of ethics. It was, unquestionably, the source from which moral philosophy was directly developed, and theorists upon life and infinity, such as Pythagoras and Xenophanes, seem to have begun their career as gnomic poets. By the very nature of things, gnomes, in their literary sense, belong exclusively to the dawn of literature; their naïveté and their simplicity in moralizing betray it. But it has been observed that many of the ethical reflections of the great dramatists, and in particular of Sophocles and Euripides, are gnomic distiches expanded. It would be an error to suppose that the ancient Greek gnomes are all of a solemn character; some are voluptuous and some chivalrous; those of Demodocus of Leros had the reputation of being droll. In modern times, the gnomic spirit has occasionally been displayed by poets of a homely philosophy, such as Francis Quarles (1592–1644) in England and Gui de Pibrac (1529–1584) in France. The once-celebrated Quatrains of the latter, published in 1574, enjoyed an immense success throughout Europe; they were composed in deliberate imitation of the Greek gnomic writers of the 6th century B.C. These modern effusions are rarely literature and perhaps never poetry. With the gnomic writings of Pibrac it was long customary to bind up those of Antoine Favre (or Faber) (1557–1624) and of Pierre Mathieu (1563–1621). Gnomes are frequently to be found in the ancient literatures of Arabia, Persia and India, and in the Icelandic staves. The priamel, a brief, sententious kind of poem, which was in favour in Germany from the 12th to the 16th century, belonged to the true gnomic class, and was cultivated with particular success by Hans Rosenblut, the lyrical goldsmith of Nuremberg, in the 15th century. (E. G.)
GNOMES (Fr. gnomes, Ger. Gnomen), in folk-lore, the name
now commonly given to the earth and mountain spirits who are
supposed to watch over veins of precious metals and other
hidden treasures. They are usually pictured as bearded dwarfs
clad in brown close-fitting garments with hoods. The word
“gnome” as applied to these is of comparatively modern
and somewhat uncertain origin. By some it is said to have
been coined by Paracelsus (so Hatzfeld and Darmesteter,
Dictionnaire), who uses Gnomi as a synonym of Pygmaei, from
the Greek γνώμη, intelligence. The New English Dictionary,
however, suggests a derivation from genomus, i.e. a Greek type
γηνόμος, “earth-dweller,” on the analogy of θαλασσονόμος,
“dwelling in the sea,” adding, however, that though there is
no evidence that the term was not used before Paracelsus,
it is possibly “a mere arbitrary invention, like so many others
found in Paracelsus” (N.E.D. s.v.).
|
GNOMON, the Greek word for the style of a sundial, or any object, commonly a vertical column, the shadow of which was observed in former times in order to learn the altitude of the sun, especially when on the meridian. The art of constructing a sundial is sometimes termed gnomonics. In geometry, a gnomon is a plane figure formed by removing a parallelogram from a corner of a larger parallelogram; in the figure ABCDEFA is a gnomon. Gnomonic projection is a projection of a sphere in which the centre of sight is the centre of the sphere.
GNOSTICISM (Gr. γνῶσις, knowledge), the name generally applied to that spiritual movement existing side by side with genuine Christianity, as it gradually crystallized into the old Catholic Church, which may roughly be defined as a distinct religious syncretism bearing the strong impress of Christian influences.
I. The term “Gnosis” first appears in a technical sense in 1 Tim. vi. 20 (ἡ ψευδώνυμος γνῶσις). It seems to have at first been applied exclusively, or at any rate principally, to a particular tendency within the movement as a whole, i.e. to those sections of (the Syrian) Gnostics otherwise generally known as Ophites or Naasseni (see Hippolytus, Philosophumena, v. 2: Ναασσηνοὶ . . . οἱ ἑαυτοὺς Γνωστικοὺς ἀποκαλοῦντες; Irenaeus i. 11. 1; Epiphanius, Haeres. xxvi. Cf. also the self-assumed name of the Carpocratiani, Iren. i. 25. 6). But in Irenaeus the term has already come to designate the whole movement. This first came into prominence in the opening decades of the 2nd century A.D., but is certainly older; it reached its height in the second third of the same century, and began to wane about the 3rd century, and from the second half of the 3rd century onwards was replaced by the closely-related and more powerful Manichaean movement. Offshoots of it, however, continued on into the 4th and 5th centuries. Epiphanius still had the opportunity of making personal acquaintance with Gnostic sects.
