lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs Desmoulins, whose
family he had known many years before in Staffordshire. Room was found
for the daughter of Mrs Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel,
who was generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her generous
host called Polly. An old quack doctor named Levett, who had a wide
practice, but among the very poorest class, poured out Johnson's tea in
the morning and completed this strange menagerie. All these poor
creatures were at constant war with each other, and with Johnson's negro
servant Frank. Sometimes, indeed, they transferred their hostilities
from the servant to the master, complained that a better table was not
kept for them, and railed or maundered till their benefactor was glad to
make his escape to Streatham or to the Mitre Tavern. And yet he, who was
generally the haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was but too
prompt to resent anything which looked like a slight on the part of a
purse-proud bookseller, or of a noble and powerful patron, bore
patiently from mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to
the workhouse, insults more provoking than those for which he had
knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year after
year Mrs Williams and Mrs Desmoulins, Polly and Levett, continued to
torment him and to live upon him.
The course of life which has been described was interrupted in Johnson's
sixty-fourth year by an important event. He had early read an account of
the Hebrides, and had been much interested by learning that there was so
near him a land peopled by a race which was still as rude and simple as
in the Middle Ages. A wish to become intimately acquainted with a state
of society so utterly unlike all that he had ever seen frequently
crossed his mind. But it is not probable that his curiosity would have
overcome his habitual sluggishness, and his love of the smoke, the mud,
and the cries of London, had not Boswell importuned him to attempt the
adventure, and offered to be his squire. At length, in August 1773,
Johnson crossed the Highland line, and plunged courageously into what
was then considered, by most Englishmen, as a dreary and perilous
wilderness. After wandering about two months through the Celtic region,
sometimes in rude boats which did not protect him from the rain, and
sometimes on small shaggy ponies which could hardly bear his weight, he
returned to his old haunts with a mind full of new images and new
theories. During the following year he employed himself in recording his
adventures. About the beginning of 1775 his _Journey to the Hebrides_
was published, and was, during some weeks, the chief subject of
conversation in all circles in which any attention was paid to
literature. His prejudice against the Scots had at length become little
more than matter of jest; and whatever remained of the old feeling had
been effectually removed by the kind and respectful hospitality with
which he had been received in every part of Scotland. It was, of course,
not to be expected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the Presbyterian
polity and ritual, or that an eye accustomed to the hedgerows and parks
of England should not be struck by the bareness of Berwickshire and East
Lothian. But even in censure Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most
enlightened Scotsmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, were well
pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotsmen were moved to anger by a
little unpalatable truth which was mingled with much eulogy, and
assailed him whom they chose to consider as the enemy of their country
with libels much more dishonourable to their country than anything that
he had ever said or written. They published paragraphs in the
newspapers, articles in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets, five-shilling
books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being blear-eyed, another for
being a pensioner; a third informed the world that one of the doctor's
uncles had been convicted of felony in Scotland, and had found that
there was in that country one tree capable of supporting the weight of
an Englishman. Macpherson, whose _Fingal_ had been treated in the
_Journey_ as an impudent forgery, threatened to take vengeance with a
cane. The only effect of this threat was that Johnson reiterated the
charge of forgery in the most contemptuous terms, and walked about,
during some time, with a cudgel.
Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever. He had early
resolved never to be drawn into controversy; and he adhered to his
resolution with a steadfastness which is the more extraordinary because
he was, both intellectually and morally, of the stuff of which
controversialists are made. In conversation he was a singularly eager,
acute and pertinacious disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he
had recourse to sophistry; and when heated by altercation, he made
unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But when he took his pen in his
hand, his whole character seemed to be changed. A hundred bad writers
misrepresented him and reviled him; but not one of the hundred could
boast of having been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even of a
retort. One Scotsman, bent on vindicating the fame of Scots learning,
defied him to the combat in a detestable Latin hexameter:--
"Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum."
But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He always maintained that
fame was a shuttlecock which could be kept up only by being beaten back
as well as beaten forward, and which would soon fall if there were only
one battledore. No saying was oftener in his mouth than that fine
apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was ever written down but by himself.
Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the _Journey to the
Hebrides_, Johnson did what none of his envious assailants could have
done, and to a certain extent succeeded in writing himself down. The
disputes between England and her American colonies had reached a point
at which no amicable adjustment was possible. War was evidently
impending; and the ministers seem to have thought that the eloquence of
Johnson might with advantage be employed to inflame the nation against
the opposition at home, and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He
had already written two or three tracts in defence of the foreign and
domestic policy of the government; and those tracts, though hardly
worthy of him, were much superior to the crowd of pamphlets which lay on
the counters of Almon and Stockdale. But his _Taxation no Tyranny_ was a
pitiable failure. Even Boswell was forced to own that in this
unfortunate piece he could detect no trace of his master's powers. The
general opinion was that the strong faculties which had produced the
_Dictionary_ and the _Rambler_ were beginning to feel the effect of time
and of disease, and that the old man would best consult his credit by
writing no more. But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not
because his mind was less vigorous than when he wrote _Rasselas_ in the
evenings of a week, but because he had foolishly chosen, or suffered
others to choose for him, a subject such as he would at no time have
been competent to treat. He was in no sense a statesman. He never
willingly read or thought or talked about affairs of state. He loved
biography, literary history, the history of manners; but political
history was positively distasteful to him. The question at issue between
the colonies and the mother country was a question about which he had
really nothing to say. Happily, Johnson soon had an opportunity of
proving most signally that his failure was not to be ascribed to
intellectual decay.
On Easter Eve 1777 some persons, deputed by a meeting which consisted of
forty of the first booksellers in London, called upon him. Though he had
some scruples about doing business at that season, he received his
visitors with much civility. They came to inform him that a new edition
of the English poets, from Cowley downwards, was in contemplation, and
to ask him to furnish short biographical prefaces. He readily undertook
the task for which he was pre-eminently qualified. His knowledge of the
literary history of England since the Restoration was unrivalled. That
knowledge he had derived partly from books, and partly from sources
which had long been closed: from old Grub Street traditions; from the
talk of forgotten poetasters and pamphleteers, who had long been lying
in parish vaults; from the recollections of such men as Gilbert
Walmesley, who had conversed with the wits of Button, Cibber, who had
mutilated the plays of two generations of dramatists, Orrery, who had
been admitted to the society of Swift and Savage, who had rendered
services of no very honourable kind to Pope. The biographer therefore
sat down to his task with a mind full of matter. He had at first
intended to give only a paragraph to every minor poet, and only four or
five pages to the greatest name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism
overflowed the narrow channel. The work, which was originally meant to
consist only of a few sheets, swelled into ten volumes--small volumes,
it is true, and not closely printed. The first four appeared in 1779,
the remaining six in 1781.
The _Lives of the Poets_ are, on the whole, the best of Johnson's works.
The narratives are as entertaining as any novel. The remarks on life and
on human nature are eminently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are
often excellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, well
deserve to be studied. _Savage's Life_ Johnson reprinted nearly as it
had appeared in 1744. Whoever, after reading that life, will turn to the
other lives will be struck by the difference of style. Since Johnson had
been at ease in his circumstances he had written little and had talked
much. When therefore he, after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the
mannerism which he had contracted while he was in the constant habit of
elaborate composition was less perceptible than formerly, and his
diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had formerly wanted.
The improvement may be discerned by a skilful critic in the _Journey to
the Hebrides_, and in the _Lives of the Poets_ is so obvious that it
cannot escape the notice of the most careless reader. Among the _Lives_
the best are perhaps those of Cowley, Dryden and Pope. The very worst
is, beyond all doubt, that of Gray; the most controverted that of
Milton.
This great work at once became popular. There was, indeed, much just and
much unjust censure; but even those who were loudest in blame were
attracted by the book in spite of themselves. Malone computed the gains
of the publishers at five or six thousand pounds. But the writer was
very poorly remunerated. Intending at first to write very short
prefaces, he had stipulated for only two hundred guineas. The
booksellers, when they saw how far his performance had surpassed his
promise, added only another hundred. Indeed Johnson, though he did not
despise or affect to despise money, and though his strong sense and long
experience ought to have qualified him to protect his own interests,
seems to have been singularly unskilful and unlucky in his literary
bargains. He was generally reputed the first English writer of his time.
Yet several writers of his time sold their copyrights for sums such as
he never ventured to ask. To give a single instance, Robertson received
£4500 for the _History of Charles V._
Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The infirmities of age were
coming fast upon him. That inevitable event of which he never thought
without horror was brought near to him; and his whole life was darkened
by the shadow of death. The strange dependants to whom he had given
shelter, and to whom, in spite of their faults, he was strongly attached
by habit, dropped off one by one; and, in the silence of his home, he
regretted even the noise of their scolding matches. The kind and
generous Thrale was no more; and it was soon plain that the old
Streatham intimacy could not be maintained upon the same footing. Mrs
Thrale herself confessed that without her husband's assistance she did
not feel able to entertain Johnson as a constant inmate of her house.
Free from the yoke of the brewer, she fell in love with a music master,
high in his profession, from Brescia, named Gabriel Piozzi, in whom
nobody but herself could discover anything to admire. The secret of this
attachment was soon discovered by Fanny Burney, but Johnson at most only
suspected it.
In September 1782 the place at Streatham was from motives of economy let
to Lord Shelburne, and Mrs Thrale took a house at Brighton, whither
Johnson accompanied her; they remained for six weeks on the old familiar
footing. In March 1783 Boswell was glad to discover Johnson well looked
after and staying with Mrs Thrale in Argyll Street, but in a bad state
of health. Impatience of Johnson's criticisms and infirmities had been
steadily growing with Mrs Thrale since 1774. She now went to Bath with
her daughters, partly to escape his supervision. Johnson was very ill in
his lodgings during the summer, but he still corresponded affectionately
with his "mistress" and received many favours from her. He retained the
full use of his senses during the paralytic attack, and in July he was
sufficiently recovered to renew his old club life and to meditate
further journeys. In June 1784 he went with Boswell to Oxford for the
last time. In September he was in Lichfield. On his return his health
was rather worse; but he would submit to no dietary régime. His asthma
tormented him day and night, and dropsical symptoms made their
appearance. His wrath was excited in no measured terms against the
re-marriage of his old friend Mrs Thrale, the news of which he heard
this summer. The whole dispute seems, to-day, entirely uncalled-for, but
the marriage aroused some of Johnson's strongest prejudices. He wrote
inconsiderately on the subject, but we must remember that he was at the
time afflicted in body and mentally haunted by dread of impending
change. Throughout all his troubles he had clung vehemently to life. The
feeling described in that fine but gloomy paper which closes the series
of his _Idlers_ seemed to grow stronger in him as his last hour drew
near. He fancied that he should be able to draw his breath more easily
in a southern climate, and would probably have set out for Rome and
Naples but for his fear of the expense of the journey. That expense,
indeed, he had the means of defraying; for he had laid up about two
thousand pounds, the fruit of labours which had made the fortune of
several publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon this hoard,
and he seems to have wished even to keep its existence a secret. Some of
his friends hoped that the Government might be induced to increase his
pension to six hundred pounds a year, but this hope was disappointed,
and he resolved to stand one English winter more.
