[1] Cotelier included the Acts of Martyrdom of Clement, Ignatius and
Polycarp; and those of Ignatius and Polycarp are still often printed
by editors.
[2] See G.A. Deissmann, _Bible Studies_, pp. 1-60, for this
distinction between the genuine "letter" and the literary "epistle,"
as applied to the New Testament in particular.
[3] One result is their inability to form a true theory of Judaism
and of the Old Testament in relation to the Gospel, a matter of great
moment for them and for their successors.
APOSTOLICI, APOSTOLIC BRETHREN, or APOSTLES, the names given to various
Christian heretics, whose common doctrinal feature was an ascetic
rigidity of morals, which made them reject property and marriage. The
earliest Apostolici appeared in Phrygia, Cilicia, Pisidia and Pamphylia
towards the end of the 2nd century or the beginning of the 3rd.
According to the information given by Epiphanius (_Haer._ 61) about the
doctrines of these heretics, it is evident that they were connected with
the Encratites and the Tatianians. They condemned individual property,
hence the name sometimes given to them of _Apotactites_ or
_Renuntiatores_. They preserved an absolute chastity and abstained from
wine and meat. They refused to admit into their sect those Christians
whom the fear of martyrdom had once restored to paganism. As late as the
4th century St Basil (_Can_. i and 47) knew some Apostolici. After that
period they disappeared, either becoming completely extinct, or being
confounded with other sects (see St Augustine, _Haer._ 40; John of
Damascus, _Haer._ 61).
Failing a more exact designation, the name of Apostolici has been given
to certain groups of Latin heretics of the 12th century. It is the
second of the two sects of Cologne (the first being composed very
probably of Cathari) that is referred to in the letter addressed in 1146
by Everwin, provost of Steinfeld, to St Bernard (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._
iii. 452). They condemned marriage (save, perhaps, first marriages), the
eating of meat, baptism of children, veneration of saints, fasting,
prayers for the dead and belief in purgatory, denied transubstantiation,
declared the Catholic priesthood worthless, and considered the whole
church of their time corrupted by the "negotia saecularia" which
absorbed all its zeal (of. St Bernard, _Serm._ 65 and 66 _in Cantic._).
They do not seem to have been known as Apostles or Apostolici: St
Bernard, in fact, asks his hearers: "Quo nomine istos titulove
censebis?" (_Serm. 66 in Cantic._). Under this designation, too, are
included the heretics of Perigueux in France, alluded to in the letter
of a certain monk Heribert (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._ iii. 467). Heribert
says merely: "Se dicunt apostolicam vitam ducere." It is possible that
they were Henricians (see HENRY OF LAUSANNE). During his mission in the
south-east of France in 1146-1147 St Bernard still met disciples of
Henry of Lausanne in the environs of Perigueux. The heretics of whom
Heribert speaks condemned riches, denied the value of the sacraments and
of good works, ate no meat, drank no wine and rejected the veneration of
images. Their leader, named Pons, gathered round him nobles, priests,
monks and nuns.
In the second half of the 13th century appeared in Italy the _Order of
the Apostles_ or _Apostle Brethren_ (see especially the _Chron._ of Fra
Salimbene). This was a product of the mystic fermentation which
proceeded from exalted Franciscanism and from Joachimism (see FRATICELLI
and JOACHIM). It presents great analogies with groups of the same
character, e.g. Sachets, Bizocchi, Flagellants, &c. The order of the
Apostles was founded about 1260 by a young workman from the environs of
Parma, Gerard Segarelli, who had sought admission unsuccessfully to the
Franciscan order. To make his life conform to that of Christ, his
contemporaries say that he had himself circumcised, wrapped in swaddling
clothes and laid in a cradle, and that he then, clad in a white robe and
bare-footed, walked through the streets of Parma crying "Penitenz
agite!" ("Poenitentiam agite!"). He was soon followed by a throng of men
and women, peasants and mechanics. All had to live in absolute poverty,
chastity and idleness. They begged, and preached penitence. Opizo,
bishop of Parma, protected them until they caused trouble in his
diocese. Their diffusion into several countries of Christendom disturbed
Pope Honorius IV., who in 1286 ordered them to adhere to an already
recognized rule. On their refusal, the pope condemned them to banishment
and Opizo imprisoned Segarelli. The councils of Wurzburg (1287) and
Chichester (1289) took measures against the Apostles of Germany and
England. But in 1291 the sect reappeared, sensibly increased, and Pope
Nicholas IV. published anew the bull of Honorius IV. From that day the
Apostles, regarded as rebels, were persecuted pitilessly. Four were
burned in 1294, and Segarelli, as a relapsed heretic, went to the stake
at Parma in 1300.
