VOLUME XII SLICE III Helmont, Jean to Hernösand (continued 11)
Reading edition
Although in Greece there was generally wide tolerance, yet in 399 B.C. Socrates “was indicted as an irreligious man, a corrupter of youth, and an innovator in worship.”
Besides the works quoted above, see Gottfried Arnold’s Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie (1699-1700; ed. Schaffhausen, 1740). A very good list of writers on heresy, ancient and medieval, is given in Burton’s Bampton Lectures on Heresies of the Apostolic Age (1829). The various Trinitarian and Christological heresies may be studied in Dorner’s History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ (1845-1856; Eng. trans., 1861-1862); the Gnostic and Manichaean heresies in the works of Mansel, Matter and Beausobre; the medieval heresies in Hahn’s Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter (1846-1850), and Preger’s Geschichte der deutschen Mystik (1875); Quietism in Heppe’s Geschichte der quietistischen Mystik (1875); the Pietist sects in Palmer’s Gemeinschaften und Secten Württembergs (1875); the Reformation and 17th-century heresies and sects in the Anabaptisticum et enthusiasticum Pantheon und geistliches Rüst-Haus (1702). Böhmer’s Jus ecclesiasticum Protestantium (1714-1723), and van Espen’s Jus ecclesiasticum (1702) detail at great length the relations of heresy to canon and civil law. On the question of the baptism of heretics see Smith and Cheetham’s Dict. of Eccl. Antiquities, “Baptism, Iteration of”; and on that of the readmission of heretics into the church, compare Martene, De ritibus, and Morinus, De poenitentia.
(A. E. G.*)
Heresy according to the Law of England.—The highest point reached by the ecclesiastical power in England was in the Act De Haeretico comburendo (2 Henry IV. c. 15). Some have supposed that a writ of that name is as old as the common law, but its execution might be arrested by a pardon from the crown. The Act of Henry IV. enabled the diocesan alone, without the co-operation of a synod, to pronounce sentence of heresy, and required the sheriff to execute it by burning the offender, without waiting for the consent of the crown.2 A large number of penal statutes were enacted in the following reigns, and the statute 1 Eliz. c. 1 is regarded by lawyers as limiting for the first time the description of heresy to tenets declared heretical either by the canonical Scripture or by the first four general councils, or such as should thereafter be so declared by parliament with the assent of Convocation. The writ was abolished by 29 Car. II. c. 9, which reserved to the ecclesiastical courts their jurisdiction over heresy and similar offences, and their power of awarding punishments not extending to death. Heresy became henceforward a purely ecclesiastical offence, although disabling laws of various kinds continued to be enforced against Jews, Catholics and other dissenters. The temporal courts have no knowledge of any offence known as heresy, although incidentally (e.g. in questions of copyright) they have refused protection to persons promulgating irreligious or blasphemous opinions. As an ecclesiastical offence it would at this moment be almost impossible to say what opinion, in the case of a layman at least, would be deemed heretical. Apparently, if a proper case could be made out, an ecclesiastical court might still sentence a layman to excommunication for heresy, but by no other means could his opinions be brought under censure. The last case on the subject (Jenkins v. Cook, L.R. 1 P.D. 80) leaves the matter in the same uncertainty. In that case a clergyman refused the communion to a parishioner who denied the personality of the devil. The judicial committee held that the rights of the parishioners are expressly defined in the statute of I Edw. VI. c. i, and, without admitting that the canons of the church, which are not binding on the laity, could specify a lawful cause for rejection, held that no lawful cause within the meaning of either the canons or the rubric had been shown. It was maintained at the bar that the denial of the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity would not be a lawful cause for such rejection, but the judgment only queries whether a denial of the personality of the devil or eternal punishment is consistent with membership of the church. The right of every layman to the offices of the church is established by statute without reference to opinions, and it is not possible to say what opinions, if any, would operate to disqualify him.
The case of clergymen is entirely different. The statute 13 Eliz. c. 12, § 2, enacts that “if any person ecclesiastical, or which shall have an ecclesiastical living, shall advisedly maintain or affirm any doctrine directly contrary or repugnant to any of the said articles, and by conventicle before the bishop of the diocese, or the ordinary, or before the queen’s highness’s commissioners in matters ecclesiastical, shall persist therein or not revoke his error, or after such revocation eftsoons affirm such untrue doctrine,” he shall be deprived of his ecclesiastical promotions. The act it will be observed applies only to clergymen, and the punishment is strictly limited to deprivation of benefice. The judicial committee of the privy council, as the last court of appeal, has on several occasions pronounced judgments by which the scope of the act has been confined to its narrowest legal effect. The court will construe the Articles of Religion and formularies according to the legal rules for the interpretation of statutes and written instruments. No rule of doctrine is to be ascribed to the church which is not distinctly and expressly stated or plainly involved in the written law of the Church, and where there is no rule, a clergyman may express his opinion without fear of penal consequences. In the Essays and Reviews cases (Williams v. the Bishop of Salisbury, and Wilson v. Fendall, 2 Moo. P.C.C., N.S. 375) it was held to be not penal for a clergyman to speak of merit by transfer as a “fiction,” or to express a hope of the ultimate pardon of the wicked, or to affirm that any part of the Old or New Testament, however unconnected with religious faith or moral duty, was not written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In the case of Noble v. Voysey (L.R. 3 P.C. 357) in 1871 the committee held that it was not bound to affix a meaning to articles of really dubious import, as it would have been in cases affecting property. At the same time any manifest contradiction of the Articles, or any obvious evasion of them, would subject the offender to the penalties of deprivation. In some of the cases the question has been raised how far the doctrine of the church could be ascertained by reference to the opinions generally expressed by divines belonging to its communion. Such opinions, it would seem, might be taken into account as showing the extent of liberty which had been in practice, claimed and exercised on the interpretation of the articles, but would certainly not be allowed to increase their stringency. It is not the business of the court to pronounce upon the absolute truth or falsehood of any given opinion, but simply to say whether it is formally consistent with the legal doctrines of the Church of England. Whether Convocation has any jurisdiction in cases of heresy is a question which has occasioned some difference of opinion among lawyers. Hale, as quoted by Phillimore (Ecc. Law), says that before the time of Richard II., that is, before any acts of Parliament were made about heretics, it is without question that in a convocation of the clergy or provincial synod “they might and frequently did here in England proceed to the sentencing of heretics.” But later writers, while adhering to the statement that Convocation might declare opinions to be heretical, doubted whether it could proceed to punish the offender, even when he was a clerk in orders. Phillimore states that there is no longer any doubt, even apart from the effect of the Church Discipline Act 1840, that Convocation has no power to condemn clergymen for heresy. The supposed right of Convocation to stamp heretical opinions with its disapproval was exercised on a somewhat memorable occasion. In 1864 the Convocation of the province of Canterbury, having taken the opinion of two of the most eminent lawyers of the day (Sir Hugh Cairns and Sir John Rolt), passed judgment upon the volume entitled Essays and Reviews. The judgment purported to “synodically condemn the said volume as containing teaching contrary to the doctrine received by the United Church of England and Ireland, in common with the whole Catholic Church of Christ.” These proceedings were challenged in the House of Lords by Lord Houghton, and the lord chancellor (Westbury), speaking on behalf of the government, stated that if there was any “synodical judgment” it would be a violation of the law, subjecting those concerned in it to the penalties of a praemunire, but that the sentence in question, was “simply nothing, literally no sentence at all.” It is thus at least doubtful whether Convocation has a right even to express an opinion unless specially authorized to do so by the crown, and it is certain that it cannot do anything more. Heresy or no heresy, in the last resort, like all other ecclesiastical questions, is decided by the judicial committee of the council.
The English lawyers, following the Roman law, distinguish between heresy and apostasy. The latter offence is dealt with by an act which still stands on the statute book, although it has long been virtually obsolete—the 9 & 10 Will. III. c. 35. If any person who has been educated in or has professed the Christian religion shall, by writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking, assert or maintain that there are more Gods than one, or shall deny any of the persons of the Holy Trinity to be God, or shall deny the Christian religion to be true or the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be of divine authority, he shall for the first offence be declared incapable of holding any ecclesiastical, civil, or military office or employment, and for the second incapable of bringing any action, or of being guardian, executor, legatee, or grantee, and shall suffer three years’ imprisonment without bail. Unitarians were saved from these atrocious penalties by a later act (53 Geo. III. c. 160), which permits Christians to deny any of the persons in the Trinity without penal consequences.
1 For fuller details see separate articles.
2 Stephen’s Commentaries, bk. iv. ch. 7.
HEREWARD, usually but erroneously styled “the Wake” (an addition of later days), an Englishman famous for his resistance to William the Conqueror. It is now established that he was a tenant of Peterborough Abbey, from which he held lands at Witham-on-the-Hill and Barholme with Stow in the south-western corner of Lincolnshire, and of Crowland Abbey at Rippingale in the neighbouring fenland. His first authentic act is the storm and sacking of Peterborough in 1070, in company with outlaws and Danish invaders. The next year he took part in the desperate stand against the Conqueror’s rule made in the isle of Ely, and, on its capture by the Normans, escaped with his followers through the fens. That his exploits made an exceptional impression on the popular mind is certain from the mass of legendary history that clustered round his name; he became, says Mr Davis, “in popular eyes the champion of the English national cause.” The Hereward legend has been fully dealt with by him and by Professor Freeman, who observed that “with no name has fiction been more busy.”
See E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, vol. iv.; J. H. Round, Feudal England; H. W. C. Davis, England under the Normans and Angevins.
(J. H. R.)
HERFORD, a town in the Prussian province of Westphalia, situated at the confluence of the Werre and Aa, on the Minden & Cologne railway, 9 m. N.E. of Bielefeld, and at the junction of the railway to Detmold and Altenbeken. Pop. (1885) 15,902; (1905) 24,821. It possesses six Evangelical churches, notably the Münsterkirche, a Romanesque building with a Gothic apse of the 15th century; the Marienkirche, in the Gothic style; and the Johanniskirche, with a steeple 280 ft. high. The other principal buildings are the Roman Catholic church, the synagogue, the gymnasium founded in 1540, the agricultural school and the theatre. There is a statue of Frederick William of Brandenburg. The industries include cotton and flax-spinning, and the manufacture of linen cloth, carpets, furniture, machinery, sugar, tobacco and leather.
