Part 729

NELSON'S FARM, OR GLENDALE, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (JUNE-JULY: VIRGINIA).

NEMEDIANS, The.

It is among the legends of the Irish that their island was settled, about the time of the patriarch Jacob, by a colony of descendants from Japhet, led by one Nemedius, from whom they and their posterity took the name of Nemedians. The Nemedians were afterwards subjugated by a host of African sea-rovers, known as Fomorians, but were delivered from these in time by a fresh colony of their kindred from the East called the Fir Bolgs.

_T. Wright, History of Ireland, book 1, chapter 2._

NEMEAN AND ISTHMIAN GAMES.

"The Nemean and Isthmian [games in ancient. Greece] were celebrated each twice in every Olympiad, at different seasons of the year: the former in the plain of Nemea, in Argolis, under the presidency of Argos; the latter in the Corinthian isthmus, under the presidency of Corinth. These, like the Pythian and Olympic games, claimed a very high antiquity, though the form in which they were finally established was of late institution; and it is highly probable that they were really suggested by the tradition of ancient festivals, which had served to cement an Amphictyonic confederacy."

_C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 10._

NEMETACUM.

Modern Arras.

See BELGÆ.

NEMETES, The.

See VANGIONES.

NEMI, Priest of.

See ARICIAN GROVE.

NEMOURS, Treaty and Edict of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1584-1589.

NEODAMODES.

Enfranchised helots, in ancient Sparta.

_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 73._

NEOLITHIC PERIOD.

See STONE AGE.

NEOPLATONICS, The.

"There now [in the third century after Christ] arose another school, which from its first beginnings announced itself as a reform and support of the ancient faith, and, consequently, as an enemy of the new religion. This was the Neoplatonic school of Alexandria, founded by Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus, and which was afterwards represented by Porphyrius, Amelius, and Iamblicus. The doctrine of this school was the last, and in many respects the best production of paganism, now in its final struggle; the effort of a society, which acknowledged its own defects, to regenerate and to purify itself. Philosophy, and the religion of the vulgar, hitherto separated and irreconcilable, joined in harmony together for mutual support, and for a new existence. The Neoplatonics endeavoured, therefore, to unite the different systems of philosophy, especially the Pythagorean, Platonic, and Aristotelean, in one body with the principles of oriental learning, and thus to raise an edifice of universal, absolute truth. In the same manner they represented the varied forms of eastern and western religious worship as one entire whole, which had manifested itself indeed in different ways, but at the foundation of which there lay the same true faith. They taught that 'every kind of homage and adoration, which men offer to superior beings, is referred to heroes, demons, or Gods, but, finally, to the one most-high God, the author of all: that these demons are the chiefs and genii of the different parts, elements, and powers of the world, of people, countries, and cities, to obtain whose favour and protection, it behoved men to honour them according to the rites and customs of the ancients.' {2248} It is, therefore, manifest that these philosophers were essentially hostile to the Christian religion,—the exclusive character of which, and tendency to destroy all other religions, stood in direct contrast with their doctrines: and as their school was in its vigour at the very time in which Christianity made its most rapid advances, and had struck Paganism with a mortal wound, they employed themselves especially, and more earnestly, than other philosophers, to maintain their own tenets, and to destroy Christianity. They in nowise, however, desired to defend heathenism, or its worship, in their then degenerate and degrading state: their ideal was a more pure, more noble, spiritualized, polytheism, to establish which was the object which they had proposed to themselves. Whilst, therefore, on the one hand, they preserved the ancient and genuine truths which had sprung from primitive tradition, and purified them from recent errors and deformations; on the other, they adopted many of the doctrines of the hated Christianity, and sought to reform paganism by the aid of light which had streamed upon them from the sanctuary of the Church. This admission and employment of Christian truths are easily explained, if it be true, that two of their chiefs, Ammonius and Porphyrius, had been Christians. It is well known that they received instructions from Christian masters. … This uniformity, or imitation, consists not only in the use of terms, but in essential dogmas. The Neoplatonic idea of three hypostases in one Godhead would not have been heard of, if the Christian doctrine of the Trinity had not preceded it. … Their doctrines respecting the minor Gods, their influence and connexion with the supreme Being, approached near to the Christian dogma of the angels. Nor is the influence of Christianity less evident in the pure and grave morality of the Neoplatonics: in their lessons which teach the purifying of fallen souls, the detachment from the senses, the crucifying … of the affections and passions, it is easy to distinguish the Christian, from the commingled pagan, elements. The Neoplatonics endeavoured to reform polytheism by giving to men a doctrine more pure concerning the Gods, by attributing an allegorical sense to the fables, and a moral signification to the forms and ceremonies of religion: they sought to raise the souls of men to piety, and rejected from their mythology many of the degrading narrations with which it had before abounded. It was their desire also to abolish the sacrifices, for the Gods could only abhor the slaughter, the dismemberment and the burning of animals. But at the same time they reduced to a theory the apparitions of the Gods; they declared magic to be the most divine of sciences; they taught and defended theurgy, or the art of invoking the Gods (those of an inferior order, who were united to matter), and of compelling them to comply with the desires of men."