That winter was his last. His legs grew weaker; his breath grew shorter;
the fatal water gathered fast, in spite of incisions which he,
courageous against pain but timid against death, urged his surgeons to
make deeper and deeper. Though the tender care which had mitigated his
sufferings during months of sickness at Streatham was withdrawn, and
though Boswell was absent, he was not left desolate. The ablest
physicians and surgeons attended him, and refused to accept fees from
him. Burke parted from him with deep emotion. Windham sat much in the
sick-room. Frances Burney, whom the old man had cherished with fatherly
kindness, stood weeping at the door; while Langton, whose piety
eminently qualified him to be an adviser and comforter at such a time,
received the last pressure of his friend's hand within. When at length
the moment, dreaded through so many years, came close, the dark cloud
passed away from Johnson's mind. Windham's servant, who sat up with him
during his last night, declared that "no man could appear more
collected, more devout or less terrified at the thoughts of the
approaching minute." At hour intervals, often of much pain, he was moved
in bed and addressed himself vehemently to prayer. In the morning he was
still able to give his blessing, but in the afternoon he became drowsy,
and at a quarter past seven in the evening on the 13th of December 1784,
in his seventy-sixth year, he passed away. He was laid, a week later, in
Westminster Abbey, among the eminent men of whom he had been the
historian--Cowley and Denham, Dryden and Congreve, Gay, Prior and
Addison. (M.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The splendid example of his style which Macaulay
contributed in the article on Johnson to the 8th edition of this
encyclopaedia has become classic, and has therefore been retained
above with a few trifling modifications in those places in which his
invincible love of the picturesque has drawn him demonstrably aside
from the dull line of veracity. Macaulay, it must be noted,
exaggerated persistently the poverty of Johnson's pedigree, the
squalor of his early married life, the grotesqueness of his entourage
in Fleet Street, the decline and fall from complete virtue of Mrs
Thrale, the novelty and success of the _Dictionary_, the complete
failure of the Shakespeare and the political tracts. Yet this
contribution is far more mellow than the article contributed on
Johnson twenty-five years before to the _Edinburgh Review_ in
correction of Croker. Matthew Arnold, who edited six selected _Lives_
of the poets, regarded it as one of Macaulay's happiest and ripest
efforts. It was written out of friendship for Adam Black, and "payment
was not so much as mentioned." The big reviews, especially the
quarterlies, have always been the natural home of Johnsonian study.
Sir Walter Scott, Croker, Hayward, Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle (whose
famous Fraser article was reprinted in 1853) and Whitwell Elwin have
done as much as anybody perhaps to sustain the zest for Johnsonian
studies. Macaulay's prediction that the interest in the man would
supersede that in his "Works" seemed and seems likely enough to
justify itself; but his theory that the man alone mattered and that a
portrait painted by the hand of an inspired idiot was a true measure
of the man has not worn better than the common run of literary
propositions. Johnson's prose is not extensively read. But the same is
true of nearly all the great prose masters of the 18th century. As in
the case of all great men, Johnson has suffered a good deal at the
hands of his imitators and admirers. His prose, though not nearly so
uniformly monotonous or polysyllabic as the parodists would have us
believe, was at one time greatly overpraised. From the "Life of
Savage" to the "Life of Pope" it developed a great deal, and in the
main improved. To the last he sacrificed expression rather too much to
style, and he was perhaps over conscious of the balanced epithet. But
he contributed both dignity and dialectical force to the prose
movement of his period.
The best edition of his works is still the Oxford edition of 1825 in 9
vols. At the present day, however, his periodical writings are
neglected, and all that can be said to excite interest are, first the
_Lives of the Poets_ (best edition by Birkbeck Hill and H. S. Scott, 3
vols., 1905), and then the _Letters_, the _Prayers_ and _Meditations_,
and the _Poems_, to which may doubtfully be added the once idolized
_Rasselas_. The _Poems_ and _Rasselas_ have been reprinted times
without number. The others have been re-edited with scrupulous care
for the Oxford University Press by the pious diligence of that most
enthusiastic of all Johnsonians, Dr Birkbeck Hill. But the tendency at
the present day is undoubtedly to prize Johnson's personality and
sayings more than any of his works. These are preserved to us in a
body of biographical writing, the efficiency of which is unequalled in
the whole range of literature. The chief constituents are Johnson's
own _Letters_ and _Account of his Life from his Birth to his Eleventh
Year_ (1805), a fragment saved from papers burned in 1784 and not seen
by Boswell; the life by his old but not very sympathetic friend and
club-fellow, Sir John Hawkins (1787); Mrs Thrale-Piozzi's _Anecdotes_
(1785) and _Letters_; the _Diary_ and _Letters_ of Fanny Burney
(D'Arblay) (1841); the shorter Lives of Arthur Murphy, T. Tyers, &c.;
far above all, of course, the unique Life by James Boswell, first
published in 1791, and subsequently encrusted with vast masses of
Johnsoniana in the successive editions of Malone, Croker, Napier,
Fitzgerald, Mowbray Morris (Globe), Birrell, Ingpen (copiously
illustrated) and Dr Birkbeck Hill (the most exhaustive).
The sayings and Johnsoniana have been reprinted in very many and
various forms. Valuable work has been done in Johnsonian genealogy and
topography by Aleyn Lyell Reade in his _Johnsonian Gleanings_, &c.,
and in the _Memorials of Old Staffordshire_ (ed. W. Beresford). The
most excellent short Lives are those by F. Grant (Eng. Writers) and
Sir Leslie Stephen (Eng. Men of Letters). Professor W. Raleigh's essay
(Stephen Lecture), Lord Rosebery's estimate (1909), and Sir Leslie
Stephen's article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, with
bibliography and list of portraits, should be consulted. Johnson's
"Club" ("The Club") still exists, and has contained ever since his
time a large proportion of the public celebrities of its day. A
"Johnson Club," which has included many Johnson scholars and has
published papers, was founded in 1885. Lichfield has taken an active
part in the commemoration of Johnson since 1887, when Johnson's
birthplace was secured as a municipal museum, and Lichfield was the
chief scene of the Bicentenary Celebrations of September 1909 (fully
described in A. M. Broadley's _Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale_, 1909),
containing, together with new materials and portraits, an essay
dealing with Macaulay's treatment of the Johnson-Thrale episodes by T.
Seccombe). Statues both of Johnson and Boswell are in the market-place
at Lichfield. A statue was erected in St Paul's in 1825, and there are
commemorative tablets in Lichfield Cathedral, St Nicholas (Brighton),
Uttoxeter, St Clement Danes (London), Gwaynynog and elsewhere.
(T. Se.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This famous dictum of Macaulay, though endorsed by Lord Rosebery,
has been energetically rebutted by Professor W. Raleigh and others,
who recognize both sagacity and scholarship in Johnson's Preface and
Notes. Johnson's wide grasp of the discourse and knowledge of human
nature enable him in a hundred entangled passages to go straight to
the dramatist's meaning.--(T. Se.)
JOHNSON, SIR THOMAS (1664-1729), English merchant, was born in Liverpool
in November 1664. He succeeded his father in 1689 as bailiff and in 1695
as mayor. From 1701 to 1723 he represented Liverpool in parliament, and
he was knighted by Queen Anne in 1708. He effected the separation of
Liverpool from the parish of Walton-on-the-Hill; from the Crown he
obtained the grant to the corporation of the site of the old castle
where he planned the town market; while the construction of the first
floating dock (1708) and the building of St Peter's and St George's
churches were due in great measure to his efforts. He was interested in
the tobacco trade; in 1715 he conveyed 130 Jacobite prisoners to the
American plantations. In 1723, having lost in speculation the fortune
which he had inherited from his father, he went himself to Virginia as
collector of customs on the Rappahannock river. He died in Jamaica in
1729. A Liverpool street is named Sir Thomas Buildings after him.
JOHNSON, THOMAS, English 18th-century wood-carver and furniture
designer. Of excellent repute as a craftsman and an artist in wood, his
original conceptions and his adaptations of other men's ideas were
remarkable for their extreme flamboyance, and for the merciless manner
in which he overloaded them with thin and meretricious ornament. Perhaps
his most inept design is that for a table in which a duck or goose is
displacing water that falls upon a mandarin, seated, with his head on
one side, upon the rail below. No local school of Italian rococo ever
produced more extravagant absurdities. His clocks bore scythes and
hour-glasses and flashing sunbeams, together with whirls and
convolutions and floriated adornments without end. On the other hand, he
occasionally produced a mirror frame or a mantelpiece which was simple
and dignified. The art of artistic plagiarism has never been so well
understood or so dexterously practised as by the 18th-century designers
of English furniture, and Johnson appears to have so far exceeded his
contemporaries that he must be called a barefaced thief. The three
leading "motives" of the time--Chinese, Gothic and Louis Quatorze--were
mixed up in his work in the most amazing manner; and he was exceedingly
fond of introducing human figures, animals, birds and fishes in highly
incongruous places. He appears to have defended his enormities on the
ground that "all men vary in opinion, and a fault in the eye of one may
be a beauty in that of another; 'tis a duty incumbent on an author to
endeavour at pleasing every taste." Johnson, who was in business at the
"Golden Boy" in Grafton Street, Westminster, published a folio volume of
_Designs for Picture Frames, Candelabra, Ceilings, &c._ (1758); and _One
Hundred and Fifty New Designs_ (1761).
JOHNSON, SIR WILLIAM (1715-1774), British soldier and American pioneer,
was born in Smithtown, County Meath, Ireland, in 1715, the son of
Christopher Johnson, a country gentleman. As a boy he was educated for a
commercial career, but in 1738 he removed to America for the purpose of
managing a tract of land in the Mohawk Valley, New York, belonging to
his uncle, Admiral Sir Peter Warren (1703-1752). He established himself
on the south bank of the Mohawk river, about 25 m. W. of Schenectady.
Before 1743 he removed to the north side of the river. The new
settlement prospered from the start, and a valuable trade was built up
with the Indians, over whom Johnson exercised an immense influence. The
Mohawks adopted him and elected him a sachem. In 1744 he was appointed
by Governor George Clinton (d. 1761) superintendent of the affairs of
the Six Nations (Iroquois). In 1746 he was made commissary of the
province for Indian affairs, and was influential in enlisting and
equipping the Six Nations for participation in the warfare with French
Canada, two years later (1748) being placed in command of a line of
outposts on the New York frontier. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle put a
stop to offensive operations, which he had begun. In May 1750 by royal
appointment he became a member for life of the governor's council, and
in the same year he resigned the post of superintendent of Indian
affairs. In 1754 he was one of the New York delegates to the
inter-colonial convention at Albany, N.Y. In 1755 General Edward
Braddock, the commander of the British forces in America, commissioned
him major-general, in which capacity he directed the expedition against
Crown Point, and in September defeated the French and Indians under
Baron Ludwig A. Dieskau (1701-1767) at the battle of Lake George, where
he himself was wounded. For this success he received the thanks of
parliament, and was created a baronet (November 1755). From July 1756
until his death he was "sole superintendent of the Six Nations and other
Northern Indians." He took part in General James Abercrombie's
disastrous campaign against Ticonderoga (1758), and in 1759 he was
second in command in General John Prideaux's expedition against Fort
Niagara, succeeding to the chief command on that officer's death, and
capturing the fort. In 1760 he was with General Jeffrey Amherst
(1717-1797) at the capture of Montreal. As a reward for his services the
king granted him a tract of 100,000 acres of land north of the Mohawk
river. It was due to his influence that the Iroquois refused to join
Pontiac in his conspiracy, and he was instrumental in arranging the
treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768. After the war Sir William retired to his
estates, where, on the site of the present Johnstown, he built his
residence, Johnson Hall, and lived in all the style of an English baron.
He devoted himself to colonizing his extensive lands, and is said to
have been the first to introduce sheep and blood horses into the
province. He died at Johnstown, N.Y., on the 11th of July 1774. In 1739
Johnson had married Catherine Wisenberg, by whom he had three children.
After her death he had various mistresses, including a niece of the
Indian chief Hendrick, and Molly Brant, a sister of the famous chief
Joseph Brant.