Herford owes its origin to a Benedictine nunnery which is said to have been founded in 832, and was confirmed by the emperor Louis the Pious in 839. From the emperor Frederick I. the abbess obtained princely rank and a seat in the imperial diet. Among the abbesses was the celebrated Elizabeth (1618-1680), eldest daughter of the elector palatine Frederick V., who was a philosophical princess, and a pupil of Descartes. Under her rule the sect of the Labadists settled for some time in Herford. The foundation was secularized in 1803. Herford was a member of the Hanseatic League, and its suzerainty passed in 1547 from the abbesses to the dukes of Juliers. In 1631 it became a free imperial town, but in 1647 it was subjugated by the elector of Brandenburg. It came into the possession of Westphalia in 1807, and in 1813 into that of Prussia.
See L. Hölscher, Reformationsgeschichte der Stadt Herford (Gütersloh, 1888).
HERGENRÖTHER, JOSEPH VON (1824-1890), German theologian, was born at Würzburg in Bavaria on the 15th of September 1824. He studied at Würzburg and at Rome. After spending a year as parish priest at Zellingen, near his native city, he went, in 1850, at his bishop’s command, to the university of Munich, where he took his degree of doctor of theology the same year, becoming in 1851 Privatdozent, and in 1855 professor of ecclesiastical law and history. At Munich he gained the reputation of being one of the most learned theologians on the Ultramontane side of the Infallibility question, which had begun to be discussed; and in 1868 he was sent to Rome to arrange the proceedings of the Vatican Council. He was a stanch supporter of the infallibility dogma; and in 1870 he wrote Anti-Janus, an answer to The Pope and the Council, by “Janus” (Döllinger and J. Friedrich), which made a great sensation at the time. In 1877 he was made prelate of the papal household; he became cardinal deacon in 1879, and was afterwards made curator of the Vatican archives. He died in Rome on the 3rd of October 1890.
Hergenröther’s first published work was a dissertation on the doctrine of the Trinity according to Gregory Nazianzen (Regensburg, 1850), and from this time onward his literary activity was immense. After several articles and brochures on Hippolytus and the question of the authorship of the Philosophumena, he turned to the study of Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, and the history of the Greek schism. For twelve years he was engaged upon this work, the result being his monumental Photius, Patriarch von Constantinopel. Sein Leben, seine Schriften und das griechische Schisma (3 vols., Regensburg, 1867-1869); an additional volume (1869) gave, under the title Monumenta Graeca ad Photium ... pertinentia, a collection of the unpublished documents on which the work was largely based. Of Hergenröther’s other works, the most important are his history of the Papal States since the Revolution (Der Kirchenstaat seit der französischen Revolution, Freiburg i. B., 1860; Fr. trans., Leipzig, 1860), his great work on the relations of church and state (Katholische Kirche und christlicher Staat in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung und in Beziehung auf Fragen der Gegenwart, 2 parts, Freiburg i. B., 1872; 2nd ed. expanded, 1876; Eng. trans., London, 1876, Baltimore, 1889), and his universal church history (Handbuch der allgemeinen Kirchengeschichte, 3 vols., Freiburg i. B., 1876-1880; 2nd ed., 1879, &c.; 3rd ed., 1884-1886; 4th ed., by Peter Kirsch, 1902, &c.; French trans., Paris, 1880, &c.). He also found time for a while to edit the new edition of Wetzer and Welte’s Kirchenlexikon (1877), to superintend the publication of part of the Regesta of Pope Leo X. (Freiburg i. B., 1884-1885), and to add two volumes to Hefele’s Conciliengeschichte (ib., 1887 and 1890).
HERINGSDORF, a seaside resort of Germany, in the Prussian province of Pomerania, on the north coast of the island of Usedom, 5 m. by rail N.W. of Swinemünde. It is surrounded by beech woods, and is perhaps the most popular seaside resort on the German shore of the Baltic, being frequented by some 12,000 visitors annually.
HERIOT, GEORGE (1563-1623), the founder of Heriot’s Hospital, Edinburgh, was descended from an old Haddington family; his father, a goldsmith in Edinburgh, represented the city in the Scottish parliament. George was born in 1563, and after receiving a good education was apprenticed to his father’s trade. In 1586 he married the daughter of a deceased Edinburgh merchant, and with the assistance of her patrimony set up in business on his own account. At first he occupied a small “buith” at the north-east corner of St Giles’s church, and afterwards a more pretentious shop at the west end of the building. To the business of a goldsmith he joined that of a money-lender, and in 1597 he had acquired such a reputation that he was appointed goldsmith to Queen Anne, consort of James VI. In 1601 he became jeweller to the king, and followed him to London, occupying a shop opposite the Exchange. Heriot was largely indebted for his fortune to the extravagance of the queen, and the imitation of this extravagance by the nobility. Latterly he had such an extensive business as a jeweller that on one occasion a government proclamation was issued calling upon all the magistrates of the kingdom to aid him in securing the workmen he required. He died in London on the 10th of February 1623. In 1608, having some time previously lost his first wife, he married Alison Primrose, daughter of James Primrose, grandfather of the first earl of Rosebery, but she died in 1612; by neither marriage had he any issue. The surplus of his estate, after deducting legacies to his nearest relations and some of his more intimate friends, was bequeathed to found a hospital for the education of freemen’s sons of the town of Edinburgh; and its value afterwards increased so greatly as to supply funds for the erection of several Heriot foundation schools in different parts of the city.
Heriot takes a leading part in Scott’s novel, The Fortunes of Nigel (see also the Introduction). A History of Heriot’s Hospital, with a Memoir of the Founder, by William Steven, D.D., appeared in 1827; 2nd ed. 1859.
HERIOT, by derivation the arms and equipment (geatwa) of a soldier or army (here); the O. Eng. word is thus here-geatwa. The lord of a fee provided his tenant with arms and a horse, either as a gift or loan, which he was to use in the military service paid by him. On the death of the tenant the lord claimed the return of the equipment. When by the 10th century land was being given instead of arms, the heriot was still paid, but more in the nature of a “relief” (q.v.). There seems to have been some connexion between the payment of the heriot and the power of making a will (F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 298). By the 13th century the payment was made either in money or in kind by the handing over of the best beast or of the best other chattel of the tenant (see Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, i. 270 sq.). For the manorial law relating to heriots, see Copyhold.
HERISAU, the largest town in the entire Swiss canton of Appenzell, built on the Glatt torrent, and by light railway 7 m. south-west of St Gall or 13½ m. north of Appenzell. In 1900 it had 13,497 inhabitants, mainly Protestant and German-speaking. The lower portion of the massive tower of the parish church (Protestant) dates from the 11th century or even earlier. It is a prosperous little industrial town in the Ausser Rhoden half of the canton, especially busied with the manufacture of embroidery by machinery, and of muslins. Near it is the goats’ whey cure establishment of Heinrichsbad, and the two castles of Rosenberg and Rosenburg, ruined in 1403 when the land rose against its lord, the abbot of St Gall. About 5 m. to the south-east is Hundwil, a village of 1523 inhabitants, where the Landsgemeinde of Ausser Rhoden meets In the odd years (in other years at Trogen) on the last Sunday in April.
HERITABLE JURISDICTIONS, in the law of Scotland, grants of jurisdiction made to a man and his heirs. They were a usual accompaniment to feudal tenures, and the power which they conferred on great families, being recognized as a source of danger to the state, led to frequent attempts being made by statute to restrict them, both before and after the Union. They were all abolished in 1746.
HERKIMER, a village and the county-seat of Herkimer county, New York, U.S.A., in the township of the same name, on the Mohawk river, about 15 m. S.E. of Utica. Pop. (1900) 5555 (724 being foreign-born); (1905, state census) 6596; (1910) 7520. It is served by the New York Central & Hudson River railway, a branch of which (the Mohawk & Malone railway) extends through the Adirondacks to Malone, N.Y.; by inter-urban electric railway to Little Falls, Syracuse, Richfield Springs, Cooperstown and Oneonta, and by the Erie canal. The village has a public library, and is the seat of the Folts Mission Institute (opened 1893), a training school for young women, controlled by the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Herkimer is situated in a rich dairying region, and has various manufactures. The municipality owns and operates its water-supply system and electric-lighting plant. Herkimer, named in honour of General Nicholas Herkimer (c. 1728-1777), who was mortally wounded in the Battle of Oriskany, and in whose memory there is a monument (unveiled on the 6th of August 1907) in the village, was settled about 1725 by Palatine Germans, who bought from the Mohawk Indians a large tract of land including the present site of the village and established thereon several settlements which became known collectively as the “German Flats.” In 1756 a stone house, built in 1740 by General Herkimer’s father, John Jost Herkimer (d. 1775)—apparently one of the original group of settlers—a stone church, and other buildings, standing within what is now Herkimer village, were enclosed in a stockade and ditch fortifications by Sir William Johnson, and this post, at first known as Fort Kouari (the Indian name), was subsequently called Fort Herkimer. Another fort (Ft. Dayton) was built within the limits of the present village in 1776 by Colonel Elias Dayton (1737-1807), who later became a brigadier-general (1783) and served in the Confederation Congress in 1787-1788. During the French and Indian War the settlement was attacked (12th November 1757) and practically destroyed, many of the settlers being killed or taken prisoners; and it was again attacked on the 30th of April 1758. In the War of Independence General Herkimer assembled here the force which on the 6th of August 1777 was ambushed near Oriskany on its march from Ft. Dayton to the relief of Ft. Schuyler (see Oriskany); and the settlement was attacked by Indians and “Tories” in September 1778 and in June 1782. The township of Herkimer was organized in 1788, and in 1807 the village was incorporated.
See Nathaniel I. Benton, History of Herkimer County (Albany, 1856); and Phoebe S. Cowen, The Herkimers and Schuylers, (1903).
HERKOMER, SIR HUBERT VON (1849- ), British painter, was born at Waal, in Bavaria, and eight years later was brought to England by his father, a wood-carver of great ability. He lived for some time at Southampton and in the school of art there began his art training; but in 1866 he entered upon a more serious course of study at the South Kensington Schools, and in 1869 exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy. By his picture, “The Last Muster,” at the Academy in 1875, he definitely established his position as an artist of high distinction. He was elected an associate of the Academy in 1879, and academician in 1890; an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1893, and a full member in 1894; and in 1885 he was appointed Slade professor at Oxford. He exhibited a very large number of memorable portraits, figure subjects and landscapes, in oil and water colour; he achieved marked success as a worker in enamel, as an etcher, mezzotint engraver and illustrative draughtsman; and he exercised wide influence upon art education by means of the Herkomer School (Incorporated), at Bushey, which he founded in 1883 and directed gratuitously until 1904, when he retired. It was then voluntarily wound up, and is now conducted privately. Two of his pictures, “Found” (1885) and “The Chapel of the Charterhouse” (1889), are in the National Gallery of British Art. In the year 1907 he received the honorary degree of D.C.L. at Oxford, and a knighthood was conferred upon him by the king in addition to the commandership of the Royal Victorian Order with which he was already decorated.