_J. J. I. Döllinger, History of the Church, volume 1, pages 70-73._

ALSO IN: _F. Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, sections 66-70 (volume 1)._

_C. Kingsley, Alexandria and Her Schools._

NEPAUL, OR NIPAL, English war with the Ghorkas of.

See INDIA: A. D. 1805-1816.

NEPHTHALITES, The.

See HUNS, THE WHITE.

NÉRAC, Treaty of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1578-1580.

NERESHEIM, Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER).

NERI AND BIANCHI (Blacks and Whites), The.

See FLORENCE: A. D. 1295-1300, and 1301-1313.

NERIUM, Headland of.

The ancient name of Cape Finisterre.

NERO, Roman Emperor, A. D. 54-68.

NERONIA.

Games instituted by Nero, to be conducted in the Greek fashion and to recur periodically, like the Olympian.

NERVA, Roman Emperor, A. D. 96-98.

NERVII, The.

A tribe in Belgic Gaul, at the time of Cæsar's conquest, which occupied the country "between the Sambre and the Scheldt (French and Belgic Hainaut, provinces of Southern Brabant, of Antwerp, and part of Eastern Flanders). The writers posterior to Cæsar mention Bagacum (Bavay) as their principal town."

_Napoleon III., History of Cæsar, book 3, chapter 2, foot-note (volume 2)._

The tribe was destroyed by Cæsar.

See BELGÆ, CÆSAR'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE.

NESSA: Destruction by the Mongols (1220).

See KHORASSAN: A. D. 1220-1221.

NESTORIAN AND MONOPHYSITE CONTROVERSY.

The great religious controversy of the Christian world in the fourth century, relating to the mystery of the Trinity, having been settled by the triumph of the doctrine of Athanasius over the doctrine of Arius, it was succeeded in the fifth century by a still more violent disputation, which concerned the yet profounder mystery of the Incarnation. To the dogmatists of one party it was wickedness to distinguish the divine nature and the human nature which they believed to be united in Christ; to the dogmatists of the other side it was sin to confound them. Cyril of Alexandria became the implacable leader of the first party. Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, was forced to the front of the battle on the other side and became its martyr. The opponents of Nestorius gained advantages in the contest from the then rapidly growing tendency in the Christian world to pay divine honors to the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God. To Nestorius and those who believed with him, this was abhorrent. "Like can but bear like," said Nestorius in one of his sermons; "a human mother can only bear a human being. God was not born—he dwelt in that which was born." But the mob was too easily charmed with Mariolatry to be moved by reasoning on the subject, and Cyril led the mob, not only in Alexandria, where it murdered Hypatia and massacred Jews at his bidding, but generally throughout the Christian world. A Council called at Ephesus in 431 and recognized as the third Œcumenical Council, condemned Nestorius and degraded him from his episcopal throne; but a minority disputed its procedure and organized a rival Council, which retorted anathemas and excommunications against Cyril and his friends. The emperor at last interfered and dissolved both; but Nestorius, four years later, was exiled to the Libyan desert and persecuted remorselessly until he died. Meantime the doctrine of Cyril had been carried to another stage of development by one of his most ardent supporters, the Egyptian monk Eutyches, who maintained that the human nature of Christ was absorbed in the divine nature. Both forms of the doctrine of one nature in the Son of God seem to have acquired somewhat confusedly the name of Monophysite, though the latter tenet is more often called Eutychian, from the name of its chief promulgator. {2249} It kindled new fires in the controversy. In 449, a second Council at Ephesus, which is called the "Robber Synod" on account of the peculiar violence and indecency of its proceedings, sustained the Monophysites. But two years later, in 451, the vanquished party, supported by Pope Leo the Great, at Rome, succeeded in assembling a Council at Chalcedon which laid down a definition of the Christian faith affirming the existence of two natures in one person, and which nevertheless condemned Nestorianism and Monophysitism, alike. Their success only inflamed the passions of the worshippers of the Virgin as the "Mother of God." "Everywhere monks were at the head of the religious revolution which threw off the yoke of the Council of Chalcedon." In Jerusalem "the very scenes of the Saviour's mercies ran with blood shed in his name by his ferocious self-called disciples." At Alexandria, a bishop was murdered in the baptistery of his church. At Constantinople, for sixty years, there went on a succession of bloody tumults and fierce revolutionary conspiracies which continually shook the imperial throne and disorganized every part of society, all turning upon the theological question of one nature or two in the incarnate Son of God. The Emperor Zeno "after a vain attempt to obtain the opinions of the chief ecclesiastical dignitaries, without assembling a new Council, a measure which experience had shown to exasperate rather than appease the strife, Zeno issued his famous Henoticon, or Edict of Union. … It aimed not at the reconcilement of the conflicting opinions, but hoped, by avoiding all expressions offensive to either party, to allow them to meet together in Christian amity." The Henoticon only multiplied the factions in number and heated the strife between them. The successor of Zeno, Anastasius, became a partisan in the fray, and through much of his reign of twenty-seven years the conflict raged more fiercely than ever. Constantinople was twice, at least, in insurrection. "The blue and green factions of the Circus—such is the language of the times—gave place to these more maddening conflicts. The hymn of the Angels in Heaven [the Trisagion] was the battle-cry on earth." At length the death of Anastasius ended the strife. His successor Justin (A. D. 518), bowed to the authority of the Bishop of Rome—the Pope Hormisdas—and invoked his aid. The Eastern world, exhausted, followed generally the emperor's example in taking the orthodoxy of Rome for the orthodoxy of Christianity. Nestorianism and Monophysitism in their extreme forms were driven from the open field in the Christian world, but both survived and have transmitted their remains to the present day.