They had had close relations with the dissident Franciscans, but the
Spirituals often disavowed them, especially when the sect, which in
Segarelli's time had had no very precise doctrinal character, became
with Dolcino frankly heterodox. Dolcino of Novara was brought up at
Vercelli, and had been an Apostle since 1291. Thrice he fell into the
hands of the Inquisition, and thrice recanted. But immediately after
Segarelli's death he wrote an epistle, soon followed by a second, in
which he declared that the third Joachimite age began with Segarelli and
that Frederick of Sicily was the expected conqueror (_Hist. Dulcini_ and
_Addit. ad Hist. Dulcini_ in Muratori, _Scriptores_, vol. ix.). He gave
himself out as an angel sent from God to elucidate the prophecies. Soon
he founded an _Apostolic congregation_ at whose head he placed himself.
Under him were his four lieutenants, his "mystic sister," Margherita di
Franck, and 4000 disciples. He taught almost the same principles of
devotion as Segarelli, but the Messianic character which he attributed
to himself, the announcement of a communistic millennial kingdom, and,
besides, an aggressive anti-sacerdotalism, gave to Dolcino's sect a
clearly marked character, analogous only to the theocratic community of
the Anabaptists of Munster in the 16th century. On the 5th of June 1305
Pope Clement V., recognizing the impotence of the ordinary methods of
repression, issued bulls for preaching a crusade against the Dolcinists.
But four crusades, directed by the bishop of Vercelli, were required to
reduce the little army of the heresiarch, entrenched in the mountains in
the neighbourhood of Vercelli. Not till the 23rd of March 1307 were the
sectaries definitively overcome. The Catholic crusaders seized Dolcino
in his entrenchments on Mount Rubello, and the pope at once announced
the happy event to King Philip the Fair. At Vercelli Dolcino suffered a
horrible punishment. He was torn in pieces with red-hot pincers--the
torture lasting an entire day--while Margherita was burned at a slow
fire. Dante mentions Dolcino's name (_Inferno_, c. xxviii.), and his
memory is not yet completely effaced in the province of Novara. The
Apostles continued their propaganda in Italy, Languedoc, Spain and
Germany. In turn they were condemned by the councils of Cologne (1306),
Treves (1310) and Spoleto (1311). The inquisitor of Languedoc, Bernard
Gui, persecuted them unremittingly (see Gui's _Practica Inquisitionis_).
From 1316 to 1323 the condemnations of Apostles increased at Avignon and
Toulouse. They disappeared, however, at a comparatively late date from
those regions (council of Lavaur, 1368; council of Narbonne, 1374). In
Germany two Apostles were burned at Lubeck and Wismar at the beginning
of the 15th century (1402-1403) by the inquisitor Eylard.
Several controversialists, including Gotti, Krohn and Stockmann, have
mentioned among the innumerable sects that have sprung from Anabaptism a
group of individuals whose open-air preaching and rigorous practice of
poverty gained them the name of Apostolici. These must be carefully
distinguished from the _Apostoolians_, Mennonites of Frisia, who
followed the teachings of the pastor Samuel Apostool (1638-beginning of
18th century). In the Mennonite church they represent the rigid,
conservative party, as opposed to the Galenists, who inclined towards
the Arminian latitudinarianism and admitted into their community all
those who led a virtuous life, whatever their doctrinal tendencies.
