Part 1
# Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Geoponici" to "Germany": Volume 11, Slice 7 ### By Various
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Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's notes:
(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an underscore, like C_n.
(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.
(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective paragraphs.
(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not inserted.
(5) [root] stands for the root symbol; [alpha], [beta], etc. for greek letters.
(6) The following typographical errors have been corrected:
ARTICLE GEORGE III.: "George III. therefore waited his time." 'George' amended from 'Goerge'.
ARTICLE GEORGE THE SYNCELLUS: "He was the syncellus (cell-mate, the confidential companion assigned to the patriarchs ..." 'companion' amended from 'campanion'.
ARTICLE GEORGIA: "The governor's power of veto extends to separate items in appropriation bills, but in every case his veto may be overridden by a two-thirds vote of the legislature." 'overridden' amended from 'overriden'.
ARTICLE GERMAN LITERATURE: "But it had no vitality of its own; it virtually sprang into existence at the command of Charlemagne ..." 'existence' amended from 'existance'.
ARTICLE GERMAN LITERATURE: "The unkempt literature of the Reformation age admittedly stood in need of guidance and discipline, but the 17th century made the fatal mistake of trying to impose the laws and rules of Romance literatures on a people of a purely Germanic stock." 'guidance' amended from 'guidauce'.
ARTICLE GERMANY: "The sandstone range of the Elbe unites in the east with the low Lusatian group, along the east of which runs the best road from northern Germany to Bohemia." 'sandstone' amended from 'standstone'.
ARTICLE GERMANY: "... farther inland, and especially east of the Elbe, coniferous trees are the most prevalent, particularly the Scotch fir; birches are also abundant." 'particularly' amended from 'praticularly'.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME XI, SLICE VII
Geoponici to Germany
ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:
GEOPONICI GERARD, ETIENNE MAURICE GEORGE, SAINT GERARD, FRANCOIS GEORGE I. GERARD, JEAN IGNACE ISIDORE GEORGE II. GERARD, JOHN GEORGE III. GERARDMER GEORGE IV. GERASA GEORGE V. (of Great Britain) GERAULT-RICHARD, ALFRED LEON GEORGE V. (of Hanover) GERBER, ERNST LUDWIG GEORGE I. (of the Hellenes) GERBERON, GABRIEL GEORGE (of Saxony) GERBERT, MARTIN GEORGE OF LAODICEA GERBIL GEORGE OF TREBIZOND GERENUK GEORGE THE MONK GERGOVIA GEORGE THE SYNCELLUS GERHARD, FRIEDRICH WILHELM EDUARD GEORGE, HENRY GERHARD, JOHANN GEORGE PISIDA GERHARDT, CHARLES FREDERIC GEORGE, LAKE GERHARDT, PAUL GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC GERICAULT, JEAN LOUIS ANDRE THEODORE GEORGETOWN (British Guiana) GERIZIM GEORGETOWN (Washington, U.S.A.) GERLACHE, ETIENNE CONSTANTIN GEORGETOWN (Kentucky, U.S.A.) GERLE, CHRISTOPHE ANTOINE GEORGETOWN (South Car., U.S.A.) GERMAN BAPTIST BRETHREN GEORGETOWN (Texas, U.S.A.) GERMAN CATHOLICS GEORGIA (U.S.A.) GERMAN EAST AFRICA GEORGIA (Transcaucasia) GERMAN EVANGELICAL SYNOD OF N. AMERICA GEORGIAN BAY GERMANIC LAWS, EARLY GEORGSWALDE GERMANICUS CAESAR GEPHYREA GERMANIUM GERA GERMAN LANGUAGE GERALDTON GERMAN LITERATURE GERANDO, MARIE JOSEPH DE GERMAN REED ENTERTAINMENT GERANIACEAE GERMAN SILVER GERANIUM GERMAN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA GERARD (archbishop of York) GERMANTOWN GERARD (Tum, Tunc, Tenque) GERMANY (part) GERARD OF CREMONA
GEOPONICI,[1] or _Scriptores rei rusticae_, the Greek and Roman writers on husbandry and agriculture. On the whole the Greeks paid less attention than the Romans to the scientific study of these subjects, which in classical times they regarded as a branch of economics. Thus Xenophon's _Oeconomicus_ (see also _Memorabilia_, ii. 4) contains a eulogy of agriculture and its beneficial ethical effects, and much information is to be found in the writings of Aristotle and his pupil Theophrastus. About the same time as Xenophon, the philosopher Democritus of Abdera wrote a treatise [Greek: Peri Georgias], frequently quoted and much used by the later compilers of _Geoponica_ (agricultural treatises). Greater attention was given to the subject in the Alexandrian period; a long list of names is given by Varro and Columella, amongst them Hiero II. and Attalus III. Philometor. Later, Cassius Dionysius of Utica translated and abridged the great work of the Carthaginian Mago, which was still further condensed by Diophanes of Nicaea in Bithynia for the use of King Deiotarus. From these and similar works Cassianus Bassus (q.v.) compiled his _Geoponica_. Mention may also be made of a little work [Greek: Peri Georgikon] by Michael Psellus (printed in Boissonade, _Anecdota Graeca_, i.).
