mountains whose summits have nearly the same height above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places. The term “highland” is used in physical geography for any elevated mountainous plateau.
HIGHNESS, literally the quality of being lofty or high, a
term used, as are so many abstractions, as a title of dignity and
honour, to signify exalted rank or station. These abstractions
arose in great profusion in the Roman empire, both of the
East and West, and “highness” is to be directly traced to the
altitudo and celsitudo of the Latin and the ὑψηλότης of the
Greek emperors. Like other “exorbitant and swelling attributes”
of the time, they were conferred on ruling princes
generally. In the early middle ages such titles, couched in
the second or third person, were “uncertain and much more
arbitrary (according to the fancies of secretaries) than in the
later times” (Selden, Titles of Honour, pt. i. ch. vii. 100). In
English usage, “Highness” alternates with “Grace” and
“Majesty,” as the honorific title of the king and queen until
the time of James I. Thus in documents relating to the reign
of Henry VIII. all three titles are used indiscriminately; an
example is the king’s judgment against Dr Edward Crome
(d. 1562), quoted, from the lord chamberlain’s books, ser. 1,
p. 791, in Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc. N.S. xix. 299, where article
15 begins with “Also the Kinges Highness” hath ordered,
16 with “Kinges Majestie,” and 17 with “Kinges Grace.” In
the Dedication of the Authorized Version of the Bible of 1611
James I. is still styled “Majesty” and “Highness”; thus,
in the first paragraph, “the appearance of Your Majesty, as
of the Sun in his strength, instantly dispelled those supposed
and surmised mists ... especially when we beheld the government
established in Your Highness and Your hopeful Seed,
by an undoubted title.” It was, however, in James I.’s
reign that “Majesty” became the official title. It may
be noted that Cromwell, as lord protector, and his wife
were styled “Highness.” In present usage the following
members of the British Royal Family are addressed as “Royal
Highness” (H.R.H.): all sons and daughters, brothers and
sisters, uncles and aunts of the reigning sovereign, grandsons
and granddaughters if children of sons, and also great grandchildren
(decree of 31st of May 1898) if children of an eldest
son of any prince of Wales. Nephews, nieces and cousins and
grandchildren, offspring of daughters, are styled “Highness”
only. A change of sovereign does not entail the forfeiture
of the title “Royal Highness,” once acquired, though the
father of the bearer has become a nephew and not a grandson
of the sovereign. The principal feudatory princes of the Indian
empire are also styled “Highness.”
As a general rule the members of the blood royal of an Imperial or Royal house are addressed as “Imperial” or “Royal Highness” (Altesse Impériale, Royale, Kaiserliche, Königliche Hoheit) respectively. In Germany the reigning heads of the Grand Duchies bear the title of Royal or Grand Ducal Highness (Königliche or Gross-Herzogliche Hoheit), while the members of the family are addressed as Hoheit, Highness, simply. Hoheit is borne by the reigning dukes and the princes and princesses of their families. The title “Serene Highness” has also an antiquity equal to that of “highness,” for γαληνότης and ἡμερότης were titles borne by the Byzantine rulers, and serenitas and serenissimus by the emperors Honorius and Arcadius. The doge of Venice was also styled Serenissimus. Selden (op. cit. pt. ii. ch. x. 739) calls this title “one of the greatest that can be given to any Prince that hath not the superior title of King.” In modern times “Serene Highness” (Altesse Sérénissime) is used as the equivalent of the German Durchlaucht, a stronger form of Erlaucht, illustrious, represented in the Latin honorific superillustris. Thackeray’s burlesque title “Transparency” in the court at Pumpernickel very accurately gives the meaning. The title of Durchlaucht was granted in 1375 by the emperor Charles IV. to the electoral princes (Kurfürsten). In the 17th century it became the general title borne by the heads of the reigning princely states of the empire (reichsländische Fürsten), as Erlaucht by those of the countly houses (reichständische Grafen). In 1825 the German Diet agreed to grant the title Durchlaucht to the heads of the mediatized princely houses whether domiciled in Germany or Austria, and it is now customary to use it of the members of those houses. Further, all those who are elevated to the rank of prince (Fürst) in the secondary meaning of that title (see Prince) are also styled Durchlaucht. In 1829 the title of Erlaucht, which had formerly been borne by the reigning counts of the empire, was similarly granted to the mediatized countly families (see Almanach de Gotha, 1909, 107).
HIGH PLACE, in the English version of the Old Testament, the literal translation of the Heb. bāmāh. This rendering is
etymologically correct, as appears from the poetical use of
the plural in such expressions as to ride, or stalk, or stand on
the high places of the earth, the sea, the clouds, and from the
corresponding usage in Assyrian; but in prose bāmāh is always
a place of worship. It has been surmised that it was so called
because the places of worship were originally upon hill-tops,
or that the bāmāh was an artificial platform or mound, perhaps
imitating the natural eminence which was the oldest holy
place, but neither view is historically demonstrable. The
development of the religious significance of the word took
place probably not in Israel but among the Canaanites, from
whom the Israelites, in taking possession of the holy places
of the land, adopted the name also.
In old Israel every town and village had its own place of sacrifice, and the common name for these places was bāmāh, which is synonymous with miḳdāsh, holy place (Amos vii. 9; Isa. xvi. 12, &c.). From the Old Testament and from existing remains a good idea may be formed of the appearance of such a place of worship. It was often on the hill above the town, as at Ramah (1 Sam. ix. 12-14); there was a stelè (maṣṣēbāh), the seat of the deity, and a wooden post or pole (ashērāh), which marked the place as sacred and was itself an object of worship; there was a stone altar, often of considerable size and hewn out of the solid rock[1] or built of unhewn stones (Ex. xx. 25; see Altar), on which offerings were burnt (mizbēḥ, lit. “slaughter place”); a cistern for water, and perhaps low stone tables for dressing the victims; sometimes also a hall (lishkāh) for the sacrificial feasts.
Around these places the religion of the ancient Israelite centred; at festival seasons, or to make or fulfil a vow, he might journey to more famous sanctuaries at a distance from his home, but ordinarily the offerings which linked every side of his life to religion were paid at the bāmāh of his own town. The building of royal temples in Jerusalem or in Samaria made no change in this respect; they simply took their place beside the older sanctuaries, such as Bethel, Dan, Gilgal, Beersheba, to which they were, indeed, inferior in repute.
The religious reformers of the 8th century assail the popular religion as corrupt and licentious, and as fostering the monstrous delusion that immoral men can buy the favour of God by worship; but they make no difference in this respect between the high places of Israel and the temple in Jerusalem (cf. Amos v. 21 sqq.; Hos. iv.; Isa. i. 10 sqq.); Hosea stigmatizes the whole cultus as pure heathenism—Canaanite baal-worship adopted by apostate Israel. The fundamental law in Deut. xii. prohibits sacrifice at every place except the temple in Jerusalem; in accordance with this law Josiah, in 621 B.C., destroyed and desecrated the altars (bāmōth) throughout his kingdom, where Yahweh had been worshipped from time immemorial, and forcibly removed their priests to Jerusalem, where they occupied an inferior rank in the temple ministry. In the prophets of the 7th and 6th centuries the word bāmōth connotes “seat of heathenish or idolatrous worship”; and the historians of the period apply the term in this opprobrious sense not only to places sacred to other gods but to the old holy places of Yahweh in the cities and villages of Judah, which, in their view, had been illegitimate from the building of Solomon’s temple, and therefore not really seats of the worship of Yahweh; even the most pious kings of
- ↑ Several altars of this type have been preserved.