His son, SIR JOHN JOHNSON (1742-1830), who was knighted in 1765 and
succeeded to the baronetcy on his father's death, took part in the
French and Indian War and in the border warfare during the War of
Independence, organizing a loyalist regiment known as the "Queen's Royal
Greens," which he led at the battle of Oriskany and in the raids (1778
and 1780) on Cherry Valley and in the Mohawk Valley. He was also one of
the officers of the force defeated by General John Sullivan in the
engagement at Newtown (Elmira), N.Y., on the 29th of August 1779. He was
made brigadier-general of provincial troops in 1782. His estates had
been confiscated, and after the war he lived in Canada, where he held
from 1791 until his death the office of superintendent-general of Indian
affairs for British North America. He received £45,000 from the British
government for his losses.
Sir William's nephew, GUY JOHNSON (1740-1788), succeeded his uncle as
superintendent of Indian affairs in 1774, and served in the French and
Indian War and, on the British side, in the War of Independence.
See W. L. Stone, _Life of Sir William Johnson_ (2 vols., 1865); W. E.
Griffis, _Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations_ (1891) in "Makers
of America" series; Augustus C. Buell, _Sir William Johnson_ (1903) in
"Historic Lives Series"; and J. Watts De Peyster, "The Life of Sir
John Johnson, Bart.," in _The Orderly Book of Sir John Johnson during
the Oriskany Campaign_, 1776-1777, annotated by William L. Stone
(1882).
JOHNSTON, ALBERT SIDNEY (1803-1862), American Confederate general in the
Civil War, was born at Washington, Mason county, Kentucky, on the 3rd of
February 1803. He graduated from West Point in 1826, and served for
eight years in the U.S. infantry as a company officer, adjutant, and
staff officer. In 1834 he resigned his commission, emigrated in 1836 to
Texas, then a republic, and joined its army as a private. His rise was
very rapid, and before long he was serving as commander-in-chief in
preference to General Felix Huston, with whom he fought a duel. From
1838 to 1840 he was Texan secretary for war, and in 1839 he led a
successful expedition against the Cherokee Indians. From 1840 to the
outbreak of the Mexican War he lived in retirement on his farm, but in
1846 he led a regiment of Texan volunteers in the field, and at
Monterey, as a staff officer, he had three horses shot under him. In
1849 he returned to the United States army as major and paymaster, and
in 1855 became colonel of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry (afterwards 5th), in
which his lieut.-colonel was Robert E. Lee, and his majors were Hardee
and Thomas. In 1857 he commanded the expedition sent against the
Mormons, and performed his difficult and dangerous mission so
successfully that the objects of the expedition were attained without
bloodshed. He was rewarded with the brevet of brigadier-general. At the
outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 Johnston, then in command of the
Pacific department, resigned his commission and made his way to
Richmond, where Pres. Jefferson Davis, whom he had known at West Point,
at once made him a full general in the Confederate army and assigned him
to command the department of Kentucky. Here he had to guard a long and
weak line from the Mississippi to the Alleghany Mountains, which was
dangerously advanced on account of the political necessity of covering
friendly country. The first serious advance of the Federals forced him
back at once, and he was freely criticized and denounced for what, in
ignorance of the facts, the Southern press and people regarded as a weak
and irresolute defence. Johnston himself, who had entered upon the Civil
War with the reputation of being the foremost soldier on either side,
bore with fortitude the reproaches of his countrymen, and Davis loyally
supported his old friend. Johnston then marched to join Beauregard at
Corinth, Miss., and with the united forces took the offensive against
Grant's army at Pittsburg Landing. The battle of Shiloh (q.v.) took
place on the 6th and 7th of April, 1862. The Federals were completely
surprised, and Johnston was in the full tide of success when he fell
mortally wounded. He died a few minutes afterwards. President Davis
said, in his message to the Confederate Congress, "Without doing
injustice to the living, it may safely be said that our loss is
irreparable," and the subsequent history of the war in the west went far
to prove the truth of his eulogy.
His son, WILLIAM PRESTON JOHNSTON (1831-1899), who served on the staff
of General Johnston and subsequently on that of President Davis, was a
distinguished professor and president of Tulane University. His chief
work is the _Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston_ (1878), a most
valuable and exhaustive biography.
JOHNSTON, ALEXANDER (1849-1889), American historian, was born in
Brooklyn, New York, on the 29th of April 1849. He studied at the
Polytechnic institute of Brooklyn, graduated at Rutgers College in 1870,
and was admitted to the bar in 1875 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where
he taught in the Rutgers College grammar school from 1876 to 1879. He
was principal of the Latin school of Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1879-1883,
and was professor of jurisprudence and political economy in the College
of New Jersey (Princeton University) from 1884 until his death in
Princeton, N.J., on the 21st of July 1889. He wrote _A History of
American Politics_ (1881); _The Genesis of a New England
State--Connecticut_ (1883), in "Johns Hopkins University Studies"; _A
History of the United States for Schools_ (1886); _Connecticut_ (1887)
in the "American Commonwealths Series"; the article on the history of
the United States for the 9th edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_,
reprinted as _The United Stales: Its History and Constitution_ (1887); a
chapter on the history of American political parties in the seventh
volume of Winsor's _Narrative and Critical History of America_, and many
articles on the history of American politics in Lalor's _Cyclopaedia of
Political Science, Political Economy, and Political History of the
United States_ (1881-1884). These last articles, which like his other
writings represent much original research and are excellent examples of
Johnston's rare talent for terse narrative and keen analysis and
interpretation of facts, were republished in two volumes entitled
_American Political History 1763-1876_ (1905-1906), edited by Professor
J. A. Woodburn.
JOHNSTON, ALEXANDER KEITH (1804-1871), Scottish geographer, was born at
Kirkhill near Edinburgh on the 28th of December 1804. After an education
at the high school and the university of Edinburgh he was apprenticed to
an engraver; and in 1826 joined his brother (afterwards Sir William
Johnston, lord provost of Edinburgh) in a printing and engraving
business, the well-known cartographical firm of W. and A. K. Johnston.
His interest in geography had early developed, and his first important
work was the _National Atlas_ of general geography, which gained for him
in 1843 the appointment of Geographer-Royal for Scotland. Johnston was
the first to bring the study of physical geography into competent notice
in England. His attention had been called to the subject by Humboldt;
and after years of labour he published his magnificent _Physical Atlas_
in 1848, followed by a second and enlarged edition in 1856. This, by
means of maps with descriptive letterpress, illustrates the geology,
hydrography, meteorology, botany, zoology, and ethnology of the globe.
The rest of Johnston's life was devoted to geography, his later years to
its educational aspects especially. His services were recognized by the
leading scientific societies of Europe and America. He died at Ben
Rhydding, Yorkshire, on the 9th of July 1871. Johnston published a
_Dictionary of Geography_ in 1850, with many later editions; _The Royal
Atlas of Modern Geography_, begun in 1855; an atlas of military
geography to accompany Alison's _History of Europe_ in 1848 seq.; and a
variety of other atlases and maps for educational or scientific
purposes. His son of the same name (1844-1879) was also the author of
various geographical works and papers; in 1873-1875 he was geographer to
a commission for the survey of Paraguay; and he died in Africa while
leading the Royal Geographical Society's expedition to Lake Nyasa.
JOHNSTON, ARTHUR (1587-1641), Scottish physician and writer of Latin
verse, was the son of an Aberdeenshire laird Johnston of Johnston and
Caskieben, and on his mother's side a grandson of the seventh Lord
Forbes. It is probable that he began his university studies at one, or
both, of the colleges at Aberdeen, but in 1608 he proceeded to Italy and
graduated M.D. at Padua in 1610. Thereafter he resided at Sedan, in the
company of the exiled Andrew Melville (q.v.), and in 1619 was in
practice in Paris. He appears to have returned to England about the time
of James I.'s death and to have been in Aberdeen about 1628. He met Laud
in Edinburgh at the time of Charles I.'s Scottish coronation (1633) and
was encouraged by him in his literary efforts, partly, it is said, for
the undoing of Buchanan's reputation as a Latin poet. He was appointed
rector of King's College, Aberdeen, in June 1637. Four years later he
died at Oxford, on his way to London, whither Laud had invited him.
Johnston left more than ten works, all in Latin. On two of these,
published in the same year, his reputation entirely rests: (a) his
version of the Psalms (_Psalmorum Davidis paraphrasis poetica et
canticorum evangelicorum_, Aberdeen, 1637), and (b) his anthology of
contemporary Latin verse by Scottish poets (_Deliciae poetarum
scotorum hujus aevi illustrium_, Amsterdam, 1637). He had published in
1633 a volume entitled _Cantici Salomonis paraphrasis poetica_, which,
dedicated to Charles I., had brought him to the notice of Laud. The
full version of the Psalms was the result of Laud's encouragement. The
book was for some time a strong rival of Buchanan's work, though its
good Latinity was not superior to that of the latter. The _Deliciae_,
in two small thick volumes of 699 and 575 pages, was a patriotic
effort in imitation of the various volumes (under a similar title)
which had been popular on the Continent during the second decade of
the century. The volumes are dedicated by Johnston to John Scot of
Scotstarvet, at whose expense the collected works were published after
Johnston's death, at Middelburg (1642). Selections from his own poems
occupy pages 439-647 of the first volume, divided into three sections,
_Parerga_, _Epigrammata_ and _Musae Aulicae_. He published a volume of
epigrams at Aberdeen in 1632. In these pieces he shows himself at his
best. His sacred poems, which had appeared in the _Opera_ (1642), were
reprinted by Lauder in his _Poetarum Scotorum musae sacrae_ (1739).
The earliest lives are by Lauder (_u.s._) and Benson (in _Psalmi
Davidici_, 1741). Ruddiman's _Vindication of Mr George Buchanan's
Paraphrase_ (1745) began a pamphlet controversy regarding the merits
of the rival poets.
JOHNSTON, SIR HENRY HAMILTON (1858- ), British administrator and
explorer, was born on the 12th of June 1858 at Kennington, London, and
educated at Stockwell grammar school and King's College, London. He was
a student for four years in the painting schools of the Royal Academy.
At the age of eighteen he began a series of travels in Europe and North
Africa, chiefly as a student of painting, architecture and languages. In
1879-1880 he visited the then little known interior of Tunisia. He had
also a strong bent towards zoology and comparative anatomy, and carried
on work of this description at the Royal College of Surgeons, of whose
Hunterian Collection he afterwards became one of the trustees. In 1882
he joined the earl of Mayo in an expedition to the southern part of
Angola, a district then much traversed by Transvaal Boers. In 1883
Johnston visited H. M. Stanley on the Congo, and was enabled by that
explorer to visit the river above Stanley Pool at a time when it was
scarcely known to other Europeans than Stanley and De Brazza. These
journeys attracted the attention of the Royal Geographical Society and
the British Association, and the last-named in concert with the Royal
Society conferred on Johnston the leadership of the scientific
expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro which started from Zanzibar in April
1884. Johnston's work in this region was also under the direction of Sir
John Kirk, British consul at Zanzibar. While in the Kilimanjaro district
Johnston concluded treaties with the chiefs of Moshi and Taveta
(Taveita). These treaties or concessions were transferred to the
merchants who founded the British East Africa Company, and in the final
agreement with Germany Taveta fell to Great Britain. In October 1885
Johnston was appointed British vice-consul in Cameroon and in the Niger
delta, and he became in 1887 acting consul for that region. A British
protectorate over the Niger delta had been notified in June 1885, and
between the date of his appointment and 1888, together with the consul
E. H. Hewett, Johnston laid the foundations of the British
administration in that part of the delta not reserved for the Royal
Niger Company. His action in removing the turbulent chief Ja-ja (an
ex-slave who had risen to considerable power in the palm-oil trade)
occasioned considerable criticism but was approved by the Foreign
Office. It led to the complete pacification of a region long disturbed
by trade disputes. During these three years of residence in the Gulf of
Guinea Johnston ascended the Cameroon Mountain, and made large
collections of the flora and fauna of Cameroon for the British Museum.
