VOLUME XV SLICE III Japan (part) to Jeveros (continued 8)

While Jenghiz was thus adding city to city and province to province in China, Kushlek, the fugitive Naiman chief, was not idle. With characteristic treachery he requested permission from his host, the Khitan khan, to collect the fragments of his army which had been scattered by Jenghiz at the battle on the Irtysh, and thus having collected a considerable force he leagued himself with Mahommed, the shah of Khwārizm, against the confiding khan. After a short but decisive campaign the allies remained masters of the position, and the khan was compelled to abdicate the throne in favour of the late guest.

With the power and prestige thus acquired, Kushlek prepared once again to measure swords with the Mongol chief. On receiving the news of his hostile preparations, Jenghiz at once took the field, and in the first battle routed the Naiman troops and made Kushlek a prisoner. His ill-gotten kingdom became an apanage of the Mongol Empire. Jenghiz now held sway up to the Khwārizm frontier. Beyond this he had no immediate desire to go, and he therefore sent envoys to Mahommed, the shah, with presents, saying, “I send thee greeting; I know thy power and the vast extent of thine empire; I regard thee as my most cherished son. On my part thou must know that I have conquered China and all the Turkish nations north of it; thou knowest that my country is a magazine of warriors, a mine of silver, and that I have no need of other lands. I take it that we have an equal interest in encouraging trade between our subjects.” This peaceful message was well received by the shah, and in all probability the Mongol armies would never have appeared in Europe but for an unfortunate occurrence. Shortly after the despatch of this first mission Jenghiz sent a party of traders into Transoxiana who were seized and put to death as spies by Inaljuk, the governor of Otrar. As satisfaction for this outrage Jenghiz demanded the extradition of the offending governor. Far from yielding to this summons, however, Mahommed beheaded the chief of the Mongol envoys, and sent the others back without their beards. This insult made war inevitable, and in the spring of 1219 Jenghiz set out from Karakorum on a campaign which was destined to be as startling in its immediate results as its ulterior effects were far-reaching. The invading force was in the first instance divided into two armies: one commanded by Jenghiz’s second son Jagatai was directed to march against the Kankalis, the northern defenders of the Khwārizm empire; and the other, led by Juji, his eldest son, advanced by way of Sighnak against Jand (Jend). Against this latter force Mahommed led an army of 400,000 men, who were completely routed, leaving it is said 160,000 dead upon the field. With the remnant of his host Mahommed fled to Samarkand. Meanwhile Jagatai marched down upon the Syr Daria (Jaxartes) by the pass of Taras and invested Otrar, the offending city. After a siege of five months the citadel was taken by assault, and Inaljuk and his followers were put to the sword. The conquerors levelled the walls with the ground, after having given the city over to pillage. At the same time a third army besieged and took Khojent on the Jaxartes; and yet a fourth, led by Jenghiz and his youngest son Tulē, advanced in the direction of Bokhara. Tashkent and Nur surrendered on their approach, and after a short siege Bokhara fell into their hands. On entering the town Jenghiz ascended the steps of the principal mosque, and shouted to his followers, “The hay is cut; give your horses fodder.” No second invitation to plunder was needed; the city was sacked, and the inhabitants either escaped beyond the walls or were compelled to submit to infamies which were worse than death. As a final act of vengeance the town was fired, and before the last of the Mongols left the district, the great mosque and certain palaces were the only buildings left to mark the spot where the “centre of science” once stood. From the ruins of Bokhara Jenghiz advanced along the valley of the Sogd to Samarkand, which, weakened by treachery, surrendered to him, as did also Balkh. But in neither case did submission save either the inhabitants from slaughter or the city from pillage. Beyond this point Jenghiz went no farther westward, but sent Tulē, at the head of 70,000 men, to ravage Khorasan, and two flying columns under Chēpē and Sabutai Bahadar to pursue after Mahommed who had taken refuge in Nishapur. Defeated and almost alone, Mahommed fled before his pursuers to the village of Astara on the shore of the Caspian Sea, where he died of an attack of pleurisy, leaving his empire to his son Jelaleddīn (Jalāl ud-din). Meanwhile Tulē carried his arms into the fertile province of Khorasan, and after having captured Nessa by assault appeared before Merv. By an act of atrocious treachery the Mongols gained possession of the city, and, after their manner, sacked and burnt the town. From Merv Tulē marched upon Nishapur, where he met with a most determined resistance. For four days the garrison fought desperately on the walls and in the streets, but at length they were overpowered, and, with the exception of 400 artisans who were sent into Mongolia, every man, woman and child was slain. Herat escaped the fate which had overtaken Merv and Nishapur by opening its gates to the Mongols. At this point of his victorious career Tulē received an order to join Jenghiz before Talikhan in Badakshan, where that chieftain was preparing to renew his pursuit of Jelaleddīn, after a check he had sustained in an engagement fought before Ghazni. As soon as sufficient reinforcements arrived Jenghiz advanced against Jelaleddīn, who had taken up a position on the banks of the Indus. Here the Turks, though far outnumbered, defended their ground with undaunted courage, until, beaten at all points, they fled in confusion. Jelaleddīn, seeing that all was lost, mounted a fresh horse and jumped into the river, which flowed 20 ft. below. With admiring gaze Jenghiz watched the desperate venture of his enemy, and even saw without regret the dripping horseman mount the opposite bank. From the Indus Jenghiz sent in pursuit of Jelaleddīn, who fled to Delhi, but failing to capture the fugitive the Mongols returned to Ghazni after having ravaged the provinces of Lahore, Peshawar and Melikpur. At this moment news reached Jenghiz that the inhabitants of Herat had deposed the governor whom Tulē had appointed over the city, and had placed one of their own choice in his room. To punish this act of rebellion Jenghiz sent an army of 80,000 men against the offending city, which after a siege of six months was taken by assault. For a whole week the Mongols ceased not to kill, burn and destroy, and 1,600,000 persons are said to have been massacred within the walls. Having consummated this act of vengeance, Jenghiz returned to Mongolia by way of Balkh, Bokhara and Samarkand.

Meanwhile Chēpē and Sabutai marched through Azerbeijan, and in the spring of 1222 advanced into Georgia. Here they defeated a combined force of Lesghians, Circassians and Kipchaks, and after taking Astrakhan followed the retreating Kipchaks to the Don. The news of the approach of the mysterious enemy of whose name even they were ignorant was received by the Russian princes at Kiev with dismay. At the instigation, however, of Mitislaf, prince of Galicia, they assembled an opposing force on the Dnieper. Here they received envoys from the Mongol camp, whom they barbarously put to death. “You have killed our envoys,” was the answer made by the Mongols; “well, as you wish for war you shall have it. We have done you no harm. God is impartial; He will decide our quarrel.” In the first battle, on the river Kaleza, the Russians were utterly routed, and fled before the invaders, who, after ravaging Great Bulgaria retired, gorged with booty, through the country of Saksin, along the river Aktuba, on their way to Mongolia.

In China the same success had attended the Mongol arms as in western Asia. The whole of the country north of the Yellow river, with the exception of one or two cities, was added to the Mongol rule, and, on the death of the Kin emperor Süan Tsung in 1223, the Kin empire virtually ceased to be, and Jenghiz’s frontiers thus became conterminous with those of the Sung emperors who held sway over the whole of central and southern China. After his return from Central Asia, Jenghiz once more took the field in western China. While on this campaign the five planets appeared in a certain conjunction, which to the superstitiously minded Mongol chief foretold that evil was awaiting him. With this presentiment strongly impressed upon him he turned his face homewards, and had advanced no farther than the Si-Kiang river in Kansuh when he was seized with an illness of which he died a short time afterwards (1227) at his travelling palace at Ha-lao-tu, on the banks of the river Sale in Mongolia. By the terms of his will Ogotai was appointed his successor, but so essential was it considered to be that his death should remain a secret until Ogotai was proclaimed that, as the funeral procession moved northwards to the great ordu on the banks of the Kerulen, the escort killed every one they met. The body of Jenghiz was then carried successively to the ordus of his several wives, and was finally laid to rest in the valley of Kilien.

Thus ended the career of one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen. Born and nurtured as the chief of a petty Mongolian tribe, he lived to see his armies victorious from the China Sea to the banks of the Dnieper; and, though the empire which he created ultimately dwindled away under the hands of his degenerate descendants, leaving not a wrack behind, we have in the presence of the Turks in Europe a consequence of his rule, since it was the advance of his armies which drove their Osmanli ancestors from their original home in northern Asia, and thus led to their invasion of Bithynia under Othman, and finally their advance into Europe under Amurath I.

See Sir H. H. Howorth, The History of the Mongols; Sir Robert K. Douglas, The Life of Jenghiz Khan.

(R. K. D.)

JENKIN, HENRY CHARLES FLEEMING (1833-1885), British engineer, was born near Dungeness on the 25th of March 1833, his father (d. 1885) being a naval commander, and his mother (d. 1885) a novelist of some literary repute, her best books perhaps being Cousin Stella (1859) and Who breaks, pays (1861). Fleeming Jenkin was educated at first in Scotland, but in 1846 the family went to live abroad, owing to financial straits, and he studied at Genoa University, where he took a first-class degree in physical science. In 1851 he began his engineering career as apprentice in an establishment at Manchester, and subsequently he entered Newall’s submarine cable works at Birkenhead. In 1859 he began, in concert with Sir William Thomson (afterwards Lord Kelvin), to work on problems respecting the making and use of cables, and the importance of his researches on the resistance of gutta-percha was at once recognized. From this time he was in constant request in connexion with submarine telegraphy, and he became known also as an inventor. In partnership with Thomson, he made a large income as a consulting telegraph engineer. In 1865 he was elected F.R.S., and was appointed professor of engineering at University College, London. In 1868 he obtained the same professorship at Edinburgh University, and in 1873 he published a textbook of Magnetism and Electricity, full of original work. He was author of the article “Bridges” in the ninth edition of this encyclopaedia. His influence among the Edinburgh students was pronounced, and R. L. Stevenson’s well-known Memoir is a sympathetic tribute to his ability and character. The meteoric charm of his conversation is well described in Stevenson’s essay on “Talk and Talkers,” under the name of Cockshot. Jenkin’s interests were by no means confined to engineering, but extended to the arts and literature; his miscellaneous papers, showing his critical and unconventional views, were issued posthumously in two volumes (1887). In 1882 Jenkin invented an automatic method of electric transport for goods—“telpherage”—but the completion of its details was prevented by his death on the 12th of June 1885. A telpher line on his system was subsequently erected at Glynde in Sussex. He was also well known as a sanitary reformer, and during the last ten years of his life he did much useful work in inculcating more enlightened ideas on the subject both in Edinburgh and other places.