See Hubert von Herkomer, R.A., a Study and a Biography, by A. L. Baldry (London, 1901); Professor Hubert Herkomer, Royal Academician, His Life and Work, by W. L. Courtney (London, 1892).
HERLEN (or Herlin), FRITZ, of Nördlingen, German artist of the early Swabian school, in the 15th century. The date and place of his birth are unknown, but his name is on the roll of the tax-gatherers of Ulm in 1449; and in 1467 he was made citizen and town painter at Nördlingen, “because of his acquaintance with Flemish methods of painting.” One of the first of his acknowledged productions is a shrine on one of the altars of the church of Rothenburg on the Tauber, the wings of which were finished in 1466, with seven scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary. In the town-hall of Rothenburg is a Madonna and St Catherine of 1467; and in the choir of Nördlingen cathedral a triptych of 1488, representing the “Nativity” and “Christ amidst the Doctors,” at the side of a votive Madonna attended by St Joseph and St Margaret as patrons of a family. In each of these works the painter’s name certifies the picture, and the manner is truly that of an artist “acquainted with Flemish methods.” We are not told under whom Herlen laboured in the Netherlands, but he probably took the same course as Schongauer and Hans Holbein the elder, who studied in the school of van der Weyden. His altarpiece at Rothenburg contains groups and figures, as well as forms of action and drapery, which seem copied from those of van der Weyden’s or Memlinc’s disciples, and the votive Madonna of 1488, whilst characterized by similar features, only displays such further changes as may be accounted for by the master’s constant later contact with contemporaries in Swabia. Herlen had none of the genius of Schongauer. He failed to acquire the delicacy even of the second-rate men who handed down to Matsys the traditions of the 15th century; but his example was certainly favourable to the development of art in Swabia. By general consent critics have assigned to him a large altar-piece, with scenes from the gospels and figures of St Florian and St Floriana, and a Crucifixion, the principal figure of which is carved in high relief on the surface of a large panel in the church of Dinkelsbühl. A Crucifixion, with eight scenes from the New Testament, is shown as his in the cathedral, a “Christ in Judgment, with Mary and John,” and the “Resurrection of Souls” in the town-hall of Nördlingen. A small Epiphany, once in the convent of the Minorites of Ulm, is in the Holzschuher collection at Augsburg, a Madonna and Circumcision in the National Museum at Munich. Herlen’s epitaph, preserved by Rathgeber, states that he died on the 12th of October 1491, and was buried at Nördlingen.
HERMAE, in Greek antiquities, quadrangular pillars, broader above than at the base, surmounted by a head or bust, so called either because the head of Hermes was most common or from their etymological connexion with the Greek word ἕρματα (blocks of stone), which originally had no reference to Hermes at all. In the oldest times Hermes, like other divinities, was worshipped in the form of a heap of stones or of an amorphous block of wood or stone, which afterwards took the shape of a phallus, the symbol of productivity. The next step was the addition of a head to this phallic column which became quadrangular (the number 4 was sacred to Hermes, who was born on the fourth day of the month), with the significant indication of sex still prominent. In this shape the number of herms rapidly increased, especially those of Hermes, for which the distinctive name of Hermhermae has been suggested. In Athens they were found at the corners of streets; before the gates and in the courtyards of houses, where they were worshipped by women as having the power to make them prolific; before the temples; in the gymnasia and palaestrae. On each side of the road leading from the Stoa Poikile to the Stoa Basileios, rows of Hermae were set up in such numbers by the piety of private individuals or public corporations, that the Stoa Basileios was called the Stoa of the Hermae. The function of Hermes as protector of the roads, of merchants and of commerce, explains the number of Hermae that served the purpose of signposts on the roads outside the city. It is stated in the pseudo-Platonic Hipparchus that the son of Peisistratus had set up marble pillars at suitable places on the roads leading from the different country districts to Athens, having the places connected with the roads inscribed on the one side in a hexameter verse, and on the other a pentameter containing a short proverb or moral precept for the edification of travellers. Sometimes they bore inscriptions celebrating the valour of those who had fought for their country. Just as it was customary for the passer-by to show respect to the rudest form of the god (the heap of stones) by contributing a stone to the heap or anointing it with oil, in like manner small offerings, generally of dried figs, were deposited near the Hermae, to appease the hunger of the necessitous wayfarer. Garlands of flowers were also suspended on the two arm-like tenons projecting from either side of the column at the top (for the oracle at Pharae see Hermes). These pillars were also used to mark the frontier boundaries or the limits of different estates. The great respect attaching to them is shown by the excitement caused in Athens by the “Mutilation of the Hermae” just before the departure of the Sicilian expedition (May 415 B.C.). They formed the object of a special industry, the makers of them being called Hermoglyphi. The surmounting heads were not, however, confined to those of Hermes; those of other gods and heroes, and even of distinguished mortals, were of frequent occurrence. In this case a compound was formed: Hermathena (a herm of Athena), Hermares, Hermaphroditus, Hermanubis, Hermalcibiades, and so on. In the case of these compounds it is disputed whether they indicated a herm with the head of Athena, or with a Janus-like head of both Hermes and Athena, or a figure compounded of both deities. The Romans not only borrowed the Hermes pillars for their deities which at an early period they assimilated to those of the Greeks (as Heracles—Hercules) but also for the indigenous gods who preserved their individuality. Thus herms of Jupiter Terminalis (the hermae being identified with the Roman termini) and of Silvanus occur. Under the empire, the function of the hermae was rather architectural than religious. They were used to keep up the draperies in the interior of a house, and in the Circus Maximus they were used to support the barriers.
See the article with bibliography by Pierre Paris in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités; for the mutilation of the Hermae, Thucydides vi. 27; Andocides, De mysteriis; Grote, Hist. of Greece, ch. 58; H. Weil, Études sur l’antiquité grecque (1900); Burolt, Griech. Gesch. (ed. 1904), III. ii. p. 1287.
HERMAGORAS, of Temnos, Greek rhetorician of the Rhodian school and teacher of oratory in Rome, flourished during the first half of the 1st century B.C. He obtained a great reputation among a certain section and founded a special school, the members of which called themselves Hermagorei. His chief opponent was Posidonius of Rhodes, who is said to have contended with him in argument in the presence of Pompey (Plutarch, Pompey, 42). Hermagoras devoted himself particularly to the branch of rhetoric known as οἰκονομία (inventio), and is said to have invented the doctrine of the four στάσεις (status) and to have arranged the parts of an oration differently from his predecessors. Cicero held an unfavourable opinion of his methods, which were approved by Quintilian, although he considers that Hermagoras neglected the practical side of rhetoric for the theoretical. According to Suidas and Strabo, he was the author of τέχναι ῥητορικαί (rhetorical manuals) and of other works, which should perhaps be attributed to his younger namesake, surnamed Carion, the pupil of Theodorus of Gadara.
See Strabo xiii. p. 621; Cicero, De inventione, i. 6. 8, Brutus, 76, 263. 78, 271; Quintilian, Instit. iii. 1. 16, 3. 9, 11. 22; C. W. Piderit, De Hermagora rhetore (1839); G. Thiele, Hermagoras Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Rhetorik (1893).
HERMANDAD (from hermano, Lat. germanus, a brother), a Castilian word meaning, strictly speaking, a brotherhood. In the Romance language spoken on the east coast of Spain in Catalonia it is written germandat or germania. In the form germania it has acquired the significance of “thieves’ Latin” or “thieves’ cant,” and is applied to any jargon supposed to be understood only by the Initiated. But the typical “germania” is a mixture of slang and of the gipsy language. The hermandades have played a conspicuous part in the history of Spain. The first recorded case of the formation of an hermandad occurred in the 12th century when the towns and the peasantry of the north united to police the pilgrim road to Santiago in Galicia, and protect the pilgrims against robber knights. Throughout the middle ages such alliances were frequently formed by combinations of towns to protect the roads connecting them, and were occasionally extended to political purposes. They acted to some extent like the Fehmic courts of Germany. The Catholic sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, adapted an existing hermandad to the purpose of a general police acting under officials appointed by themselves, and endowed with large powers of summary jurisdiction even in capital cases. The hermandad became, in fact, a constabulary, which, however, fell gradually into neglect. In Catalonia and Valencia the “germanias” were combinations of the peasantry to resist the exactions of the feudal lords.
HERMAN DE VALENCIENNES, 12th-century French poet, was born at Valenciennes, of good parentage. His father and mother, Robert and Hérembourg, belonged to Hainault, and gave him for god-parents Count Baldwin and Countess Yoland—doubtless Baldwin IV. of Hainault and his mother Yoland. Herman was a priest and the author of a verse Histoire de la Bible, which includes a separate poem on the Assumption of the Virgin. The work is generally known as Le Roman de sapience, the name arising from a copyist’s error in the first line of the poem:
“Comens de sapiense, ce est la cremors de Deu”
the first word being miswritten in one MS. Romens, and In another Romanz. His work has, indeed, the form of an ordinary romance, and cannot be regarded as a translation. He selects such stories from the Bible as suit his purpose, and adds freely from legendary sources, displaying considerable art in the selection and use of his materials. This scriptural poem, very popular in its day, mentions Henry II. of England as already dead, and must therefore be assigned to a date posterior to 1189.
See Notices et extraits des manuscrits (Paris, vol. 34), and Jean Bonnard, Les Traductions de la Bible en vers français au moyen âge (1884).