In the spring of 1889 he was sent to Lisbon to negotiate an arrangement
for the delimitation of the British and Portuguese spheres of influence
in South-East Africa, but the scheme drawn up, though very like the
later arrangement of those regions, was not given effect to at the time.
On his return from Lisbon he was despatched to Mozambique as consul for
Portuguese East Africa, and was further charged with a mission to Lake
Nyasa to pacify that region, then in a disturbed state owing to the
attacks of slave-trading Arabs on the stations of the African Lakes
Trading Company--an unofficial war, in which Captain (afterwards Colonel
Sir Frederick) Lugard and Mr (afterwards Sir Alfred) Sharpe
distinguished themselves. Owing to the unexpected arrival on the scene
of Major Serpa Pinto, Johnston was compelled to declare a British
protectorate over the Nyasa region, being assisted in this work by John
Buchanan (vice-consul), Sir Alfred Sharpe, Alfred Swann and others. A
truce was arranged with the Arabs on Lake Nyasa, and within twelve
months the British flag, by agreement with the natives, had been hoisted
over a very large region which extended north of Lake Tanganyika to the
vicinity of Uganda, to Katanga in the Congo Free State, the Shiré
Highlands and the central Zambezi. Johnston's scheme, in fact, was that
known as the "Cape-to-Cairo," a phrase which he had brought into use in
an article in _The Times_ in August 1888. According to his arrangement
there would have been an all-British route from Alexandria to Cape Town.
But by the Anglo-German agreement of the 1st of July 1890 the British
sphere north of Tanganyika was abandoned to Germany, and the
Cape-to-Cairo route broken by a wedge of German territory. Johnston
returned to British Central Africa as commissioner and consul-general in
1891, and retained that post till 1896, in which year he was made a
K.C.B. His health having suffered much from African fever, he was
transferred to Tunis as consul-general (1897). In the autumn of 1899 Sir
Harry Johnston was despatched to Uganda as special commissioner to
reorganize the administration of that protectorate after the suppression
of the mutiny of the Sudanese soldiers and the long war with Unyoro. His
two years' work in Uganda and a portion of what is now British East
Africa were rewarded at the close of 1901 by a G.C.M.G. In the spring of
the following year he retired from the consular service. After 1904 he
interested himself greatly in the affairs of the Liberian republic, and
negotiated various arrangements with that negro state by which order was
brought into its finances, the frontier with France was delimited, and
the development of the interior by means of roads was commenced. In 1903
he was defeated as Liberal candidate for parliament at a by-election at
Rochester. He met with no better success at West Marylebone at the
general election of 1906.
For his services to zoology he was awarded the gold medal of the
Zoological Society in 1902, and in the same year was made an honorary
doctor of science at Cambridge. He received the gold medal of the Royal
Geographical and the Royal Scottish Geographical societies, and other
medals for his artistic work from South Kensington and the Society of
Arts. His pictures, chiefly dealing with African subjects, were
frequently exhibited at the Royal Academy. He was the author of numerous
books on Africa, including _British Central Africa_ (1897); _The
Colonization of Africa_ (1899); _The Uganda Protectorate_ (1902);
_Liberia_ (1906); _George Grenfell and the Congo_ (1908). During his
travels in the north-eastern part of the Congo Free State in 1900 he was
instrumental in discovering and naming the okapi, a mammal nearly allied
to the giraffe. His name has been connected with many other discoveries
in the African fauna and flora.
JOHNSTON, JOSEPH EGGLESTON (1807-1891), American Confederate general in
the Civil War, was born near Farmville, Prince Edward county, Virginia,
on the 3rd of February 1807. His father, Peter Johnston (1763-1841), a
Virginian of Scottish descent, served in the War of Independence, and
afterwards became a distinguished jurist; his mother was a niece of
Patrick Henry. He graduated at West Point, in the same class with Robert
E. Lee, and was made brevet second lieutenant, 4th Artillery, in 1829.
He served in the Black Hawk and Seminole wars, and left the army in 1837
to become a civil engineer, but a year afterwards he was reappointed to
the army as first lieutenant, Topographical Engineers, and breveted
captain for his conduct in the Seminole war. During the Mexican war he
was twice severely wounded in a reconnaissance at Cerro Gordo, 1847, was
engaged in the siege of Vera Cruz, the battles of Contreras, Churubusco,
and Molino del Rey, the storming of Chapultepec, and the assault on the
city of Mexico, and received three brevets for gallant and meritorious
service. From 1853 to 1855 he was employed on Western river
improvements, and in 1855 he became lieut.-colonel of the 1st U.S.
Cavalry. In 1860 he was made quartermaster-general, with the rank of
brigadier-general. In April 1861 he resigned from the United States army
and entered the Confederate service. He was commissioned major-general
of volunteers in the Army of Virginia, and assisted in organizing the
volunteers. He was later appointed a general officer of the Confederacy,
and assigned to the command of the Army of the Shenandoah, being opposed
by the Federal army under Patterson. When McDowell advanced upon the
Confederate forces under Beauregard at Manassas, Johnston moved from the
Shenandoah Valley with great rapidity to Beauregard's assistance. As
senior officer he took command on the field, and at Bull Run (Manassas)
(q.v.) won the first important Confederate victory. In August 1861 he
was made one of the five full generals of the Confederacy, remaining in
command of the main army in Virginia. He commanded in the battle of Fair
Oaks (May 31, 1862), and was so severely wounded as to be incapacitated
for several months. In March 1863, still troubled by his wound, he was
assigned to the command of the south-west, and in May was ordered to
take immediate command of all the Confederate forces in Mississippi,
then threatened by Grant's movement on Vicksburg. When Pemberton's army
was besieged in Vicksburg by Grant, Johnston used every effort to
relieve it, but his force was inadequate. Later in 1863, when the battle
of Chattanooga brought the Federals to the borders of Georgia, Johnston
was assigned to command the Army of Tennessee at Dalton, and in the
early days of May 1864 the combined armies of the North under Sherman
advanced against his lines. For the main outlines of the famous campaign
between Sherman and Johnston see AMERICAN CIVIL WAR (§ 29). From the 9th
of May to the 17th of July there were skirmishes, actions and combats
almost daily. The great numerical superiority of the Federals enabled
Sherman to press back the Confederates without a pitched battle, but the
severity of the skirmishing may be judged from the casualties of the two
armies (Sherman's about 26,000 men, Johnston's over 10,000), and the
obstinate steadiness of Johnston by the fact that his opponent hardly
progressed more than one mile a day. But a Fabian policy is never
acceptable to an eager people, and when Johnston had been driven back to
Atlanta he was superseded by Hood with orders to fight a battle. The
wisdom of Johnston's plan was soon abundantly clear, and the Confederate
cause was already lost when Lee reinstated him on the 23rd of February
1865. With a handful of men he opposed Sherman's march through the
Carolinas, and at Bentonville, N.C., fought and almost won a most
gallant and skilful battle against heavy odds. But the Union troops
steadily advanced, growing in strength as they went, and a few days
after Lee's surrender at Appomattox Johnston advised President Davis
that it was in his opinion wrong and useless to continue the conflict,
and he was authorized to make terms with Sherman. The terms entered into
between these generals, on the 18th of April, having been rejected by
the United States government, another agreement was signed on the 26th
of April, the new terms being similar to those of the surrender of Lee.
After the close of the war Johnston engaged in civil pursuits. In 1874
he published a _Narrative of Military Operations during the Civil War_.
In 1877 he was elected to represent the Richmond district of Virginia in
Congress. In 1887 he was appointed by President Cleveland U.S.
commissioner of railroads. Johnston was married in early life to Louisa
(d. 1886), daughter of Louis M'Lane. He died at Washington, D.C., on the
21st of March 1891, leaving no children.
It was not the good fortune of Johnston to acquire the prestige which so
much assisted Lee and Jackson, nor indeed did he possess the power of
enforcing his will on others in the same degree, but his methods were
exact, his strategy calm and balanced, and, if he showed himself less
daring than his comrades, he was unsurpassed in steadiness. The duel of
Sherman and Johnston is almost as personal a contest between two great
captains as were the campaigns of Turenne and Montecucculi. To
Montecucculi, indeed, both in his military character and in the
incidents of his career, Joseph Johnston bears a striking resemblance.
See Hughes, _General Johnston_, in "Great Commanders Series" (1893).
JOHNSTONE, a police burgh of Renfrewshire, Scotland, on the Black Cart,
11 m. W. of Glasgow by the Glasgow & South-Western railway. Pop. (1901),
10,503. The leading industries include flax-spinning, cotton
manufactures (with the introduction of which in 1781 the prosperity of
the town began), paper-making, shoe-lace making, iron and brass
foundries and engineering works. There are also coal mines and oil works
in the vicinity. Elderslie, 1 m. E., is the reputed birthplace of Sir
William Wallace, but it is doubtful if "Wallace's Yew," though of great
age, and "Wallace's Oak," a fine old tree that perished in a storm in
1856, and the small castellated building (traditionally his house) which
preceded the present mansion in the west end of the village, existed in
his day.
JOHNSTOWN, a city and the county-seat of Fulton county, New York,
U.S.A., on Cayadutta Creek, about 4 m. N. of the Mohawk river and about
48 m. N.W. of Albany. Pop. (1890), 7768; (1900), 10,130 (1653
foreign-born); (1905, state census), 9765; (1910) 10,447. It is served
by the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville railroad, and by an electric line
to Schenectady. The city has a Federal building, a Y.M.C.A. building, a
city hall, and a Carnegie library (1902). The most interesting building
is Johnson Hall, a fine old baronial mansion, built by Sir William
Johnson in 1762 and his home until his death; his grave is just outside
the present St John's episcopal church. Originally the hall was flanked
by two stone forts, one of which is still standing. In 1907 the hall was
bought by the state and was placed in the custody of the Johnstown
Historical Society, which maintains a museum here. In the hall Johnson
established in 1766 a Masonic lodge, one of the oldest in the United
States. Other buildings of historical interest are the Drumm House and
the Fulton county court house, built by Sir William Johnson in 1763 and
1772 respectively, and the gaol (1772), at first used for all New York
west of Schenectady county, and during the War of Independence as a
civil and a military prison. The court house is said to be the oldest in
the United States. Three miles south of the city is the Butler House,
built in 1742 by Colonel John Butler (d. 1794), a prominent Tory leader
during the War of Independence. A free school, said to have been the
first in New York state, was established at Johnstown by Sir William
Johnson in 1764. The city is (after Gloversville, 3 m. distant) the
principal glove-making centre in the United States, the product being
valued at $2,581,274 in 1905 and being 14.6% of the total value of this
industry in the United States. The manufacture of gloves in commercial
quantities was introduced into the United States and Johnstown in 1809
by Talmadge Edwards, who was buried there in the colonial cemetery. The
value of the total factory product in 1905 was $4,543,272 (a decrease of
11.3% since 1900). Johnstown was settled about 1760 by a colony of Scots
brought to America by Sir William Johnson, within whose extensive grant
it was situated, and in whose honour, in 1771, it was named. A number of
important conferences between the colonial authorities and the Iroquois
Indians were held here, and on the 28th of October 1781, during the War
of Independence, Colonel Marinus Willett (1740-1830) defeated here a
force of British and Indians, whose leader, Walter Butler, a son of
Colonel John Butler, and, with him, a participant in the Wyoming
massacres, was mortally wounded near West Canada creek during the
pursuit. Johnstown was incorporated as a village in 1808, and was
chartered as a city in 1895.
