Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/696

674 GLASSIUS, (–1656), theologian and Biblical critic, was born at Sondershausen, in the principality of Sch waerurg-Sondershausen, in, received his school- elucation at the gymnasium of Gotha, and in 1612 entered the university of Jena, where, with the exception of some months spent at Wittenberg'in 1615, he paSSed the following nine years of his life. As a student of theology under John Gerhard he directed his attention especially to Hebrew and the cognate dialects ; in 1619 he was made an "adjunctus" of the philosophical faculty, and some time afterwards he received an appointment to the chair of Oriental languages. From 1625 to 1638 he discharged the duties of superintendent in Sondershausen ; but in the latter year, shortly after the death of Gerhard (1637), he was, in accordance with the last wish of that great'man, appointed to succeed him in the chair of theology at Jena. He did not, however, continue long at that university ; for in 1640, at the earnest invitation of Duke Ernest the Pious, he re- moved to Gotha, there to act as general superintendent in the execution of important reforms which had been initiated both in the ecclesiastical and in the educational establish- ments of the duchy. The delicate duties attached to this ofﬁce he discharged with singular tact and energy; and when called upon to take part in what is known as the “syucretistic ” controversy, by which Protestant Germany was so lonrr vexed, he manifested a combination of ﬁrmness with liberajity, of loyalty to the past with a just regard to the demands of the present and the future, which unhappily have only too seldom been equalled in theological disputes. His principal work, the well known I’Itllologz'a Sacra, pub- lished originally in 16:25, was and still is regarded as a work of great value in biblical hermeneutic; and it has an his- torical importance as marking the transition from the earlier views on questions of biblical criticism to those of the school of Spener. It was more than once reprinted during the author’s lifetime, and appeared in a new and revised form, edited by Dathe and Bauer at Leipsic, towards the close of the century (1776—1797). Glassius succeeded Gerhard also in the editorship of the Weimar Bibel-werk, and he wrote the commentary on the poetical books of the Old Testament for that publication. A volume of his Opuscula was printed at Leyden in 1700. He died in 1636.  GLASTONBURY, a market town and municipal borough of England, is situated near the middle of Somer- satshire, about 2:3 miles SW. of Bath, on the great western road from London to Exeter. The spot occupied by the town is a sort of peninsula formed by the windings of the river Brue, which ﬂows west through the valley between the Poldew and the Mendip Hills ; and in earlier times it was to all intents an island, as the country round was an extensive marsh, broken, however, by the Tor of St Michael to the of the town. Of the public buildings the most important, besides the ruins of the great abbey, are the church of St John the Baptist, in the Perpendicular style, with a tower of ﬁne proportions; the church of St Benedict, dating from between and ; the hospital of St John, founded in ; and the George Inn, erected about the time of Henry VII. or Henry VIII. There was formerly in the town a remarkable cross, which is ﬁgured in \Varner’s Glastonbury; but it fell into decay, and was replaced by the present insignificant monument in 1846. Though Glastonbury has a station on the Somerset and Dorset Railway, and communicates with the estuary of the Severn by means of a canal for vessels of 70 or 100 tons burden, it has comparatively little trade. The woollen manufacture was introduced by the duke of Somerset in the, as may be seen at length in Strypc’s Life of Cranmer ; but neither that nor the manu- facture of silk, which was al