II. Of the actual writings of the Gnostics, which were extraordinarily numerous,[1] very little has survived; they were sacrificed to the destructive zeal of their ecclesiastical opponents. Numerous fragments and extracts from Gnostic writings are to be found in the works of the Fathers who attacked Gnosticism. Most valuable of all are the long extracts in the 5th and 6th books of the Philosophumena of Hippolytus. The most accessible and best critical edition of the fragments which have been preserved word for word is to be found in Hilgenfeld’s Ketzergeschichte des Urchristentums. One of the most important of these fragments is the letter of Ptolemaeus to Flora, preserved in Epiphanius, Haeres. xxxiii. 3-7 (see on this point Harnack in the Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie, 1902, pp. 507–545). Gnostic fragments are certainly also preserved for us in the Acts of Thomas. Here we should especially mention the beautiful and much-discussed Song of the Pearl, or Song of the Soul, which is generally, though without absolute clear proof, attributed to the Gnostic Bardesanes (till lately it was known only in the Syrian text; edited and translated by Bevan, Texts and Studies,[2] v. 3, 1897; Hofmann, Zeitschrift für neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, iv.; for the newly-found Greek text see Acta apostolorum, ed. Bonnet, ii. 2, c. 108, p. 219). Generally also much Gnostic matter is contained in the apocryphal histories of the Apostles. To the school of Bardesanes belongs the “Book of the Laws of the Lands,” which does not, however, contribute much to our knowledge of Gnosticism. Finally, we should mention in this connexion the text on which are based the pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitiones (beginning of the 3rd century). It is, of course, already permeated with the Catholic spirit, but has drawn so largely upon sources of a Judaeo-Christian Gnostic character that it comes to a great extent within the category of sources for Gnosticism. Complete original Gnostic works have unfortunately survived to us only from the period of the decadence of Gnosticism. Of these we should mention the comprehensive work called the Pistis-Sophia, probably belonging to the second half of the 3rd century.[3] Further, the Coptic-Gnostic texts of the Codex Brucianus; both the books of Ieu, and an anonymous third work (edited and translated by C. Schmidt, Texte und Untersuchungen, vol. viii., 1892; and a new translation by the same in Koptische-gnostische Schriften, i.) which, contrary to the opinion of their editor and translator, the present writer believes to represent, in their existing form, a still later period and a still more advanced stage in the decadence of Gnosticism. For other and older Coptic-Gnostic texts, in one of which is contained the source of Irenaeus’s treatises on the Barbelognostics, but which have unfortunately not yet been made completely accessible, see C. Schmidt in Sitzungsberichte der Berl. Akad. (1896), p. 839 seq., and “Philotesia,” dedicated to Paul Kleinert (1907); p. 315 seq.
On the whole, then, for an exposition of Gnosticism we are thrown back upon the polemical writings of the Fathers in their controversy with heresy. The most ancient of these is Justin, who according to his Apol. i. 26 wrote a Syntagma against all heresies (c. A.D. 150), and also, probably, a special polemic against
- ↑ See the list of their titles in A. Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, Teil I. v. 171; ib. Teil II. Chronologie der altchristl. Literatur, i. 533 seq.; also Liechtenhahn, Die Offenbarung im Gnosticismus (1901).
- ↑ For the text see A. Merx, Bardesanes von Edessa (1863), and A. Hilgenfeld, Bardesanes der letzte Gnostiker (1864).
- ↑ Ed. Petermann-Schwartze; newly translated by C. Schmidt, Koptisch-gnostische Schriften, i. (1905), in the series Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte; see also A. Harnack, Texte und Untersuchungen, Bd. vii. Heft 2 (1891), and Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur, ii. 193-195.