JENKINS, SIR LEOLINE (1623-1685), English lawyer and diplomatist, was the son of a Welsh country gentleman. He was born in 1623 and was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, of which he was elected a fellow at the Restoration in 1660, having been an ardent royalist during the civil war and commonwealth; and in 1661 he became head of the college. In the same year he was made registrar of the consistory court of Westminster; in 1664 deputy judge of the court of arches; about a year later judge of the admiralty court; in 1689 judge of the prerogative court of Canterbury. In these offices Jenkins did enduring work in elucidating and establishing legal principles, especially in relation to international law and admiralty jurisdiction. He was selected to draw up the claim of Charles II. to succeed to the property of his mother, Henrietta Maria, on her death in August 1666, and while in Paris for this purpose he succeeded in defeating the rival claim of the duchess of Orleans, being rewarded by a knighthood on his return. In 1673, on being elected member for Hythe, Jenkins resigned the headship of Jesus College. He was one of the English representatives at the congress of Cologne in 1673, and at the more important congress of Nijmwegen in 1676-1679. He was made a privy councillor in February 1680 and became secretary of state in April of the same year, in which office he was the official leader of the opposition to the Exclusion Bill, though he was by no means a pliant tool in the hands of the court. He resigned office in 1684, and died on the 1st of September 1685. He left most of his property to Jesus College, Oxford, including his books, which he bequeathed to the college library, built by himself; and he left some important manuscripts to All Souls College, where they are preserved. Jenkins left his impress on the law of England in the Statute of Frauds, and the Statute of Distributions, of which he was the principal author, and of which the former profoundly affected the mercantile law of the country, while the latter regulated the inheritance of the personal property of intestates. He was never married.

See William Wynne, Life of Sir Leoline Jenkins (2 vols., London, 1724), which contains a number of his diplomatic despatches, letters, speeches and other papers. See also Sir William Temple, Works, vol. ii. (4 vols., 1770); Anthony à Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (Fasti) edited by P. Bliss (4 vols., London, 1813-1820), and History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, edited by J. Gutch (Oxford, 1792-1796).

JENKINS, ROBERT (fl. 1731-1745), English master mariner, is known as the protagonist of the “Jenkins’s ear” incident, which, magnified in England by the press and the opposition, became a contributory cause of the war between England and Spain (1739). Bringing home the brig “Rebecca” from the West Indies in 1731, Jenkins was boarded by a Spanish guarda-costa, whose commander rifled the holds and cut off one of his ears. On arriving in England Jenkins stated his grievance to the king, and a report was furnished by the commander-in-chief in the West Indies confirming his account. At first the case created no great stir, but in 1738 he repeated his story with dramatic detail before a committee of the House of Commons, producing what purported to be the ear that had been cut off. Afterwards it was suggested that he might have lost the ear in the pillory.

Jenkins was subsequently given the command of a ship in the East India Company’s service, and later became supervisor of the company’s affairs at St Helena. In 1741 he was sent from England to that island to investigate charges of corruption brought against the acting governor, and from May 1741 until March 1742 he administered the affairs of the island. Thereafter he resumed his naval career, and is stated in an action with a pirate vessel to have preserved his own vessel and three others under his care (see T. H. Brooke, History of the Island of St Helena (London, 2nd ed., 1824), and H. R. Janisch, Extracts from the St Helena Records, 1885).

JENKS, JEREMIAH WHIPPLE (1856- ), American economist, was born in St Clair, Michigan, on the 2nd of September 1856. He graduated at the university of Michigan in 1878; taught Greek, Latin and German in Mt. Morris College, Illinois; studied in Germany, receiving the degree of Ph.D. from the university of Halle in 1885; taught political science and English literature at Knox College, Galesburg, Ill., in 1886-1889; was professor of political economy and social science at Indiana State University in 1889-1891; and was successively professor of political, municipal and social institutions (1891-1892), professor of political economy and civil and social institutions (1892-1901), and after 1901 professor of political economy and politics at Cornell University. In 1899-1901 he served as an expert agent of the United States industrial commission on investigation of trusts and industrial combinations in the United States and Europe, and contributed to vols. i., viii. and xiii. of this commission’s report (1900 and 1901), vol. viii. being a report, written wholly by him, on industrial combinations in Europe. In 1901-1902 he was special commissioner of the United States war department on colonial administration, and wrote a Report on Certain Economic Questions in the English and Dutch Colonies in the Orient, published (1902) by the bureau of insular affairs; and in 1903 he was adviser to the Mexican ministry of finance on projected currency changes. In 1903-1904 he was a member of the United States commission on international exchange, in especial charge of the reform of currency in China; in 1905 he was special representative of the United States with the imperial Chinese special mission visiting the United States. In 1907 he became a member of the United States immigration commission. Best known as an expert on “trusts,” he has written besides on elections, ballot reform, proportional representation, on education (especially as a training for citizenship), on legislation regarding highways, &c.

His principal published works are Henry C. Carey als Nationalökonom (Halle a. S., 1885); The Trust Problem (1900; revised 1903); Great Fortunes (1906); Citizenship and the Schools (1906); and Principles of Politics (1909).

JENNÉ, a city of West Africa, formerly the capital of the Songhoi empire, now included in the French colony of Upper Senegal and Niger. Jenné is situated on a marigot or natural canal connecting the Niger and its affluent the Bani or Mahel Balevel, and is within a few miles of the latter stream. It lies 250 m. S.W. of Timbuktu in a straight line. The city is surrounded by channels connected with the Bani but in the dry season it ceases to be an island. On the north is the Moorish quarter; on the north-west, the oldest part of the city, stood the citadel, converted by the French since 1893 into a modern fort. The market-place is midway between the fort and the commercial harbour. The old mosque, partially destroyed in 1830, covered a large area in the south-west portion of the city. It was built on the site of the ancient palace of the Songhoi kings. The architecture of many of the buildings bears a resemblance to Egyptian, the façades of the houses being adorned with great buttresses of pylonic form. There is little trace of the influence of Moorish or Arabian art. The buildings are mostly constructed of clay made into flat long bricks. Massive clay walls surround the city. The inhabitants are great traders and the principal merchants have representatives at Timbuktu and all the chief places on the Niger. The boats built at Jenné are famous throughout the western Sudan.

Jenné is believed to have been founded by the Songhoi in the 8th century, and though it has passed under the dominion of many races it has never been destroyed. Jenné seems to have been at the height of its power from the 12th to the 16th century, when its merchandise was found at every port along the west coast of Africa. From this circumstance it is conjectured that Jenné (Guinea) gave its name to the whole coast (see Guinea). Subsequently, under the control of Moorish, Tuareg and Fula invaders, the importance of the city greatly declined. With the advent of the French, commerce again began to flourish.

See F. Dubois, Tombouctou la mystérieuse (Paris, 1897), in which several chapters are devoted to Jenné; also Songhoi; Timbuktu; and Senegal.

JENNER, EDWARD (1749-1823), English physician and discoverer of vaccination, was born at Berkeley, Gloucestershire, on the 17th of May 1749. His father, the Rev. Stephen Jenner, rector of Rockhampton and vicar of Berkeley, came of a family that had been long established in that county, and was possessed of considerable landed property; he died when Edward was only six years old, but his eldest son, the Rev. Stephen Jenner, brought his brother up with paternal care and tenderness. Edward received his early education at Wotton-under-Edge and Cirencester, where he already showed a strong taste for natural history. The medical profession having been selected for him, he began his studies under Daniel Ludlow, a surgeon of Sodbury near Bristol; but in his twenty-first year he proceeded to London, where he became a favourite pupil of John Hunter, in whose house he resided for two years. During this period he was employed by Sir Joseph Banks to arrange and prepare the valuable zoological specimens which he had brought back from Captain Cook’s first voyage in 1771. He must have acquitted himself satisfactorily in this task, since he was offered the post of naturalist in the second expedition, but declined it as well as other advantageous offers, preferring rather to practise his profession in his native place, and near his eldest brother, to whom he was much attached. He was the principal founder of a local medical society, to which he contributed several papers of marked ability, in one of which he apparently anticipated later discoveries concerning rheumatic inflammations of the heart. He maintained a correspondence with John Hunter, under whose direction he investigated various points in biology, particularly the hibernation of hedgehogs and habits of the cuckoo; his paper on the latter subject was laid by Hunter before the Royal Society, and appeared in the Phil. Trans. for 1788. He also devoted considerable attention to the varied geological character of the district in which he lived, and constructed the first balloon seen in those parts. He was a great favourite in general society, from his agreeable and instructive conversation, and the many accomplishments he possessed. Thus he was a fair musician, both as a part singer and as a performer on the violin and flute, and a very successful writer, after the fashion of that time, of fugitive pieces of verse. In 1788 he married Catherine Kingscote, and in 1792 he obtained the degree of doctor of medicine from St Andrews.

