Blasien became a notable centre of the methodical study of history; it was here that Marquard Herrgott wrote his Monumenta domus Austriacae, of which the first two volumes were edited, for the second edition, by Gerbert, who also published a Codex epistolaris Rudolphi I., Romani regis (1772) and De Rudolpho Suevico comite de Rhinfelden, duce et rege, deque ejus familia (1785). It was, however, in sacramental theology, liturgiology, and notably ecclesiastical music that Gerbert was mainly interested. In 1774 he published two volumes De cantu et musica sacra; in 1777, Monumenta veteris liturgiae Alemannicae; and in 1784, in three volumes, Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra, a collection of the principal writers on church music from the 3rd century till the invention of printing. The materials for this work he had gathered during his travels, and although it contains many textual errors, its publication has been of great importance for the history of music, by preserving writings which might either have perished or remained unknown. His interest in music led to his acquaintance with the composer Gluck, who became his intimate friend.
As a prince of the Empire Gerbert was devoted to the interests of the house of Austria; as a Benedictine abbot he was opposed to Joseph II.’s church policy. In the Febronian controversy (see Febronianism) he had early taken a mediating attitude, and it was largely due to his influence that Bishop Hontheim had been induced to retract his extreme views.
In 1768 the abbey of St Blasien, with the library and church, was burnt to the ground, and the splendid new church which rose on the ruins of the old (1783) remained until its destruction by fire in 1874, at once a monument of Gerbert’s taste in architecture and of his Habsburg sympathies. It was at his request that it was made the mausoleum of all the Austrian princes buried outside Austria, whose remains were solemnly transferred to its vaults. In connexion with its consecration he published his Historia Nigrae Silvae, ordinis S. Benedicti coloniae (3 vols., St Blasien, 1783).
Gerbert, who was beloved and respected by Catholics and Protestants alike, died on the 3rd of May 1793.
See Joseph Bader, Das ehemalige Kloster St Blasien und seine Gelehrtenakademie (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1874), which contains a chronological list of Gerbert’s works.
GERBIL, or Gerbille, the name of a group of small, elegant,
large-eyed, jumping rodents typified by the North African
Gerbillus aegyptiacus (or gerbillus), and forming a special sub-family,
Gerbillinae, of the rat tribe or Muridae. They are found
over the desert districts of both Asia and Africa, and are classed
in the genera Gerbillus (or Tatera), Pachyuromys, Meriones,
Psammomys and Rhombomys, with further divisions into sub-genera.
They have elongated hind-limbs and long hairy tails;
and progress by leaps, in the same manner as jerboas, from which
they differ in having five hind-toes. The cheek-teeth have transverse
plates of enamel on the crowns; the number of such plates
diminishing from three in the first tooth to one or one and a half
in the third. The upper incisor teeth are generally marked by
grooves. Gerbils are inhabitants of open sandy plains, where
they dwell in burrows furnished with numerous exits, and containing
large grass-lined chambers. The Indian G. indicus
produces at least a dozen young at a birth. All are more or less
completely nocturnal.
GERENUK, the Somali name of a long-necked aberrant gazelle,
commonly known as Waller’s gazelle (Lithocranius walleri),
and ranging from Somaliland to Kilimanjaro. The long neck
and limbs, coupled with peculiarities in the structure of the skull,
entitle the gerenuk, which is a large species, to represent a genus.
The horns of the bucks are heavy, and have a peculiar forward
curvature at the tips; the colour of the coat is red-fawn, with
a broad brown band down the back. Gerenuk are browsing
ruminants, and, in Somaliland, are found in small family-parties,
and feed more by browsing on the branches and leaves of trees and
shrubs than by grazing. Frequently they raise themselves by
standing on their hind-legs with the fore-feet resting against the
trunk of the tree on which they are feeding. Their usual pace is
an awkward trot, not unlike that of a camel; and they seldom
break into a gallop. The Somali form has been separated as
L. sclateri, but is not more than a local race. (See Antelope.)
GERGOVIA (mod. Gergovie), in ancient geography, the chief
town of the Arverni, situated on a hill in the Auvergne, about
8 m. from the Puy de Dôme, France. Julius Caesar attacked
it in 52 B.C., but was beaten off; some walls and earthworks
seem still to survive from this period. Later, when Gaul had been
subdued, the place was dismantled and its Gaulish inhabitants
resettled 4 m. away in the plain at the new Roman city of
Augustonemĕtum (mod. Clermont-Ferrand).
