Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/99

ALB ALBORNOZ, (or, a Spanish ecclesiastic, and one of the greatest men Spain ever produced, was born at Cuenza about the beginning of the fourteenth century. Of noble and even royal extraction, he was raised, while quite a youth, to the archiepiscopal see of Toledo; and he rendered Alfonso XI. great service in his wars with the Moors, procuring him subsidies, and by his valour saving his life in battle. Having, by his faithful remonstrances, incurred the enmity of Pedro the Cruel, he resigned his archbishopric; and, repairing to Avignon, was made a cardinal by Clement VI., and appointed to recover by arms the states of the church. This he accomplished by force or polity; and continued to govern as legate the ecclesiastical territory with singular judgment and success, displaying eminent military talents, political discretion, and administrative capacity, as well as dignified sentiments and rare disinterestedness. Died at Viterbo in 1367.—E. M.  ALBOSIUS or AILLEBOUT,, physician to Henry III. of France, and author of a medical work, entitled "Portentosum Lithopædium," containing the description of a medical phenomenon which attracted great attention, and led to the discovery of similar petrifactions.  ALBOUZDJANY,, an Arab astronomer, a native of Bouzdjan, in Khorassan, who flourished at the court of the caliphs of Bagdad in the tenth century, and contributed to the progress of astronomical science.  ALBRAND,, a French orientalist and traveller, who visited the interior of Madagascar, established a colony there, and died in 1827, at the age of 32, while engaged in composing a dictionary of the language of that island.  ALBRECHT,, a Bavarian historical painter, born in 1687, died in 1765, He studied in Italy, and distinguished himself especially in sacred subjects. He was deservedly appointed, by the elector, surveyor of the Munich gallery.—R. M.  ALBRECHT,, a native of Suabia, who in 1805, under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, established a mission settlement in Southern Africa at Warm-bath, to the north of the Orange river; and continued his arduous labours for the conversion of the heathen, first at Warm-bath, and, after its desolation by the famous chief Africaner, at Pella, on the south of the Orange river, where he collected the remnant of his flock, till his death in 1815.—E. M.  * ALBRECHT,, son of the celebrated Archduke Charles, was born in 1817, became in 1845 general and commander of the forces in Lower Austria, was unjustly represented as having in 1848 ordered the troops to fire on the people at Vienna, as he was then absent and had resigned the command, served in 1848 under Radetski in Italy, and in 1849 was made governor of the federal fortress of Mayence.—E. M.  ALBRECHT, an old German poet, one of the "minnesingers," flourished early in the thirteenth century. His productions consist mainly of imitations and translations. Besides imitations of two French Romans, he wrote a free translation of "Ovid's Metamorphoses." <section end="99H" /> <section begin="99I" />ALBRECHT,, a German physician, author of numerous but indifferent novels, was born in 1752 at Stade in Hanover, practised medicine at Reval, became a bookseller at Prague, then director of a theatre at Altona, and latterly resumed his medical practice. Died in 1816. <section end="99I" /> <section begin="99J" />ALBRECHT,, a German physician and naturalist, professor of natural history at Coburg, remarkable for his attention to strange and abnormal phenomena in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and author of numerous memoirs containing the results of his observations, was born in 1695, and died at Coburg. The precise time of his death is uncertain. <section end="99J" /> <section begin="99K" />ALBRECHT,, a German physician, successively professor at Wittemberg, from 1734, and professor of anatomy, surgery, and botany at Göttingen, author of numerous learned professional works, including an ingenious dissertation on the influence of music on the state of animated bodies, was born at Erfurt in 1703, and died in 1736. <section end="99K" /> <section begin="99L" />ALBRECHT,, a celebrated German agriculturist, born in 1786. After being trained under Thaër, he was for some time teacher of rural economy in M. de Fellenberg's establishment at Hofwyl, near Berne. In 1819 he was appointed by the duke of Nassau, editor of a weekly journal of agriculture, and in 1820 director of the Normal Agricultural Institute at Idstein, which was subsequently transferred to Geisberg in the vicinity of Nassau, and became a prominent source of agricultural improvements for the west of Germany. The object of the establishment was neither to form men of science, nor to train farm servants, but to send forth agricultural instructors and enlightened farmers, acquainted with the theory, and versed in the practice, of agriculture. During the summer months, the students were expected to be engaged in agricultural labour and observation on well-managed farms. As secretary to the Nassau Agricultural Society, he continued for fifteen years, from 1819, to publish its transactions annually, in one volume 8vo. A short time before his death, which occurred in 1848, he resigned the directorship of the institute at Geisberg, and spent the remainder of his days in retirement.