Meanwhile the discovery that is associated with his name had been slowly maturing in his mind. When only an apprentice at Sodbury, his attention had been directed to the relations between cow-pox and small-pox in connexion with a popular belief which he found current in Gloucestershire, as to the antagonism between these two diseases. During his stay in London he appears to have mentioned the thing repeatedly to Hunter, who, being engrossed by other important pursuits, was not so strongly persuaded as Jenner was of its possible importance, yet spoke of it to his friends and in his lectures. After he began practice in Berkeley, Jenner was always accustomed to inquire what his professional brethren thought of it; but he found that, when medical men had noticed the popular report at all, they supposed it to be based on imperfect induction. His first careful investigation of the subject dated from about 1775, and five years elapsed before he had succeeded in clearing away the most perplexing difficulties by which it was surrounded. He first satisfied himself that two different forms of disease had been hitherto confounded under the term cow-pox, only one of which protected against small-pox, and that many of the cases of failure were to be thus accounted for; and his next step was to ascertain that the true cow-pox itself only protects when communicated at a particular stage of the disease. At the same time he came to the conclusion that “the grease” of horses is the same disease as cow-pox and small-pox, each being modified by the organism in which it was developed. For many years, cow-pox being scarce in his county, he had no opportunity of inoculating the disease, and so putting his discovery to the test, but he did all he could in the way of collecting information and communicating what he had ascertained. Thus in 1788 he carried a drawing of the cow-pox, as seen on the hands of a milkmaid, to London, and showed it to Sir E. Home and others, who agreed that it was “an interesting and curious subject.” At length, on the 14th of May 1796, he was able to inoculate James Phipps, a boy about eight years old, with matter from cow-pox vesicles on the hand of Sarah Nelmes. On the 1st of the following July the boy was carefully inoculated with variolous matter, but (as Jenner had predicted) no small-pox followed. The discovery was now complete, but Jenner was unable to repeat his experiment until 1798, owing to the disappearance of cow-pox from the dairies. He then repeated his inoculations with the utmost care, and prepared a pamphlet (Inquiry into the Cause and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae) which should announce his discovery to the world. Before publishing it, however, he thought it well to visit London, so as to demonstrate the truth of his assertions to his friends; but he remained in London nearly three months, without being able to find any person who would submit to be vaccinated. Soon after he had returned home, however, Henry Cline, surgeon of St Thomas’s Hospital, inoculated some vaccine matter obtained from him over the diseased hip-joint of a child, thinking the counter-irritation might be useful, and found the patient afterwards incapable of acquiring small-pox. In the autumn of the same year, Jenner met with the first opposition to vaccination; and this was the more formidable because it proceeded from J. Ingenhousz, a celebrated physician and man of science. But meanwhile Cline’s advocacy of vaccination brought it much more decidedly before the medical profession, of whom the majority were prudent enough to suspend their judgment until they had more ample information. But besides these there were two noisy and troublesome factions, one of which opposed vaccination as a useless and dangerous practice, while the other endangered its success much more by rash and self-seeking advocacy. At the head of the latter was George Pearson, who in November 1798 published a pamphlet speculating upon the subject, before even seeing a case of cow-pox, and afterwards endeavoured, by lecturing on the subject and supplying the virus, to put himself forward as the chief agent in the cause. The matter which he distributed, which had been derived from cows that were found to be infected in London, was found frequently to produce, not the slight disease described by Jenner, but more or less severe eruptions resembling small-pox. Jenner concluded at once that this was due to an accidental contamination of the vaccine with variolous matter, and a visit to London in the spring of 1799 convinced him that this was the case. In the course of this year the practice of vaccination spread over England, being urged principally by non-professional persons of position; and towards its close attempts were made to found institutions for gratuitous vaccination and for supplying lymph to all who might apply for it. Pearson proposed to establish one of these in London, without Jenner’s knowledge, in which he offered him the post of honorary corresponding physician! On learning of this scheme to supplant him, and to carry on an institution for public vaccination on principles which he knew to be partly erroneous, Jenner once more visited London early in 1800, when he had influence enough to secure the abandonment of the project. He was afterwards presented to the king, the queen and the prince of Wales, whose encouragement materially aided the spread of vaccination in England. Meanwhile it had made rapid progress in the United States, where it was introduced by Benjamin Waterhouse, then professor of physic at Harvard, and on the continent of Europe, where it was at first diffused by De Carro of Vienna. In consequence of the war between England and France, the discovery was later in reaching Paris; but, its importance once realized, it spread rapidly over France, Spain and Italy.

A few of the incidents connected with its extension may be mentioned. Perhaps the most striking is the expedition which was sent out by the court of Spain in 1803, for the purpose of diffusing cow-pox through all the Spanish possessions in the Old and New Worlds, and which returned in three years, having circumnavigated the globe, and succeeded beyond its utmost expectations. Clergymen in Geneva and Holland urged vaccination upon their parishioners from the pulpit; in Sicily, South America and Naples religious processions were formed for the purpose of receiving it; the anniversary of Jenner’s birthday, or of the successful vaccination of James Phipps, was for many years celebrated as a feast in Germany; and the empress of Russia caused the first child operated upon to receive the name of Vaccinov, and to be educated at the public expense. About the close of the year 1801 Jenner’s friends in Gloucestershire presented him with a small service of plate as a testimonial of the esteem in which they held his discovery. This was intended merely as a preliminary to the presenting of a petition to parliament for a grant. The petition was presented in 1802, and was referred to a committee, of which the investigations resulted in a report in favour of the grant, and ultimately in a vote of £10,000.

Towards the end of 1802 steps were taken to form a society for the proper spread of vaccination in London, and the Royal Jennerian Society was finally established, Jenner returning to town to preside at the first meeting. This institution began very prosperously, more than twelve thousand persons having been inoculated in the first eighteen months, and with such effect that the deaths from small-pox, which for the latter half of the 18th century had averaged 2018 annually, fell in 1804 to 622. Unfortunately the chief resident inoculator soon set himself up as an authority opposed to Jenner, and this led to such dissensions as caused the society to die out in 1808.

Jenner was led, by the language of the chancellor of the exchequer when his grant was proposed, to attempt practice in London, but after a year’s trial he returned to Berkeley. His grant was not paid until 1804, and then, after the deduction of about £1000 for fees, it did little more than pay the expenses attendant upon his discovery. For he was so thoroughly known everywhere as the discoverer of vaccination that, as he himself said, he was “the vaccine clerk of the whole world.” At the same time he continued to vaccinate gratuitously all the poor who applied to him on certain days, so that he sometimes had as many as three hundred persons waiting at his door. Meanwhile honours began to shower upon him from abroad: he was elected a member of almost all the chief scientific societies on the continent of Europe, the first being that of Göttingen, where he was proposed by J. F. Blumenbach. But perhaps the most flattering proof of his influence was derived from France. On one occasion, when he was endeavouring to obtain the release of some of the unfortunate Englishmen who had been detained in France on the sudden termination of the Peace of Amiens, Napoleon was about to reject the petition, when Josephine uttered the name of Jenner. The emperor paused and exclaimed: “Ah, we can refuse nothing to that name.” Somewhat later he did the same service to Englishmen confined in Mexico and in Austria; and during the latter part of the great war persons before leaving England would sometimes obtain certificates signed by him which served as passports. In his own country his merits were less recognized. His applications on behalf of French prisoners in England were less successful; he never shared in any of the patronage at the disposal of the government, and was even unable to obtain a living for his nephew George.

In 1806 Lord Henry Petty (afterwards the marquess of Lansdowne) became chancellor of the exchequer, and was so convinced of the inadequacy of the former parliamentary grant that he proposed an address to the Crown, praying that the college of physicians should be directed to report upon the success of vaccination. Their report being strongly in its favour, the then chancellor of the exchequer (Spencer Perceval) proposed that a sum of £10,000 without any deductions should be paid to Jenner. The anti-vaccinationists found but one advocate in the House of Commons; and finally the sum was raised to £20,000. Jenner, however, at the same time had the mortification of learning that government did not intend to take any steps towards checking small-pox inoculation, which so persistently kept up that disease. About the same time a subscription for his benefit was begun in India, where his discovery had been gratefully received, but the full amount of this (£7383) only reached him in 1812.

The Royal Jennerian Society having failed, the national vaccine establishment was founded, for the extension of vaccination, in 1808. Jenner spent five months in London for the purpose of organizing it, but was then obliged, by the dangerous illness of one of his sons, to return to Berkeley. He had been appointed director of the institution; but he had no sooner left London than Sir Lucas Pepys, president of the college of physicians, neglected his recommendations, and formed the board out of the officials of that college and the college of surgeons. Jenner at once resigned his post as director, though he continued to give the benefit of his advice whenever it was needed, and this resignation was a bitter mortification to him. In 1810 his eldest son died, and Jenner’s grief at his loss, and his incessant labours, materially affected his health. In 1813 the university of Oxford conferred on him the degree of M.D. It was believed that this would lead to his election into the college of physicians, but that learned body decided that he could not be admitted until he had undergone an examination in classics. This Jenner at once refused; to brush up his classics would, he said, “be irksome beyond measure. I would not do it for a diadem. That indeed would be a bauble; I would not do it for John Hunter’s museum.”

He visited London for the last time in 1814, when he was presented to the Allied Sovereigns and to most of the principal personages who accompanied them. In the next year his wife’s death was the signal for him to retire from public life: he never left Berkeley again, except for a day or two, as long as he lived. He found sufficient occupation for the remainder of his life in collecting further evidence on some points connected with his great discovery, and in his engagements as a physician, a naturalist and a magistrate. In 1818 a severe epidemic of small-pox prevailed, and fresh doubts were thrown on the efficacy of vaccination, in part apparently owing to the bad quality of the vaccine lymph employed. This caused Jenner much annoyance, which was relieved by an able defence of the practice, written by Sir Gilbert Blane. But this led him, in 1821, to send a circular letter to most of the medical men in the kingdom inquiring into the effect of other skin diseases in modifying the progress of cow-pox. A year later he published his last work, On the Influence of Artificial Eruptions in Certain Diseases; and in 1823 he presented his last paper—“On the Migration of Birds”—to the Royal Society. On the 24th of January 1823 he retired to rest apparently as well as usual, and next morning rose and came down to his library, where he was found insensible on the floor, in a state of apoplexy, and with the right side paralysed. He never rallied, and died on the following morning.

A public subscription was set on foot, shortly after his death, by the medical men of his county, for the purpose of erecting some memorial in his honour, and with much difficulty a sufficient sum was raised to enable a statue to be placed in Gloucester Cathedral. In 1850 another attempt was made to set up a monument to him; this appears to have failed, but at length, in 1858, a statue of him was erected by public subscription in London.

