inhabitants are engaged in agriculture, or work in flour-mills, oilworks, tanneries and potash-works. Mokshany, which was built in 1535 as a fort to protect the country from the raids of the Tatars and the Kalmucks, is supposed to occupy the site of the Meshcheryak town of Murunza, mentioned as early as the 9th century.
MOLASSES, the syrup obtained from the drainings of raw
sugar or from sugar during the process of refining. In American
usage the word usually applies to both forms of the syrup, but
in English usage the second form is more usually known as
“treacle” (see Sugar). The word, which in early forms appears
as melasses, molassos, &c., is from the Port. melaço, or Fr. mélasse,
cf. the Late Lat. mellaceum, syrup made from honey (mel ).
The geological term “molasse” must be distinguished; this
word, applied to the soft greenish sandstone of the district
between the Jura and the Alps, is French, meaning “soft,” Lat. mollis.
MOLAY, JACQUES DE (d. 1314), last grand master of the Knights Templars, was born of a noble but impoverished family, at a village of the same name in the old province of Franche-Comté (mod. department of Haute-Saône), about the middle of the 13th century. The family property being the inheritance of an elder brother, Jacques was thrown upon his own resources. Having been brought up in the neighbourhood of a commandery of the Temple, he entered the order in 1265 at Beaune in the
diocese of Autun. It is probable that he at once set out for the East to take part in the defence of the Holy Land against the Saracens. About 1295 he was elected grand master of the order. After the Templars had been driven out of Palestine by the Saracens, De Molay took refuge with the remnant of his followers in the island of Cyprus. Here, while attempting to get together
a force to retrieve the disasters to the Christian arms, he received a summons (in 1306) from Pope Clement V. to repair to Paris. The pope’s pretext for the summons was his desire to put an end to the quarrels between the Templars and the Knights of St John,
and to concert plans for a new crusade; in reality he had entered
into a secret agreement with the king of France for the suppression
of the Templars. Molay left Cyprus with a retinue of
60 followers, and made a triumphal entry into Paris. On the
13th of October 1307 every Templar in France was arrested,
and a prolonged examination of the members of the order was
held. De Molay, probably under torture, confessed that some
of the charges brought against the order were true. He was
kept in prison for several years, and in 1314 he was brought up
with three other dignitaries of the Temple before a commission
of cardinals and others to hear the sentence (imprisonment for
life) pronounced. Then, to the surprise of the commission,
De Molay withdrew his confession. Immediately the king heard
of it he gave orders that De Molay and another of the four, who
had also recanted, should be burnt as lapsed heretics. The
sentence was carried out on the 11th (or 19th) of March 1314.
De Molay’s ashes were gathered up by the people, and it is said
that with his last breath he summoned the king and the pope
to appear with him before the throne of God.
For the charges brought against the Templars and the famous process in connexion with them, see Templars; J. Michelet, Procès des Templiers (1841–1851) and Lavocat, Procès des frères et de l’ordre du Temple d’après des pièces inédites publiées par M. Michelet (1888); E. Besson, “Étude sur Jacques de Molay” in Mémoires de la soc. d’émulation du Doubs (Besançon, 1876); H. H. Milman; Hist. of Latin Christianity, bk. xii., chs. 1 and 2; H. Prutz, Entwickelung und Untergang des Tempelherrenordens (Berlin, 1888).
MOLD (formerly Mould, Welsh Y Wyddgrug, a conspicuous
barrow, Lat. Mons altus, the translation of the Welsh name),
a market town, contributory parliamentary borough of Flintshire,
N. Wales; on the London & North-Western railway
(Chester and Denbigh branch), 182 m. from London and 11 m.