JOHNSTOWN, a city of Cambria county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., at the
confluence of the Conemaugh river and Stony creek, about 75 m. E. by S.
of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890), 21,805; (1900), 35,936, of whom 7318 were
foreign-born, 2017 being Hungarians, 1663 Germans, and 923 Austrians;
(1910 census) 55,482. It is served by the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore
& Ohio railways. The city lies about 1170 ft. above the sea, on level
ground extending for some distance along the river, and nearly enclosed
by high and precipitous hills. Among the public buildings and
institutions are the Cambria free library (containing about 14,000
volumes in 1908), the city hall, a fine high school, and the Conemaugh
Valley memorial hospital. Roxbury Park, about 3 m. from the city, is
reached by electric lines. Coal, iron ore, fire clay and limestone
abound in the vicinity, and the city has large plants for the
manufacture of iron and steel. The total value of the factory product in
1905 was $28,891,806, an increase of 35.2% since 1900. A settlement was
established here in 1791 by Joseph Jahns, in whose honour it was named,
and the place was soon laid out as a town, but it was not incorporated
as a city until 1889, the year of the disastrous Johnstown flood. In
1852 a dam (700 ft. long and 100 ft. high), intended to provide a
storage reservoir for the Pennsylvania canal, had been built across the
South Fork, a branch of the Conemaugh river, 12 m. above the city, but
the Pennsylvania canal was subsequently abandoned, and in 1888 the dam
was bought and repaired by the South Fork hunting and fishing club, and
Conemaugh lake was formed. On the 31st of May 1889, during a heavy
rainfall, the dam gave way and a mass of water 20 ft. or more in height
at its head swept over Johnstown at a speed of about 20 m. an hour,
almost completely destroying the city. The Pennsylvania railroad bridge
withstood the strain, and against it the flood piled up a mass of
wreckage many feet in height and several acres in area. On or in this
confused mass many of the inhabitants were saved from drowning, only to
be burned alive when it caught fire. Seven other towns and villages in
the valley were also swept away, and the total loss of lives was 2000 or
more. A relief fund of nearly $3,000,000 was raised, and the city was
quickly rebuilt.
JOHOR (Johore is the local official, but incorrect spelling), an
independent Malayan state at the southern end of the peninsula,
stretching from 2° 40´ S. to Cape Romania (Ramunya), the most southerly
point on the mainland of Asia, and including all the small islands
adjacent to the coast which lie to the south of parallel 2° 40´ S. It is
bounded N. by the protected native state of Pahang, N.W. by the Negri
Sembilan and the territory of Malacca, S. by the strait which divides
Singapore island from the mainland, E. by the China Sea, and W. by the
Straits of Malacca. The province of Muar was placed under the
administration of Johor by the British government as a temporary measure
in 1877, and was still a portion of the sultan's dominions in 1910. The
coast-line measures about 250 m. The greatest length from N.W. to S.E.
is 165 m., the greatest breadth from E. to W. 100 m. The area is
estimated at about 9000 sq. m. The principal rivers are the Muar, the
most important waterway in the south of the peninsula; the Johor, up
which river the old capital of the state was situated; the Endau, which
marks the boundary with Pahang; and the Batu Pahat and Sedeli, of
comparative unimportance. Johor is less mountainous than any other state
in the peninsula. The highest peak is Gunong Ledang, called Mt Ophir by
Europeans, which measures some 4000 ft. in height. Like the rest of the
peninsula, Johor is covered from end to end by one vast spread of
forest, only broken here and there by clearings and settlements of
insignificant area. The capital is Johor Bharu (pop. about 20,000),
situated at the nearest point on the mainland to the island of
Singapore. The fine palace built by the sultan Abubakar is the principal
feature of the town. It is a kind of Oriental Monte Carlo, and is much
resorted to from Singapore. The capital of the province of Muar is
Bandar Maharani, named after the wife of the sultan before he had
assumed his final title. The climate of Johor is healthy and equable for
a country situated so near to the equator; it is cooler than that of
Singapore. The shade temperature varies from 98.5° F. to 68.2° F. The
rainfall averages 97.28 in. per annum. No exact figures can be obtained
as to the population of Johor, but the best estimates place it at about
200,000, of whom 150,000 are Chinese, 35,000 Malays, 15,000 Javanese. We
are thus presented with the curious spectacle of a country under Malay
rule in which the Chinese outnumber the people of the land by more than
four to one. It is not possible to obtain any exact data on the subject
of the revenue and expenditure of the state. The revenue, however, is
probably about 750,000 dollars, and the expenditure under public service
is comparatively small. The revenue is chiefly derived from the revenue
farms for opium, spirits, gambling, &c., and from duty on pepper and
gambier exported by the Chinese. The cultivation of these products forms
the principal industry. Areca-nuts and copra are also exported in some
quantities, more especially from Muar. There is little mineral wealth of
proved value.
_History._--It is claimed that the Mahommedan empire of Johor was
founded by the sultan of Malacca after his expulsion from his kingdom by
the Portuguese in 1511. It is certain that Johor took an active part,
only second to that of Achin, in the protracted war between the
Portuguese and the Dutch for the possession of Malacca. Later we find
Johor ruled by an officer of the sultan of Riouw (Riau), bearing the
title of Tumenggong, and owing feudal allegiance to his master in common
with the Bendahara of Pahang. In 1812, however, this officer seems to
have thrown off the control of Riouw, and to have assumed the title of
sultan, for one of his descendants, Sultan Husain, ceded the island of
Singapore to the East India Company in 1819. In 1855 the then sultan,
Ali, was deposed, and his principal chief, the Tumenggong, was given the
supreme rule by the British. His son Tumenggong Abubakar proved to be a
man of exceptional intelligence. He made numerous visits to Europe, took
considerable interest in the government and development of his country,
and was given by Queen Victoria the title of maharaja in 1879. On one of
his visits to England he was made the defendant in a suit for breach of
promise of marriage, but the plaintiff was non-suited, since it was
decided that no action lay against a foreign sovereign in the English
law courts. In 1885 he entered into a new agreement with the British
government, and was allowed to assume the title of sultan of the state
and territory of Johor. He was succeeded in 1895 by his son Sultan
Ibrahim. The government of Johor has been comparatively so free from
abuses under its native rulers that it has never been found necessary to
place it under the residential system in force in the other native
states of the peninsula which are under British control, and on several
occasions Abubakar used his influence with good effect on the side of
law and order. The close proximity of Johor to Singapore has constantly
subjected the rulers of the former state to the influence of European
public opinion. None the less, the Malay is by nature but ill fitted for
the drudgery which is necessary if proper attention is to be paid to the
dull details whereby government is rendered good and efficient.
Abubakar's principal adviser, the Dato 'Mentri, was a worthy servant of
his able master. Subsequently, however, the reins of government came
chiefly into the hands of a set of young men who lacked either
experience or the serious devotion to dull duties which is the
distinguishing mark of the English civil service. Muar, in imitation of
the British system, is ruled by a raja of the house of Johor, who bears
the title of resident. (H. Cl.)
JOIGNY, a town of central France, capital of an arrondissement in the
department of Yonne, 18 m. N.N.W. of Auxerre by the
Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway. Pop. (1906), 4888. It is situated on
the flank of the hill known as the Côte St Jacques on the right bank of
the Yonne. Its streets are steep and narrow, and old houses with carved
wooden façades are numerous. The church of St Jean (16th century), which
once stood within the _enceinte_ of the old castle, contains a
representation (15th century) of the Holy Sepulchre in white marble.
Other interesting buildings are the church of St André (12th, 16th and
17th centuries), of which the best feature is the Renaissance portal
with its fine bas-reliefs; and the church of St Thibault (16th century),
in which the stone crown suspended from the choir vaulting is chiefly
noticeable. The Porte du Bois, a gateway with two massive flanking
towers, is a relic of the 10th century castle; there is also a castle of
the 16th and 17th centuries, in part demolished. The hôtel de ville
(18th century) shelters the library; the law-court contains the
sepulchral chapel of the Ferrands (16th century). The town is the seat
of a sub-prefect and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce,
and a communal college for boys. It is industrially unimportant, but the
wine of the Côte St Jacques is much esteemed.
Joigny (_Joviniacum_) was probably of Roman origin. In the 10th century
it became the seat of a countship dependent on that of Champagne, which
after passing through several hands came in the 18th century into the
possession of the family of Villeroi. A fragment of a ladder preserved
in the church of St André commemorates the successful resistance offered
by the town to the English in 1429.
JOINDER, in English law, a term used in several connexions.
_Joinder of causes of action_ is the uniting in the same action several
causes of action. Save in actions for the recovery of land and in
actions by a trustee in bankruptcy a plaintiff may without leave join in
one action, not several actions, but several "causes of action." Claims
by or against husband and wife may be joined with claims by or against
either of them separately. Claims by or against an executor or
administrator as such may be joined with claims by or against him
personally, provided such claims are alleged to arise with reference to
the estate of which the plaintiff or defendant sues or is sued as
executor or administrator. Claims by plaintiffs jointly may be joined
with claims by them or any of them separately against the same
defendant.
_Joinder in pleading_ is the joining by the parties on the point of
matter issuing out of the allegations and pleas of the plaintiff and the
defendant in a cause and the putting the cause upon trial.
_Joinder of parties._--Where parties may jointly, severally or in the
alternative bring separate actions in respect of or arising out of the
same transaction or series of transactions they may, by Order XVI. of
the rules of the supreme court, be joined in one action as plaintiffs.
JOINERY, one of the useful arts which contribute to the comfort and
convenience of man. As the arts of joinery and carpentry are often
followed by the same individual, it appears natural to conclude that the
same principles are common to both, but a closer examination leads to a
different conclusion. The art of carpentry is directed almost wholly to
the support of weight or pressure, and therefore its principles must be
sought in the mechanical sciences. In a building it includes all the
rough timber work necessary for support, division or connexion, and its
proper object is to give firmness and stability. The art of joinery has
for its object the addition in a building of all the fixed woodwork
necessary for convenience or ornament. The joiner's works are in many
cases of a complicated nature, and often require to be executed in an
expensive material, therefore joinery requires much skill in that part
of geometrical science which treats of the projection and description of
lines, surfaces and solids, as well as an intimate knowledge of the
structure and nature of wood. A man may be a good carpenter without
being a joiner at all, but he cannot be a joiner without being
competent, at least, to supervise all the operations required in
carpentry. The rough labour of the carpenter renders him in some degree
unfit to produce that accurate and neat workmanship which is expected
from a modern joiner, but it is no less true that the habit of neatness
and the great precision of the joiner make him a much slower workman
than the man practised in works of carpentry. In carpentry framing owes
its strength mainly to the form and position of its parts, but in
joinery the strength of a frame depends to a larger extent upon the
strength of the joinings. The importance of fitting the joints together
as accurately as possible is therefore obvious. It is very desirable
that a joiner shall be a quick workman, but it is still more so that he
shall be a good one, and that he should join his materials with firmness
and accuracy. It is also of the greatest importance that the work when
thus put together shall be constructed of such sound and dry materials,
and on such principles, that the whole shall bear the various changes of
temperature and of moisture and dryness, so that the least possible
shrinkage or swelling shall take place; but provision must be made so
that, if swelling or shrinking does occur, no damage shall be done to
the work.