(P. A.)
APOSTOLIC MAJESTY, a title borne by the kings of Hungary. About A.D.
1000 it was conferred by Pope Silvester II. upon St Stephen (975-1038),
the first Christian king of Hungary, in return for his zeal in seeking
the conversion of the heathen. It was renewed by Pope Clement XIII. in
1758 in favour of the empress Maria Theresa and her descendants. The
emperor of Austria bears the title of apostolic king of Hungary.
APOSTOLIUS, MICHAEL (d. c. 1480), a Greek theologian and rhetorician of
the 15th century. When, in 1453, the Turks conquered Constantinople, his
native city, he fled to Italy, and there obtained the protection of
Cardinal Bessarion. But engaging in the great dispute that then raged
between the upholders of Aristotle and Plato, his zeal for the latter
led him to speak so contemptuously of the more popular philosopher and
of his defender, Theodorus Gaza, that he fell under the severe
displeasure of his patron. He afterwards retired to Crete, where he
earned a scanty living by teaching and by copying manuscripts. Many of
his copies are still to be found in the libraries of Europe. One of
them, the _Icones_ of Philostratus at Bologna, bears the inscription:
"The king of the poor of this world has written this book for his
living." Apostolius died about 1480, leaving two sons, Aristobulus
Apostolius and Arsenius. The latter became bishop of Malvasia
(Monemvasia) in the Morea.
Of his numerous works a few have been printed: [Greek: Paroimiai]
(Basel, 1538), now exceedingly rare; a collection of proverbs in
Greek, of which a fuller edition appeared at Leiden, "Curante
Heinsio," in 1619; "Oratio Panegyrica ad Fredericum III." in Freher's
_Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum_, vol. ii. (Frankfort, 1624); Georgii
Gemisthi Plethonis et Mich. Apostolii _Orationes funebres duae in
quibus de Immortalitate Animae exponitur_ (Leipzig, 1793); and a work
against the Latin Church and the council of Florence in Le Moine's
_Varia Sacra_.
APOSTROPHE (Gr. [Greek: apostrophe], turning away; the final e being
sounded), the name given to an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech,
when a speaker or writer breaks off and addresses some one directly in
the vocative. The same word (representing, through the French, the Greek
[Greek: apostrophos prosudia], the accent of elision) means also the
sign (') for the omission of a letter or letters, e.g. in "don't." In
physiology, "apostrophe" is used more precisely in connexion with its
literal meaning of "turning away," e.g. for movement away from the
light, in the case of the accumulation of chlorophyll-corpuscles on the
cells of leaves.
APOTACTITES, or APOTACTICI (from Gr. [Greek: apotaktos], set apart), a
sect of early Christians, who renounced all their worldly possessions.
(See APOSTOLICI _ad init._)
APOTHECARY (from the Lat. _apothecarius_, a keeper of an _apotheca_, Gr.
[Greek: apotheke], a store), a word used by Galen to denote the
repository where his medicines were kept, now obsolete in its original
sense. An apothecary was one who prepared, sold and prescribed drugs,
but the preparing and selling of drugs prescribed by others has now
passed into the hands of duly qualified and authorized persons termed
"chemists and druggists," while the apothecary, by modern legislation,
has become a general medical practitioner, and the word itself, when
used at all, is applied, more particularly in the United States and in
Scotland, to those who in England are called "pharmaceutical chemists."
The Apothecaries' Society of London is one of the corporations of that
city, and both by royal charters and acts of parliament exercises the
power of granting licences to practise medicine. The members of this
society do not possess and never have possessed any exclusive power to
deal in or sell drugs; and until 1868 any person whatever might open
what is called a chemist's shop, and deal in drugs and poisons. In that
year, however, the Pharmacy Act was passed, which prohibits any person
from engaging in this business without being registered.
