Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/570

Rh 550 E S 8 E S S which existed as early as the time of the Romans under the name of Mursia. At the beginning of the Hungarian re volution of 1848 the town was held by the Hungarians, but on the 4th February 1849, it was taken by the Austrians under General Baron Trebersberg. The population in 1869 was 17,247. ESSEN, a town of Prussia, in the government district of Diisseldorf, province of the Rhine, is situated 19 miles N.E. of Diisseldorf. It is the seat of a court of justice and a board of trade. Among its principal buildings are the town-house, the post-office, the imperial bank, the real school, the two infirmaries, and the hospital. It has also an old Benedictine nunnery founded in 873, and a Catholic church whose choir dates from the 9th century. In the immediate neighbourhood of the town there is a beautiful public park. The town owes its prosperity originally to the large coal mines in its vicinity, which employ more than 20,000 workmen, and afford special facilities for its various industries. It has manufactories of woollen and linen goods, vitriol, leather, and machines, but is best known by the cast-steel works of Frederick Krupp, at which are manu factured the famous Krupp cannon. In 1876, 10,500 men were employed in the factory, besides 5000 others in the mines and at the blast furnaces. There Avere in opera tion 250 smelting furnaces, 390 annealing and other kinds of furnaces, 77 steam hammers, and 294 steam engines, with a total of 10,000 horse power. In 1875, 612,000 tons of coal and coke were used in the furnaces. The population of Essen lias for some time been rapidly increasing ; while in 1849 it numbered only 8813, it amounted in 1875 to 54,790. Essen was formed into a town about the middle of the 10th century by the abbess Hagona, sister of the emperor Henry I. The abbess of the nunnery, holding from 1275 the rank of a prin cess, governed the town until 1802, when it was incorporated with Prussia. In 1806 it came into the possession of the duchy of Berg, but it was again transferred to Prussia in 1S13. ESSENES, Tiii ;, were one of the three principal sects of the Jews, appearing for the first time in Josephus, about the middle of the 2d century before Christ. The historian introduces them along with the Pharisees and Sadducees in his account of the period of Jonathan the Asmonean. As to the circumstances under which they arose, the precise causes in Jewish life to which they owed their origin, and the various stages by which they attained to the elaborate organization of later times, we have no positive information whatever. The accounts we have of them refer particularly to the half century preceding the fall of Jerusalem, when the growth and organization of the sect were complete. Be sides the detailed account of Josephus (Bell. 7m/., ii. 8; briefly in Antiq., xviii. 1, 5), we have a sketch of them in Philo (in his treatise Quod omnis prolus liber, and in the fragment of his Apology for the Jeics preserved in Eusebius, Pr. Evany., viii. 11), and a brief notice from Pliny (Hist. Kat., v. 17). Josephus himself made trial of the sect of Essenes in his youth; but from his own statement it appears that he must have been a very short time with them, and therefore could not have been initiated into the inner mysteries of the society (De vita sua, 2). There is no little difficulty about their namo. Josephus generally writes Eo-o-ryiW, but has Eao-cuoi sometimes ; Philo lias Eo-o-cuoi, and Pliny Esseni. Its derivation is quite uncertain, all the more so as the origin of tli3 sect is totally unknown. The most extraordinary conjecture is that of Philo, who connects it with oo-ios, holy ; Salmasius proposed _ the Syrian city Essa; Ewald refers it to the &quot; Rabbinical VTil (properly, preserver, guardian), and sup poses that the Essenes called themselves so as watchers, servants (of God), since they did not in fact purpose to he any thing more than depaTrevral (9eoi&amp;gt;, as Philo says.&quot; The most probable root is NQX, to heal, suggested by several authori ties, which also is analogous to 0epa7rcimu, the name o. the kindred sect in Egypt. (For a full discussion of the name of the sect, see Canon Lightfoot on the Colos- sians.) The Essenes were an exclusive society, distinguished from the rest of the Jewish nation in Palestine by an organization peculiar to themselves, and by a theory of lift in which a severe asceticism and a rare benevolence to one another and to mankind in general were the most striking characteristics. They had fixed rules for initiation, a succession of strictly separate grades within the limits of the society, and regulations for the conduct of their daily life even in its minutest details. Their membership could be recruited only from the outside world, as marriage and all intercourse with women were absolutely renounced. They were the first society in the world to condemn slavery both in theory and practice ; they enforced and practised the most complete community of goods. They chose their own priests and public office-bearers, and even their own judges. Though their prevailing tendency was practical, and the tenets of the society were kept a profound secret, it is perfectly clear from the concurrent testimony of Philo and Josephus that they cultivated a kind of speculation, which not only accounts for their spiritual asceticism, but indicates a great deviation from the normal development of Judaism, and a profound sympathy with Greek philosophy, and probably also with Oriental ideas. At the same time we do our Jewish authorities no injustice in imputing to them the patriotic tendency to idealize the society, and thus offer to their readers something in Jewish life that would bear comparison at least with similar manifestations of Gentile life. There is some little difficulty in determining how far the Essenes separated themselves locally from their fellow countrymen. Josephus informs us that they had no single city of their own, but that many of them dwelt in every city. While in his treatise Quod omnis, &c., Philo speaks of their avoiding towns and preferring to live in villages, in his Apology for the Jews we find them living in many cities, villages, and in great and prosperous towns. In Pliny they are a perennial colony settled on the western shore of the Dead Sea. On the whole, as Philo and Josephus agree in estimating their number at four thousand, we are justified in suspecting some exaggeration as to the many cities, towns, and villages where they were said to be found. As agriculture was their favourite occupation, and a 1 ? their tendency was to withdraw from the haunts and ordinary interests of mankind, we may assume that with the growing confusion and corruption of Jewish society, they felt themselves attracted from the mass of the popula tion to the sparsely peopled districts, till they found a con genial settlement and free scope for their peculiar view of life by the shore of the Dead Sea. &quot;While their principles were consistent with the neighbourhood of men, they were better adapted to a state of seclusion. The Essenes did not renounce marriage because they denied the validity of the institution or the necessity of it as providing for the continuance of the human race, but because they were convinced of the artfulness and fickle ness of the sex. They adopted children when viry young, and brought them up on their own principles. Pleasure generally they rejected as evil. Tbey despised riches not leas than pleasure ; neither poverty nor wealth was observ able among them ; at initiation every one gave his property into the common stock ; every member in receipt of wages handed them over to the funds of the society. In matters of dress the asceticism of the society was very pronounced. They regarded oil as a defilement, even washing it off if anointed with it against their will. They did not change