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 Istria, 56 m. S.E. of Trieste by rail. Pop. (1900) 2343. It is situated on the Gulf of Quarnero in a sheltered position at the foot of the Monte Maggiore (4580 ft.), and is surrounded by beautiful woods of laurel. The average temperature is 50° Fahr. in winter, and 77° Fahr. in summer. The old abbey, San Giacomo della Priluca, from which the place derives its name, has been converted into a villa. Abbazia is frequented annually by about 16,000 visitors. The whole sea-coast to the north and south of Abbazia is rocky and picturesque, and contains several smaller winter-resorts. The largest of them is Lovrana (pop. 513), situated 5 m. to the south. ABBESS (Lat. abbatissa, fem. form of abbas, abbot), the female superior of an abbey or convent of nuns. The mode of election, position, rights and authority of an abbess correspond generally with those of an (q.v.). The office is elective, the choice being by the secret votes of the sisters from their own body. The abbess is solemnly admitted to her office by episcopal benediction, together with the conferring of a staff and pectoral cross, and holds for life, though liable to be deprived for misconduct. The council of Trent fixed the qualifying age at forty, with eight years of profession. Abbesses have a right to demand absolute obedience of their nuns, over whom they exercise discipline, extending even to the power of expulsion, subject, however, to the bishop. As a female an abbess is incapable of performing the spiritual functions of the priesthood belonging to an abbot. She cannot ordain, confer the veil, nor excommunicate. In England abbesses attended ecclesiastical councils, e.g. that of Becanfield in 694, where they signed before the presbyters.

By Celtic usage abbesses presided over joint-houses of monks and nuns. This custom accompanied Celtic monastic missions to France and Spain, and even to Rome itself. At a later period, 1115, Robert, the founder of Fontevraud, committed the government of the whole order, men as well as women, to a female superior.

In the German Evangelical church the title of abbess (Aebtissin) has in some cases—e.g. Itzehoe—survived to designate the heads of abbeys which since the Reformation have continued as Stifte, i.e. collegiate foundations, which provide a home and an income for unmarried ladies, generally of noble birth, called canonesses (Kanonissinen) or more usually Stiftsdamen. This office of abbess is of considerable social dignity, and is sometimes filled by princesses of the reigning houses. ABBEVILLE, a town of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Somme, on the Somme, 12 m. from its mouth in the English Channel, and 28 m. N.W. of Amiens on the Northern railway. Pop. (1901) 18,519; (1906) 18,971. It lies in a pleasant and fertile valley, and is built partly on an island and partly on both sides of the river, which is canalized from this point to the estuary. The streets are narrow, and the houses are mostly picturesque old structures, built of wood, with many quaint gables and dark archways. The most remarkable building is the church of St Vulfran, erected in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. The original design was not completed. The nave has only two bays and the choir is insignificant. The façade is a magnificent specimen of the flamboyant Gothic style, flanked by two Gothic towers. Abbeville has several other old churches and an hôtel-de-ville, with a belfry of the 13th century. Among the numerous old houses, that known as the Maison de François Iᵉʳ, which is the most remarkable, dates from the 16th century. There is a statue of Admiral Courbet (d. 1885) in the chief square. The public institutions include tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, and a communal college. Abbeville is an important industrial centre; in addition to its old-established manufacture of cloth, hemp-spinning, sugar-making, ship-building and locksmiths’ work are carried on; there is active commerce in grain, but the port has little trade.

Abbeville, the chief town of the district of Ponthieu, first appears in history during the 9th century. At that time belonging to the abbey of St Riquier, it was afterwards governed by the counts of Ponthieu. Together with that county, it came into the possession of the Alençon and other French families, and afterwards into that of the house of Castille, from whom by marriage it fell in 1272 to Edward I., king of England. French and English were its masters by turns till 1435 when, by the treaty of Arras, it was ceded to the duke of Burgundy. In 1477 it was annexed by Louis XI., king of France, and was held by two illegitimate branches of the royal family in the 16th and 17th centuries, being in 1696 reunited to the crown. ABBEY, EDWIN AUSTIN (1852–  ), American painter, was born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 1st of April 1852. He left the schools of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts at the age of nineteen to enter the art department of the publishing house of Harper & Brothers in New York, where, in company with such men as Howard Pyle, Charles Stanley Reinhart, Joseph Pennell and Alfred Parsons, he became very successful as an illustrator. In 1878 he was sent by the Harpers to England to gather material for illustrations of the poems of Robert Herrick. These, published in 1882, attracted much attention, and were followed by illustrations for Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer (1887), for a volume of Old Songs (1889), and for the comedies (and a few of the tragedies) of Shakespeare. His water-colours and pastels were no less successful than the earlier illustrations in pen and ink. Abbey now became closely identified with the art life of England, and was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours in 1883. Among his water-colours are “The Evil Eye” (1877); “The Rose in October” (1879); “An Old Song” (1886); “The Visitors” (1890), and “The Jongleur” (1892). Possibly his best known pastels are “Beatrice,” “Phyllis,” and “Two Noble Kinsmen.” In 1890 he made his first appearance with an oil painting, “A May Day Morn,” at the Royal Academy in London. He exhibited “Richard duke of Gloucester and the Lady Anne” at the Royal Academy in 1896, and in that year was elected A.R.A., becoming a full R.A. in 1898. Apart from his other paintings, special mention must be made of the large frescoes entitled “The Quest of the Holy Grail,” in the Boston Public Library, on which he was occupied for some years; and in 1901 he was commissioned by King Edward VII. to paint a picture of the coronation, containing many portraits elaborately grouped. The dramatic subjects, and the brilliant colouring of his oil pictures, gave them pronounced individuality among the works of contemporary painters. Abbey became a member not only of the Royal Academy, but also of the National Academy of Design of New York, and honorary member of the Royal Bavarian Society, the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts (Paris), the American Water-Colour Society, etc. He received first class gold medals at the International Art Exhibition of Vienna in 1898, at Philadelphia in 1898, at the Paris Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900, and at Berlin in 1903; and was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour. ABBEY (Lat. abbatia; from Syr. abba, father), a monastery, or conventual establishment, under the government of an or an. A priory only differed from an abbey in that the superior bore the name of prior instead of abbot. This was the case in all the English conventual cathedrals, e.g. Canterbury, Ely, Norwich, &c., where the archbishop or bishop occupied the abbot’s place, the superior of the monastery being termed prior. Other priories were originally offshoots from the larger abbeys, to the abbots of which they continued subordinate; but in later times the actual distinction between abbeys and priories was lost.

The earliest Christian monastic communities (see ) with which we are acquainted consisted of groups of cells or huts collected about a common centre, which was usually the abode of some anchorite celebrated for superior holiness or singular asceticism, but without any attempt at orderly arrangement. The formation of such communities in the East does not date from the introduction of Christianity. The example had been already set by the Essenes in Judea and the Therapeutae in Egypt.

In the earliest age of Christian monasticism the ascetics were accustomed to live singly, independent of one another, at no great distance from some village, supporting themselves by the labour of their own hands, and distributing the surplus after the supply of their own scanty wants to the poor. Increasing religious