Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 10.djvu/85

LEFT TJLEABORG 67 ULFILAS is thin and of a greenish-yellow tint. These ulcers are seldom very sensitive or painful. The general treatment must be that recommended for constitutional scrofula. Iodine in some form or other is the best local application. A poultice of bruised and warmed sea weed is a very popular remedy; but there is prob- ably nothing so efficacious as tincture of iodine diluted with water till it causes only a slight discomfort, and applied three or four times a day (about 30 drops of the tincture may be added to an ounce of water to begin with). TJLEABORG, or OTJLU, a seaport town of Finland; capital of the provmce of the same name; on the S. bank of the Ulea, near the head of the Gulf of Bothnia. It was founded in 1605, and the privileges of a port were granted to it in 1715. In 1822 it suffered severely from fire. The harbor has become so shallow that vessels are obliged to un- load in the roadstead, 4 miles from the town. In 1854 an English flotilla burned the government property in the place. Pop. about 22,000. ULEMA, the collective name (which cannot be used as a singular) of the body of professional theologians and doctors of divinity, and therefore of law, in any Mohammedan country. They form the legal and judicial class, and interpret, the Koran and the law derived there- from ; they also constitute whatever there is of the nature of a hierarchy in Islam., and their power and influence have often curbed the irresponsible authority of a despot. There are necessarily ulema in every Mohammedan city, but the most re- nowned are the ulema of Constantinople, of Mecca, and of the Azhar university at Cairo. The ulema of Turkey are the best organized, and possess many privileges and immunities. They include (apart from the "softas," who are a species of undergraduates training for the rank of ulema) the "imams" or readers of the public prayers at the mosques ; the "muf- tis" or doctors of the law, who act partly as barristers, partly as assessors in the courts; and the "kadis" or "mollas," who are the regular magistrates, and are under the authority of two chief -justices, the "kadiasker" of Europe and of Asia; while over them all stands the grand mufti or "Sheik-ul-Islam," the spiritual head (under the Caliph) of orthodox Mo- hammedanism and supreme judge of the Ottoman empire. The verdicts or deci- sions of the ulema are called "fetvas." The ulema form the ultra-conservative party in all Mohammedan countries; their interpretations of the Koran, when honest, are rigidly and pedantically in ac- cordance with established tradition, but as individuals they are far from incor- ruptible. To them is due the lifeless formalism that prevails in Mohammedan countries, and they are the prime movers in all outbreaks of fanaticism. ULFILAS, or WULFILA, a Gothic bishop and translator of the Bible; born in one of the Gothic settlem.ents to the N. of the Danube in A. D. 311. He was probably of pure, perhaps noble Gothic blood, the story told by Philostorgius, that his progenitors were among the prisoners brought by the Goths from Cappadocia in 258, resting on very in- sufficient authority. Being sent to Con- stantinople on a embassy — possibly as a hostage — he adopted the Christianity of the capital, which was then of the Arian type, and was appointed " Anagnostes" ; and it was probably while holding this office, which in the Greek Church involves preaching as well as reading, that he executed the Gothic translation of the Scriptures. Early in the year 341, having just reached the required age, he was consecrated bishop of the Goths by Eusebius of Nicomedia at Antioch, and immediately returned to his people across the Danube. After laboring among them for seven years, he and his converts were obliged by the persecution of the heathen Prince Athanaric to take refuge vdthin the limits of the Roman empire, and for the rest of his life he continued to labor in the country of the Balkans. Subsequently to the first Gothic immi- gration and shortly before the battle of Adrianople in 378 he seems to have been employed in fruitless negotiations be- tween the Gothic and Imperial generals; and three years after (in 381) he died in Constantinople, having gone there partly to remonstrate with a lapsed sect of semi-Arians; partly to petition the emperor for a General Council. He translated into Gothic both the Old and the New Testaments, with the exception apparently of four books (I and II Sam- uel, and I and II Kings) ; but only a small proportion of his work has been preserved. Mark is the only one of the Gospels that is complete ; the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistle to the Hebrews, those of James, Peter, John, and Jude, and the Apocalypse, are altogether lost; and the Old Testament has left only a few fragments. But the fact that they furnish the oldest text of any German tongue, renders even the minor relics of inestimable value to the philologist. The principal MS. is the "Codex Argenteus," written with silver letters on a purple parchment, which was discovered by Arnold Mercator about the end of the