was captured by Alexander Jannaeus (c. 83 B.C.), rebuilt by the Romans (c. A.D. 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). (R. A. S. M.)
GÉRAULT-RICHARD, ALFRED LÉON (1860– ), 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