Jenner’s life was written by the intimate friend of his later years, Dr John Baron of Gloucester (2 vols., 1827, 1838). See also Vaccination.

JENNER, SIR WILLIAM, Bart. (1815-1898), English physician, was born at Chatham on the 30th of January 1815, and educated at University College, London. He became M.R.C.S. in 1837, and F.R.C.P. in 1852, and in 1844 took the London M.D. In 1847 he began at the London fever hospital investigations into cases of “continued” fever which enabled him finally to make the distinction between typhus and typhoid on which his reputation as a pathologist principally rests. In 1849 he was appointed professor of pathological anatomy at University College, and also assistant physician to University College Hospital, where he afterwards became physician (1854-1876) and consulting physician (1879), besides holding similar appointments at other hospitals. He was also successively Holme professor of clinical medicine and professor of the principles and practice of medicine at University College. He was president of the college of physicians (1881-1888); he was elected F.R.S. in 1864, and received honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh. In 1861 he was appointed physician extraordinary, and in 1862 physician in ordinary, to Queen Victoria, and in 1863 physician in ordinary to the prince of Wales; he attended both the prince consort and the prince of Wales in their attacks of typhoid fever. In 1868 he was created a baronet. As a consultant Sir William Jenner had a great reputation, and he left a large fortune when he died, at Bishop’s Waltham, Hants, on the 11th of December 1898, having then retired from practice for eight years owing to failing health.

JENNET, a small Spanish horse; the word is sometimes applied in English to a mule, the offspring of a she-ass and a stallion. Jennet comes, through Fr. genet, from Span, jinete, a light horseman who rides à la gineta, explained as “with his legs tucked up.” The name is taken to be a corruption of the Arabic Zenāta, a Berber tribe famed for its cavalry. English and French transferred the word from the rider to his horse, a meaning which the word has only acquired in Spain in modern times.

JENOLAN CAVES, a series of remarkable caverns in Roxburgh county, New South Wales, Australia; 113 m. W. by N. of Sydney, and 36 m. from Tarana, which is served by railway. They are the most celebrated of several similar groups in the limestone of the country; they have not yielded fossils of great interest, but the stalactitic formations, sometimes pure white, are of extraordinary beauty. The caves have been rendered easily accessible to visitors and lighted by electricity.

JENSEN, WILHELM (1837- ), German author, was born at Heiligenhafen in Holstein on the 15th of February 1837, the son of a local Danish magistrate, who came of old patrician Frisian stock. After attending the classical schools at Kiel and Lübeck, Jensen studied medicine at the universities of Kiel, Würzburg and Breslau. He, however, abandoned the medical profession for that of letters, and after engaging for some years in individual private study proceeded to Munich, where he associated with men of letters. After a residence in Stuttgart (1865-1869), where for a short time he conducted the Schwäbische Volks-Zeitung, he became editor in Flensburg of the Norddeutsche Zeitung. In 1872 he again returned to Kiel, lived from 1876 to 1888 in Freiburg im Breisgau, and since 1888 has been resident in Munich.

Jensen is perhaps the most fertile of modern German writers of fiction, more than one hundred works having proceeded from his pen; but only comparatively few of them have caught the public taste; such are the novels, Karin von Schweden (Berlin, 1878); Die braune Erica (Berlin, 1868); and the tale, Die Pfeifer von Dusenbach, Eine Geschichte aus dem Elsass (1884). Among others may be mentioned: Barthenia (Berlin, 1877); Götz und Gisela (Berlin, 1886); Heimkunft (Dresden, 1894); Aus See und Sand (Dresden, 1897); Luv und Lee (Berlin, 1897); and the narratives, Aus den Tagen der Hansa (Leipzig, 1885); Aus stiller Zeit (Berlin, 1881-1885); and Heimath (1901). Jensen also published some tragedies, among which Dido (Berlin, 1870) and Der Kampf für’s Reich (Freiburg im Br., 1884) may be mentioned.

JENYNS, SOAME (1704-1787), English author, was born in London on the 1st of January 1704, and was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge. In 1742 he was chosen M.P. for Cambridgeshire, in which his property lay, and he afterwards sat for the borough of Dunwich and the town of Cambridge. From 1755 to 1780 he was one of the commissioners of the board of trade. He died on the 18th of December 1787.

For the measure of literary repute which he enjoyed during his life Jenyns was indebted as much to his wealth and social standing as to his accomplishments and talents, though both were considerable. His poetical works, the Art of Dancing (1727) and Miscellanies (1770), contain many passages graceful and lively though occasionally verging on licence. The first of his prose works was his Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil (1756). This essay was severely criticized on its appearance, especially by Samuel Johnson in the Literary Magazine. Johnson, in a slashing review—the best paper of the kind he ever wrote—condemned the book as a slight and shallow attempt to solve one of the most difficult of moral problems. Jenyns, a gentle and amiable man in the main, was extremely irritated by his failure. He put forth a second edition of his work, prefaced by a vindication, and tried to take vengeance on Johnson after his death by a sarcastic epitaph.1 In 1776 Jenyns published his View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion. Though at one period of his life he had affected a kind of deistic scepticism, he had now returned to orthodoxy, and there seems no reason to doubt his sincerity, questioned at the time, in defending Christianity on the ground of its total variance with the principles of human reason. The work was deservedly praised in its day for its literary merits, but is so plainly the production of an amateur in theology that as a scientific treatise it is valueless.

A collected edition of the works of Jenyns appeared in 1790, with a biography by Charles Nalson Cole. There are several references to him in Boswell’s Johnson.

1 Two lines will suffice:—

Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit, Will tell you how he wrote, and talk’d, and cough’d, and spit.

JEOPARDY, a term meaning risk or danger of death, loss or other injury. The word, in Mid. Eng. juparti, jeupartie, &c., was adapted from O. Fr. ju, later jeu, and parti, even game, in medieval Latin jocus partitus. This term was originally used of a problem in chess or of a stage in any other game at which the chances of success or failure are evenly divided between the players. It was thus early transformed to any state of uncertainty.

JEPHSON, ROBERT (1736-1803), British dramatist, was born in Ireland. After serving for some years in the British army, he retired with the rank of captain, and lived in England, where he was the friend of Garrick, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Johnson, Burke, Burney and Charles Townshend. His appointment as master of the horse to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland took him back to Dublin. He published, in the Mercury newspaper a series of articles in defence of the lord-lieutenant’s administration which were afterwards collected and issued in book form under the title of The Bachelor, or Speculations of Jeoffry Wagstaffe. A pension of £300, afterwards doubled, was granted him, and he held his appointment under twelve succeeding viceroys. From 1775 he was engaged in the writing of plays. Among others, his tragedy Braganza was successfully performed at Drury Lane in 1775, Conspiracy in 1796, The Law of Lombardy in 1779, and The Count of Narbonne at Covent Garden in 1781. In 1794 he published an heroic poem Roman Portraits, and The Confessions of Jacques Baptiste Couteau, a satire on the excesses of the French Revolution. He died at Blackrock, near Dublin, on the 31st of May 1803.

JEPHTHAH, one of the judges of Israel, in the Bible, was an illegitimate son of Gilead, and, being expelled from his father’s house by his lawful brethren, took refuge in the Syrian land of Tob, where he gathered around him a powerful band of homeless men like himself. The Ammonites pressing hard on his countrymen, the elders of Gilead called for his help, which he consented to give on condition that in the event of victory he should be made their head (Judg. xi. 1-xii. 7). His name is best known in history and literature in connexion with his vow, which led to the sacrifice of his daughter on his successful return. The reluctance shown by many writers in accepting the plain sense of the narrative on this point proceeds to a large extent on unwarranted assumptions as to the stage of ethical development which had been reached in Israel in the period of the judges, or at the time when the narrative took shape. The annual lamentation of the women for her death suggests a mythical origin (see Adonis). Attached to the narrative is an account of a quarrel between Jephthah and the Ephraimites. The latter were defeated, and their retreat was cut off by the Gileadites, who had seized the fords of the Jordan. As the fugitives attempted to cross they were bidden to say “shibbōleth” (“flood” or “ear of corn”), and those who said “sibbōleth” (the Ephraimites apparently being unused to sh), were at once put to death. In this way 42,000 of the tribe were killed.1

The loose connexion between this and the main narrative, as also the lengthy speech to the children of Ammon (xi. 14-27), which really relates to Moab, has led some writers to infer that two distinct heroes and situations have been combined. See further the commentaries on the Book of Judges (q.v.), and Cheyne, Ency. Bib., art. “Jephthah.”

(S. A. C.)

1 Similarly a Syrian story tells how the Druses came to slay Ibrahim Pasha’s troops, and desiring to spare the Syrians ordered the men to say gamal (camel). As the Syrians pronounce the g soft, and the Egyptians the g, hard, the former were easily identified. Other examples from the East will be found in H. C. Kay, Yaman, p. 36, and in S. Lane-Poole, History of Egypt in the Middle Ages, p. 300. Also, at the Sicilian Vespers (March 13, 1282) the French were made to betray themselves by their pronunciation of ceci and ciceri (Ital. c like tch; Fr. c like s).

JERAHMEEL, (Heb. “May God pity”), in the Bible, a clan which with Caleb, the Kenites and others, occupied the southern steppes of Palestine, probably in the district around Arad, about 17 m. S. of Hebron. It was on friendly terms with David during his residence at Ziklag (1 Sam. xxx. 29), and it was apparently in his reign that the various elements of the south were united and were reckoned to Israel. This is expressed in the chronicler’s genealogies which make Jerahmeel and Caleb descendants of Judah (see David; Judah).

On the names in 1 Chron. ii. see S. A. Cook, Ency. Bib., col. 2363 seq. Peleth (v. 33) may be the origin of the Pelethites (2 Sam. viii. 18; xv. 18; xx. 7), and since the name occurs in the revolt of Korah (Num. xvi. 1), it is possible that Jerahmeel, like Caleb and the Kenites, had moved northwards from Kadesh. Samuel (q.v.) was of Jerahmeel (1 Sam. i. 1; Septuagint), and the consecutive Jerahmeelite names Nathan and Zabad (1 Chron. ii. 36) have been associated with the prophet and officer (Zabud, 1 Kings iv. 5) of the times of David and Solomon respectively. The association of Samuel and Nathan with this clan, if correct, is a further illustration of the importance of the south for the growth of biblical history (see Kenites and Rechabites). The Chronicles of Jerahmeel (M. Gaster, Oriental Translation Fund, 1899) is a late production containing a number of apocryphal Jewish legends of no historical value.

