the autumn of 1872, while collecting plants in a morass near Ordrup, he contracted pulmonary disease. His illness, which cut him off from scientific investigation, drove him to literature. He met the famous critic, Dr Georg Brandes, who was struck by his powers of expression, and under his influence, in the spring of 1873, Jacobsen began his great historical romance of Marie Grubbe. His method of composition was painful and elaborate, and his work was not ready for publication until the close of 1876. In 1879 he was too ill to write at all; but in 1880 an improvement came, and he finished his second novel, Niels Lyhne. In 1882 he published a volume of six short stories, most of them written a few years earlier, called, from the first of them, Mogens. After this he wrote no more, but lingered on in his mother’s house at Thisted until the 30th of April 1885. In 1886 his posthumous fragments were collected. It was early recognized that Jacobsen was the greatest artist in prose that Denmark has produced. He has been compared with Flaubert, with De Quincey, with Pater; but these parallelisms merely express a sense of the intense individuality of his style, and of his untiring pursuit of beauty in colour, form and melody. Although he wrote so little, and crossed the living stage so hurriedly, his influence in the North has been far-reaching. It may be said that no one in Denmark or Norway has tried to write prose carefully since 1880 whose efforts have not been in some degree modified by the example of Jacobsen’s laborious art.
His Samlede Skrifter appeared in two volumes in 1888; in 1899 his letters (Breve) were edited by Edvard Brandes. In 1896 an English translation of part of the former was published under the title of Siren Voices: Niels Lyhne, by Miss E. F. L. Robertson. (E. G.)
JACOB’S WELL, the scene of the conversation between
Jesus and the “woman of Samaria” narrated in the Fourth
Gospel, is described as being in the neighbourhood of an otherwise
unmentioned “city called Sychar.” From the time of
Eusebius this city has been identified with Sychem or Shechem
(modern Nablus), and the well is still in existence 112 m. E. of
the town, at the foot of Mt Gerizim. It is beneath one of the
ruined arches of a church mentioned by Jerome, and is reached
by a few rough steps. When Robinson visited it in 1838 it
was 105 ft. deep, but it is now much shallower and often dry.
For a discussion of Sychar as distinct from Shechem see T. K. Cheyne, art. “Sychar,” in Ency. Bibl., col. 4830. It is possible that Sychar should be placed at Tulūl Balātā, a mound about 12 m. W. of the well (Palestine Exploration Fund Statement, 1907, p. 92 seq.); when that village fell into ruin the name may have migrated to ʽAskar, a village on the lower slopes of Mt Ebal about 134 m. E.N.E. from Nablus and 12 m. N. from Jacob’s Well. It may be noted that the difficulty is not with the location of the well, but with the identification of Sychar.
JACOBUS DE VORAGINE (c. 1230–c. 1298), Italian chronicler,
archbishop of Genoa, was born at the little village of Varazze,
near Genoa, about the year 1230. He entered the order of the
friars preachers of St Dominic in 1244, and besides preaching
with success in many parts of Italy, taught in the schools of his
own fraternity. He was provincial of Lombardy from 1267 till
1286, when he was removed at the meeting of the order in Paris.
He also represented his own province at the councils of Lucca
(1288) and Ferrara (1290). On the last occasion he was one of
the four delegates charged with signifying Nicholas IV.’s desire
for the deposition of Munio de Zamora, who had been master
of the order from 1285, and was deprived of his office by a papal
bull dated the 12th of April 1291. In 1288 Nicholas empowered
him to absolve the people of Genoa for their offence in aiding
the Sicilians against Charles II. Early in 1292 the same pope,
himself a Franciscan, summoned Jacobus to Rome, intending
to consecrate him archbishop of Genoa with his own hands.
He reached Rome on Palm Sunday (March 30), only to find
his patron ill of a deadly sickness, from which he died on Good
Friday (April 4). The cardinals, however, “propter honorem
Communis Januae,” determined to carry out this consecration
on the Sunday after Easter. He was a good bishop, and especially
distinguished himself by his’ efforts to appease the civil
discords of Genoa. He died in 1298 or 1299, and was buried
in the Dominican church at Genoa. A story, mentioned by the
chronicler Echard as unworthy of credit, makes Boniface VIII.,
on the first day of Lent, cast the ashes in the archbishop’s eyes
instead of on his head, with the words, “Remember that thou
art a Ghibelline, and with thy fellow Ghibellines wilt return to
naught.”