From early records we learn that the different branches of the medical
profession were not regularly distinguished till the reign of Henry
VIII., when separate duties were assigned to them, and peculiar
privileges were granted to each. In 1518 the physicians of London were
incorporated, and the barber-surgeons in 1540. But, independently of the
physicians and the surgeons, there were a great number of irregular
practitioners, who were more or less molested by their legitimate
rivals, and it became necessary to pass an act in 1543 for their
protection and toleration. As many of these practitioners kept shops for
the sale of medicines, the term "apothecary" was used to designate their
calling.
In April 1606 James I. incorporated the apothecaries as one of the city
companies, uniting them with the grocers. On their charter being renewed
in 1617 they were formed into a separate corporation, under the title of
the "Apothecaries of the City of London." These apothecaries appear to
have prescribed medicines in addition to dispensing them, and to have
claimed an ancient right of acting in this double capacity; and it may
be mentioned that Henry VIII., after the grant of the charter to the
College of Physicians, appointed an apothecary to the Princess Mary, who
was delicate and unhealthy, at a salary of 40 marks a year, "_pro
meliore cura, et consideratione sanitatis suae_." During the 17th
century, however, there arose a warm contest between the physicians and
the apothecaries,--the former accusing the latter of usurping their
province, and the latter continuing and justifying the usurpation until
the dispute was finally set at rest by a judgment of the House of Lords
in 1703 (_Rose v. College of Physicians_, 5 Bro. P. C. 553), when it was
decided that the duty of the apothecary consisted not only in
compounding and dispensing, but also in directing and ordering the
remedies employed in the treatment of disease. In 1722 an act was
obtained empowering the Apothecaries' Company to visit the shops of all
apothecaries practising in London, and to destroy such drugs as they
found unfit for use. In 1748 great additional powers were given to the
company by an act authorizing them to appoint a board of ten examiners,
without whose licence no person should be allowed to dispense medicines
in London, or within a circuit of 7 m. round it. In 1815, however, an
act of parliament was passed which gave the Apothecaries' Society a new
position, empowering a board, consisting of twelve of their members, to
examine and license all apothecaries throughout England and Wales. It
also enacted that, from the 1st of August of that year, no persons
except those who were so licensed should have the right to act as
apothecaries, and it gave the society the power of prosecuting those who
practised without such licence. But the act expressly exempted from
prosecution all persons who were then in actual practice, and it
distinctly excluded from its operation all persons pursuing the calling
of chemists and druggists. It was also provided that the act should in
no way interfere with the rights or privileges of the English
universities, or of the English College of Surgeons or the College of
Physicians; and indeed a clause imposed severe penalties on any
apothecaries who should refuse to compound and dispense medicines on the
order of a physician, legally qualified to act as such. It is therefore
clear that the act contemplated the creation of a class of practitioners
who, while having the right to practise medicine, should assist and
co-operate with the physicians and surgeons.
Before this act came into operation the education of the medical
practitioners of England and Wales was entirely optional on their own
part, and although many of them possessed degrees or licences from the
universities or colleges, the greater number possessed no such
qualification, and many of them were wholly illiterate and uneducated.
The court of examiners of the Apothecaries' Society, being empowered to
enforce the acquisition of a sufficient medical education upon its
future licentiates, specified from time to time the courses of lectures
or terms of hospital practice to be attended by medical students before
their examination, and in the progress of years regular schools of
medicine were organized throughout England.
As it was found that, notwithstanding the stringent regulations as to
medical acquirements, the candidates were in many instances deficient in
preliminary education, the court of examiners instituted, about the year
1850, a preliminary examination in arts as a necessary and indispensable
prerequisite to the medical curriculum, and this provision has been so
expanded that, at the present day, all medical students in the United
Kingdom are compelled to pass a preliminary examination in arts, unless
they hold a university degree. An act of parliament, passed in 1858, and
known as the Medical Act, made very little alteration in the powers
exercised by the Apothecaries' Society, and indeed it confirmed and in
some degree amplified them, for whereas by the act of 1815, the
licentiates of the society were authorized to practise as such only in
England and Wales, the new measure gave them the same right in Scotland
and Ireland. The Medical Act 1886 extended the qualifications necessary
for registration under the medical acts, by making it necessary to pass
a qualifying examination in medicine, surgery and midwifery. (See
MEDICAL EDUCATION.)