from Chester. Pop. of urban district (1901), 4263. The locality
is populous owing to the collieries and lead-smelting works in
the vicinity. At the north end of the town there is a height,
Bailey Hill (perhaps from ballia, the architectural term applied
to fortified castle courts). This hill, partly natural and partly
artificial, was once the site of a Roman fortification, and in old
records is known as Moaldes, Monhault, or Monthault (de monte
alto). Mold Castle was probably built by Robert Monthault
(temp. William Rufus), was taken and destroyed by Owen
Gwynedd in 1144–1145, its site lost to the English and retaken
by Llewelyn ap Iowerth in 1201, and by Gruffydd Llwyd in
1322. On this site, too, where there are now no remains of any
fortress, were found, in 1849, some 15 skeletons, supposed to be
of the 13th or 14th centuries. Maes Garmon (the battlefield of
Germanus) is about a mile west of Mold. Here, as is supposed,
the “Alleluia Victory” was gained over the Picts and Scots by
Lupus and Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, according to some
about A.D. 430, but others give A.D. 448, the date of the saint’s
death. A commemorative obelisk was erected on the Maes by
N. Griffith of Rhual (1736). Over a mile south of Mold,
on the right of the road to Nerquis, is the “Tower” (15th
century, but perhaps restored in the 18th), where, in 1465 or
1475, the royal chieftain, Rheinallt ab Gruffyd ad Bleddyn,
hanged Robert Byrne, mayor of Chester, and subsequently
burned alive some 200 Chester folk who tried to arrest him.
Many tumuli are visible round Mold.
Mold county gaol, bought in 1880 by Jesuits expelled from France, was by them named St Germanus’s House. St Mary’s church, a Gothic building, is mentioned as early as the time of Henry VII. Its important collieries and lead mines; fire-brick, tile, earthenware, mineral oil, tinplate and nail manufactures, tanneries, breweries and malt-houses, have made 'Mold the business centre of the county. About 4 m. distant is Cilcain village, of which the church has a carved oak roof, stolen from Basingwerk Abbey at the dissolution of the monasteries. Among the neighbouring Clwyd hills Moel Fammau and Moel Arthur are specially noticeable. On the summit of the former is George III.’s jubilee pyramid. The Ordovices and the Romans fortified Moel Arthur. The sites of seven posts established against Rome may be traced along the hills bounding Flintshire and Denbighshire.
MOLDAVIA, a former principality of south-eastern Europe, constituting, after its union with Wallachia on the 9th of November 1859, a part of Rumania (q.v.).
MOLDAVITE, an olive-green or dull greenish vitreous substance,
named by Dufrénoy from Moldauthein in Bohemia,
where it occurs. It is sometimes cut and polished as an ornamental
stone under the name of pseudo-chrysolite, Its bottle-glass
colour led to its being commonly called Bouteillenstein,
and at one time it was regarded as an artificial product, but this
view is opposed to the fact that no remains of glass-works are
found in the neighbourhood of its occurrence: moreover pieces
of the substance are widely distributed in Tertiary and early
Pleistocene deposits in Bohemia and Moravia. For a long time
it was generally believed to be a variety of obsidian, but its
difficult fusibility and its chemical composition are rather
against its volcanic origin. Dr F. E. Suess pointed out that
the nodules or small masses of moldavite presented curious
pittings and wrinkles on the surface, which could not be due
to the action of water, but resembled the characteristic markings
on many meteorites. Boldly attributing the material to a
cosmic origin, he regarded moldavite as a special type of meteorite
for which he proposed the name of tectite (Gr. τηκτός,
melted). To this type are also referred the so-called obsidian
bombs and buttons from Australia and Tasmania, known sometimes
as australite, and called by R. H. Walcott obsidianites.
Similar bodies have been found in Malaysia and have been
termed billitonite, from the isle of Billiton where they occur in
tin-bearing gravels. Usually they are flat, rounded or ellipsoidal
bodies, sometimes surrounded by an equatorial girdle or rim,
and often with a brilliant black superficial lustre, as though
varnished. Moldavite has been reported also from Scania in
Sweden.
See Franz E. Suess, Jahrbuch der k.-k. geolog. Reichsanstalt (Vienna), 1901, p. 193; E. Weinschenk, Centralblatt f. Mineralogie (Stuttgart), 1908, p. 737. (F. W. R.*)
MOLDE, a small seaside town of Norway, in Romsdal amt
(county), 204 m. by sea N.N.E. of Bergen, in 62° 45′ N. (that