In early times every part was rude, and jointed in the most artless
manner. The first dawnings of the art of modern joinery appear in the
thrones, stalls, pulpits and screens of early Gothic cathedrals and
churches, but even in these it is indebted to the carver for everything
that is worthy of regard. With the revival of classic art, however,
great changes took place in every sort of construction. Forms began to
be introduced in architecture which could not be executed at a moderate
expense without the aid of new principles, and these principles were
discovered and published by practical joiners. These authors, with their
scanty geometrical knowledge, had but confused notions of these
principles, and accordingly their descriptions are often obscure, and
sometimes erroneous. The framed wainscot of small panels gave way to the
large bolection moulded panelling. Doors which were formerly heavily
framed and hung on massive posts or in jambs of cut stone, were now
framed in light panels and hung in moulded dressings of wood. The
scarcity of oak timber, and the expense of working it, subsequently led
to the importation of fir timber from northern Europe, and this
gradually superseded all other material save for special work.
_Tools and Materials._--The joiner operates with saws, planes, chisels,
gouges, hatchet, adze, gimlets and other boring instruments (aided and
directed by chalked lines), gauges, squares, hammers, wallets, floor
cramps and a great many other tools. His operations consist principally
of sawing and planing in all their varieties, and of setting out and
making joints of all kinds. There is likewise a great range of other
operations--such as paring, gluing up, wedging, pinning, fixing, fitting
and hanging--and many which depend on nailing and screwing, such as
laying floors, boarding ceilings, wainscoting walls, bracketing,
cradling, firring, and the like. In addition to the wood on which the
joiner works, he requires also glue, white lead, nails, brads, screws
and hinges, and accessorily he applies bolts, locks, bars and other
fastenings, together with pulleys, lines, weights, holdfasts, wall
hooks, &c. The joiner's work for a house is for the most part prepared
at the shop, where there should be convenience for doing everything in
the best and readiest manner, so that little remains when the carcase is
ready and the floors laid but to fit, fix and hang. The sashes, frames,
doors, shutters, linings and soffits are all framed and put together,
i.e. wedged up and cleaned off at the shop; the flooring is planed and
prepared with rebated or grooved edges ready for laying, and the moulded
work--the picture and dado rails, architraves, skirtings and
panelling--is all got out at the shop. On a new building the joiner fits
up a temporary workshop with benches, sawing stools and a stove for his
glue pot. Here he adjusts the work for fitting up and makes any small
portions that may still be required.
The preparation of joinery entirely by hand is now the exception--a fact
due to the ever-increasing use of machines, which have remarkably
shortened the time required to execute the ordinary operations. Various
machines rapidly and perfectly execute planing and surfacing, mortising
and moulding, leaving the craftsman merely to fit and glue up. Large
quantities of machine-made flooring, window-frames and doors are now
imported into England from Canada and the continent of Europe. The
timber is grown near the place of manufacture, and this, coupled with
the fact that labour at a low rate of wages is easily obtainable on the
Continent, enables the cost of production to be kept very low.
The structure and properties of wood should be thoroughly understood by
every joiner. The man who has made the nature of timber his study has
always a decided advantage over those who have neglected this. Timber
shrinks considerably in the width, but not appreciably in the length.
Owing to this shrinkage certain joints and details, hereinafter
described and illustrated, are in common use for the purpose of
counteracting the bad effect this movement would otherwise have upon all
joinery work.
The kinds of wood commonly employed in joinery are the different
species of North European and North American pine, oak, teak and
mahogany (see TIMBER). The greater part of English joiners' work is
executed in the northern pine exported from the Baltic countries.
Hence the joiner obtains the planks, deals, battens and strips from
which he shapes his work. The timber reaches the workman from the
sawmills in a size convenient for the use he intends, considerable
time and labour being saved in this way.
A log of timber sawn to a square section is termed a _balk_. In
section it may range from 1 to 1½ ft. square. _Planks_ are formed by
sawing the balk into sections from 11 to 18 in. wide and 3 to 6 in.
thick, and the term _deal_ is applied to sawn stuff 9 in. wide and 2
to 4½ in. thick. _Battens_ are boards running not more than 3 in.
thick and 4 to 7 in. wide. A _strip_ is not thicker than 1½ in., the
width being about 4 in.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
_Joints.--Side joints_ (fig. 1) are used for joining boards together
edge to edge, and are widely employed in flooring. In the _square_
joint the edges of the boards are carefully shot, the two edges to be
joined brought together with glue applied hot, and the boards tightly
clamped and left to dry, when the surface is cleaned off with the
smoothing plane. A joint in general use for joining up boards for
fascias, panels, linings, window-boards, and other work of a like
nature is formed in a similar manner to the above, but with a
cross-grained tongue inserted, thereby greatly strengthening the work
at an otherwise naturally weak point. This is termed a _cross-tongued
and glued_ joint. The _dowelled_ joint is a square glued joint
strengthened with hard wood or iron dowels inserted in the edge of
each board to a depth of about ¾ in. and placed about 18 in. apart.
The _matched_ joint is shown in two forms, beaded and jointed. Matched
boarding is frequently used as a less expensive substitute for
panelled framing. Although of course in appearance it cannot compare
with the latter, it has a somewhat ornamental appearance, and the
moulded joints allow shrinkage to take place without detriment to the
appearance of the work. The _rebated_ joint is used in the meeting
styles of casements and folding doors, and it is useful in excluding
draughts and preventing observation through the joint.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
Of the _angle joints_ (fig. 2) in common use by the joiner the
following are the most important. The _mitre_ is shown in the drawing,
and is so well known as to need little description. Although simple,
it needs a practised and accurate hand for its proper execution. The
common mitre is essentially weak unless reinforced with blocks glued
into the angle at the back of it, and is therefore often strengthened
with a feather of wood or iron. Other variations of the mitre are the
_mitre and butt_, used where the pieces connected are of unequal
thickness; the _mitre and rebate_, with a square section which
facilitates nailing or screwing; the _mitre rebate and feather_,
similar to the latter, with a feather giving additional strength to
the joint; and the _mitre groove and tongue_, having a tongue worked
on the material itself in place of the feather of the last-named
joint. The last two methods are used in the best work, and, carefully
worked and glued, with the assistance of angle blocks glued at the
back, obviate the necessity of face screws or nails. The _keyed mitre_
consists of a simple mitre joint, which after being glued up has a
number of pairs of saw cuts made across the angle, into which are
fitted and glued thin triangular slips of hard wood, or as an
alternative, pieces of brass or other metal. Other forms of angle
joints are based on the rebate with a bead worked on in such a
position as to hide any bad effects caused by the joint opening by
shrinkage. They may be secured either by nailing or screwing, or by
glued angle blocks.
The _dovetail_ is a most important joint; its most usual forms are
illustrated in fig. 3. The _mitre dovetail_ is used in the best work.
It will be seen that the dovetail is a tenon, shaped as a wedge, and
it is this distinguishing feature which gives it great strength
irrespective of glue or screws. It is invaluable in framing together
joiners' fittings; its use in drawers especially provides a good
example of its purpose and structure.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Dovetails.]
_Warping in Wide Boards._--It is necessary to prevent the tendency to
warp, twist and split, which boards of great width, or several boards
glued together edge to edge, naturally possess. On the other hand,
swelling and shrinking due to changes in the humidity of the
atmosphere must not be checked, or the result will be disastrous. To
effect this end various simple devices are available. The direction of
the annular rings in alternate boards may be reversed, and when the
boards have been carefully jointed with tongues or dowels and glued
up, a hard-wood tapering key, dovetail in section, may be let into a
wide dovetail at the back (fig. 4). It must be accurately fitted and
driven tightly home, but, of course, not glued. Battens of hard wood
may be used for the same purpose, fixed either with hard-wood buttons
or by means of brass slots and screws, the slots allowing for any
slight movement that may take place. With boards of a substantial
thickness light iron rods may be used, holes being bored through the
thickness of the boards and rods passed through; the edges are then
glued up. This method is very effective and neat in appearance, and is
specially suitable when a smooth surface is desired on both sides of
the work.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Prevention of Warping.]
_Mouldings_ are used in joinery to relieve plain surfaces by the
contrasts of light and shade formed by their members, and to ornament
or accentuate those particular portions which the designer may wish to
bring into prominence. Great skill and discrimination are required in
designing and applying mouldings, but that matter falls to the
qualified designer and is perhaps outside the province of the
practical workman, whose work is to carry out in an accurate and
finished manner the ideas of the draughtsman. The character of a
moulding is greatly affected by the nature and appearance of the wood
in which it is worked. A section suitable for a hard regularly grained
wood, such as mahogany, would probably look insignificant if worked in
a softer wood with pronounced markings. Mouldings worked on woods of
the former type may consist of small and delicate members; woods of
the latter class require bold treatment.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Mouldings.]
The mouldings of joinery, as well as of all other moulded work used in
connexion with a building, are usually worked in accordance with
full-sized detail drawings prepared by the architect, and are designed
by him to conform with the style and class of building. There are,
however, a number of moulded forms in common use which have particular
names; sections are shown of many of these in fig. 5. Most of them
occur in the classic architecture of both Greeks and Romans. A
striking distinction, however, existed in the mouldings of these two
peoples; the curves of the Greek mouldings were either derived from
conic sections or drawn in freehand, while in typical Roman work the
curved components were segments of a circle. Numerous examples of the
use of these forms occur in ordinary joinery work, and may be
recognized on reference to the illustrations, which will be easily
understood without further description.
Mouldings may be either stuck or planted on. A _stuck_ moulding is
worked directly on to the framing it is used to ornament; a _planted_
moulding is separately worked and fixed in position with nails or
screws. Beads and other small mouldings should always be stuck; larger
ones are usually planted on. In the case of mouldings planted on
panelled work, the nails should be driven through the moulding into
the style or rail of the framing, and on no account into the panel. By
adopting the former method the panel is free to shrink--as it
undoubtedly will do--without altering the good appearance of the work,
but should the moulding be fixed to the panel it will, when the latter
shrinks, be pulled out of place, leaving an unsightly gap between it
and the framing.
_Flooring._--When the bricklayer, mason and carpenter have prepared
the carcase of a building for the joiner, one of the first operations
is that of laying the floor boards. They should have been stacked
under cover on the site for some considerable time, in order to be
thoroughly well seasoned when the time to use them arrives. The work
of laying should take place in warm dry weather. The joints of
flooring laid in winter time or during wet weather are sure to open in
the following summer, however tightly they may be cramped up during
the process of laying. An additional expense will then be incurred by
the necessity of filling in the opened joints with wood slips glued
and driven into place. Boards of narrow width are better and more
expensive than wide ones. They may be of various woods, the kinds
generally preferred, on account of their low comparative cost and ease
of working, being yellow deal and white deal. White deal or spruce is
an inferior wood, but is frequently used with good results for the
floors of less important apartments. A better floor is obtained with
yellow deal, which, when of good quality and well seasoned, is lasting
and wears well. For floors where a fine appearance is desired, or
which will be subjected to heavy wear, some harder and tougher
material, such as pitch pine, oak, ash, maple or teak, should be laid.
These woods are capable of taking a fine polish and, finished in this
way, form a beautiful as well as a durable floor.