An act, passed in 1874, related exclusively to the Apothecaries'
Society, and is termed the Apothecaries' Act Amendment Act. By this
measure some provisions of the act of 1815, which had become obsolete or
unsuitable, were repealed, and powers were given to the society to unite
or co-operate with other medical licensing bodies in granting licences
to practise. The act of 1815 had made it compulsory on all candidates
for a licence to have served an apprenticeship of five years to an
apothecary, and although by the interpretation of the court of examiners
of the society this term really included the whole period of medical
study, yet the regulation was felt as a grievance by many members of the
medical profession. It was accordingly repealed, and no apprenticeship
is now necessary. The restriction of the choice of examiners to the
members of the society was also repealed, and the society was given the
power (which it did not before possess) to strike off from the list of
its licentiates the names of disreputable persons. The act of 1874 also
specified that the society was not deprived of any right or obligation
they may have to admit women to examination, and to enter their names on
the list of licentiates if they acquit themselves satisfactorily.
The Apothecaries' Society is governed by a master, two wardens and
twenty-two assistants. The members are divided into THREE grades,
yeomanry or freemen, the livery, and the court. Women are not, however,
admitted to the freedom. The hall of the society, situated in Water
Lane, London, and covering about three-quarters of an acre, was acquired
in 1633. It was destroyed by the great fire, but was rebuilt about ten
years later and enlarged in 1786. This is the only property possessed by
the society. In 1673, the society established a botanic and physic
garden at Chelsea, and in 1722 Sir Hans Sloane, who had become the
ground owner, gave it to the society on the condition of presenting
annually to the Royal Society fifty dried specimens of plants till the
number should reach 2000. This condition was fulfilled in 1774. Owing to
the heavy cost of maintenance and other reasons, the "physic garden" was
handed over in 1902, with the consent of the Charity Commissioners, to a
committee of management, to be maintained in the interests of botanical
study and research.
See C.R.B. Barrett, _The History of the Society of Apothecaries of
London_ (1905).
APOTHEOSIS (Gr. [Greek: apotheoun], to make a god, to deify), literally
deification. The term properly implies a clear polytheistic conception
of gods in contrast with men, while it recognizes that some men cross
the dividing line. It is characteristic of polytheism to blur that line
in several ways. Thus the ancient Greek religion was especially disposed
to belief in heroes and demigods. Founders of cities, and even of
colonies, received worship; the former are, generally speaking, mythical
personages and, in strictness, heroes. But the worship after death of
historical persons, such as Lycurgus, or worship of the living as true
deities, e.g. Lysander and Philip II. of Macedon, occurred sporadically
even before Alexander's conquests brought Greek life into contact with
oriental traditions. It was inevitable, too, that ancient monarchies
should enlist polytheistic conceptions of divine or half-divine men in
support of the dynasties; "_Seu deos regesve canit deorum Sanguinem_,"
Horace (_Odes_, iv. 2, 11. 12, 13) writes of Pindar; though the
reference is to myths, yet the phrase is significant. In the East all
such traits are exaggerated, a result perhaps rather of the statecraft
than of the religions of Egypt and Persia. Whatever part vanity or the
flattery of courtiers may have played with others, or with Alexander, it
is significant that the dynasties of Alexander's various successors all
claim divine honours of some sort (see PTOLEMIES, SELEUCID DYNASTY,
&c.). Theocritus (_Idyll_ 17) hails Ptolemy Philadelphus as a demigod,
and speaks of his father as seated among the gods along with Alexander.