HERMANN I. (d. 1217), landgrave of Thuringia and count palatine of Saxony, was the second son of Louis II. the Hard, landgrave of Thuringia, and Judith of Hohenstaufen, sister of the emperor Frederick I. Little is known of his early years, but in 1180 he joined a coalition against Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, and with his brother, the landgrave Louis III., suffered a short imprisonment after his defeat at Weissensee by Henry. About this time he received from his brother Louis the Saxon palatinate, over which he strengthened his authority by marrying Sophia, sister of Adalbert, count of Sommerschenburg, a former count palatine. In 1190 Louis died and Hermann by his energetic measures frustrated the attempt of the emperor Henry VI. to seize Thuringia as a vacant fief of the Empire, and established himself as landgrave. Having joined a league against the emperor he was accused, probably wrongly, of an attempt to murder him. Henry was not only successful in detaching Hermann from the hostile combination, but gained his support for the scheme to unite Sicily with the Empire. In 1197 Hermann went on crusade. When Henry VI. died in 1198 Hermann’s support was purchased by the late emperor’s brother Philip, duke of Swabia, but as soon as Philip’s cause appeared to be weakening he transferred his allegiance to Otto of Brunswick, afterwards the emperor Otto IV. Philip accordingly invaded Thuringia in 1204 and compelled Hermann to come to terms by which he surrendered the lands he had obtained in 1198. After the death of Philip and the recognition of Otto he was among the princes who invited Frederick of Hohenstaufen, afterwards the emperor Frederick II., to come to Germany and assume the crown. In consequence of this step the Saxons attacked Thuringia, but the landgrave was saved by Frederick’s arrival in Germany in 1212. After the death of his first wife in 1195 Hermann married Sophia, daughter of Otto I., duke of Bavaria. By her he had four sons, two of whom, Louis and Henry Raspe, succeeded their father in turn as landgrave. Hermann died at Gotha on the 25th of April 1217, and was buried at Reinhardsbrunn. He was fond of the society of men of letters, and Walther von der Vogelweide and other Minnesingers were welcomed to his castle of the Wartburg. In this connexion he figures in Wagner’s Tannhäuser.
See E. Winkelmann, Philipp von Schwaben und Otto IV. von Braunschweig (Leipzig, 1873-1878); T. Knochenhauer, Geschichte Thüringens (Gotha, 1871); and F. Wachter, Thüringische und obersächsische Geschichte (Leipzig, 1826).
HERMANN OF REICHENAU (Herimannus Augiensis), commonly distinguished as Hermannus Contractus, i.e. the Lame (1013-1054), German scholar and chronicler, was the son of Count Wolferad of Alshausen in Swabia. Hermann, who became a monk of the famous abbey of Reichenau, is at once one of the most attractive and one of the most pathetic figures of medieval monasticism. Crippled and distorted by gout from his childhood, he was deprived of the use of his legs; but, in spite of this, he became one of the most learned men of his time, and exercised a great personal and intellectual influence on the numerous band of scholars he gathered round him. He died on the 24th of September 1054, at the family castle of Alshausen near Biberach. Besides the ordinary studies of the monastic scholar, he devoted himself to mathematics, astronomy and music, and constructed watches and instruments of various kinds.
His chief work is a Chronicon ad annum 1054, which furnishes important and original material for the history of the emperor Henry III. The first edition, from a MS. no longer extant, was printed by J. Sichard at Basel in 1529, and reissued by Heinrich Peter in 1549; another edition appeared at St Blaise in 1790 under the supervision of Ussermann; and a third, as a result of the collation of numerous MSS., forms part of vol. v. of Pertz’s Monumenta Germaniae historica. A German translation of the last is contributed by K. F. A. Nobbe to Die Geschichtsschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit (1st ed., Berlin, 1851; 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1893). The separate lives of Conrad II. and Henry III., often ascribed to Hermann, appear to have perished. His treatises De mensura astrolabii and De utilitatibus astrolabii (to be found, on the authority of Salzburg MSS., in Pez, Thesaurus anecdotorum novissimus, iii.) being the first contributions of moment furnished by a European to this subject, Hermann was for a time considered the inventor of the astrolabe. A didactic poem from his pen, De octo vitiis principalibus, is printed in Haupt’s Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum (vol. xiii.); and he is sometimes credited with the composition of the Latin hymns Veni Sancte Spiritus, Salve Regina, and Alma Redemptoris. A martyrologium by Hermann was discovered by E. Dümmler in a MS. at Stuttgart, and was published by him in “Das Martyrologium Notkers und seine Verwandten” in Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, xxv. (Göttingen, 1885).
See H. Hansjakob, Herimann der Lahme (Mainz, 1875); Potthast, Bibliotheca med. aev. s. “Herimannus Augiensis.”
HERMANN OF WIED (1477-1552), elector and archbishop of Cologne, was the fourth son of Frederick, count of Wied (d. 1487), and was born on the 14th of January 1477. Educated for the Church, he became elector and archbishop in 1515, and ruled his electorate with vigour and intelligence, taking up at first an attitude of hostility towards the reformers and their teaching. A quarrel with the papacy turned, or helped to turn, his thoughts in the direction of Church reform, but he hoped this would come from within rather than from without, and with the aid of his friend John Gropper (1503-1559), began, about 1536, to institute certain reforms in his own diocese. One step led to another, and as all efforts at union failed the elector invited Martin Bucer to Cologne in 1542. Supported by the estates of the electorate, and relying upon the recess of the diet of Regensburg in 1541, he encouraged Bucer to press on with the work of reform, and in 1543 invited Melanchthon to his assistance. His conversion was hailed with great joy by the Protestants, and the league of Schmalkalden declared they were resolved to defend him; but the Reformation in the electorate received checks from the victory of Charles V. over William, duke of Cleves, and the hostility of the citizens of Cologne. Summoned both before the emperor and the pope, the elector was deposed and excommunicated by Paul III. in 1546. He resigned his office in February 1547, and retired to Wied. Hermann, who was also a bishop of Paderborn from 1532 to 1547, died on the 15th of August 1552.
See C. Varrentrapp, Hermann von Wied (Leipzig, 1878).
HERMANN, FRIEDRICH BENEDICT WILHELM VON (1795-1868), German economist, was born on the 5th of December 1795, at Dinkelsbühl in Bavaria. After finishing his primary education he was for some time employed in a draughtsman’s office. He then resumed his studies, partly at the gymnasium in his native town, partly at the universities of Erlangen and Würzburg. In 1817 he took up a private school at Nuremberg, where he remained for four years. After filling an appointment as teacher of mathematics at the gymnasium of Erlangen, he became in 1823 Privatdozent at the university in that town. His inaugural dissertation was on the notions of political economy among the Romans (Dissertatio exhibens sententias Romanorum ad oeconomiam politicam pertinentes, Erlangen, 1823). He afterwards acted as professor of mathematics at the gymnasium and polytechnic school in Nuremberg, where he continued till 1827. During his stay there he published an elementary treatise on arithmetic and algebra (Lehrbuch der Arith. u. Algeb., 1826), and made a journey to France to inspect the organization and conduct of technical schools in that country. The results of his investigation were published in 1826 and 1828 (Über technische Unterrichts-Anstalten). Soon after his return from France he was made professor extraordinarius of political science of the university of Munich, and in 1833 he was advanced to the rank of ordinary professor. In 1832 appeared the first edition of his great work on political economy, Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen. In 1835 he was made member of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences. From the year 1836 he acted as inspector of technical instruction in Bavaria, and made frequent journeys to Berlin and Paris in order to study the methods there pursued. In the state service of Bavaria, to which he devoted himself, he rose rapidly. In 1837 he was placed on the council for superintendence of church and school work; in 1839 he was entrusted with the direction of the bureau of statistics; in 1845 he was one of the councillors for the interior; in 1848 he sat as member for Munich in the national assembly at Frankfort. In this assembly Hermann, with Johann Heckscher and others, was mainly instrumental in organizing the so-called “Great German” party, and was selected as one of the representatives of their views at Vienna. Warmly supporting the customs union (Zollverein), he acted in 1851 as one of its commissioners at the great industrial exhibition at London, and published an elaborate report on the woollen goods. Three years later he was president of the committee of judges at the similar exhibition at Munich, and the report of its proceedings was drawn up by him. In 1855 he became councillor of state, the highest honour in the service. From 1835 to 1847 he contributed a long series of reviews, mainly of works on economical subjects, to the Münchener gelehrte Anzeigen and also wrote for Rau’s Archiv der politischen Ökonomie and the Augsburger allgemeine Zeitung. As head of the bureau of statistics he published a series of valuable annual reports (Beiträge zur Statistik des Königreichs Bayern, Hefte 1-17, 1850-1867). He was engaged at the time of his death, on the 23rd of November 1868, upon a second edition of his Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen, which was published in 1870.
Hermann’s rare technological knowledge gave him a great advantage in dealing with some economic questions. He reviewed the principal fundamental ideas of the science with great thoroughness and acuteness. “His strength,” says Roscher, “lies in his clear, sharp, exhaustive distinction between the several elements of a complex conception, or the several steps comprehended in a complex act.” For keen analytical power his German brethren compare him with Ricardo. But he avoids several one-sided views of the English economist. Thus he places public spirit beside egoism as an economic motor, regards price as not measured by labour only but as a product of several factors, and habitually contemplates the consumption of the labourer, not as a part of the cost of production to the capitalist, but as the main practical end of economics.
See Kautz, Gesch. Entwicklung d. National-Ökonomik, pp. 633-638; Roscher, Gesch. d. Nat.-Ökon. in Deutschland, pp. 860-879.
HERMANN, JOHANN GOTTFRIED JAKOB (1772-1848), German classical scholar and philologist, was born at Leipzig on the 28th of November 1772. Entering the university of his native city at the age of fourteen, Hermann at first studied law, which he soon abandoned for the classics. After a session at Jena in 1793-1794, he became a lecturer on classical literature in Leipzig, in 1798 professor extraordinarius of philosophy in the university, and in 1803 professor of eloquence (and poetry, 1809). He died on the 31st of December 1848. Hermann maintained that an accurate knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages was the only road to a clear understanding of the intellectual life of the ancient world, and the chief, if not the only, aim of philology. As the leader of this grammatico-critical school, he came into collision with A. Böckh and Otfried Müller, the representatives of the historico-antiquarian school, which regarded Hermann’s view of philology as inadequate and one-sided.
Hermann devoted his early attention to the classical poetical metres, and published several works on that subject, the most important being Elementa doctrinae metricae (1816), in which he set forth a scientific theory based on the Kantian categories. His writings on Greek grammar are also valuable, especially De emendanda ratione Graecae grammaticae (1801), and notes and excursus on Viger’s treatise on Greek idioms. His editions of the classics include several of the plays of Euripides; the Clouds of Aristophanes (1799); Trinummus of Plautus (1800); Poëtica of Aristotle (1802); Orphica (1805); the Homeric Hymns (1806); and the Lexicon of Photius (1808). In 1825 Hermann finished the edition of Sophocles begun by Erfurdt. His edition of Aeschylus was published after his death in 1852. The Opuscula, a collection of his smaller writings in Latin, appeared in seven volumes between 1827 and 1839.