The Romans, aware of the necessity of maintaining a numerous and thriving order of agriculturists, from very early times endeavoured to instil into their countrymen both a theoretical and a practical knowledge of the subject. The occupation of the farmer was regarded as next in importance to that of the soldier, and distinguished Romans did not disdain to practise it. In furtherance of this object, the great work of Mago was translated into Latin by order of the senate, and the elder Cato wrote his _De agri cultura_ (extant in a very corrupt state), a simple record in homely language of the rules observed by the old Roman landed proprietors rather than a theoretical treatise. He was followed by the two Sasernae (father and son) and Gnaeus Tremellius Scrofa, whose works are lost. The learned Marcus Terentius Varro of Reate, when eighty years of age, composed his _Rerum rusticarum, libri tres_, dealing with agriculture, the rearing of cattle, and the breeding of fishes. He was the first to systematize what had been written on the subject, and supplemented the labours of others by practical experience gained during his travels. In the Augustan age Julius Hyginus wrote on farming and bee-keeping, Sabinus Tiro on horticulture, and during the early empire Julius Graecinus and Julius Atticus on the culture of vines, and Cornelius Celsus (best known for his _De medicina_) on farming. The chief work of the kind, however, is that of Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (q.v.). About the middle of the 2nd century the two Quintilii, natives of Troja, wrote on the subject in Greek. It is remarkable that Columella's work exercised less influence in Rome and Italy than in southern Gaul and Spain, where agriculture became one of the principal subjects of instruction in the superior educational establishments that were springing up in those countries. One result of this was the preparation of manuals of a popular kind for use in the schools. In the 3rd century Gargilius Martialis of Mauretania compiled a _Geoponica_ in which medical botany and the veterinary art were included. The _De re rustica_ of Palladius (4th century), in fourteen books, which is almost entirely borrowed from Columella, is greatly inferior in style and knowledge of the subject. It is a kind of farmer's calendar, in which the different rural occupations are arranged in order of the months. The fourteenth book (on forestry) is written in elegiacs (85 distichs). The whole of Palladius and considerable fragments of Martialis are extant.
The best edition of the _Scriptores rei rusticae_ is by J.G. Schneider (1794-1797), and the whole subject is exhaustively treated by A. Magerstedt, _Bilder aus der romischen Landwirtschaft_ (1858-1863); see also Teuffel-Schwabe, _Hist. of Roman Literature_, 54; C.F. Bahr in Ersch and Gruber's _Allgemeine Encyklopadie_.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The latinized form of a non-existent [Greek: Geoponikoi], used for convenience.