Ancestor worship, or reverence for the dead, was a third factor. It may
work even in Cicero's determination that his daughter should enjoy
"[Greek: apotheosis]"--as he writes to Atticus--or receive the "honour"
of _consecratia_ (fragment of his _De Consolatione_). Lastly, we need
not speak of mere sycophancy. Yet it was common; Verres was worshipped
before he was impeached!
The Romans had, up to the end of the Republic, accepted only one
official apotheosis; the god Quirinus, whatever his original meaning,
having been identified with Romulus. But the emperor Augustus carried on
the tradition of ancient statecraft by having Julius Caesar recognized
as a god (_divus Julius_), the first of a new class of deities proper
(_divi_). The tradition was steadily followed and was extended to some
ladies of the imperial family and even to imperial favourites. Worship
of an emperor during his lifetime, except as the worship of his
_genius_, was, save in the cases of Caligula and Domitian, confined to
the provinces. Apotheosis after his death, being in the hands of the
senate, did not at once cease, even when Christianity was officially
adopted. The Latin term is _consecratio_, which of course has a variety
of senses, including simple burial. (Inscription in G. Boissier, _La
Religion romaine_; Renier, _Inscriptions d'Algiers_, 2510.) The Greek
term Apotheosis, probably a coinage of the Hellenistic epoch, becomes
more nearly technical for the deification of dead emperors. But it is
still used simply for the erection of tombs (clearly so in some Greek
inscriptions, _Corpus Inscript. Graec._ 2831, 2832, quoted in
Pauly-Wissowa, _s.v. Apotheosis_). Possibly there is a trace of ancestor
worship even here; but the two usages have diverged. The squib of the
philosopher Seneca on the memory of Claudius (d. A.D. 54),
_Apocolocyntosis_ ("pumpkinification"), is evidence that, as early as
Seneca's lifetime, apotheosis was in use for the recognition of a
departed emperor as a god. It also indicates how much contempt might be
associated with this pretended worship. The people, says Suetonius
(_Jul. Caes._ c. 88), fully believed in the divinity of Julius Caesar,
hinting at the same time that this was by no means the case with the
majority of the apotheoses subsequently decreed by the senate. Yet we
learn from Capitolinus that Marcus Aurelius was still worshipped as a
household divinity in the time of Diocletian, and was believed to impart
revelations in dreams (Vit. M. Ant. c. 18). Antinous, the favourite of
Hadrian, was adored in Egypt a century after his death (Origen, _Contra
Celsum_, iii. 36), though, according to Boissier, his worship never had
official sanction. The ceremonies attendant on an imperial apotheosis
are very fully described by Herodianus (bk. iv. c. 2) on occasion of the
obsequies of Severus, which he appears to have witnessed. The most
significant was the liberation, at the moment of kindling the funeral
pyre, of an eagle which was supposed to bear the emperor's soul to
heaven. Sharp-sighted persons had actually beheld the ascension of
Augustus (Suet. _August_, c. 100), and of Drusilla, sister of Caligula.
Representations of apotheoses occur on several works of art; the most
important are the apotheosis of Homer on a relief in the Townley
collection of the British Museum, that of Titus on the arch of Titus,
and that of Augustus on a magnificent cameo in the Louvre.
In China at the present day many Taoist gods are (or are given out as)
men deified for service to the state. This again may be statecraft. In
India, the (still unexplained) rise of the doctrine of transmigration
hindered belief. Apotheosis can mean nothing to those who hold that a
man may be reborn as a god, but still needs redemption, and that men on
earth may win redemption, if they are brave enough. Curiously, Buddhism
itself is ruled by the ghost or shadowy remainder of belief in
transmigration--Karma.
Apotheosis may also be used in wider senses. (a) Some (e.g. Herbert
Spencer) hold that most gods are deified men, and most myths historical
traditions which have been grotesquely distorted. This theory is known
as Euhemerism (see EUHEMERUS). It is needless to say that the attitude
of those holding the Euhemerist theory is at the farthest pole from
belief in apotheosis. According to the latter, some men may become gods.