GERHARD, FRIEDRICH WILHELM EDUARD (1795–1867),
German archaeologist, was born at Posen on the 29th of
November 1795, and was educated at Breslau and Berlin. The
reputation he acquired by his Lectiones Apollonianae (1816)
led soon afterwards to his being appointed professor at the
gymnasium of Posen. On resigning that office in 1819, on
account of weakness of the eyes, he went in 1822 to Rome, where
he remained for fifteen years. He contributed to Platner’s
Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, then under the direction of Bunsen,
and was one of the principal originators and during his residence
in Italy director of the Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica,
founded at Rome in 1828. Returning to Germany in 1837 he was
appointed archaeologist at the Royal Museum of Berlin, and in
1844 was chosen a member of the Academy of Sciences, and a professor
in the university. He died at Berlin on the 12th of May 1867.
Besides a large number of archaeological papers in periodicals, in the Annali of the Institute of Rome, and in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy, and several illustrated catalogues of Greek, Roman and other antiquities in the Berlin, Naples and Vatican Museums, Gerhard was the author of the following works: Antike Bildwerke (Stuttgart, 1827–1844); Auserlesene griech. Vasenbilder (1839–1858); Etruskische Spiegel (1839–1865); Hyperboreisch-röm. Studien (vol. i., 1833; vol. ii., 1852); Prodromus mytholog. Kunsterklärung (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1828); and Griech. Mythologie (1854–1855). His Gesammelte akademische Abhandlungen und kleine Schriften were published posthumously in 2 vols., Berlin, 1867.
GERHARD, JOHANN (1582–1637), Lutheran divine, was born in Quedlinburg on the 17th of October 1582. In his fifteenth year, during a dangerous illness, he came under the personal influence of Johann Arndt, author of Das wahre Christenthum, and resolved to study for the church. He entered the university of Wittenberg in 1599, and first studied philosophy. He also attended lectures in theology, but, a relative having persuaded him to change his subject, he studied medicine for two years. In 1603, however, he resumed his theological reading at Jena, and in the following year received a new impulse from J. W. Winckelmann (1551–1626) and Balthasar Mentzer (1565–1627) at Marburg. Having graduated and begun to give lectures at Jena in 1605, he in 1606 accepted the invitation of John Casimir, duke of Coburg, to the superintendency of Heldburg and mastership of the gymnasium; soon afterwards he became general superintendent of the duchy, in which capacity he was engaged in the practical work of ecclesiastical organization until 1616, when he became theological professor at Jena, where the remainder of his life was spent. Here, with Johann Major and Johann Himmel, he formed the “Trias Johannea.” Though still comparatively young, Gerhard had already come to be regarded as the greatest living theologian of Protestant Germany; in the numerous “disputations” of the period he was always protagonist, while on all public and domestic questions touching on religion or morals his advice was widely sought. It is recorded that during the course of his lifetime he had received repeated calls to almost every university in Germany (e.g. Giessen, Altdorf, Helmstädt, Jena, Wittenberg), as well as to Upsala in Sweden. He died in Jena on the 20th of August 1637.
His writings are numerous, alike in exegetical, polemical, dogmatic and practical theology. To the first category belong the Commentarius in harmoniam historiae evangelicae de passione Christi (1617), the Comment, super priorem D. Petri epistolam (1641), and also his commentaries on Genesis (1637) and on Deuteronomy (1658). Of a controversial character are the Confessio Catholica (1633–1637), an extensive work which seeks to prove the evangelical and catholic character of the doctrine of the Augsburg Confession from the writings of approved Roman Catholic authors; and the Loci communes theologici (1610–1622), his principal contribution to science, in which Lutheranism is expounded “nervose, solide,