GEORGE, SAINT (d. 303), the patron saint of England, Aragon and Portugal. According to the legend given by Metaphrastes the Byzantine hagiologist, and substantially repeated in the Roman _Acta sanctorum_ and in the Spanish breviary, he was born in Cappadocia of noble Christian parents, from whom he received a careful religious training. Other accounts place his birth at Lydda, but preserve his Cappadocian parentage. Having embraced the profession of a soldier, he rapidly rose under Diocletian to high military rank. In Persian Armenia he organized and energized the Christian community at Urmi (Urumiah), and even visited Britain on an imperial expedition. When Diocletian had begun to manifest a pronounced hostility towards Christianity, George sought a personal interview with him, in which he made deliberate profession of his faith, and, earnestly remonstrating against the persecution which had begun, resigned his commission. He was immediately laid under arrest, and after various tortures, finally put to death at Nicomedia (his body being afterwards taken to Lydda) on the 23rd of April 303. His festival is observed on that anniversary by the entire Roman Catholic Church as a semi-duplex, and by the Spanish Catholics as a duplex of the first class with an octave. The day is also celebrated as a principal feast in the Orthodox Eastern Church, where the saint is distinguished by the titles [Greek: megalomartyr] and [Greek: tropaiophoros].
The historical basis of the tradition is particularly unsound, there being two claimants to the name and honour. Eusebius, _Hist. eccl._ viii. 5, writes: "Immediately on the promulgation of the edict (of Diocletian) a certain man of no mean origin, but highly esteemed for his temporal dignities, as soon as the decree was published against the churches in Nicomedia, stimulated by a divine zeal and excited by an ardent faith, took it as it was openly placed and posted up for public inspection, and tore it to shreds as a most profane and wicked act. This, too, was done when the two Caesars were in the city, the first of whom was the eldest and chief of all and the other held fourth grade of the imperial dignity after him. But this man, as the first that was distinguished there in this manner, after enduring what was likely to follow an act so daring, preserved his mind, calm and serene, until the moment when his spirit fled." Rivalling this anonymous martyr, who is often supposed to have been St George, is an earlier martyr briefly mentioned in the _Chronicon Pascale_: "In the year 225 of the Ascension of our Lord a persecution of the Christians took place, and many suffered martyrdom, among whom also the Holy George was martyred."
Two Syrian church inscriptions bearing the name, one at Ezr'a and the other at Shaka, found by Burckhardt and Porter, and discussed by J. Hogg in the _Transactions of the Royal Literary Society_, may with some probability be assigned to the middle of the 4th century. Calvin impugned the saint's existence altogether, and Edward Reynolds (1599-1676), bishop of Norwich, like Edward Gibbon a century later, made him one with George of Laodicea, called "the Cappadocian," the Arian bishop of Alexandria (see GEORGE OF LAODICEA).
Modern criticism, while rejecting this identification, is not unwilling to accept the main fact that an officer named Georgios, of high rank in the army, suffered martyrdom probably under Diocletian. In the canon of Pope Gelasius (494) George is mentioned in a list of those "whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God," a statement which implies that legends had already grown up around his name. The caution of Gelasius was not long preserved; Gregory of Tours, for example, asserts that the saint's relics actually existed in the French village of Le Maine, where many miracles were wrought by means of them; and Bede, while still explaining that the _Gesta Georgii_ are reckoned apocryphal, commits himself to the statement that the martyr was beheaded under Dacian, king of Persia, whose wife Alexandra, however, adhered to the Christian faith. The great fame of George, who is reverenced alike by Eastern and Western Christendom and by Mahommedans, is due to many causes. He was martyred on the eve of the triumph of Christianity, his shrine was reared near the scene of a great Greek legend (Perseus and Andromeda), and his relics when removed from Lydda, where many pilgrims had visited them, to Zorava in the Hauran served to impress his fame not only on the Syrian population, but on their Moslem conquerors, and again on the Crusaders, who in grateful memory of the saint's intervention on their behalf at Antioch built a new cathedral at Lydda to take the place of the church destroyed by the Saracens. This cathedral was in turn destroyed by Saladin.
The connexion of St George with a dragon, familiar since the _Golden Legend_ of Jacobus de Voragine, can be traced to the close of the 6th century. At Arsuf or Joppa--neither of them far from Lydda--Perseus had slain the sea-monster that threatened the virgin Andromeda, and George, like many another Christian saint, entered into the inheritance of veneration previously enjoyed by a pagan hero.[1] The exploit thus attaches itself to the very common Aryan myth of the sun-god as the conqueror of the powers of darkness.
The popularity of St George in England has never reached the height attained by St Andrew in Scotland, St David in Wales or St Patrick in Ireland. The council of Oxford in 1222 ordered that his feast should be kept as a national festival; but it was not until the time of Edward III. that he was made patron of the kingdom. The republics of Genoa and Venice were also under his protection.
