Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/787

 was captured by Alexander Jannaeus (c. 83 ), rebuilt by the Romans (c. 65), burned by the Jews in revenge for the massacre at Caesarea, and again plundered and depopulated by Annius, the general of Vespasian; but, in spite of these disasters, it was still in the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Christian era one of the wealthiest and most flourishing cities of Palestine. It was a centre of Greek civilization, devoted especially to the worship of Artemis, and producing famous teachers, of whom Stephen the Byzantine mentions Ariston, Kerykos and Plato. As late as 1121 the soldiers of Baldwin II. found it defended by a castle built by a king of Damascus; but at the beginning of the following century the Arabian geographer Yaqut speaks of it as deserted and overthrown. The ruins of Jerash, discovered about 1806, and since then frequently visited and described, still attest the splendour of the Roman city. They are distributed along both banks of the Kerwan, a brook which flows south through the Wadi-ed-Dēr to join the Zerka or Jabbok; but all the principal buildings are situated on the level ground to the right of the stream. The town walls, which can still be traced and indeed are partly standing, had a circuit of not more than 2 m., and the main street was less than half a mile in length; but remains of buildings on the road for fully a mile beyond the south gate, show that the town had outgrown the limit of its fortifications. The most striking feature of the ruins is the profusion of columns, no fewer than 230 being even now in position; the main street is a continuous colonnade, a large part of which is still entire, and it terminates to the south in a forum of similar formation. Among the public buildings still recognizable are a theatre capable of accommodating 6000 spectators, a naumachia (circus for naval combats) and several temples, of which the largest was probably the grandest structure in the city, possessing a portico of Corinthian pillars 38 ft. high. The desolation of the city is probably due to earthquake; and the absence of Moslem erections or restorations seems to show that the disaster took place before the Mahommedan period.

The town is now occupied by a colony of Circassians, whose houses have been built with materials from the earlier buildings, and there has been much destruction of the interesting ruins. “The country of the Gerasenes” (Matt. viii. 28 and parallels; other readings, Gadarenes, Gergesenes) must be looked for in another quarter—on the E. coast of the Sea of Galilee, probably in the neighbourhood of the modern Khersa (C. W. Wilson in Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 369).

GÉRAULT-RICHARD, ALFRED LÉON (1860–&emsp;&emsp;), French journalist and politician, was born at Bonnétable in the department of Sarthe, of a peasant family. He began life as a working upholsterer, first at Mans, then at Paris (1880), where his peasant and socialist songs soon won him fame in the Montmartre quarter. Lissagaray, the communist, offered him a position on La Bataille, and he became a regular contributor to the advanced journals, especially to La Petite République, of which he became editor-in-chief in 1897. In 1893 he founded Le Chambard, and was imprisoned for a year (1894) on account of a personal attack upon the president, Casimir-Périer. In January 1895 he was elected to the chamber as a Socialist for the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris. He was defeated at the elections of 1898 at Paris, but was re-elected in 1902 and in 1906 by the colony of Guadeloupe.

GERBER, ERNST LUDWIG (1746–1819), German musician, author of a famous dictionary of musicians, was born at Sondershausen in the principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen on the 29th of September 1746. His father, Henry Nicolas Gerber (1702–1775), a pupil of J. S. Bach, was an organist and composer of some distinction, and under his direction Ernst Ludwig at an early age had made great progress in his musical studies. In 1765 he went to Leipzig to study law, but the claims of music, which had gained additional strength from his acquaintanceship with J. A. Hiller, soon came to occupy almost his sole attention. On his return to Sondershausen he was appointed music teacher to the children of the prince, and in 1775 he succeeded his father as court organist. Afterwards he devoted much of his time to the study of the literature and history of music, and with this view he made himself master of several modern languages. His Historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler appeared in 1790 and 1792 in two volumes; and the first volume of what was virtually an improved and corrected edition of this work was published in 1810 under the title Neues historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler, followed by other three volumes in 1812, 1813 and 1814. Gerber also contributed a number of papers to musical periodicals, and published several minor musical compositions. He died at Sondershausen on the 30th of June 1819.

GERBERON, GABRIEL (1628–1711), French Jansenist monk, was born on the 12th of August 1628 at St Calais, in the department of Sarthe. At the age of twenty he took the vows of the Benedictine order at the abbey of Ste Melaine, Rennes, and afterwards taught rhetoric and philosophy in several monasteries. His open advocacy of Jansenist opinions, however, caused his superiors to relegate him to the most obscure houses of the order, and finally to keep him under surveillance at the abbey of St Germain-des-Prés at Paris. Here he wrote a defence of the doctrine of the Real Presence against the Calvinists in the form of an apology for Rupert, abbot of Deutz (Apologia pro Ruperto abbate Tuitensi, Paris, 1669). In 1676 he published at Brussels, under the name of “Sieur Flore de Ste Foi” his Miroir de la piété chrétienne, an enlarged edition of which appeared at Liége in the following year. This was condemned by certain archbishops and theologians as the repetition of the five condemned propositions of Jansen, and Gerberon defended it, under the name of “Abbé Valentin” in Le Miroir sans tache (Paris, 1680). He had by this time aroused against him the full fury of the Jesuits, and at their instigation a royal provost was sent to Corbie to arrest him. He had, however, just time to escape, and fled to the Low Countries, where he lived in various towns. He was invited by the Jansenist clergy to Holland, where he wrote another controversial work against the Protestants: Défense de l’Église Romain contre la calomnie des Protestants (Cologne, 1688–1691). This produced unpleasantness with the Reformed clergy, and feeling himself no longer safe he returned to Brussels. In 1700 he published his history of Jansenism (Histoire générale du Jansénisme), a dry work, by which, however, he is best remembered. He adhered firmly to the Augustinian doctrine of Predestination, and on the 30th of May 1703 he was arrested at Brussels at the instance of the archbishop of Malines, and ordered to subscribe the condemnation of the five sentences of Jansen. On his refusal, he was handed over to his superiors and imprisoned in the citadel of Amiens and afterwards at Vincennes. Every sort of pressure was brought to bear upon him to make his submission, and at last, broken in health and spirit, he consented to sign a formula which the cardinal de Noailles claimed as a recantation. Upon this he was released in 1710. The first use he made of his freedom was to write a work (which, however, his friends prudently prevented him from publishing), Le Vaine Triomphe du cardinal de Noailles, containing a virtual withdrawal of the compulsory recantation. He died at the abbey of St Denis on the 29th of March 1711.

GERBERT, MARTIN (1720–1793), German theologian, historian and writer on music, belonged to the noble family of Gerbert von Hornau, and was born at Horb on the Neckar, Württemberg, on the 12th (or 11th or 13th) of August 1720. He was educated at Freiburg in the Breisgau, at Klingenau in Switzerland and at the Benedictine abbey of St Blasien in the Black Forest, where in 1737 he took the vows. In 1744 he was ordained priest, and immediately afterwards appointed professor, first of philosophy and later of theology. Between 1754 and 1764 he published a series of theological treatises, their main tendency being to modify the rigid scholastic system by an appeal to the Fathers, notably Augustine; from 1759 to 1762 he travelled in Germany, Italy and France, mainly with a view to examining the collections of documents in the various monastic libraries. In 1764 he was elected prince-abbot of St Blasien, and proved himself a model ruler both as abbot and prince. His examination of archives during his travels had awakened in him a taste for historical research, and under his rule St