See monographs by O. Jahn (1849) and H. Köchly (1874); C. Bursian, Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in Deutschland (1883); art. in Allgem. deutsche Biog.; Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol. iii.
HERMANN, KARL FRIEDRICH (1804-1855), German classical scholar and antiquary, was born on the 4th of August 1804, at Frankfort-on-Main. Having studied at the universities of Heidelberg and Leipzig, he went for a tour in Italy, on his return from which he lectured as Privatdozent in Heidelberg. In 1832 he was called to Marburg as professor ordinarius of classical literature; and in 1842 he was transferred to Göttingen to the chair of philology and archaeology, vacant by the death of Otfried Müller. He died at Göttingen on the 31st of December 1855. His knowledge of all branches of classical learning was profound, but he was chiefly distinguished for his works on Greek antiquities and ancient philosophy. Among these may be mentioned the Lehrbuch der griechischen Antiquitäten (new ed., 1889) dealing with political, religious and domestic antiquities; the Geschichte und System der Platonischen Philosophie (1839), unfinished; an edition of the Platonic Dialogues (6 vols., 1851-1853); and Culturgeschickte der Griechen und Römer (1857-1858), published after his death by C. G. Schmidt. He also edited the text of Juvenal and Persius (1854) and Lucian’s De conscribenda historia (1828). A collection of Abhandlungen und Beiträge appeared in 1849.
See M. Lechner, Zur Erinnerung an K. F. Hermann (1864), and article by C. Halm in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xii. (1880).
HERMAPHRODITUS, in Greek mythology, a being, partly male, partly female, originally worshipped as a divinity. The conception undoubtedly had its origin in the East, where deities of a similar dual nature frequently occur. The oldest traces of the cult in Greek countries are found in Cyprus. Here, according to Macrobius (Saturnalia, iii. 8) there was a bearded statue of a male aphrodite, called Aphroditos by Aristophanes (probably in his Νίοβος, a similar variant). Philochorus in his Atthis (ap. Macrobius loc. cit.) further identified this divinity, at whose sacrifices men and women exchanged garments, with the moon. This double sex also attributed to Dionysus and Priapus—the union in one being of the two principles of generation and conception—denotes extensive fertilizing and productive powers. This Cyprian Aphrodite is the same as the later Hermaphroditos, which simply means Aphroditos in the form of a herm (see Hermae), and first occurs in the Characteres (16) of Theophrastus. After its introduction at Athens (probably in the 5th century B.C.), the importance of this being seems to have declined. It appears no longer as the object of a special cult, but limited to the homage of certain sects, expressed by superstitious rites of obscure significance. The still later form of the legend, a product of the Hellenistic period, is due to a mistaken etymology of the name. In accordance with this, Hermaphroditus is the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, of whom the nymph of the fountain of Salmacis in Caria became enamoured while he was bathing. When her overtures were rejected, she embraced him and entreated the gods that she might be for ever united with him. The result was the formation of a being, half man, half woman. This story is told by Ovid (Metam. iv. 285) to explain the peculiarly enervating qualities of the water of the fountain. Strabo (xiv. p. 656) attributes its bad reputation to the attempt of the inhabitants of the country to find some excuse for the demoralization caused by their own luxurious and effeminate habits of life. There was a famous statue of Hermaphroditus by Polycles of Athens, probably the younger of the two statuaries of that name. In later Greek art he was a favourite subject.
See articles in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités, and Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; and for art, A. Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen Altertums (1884-1888).
HERMAS, SHEPHERD OF, one of the works representing the Apostolic Fathers (q.v.), a hortatory writing which “holds the mirror up” to the Church in Rome during the 3rd Christian generation. This is the period indicated by the evidence of the Muratorian Canon, which assigns it to the brother of Pius, Roman bishop c. 139-154. Probably it was not the fruit of a single effort of its author. Rather its contents came to him piecemeal and at various stages in his ministry as a Christian “prophet,” extending over a period of years; and, like certain Old Testament prophets, he shows us how by his own experiences he became the medium of a divine message to his church and to God’s “elect” people at large.
In its present form it falls under three heads: Visions, Mandates, Similitudes. But these divisions are misleading. The personal and preliminary revelation embodied in Vision i. brings the prophet a new sense of sin as essentially a matter of the heart, and an awakened conscience as before the “glory of God,” the Creator and Upholder of all things. His responsibility also for the sad state of religion at home is emphasized, and he is given a mission of repentance to his erring children. How far in all this and in the next vision the author is describing facts, and how far transforming his personal history into a type (after the manner of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress), the better to impress his moral upon his readers, is uncertain. But the whole style of the work, with its use of conventional apocalyptic forms, favours the more symbolic view. Vision ii. records his call proper, through revelation of his essential message, to be delivered both to his wife and children and to “all the saints who have sinned unto this day” (2. 4). It contains the assurances of forgiveness even for the gravest sins after baptism (save blasphemy of the Name and betrayal of the brethren, Sim. ix. 19), “if they repent with their whole heart and remove doubts from their minds. For the Master hath sworn by His glory (‘His Son,’ below) touching His elect, that if there be more sinning after this day which He hath limited, they shall not obtain salvation. For the repentance of the righteous hath an end; the days of repentance for all saints are fulfilled.... Stand fast, then, ye that work righteousness and be not of doubtful mind.... Happy are all ye that endure the great tribulation which is to come.... The Lord is nigh unto them that turn to Him, as it is written in the book of Eldad and Modad, who prophesied to the people in the wilderness.”
Here, in the gist of the “booklet” received from the hand of a female figure representing the Church, we have in germ the message of The Shepherd. But before Hermas announces it to the Roman Church, and through “Clement”1 to the churches abroad, there are added two Visions (iii. iv.) tending to heighten its impressiveness. He is shown the “holy church” under the similitude of a tower in building, and the great and final tribulation (already alluded to as near at hand) under that of a devouring beast, which yet is innocuous to undoubting faith.
Hermas begins to deliver the message of Vis. i.-iv., as bidden. But as he does so, it is added to, in the way of detail and illustration, by a fresh series of revelations through an angel in the guise of a Shepherd, who in a preliminary interview announces himself as the Angel of Repentance, sent to administer the special “repentance” which it was Hermas’s mission to declare. This interview appears in our MSS. as Vis. v.,2 but is really a prelude to the Mandates and Similitudes which form the bulk of the whole work, hence known as “The Shepherd.” The relation of this second part to Vis. i.-iv. is set forth by the Shepherd himself. “I was sent, quoth he, to show thee again all that thou sawest before, to wit the sum of the things profitable for thee. First of all write thou my mandates and similitudes; and the rest, as I will show thee, so shalt thou write.” This programme is fulfilled in the xii. Mandates—perhaps suggested by the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (see Didache), which Hermas knows—and Similitudes i.-viii., while Simil. ix. is “the rest” and constitutes a distinct “book” (Sim. ix. 1. 1, x. 1. 1). In this latter the building of the Tower, already shown in outline in Vis. iii., is shown “more carefully” in an elaborate section dealing with the same themes. One may infer that Sim. ix. represents a distinctly later stage in Hermas’s ministry—during the whole of which he seems to have committed to writing what he received on each occasion,3 possibly for recital to the church (cf. Vis. ii. fin.). Finally came Sim. x., really an epilogue in which Hermas is “delivered” afresh to the Shepherd, for the rest of his days. He is “to continue in this ministry” of proclaiming the Shepherd’s teaching, “so that they who have repented or are about to repent may have the same mind with thee,” and so receive a good report before God (Sim. x. 2 2-4). Only they must “make haste to do aright,” lest while they delay the tower be finished (4. 4), and the new aeon dawn (after the final tribulation: cf. Vis. iv. 3. 5).
The relation here indicated between the Shepherd’s instruction and the initial message of one definitive repentance, open to those believers who have already “broken” their “seal” of baptism by deadly sins, as announced in Visions i.-iv. is made yet plainer by Sim. vi. 1. 3 f. “These mandates are profitable to such as are about to repent; for except they walk in them their repentance is in vain.” Hermas sees that mere repentance is not enough to meet the backsliding condition in which so many Christians then were, owing to the recoil of inveterate habits of worldliness4 entrenched in society around and within. It is, after all, too negative a thing to stand by itself or to satisfy God. “Cease, Hermas,” says the Church, “to pray all about thy sins. Ask for righteousness also” (Vis. iii. 1. 6). The positive Christian ideal which “the saints” should attain, “the Lord enabling,” it is the business of the Shepherd to set forth.
Here lies a great merit of Hermas’s book, his insight into experimental religion and the secret of failure in Christians about him, to many of whom Christianity had come by birth rather than personal conviction. They shared the worldly spirit in its various forms, particularly the desire for wealth and the luxuries it affords, and for a place in “good society”—which meant a pagan atmosphere. Thus they were divided in soul between spiritual goods and worldly pleasures, and were apt to doubt whether the rewards promised by God to the life of “simplicity” (all Christ meant by the childlike spirit, including generosity in giving and forgiving) and self-restraint, were real or not. For while the expected “end of the age” delayed, persecutions abounded. Such “doubled-souled” persons, like Mr Facing-both-ways, inclined to say, “The Christian ideal may be glorious, but is it practicable?” It is this most fatal doubt which evokes the Shepherd’s sternest rebuke; and he meets it with the ultimate religious appeal, viz. to “the glory of God.” He who made man “to rule over all things under heaven,” could He have given behests beyond man’s ability? If only a man “hath the Lord in his heart,” he “shall know that there is nothing easier nor sweeter nor gentler than these mandates” (Mand. xii. 3-4). So in the forefront of the Mandates stands the secret of all: “First of all believe that there is one God.... Believe therefore in Him, and fear Him, and fearing Him have self-mastery. For the fear of the Lord dwelleth in the good desire,” and to “put on” this master-desire is to possess power to curb “evil desire” in all its shapes (Mand. xii. 1-2). Elsewhere “good desire” is analysed into the “spirits” of the several virtues, which yet are organically related, Faith being mother, and Self-mastery her daughter, and so on (Vis. iii. 8. 3 seq.; cf. Sim. ix. 15). These are the specific forms of the Holy Spirit power, without whose indwelling the mandates cannot be kept (Sim. x. 3; cf. ix. 13. 2, 24. 2).