See P. Heylin, _The History of ... S. George of Cappadocia_ (1631); S. Baring-Gould, Curious _Myths of the Middle Ages_; Fr. Gorres, "Der Ritter St Georg in der Geschichte, Legende und Kunst" (_Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie_, xxx., 1887, Heft i.); E.A.W. Budge, _The Martyrdom and Miracles of St George of Cappadocia_: the Coptic texts edited with an English translation (1888); Bolland, _Acta Sancti_, iii. 101; E.O. Gordon, _Saint George_ (1907); M.H. Bulley, _St George for Merrie England_ (1908).
FOOTNOTE:
[1] G.A. Smith (_Hist. Geog. of Holy Land_, p. 164) points out another coincidence. "The Mahommedans who usually identify St George with the prophet Elijah, at Lydda confound his legend with one about Christ himself. Their name for Antichrist is Dajjal, and they have a tradition that Jesus will slay Antichrist by the gate of Lydda. The notion sprang from an ancient bas-relief of George and the Dragon on the Lydda church. But Dajjal may be derived, by a very common confusion between _n_ and _l_, from Dagon, whose name two neighbouring villages bear to this day, while one of the gates of Lydda used to be called the Gate of Dagon." It is a curious process by which the monster that symbolized heathenism conquered by Christianity has been evolved out of the first great rival of the God of Israel.
GEORGE I. [George Louis] (1660-1727), king of Great Britain and Ireland, born in 1660, was heir through his father Ernest Augustus to the hereditary lay bishopric of Osnabruck, and to the duchy of Calenberg, which formed one portion of the Hanoverian possessions of the house of Brunswick, whilst he secured the reversion of the other portion, the duchy of Celle or Zell, by his marriage (1682) with the heiress, his cousin Sophia Dorothea. The marriage was not a happy one. The morals of German courts in the end of the 17th century took their tone from the splendid profligacy of Versailles. It became the fashion for a prince to amuse himself with a mistress or more frequently with many mistresses simultaneously, and he was often content that the mistresses whom he favoured should be neither beautiful nor witty. George Louis followed the usual course. Count Konigsmark--a handsome adventurer--seized the opportunity of paying court to the deserted wife. Conjugal infidelity was held at Hanover to be a privilege of the male sex. Count Konigsmark was assassinated. Sophia Dorothea was divorced in 1694, and remained in seclusion till her death in 1726. When George IV., her descendant in the fourth generation, attempted in England to call his wife to account for sins of which he was himself notoriously guilty, free-spoken public opinion reprobated the offence in no measured terms. But in the Germany of the 17th century all free-spoken public opinion had been crushed out by the misery of the Thirty Years' War, and it was understood that princes were to arrange their domestic life according to their own pleasure.
The prince's father did much to raise the dignity of his family. By sending help to the emperor when he was struggling against the French and the Turks, he obtained the grant of a ninth electorate in 1692. His marriage with Sophia, the youngest daughter of Elizabeth the daughter of James I. of England, was not one which at first seemed likely to confer any prospect of advancement to his family. But though there were many persons whose birth gave them better claims than she had to the English crown, she found herself, upon the death of the duke of Gloucester, the next Protestant heir after Anne. The Act of Settlement in 1701 secured the inheritance to herself and her descendants. Being old and unambitious she rather permitted herself to be burthened with the honour than thrust herself forward to meet it. Her son George took a deeper interest in the matter. In his youth he had fought with determined courage in the wars of William III. Succeeding to the electorate on his father's death in 1698, he had sent a welcome reinforcement of Hanoverians to fight under Marlborough at Blenheim. With prudent persistence he attached himself closely to the Whigs and to Marlborough, refusing Tory offers of an independent command, and receiving in return for his fidelity a guarantee by the Dutch of his succession to England in the Barrier treaty of 1709. In 1714 when Anne was growing old, and Bolingbroke and the more reckless Tories were coquetting with the son of James II., the Whigs invited George's eldest son, who was duke of Cambridge, to visit England in order to be on the spot in case of need. Neither the elector nor his mother approved of a step which was likely to alienate the queen, and which was specially distasteful to himself, as he was on very bad terms with his son. Yet they did not set themselves against the strong wish of the party to which they looked for support, and it is possible that troubles would have arisen from any attempt to carry out the plan, if the deaths, first of the electress (May 28) and then of the queen (August 1, 1714), had not laid open George's way to the succession without further effort of his own.
