Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/341

 HERST

297

HERVAS

cently succeeded to the crown) and other benefactors provided endowments, and Pope Stephen III granted exemption from episcopal jurisdiction to tlie house, which soon possessed 1050 liides of land and a com- munity of 150 monks. It became a place of pilgrim- age after 780, owing to the bringing thither of the relics of St. Wigbert, and the reputed occurrence of miracles. A valuable liljrary was collected, the annals of the monastery were regularly kept, and it became renowned as a seat of piety and learning. Towards the close of the tenth century Hersfeld suffered from the general decadence of the age, and the monastic discipline became relaxed. Some years later, how- ever, the observance was reformed by St. Gotthard (afterwards Bishop of Hildesheim), and we find mem- bers of the community sent out to other houses of the order to carry out in them the work of religious revival.

During the long struggle between the Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII, Hersfeld espoused the imperial cause. Henry liimself visited it not in- frequently, sometimes accompanied by his consort; and their son Conrad (who afterwards succeeded to the throne) was born and bajitized within the precincts of the abbey. In the last decade of the eleventh century the abbey seems to have been fully restored to papal favour, and it continued to prosper for a long subsequent period. The town of Hersfeld, outside the abbey walls, also grew and flourished, one result of this being that it found itself strong enough to as- sert its independence of the rule of the monks, and in 1371 formally placed itself under the protection of the Landgraves of Hesse. As time went on the state of the monastery again deteriorated, and in 1513 it was at so low an ebb that the abbot (Wolpert) re- signed his office into the hands of Pope Leo X, and the Abbot of Fulda was authorized by the Emperor Maximilian to incorporate the house into his own famous abbey. A melancholy account has come down to us of the condition into which the venerable Abbey of Hersfeld had at this time been allowed to fall. The library was in a state of ruin and decay, many pre- cious volumes had altogether disappeared, and manu- scripts containing the archives and recortls of the house were used in the kennels as litter for the dogs. This forced union between Hersfeld and Fulda lasted little more than two years, and a new Abbot of Hers- feld was chosen. Abbot Krato, who held office in 1517, was in sympathy with Lutheranism, and he swore allegiance to Philip, the Lutheran Landgrave of Hesse, in 1525. The abbey church was conse- quently closed to Catholic worsliip, the Holy Sacri- fice of the Mass being said only in a chapel within the monastery.

During the remainder of the century the abbey dragged on an inglorious existence, and on the death of the last abbot (Joachim Roll) in 160(3, Otto, hered- itary Prince of Hesse, was elected lay administrator. The pope made a fruitless endeavour, after Otto's death, to re]3lace the abbey under Catholic adminis- tration. It continued in the hands of the princely family until about the middle of the seventeenth century, when, after the conclusion of the Treaty of Westphalia, Hersfeld was, as an imperial fief, united to Hesse under the title of a principality. The town of Hersfeld continued to rank as the capital of a prin- cipality until 1S2S. It is now the chief town of a cir- cle in the government district of Kassel, and has a population of nearly SOOO, with some important man- ufactures. The Stailtkirche, dating from about 1300, was restored in 1S99, and there is a Rathaus of the sixteenth century. The ruined collegiate church, in the Romanesciue style, was built in the early part of the twelfth century, Ijut was destroyed by the French in 1761, in the course of the Seven Years War. Out- side the town, of which the old walls are still preserved, are the remains of the once famous monastery, with

its extensive surrounding grounds. The "Annales Hersfeldienses " are often cited as sources of medieval German history (see below).

Annales Hersfeldienses in Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist.; Script. (Hanover, 18.39), III, lS-116: Hafner, Die Rcichsabtci Hers- feld bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrh. (Herefeld. 1890); Lorenz, Die J ahrhiicher von Hersfeld (Leipzig, 18S5); Gallia Christiana, V (Paris, 1877),567-572;ER.scH-GRUBER,.4//t;em.i?nrj/c/op. (Leip- zig, 1830), VII, 46-52; Streber in Kirchenlex., s. v.; Gautsch, Das Lehnsverhaltnis zwischen Hersfeld und den- Markgrafen von Meissen in .irehiv. stichs. Gesch., V (Leipzis:, 1867), 233-263.

D. O. Huntek-Blair. Herst, RicH.VRD. See Hurst.

Hervas y Panduro, Lorenzo, a Spanish Jesuit and famous plxilologist; b. at Horcajo, 1 May, 1735; d.at Rome, 24 Aug., 1809. Having entered the Jesuit Order at Madrid, he studied at Alcala de Henares, de- voting himself with special zeal to architecture and linguistics. For a time he taught at the royal semi- nary in Madrid and at the Jesuit college of Murcia ; then he went to America as a missionary and remained there until 1767, when in connexion with the abolition of the Jesuits the establishments of the Society were taken away from the order. Hervds now returned to Europe, taking up his residence at first at Cesena, Italy, and then in 1784 at Rome. In 1799 he went back to his native land, but four years later left Spain and lived in Rome for the remainder of his life. He was held in high honour; Pope Pius VII made him prefect of the Quirinal liljrary, and he was a member of several learned academies. In Italy he had a chance to meet many Jesuits who had flocked thither from all parts of the world after the suppression of the order. He availed himself diligently of the excep- tional opportunity thus afforded him of gaining in- formation about remote and unknown idioms that could not be studied from literary remains. The re- sults of his studies he laid down in a number of works, written first in Italian, and subsequently translated into Spanish.

The greatest work of Hervds is the huge treatise on cosmography, "Idea dell' Universo " (Cesena, 177S-,87, in 21 vols, in 4'°). It consists of several parts, almost all of which were translated into Spanish and appeared as separate works. Of these the most important, which had appeared separately in Italian in 1784, is entitled "Catilogo de las lenguas de las naciones con- ocidas, y numeracion, division y clase de estas segiin la diversitad de sus idiomas y dialectos " (Madrid, 1800- 5, 6 vols.). Here Hervds attempts to investigate the origin and ethnological relationship of different nations on the basis of language. The main oljject of the book is, therefore, not really philological. Vol. I treats of American races and idioms; vol. II of those of islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans; the remaining vol- umes, devoted to the European languages, are inferior in value to the first two. The American dialects are certainly better described and classified than they had been before; the existence of a Malay and Polynesian speech-family is established. For deter- mining affinity of languages similarity in grammar is emphasized as against mere resemblance in vocabu- lary. While there were gross errors and defects in the work, it is conceded that it presented its material with scholarly accuracy and thus proved useful to later investigators. Other parts of the work to ap- pear separately in Italian and later in Spanish were " Virilita dell' Uomo" (4 vols., 1779-80); "Vecchiaja e Morte dell' LTonio" (1780); "Viaggio estatico al Mondo planetario" (1780); "Storia della Terra" (1781-83, 6 vols.); "Origine, formazione, mecanismo ed armonia degl' Idiomi " (178.5); "Vocabolario Poliglotto, con prolegomeni sopra piu di CL lingue " (1787); "Saggio prattico delle Lingue, con prole- gomeni e una raccolta di orazioni dominicali in piCl di trecento lingue e dialetti " (1787).

Hervds also wrote a number of educational works for deaf-mutes, the most notable being "La escuela