(S. A. C.)

JERBA, an island off the coast of North Africa in the Gulf of Gabes, forming part of the regency of Tunisia. It is separated from the mainland by two narrow straits, and save for these channels blocks the entrance to a large bight identified with the Lake Triton of the Romans. The western strait, opening into the Gulf of Gabes, is a mile and a half broad; the eastern strait is wider, but at low water it is possible to cross to the mainland by the Tarik-el-Jemil (road of the camel). The island is irregular in outline, its greatest length and breadth being some 20 m., and its area 425 sq. m. It contains neither rivers nor springs, but is supplied with water by wells and cisterns. It is flat and well wooded with date palms and olive trees. Pop. 35,000 to 40,000, the bulk of the inhabitants being Berbers. Though many of them have adopted Arabic a Berber idiom is commonly spoken. An affinity exists between the Berbers of Jerba and the Beni Mzab. About 3000 Jews live apart in villages of their own, and some 400 Europeans, chiefly Maltese and Greeks, are settled in the island. Jerba has a considerable reputation for the manufacture of the woollen tissues interwoven with silk which are known as burnous stuffs; a market for the sale of sponges is held from November till March; and there is a considerable export trade in olives, dates, figs and other fruits. The capital, trading centre and usual landing-place are at Haumt-es-Suk (market quarter) on the north side of the island (pop. 2500). Here are a medieval fort, built by the Spaniards in 1284, and a modern fort, garrisoned by the French. Gallala, to the south, is noted for the manufacture of a kind of white pottery, much prized. At El Kantara (the bridge) on the eastern strait, and formerly connected with the mainland by a causeway, are extensive ruins of a Roman city—probably those of Meninx, once a flourishing seaport.

Jerba is the Lotophagitis or Lotus-eaters’ Island of the Greek and Roman geographers, and is also identified with the Brachion of Scylax. The modern name appears as early as the 4th century in Sextus Aurelius Victor. In the middle ages the possession of Jerba was contested by the Normans of Sicily, the Spaniards and the Turks, the Turks proving victorious. In 1560 after the destruction of the Spanish fleet off the coast of the island by Piali Pasha and the corsair Dragut the Spanish garrison at Haumt-es-Suk was exterminated, and a pyramid, 10 ft. broad at the base and 20 ft. high, was built of their skulls and other bones. In 1848 this pyramid was pulled down at the instance of the Christian community, and the bones were buried in the Catholic cemetery. In general, from the Arab invasion in the 7th century Jerba shared the fortunes of Tunisia.

See H. Barth, Wanderungen durch die Küstenl. des Mittelmeeres (Berlin, 1849); and H. von Maltzan, Reise in Tunis und Tripolis (Leipzig, 1870).

JERBOA, properly the name of an Arabian and North African jumping rodent mammal, Jaculus aegyptius (also known as Jaculus, or Dipus, jaculus) typifying the family Jaculidae (or Dipodidae), but in a wider sense applied to most of the representatives of that family, which are widely distributed over the desert and semi-desert tracts of the Old World, although unknown in Africa south of the Sahara. In all the more typical members of the family the three middle metatarsals of the long hind-legs are fused into a cannon-bone; and in the true jerboas of the genus Jaculus the two lateral toes, with their supporting metatarsals, are lost, although they are present in the alactagas (Alactaga), in which, however, as in certain allied genera, only the three middle toes are functional. As regards the true jerboas, there is a curious resemblance in the structure of their hind-legs to that obtaining among birds. In both groups, for instance, the lower part of the hind-leg is formed by a long, slender cannon-bone, or metatarsus, terminating inferiorly in triple condyles for the three long and sharply clawed toes, the resemblance being increased by the fact that in both cases the small bone of the leg (fibula) is fused with the large one (tibia). It may also be noticed that in mammals and birds which hop on two legs, such as jerboas, kangaroos, thrushes and finches, the proportionate length of the thigh-bone or femur to the tibia and foot (metatarsus and toes) is constant, being 2 to 5; in animals, on the other hand, such as hares, horses and frogs, which use all four feet, the corresponding lengths are 4 to 7. The resemblance between the jerboa’s and the bird’s skeleton is owing to adaptation to a similar mode of existence. In the young jerboa the proportion of the femur to the rest of the leg is the same as in ordinary running animals. Further, at an early stage of development the fibula is a complete and separate bone, while the three metatarsals, which subsequently fuse together to form the cannon-bone, are likewise separate. In addition to their long hind and short fore limbs, jerboas are mostly characterized by their silky coats—of a fawn colour to harmonize with their desert surroundings—their large eyes, and long tails and ears. As is always the case with large-eared animals, the tympanic bullae of the skull are of unusually large size; the size varying in the different genera according to that of the ears. (For the characteristics of the family and of its more important generic representatives, see Rodentia.)

In the Egyptian jerboa the length of the body is 8 in., and that of the tail, which is long, cylindrical and covered with short hair terminated by a tuft, 10 in. The five-toed front limbs are extremely short, while the hind pair are six times as long. When about to spring, this jerboa raises its body by means of the hinder extremities, and supports itself at the same time upon its tail, while the fore-feet are so closely pressed to the breast as to be scarcely visible, which doubtless suggested the name Dipus, or two-footed. It then leaps into the air and alights upon its four feet, but instantaneously erecting itself, it makes another spring, and so on in such rapid succession as to appear as if rather flying than running. It is a gregarious animal, living in considerable colonies in burrows, which it excavates with its nails and teeth in the sandy soil of Egypt and Arabia. In these it remains during great part of the day, emerging at night in search of the herbs on which it feeds. It is exceedingly shy, and this, together with its extraordinary agility, renders it difficult to capture. The Arabs, however, succeed by closing up all the exits from the burrows with a single exception, by which the rodents are forced to escape, and over which a net is placed for their capture. When confined, they will gnaw through the hardest wood in order to make their escape. The Persian jerboa (Alactaga indica) is also a nocturnal burrowing animal, feeding chiefly on grain, which it stores up in underground repositories, closing these when full, and only drawing upon them when the supply of food above ground is exhausted (see also Jumping Mouse).

(R. L.*)

JERDAN, WILLIAM (1782-1869), Scottish journalist, was born on the 16th of April 1782, at Kelso, Scotland. During the years between 1799 and 1806 he spent short periods in a country lawyer’s office, a London West India merchant’s counting-house, an Edinburgh solicitor’s chambers, and held the position of surgeon’s mate on board H.M. guardship “Gladiator” in Portsmouth Harbour, under his uncle, who was surgeon. He went to London in 1806, and became a newspaper reporter. He was in the lobby of the House of Commons on the 11th of May 1812 when Spencer Perceval was shot, and was the first to seize the assassin. By 1812 he had become editor of The Sun, a semi-official Tory paper; he occasionally inserted literary articles, then quite an unusual proceeding; but a quarrel with the chief proprietor brought that engagement to a close in 1817. He passed next to the editor’s chair of the Literary Gazette, which he conducted with success for thirty-four years. Jerdan’s position as editor brought him into contact with many distinguished writers. An account of his friends, among whom Canning was a special intimate, is to be found in his Men I have Known (1866). When Jerdan retired in 1850 from the editorship of the Literary Gazette his pecuniary affairs were far from satisfactory. A testimonial of over £900 was subscribed by his friends; and in 1853 a government pension of 100 guineas was conferred on him by Lord Aberdeen. He published his Autobiography in 1852-1853, and died on the 11th of July 1869.

JEREMIAH, in the Bible, the last pre-exilic prophet (fl. 626-586 B.C.?), son of Hilkiah.

Early Days of Jeremiah.—There must anciently have existed one or more prose works on Jeremiah and his times, written partly to do honour to the prophet, partly to propagate those views respecting Israel’s past with which the name of Jeremiah was associated. Some fragments of this work (or these works) have come down to us; they greatly add to the popularity of the Book of Jeremiah. Strict historical truth we must not ask of them, but they do give us what was believed concerning Jeremiah in the following age, and we must believe that the personality so honoured was an extraordinary one. We have also a number of genuine prophecies which admit us into Jeremiah’s inner nature. These are our best authorities, but they are deficient in concrete facts. By birth Jeremiah was a countryman; he came of a priestly family whose estate lay at Anathoth “in the land of Benjamin” (xxxii. 3; cf. i. 1). He came forward as a prophet in the thirteenth year of Josiah (626 B.C.), still young but irresistibly impelled. Unfortunately the account of the call and of the object of the divine caller come to us from a later hand (ch. i.), but we can well believe that the concrete fact which the prophetic call illuminated was an impending blow to the state (i. 13-16; cf. ch. iv.). What the blow exactly was is disputed,1 but it is certain that Jeremiah saw the gathering storm and anticipated its result, while the statesmen were still wrapped in a false security. Five years later came the reform movement produced by the “finding” of the “book of the law” in the Temple in 621 B.C. (2 Kings xxii. 8), and some critics have gathered from Jer. xi. 1-8 that Jeremiah joined the ranks of those who publicly supported this book in Jerusalem and elsewhere. To others this view appears in itself improbable. How can a man like Jeremiah have advocated any such panacea? He was indeed not at first a complete pessimist, but to be a preacher of Deuteronomy required a sanguine temper which a prophet of the school of Isaiah could not possess. Besides, there is a famous passage (viii. 8, see R.V.) in which Jeremiah delivers a vehement attack upon the “scribes” (or, as we might render, “bookmen”) and their “false pen.” If, as Wellhausen and Duhm suppose, this refers to Deuteronomy (i.e. the original Deuteronomy), the incorrectness of the theory referred to is proved. And even if we think that the phraseology of viii. 8 applies rather to a body of writings than to a single book, yet there is no good ground (xi. 1-8 and xxxiv. 12 being of doubtful origin) for supposing that Jeremiah would have excepted Deuteronomy from his condemnation.