Thus the “moralism” sometimes traced in Hermas is apparent rather than real, for he has a deep sense of the enabling grace of God. His defect lies rather in not presenting the historic Christ as the Christian’s chief inspiration, a fact which connects itself with the strange absence of the names “Jesus” and “Christ.” He uses rather “the Son of God,” in a peculiar Adoptianist sense, which, as taken for granted in a work by the bishop’s own brother, must be held typical of the Roman Church of his day. But as it is implicit and not part of his distinctive message, it did not hinder his book from enjoying wide quasi-canonical honour during most of the Ante-Nicene period.
The absence of the historic names, “Jesus” and “Christ,” may be due to the form of the book as purporting to quote angelic communications. This would also explain the absence of explicit scriptural citations generally, though knowledge both of the Old Testament and of several New Testament books—including the congenially symbolic Gospel of John—is clear (cf. The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, Oxford, 1905, 105 seq.). The one exception is a prophetic writing, the apocryphal Book of Eldad and Modad, which is cited apparently as being similar in the scope of its message. Among its non-scriptural sources may be named the allegoric picture of human life known as Tabula Cebetis (cf. C. Taylor, as below), the Didache, and perhaps certain “Sibylline Oracles.”
Hermas regarded Christians as “justified by the most reverend Angel” (i.e. the pre-existent Holy Spirit or Son, who dwelt in Christ’s “flesh”), in baptism, the “seal” which even Old Testament saints had to receive in Hades (Sim. ix. 16. 3-7) and so attain to “life.” Yet the degree of “honour” (e.g. that of martyrs, Vis. iii. 2; Sim. ix. 28), the exact place in the kingdom or consummated church (the Tower), is given as reward for zeal in doing God’s will beyond the minimum requisite in all. Here comes in Hermas’s doctrine of works of supererogation, in fulfilment of counsels of perfection, on lines already seen in Did. vi. 2, cf. i. 4, and reappearing in the two types of Christian recognized by Clement and Origen and in later Catholicism. Again his doctrine of fasting is a spiritualizing of a current opus operatum conception on Jewish lines as though “keeping a watch” (statio) in that way atoned for sins (Sim. v.). The Shepherd enjoins instead, first, as “a perfect fast,” a fast “from every evil word and every evil desire, ... from all the vanities of this world-age” (3. 6; cf. Barn. iii. and the Oxyrhynchus Saying, “except ye fast from the world”); and next, as a counsel of perfection, a fast to yield somewhat for the relief of the widow and orphan, that this extra “service” may be to God for a “sacrifice.”
Generally speaking, Hermas’s piety, especially in its language, adheres closely to Old Testament forms. But it is doubtful (pace Spina and Völter, who assume a Jewish or a proselyte basis) whether this means more than that the Old Testament was still the Scriptures of the Church. In this respect, too, Hermas faithfully reflects the Roman Church of the early 2nd century (cf. the language of 1 Clem., esp. the liturgical parts, and even the Roman Mass). Indeed the prime value of the Shepherd is the light it casts on Christianity at Rome in the otherwise obscure period c. 110-140, when it had as yet hardly felt the influences converging on it from other centres of tradition and thought. Thus Hermas’s comparatively mild censures on Gnostic teachers in Sim. ix. suggest that the greater systems, like the Valentinian and Marcionite, had not yet made an impression there, as Harnack argues that they must have done by c. 145. This date, then, is a likely lower limit for Hermas’s revision of his earlier prophetic memoranda, and their publication in a single homogeneous work, such as the Shepherd appears to be. Its wider historic significance—it was felt by its author to be adapted to the needs of the Church at large, and was generally welcomed as such—is great but hard to determine in detail.5 What is certain is its influence on the development of the Church’s policy as to discipline in grave cases, like apostasy and adultery—a burning question for some generations from the end of the 2nd century, particularly in Rome and North Africa. Indirectly, too, Hermas tended to keep alive the idea of the Christian prophet, even after Montanism had helped to discredit it.
Literature.—The chief modern edition is by O. von Gebhardt and A. Harnack, in Fasc. iii. of their Patr. apost. opera (Leipzig, 1877); it is edited less fully by F. X. Funk, Patr. apost. (Tübingen, 1901), and in an English trans., with Introduction and occasional notes, by Dr C. Taylor (S.P.C.K., 2 vols., 1903-1906). For the wide literature of the subject, see the two former editions, also Harnack’s Chronologie der altchr. Lit. i. 257 seq., and O. Bardenhewer, Gesch. der altkirchl. Lit. i. 557 seq. For the authorship see Apocalyptic Literature, sect. III.
(J. V. B.)
1 More than one interpretation, typical or otherwise, of this “Clement” is possible; but none justifies us in assigning even to this Vision a date consistent with that usually given to the traditional bishop of this name (see Clement I.). Yet we may have to correct the dubious chronology of the first Roman bishops by this datum, and prolong his life to about A.D. 110. This is Harnack’s date for the nucleus of Vis. ii., though he places our Vis. i.-iii. later in Trajan’s reign, and thinks Vis. iv. later still.
2 That a prior vision in which Hermas was “delivered” to the Shepherd’s charge, has dropped out, seems implied by Vis. v. 3 f., Sim. x. 1. 1.
3 Harnack places “The Shepherd” proper mostly under Hadrian (117-138), and the completed work c. 140-145.
4 A careful study of practical Christian ethics at Rome as implied in the Shepherd, will be found in E. von Dobschütz, Christian Life in the Primitive Church (1904).
5 Note the prestige of martyrs and confessors, the ways of true and false prophets in Mand. xi., and the different types of evil and good “walk” among Christians, e.g. in Vis. iii. 5-7; Mand. viii.; Sim. viii.
HERMENEUTICS (Gr. ἑρμηνευτική, sc. τέχνη, Lat. ars hermeneutica, from ἑρμηνεύειν, to interpret, from Hermes, the messenger of the gods), the science or art of interpretation or explanation, especially of the Holy Scriptures (see Theology).
HERMES, a Greek god, identified by the Romans with Mercury. The derivation of his name and his primitive character are very uncertain. The earliest centres of his cult were Arcadia, where Mt. Cyllene was reputed to be his birthplace, the islands of Lemnos, Imbros and Samothrace, in which he was associated with the Cabeiri and Attica. In Arcadia he was specially worshipped as the god of fertility, and his images were ithyphallic, as also were the “Hermae” at Athens. Herodotus (ii. 51) states that the Athenians borrowed this type from the Pelasgians, thus testifying to the great antiquity of the phallic Hermes. At Cyllene in Elis a mere phallus served as his emblem, and was highly venerated in the time of Pausanias (vi. 26. 3). Both in literature and cult Hermes was constantly associated with the protection of cattle and sheep; at Tanagra and elsewhere his title was κριοφόρος, the ram-bearer. As a pastoral god he was often closely connected with deities of vegetation, especially Pan and the nymphs. His pastoral character is recognized in the Iliad (xiv. 490) and the later epic hymn to Hermes; and his Homeric titles ἀκάκητα, ἐριούνιος, δώτωρ ἐάων, probably refer to him as the giver of fertility. In the Odyssey, however, he appears mainly as the messenger of the gods, and the conductor of the dead to Hades. Hence in later times he is often represented in art and mythology as a herald. The conductor of souls was naturally a chthonian god; at Athens there was a festival in honour of Hermes and the souls of the dead, and Aeschylus (Persae, 628) invokes Hermes, with Earth and Hades, in summoning a spirit from the underworld. The function of a messenger-god may have originated the conception of Hermes as a dream-god; he is called the “conductor of dreams” (ἡγήτωρ ὀνείρων), and the Greeks offered to him the last libation before sleep. As a messenger he may also have become the god of roads and doorways; he was the protector of travellers and his images were used for boundary-marks (see Hermae). It was a custom to make a cairn of stones near the wayside statues of Hermes, each passer-by adding a stone; the significance of the practice, which is found in many countries, is discussed by Frazer (Golden Bough, 2nd ed., iii. 10 f.) and Hartland (Legend of Perseus, ii. 228). Treasure found in the road (ἕρμαιον) was the gift of Hermes, and any stroke of good luck was attributed to him; but it may be doubted whether his patronage of luck in general was developed from his function as a god of roads. As the giver of luck he became a deity of gain and commerce (κερδῷος, ἀγοραῖος), an aspect which caused his identification with Mercury, the Roman god of trade. From this conception his thievish character may have been evolved. The trickery and cunning of Hermes is a prominent theme in literature from Homer downwards, although it is very rarely recognized in official cult.1 In the hymn to Hermes the god figures as a precocious child (a type familiar in folk-lore), who when a new-born babe steals the cows of Apollo. In addition to these characteristics various other functions were assigned to Hermes, who developed, perhaps, into the most complete type of the versatile Greek. In many respects he was a counterpart of Apollo, less dignified and powerful, but more human than his greater brother. Hermes was a patron of music, like Apollo, and invented the cithara; he presided over the games, with Apollo and Heracles, and his statues were common in the stadia and gymnasia. He became, in fact, the ideal Greek youth, equally proficient in the “musical” and “gymnastic” branches of Greek education. On the “musical” side he was the special patron of eloquence (λόγιος); in gymnastic, he was the giver of grace rather than of strength, which was the province of Heracles. Though athletic, he was one of the least militant of the gods; a title πρόμαχος, the Defender, is found only in connexion with a victory of young men (“ephebes”) in a battle at Tanagra. A further point of contact between Hermes and Apollo may here be noted: both had prophetic powers, although Hermes held a place far inferior to that of the Pythian god, and possessed no famous oracle. Certain forms of popular divination were, however, under his patronage, notably the world-wide process of divination by pebbles (θριαί). The “Homeric” Hymn to Hermes explains these minor gifts of prophecy as delegated by Apollo, who alone knew the mind of Zeus. Only a single oracle is recorded for Hermes, in the market-place of Pharae in Achaea, and here the procedure was akin to popular divination. An altar, furnished with lamps, was placed before the statue; the inquirer, after lighting the lamps and offering incense, placed a coin in the right hand of the god; he then whispered his question into the ear of the statue, and, stopping his own ears, left the market place. The first sound which he heard outside was an omen.