_H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, book 2, chapters 3-4, book 3, chapter 1, and 3._

ALSO IN: _E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 47._

_J. Alzog, Universal Church History, 2d epoch, chapter 2._

See, also, NESTORIANS; JACOBITE CHURCH; and MONOTHELITE CONTROVERSY.

NESTORIANS, The.

"Within the limits of the Roman empire … this sect was rapidly extirpated by persecution [see above, NESTORIAN AND MONOPHYSITE CONTROVERSY]; and even in the patriarchate of Antioch, where, as we have seen, the tenets of Nestorius at first found greatest favour, it had disappeared as early as the time of Justinian [A. D. 527-565]. But another field lay open to it in the Persian kingdom of the Sassanidæ, and in this it ultimately struck its roots deeply. The Chaldæan church, which at the beginning of the fifth century was in a flourishing condition, had been founded by missionaries from Syria; its primate, or Catholicos, was dependent on the patriarch of Antioch, and in respect of language and discipline it was closely connected with the Syrian church. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that some of its members lent a ready ear to the Nestorian doctrines. This was especially the case with the church-teachers of the famous seminary at Edessa in Mesopotamia. … One of their number, Barsumas, who was bishop of the city of Nisibis from 435 to 489, by his long and active labours contributed most of all to the establishment of the Nestorian church in Persia. He persuaded the king Pherozes (Firuz) that the antagonism of his own sect to the doctrine of the established church of the Roman empire would prove a safeguard for Persia. … From that time Nestorianism became the only form of Christianity tolerated in Persia. … The Catholicos of Chaldæa now threw off his dependence on Antioch, and assumed the title of Patriarch of Babylon. The school of Edessa, which in 489 was again broken up by the Greek emperor, Zeno, was transferred to Nisibis, and in that place continued for several centuries to be an important centre of theological learning, and especially of biblical studies. … In the sixth century the Nestorians had established churches from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea, and had preached the Gospel to the Medes, the Bactrians, the Huns, and the Indians, and as far as the coast of Malabar and the island of Ceylon. At a later period, starting from Balk and Samarcand, they spread Christianity among the nomad Tartar tribes in the remote valleys of the Imaus; and the inscription of Siganfu, which was discovered in China, and the genuineness of which is considered to be above suspicion, describes the fortunes of the Nestorian church in that country from the first mission, A. D. 636, to the year in which that monument was set up, A. D. 781. In the ninth century, during the rule of the caliphs at Bagdad, the patriarch removed to that city, and at this period twenty-five metropolitans were subject to him. … From the eleventh century onwards the prosperity of the Chaldæan church declined, owing to the terrible persecutions to which its members were exposed. Foremost among these was the attack of Timour the Tartar, who almost exterminated them. Within the present century their diminished numbers have been still further thinned by frightful massacres inflicted by the Kurds. Their headquarters now are a remote and rugged valley in the mountains of Kurdistan, on the banks of the Greater Zab. … Beyond the boundary which separates Turkey from Persia to the southward of Mount Ararat, a similar community is settled on the shores of Lake Urumia. A still larger colony is found at Mosul, and others … elsewhere in the neighbourhood of the Tigris. … Of their widely extended missions only one fragment now remains, in the Christians of St. Thomas on the Malabar coast of India."

_H. F. Tozer, The Church and the Eastern Empire, chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 47._

NETAD, Battle of.

See HUNS: A. D. 453.

