associated with the stories of the wooing of Kriemhild (see infra), has been laid out in keeping with the old traditions and was opened with great festivities in 1906. Extensive burial-grounds, ranging in date from neolithic to Merovingian times, have recently been discovered near the city.
The trade and industry of Worms are important, and not the least resource of the inhabitants is vine-growing, the most famous vintage being known as Liebfraumilch, grown on vineyards near the Liebfrauenkirche. The manufacture of patent leather employs about 5000 hands. Machinery, wool, cloth, chicory, slates, &c., are also produced. Worms possesses a good river harbour, and carries on a considerable trade by water.
Worms was known in Roman times as Borbetomagus, which in the Merovingian age became Wormatia, afterwards by popular etymology connected with Wurm, a dragon. The name Borbetomagus indicates a Celtic origin for the town, which had, however, before Caesar's time become the capital of a German tribe, the Vangiones. Drusus is said to have erected a fort here in 14 B.C. In 413 the emperor Jovinus permitted the Burgundians under their king Guntar or Guntiar to settle on the left bank of the Rhine between the Lauter and the Nahe. Here they founded a kingdom with Worms as its capital. Adopting Arianism they came into conflict with the Romans, and under their king Gundahar or Gundicar (the Gunther of the Nibelungenlied) rose in 435 against the Roman governor Aetius, who called in the Huns against them. The destruction of Worms and the Burgundian kingdom by the Huns in 436 was the subject of heroic legends afterwards incorporated in the Nibelungenlied (q.v.) and the Rosengarten (an epic probably of the late 13th century). In the Nibelungenlied King Gunther and Queen Brunhild hold their court at Worms, and Siegfried comes hither to woo Kriemhild.
Worms was rebuilt by the Merovingians, and became an episcopal see, first mentioned in 614, although a bishop of the Vangiones had attended a council at Cologne as early as 347. There was a royal palace from the 8th century, in which the Frankish kings, including Charlemagne, occasionally resided. The scene of the graceful though unhistorical romance of Einhard and Emma, the daughter of Charlemagne, is laid here.
Under the German kings the power of the bishops of Worms gradually increased, although they never attained the importance of the other Rhenish bishops. Otto I. granted extensive lands to the bishop, and in 979 Bishop Hildbold acquired comital rights in his city. Burchard I (bishop from 1000 to 1025) destroyed the castle of the Franconian house at Worms, built the cathedral and laid the foundations of the subsequent territorial power of the see. There were frequent struggles between the bishops and the citizens, who espoused the cause of the emperors against them, and were rewarded by privileges which fostered trade. Henry IV. granted a charter to Worms in 1074, and held a synod there in 1076, by which Pope Gregory VII. was declared deposed. Henry V. acquired Worms in 1121 by the treaty of Würzburg, built a castle and granted privileges to the city, which retained its freedom until 1801, in spite of the bishops, who ruled a small territory south of the city, on both sides of the Rhine, and resided at Ladenburg near Mannheim till 1622.
The city of Worms was frequently visited by the imperial court, and won the title of “Mother of Diets.” The concordat of Worms closed the investiture controversy in 1122. The “perpetual peace” (ewiger Landfriede) was proclaimed by the emperor Maximilian I. at the diet of 1495, and Luther appeared before the famous diet of 1521 to defend his doctrines in the presence of Charles V. Four years later, Worms formally embraced Protestantism, and religious conferences were held there in 1540 and 1557. It suffered severely during the Thirty Years' War. After being sacked in turn by Mansfeld, Tilly and the Spaniards, it was taken by Oxenstierna in 1632, who held a convention here with his German allies. The imperialists again took Worms in 1635, and it admitted the French under Turenne in 1644. The French under Mélac burnt the city almost entirely in 1689, and it has only fully recovered from this blow in recent years. Thus the population, which in its prosperous days is said to have exceeded 50,000, had sunk in 1815 to 6250.
By the treaty of Worms in 1743 an offensive alliance was formed between Great Britain, Austria and Sardinia. The French under Custine took the city by surprise in 1792 and it was annexed by the peace of Lunéville in 1801 to France, together with the bishop's territories on the left bank of the Rhine. The remaining episcopal dominions were secularized in 1803 and given to Hesse-Darmstadt, which acquired the whole by the Vienna Congress in 1815. In 1849 the Baden revolutionaries seized Worms, but were overthrown by the Mecklenburgers and Prussians in May of that year.
See Zorn, Wormser Chronik (Stuttgart, 1857); Fuchs, Geschichte der Stadt Worms (Worms, 1868); F. Soldan, Der Reichstag zu Worms, 1521 (Worms, 1883); Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt Worms (Worms, 1896), G. Wolf, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Worms (Breslau, 1862); Nover, Das alte und neue Worms (Worms, 1895).
WORMWOOD, the popular name for an aromatic herb known botanically as Artemisia Absinthium, a member of the family Compositae. It grows from 1 to 3 ft. high and is silkily hairy; the leaves are small and much cut, and the flowers are small yellow hemispherical heads among the leaves at the end of the branches. It grows in waste places. It is a tonic and vermifuge and used to flavour drinks. A closely allied species is A. vulgaris, mugwort, also an aromatic herb, with larger and broader leaves, which are white wooly beneath, and erect wooly heads of reddish-yellow flowers.
WORSBOROUGH, an urban district in the Holmfirth parliamentary division of the W. Riding of Yorkshire, England, 3 m. S. of Barnsley, near the Sheffield & Barnsley branch of the Great Central railway, and on a branch of the Dearne & Dove canal. Pop. (1901) 10,336. The church of St Mary is an interesting structure with remains of Norman work, but chiefly of Early English date. There are extensive collieries and gunpowder mills near, and in the town iron and steel works and corn mills.
WORSHIP (i.e. “worth-ship,” O. Eng. weorðscipe), honour, dignity, reverence, respect. The word is used in a special sense of the service, reverence and honour paid, by means of devotional words or acts, to God, to the gods, or to hallowed persons, such as the Virgin Mary or the saints, and hallowed objects, such as holy images or relics. In this sense, however, it must be borne in mind that the Roman Catholic Church distinguishes three kinds of worship: (1) latria, the worship due to God alone (from Gr. λατρεία, service, esp. the service of the gods, worship), and (2) hyperdulia, the worship or adoration due to the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God (from Gr. ὑπέρ, above, and δουλεία, service), and (3) dulia, that due to the saints. (See also Adoration.) The public service of God in church is known as “divine worship” or “divine service” (see Liturgy). In the sense of “revere" or “respect;” the verb “to worship” occurs in the English Prayer-book, in the phrase “with my body I thee worship” in the Marriage Service. In this sense the term "worship” is also used as a title of honour in speaking of or addressing other persons of position. Thus a mayor is spoken of as “his worship the mayor,” or “the worshipful the mayor.” Magistrates are addressed as “your worship.”
WORSLEY, PHILIP STANHOPE (1835–1866), English poet, son of the Rev. Charles Worsley, was born on the 12th of August 1835, and was educated at Highgate grammar school and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize in 1857 with a poem on “The Temple of Janus.” In 1861 he published a translation of the Odyssey, followed in 1865 by a translation of the first twelve books of the Iliad, in both of which he employed the Spenserian stanza with success. In 1863 appeared a volume of Poems and Translations. Worsley died on the 8th of May 1866. His translation of the Iliad was completed after his death by John Conington.
WORSLEY, an urban district in the Eccles parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, 6 m. W.N.W. of Manchester by the London & North-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 12,462. Its growth is a result of the development of the cotton manufacture and of the neighbouring collieries.