Stages of his Development.—At first our prophet was not altogether a pessimist. He aspired to convince the better minds that the only hope for Israelites, as well as for Israel, lay in “returning” to the true Yahweh, a deity who was no mere national god, and was not to be cajoled by the punctual offering of costly sacrifices. When Jeremiah wrote iv. 1-4 he evidently considered that the judgment could even then be averted. Afterwards he became less hopeful, and it was perhaps a closer acquaintance with the manners of the capital that served to disillusionize him. He began his work at Anathoth, but v. 1-5 (as Duhm points out) seems to come from one who has just now for the first time “run to and fro in the streets of Jerusalem,” observing and observed. And what is the result of his expedition? That he cannot find a single just and honest man; that high and low, rich and poor, are all ignorant of the true method of worshipping God (“the way of Yahweh,” v. 4). It would seem as if Anathoth were less corrupt than the capital, the moral state of which so shocked Jeremiah. And yet he does not really go beyond the great city-prophet Isaiah who calls the men of Jerusalem “a people of Gomorrah” (i. 10). With all reverence, an historical student has to deduct something from both these statements. It is true that commercial prosperity had put a severe strain on the old morality, and that contact with other peoples, as well as the course of political history, had appeared to lower the position of the God of Israel in relation to other gods. Still, some adherents of the old Israelitish moral and religious standards must have survived, only they were not to be found in the chief places of concourse, but as a rule in coteries which handed on the traditions of Amos and Isaiah in sorrowful retirement.

Danger of Book Religion.—Probably, too, even in the highest class there were some who had a moral sympathy with Jeremiah; otherwise we can hardly account for the contents of Deuteronomy, at least if the book “found” in the Temple at all resembled the central portion of our Deuteronomy. And the assumption seems to be confirmed by the respectful attitude of certain “elders of the land” in xxvi. 17 sqq., and of the “princes” in xxxvi. 19, 25, towards Jeremiah, which may, at any rate in part, have been due to the recent reform movement. If therefore Jeremiah aimed at Deuteronomy in the severe language of viii. 8, he went too far. History shows that book religion has special dangers of its own.2 Nevertheless the same incorruptible adviser also shows that book religion may be necessary as an educational instrument, and a compromise between the two types of religion is without historical precedent.

Reaction: Opposition to Jeremiah.—This, however, could not as yet be recognized by the friends of prophecy, even though it seemed for a time as if the claims of book religion were rebuffed by facts. The death of the pious king Josiah at Megiddo in 608 B.C. dashed the high hopes of the “book-men,” but meant no victory for Jeremiah. Its only result for the majority was a falling back on the earlier popular cultus of the Baals, and on the heathen customs introduced, or reintroduced, by Josiah’s grandfather, Manasseh. Would that we possessed the section of the prophet’s biography which described his attitude immediately after the news of the battle of Megiddo! Let us, however, be thankful for what we have, and notably for the detailed narratives in chs. xxvi. and xxxvi. The former is dated in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, though Wellhausen suspects that the date is a mistake, and that the real occasion was the death of Josiah. The one clear-sighted patriot saw the full meaning of the tragedy of Megiddo, and for “prophesying against this city”—secured, as men thought, by the Temple (vii. 4)—he was accused by “the priests, the prophets, and all the people” of high treason. But the divinity which hedged a prophet saved him. The “princes,” supported by certain “elders” and by “the people” (quick to change their leaders), succeeded in quashing the accusation and setting the prophet free. No king, be it observed, is mentioned. The latter narrative is still more exciting. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim (= the first of Nebuchadrezzar, xxv. 1) Jeremiah was bidden to write down “all the words that Yahweh had spoken to him against Jerusalem (so LXX.), Judah and all the nations from the days of Josiah onwards” (xxxvi. 2). So at least the authors of Jeremiah’s biography tell us. They add that in the next year Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch read the prophecies of Jeremiah first to the people assembled in the Temple, then to the “princes,” and then to the king, who decided his own future policy by burning Baruch’s roll in the brazier. We cannot, however, bind ourselves to this tradition. Much more probably the prophecy was virtually a new one (i.e. even if some old passages were repeated yet the setting was new), and the burden of the prophecy was “The king of Babylon shall come and destroy this land.”3 We cannot therefore assent to the judgment that “we have, at least as regards [the] oldest portions [of the book] information considerably more specific than is usual in the case of the writings of the prophets.”4

Fall of the State.—Under Zedekiah the prophet was less fortunate. Such was the tension of feeling that the “princes,” who were formerly friendly to Jeremiah, now took up an attitude of decided hostility to him. At last they had him consigned to a miry dungeon, and it was the king who (at the instance of the Cushite Ebed-melech) intervened for his relief, though he remained a prisoner in other quarters till the fall of Jerusalem (586 B.C.). Nebuchadrezzar, who is assumed to have heard of Jeremiah’s constant recommendations of submission, gave him the choice either of going to Babylon or of remaining in the country (chs. xxxviii. seq.). He chose the latter and resided with Gedaliah, the native governor, at Mizpah. On the murder of Gedaliah he was carried to Mizraim or Egypt, or perhaps to the land of Mizrim in north Arabia—against his will (chs. xl.-xliii.). How far all this is correct we know not. The graphic style of a narrative is no sufficient proof of its truth. Conceivably enough the story of Jeremiah’s journey to Egypt (or Mizrim) may have been imagined to supply a background for the artificial prophecies ascribed to Jeremiah in chs. xlvi.-li. A legend in Jerome and Epiphanius states that he was stoned to death at Daphnae, but the biography, though not averse from horrors, does not mention this.

A Patriot?—Was Jeremiah really a patriot? The question has been variously answered. He was not a Phocion, for he never became the tool of a foreign power. To say with Winckler5 that he was “a decided adherent of the Chaldean party” is to go beyond the evidence. He did indeed counsel submission, but only because his detachment from party gave him a clearness of vision (cf. xxxviii. 17, 18) which the politicians lacked. How he suffered in his uphill course he has told us himself (xv. 10-21). In after ages the oppressed people saw in his love for Israel and his patient resignation their own realized ideal. “And Onias said, This is the lover of the brethren, he who prayeth much for the people and the holy city, Jeremiah the prophet of God” (2 Macc. xv. 14). And in proportion as the popular belief in Jeremiah rose, fresh prophecies were added to the book (notably those of the new covenant and of the restoration of the people after seventy years) to justify it. Professor N. Schmidt has gone further into the character of this sympathetic prophet, Ency. Bib. “Jeremiah,” § 5.

Jeremiah’s Prophecies.—It has been said above that our best authorities are Jeremiah’s own prophecies. Which may these be? Before answering we must again point out (see also Isaiah) that the records of the pre-exilic prophets came down in a fragmentary form, and that these fragments needed much supplementing to adapt them to the use of post-exilic readers. In Jeremiah, as in Isaiah, we must constantly ask to what age do the phraseology, the ideas and the implied circumstances most naturally point? According to Duhm there are many passages in which metre (see also Amos) may also be a factor in our critical conclusions. Jeremiah, he thinks, always uses the same metre. Giesebrecht, on the other hand, maintains that there are passages which are certainly Jeremiah’s, but which are not in what Duhm calls Jeremiah’s metre; Giesebrecht also, himself rather conservative, considers Duhm remarkably free with his emendations. There has also to be considered whether the text of the poetical passages has not often become corrupt, not only from ordinary causes but through the misunderstanding and misreading of north Arabian names on the part of late scribes and editors, the danger to Judah from north Arabia being (it is held) not less in pre-exilic times than the danger from Assyria and Babylonia, so that references to north Arabia are only to be expected. To bring educated readers into touch with critical workers it is needful to acquaint them with these various points, the neglect of any one of which may to some extent injure the results of criticism.

It is a new stage of criticism on which we have entered, so that no single critic can be reckoned as the authority on Jeremiah. But since the results of the higher criticism depend on the soundness and thoroughness of the criticism called “lower,” and since Duhm has the advantage of being exceptionally free from that exaggerated respect for the letters of the traditional text which has survived the destruction of the old superstitious veneration for the vowel-points, it may be best to give the student his “higher critical” results, dated 1901. Let us premise, however, that the portions mentioned in the 9th edition of the Ency. Brit. as having been “entirely or in part denied,” to Jeremiah, viz. x. 1-16; xxx.; xxxiii.; l.-li. and lii., are still regarded in their present form as non-Jeremianic. The question which next awaits decision is whether any part of the booklet on foreign nations (xxv., xlvi.-li.) can safely be regarded as Jeremianic. Giesebrecht still asserts the genuineness of xxv. 15-24 (apart from glosses), xlvii. (in the main) and xlix. 7, 8, 10, 11. Against these views see N. Schmidt, Ency. Bib., col. 2384.

Let us now listen to Duhm, who analyses the book into six groups of passages. These are (a) i.-xxv., the “words of Jeremiah.” (i. 1); (b) xxvi.-xxix., passages from Baruch’s biography of Jeremiah; (c) xxx.-xxxi., the book of the future of Israel and Judah; (d) xxxii.-xlv., from Baruch; (e) xlvi.-li., the prophecies “concerning the nations”;6 (f) lii., historical appendix. Upon examining these groups we find that besides a prose letter (ch. xxix.), about sixty poetical pieces may be Jeremiah’s. A: Anathoth passages before 621, (a) ii. 2b, 3, 14-28; ii. 29-37; iii. 1-5; iii. 12b, 13, 19, 20; iii. 21-25; iv. i, 3, 4; these form a cycle, (b) xxxi. 2-6; 15-20; 21, 22; another cycle. (c) iv. 5-8; 11b, 12a, 13, 15-17a; 19-21; 23-26; 29-31; visions and “auditions” of the impending invasion. B: Jerusalem passages. (d) v. 1-6a; 6b-9; 10-17; vi. 1-5; 6b-8; 9-14; 16, 17, 20; 22-26a; 27-30; vii. 28, 29; viii. 4-7a; 8, 9, 13; 14-17; viii. 18-23; ix. 1-8; 9 (short song); 16-18; 19-21; x. 19, 20, 22; reign of Josiah, strong personal element. (e) xxii. 10 (Jehoahaz). xxii. 13-17; probably too xi. 15, 16; xii. 7-12 (Jehoiakim). xxii. 18, 19, perhaps too xxii. 6b, 7; 20-23; and the cycle xiii. 15, 16; 17; 18, 19; 20, 21a, 22-25a, 26, 27 (later, Jehoiakim). xxii. 24; xxii. 28 (Jehoiachin). (f) Later poems. xiv. 2-10; xv. 5-9; xvi. 5-7; xviii. 13-17; xxiii. 9-12; 13-15; xi. 18-20; xv. 10-12; 15-19a, and 20, 21; xvii. 9, 10, 14, 16, 17; xviii. 18-20; xx. 7-11; xx. 14-18; xiv. 17, 18; xvii. 1-4; xxxviii. 24; assigned to the close of Zedekiah’s time.