From the foregoing account it will be seen that it is difficult to derive the many-sided character of Hermes from a single elemental conception. The various theories which identified him with the sun, the moon or the dawn, may be dismissed, as they do not rest on evidence to which value would now be attached. The Arcadian or “Pelasgic” Hermes may have been an earth-deity, as his connexion with fertility suggests; but his symbol at Cyllene rather points to a mere personification of reproductive powers. According to Plutarch the ancients “set Hermes by the side of Aphrodite,” i.e. the male and female principles of generation; and the two deities were worshipped together in Argos and elsewhere. But this phallic character does not explain other aspects of Hermes, as the messenger-god, the master-thief or the ideal Greek ephebe. It is impossible to adopt the view that the Homeric poets turned the rude shepherd-god of Arcadia into a messenger, in order to provide him with a place in the Olympian circle. To their Achaean audience Hermes must have been more than a phallic god. It is more probable that the Olympian Hermes represents the fusion of several distinct deities. Some scholars hold that the various functions of Hermes may have originated from the idea of good luck which is so closely bound up with his character. As a pastoral god he would give luck to the flocks and herds; when worshipped by townspeople, he would give luck to the merchant, the orator, the traveller and the athlete. But though the notion of luck plays an important part in early thought, it seems improbable that the primitive Greeks would have personified a mere abstraction. Another theory, which has much to commend it, has been advanced by Roscher, who sees in Hermes a wind-god. His strongest arguments are that the wind would easily develop into the messenger of the gods (Διὸς οὖρος), and that it was often thought to promote fertility in crops and cattle. Thus the two aspects of Hermes which seem most discordant are referred to a single origin. The Homeric epithet Ἀργειφόντης, which the Greeks interpreted as “the slayer of Argus,” inventing a myth to account for Argus, is explained as originally an epithet of the wind (ἀργεστής), which clears away the mists (ἀργός, φαίνω). The uncertainty of the wind might well suggest the trickery of a thief, and its whistling might contain the germ from which a god of music should be developed. But many of Roscher’s arguments are forced, and his method of interpretation is not altogether sound. For example, the last argument would equally apply to Apollo, and would lead to the improbable conclusion that Apollo was a wind-god. It must, in fact, be remembered that men make their gods after their own likeness; and, whatever his origin, Hermes in particular was endowed with many of the qualities and habits of the Greek race. If he was evolved from the wind, his character had become so anthropomorphic that the Greeks had practically lost the knowledge of his primitive significance; nor did Greek cult ever associate him with the wind.
The oldest form under which Hermes was represented was that of the Hermae mentioned above. Alcamenes, the rival or pupil of Pheidias, was the sculptor of a herm at Athens, a copy of which, dating from Roman times, was discovered at Pergamum in 1903. But side by side with the Hermae there grew up a more anthropomorphic conception of the god. In archaic art he was portrayed as a full-grown and bearded man, clothed in a long chiton, and often wearing a cap (κυνῆ) or a broad-brimmed hat (πέτασος), and winged boots. Sometimes he was represented in his pastoral character, as when he bears a sheep on his shoulders; at other times he appears as the messenger or herald of the gods with the κηρυκεῖον, or herald’s staff, which is his most frequent attribute. From the latter part of the 5th century his art-type was changed in conformity with the general development of Greek sculpture. He now became a nude and beardless youth, the type of the young athlete. In the 4th century this type was probably fixed by Praxiteles in his statue of Hermes at Olympia.
Authorities.—F. G. Welcker, Griech. Götterl. i. 342 f. (Göttingen, 1857-1863); L. Preller, ed. C. Robert, Griech. Mythologie, ii. 385 seq. (Berlin, 1894); W. H. Roscher, Lex. der griech. u. röm. Mythologie, s.v. (Leipzig, 1884-1886); A. Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, ii. 225 seq. (London, 1887); C. Daremberg and E. Saglio, Dict. des ant. grecques et rom.; Farnell, Cults v. (1909); O. Gruppe, Griech. Mythologie u. Religionsgesch. p. 1318 seq. (Munich, 1906). In the article Greek Art, figs. 43 and 82 (Plate VI.) represent the Hermes of Praxiteles; fig. 57 (Plate II.), a professed copy of the Hermes of Alcamenes.
(E. E. S.)
1 We only hear of a Hermes δόλιος at Pellene (Paus. vii. 27. 1) and of the custom of allowing promiscuous thieving during the festival of Hermes at Samos (Plut. Quaest. Graec. 55).
HERMES, GEORG (1775-1831), German Roman Catholic theologian, was born on the 22nd of April 1775, at Dreyerwalde, in Westphalia, and was educated at the gymnasium and university of Münster, in both of which institutions he afterwards taught. In 1820 he was appointed professor of theology at Bonn, where he died on the 26th of May 1831. Hermes had a devoted band of adherents, of whom the most notable was Peter Josef Elvenich (1796-1886), who became professor at Breslau in 1829, and in 1870 threw in his lot with the Old Catholic movement. His works were Untersuchungen über die innere Wahrheit des Christenthums (Münster, 1805), and Einleitung in die christkatholische Theologie, of which the first part, a philosophical introduction, was published in 1819, the second part, on positive theology, in 1829. The Einleitung was never completed. His Christkatholische Dogmatik was published, from his lectures, after his death by two of his students, Achterfeld and Braun (3 vols., 1831-1834).
The Einleitung is a remarkable work, both in itself and in its effect upon Catholic theology in Germany. Few works of modern times have excited a more keen and bitter controversy. Hermes himself was very largely under the influence of the Kantian and Fichtean ideas, and though in the philosophical portion of his Einleitung he criticizes both these thinkers severely, rejects their doctrine of the moral law as the sole guarantee for the existence of God, and condemns their restricted view of the possibility and nature of revelation, enough remained of purely speculative material to render his system obnoxious to his church. After his death, the contests between his followers and their opponents grew so bitter that the dispute was referred to the papal see. The judgment was adverse, and on the 25th of September 1835 a papal bull condemned both parts of the Einleitung and the first volume of the Dogmatik. Two months later the remaining volumes of the Dogmatik were likewise condemned. The controversy did not cease, and in 1845 a systematic attempt was made anonymously by F. X. Werner to examine and refute the Hermesian doctrines, as contrasted with the orthodox Catholic faith (Der Hermesianismus, 1845). In 1847 the condemnation of 1835 was confirmed by Pius IX.
See K. Werner, Geschichte der katholischen Theologie (1866), pp. 405 sqq.
HERMES TRISMEGISTUS (“the thrice greatest Hermes”), an honorific designation of the Egyptian Hermes, i.e. Thoth (q.v.), the god of wisdom. In late hieroglyphic the name of Thoth often has the epithet “the twice very great,” sometimes “the thrice very great”; in the popular language (demotic) the corresponding epithet is “the five times very great,” found as early as the 3rd century B.C. Greek translations give ὁ μέγας καὶ μέγας and μέγιστος: τρίσμεγας occurs in a late magical text. ὁ τρισμέγιστος has not yet been found earlier than the 2nd century A.D., but there can now be no doubt of its origin in the above Egyptian epithets.
Thoth was “the scribe of the gods,” “Lord of divine words,” and to Hermes was attributed the authorship of all the strictly sacred books generally called by Greek authors Hermetic. These, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, our sole ancient authority (Strom. vi. p. 268 et seq.), were forty-two in number, and were subdivided into six divisions, of which the first, containing ten books, was in charge of the “prophet” and dealt with laws, deities and the education of priests; the second, consisting of the ten books of the stolistes, the official whose duty it was to dress and ornament the statues of the gods, treated of sacrifices and offerings, prayers, hymns, festive processions; the third, of the “hierogrammatist,” also in ten books, was called “hieroglyphics,” and was a repertory of cosmographical, geographical and topographical information; the four books of the “horoscopus” were devoted to astronomy and astrology; the two books of the “chanter” contained respectively a collection of songs in honour of the gods and a description of the royal life and its duties; while the sixth and last division, consisting of the six books of the “pastophorus,” was medical. Clemens’s statement cannot be contradicted. Works are extant in papyri and on temple walls, treating of geography, astronomy, ritual, myths, medicine, &c. It is probable that the native priests would have been ready to ascribe the authorship or inspiration, as well as the care and protection of all their books of sacred lore to Thoth, although there were a goddess of writing (Seshit), and the ancient deified scribes Imuthes and Amenophis, and later inspired doctors Petosiris, Nechepso, &c., to be reckoned with; there are indeed some definite traces of such an attribution extant in individual cases. Whether a canon of such books was ever established, even in the latest times, may be seriously doubted. We know, however, that the vizier of Upper Egypt (at Thebes) in the eighteenth dynasty, had 40 (not 42) parchment rolls laid before him as he sat in the hall of audience. Unfortunately we have no hint of their contents. Forty-two was the number of divine assessors at the judgment of the dead before Osiris, and was the standard number of the nomes or counties in Egypt.
The name of Hermes seems during the 3rd and following centuries to have been regarded as a convenient pseudonym to place at the head of the numerous syncretistic writings in which it was sought to combine Neo-Platonic philosophy, Philonic Judaism and cabalistic theosophy, and so provide the world with some acceptable substitute for the Christianity which had even at that time begun to give indications of the ascendancy it was destined afterwards to attain. Of these pseudepigraphic Hermetic writings some have come down to us in the original Greek; others survive in Latin or Arabic translations; but the majority appear to have perished. That which is best known and has been most frequently edited is the Ποιμάνδρης sive De potestate et sapientia divina (Ποιμάνδρης being the Divine Intelligence, ποιμὴν ἀνδρῶν), which consists of fifteen chapters treating of such subjects as the nature of God, the origin of the world, the creation and fall of man, and the divine illumination which is the sole means of his deliverance. The editio princeps appeared in Paris in 1554; there is also an edition by G. Parthey (1854); the work has also been translated into German by D. Tiedemann (1781). Other Hermetic writings which have been preserved, and which have been for the most part collected by Patricius in the Nova de universis philosophia (1593), are (in Greek) Ἰατρομαθηματικά πρὸς Ἄμμωνα Αἰγύπτιον, Περὶ κατακλίσεως νοσούντων περιγνωστικά, Ἐκ τῆς μαθηματικῆς ἐπιστήμης πρὸς Ἄμμωνα: (in Latin) Aphorismi sive Centiloquium, Cyranides; (in Arabic, but doubtless from a Greek original) an address to the human soul, which has been translated by H. L. Fleischer (An die menschliche Seele, 1870).
The connexion of the name of Hermes with alchemy will explain what is meant by hermetic sealing, and will account for the use of the phrase “hermetic medicine” by Paracelsus, as also for the so-called “hermetic freemasonry” of the middle ages.
Besides Thoth, Anubis (q.v.) was constantly identified with Hermes; see also Horus.