—E. M. <section end="99L" /> <section begin="99M" />* ALBRECHT,, a German legist, was born at Elbing in 1800, studied at Gottingen, became in 1829 professor of German law in that university, lost his chair in 1837, by joining in a protest against the king of Hanover's abolition of the constitution of 1833, and in 1840 was appointed professor of public law in the university of Leipzig. <section end="99M" /> <section begin="99Zcontin" />ALBRECHTSBERGER,, a musician, was born at Klosterneuburg, a small town near Vienna, in 1736. At seven years old he was placed in the choir of the free school, where he immediately attracted attention by his natural talent for music; his parents, however, were too poor to afford him any instruction, but in this emergency, Leopold Pittner, an organist in the town, undertook the gratuitous tuition of the young chorister on the organ and harpsichord, and in harmony. Among other acts of kindness of which Albrechtsberger always spoke with gratitude, his master had a small organ erected for him to practise upon, that is still kept in one of the neighbouring Danubian villages as a relic. After a few years, he was appointed a singing boy in the abbey of Melk; in this capacity, taking part in the performance that was customary during the carnival, of some little operas, on an occasion when the emperor was passing through the place, and so witnessed the entertainment, the imperial Joseph was so pleased with his bright soprano voice that he personally presented him with a golden ducat. Here he derived great advantages from the lessons of Kimmerling the organist. When his voice broke, he obtained an engagement to play the organ at Raab, for which he was now admirably qualified; he quitted this for a more lucrative one at Maria Taferl, from whence in 1760 he was appointed to the same office at Melk. In 1765, when the Princess Maria Josepha passed through the town on the way to her nuptials with the emperor, an ode in her honour was performed, which Albrechtsberger had composed, and which brought him a second time under the favourable notice of royalty. Some time later, the emperor again passed through Melk, and, attending mass at the abbey, heard him accompany the service, and afterwards extemporise upon the organ, when he again spoke to him personally, and promised him the first appointment in Vienna that should become vacant: accordingly, in 1772 he became organist of the Carmelite church, in the Austrian capital. Indefatigable in the study of his art, he took advantage of his new situation to place himself under Mann, the court organist, for his esteemed instruction. Four years prior to this he married the daughter of Weiss the sculptor, by whom he had fifteen children. On the death of Hoffman, the organist of St. Stephen's church in Vienna, Mozart, who had for long desired such an office, was nominated by the emperor to succeed him; already, however, the hand of death was upon the master, and the fulfilment of his earnest wish came too late for him to enjoy it; but such was his esteem for Albrechtsberger, that almost his last words were an injunction to conceal his death from every one else, until he should have time to apply for and obtain the appointment. Thus in 1792, he entered upon this engagement, which afforded him still greater scope than his former one had done for the exercise of his talent. He was elected member of the Stockholm academy in 1798. He died on the 7th of March, 1809, and was interred in the same churchyard as Mozart had been nearly eighteen years earlier, and Haydn was a year later. He was the master of many of the most distinguished musicians of the last generation, among whom may be specially noted, Weigl, Seyfried, Hummel, Eybler, and Beethoven, which last said of him, "Now Albrechtsberger is dead, there is no one to teach counterpoint." Of his extremely voluminous compositions a very small number are printed, and of these his excellent organ fugues are the most <section end="99Zcontin" />