Two Recensions of the Text.—It has often been said that we have virtually two recensions of the text, that represented by the Septuagint and the Massoretic text, and critics have taken different sides, some for one and some for the other. “Recension,” however, is a bad term; it implies that the two texts which undeniably exist were the result of revising and editing according to definite critical principles. Such, however, is not the case. It is true that “there are (in the LXX.) many omissions of words, sentences, verses and whole passages, in fact, that altogether about 2700 words are wanting, or the eighth part of the Massoretic text” (Bleek). It may also be admitted that the scribes who produced the Hebrew basis of the Septuagint version, conscious of the unsettled state of the text, did not shrink from what they considered a justifiable simplification. But we must also grant that those from whom the “written” Hebrew text proceeds allowed themselves to fill up and to repeat without any sufficient warrant. In each case in which there is a genuine difference of reading between the two texts, it is for the critic to decide; often, however, he will have to seek to go behind what both the texts present in order to constitute a truer text than either. Here is the great difficulty of the future. We may add to the credit of the Septuagint that the position given to the prophecies on “the nations” (chs. xlvi.-li. in our Bible) in the Septuagint is probably more original than that in the Massoretic text. On this point see especially Schmidt, Ency. Bib. “Jeremiah (Book)” §§ 6 and 21; Davidson, Hastings’s Dict. Bible, ii. 573b-575; Driver, Introduction (8th ed.), pp. 269, 270.

The best German commentary is that of Cornill (1905). A skilful translation by Driver, with notes intended for ordinary students (1906) should also be mentioned.

(T. K. C.)

1 Davidson (Hast., D.B., ii. 570 b) mentions two views. (1) The foe might be “a creation of his moral presentiment and assigned to the north as the cloudy region of mystery.” (2) The more usual view is that the Scythians (see Herod, i. 76, 103-106; iv. 1 ) are meant. Neither of these views is satisfactory. The passage v. 15-17 is too definite for (1), and as for (2), the idea of a threatened Scythian invasion lacks a sufficient basis. Those who hold (2) have to suppose that original references to the Scythians were retouched under the impression of Chaldean invasions. Hence Cheyne’s theory of a north Arabian invasion from the land of Zaphon = Zibeon (Gen. xxxvi. 2, 14), i.e. Ishmael. Cf. N. Schmidt, Ency. Bib., Zibeon, “Scythians,” § 8; Cheyne, Critica Biblica, part i. (Isaiah and Jeremiah).

2 Cf. Ewald, The Prophets, Eng. trans., iii. 63, 64.

3 Cheyne, Ency. Brit. (9th ed.,), “Jeremiah,” suggests after Grätz that the roll simply contained ch. xxv., omitting the most obvious interpolations. Against this view see N. Schmidt, Ency. Bib., “Jeremiah (Book),” § 8, who, however, accepts the negative part of Cheyne’s arguments.

4 Driver, Introd. to the Lit. of the O.T. (6), p. 249.

5 In Helmolt’s Weltgeschichte, iii. 211.

6 li. 59-64a, however, is a specimen of imaginative “Midrashic” history. See Giesebrecht’s monograph.

JEREMY, EPISTLE OF, an apocryphal book of the Old Testament. This letter purports to have been written by Jeremiah to the exiles who were already in Babylon or on the way thither. The author was a Hellenistic Jew, and not improbably a Jew of Alexandria. His work, which shows little literary skill, was written with a serious practical purpose. He veiled his fierce attack on the idol gods of Egypt by holding up to derision the idolatry of Babylon. The fact that Jeremiah (xxix. 1 sqq.) was known to have written a letter of this nature naturally suggested to a Hellenist, possibly of the 1st century B.C. or earlier, the idea of a second epistolary undertaking, and other passages of Jeremiah’s prophecy (x. 1-12; xxix. 4-23) may have determined also its general character and contents.

The writer warned the exiles that they were to remain in captivity for seven generations; that they would there see the worship paid to idols, from all participation in which they were to hold aloof; for that idols were nothing save the work of men’s hands, without the powers of speech, hearing or self-preservation. They could not bless their worshippers even in the smallest concerns of life; they were indifferent to moral qualities, and were of less value than the commonest household objects, and finally, “with rare irony, the author compared an idol to a scarecrow (v. 70), impotent to protect, but deluding to the imagination” (Marshall).

The date of the epistle is uncertain. It is believed by some scholars to be referred to in 2 Macc. ii. 2, which says that Jeremiah charged the exiles “not to forget the statutes of the Lord, neither to be led astray in their minds when they saw images of gold and silver and the adornment thereof.” But the reference is disputed by Fritzsche, Gifford, Shürer and others. The epistle was included in the Greek canon. There was no question of its canonicity till the time of Jerome, who termed it a pseudepigraph.

See Fritzsche, Handb. zu den Apok., 1851; Gifford, in Speaker’s Apoc. ii. 286-303; Marshall, in Hastings’ Dict. Bible, ii. 578-579.

(R. H. C.)

JERÉZ DE LA FRONTERA (formerly Xeres), a town of southern Spain, in the province of Cadiz, near the right bank of the river Guadalete, and on the Seville-Cadiz railway, about 7 m. from the Atlantic coast. Pop. (1900), 63,473. Jeréz is built in the midst of an undulating plain of great fertility. Its whitewashed houses, clean, broad streets, and squares planted with trees extend far beyond the limits formerly enclosed by the Moorish walls, almost entirely demolished. The principal buildings are the 15th-century church of San Miguel, the 17th-century collegiate church with its lofty bell-tower, the 16th-century town-hall, superseded, for official purposes, by a modern edifice, the bull-ring, and many hospitals, charitable institutions and schools, including academies of law, medicine and commerce. But the most characteristic features of Jeréz are the huge bodegas, or wine-lodges, for the manufacture and storage of sherry, and the vineyards, covering more than 150,000 acres, which surround it on all sides. The town is an important market for grain, fruit and livestock, but its staple trade is in wine. Sherry is also produced in other districts, but takes its name, formerly written in English as sherris or xeres, from Jeréz. The demand for sherry diminished very greatly during the last quarter of the 19th century, especially in England, which had been the chief consumer. In 1872 the sherry shipped from Cadiz to Great Britain alone was valued at £2,500,000; in 1902 the total export hardly amounted to one-fifth of this sum. The wine trade, however, still brings a considerable profit, and few towns of southern Spain display greater commercial activity than Jeréz. In the earlier part of the 18th century the neighbourhood suffered severely from yellow fever; but it was rendered comparatively healthy when in 1869 an aqueduct was opened to supply pure water. Strikes and revolutionary disturbances have frequently retarded business in more recent years.

Jeréz has been variously identified with the Roman Municipium Seriense; with Asido, perhaps the original of the Moorish Sherish; and with Hasta Regia, a name which may survive in the designation of La Mesa de Asta, a neighbouring hill. Jeréz was taken from the Moors by Ferdinand III. of Castile (1217-1252); but it was twice recaptured before Alphonso X. finally occupied it in 1264. Towards the close of the 14th century it received the title de la Frontera, i.e. “of the frontier,” common to several towns on the Moorish border.

JERÉZ DE LOS CABALLEROS, a town of south-western Spain, in the province of Badajoz, picturesquely situated on two heights overlooking the river Ardila, a tributary of the Guadiana, 12 m. E. of the Portuguese frontier. Pop. (1900), 10,271. The old town is surrounded by a Moorish wall with six gates; the newer portion is well and regularly built, and planted with numerous orange and other fruit trees. Owing to the lack of railway communication Jeréz is of little commercial importance; its staple trade is in agricultural produce, especially in ham and bacon from the large herds of swine which are reared in the surrounding oak forests. The town is said to have been founded by Alphonso IX. of Leon in 1229; in 1232 it was extended by his son St Ferdinand, who gave it to the knights templar. Hence the name Jeréz de los Caballeros, “Jeréz of the knights.”

JERICHO (יריחו, ירחו, once יריחה, a word of disputed meaning, whether “fragrant” or “moon [-god] city”), an important town in the Jordan valley some 5 m. N. of the Dead Sea. The references to it in the Pentateuch are confined to rough geographical indications of the latitude of the trans-Jordanic camp of the Israelites in Moab before their crossing of the river. This was the first Canaanite city to be attacked and reduced by the victorious Israelites. The story of its conquest is His Sundays were spent in the catacombs in discovering graves of the martyrs and deciphering inscriptions. Pope Liberius baptized him in 360; three years later the news of the death of the emperor Julian came to Rome, and Christians felt relieved from a great dread.