Many of the side joints illustrated in fig. 1 are applied to flooring
boards, which, however, are not usually glued up. The heart side of
the board should be placed downwards so that in drying the tendency
will be for the edges to press more tightly to the joists instead of
curling upwards. The square joint should be used only on ground
floors; if it is used for the upper rooms, dust and water will drop
through the crevices and damage the ceiling beneath. Dowelled joints
are open to the same objection. One of the best and most economical
methods is the _ploughed and tongued_ joint. The tongue may be of hard
wood or iron, preferably the latter, which is stronger and occupies
very narrow grooves. The tongue should be placed as near the bottom of
the board as is practicable, leaving as much wearing material as
possible. Two varieties of secret joints are shown in fig. 1.--the
_splayed, rebated, grooved and tongued_, and the _rebated, grooved and
tongued_. Owing to the waste of material in forming these joints and
the extra labour involved in laying the boards, they are costly and
are only used when it is required that no heads of nails or screws
should appear on the surface. The heading joints of flooring are often
specified to be splayed or bevelled, but it is far better to rebate
them.
_Wood block floors_ are much used, and are exceedingly solid. The
blocks are laid directly on a smoothed concrete bed or floor in a
damp-proof mastic having bitumen as its base; this fulfils the double
purpose of preventing the wood from rotting, and securing the blocks
in their places. To check any inclination to warp and rise, however,
the edges of the blocks in the better class of floors are connected by
dowels of wood or metal, or by a tongued joint. The blocks may be from
1 to 3 in. thick, and are usually 9 or 12 in. long by 3 in. wide.
_Parquet_ floors are made of hard woods of various kinds, laid in
patterns on a deal sub-floor, and may be of any thickness from ¼ to 1¼
in. Great care should be taken in laying the sub-floor, especially for
the thinner parquet. The boards should be in narrow widths of
well-seasoned stuff and well nailed, for any movement in the sub-floor
due to warping or shrinking may have disastrous results on the parquet
which is laid upon it. _Plated parquet_ consists of selected hard
woods firmly fixed on a framed deal backing. It is made in sections
for easy transport, and these are fitted together in the apartment for
which they are intended. When secured to the joists these form a
perfect floor.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Built-up Skirting tongued to floor.]
_Skirtings._--In joinery, the skirting is a board fixed around the
base of internal walls to form an ornamental base for the wall (see
fig. 7). It also covers the joint between the flooring and the wall,
and protects the base of the wall from injury. Skirtings may be placed
in two classes--those formed from a plain board with its upper edge
either left square or moulded, and those formed of two or more
separate members and termed a _built-up_ skirting (fig. 6). Small
angle fillets or mouldings are often used as skirtings. The skirting
should be worked so as to allow it to be fixed with the heart side of
the wood outwards; any tendency to warp will then only serve to press
the top edge more closely to the wall. In good work a groove should be
formed in the floor and the skirting tongued into it so that an open
joint is avoided should shrinkage occur. The skirting should be nailed
only near the top to wood grounds fixed to wood plugs in the joints of
the brickwork. These grounds are about ¾ to 1 in. thick, i.e. the same
thickness as the plaster, and are generally splayed or grooved on the
edge to form a key for the plaster. A rough coat of plaster should
always be laid on the wall behind the skirting in order to prevent the
space becoming a harbourage for vermin.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
_Dados._--A dado, like a skirting, is useful both in a decorative and
a protective sense. It is filled in to ornament and protect that
portion of the wall between the _chair_ or _dado rail_ and the
skirting. It may be of horizontal boards battened at the back and with
cross tongued and glued joints, presenting a perfectly smooth surface,
or of matched boarding fixed vertically, or of panelled framing. The
last method is of course the most ornate and admits of great variety
of design. The work is fixed to rough framed wood grounds which are
nailed to plugs driven into the joints of the brickwork. Fig. 7 shows
an example of a panelled dado with capping moulding and skirting. A
_picture rail_ also is shown; it is a small moulding with the top edge
grooved to take the metal hooks from which pictures are hung.
Walls are sometimes entirely sheathed with panelling, and very fine
effects are obtained in this way. The fixing is effected to rough
grounds in a manner similar to that adopted in the case of dados. In
England the architects of the Tudor period made great use of oak
framing, panelled and richly carved, as a wall covering and
decoration, and many beautiful examples may be seen in the remaining
buildings of that period.
_Windows._--The parts of a window sash are distinguished by the same
terms as are applied to similar portions of ordinary framing, being
formed of rails and styles, with sash bars rebated for glazing. The
upright sides are _styles_; the horizontal ones, which are tenoned
into the styles, are _rails_ (fig. 7).
Sashes hung by one of their vertical edges are called _casements_
(fig. 8). They are really a kind of glazed door and sometimes indeed
are used as such, as for example _French casements_ (fig. 9). They may
be made to open either outwards or inwards. It is very difficult with
the latter to form perfectly water-tight joints; with those opening
outwards the trouble does not exist to so great an extent. This form
of window, though almost superseded in England by the case frame with
hung sashes, is in almost universal use on the Continent. _Yorkshire
sliding sashes_ move in a horizontal direction upon grooved runners
with the meeting styles vertical. They are little used, and are apt to
admit draughts and wet unless efficient checks are worked upon the
sashes and frames.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Casement window fitted with shutters.]
Lights in a position difficult of access are often hung on _centre
pivots_. An example of this method is shown in fig. 8; metal pivots
are fixed to the frame and the sockets in which these pivots work are
screwed to the sash. Movement is effected by means of a cord fixed so
that a slight pull opens or closes the window to the desired extent,
and the cord is then held by being tied to, or twisted round, a small
metal button or clip, or a geared fanlight opener may be used. For the
side sashes of lantern lights and for stables and factories this form
of window is in general use.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Details of French Casement to open inwards.]
In the British Isles and in America the most usual form of window is
the _cased frame with double hung sliding sashes_. This style has many
advantages. It is efficient in excluding wet and draughts, ventilation
may be easily regulated and the sashes can be lowered and raised with
ease without interference with any blinds, curtains or other fittings,
that may be applied to the windows. In the ordinary window of this
style, however, difficulty is experienced in cleaning the external
glass without assuming a dangerous position on the sill, but there are
many excellent inventions now on the market which obviate this
difficulty by allowing--usually on the removal of a small
thumb-screw--the reversal of the sash on a pivot or hinge. For a small
extra cost these arrangements may be provided; they will be greatly
appreciated by those who clean the windows. The cased frames are in
the form of boxes to enclose the iron or lead weights which balance
the sashes (fig. 7), and consist of a pulley style--which takes the
wear of the sashes and is often of hard wood on this account--an
inside lining, and an outside lining; these three members are
continued to form the head of the frame. The sashes are connected with
the weights by flax lines working over metal pulleys fixed in the
pulley styles. For heavy sashes with plate glass, chains are sometimes
used instead of lines. Access to the weights for the purpose of
fitting new cords is obtained by removing the pocket piece. A thin
back lining is provided to the sides only and is not required in the
head. The sill is of oak weathered to throw off the water. A parting
bead separates the sashes, and the inside bead keeps them in position.
A parting slip hung from the head inside the cased frame separates the
balancing weights and ensures their smooth working. The inside lining
is usually grooved to take the elbow and soffit linings, and the
window board is fitted into a groove formed in the sill. The example
shown in fig. 7 has an extra deep bottom rail and bead; this enables
the lower sash to be raised so as to permit of ventilation between the
meeting rails without causing a draught at the bottom of the sash.
This is a considerable improvement upon the ordinary form, and the
cost of constructing the sashes in this manner is scarcely greater.
_Bay windows_ with cased frames and double hung sashes often require
the exercise of considerable ingenuity in their construction in order
that the mullions shall be so small as not to intercept more light
than necessary; at the same time the sashes must work easily and the
whole framing be stable and strong. The sills should be mitred and
tongued at the angles and secured by a hand-rail bolt. Frequently it
is not desired to hang all the sashes of a bay window, the side lights
being fixed. To enable smaller angle mullions to be obtained, the
cords of the front windows may be taken by means of pulleys over the
heads of the side lights and attached to counter-balance weights
working in casings at the junction of the window with the wall. This
enables solid angle mullions to be employed. If all the lights are
required to be hung the difficulty may be surmounted by hanging two
sashes to one weight. Lead weights take up less space than iron, and
are used for heavy sashes.
In framing and fixing _skylights_ and _lantern lights_ also great care
is necessary to ensure the result being capable of resisting rough
weather and standing firm in high winds. Glue should not be used in
any of the joints, as it would attract moisture from the atmosphere
and set up decay. Provision must be made for the escape of the water
which condenses on and runs down the under side of the glass, by means
of a lead-lined channelled moulding, provided with zinc or copper pipe
outlets. The skylight stands on a curb raised at least 6 in. to allow
of the exclusion of rain by proper flashing. The sashes of the lantern
usually take the form of fixed or hung casements fitted to solid
mullions and angle posts which are framed into and support a solid
head. The glazed framing of the roof is made up of moulded sash bars
framed to hips and ridges of stronger section, these rest on the head,
projecting well beyond it in order to throw off the water.
_Shutters_ for domestic windows have practically fallen into disuse,
but a reference to the different forms they may take is perhaps
necessary. They may be divided into two classes--those fixed to the
outside of the window and those fixed inside. They may be battened,
panelled or formed with louvres, the latter form admitting air and a
little light. External shutters are generally hung by means of hinges
to the frame of the window: when the window is set in a reveal these
hinges are necessarily of special shape, being of large projection to
enable the shutters to fold back against the face of the wall.
Internally fixed shutters may be hinged or may slide either vertically
or horizontally. Hinged folding boxed shutters are shown in the
illustration of a casement window (fig. 8), where the method of
working is clearly indicated; they are usually held in position by
means of a hinged iron bar secured with a special catch. Lifting
shutters are usually fitted in a casing formed in the window back, and
the window board is hinged to lift up, to allow the shutters to be
raised by means of rings fixed in their upper edges. The shutters are
balanced by weights enclosed with casings in the manner described for
double hung sashes. The panels are of course filled in with wood and
not glazed. The shutters are fixed by means of a thumb-screw through
the meeting rails, the lower sash being supported on the window board
which is closed down when the sashes have been lifted out. Shutters
sliding horizontally are also used in some cases, but they are not so
convenient as the forms described above.
_Shop-fronts._--The forming of shop-fronts may almost be considered a
separate branch of joiner's work. The design and construction are
attended by many minor difficulties, and, the requirements greatly
varying with almost every trade, careful study and close attention to
detail are necessary. In the erection of shop-fronts, in order to
allow the maximum width of glass with the minimum amount of
obstruction, many special sections of sash bars and stanchions are
used, the former often being reinforced by cast iron or steel of
suitable form. For these reasons the construction of shop-fronts and
fittings has been specialized by makers having a knowledge of the
requirements of different trades and with facilities for making the
special wood and metal fittings and casings necessary. Fig. 10 shows
an example of a simple shop-front in Spanish mahogany with rolling
shutters and spring roller blind; it indicates the typical
construction of a front, and reference to it will inform the reader on
many points which need no further description. The London Building
Act. 1894 requires the following regulations to be complied with in
shop-fronts:--(1) In streets of a width not greater than 30 ft. a
shop-front may project 5 in. beyond the external wall of the building
to which it belongs, and the cornice may project 13 in. (2) In streets
of a width greater than 30 ft., the projections of the shop-front may
be 10 in. and of the cornice 18 in. beyond the building line. No
woodwork of any shop-front shall be fixed higher than 25 ft. above the
level of the public pavement. No woodwork shall be fixed nearer than 4
in. to the centre of the party wall. The pier of brick or stone must
project at least an inch in front of the woodwork. These by-laws will
be made clear on reference to fig. 10, which is of a shop-front
designed to face on to a road more than 30 ft. wide.