See Ursinus, De Zoroastre, Hermete, &c. (Nuremberg, 1661); Nicolas Lenglet-Dufresnoy, L’Histoire de la philosophie hermétique (Paris, 1742); Baumgarten-Crusius, De librorum hermeticorum origine atque indole (Jena, 1827); B. J. Hilgers, De Hermetis Trismegisti Poëmandro (1855); R. Ménard, Hermès Trismégiste, traduction complète, précédée d’une étude sur l’origine des livres hermétiques (1866); R. Pietschmann, Hermes Trismegistus, nach ägyptischen, griechischen, und orientalischen Überlieferungen (1875); R. Reitzenstein, Poimandres, Studien zur griechisch-ägyptischen und frühchristlichen Literatur (Leipzig, 1904); G. R. S. Mead, Thrice Greatest Hermes (1907), introduction and translation.
(F. Ll. G.)
HERMESIANAX, of Colophon, elegiac poet of the Alexandrian school, flourished about 330 B.C. His chief work was a poem in three books, dedicated to his mistress Leontion. Of this poem a fragment of about one hundred lines has been preserved by Athenaeus (xiii. 597). Plaintive in tone, it enumerates instances, mythological and historical, of the irresistible power of love. Hermesianax, whose style is characterized by alternate force and tenderness, was exceedingly popular in his own times, and was highly esteemed even in the Augustan period.
Many separate editions have been published of the fragment, the text of which is in a very unsatisfactory condition: by F. W. Schneidewin (1838), J. Bailey (1839, with notes, glossary, and Latin and English versions), and others; R. Schulze’s Quaestiones Hermesianacteae (1858), contains an account of the life and writings of the poet and a section on the identity of Leontion.
HERMIAS. (1) A Greek philosopher of the Alexandrian school. A disciple of Proclus, he was known best for the lucidity of his method rather than for any original ideas. His chief works were a study of the Isagoge of Porphyry and a commentary on Plato’s Phaedrus. Unlike the majority of logicians of the time, he admitted the absolute validity of the second and third figures of the syllogism.
(2) A Christian apologist and philosopher who flourished probably in the 4th and 5th centuries. Nothing is known about his life, but there has been preserved of his writings a small thesis entitled Διασυρμὸς τῶν ἔξω φιλοσόφων. In this work he attacked pagan philosophy for its lack of logic in dealing with the root problems of life, the soul, the cosmos and the first cause or vital principle. There is an edition by von Otto published in the Corpus apologetarum (Jena, 1872). It is interesting, but without any claim to profundity of reasoning.
Two minor philosophers of the same name are known. Of these, one was a disciple of Plato and a friend of Aristotle; he became tyrant of Atarneus and invited Aristotle to his court. Aristotle subsequently married Pythias, who was either niece or sister of Hermias. Another Hermias was a Phoenician philosopher of the Alexandrian school; when Justinian closed the school of Athens, he was one of the five representatives of the school who took refuge at the Persian court.
HERMIPPUS, “the one-eyed,” Athenian writer of the Old Comedy, flourished during the Peloponnesian War. He is said to have written 40 plays, of which the titles and fragments of nine are preserved. He was a bitter opponent of Pericles, whom he accused (probably in the Μοῖραι) of being a bully and a coward, and of carousing with his boon companions while the Lacedaemonians were invading Attica. He also accused Aspasia of impiety and offences against morality, and her acquittal was only secured by the tears of Pericles (Plutarch, Pericles, 32). In the Ἀρτοπωλίδες (“Bakeresses”) he attacked the demagogue Hyperbolus. The Φορμοφόροι (Mat-carriers) contains many parodies of Homer. Hermippus also appears to have written scurrilous iambic poems after the manner of Archilochus.
Fragments in T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, i. (1880), and A. Meineke, Poëtarum Graecorum comicorum fragmenta (1855).
HERMIT, a solitary, one who withdraws from all intercourse with other human beings in order to live a life of religious contemplation, and so marked off from a “coenobite” (Gr. κοινός, common, and βίος, life), one who shares this life of withdrawal with others in a community (see Asceticism and Monasticism). The word “hermit” is an adaptation through the O. Fr. ermite or hermite, from the Lat. form, eremite, of the Gr. ἐρεμίτης, a solitary, from ἐρημία, a desert. The English form “eremite,” which was used, according to the New English Dictionary, quite indiscriminately with “hermit” till the middle of the 17th century, is now chiefly used in poetry or rhetorically, except with reference to the early hermits of the Libyan desert, or sometimes to such particular orders as the eremites of St Augustine (see Augustinian Hermits). Another synonym is “anchoret” or “anchorite.” This comes through the French and Latin forms from the Gr. ἀναχωρητής, from ἀναχωρεῖν, to withdraw. A form nearer to the Greek original, “anachoret,” is sometimes used of the early Christian recluses in the East.
HERMOGENES, of Tarsus, Greek rhetorician, surnamed Ξυστήρ (the polisher), flourished in the reign of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 161-180). His precocious ability secured him a public appointment as teacher of his art while as yet he was only a boy; but at the age of twenty-five his faculties gave way, and he spent the remainder of his long life in a state of intellectual impotence. During his early years, however, he had composed a series of rhetorical treatises, which became popular text-books, and the subject of subsequent commentaries. Of his Τέχνη ῥητορική we still possess the sections Περὶ τῶν στάσεων (on legal issues), Περὶ εὑρέσεως (on the invention of arguments), Περὶ ἰδεῶν (on the various kinds of style), Περὶ μεθόδου δεινότητος (on the method of speaking effectively), and Προγυμνάσματα (rhetorical exercises).
Editions by C. Walz (1832), and by L. Spengel (1854), in their Rhetores Graeci; bibliographical note on the commentaries in W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (1898).
HERMON, the highest mountain in Syria (estimated at 9050 to 9200 ft.), an outlier of the Anti-Lebanon. As the Hebrew name (חרמון, “belonging to a sanctuary,” “separate”) shows, it was always a sacred mountain. The Sidonians called it Sirion, and the Amorites Shenir (Deut. iii. 9). According to one theory it is the “high mountain” near Caesarea Philippi, which was the scene of the Transfiguration (Mark ix. 2). A curious reference in Enoch vi. 6, says that in the days of Jared the wicked angels descended on the summit of the mountain and named it Hermon. The modern name is Jebel es-Sheikh, or “mountain of the chief or elder.” It is also called Jebel eth-Thelj, “snowy mountain.” The ridge of Hermon, rising into a dome-shaped summit, is 20 m. long, extending north-east and south-west. The formation of the lower part is Nubian sandstone, that of the upper part is a hard dark-grey crystalline limestone belonging to the Neocomian period, and full of fossils. The spurs consist in some cases of white chalk covering the limestone, and on the south there are several basaltic outbreaks. The view from Hermon is very extensive, embracing all Lebanon and the plains east of Damascus, with Palestine as far as Carmel and Tabor. On a clear day Jaffa also may be seen. The mountain in spring is covered with snow, but in autumn there is occasionally none left, even in the ravines. To the height of 500 ft. it is clothed with oaks, poplars and brush, while luxuriant vineyards abound. Foxes, wolves and Syrian bears are not infrequently met with, and there is a heavy dew or night mist. Above the snow-limit the mountain is bare and covered with fine limestone shingle. The summit is a plateau from which three rocky knolls rise up, that on the west being the lowest, that on the south-east the highest. On the south slope of the latter are remains of a small temple or sacellum described by St Jerome. A semicircular dwarf wall of good masonry runs round this peak, and a trench excavated in the rock may perhaps indicate the site of an altar. On the plateau is a cave about 25 ft. sq. with the entrance on the east. A rock column supports the roof, and a building (possibly a Mithraeum) once stood above. Other small temples are found on the sides of Hermon, of which twelve in all have been explored. They face the east and are dated by architects about A.D. 200. The most remarkable are those of Deir el ‘Ashaiyir, Hibbariyeh, Hosn Niha and Tell Thatha. At the ruined town called Rukleh on the northern slopes are remains of a temple, the stones of which have been built into a church. A large medallion, 5 ft. in diameter, with a head supposed to represent the sun-god, is built into the wall. Several Greek inscriptions occur among these ruins. In the 12th century Psalm lxxxix. 12 was supposed to indicate the proximity of Hermon to Tabor. The conical hill immediately south of Tabor was thus named Little Hermon, and is still so called by some of the inhabitants of the district.
HERMSDORF, a village of Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia. Pop. (1900) 10,975. There are coal and iron mines and lime quarries in the vicinity, and in the town there are large iron-works. Hermsdorf is known as Niederhermsdorf to distinguish it from other places of the same name. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these is a village in Silesia at the foot of the Riesengebirge, chiefly famous for the ruins of the castle of Kynast. This castle, formerly the seat of the Schaffgotsch family, was destroyed by lightning in 1675. A third Hermsdorf is a village in Saxe-Altenburg, where porcelain is made.
HERNE, JAMES A. [originally Aherne] (1840-1901), American actor and playwright, was born in Troy, New York, and after theatrical experiences in various companies produced his own first play, Hearts of Oak, in 1878, and his great success Shore Acres in 1882. It was in rural drama that his humour and pathos found their proper setting, and Shore Acres was seen throughout the United States almost continuously for six seasons, being followed by the less successful Sag Harbor, 1900.
HERNE, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Westphalia, 15 m. by rail N.W. of Dortmund. Pop. (1905) 33,258. It has coal mines, boiler-works, gunpowder mills, &c. Herne was made a town in 1897.
HERNE BAY, a seaside resort in the St Augustine’s parliamentary division of Kent, England, 8 m. N. by E. of Canterbury, on the South Eastern and Chatham railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 6726. It has grown up since 1830, above a sandy and pebbly shore, and has a pier ¾ m. long. The church of St Martin in the village of Herne, 1½ m. inland, is Early English and later; the living was held by Nicholas Ridley (1538), afterwards Bishop of London. At Reculver, 3 m. E. of Herne Bay on the coast, is the site of the Roman station of Regulbium. The fortress occupied about 8 acres, but only traces of the south and east walls remain. In Saxon times it was converted into a palace by King Ethelbert, and in 669 a monastery was founded here by Egbert. The Early English church was taken down early in the 19th century owing to the encroachment of the sea, and parts of its fabric were preserved in the modern church of St Mary. But its twin towers, known as the Sisters from the tradition that they were built by a Benedictine abbess of Faversham in memory of her sister, were preserved by Trinity House as a conspicuous landmark.