Jacobus de Voragine left a list of his own works. Speaking of himself in his Chronicon januense, he says, “While he was in his order, and after he had been made archbishop, he wrote many works. For he compiled the legends of the saints (Legendae sanctorum) in one volume, adding many things from the Historia tripartita et scholastica, and from the chronicles of many writers.” The other writings he claims are two anonymous volumes of “Sermons concerning all the Saints” whose yearly feasts the church celebrates. Of these volumes, he adds, one is very diffuse, but the other short and concise. Then follow Sermones de omnibus evangeliis dominicalibus for every Sunday in the year; Sermones de omnibus evangeliis, i.e. a book of discourses on all the Gospels, from Ash Wednesday to the Tuesday after Easter; and a treatise called “Marialis, qui totus est de B. Maria compositus,” consisting of about 160 discourses on the attributes, titles, &c., of the Virgin Mary. In the same work the archbishop claims to have written his Chronicon januense in the second year of his pontificate (1293), but it extends to 1296 or 1297. To this list Echard adds several other works, such as a defence of the Dominicans, printed at Venice in 1504, and a Summa virtutum et vitiorum Guillelmi Peraldi, a Dominican who died about 1250. Jacobus is also said by Sixtus of Siena (Biblioth. Sacra, lib. ix.) to have translated the Old and New Testaments into his own tongue. “But,” adds Echard, “if he did so, the version lies so closely hid that there is no recollection of it,” and it may be added that it is highly improbable that the man who compiled the Golden Legend ever conceived the necessity of having the Scriptures in the vernacular.
His two chief works are the Chronicon januense and the Golden Legend or Lombardica hystoria. The former is partly printed in Muratori (Scriptores Rer. Ital. ix. 6). It is divided into twelve parts. The first four deal with the mythical history of Genoa from the time of its founder, Janus, the first king of Italy, and its enlarger, a second Janus “citizen of Troy”, till its conversion to Christianity “about twenty-five years after the passion of Christ.” Part v. professes to treat of the beginning, the growth and the perfection of the city; but of the first period the writer candidly confesses he knows nothing except by hearsay. The second period includes the Genoese crusading exploits in the East, and extends to their victory over the Pisans (c. 1130), while the third reaches down to the days of the author’s archbishopric. The sixth part deals with the constitution of the city, the seventh and eighth with the duties of rulers and citizens, the ninth with those of domestic life. The tenth gives the ecclesiastical history of Genoa from the time of its first known bishop, St Valentine, “whom we believe to have lived about 530 A.D.,” till 1133, when the city was raised to archiepiscopal rank. The eleventh contains the lives of all the bishops in order, and includes the chief events during their pontificates; the twelfth deals in the same way with the archbishops, not forgetting the writer himself.
The Golden Legend, one of the most popular religious works of the middle ages, is a collection of the legendary lives of the greater saints of the medieval church. The preface divides the ecclesiastical year into four periods corresponding to the various epochs of the world’s history, a time of deviation, of renovation, of reconciliation and of pilgrimage. The book itself, however, falls into five sections:—(a) from Advent to Christmas (cc. 1–5); (b) from Christmas to Septuagesima (6–30); (c) from Septuagesima to Easter (31–53); (d) from Easter Day to the octave of Pentecost (54–76); (e) from the octave of Pentecost to Advent (77–180). The saints’ lives are full of puerile legend, and in not a few cases contain accounts of 13th-century miracles wrought at special places, particularly with reference to the Dominicans. The last chapter but one (181), “De Sancto Pelagio Papa,” contains a kind of history of the world from the middle of the 6th century; while the last (182) is a somewhat allegorical disquisition, “De Dedicatione Ecclesiae.”
The Golden Legend was translated into French by Jean Belet de Vigny in the 14th century. It was also one of the earliest books to issue from the press. A Latin edition is assigned to about 1469; and a dated one was published at Lyons in 1473. Many other Latin editions were printed before the end of the century. A French translation by Master John Bataillier is dated 1476; Jean de Vigny’s appeared at Paris, 1488; an Italian one by Nic. Manerbi (? Venice, 1475); a Bohemian one at Pilsen, 1475–1479, and at Prague, 1495; Caxton’s English versions, 1483, 1487 and 1493; and a German one in 1489. Several 15th-century editions of the Sermons are also known, and the Mariale was printed at Venice in 1497 and at Paris in 1503.
For bibliography see Potthast, Bibliotheca hist. med. aev. (Berlin, 1896), p. 634; U. Chevalier, Répertoire des sources hist. Bio.-bibl. (Paris, 1905), s.v. “Jacques de Voragine.”
JACOTOT, JOSEPH (1770–1840), French educationist, author of the method of “emancipation intellectuelle,” was born