{2250}

NETHERLANDS: Start--------

NETHERLANDS. The Land.

"The north-western corner of the vast plain which extends from the German ocean to the Ural mountains is occupied by the countries called the Netherlands [Low Countries]. This small triangle, enclosed between France, Germany, and the sea, is divided by the modern kingdoms of Belgium and Holland into two nearly equal portions. … Geographically and ethnographically, the Low Countries belong both to Gaul and to Germany. It is even doubtful to which of the two the Batavian island, which is the core of the whole country, was reckoned by the Romans. It is, however, most probable that all the land, with the exception of Friesland, was considered a part of Gaul. Three great rivers—the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheld—had deposited their slime for ages among the dunes and sandbanks heaved up by the ocean around their mouths. A delta was thus formed, habitable at last for man. It was by nature a wide morass, in which oozy islands and savage forests were interspersed among lagoons and shallows; a district lying partly below the level of the ocean at its higher tides, subject to constant overflow from the rivers, and to frequent and terrible inundations by the sea. … Here, within a half-submerged territory, a race of wretched icthyophagi dwelt upon 'terpen,' or mounds, which they had raised, like beavers, above the almost fluid soil. Here, at a later day, the same race chained the tyrant Ocean and his mighty streams into subserviency, forcing them to fertilize, to render commodious, to cover with a beneficent network of veins and arteries, and to bind by watery highways with the farthest ends of the world, a country disinherited by nature of its rights. A region, outcast of ocean and earth, wrested at last from both domains their richest treasures. A race, engaged for generations in stubborn conflict with the angry elements, was unconsciously educating itself for its great struggle with the still more savage despotism of man. The whole territory of the Netherlands was girt with forests. An extensive belt of woodland skirted the sea-coast, reaching beyond the mouths of the Rhine. Along the outer edge of this barrier, the dunes cast up by the sea were prevented by the close tangle of thickets from drifting further inward, and thus formed a breastwork which time and art were to strengthen. The groves of Haarlem and the Hague are relics of this ancient forest. The Badahuenna wood, horrid with Druidic sacrifices, extended along the eastern line of the vanished lake of Flevo. The vast Hercynian forest, nine days' journey in breadth, closed in the country on the German side, stretching from the banks of the Rhine to the remote regions of the Dacians, in such vague immensity (says the conqueror of the whole country) that no German, after traveling sixty days, had ever reached, or even heard of, its commencement. On the south, the famous groves of Ardennes, haunted by faun and satyr, embowered the country, and separated it from Celtic Gaul. Thus inundated by mighty rivers, quaking beneath the level of the ocean, belted about by hirsute forests, this low land, nether land, hollow land, or Holland, seemed hardly deserving the arms of the all-accomplished Roman."

_J. L. Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, introduction, section 1._

NETHERLANDS: The early inhabitants.

See BELGÆ; NERVII; BATAVIANS; and FRISIANS.

NETHERLANDS: A. D. 69. Revolt of the Batavians under Civilis.

See BATAVIANS.

NETHERLANDS: 4-9th Centuries. Settlement and domination of the Franks.

See FRANKS; also, GAUL: A. D. 355-361.

NETHERLANDS: A. D. 843-870. Partly embraced in the kingdom of Lotharingia. The partitioning.

See LORRAINE: A. D. 843-870.

NETHERLANDS: (Flanders): A. D. 863-1383. The Flemish towns and counts.

See FLANDERS.

NETHERLANDS: (Holland): A. D. 922-1345. The early Counts of Holland.

"It was in the year 922 that Charles the Simple [of France] presented to Count Dirk the territory of Holland, by letters patent. This narrow hook of land, destined, in future ages, to be the cradle of a considerable empire, stretching through both hemispheres, was, thenceforth, the inheritance of Dirk's descendants. Historically, therefore, he is Dirk I., Count of Holland. … From the time of the first Dirk to the close of the 13th century there were nearly four hundred years of unbroken male descent, a long line of Dirks and Florences. This iron-handed, hot-headed, adventurous race, placed as sovereign upon its little sandy hook, making ferocious exertions to swell into large consequence, conquering a mile or two of morass or barren furze, after harder blows and bloodier encounters than might have established an empire under more favorable circumstances, at last dies out. The countship falls to the house of Avennes, Counts of Hainault. Holland, together with Zeland, which it had annexed, is thus joined to the province of Hainault. At the end of another half century the Hainault line expires. William the Fourth died childless in 1355 [1345?]."

_J. L. Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, introduction, sections 5-6._

NETHERLANDS: A. D. 13-15th Centuries. Relations with the Hanseatic League.

See HANSA TOWNS.

NETHERLANDS: (Holland): A. D. 1345-1354. The Rise of the Hooks and the Kabeljauws, or Cods.