in palatio) at Aix-la-Chapelle. Among the town’s principal secular buildings are the new Gothic town-hall, the post office and the railway station. There are several high-grade (classical and modern) schools, technical, mining and commercial schools, a theatre, a permanent art exhibition, and hospitals. Essen also has a beautiful public park in the immediate vicinity. The town originally owed its prosperity to the large iron and coal fields underlying the basin in which it is situated. Chief among its industrial establishments are the famous iron and steel works of Krupp (q.v.), and the whole of Essen may be said to depend for its livelihood upon this firm, which annually expends vast sums in building and supporting churches, schools, clubs, hospitals and philanthropic institutions, and in other ways providing for the welfare of its employees. There are also manufactories of woollen goods and cigars, dyeworks and breweries.
Essen was originally the seat of a Benedictine nunnery, and was formed into a town about the middle of the 10th century by the abbess Hedwig. The abbess of the nunnery, who held from 1275 the rank of a princess of the Empire, was assisted by a chapter of ten princesses and countesses; she governed the town until 1803, when it was secularized and incorporated with Prussia. In 1807 it came into the possession of the grand dukes of Berg, but was transferred to Prussia in 1814.
See Funcke, Geschichte des Fürstenthums und der Stadt Essen (Elberfeld, 1851); Kellen, Die Industriestadt Essen in Wort und Bild (Essen, 1902); and A. Shadwell, Industrial Efficiency (London, 1906).
ESSENES, a monastic order among the Jews prior to Christianity.
Their first appearance in history is in the time of
Jonathan the Maccabee (161–144 B.C.). How much older they
may have been we have no means of determining, but our
authorities agree in assigning to them a dateless antiquity.
The name occurs in Greek, in the two forms Ἐσσηνοί and Ἐσσαῖοι.
Ἐσσηνοί is used by Josephus fourteen times, Ἐσσαῖοι six, but the
latter is the only form used by Philo (ii. 457, 471, 632). Ἐσσηνοί
is also used by Synesius and Hippolytus, and its Latin equivalent
by Pliny and Solinus; Ἐσσαῖοι by Hegesippus and Porphyry.
In Epiphanius we find the forms Ὀσσαῖοι, Ὀσσηνοί, and Ἰεσσαῖοι.
There is a place named Essa mentioned by Josephus (Ant. xiii.
15, § 3), from which the name may have been formed, just as
the Christians were originally called Ναζαρηνοί or Ναζωραῖοι,
from Nazara. This etymology, however, is not much in favour
now. Lightfoot explains the name as meaning “the silent
ones,” others as meaning “physicians.” Perhaps there is most
authority in favour of deriving it from the Syriac חסיך, which
in the emphatic state becomes חסיא, so that we have a Semitic
correspondence to both the Greek forms Ἐσσηνοί and Ἐσσαῖοι.
This etymology makes the word mean “pious.” It has also
been urged in excuse for Philo’s absurd derivation from ὅσιος.
The original accounts we have of them are confined to three authors—Philo, Pliny the Elder, and Josephus. Philo describes them in his treatise known as Quod omnis probus liber (§§ 12, 13; ii. 457–460), and also in his “Apology for the Jews,” a fragment of which has been preserved by Eusebius (Praep. Ev. viii. 11, 12). Pliny (N.H. v. 17) has a short but striking sketch of them, derived in all probability from Alexander Polyhistor, who is mentioned among the authorities for the fifth book of his Natural History. This historian, of whom Eusebius had a very high opinion (Praep. Ev. ix. 17, § 1), lived in the time of Sulla. Josephus treats of them at length in his Jewish War (ii. 8), and more briefly in two passages of his Antiquities (xiii. 5, § 9; xviii. 1, § 5). He has also interesting accounts of the prophetic powers possessed by three individual members of the sect—Judas (B.J. i. 3, § 5; Ant. xiii. 11, § 2), Menahem (Ant. xv. 10, § 5), and Simon (B.J. ii. 7, § 3; Ant. xvii. 13, § 3). Besides this he mentions an Essene Gate in Jerusalem (B.J. v. 4, § 2) and a person called John the Essene, one of the bravest and most capable leaders in the war against the Romans (B.J. ii. 20, § 4; iii. 2, § 1). 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). After this the notices that we have of the Essenes from antiquity are mere reproductions, except in the case of Epiphanius (died A.D. 402), who, however, is so confused a writer as to be of little value. Solinus, who was known as “Pliny’s Ape,” echoed the words of his master about a century after that writer’s death, which took place in A.D. 79. Similarly Hippolytus, who lived in the reign of Commodus (A.D. 180–192), reproduced the account of Josephus, adding a few touches of his own. Porphyry (A.D. 233–306) afterwards did the same, but had the grace to mention Josephus in the context. Eusebius quoted the account as from Porphyry, though he must have known that he had derived it from Josephus (Praep. Ev. ix. 3, §§ 1, 13). But Porphyry’s name would impress pagan readers. There is also a mention of the Essenes by Hegesippus (Eus. H.E. iv. 22) and by Synesius in his life of Dio Chrysostom. It has been conjectured that the Clementine literature emanated from Essenes who had turned Christian. (See Ebionites.)
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 life 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 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 4000 (Philo, Q.O.P.L. § 12; Jos. Ant. xviii. 1, § 5), 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 as 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 population to the sparsely peopled districts, till they found a congenial settlement and free scope for their peculiar view of life by the shore of the Dead Sea. 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 had a low opinion of the character of women (Jos. B.J. ii. 8, § 2; Philo, “Apol. for the Jews” in Eus. Praep. Ev. viii. 11, § 8). They adopted children when very young, and brought them up on