_Rolling shutters_ for shop-fronts are made by a number of firms, and
are usually the subject of a separate estimate, being fixed by the
makers themselves. The shutter consists of a number of narrow strips
of wood, connected with each other by steel bands hinged at every
joint, or it may be formed in iron or steel. This construction allows
it to be coiled upon a cylinder containing a strong spring and usually
fixed on strong brackets behind the fascia. The shutter is guided into
position by the edges working in metal grooves a little under an inch
wide. When the width of the opening to be closed renders it necessary
to divide the shutters into more than one portion, grooved movable
pilasters are used, and when the shutters have to be lowered these are
fixed in position with bolts, the shutter working on the grooved edges
of the pilasters. _Spring roller canvas blinds_ work on a similar
principle. The wrought-iron blind arms are capable, when the blind is
extended, of being pushed up by means of a sliding arrangement, and
fixed with a pin at a level high enough to allow foot passengers to
pass along the pavement under them.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Shop-front.]
_Doors._--External doors are usually hung to solid frames placed in
the reveals of the brick or stone wall. The frames are rebated for the
door and ornamented by mouldings either stuck or planted on. The
_jambs_ or _posts_ are tenoned, wedged and glued to the head, and the
feet secured to the sill by stub tenons or dowels of iron. Solid
window frames are of similar construction and are used chiefly for
casements and sashes hung on centres as already described. Internal
doors are hung to jamb linings (fig. 7). They are usually about 1½ in.
thick and rebated for the door. When the width of jamb allows it,
panelling may be introduced as in the example shown. The linings are
nailed or screwed to rough framed grounds 1 in. in thickness plugged
or nailed to the wall or partition. _Architraves_ are the borders or
finishing mouldings fixed around a window or door opening, and screwed
or nailed to wood grounds. They are variously moulded according to the
fancy of the designer. The ordinary form of architrave is shown in the
illustration of a cased window frame (fig. 8), and a variation appears
in the combined architrave and over door frieze and capping fitted
around the six-panelled door (fig. 7). The latter would need to be
worked and framed in the shop and fixed entire. Polished hard wood
architraves may be secretly fixed, i.e. without the heads of nails or
screws showing on the face, by putting screws into the grounds with
their heads slightly projecting, and hanging the moulding on them by
means of keyhole slots formed in the back.
Doors may be made in a variety of ways. The simplest form, the _common
ledged_ door, consists of vertical boards with plain or matched joints
nailed to horizontal battens which correspond to the rails in framed
doors. For openings over 2 ft. 3 in. wide, the doors should be
furnished with braces. _Ledged and braced_ doors are similar, but
have, in addition to the ledges at the back, oblique braces which
prevent any tendency of the door to drop. The upper end of the brace
is birdsmouthed into the under side of the rail near the lock edge of
the door and crosses the door in an oblique direction to be
birdsmouthed into the upper edge of the rail below, near the hanging
edge of the door. This is done between each pair of rails. _Framed
ledged and braced_ doors are a further development of this form of
door. The framing consists of lock and hanging styles, top, middle and
bottom rails, with oblique braces between the rails. These members are
tenoned together and the door sheathed with boarding. The top rail and
styles are the full thickness of the door, the braces and middle and
bottom rails being less by the thickness of the sheathing boards,
which are tongued into the top rail and styles and carried down over
the other members to the bottom of the door. The three forms of door
described above are used mainly for temporary purposes, and stables,
farm buildings and outhouses of all descriptions. They are usually
hung by wrought-iron cross garnet or strap hinges fixed with screws or
through bolts and nuts.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Forms of Panelling.]
The doors in dwelling-houses and other buildings of a like character
are commonly _framed and panelled_ in one of the many ways possible.
The framing consists of styles, rails and muntins or mountings, and
these members are grooved to receive and hold the panels, which are
inserted previously to the door being glued and wedged up. The common
forms are doors in four or six rectangular panels, and although they
may be made with any form and number of panels, the principles of
construction remain the same. The example shown in fig. 7 is of a
six-panel door, with bolection moulded raised panels on one side, and
moulded and flat panels on the other (fig. 11).
A clear idea of the method of jointing the various members may be
obtained from fig. 12. The tongues of raised panels should be of
parallel thickness, the bevels being stopped at the moulding. The
projecting ends or _horns_ of the styles are cut off after the door
has been glued and wedged, as they prevent the ends of the styles
being damaged by the wedging process.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Joints.]
Where there is a great deal of traffic in both directions _swing
doors_, either single or double, are used. To open them it is
necessary simply to push, the inconvenience of turning a handle and
shutting the door after passing through being avoided, as a spring
causes the door to return to its original position without noise. They
are usually glazed and should be of substantial construction. The door
is hinged at the top on a steel pivot; the bottom part fits into a
metal shoe connected with the spring, which is placed in a box fixed
below the floor.
For large entrances, notably for hotels and banks, a form of door
working on the _turnstile_ principle is frequently adopted. It is
formed of four leaves fixed in the shape of a cross and working on top
and bottom central ball-bearing steel pivots, in a circular framing
which forms a kind of vestibule. The leaves of the door are fitted
with slips of india-rubber at their edges which, fitting close to the
circular framing, prevent draughts.
When an elegant appearance is desired, and it is at the same time
necessary to keep the cost of production as low as possible, doors of
pine or other soft wood are sometimes covered with a _veneer_ or thin
layer of hard wood, such as oak, mahogany or teak, giving the
appearance of a solid door of the better material. Made in the
ordinary way, however, the shrinkage or warping of the soft wood is
very liable to cause the veneer to buckle and peel off. Veneered doors
made on an improved method obviating this difficulty have been placed
on the market by a Canadian company. The core is made up of strips of
pine with the grain reversed, dried at a temperature of 200° F., and
glued up under pressure. Both the core and the hard wood veneer are
grooved over their surfaces, and a special damp-resisting glue is
applied; the two portions are then welded together under hydraulic
pressure. By reason of their construction these doors possess the
advantages of freedom from shrinking, warping and splitting, defects
which are all too common in the ordinary veneered and solid hard wood
doors.
The best glue for internal woodwork is that made in Scotland. Ordinary
animal glue should not be used in work exposed to the weather as it
absorbs damp and thus hastens decay; in its place a compound termed
_beaumontique_, composed of white lead, linseed oil and litharge,
should be employed.
_Church Work._--Joinery work in connexion with the fitting up of
church interiors must be regarded as a separate branch of the joiner's
art. Pitchpine is often used, but the best work is executed in English
oak; and when the screens, stalls and seating are well designed and
made in this material, a distinction and dignity of effect are added
to the interior of the church which cannot be obtained in any other
medium. The work is often of the richest character, and frequently
enriched with elaborate carving (fig. 13). Many beautiful specimens of
early work are to be seen in the English Gothic cathedrals and
churches; good work of a later date will be found in many churches and
public buildings erected in more recent years. Fine examples of Old
English joinery exist at Hampton Court Palace, the Temple Church in
London, the Chapel of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey, and Haddon
Hall. Specimens of modern work are to be seen in Beverley Minster in
Yorkshire, the Church of St Etheldreda in Ely Place, London, and the
Wycliffe Hall Chapel at Oxford. Other examples both ancient and modern
abound in the country.
_Carving_ is a trade apart from ordinary joinery, and requires a
special ability and some artistic feeling for its successful
execution. But even in this work machinery has found a place, and
carved ornaments of all descriptions are rapidly wrought with its aid.
Small carved mouldings especially are evolved in this manner, and,
being incomparably cheaper than those worked by manual labour, are
used freely where a rich effect is desired. Elaborately carved panels
also are made by machines and a result almost equal to work done
entirely by hand is obtained if, after machinery has done all in its
power, the hand worker with his chisels and gouges puts the finishing
touches to the work.
_Ironmongery._--In regard to the finishing of a building, no detail
calls for greater consideration than the selection and accurate fixing
of suitable ironmongery, which includes the hinges, bolts, locks, door
and window fittings, and the many varieties of metal finishings
required for the completion of a building. The task of the selection
belongs to the employer or the architect; the fixing is performed by
the joiner.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
Of _hinges_, the variety termed _butts_ are in general use for hanging
doors, and are so called from being fitted to the butt edge of the
door. They should be of wrought iron, cast-iron butts being liable to
snap should they sustain a shock. _Lifting butts_ are made with a
removable pin to enable the door to be removed and replaced without
unscrewing. _Rising butts_ have oblique joints which cause the door to
rise and clear a thick carpet and yet make a close joint with the
floor when shut. Hinges of brass or gun-metal are used in special
circumstances. Common forms of hinges used on ledged doors are the
_cross garnet_ and the _strap_. There are many varieties of _spring
hinges_ designed to bring the door automatically to a desired
position. With such hinges a rubber stop should be fixed on the floor
or other convenient place to prevent undue strain through the door
being forced back.
Among _locks and fastenings_ the ordinary _barrel_ or _tower_ bolt
needs no description. The _flush barrel_ is a bolt let in flush with
the face of a door. The _espagnolette_ is a development of the tower
bolt and extends the whole height of the door; a handle at a
convenient height, when turned, shooting bolts at the top and bottom
simultaneously. Their chief use is for French casements. The _padlock_
is used to secure doors by means of a staple and eye. The _stock_ lock
is a large rim lock with hard wood casing and is used for stables,
church doors, &c.; it is in the form of a dead lock opened only by a
key, and is often used in conjunction with a Norfolk latch. The _metal
cased_ rim lock is a cheap form for domestic and general use. The use
of a rim lock obviates the necessity of forming a mortice in the
thickness of the door which is required when a mortice lock is used.
_Finger plates_ add greatly to the good appearance of a door, and
protect the painted work. _Sash fasteners_ are fixed at the meeting
rails of double hung sashes to prevent the window being opened from
the outside and serve also to clip the two sashes tightly together.
They should be of a pattern to resist the attack of a knife inserted
between the rails. _Sash lifts_ and _pulls_ of brass or bronze are
fitted to large sashes. Ornamental _casement stays_ and fasteners in
many different metals are made in numerous designs and styles.
_Fanlight openers_ for single lights, or geared for a number of
sashes, may be designed to suit positions difficult of access.
The following are the principal books of reference on this subject: J.
Gwilt, _Encyclopaedia of Architecture_; Sutcliffe, _Modern House
Construction_; Rivington, _Notes on Building Construction_ (3 vols.);
H. Adams, _Building Construction_; C. F. Mitchell, _Building
Construction_; Robinson, _Carpentry and Joinery_; J. P. Allen,
_Practical Building Construction_; J. Newlands, _Carpenter and
Joiner's Assistant_; Bury, _Ecclesiastical Woodwork_; T. Tredgold and
Young, _Joinery_; Peter Nicholson, _Carpenter and Joiner's Assistant_.
(J. Bt.)
JOINT (through Fr. from Lat. _junctum_, _jungere_, to join), that which
joins two parts together or the place where two parts are joined. (See
JOINERY; JOINTS.) In law, the word is used adjectivally as a term
applied to obligations, estates, &c., implying that the rights in
question relate to the aggregate of the parties joined. Obligations to
which several are parties may be _several_, i.e. enforceable against
each independently of the others, or _joint_, i.e. enforceable only
against all of them taken together, or _joint and several_, i.e.
enforceable against each or all at the option of the claimant (see
GUARANTEE). So an interest or estate given to two or more persons for
their joint lives continues only so long as all the lives are in
existence. _Joint-tenants_ are co-owners who take together at the same
time, by the same title, and without any difference in the quality or
extent of their respective interests; and when one of the joint-tenants
dies his share, instead of going to his own heirs, lapses to his
co-tenants by survivorship. This estate is therefore to be carefully
distinguished from _tenancy in common_, when the co-tenants have each a
separate interest which on death passes to the heirs and not to the
surviving tenants. When several take an estate together any words or
facts implying severance will prevent the tenancy from being construed
as joint.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 4 - "Jevons, Stanley" to "Joint"" ***
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