When his student days were over Jerome returned to Strido, but did not stay there long. His character was formed. He was a scholar, with a scholar’s tastes and cravings for knowledge, easily excited, bent on scholarly discoveries. From Strido he went to Aquileia, where he formed some friendships among the monks of the large monastery, notably with Rufinus, with whom he was destined to quarrel bitterly over the question of Origen’s orthodoxy and worth as a commentator; for Jerome was a man who always sacrificed a friend to an opinion, and when he changed sides in a controversy expected his acquaintances to follow him. From Aquileia he went to Gaul (366-370), visiting in turn the principal places in that country, from Narbonne and Toulouse in the south to Treves on the north-east frontier. He stayed some time at Treves studying and observing, and it was there that he first began to think seriously upon sacred things. From Treves he returned to Strido, and from Strido to Aquileia. He settled down to literary work in Aquileia (370-373) and composed there his first original tract, De muliere septies percussa, in the form of a letter to his friend Innocentius. Some dispute caused him to leave Aquileia suddenly; and with a few companions, Innocentius, Evagrius, and Heliodorus being among them, he started for a long tour in the East. The epistle to Rufinus (3rd in Vallarsi’s enumeration) tells us the route. They went through Thrace, visiting Athens, Bithynia, Galatia, Pontus, Cappadocia and Cilicia, to Antioch, Jerome observing and making notes as they went. He was interested in the theological disputes and schisms in Galatia, in the two languages spoken in Cilicia, &c. At Antioch the party remained some time. Innocentius died of a fever, and Jerome was dangerously ill. This illness induced a spiritual change, and he resolved to renounce whatever kept him back from God. His greatest temptation was the study of the literature of pagan Rome. In a dream Christ reproached him with caring more to be a Ciceronian than a Christian. He disliked the uncouth style of the Scriptures. “O Lord,” he prayed, “thou knowest that whenever I have and study secular MSS. I deny thee,” and he made a resolve henceforth to devote his scholarship to the Holy Scripture. “David was to be henceforth his Simonides, Pindar and Alcaeus, his Flaccus, Catullus and Severus.” Fortified by these resolves he betook himself to a hermit life in the wastes of Chalcis, S.E. from Antioch (373-379). Chalcis was the Thebaid of Syria. Great numbers of monks, each in solitary cell, spent lonely lives, scorched by the sun, ill-clad and scantily fed, pondering on portions of Scripture or copying MSS. to serve as objects of meditation. Jerome at once set himself to such scholarly work as the place afforded. He discovered and copied MSS., and began to study Hebrew. There also he wrote the life of St Paul of Thebes, probably an imaginary tale embodying the facts of the monkish life around him. Just then the Meletian schism, which arose over the relation of the orthodox to Arian bishops and to those baptized by Arians, distressed the church at Antioch (see Meletius of Antioch), and Jerome as usual eagerly joined the fray. Here as elsewhere he had but one rule to guide him in matters of doctrine and discipline—the practice of Rome and the West; for it is singular to see how Jerome, who is daringly original in points of scholarly criticism, was a ruthless partisan in all other matters; and, having discovered what was the Western practice, he set tongue and pen to work with his usual bitterness (Altercatio luciferiani et orthodoxi).

At Antioch in 379 he was ordained presbyter. From there he went to Constantinople, where he met with the great Eastern scholar and theologian Gregory of Nazianzus, and with his aid tried to perfect himself in Greek. The result of his studies there was the translation of the Chronicon of Eusebius, with a continuation1 of twenty-eight homilies of Origen on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and of nine homilies of Origen on the visions of Isaiah.

In 381 Meletius died, and Pope Damasus interfered in the dispute at Antioch, hoping to end it. Jerome was called to Rome in 382 to give help in the matter, and was made secretary during the investigation. His work brought him into intercourse with this great pontiff, who soon saw what he could best do, and how his vast scholarship might be made of use to the church. Damasus suggested to him to revise the “Old Latin” translation of the Bible; and to this task he henceforth devoted his great abilities. At Rome were published the Gospels (with a dedication to Pope Damasus, an explanatory introduction, and the canons of Eusebius), the rest of the New Testament and the version of the Psalms from the Septuagint known as the Psalterium romanum, which was followed (c. 388) by the Psalterium gallicanum, based on the Hexaplar Greek text. These scholarly labours, however, did not take up his whole time, and it was almost impossible for Jerome to be long anywhere without getting into a dispute. He was a zealous defender of that monastic life which was beginning to take such a large place in the church of the 4th century, and he found enthusiastic disciples among the Roman ladies. A number of widows and maidens met together in the house of Marcella to study the Scriptures with him; he taught them Hebrew, and preached the virtues of the celibate life. His arguments and exhortations may be gathered from many of his epistles and from his tract Adversus Helvidium, in which he defends the perpetual virginity of Mary against Helvidius, who maintained that she bore children to Joseph. His influence over these ladies alarmed their relatives and excited the suspicions of the regular priesthood and of the populace, but while Pope Damasus lived Jerome remained secure. Damasus died, however, in 384, and was succeeded by Siricius, who did not show much friendship for Jerome. He found it expedient to leave Rome, and set out for the East in 385. His letters (especially Ep. 45) are full of outcries against his enemies and of indignant protestations that he had done nothing unbecoming a Christian, that he had taken no money, nor gifts great nor small, that he had no delight in silken attire, sparkling gems or gold ornaments, that no matron moved him unless by penitence and fasting, &c. His route is given in the third book In Rufinum; he went by Rhegium and Cyprus, where he was entertained by Bishop Epiphanius, to Antioch. There he was joined by two wealthy Roman ladies, Paula, a widow, and Eustochium, her daughter, one of Jerome’s Hebrew students. They came accompanied by a band of Roman maidens vowed to live a celibate life in a nunnery in Palestine. Accompanied by these ladies Jerome made the tour of Palestine, carefully noting with a scholar’s keenness the various places mentioned in Holy Scripture. The results of this journey may be traced in his translation with emendations of the book of Eusebius on the situation and names of Hebrew places, written probably three years afterwards, when he had settled down at Bethlehem. From Palestine Jerome and his companions went to Egypt, remaining some time in Alexandria, and they visited the convents of the Nitrian desert. Jerome’s mind was evidently full of anxiety about his translation of the Old Testament, for we find him in his letters recording the conversations he had with learned men about disputed readings and doubtful renderings; the blind Didymus of Alexandria, whom he heard interpreting Hosea, appears to have been most useful. When they returned to Palestine they all settled at Bethlehem, where Paula built four monasteries, three for nuns and one for monks. She was at the head of the nunneries until her death in 404, when Eustochium succeeded her; Jerome presided over the fourth monastery. Here he did most of his literary work and, throwing aside his unfinished plan of a translation from Origen’s Hexaplar text, translated the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew, with the aid of Jewish scholars. He mentions a rabbi from Lydda, a rabbi from Tiberias, and above all rabbi Ben Anina, who came to him by night secretly for fear of the Jews. Jerome was not familiar enough with Hebrew to be able to dispense with such assistance, and he makes the synagogue responsible for the fully narrated in the first seven chapters of Joshua. There must be some little exaggeration in the statement that Jericho was totally destroyed; a hamlet large enough to be enumerated among the towns of Benjamin (Josh. xviii. 21) must have remained; but that it was small is shown by the fact that it was deemed a suitable place for David’s ambassadors to retire to after the indignities put upon them by Hanun (2 Sam. x. 5; 1 Chron. xix. 5). Its refortification was due to a Bethelite named Hiel, who endeavoured to avert the curse of Joshua by offering his sons as sacrifices at certain stages of the work (1 Kings xvi. 34). After this event it grew again into importance and became the site of a college of prophets (2 Kings ii. 4 sqq.) for whom Elisha “healed” its poisonous waters. The principal spring in the neighbourhood of Jericho still bears (among the foreign residents) the name of Elisha; the natives call it, Ain es-Sultan, or “Sultan’s spring.” To Jericho the victorious Israelite marauders magnanimously returned their Judahite captives at the bidding of the prophet Oded (2 Chron. xxviii. 15). Here was fought the last fight between the Babylonians and Zedekiah, wherein the kingdom of Judah came to an end (2 Kings xxv. 5; Jer. xxxix. 5, lii. 8). In the New Testament Jericho is connected with the well-known stories of Bar-Timaeus (Matt. xx. 29; Mark x. 46; Luke xviii. 35) and Zacchaeus (Luke xix. 1) and with the good Samaritan (Luke x. 30).

The extra-Biblical history of Jericho is as disastrous as are the records preserved in the Scriptures. Bacchides, the general of the Syrians, captured and fortified it (1. Macc. ix. 50), Aristobulus (Jos. Ant. XIV. i. 2) also took it, Pompey (ib. XIV. iv. 1) encamped here on his way to Jerusalem. Before Herod its inhabitants ran away (ib. XIV. xv. 3) as they did before Vespasian (Wars, IV. viii. 2). The reason of this lack of warlike quality was no doubt the enervating effect of the great heat of the depression in which the city lies, which has the same effect on the handful of degraded humanity that still occupies the ancient site.

Few places in Palestine are more fertile. It was the city of palm trees of the ancient record of the Israelite invasion preserved in part in Judg. i. 16; and Josephus speaks of its fruitfulness with enthusiasm (Wars IV. 8, 3). Even now with every possible hindrance in the way of cultivation it is an important centre of fruit-growing.

The modern er-Rīha is a poor squalid village of, it is estimated, about 300 inhabitants. It is not built exactly on the ancient site. Indeed, the site of Jericho has shifted several times. The mound of Tell es-Sultan, near “Elisha’s Fountain,” north of the modern village, no doubt covers the Canaanite town. There are two later sites, of Roman or Herodian date, one north, the other west, of this. It was probably the crusaders who established the modern site. An old tower attributed to them is to be seen in the village, and in the surrounding mountains are many remains of early monasticism. Aqueducts, ruined sugar-mills, and other remains of ancient industry abound in the neighbourhood. The whole district is the private property of the sultan of Turkey. In 1907-8 the Canaanite Jericho was excavated under the direction of Prof. Sellin of Vienna.

See “The German Excavations at Jericho,” Pal. Explor. Fund, Quart. Statem. (1910), pp. 54-68.

1 Cf. Schoene’s critical edition (Berlin, 1866, 1875).

JERKIN, a short close-fitting jacket, made usually of leather, and without sleeves, the typical male upper garment of the 16th and 17th centuries. The origin of the word is unknown. The Dutch word jurk, a child’s frock, often taken as the source, is modern, and represents neither the sound nor the sense of the English word. In architecture the term “jerkin-roofed” is applied, probably with some obscure connexion with the garment, to a particular form of gable end, the gable being cut off half way up the roof and sloping back like a “hipped roof” to the edge.