In some respects the position of the new king was not unlike that of William III. a quarter of a century before. Both sovereigns were foreigners, with little knowledge of English politics and little interest in English legislation. Both sovereigns arrived at a time when party spirit had been running high, and when the task before the ruler was to still the waves of contention. In spite of the difference between an intellectually great man and an intellectually small one, in spite too of the difference between the king who began by choosing his ministers from both parties and the king who persisted in choosing his ministers from only one, the work of pacification was accomplished by George even more thoroughly than by William.
George I. was fortunate in arriving in England when a great military struggle had come to an end. He had therefore no reason to call upon the nation to make great sacrifices. All that he wanted was to secure for himself and his family a high position which he hardly knew how to occupy, to fill the pockets of his German attendants and his German mistresses, to get away as often as possible from the uncongenial islanders whose language he was unable to speak, and to use the strength of England to obtain petty advantages for his German principality. In order to do this he attached himself entirely to the Whig party, though he refused to place himself at the disposal of its leaders. He gave his confidence, not to Somers and Wharton and Marlborough, but to Stanhope and Townshend, the statesmen of the second rank. At first he seemed to be playing a dangerous game. The Tories, whom he rejected, were numerically superior to their adversaries, and were strong in the support of the country gentlemen and the country clergy. The strength of the Whigs lay in the towns and in the higher aristocracy. Below both
## parties lay the mass of the nation, which cared nothing for politics
except in special seasons of excitement, and which asked only to be let alone. In 1715 a Jacobite insurrection in the north, supported by the appearance of the Pretender, the son of James II., in Scotland, was suppressed, and its suppression not only gave to the government a character of stability, but displayed its adversaries in an unfavourable light as the disturbers of the peace.
Even this advantage, however, would have been thrown away if the Whigs in power had continued to be animated by violent party spirit. What really happened was that the Tory leaders were excluded from office, but that the principles and prejudices of the Tories were admitted to their full weight in the policy of the government. The natural result followed. The leaders to whom no regard was paid continued in opposition. The rank and file, who would personally have gained nothing by a party victory, were conciliated into quiescence.
This mingling of two policies was conspicuous both in the foreign and the domestic actions of the reign. In the days of Queen Anne the Whig party had advocated the continuance of war with a view to the complete humiliation of the king of France, whom they feared as the protector of the Pretender, and in whose family connexion with the king of Spain they saw a danger for England. The Tory party, on the other hand, had been the authors of the peace of Utrecht, and held that France was sufficiently depressed. A fortunate concurrence of circumstances enabled George's ministers, by an alliance with the regent of France, the duke of Orleans, to pursue at the same time the Whig policy of separating France from Spain and from the cause of the Pretender, and the Tory policy of the maintenance of a good understanding with their neighbour across the Channel. The same eclecticism was discernible in the proceedings of the home government. The Whigs were conciliated by the repeal of the Schism Act and the Occasional Conformity Act, whilst the Tories were conciliated by the maintenance of the Test Act in all its vigour. The satisfaction of the masses was increased by the general well-being of the nation.
Very little of all that was thus accomplished was directly owing to George I. The policy of the reign is the policy of his ministers. Stanhope and Townshend from 1714 to 1717 were mainly occupied with the defence of the Hanoverian settlement. After the dismissal of the latter in 1717, Stanhope in conjunction with Sunderland took up a more decided Whig policy. The Occasional Conformity Act and the Schism Act were repealed in 1719. But the wish of the liberal Whigs to modify if not to repeal the Test Act remained unsatisfied. In the following year the bursting of the South Sea bubble, and the subsequent deaths of Stanhope in 1721 and of Sunderland in 1722, cleared the way for the accession to power of Sir Robert Walpole, to whom and not to the king was due the conciliatory policy which quieted Tory opposition by abstaining from pushing Whig principles to their legitimate consequences.