According to the former, all gods are but men; or, some men have been
erroneously supposed to become gods. The Euhemerist theory mainly
appeals to ancestor worship--a fact of undoubted importance in the
history of religion, especially in China and in ancient Rome. In India,
too, a dead person treated with funeral honours becomes a guardian
spirit--if neglected, a tormenting demon. But whether the great gods of
polytheism were really transfigured ancestors is very doubtful. (b)
Again, there is a tendency to offer something like worship to the
founders of religions. Thus more than human honour is paid to Zoroaster
and Buddha and even to the founders of systems not strictly religious,
e.g. to Confucius and Auguste Comte. It is noticeable that this kind of
worship is not accorded in rigidly monotheistic systems, e.g. to Moses
and Mahomet. Nor is it accurate to speak of apotheosis in cases where
the founder is in his lifetime regarded as the incarnation of a god (cf.
Ali among Shi'ite Mahommedans; the Bab in Babism; the Druse Hakim). Most
Christians on this ground repudiate the application of the term to the
worship of Jesus Christ. Curiously, _Apotheosis_ is used by the Latin
Christian poet, Prudentius (c. 400), as the title of a poem defending
orthodox views on the person of Christ and other points of doctrine--the
affectation of a decadent age. (c) The worship paid to Saints, in those
Christian churches which admit it, is formally distinguished as _dulia_
([Greek: douleia]) from true worship or _latria_ ([Greek: latreia]).
Even the Virgin Mary, though she is styled Mother of God and Queen of
Heaven, receives only _dulia_ or at most _hyperdulia_.
(R. G.; R. Ma.)
APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS, the general name given to a vast system of
elevations in North America, partly in Canada, but mostly in the United
States, extending as a zone, from 100 to 300 m. wide, from Newfoundland,
Gaspe Peninsula and New Brunswick, 1500 m. south-westward to central
Alabama. The whole system may be divided into three great sections: the
_Northern_, from Newfoundland to the Hudson river; the _Central_, from
the Hudson Valley to that of New river (Great Kanawha), in Virginia and
West Virginia; and the _Southern_, from New river onwards. The northern
section includes the Shickshock Mountains and Notre Dame Range in
Quebec, scattered elevations in Maine, the White Mountains and the Green
Mountains; the central comprises, besides various minor groups, the
Valley Ridges between the Front of the Allegheny Plateau and the Great
Appalachian Valley, the New York-New Jersey Highlands and a large
portion of the Blue Ridge; and the southern consists of the prolongation
of the Blue Ridge, the Unaka Range, and the Valley Ridges adjoining the
Cumberland Plateau, with some lesser ranges.
_The Chief Summits._--The Appalachian belt includes, with the ranges
enumerated above, the plateaus sloping southward to the Atlantic Ocean
in New England, and south-eastward to the border of the coastal plain
through the central and southern Atlantic states; and on the north-west,
the Allegheny and Cumberland plateaus declining toward the Great Lakes
and the interior plains. A remarkable feature of the belt is the
longitudinal chain of broad valleys--the Great Appalachian
Valley--which, in the southerly sections divides the mountain system
into two subequal portions, but in the northernmost lies west of all the
ranges possessing typical Appalachian features, and separates them from
the Adirondack group. The mountain system has no axis of dominating
altitudes, but in every portion the summits rise to rather uniform
heights, and, especially in the central section, the various ridges and
intermontane valleys have the same trend as the system itself. None of
the summits reaches the region of perpetual snow. Mountains of the Long
Range in Newfoundland reach heights of nearly 2000 ft. In the
Shickshocks the higher summits rise to about 4000 ft. elevation. In
Maine four peaks exceed 3000 ft., including Katahdin (5200 ft.), Mount
Washington, in the White Mountains (6293 ft.), Adams (5805), Jefferson
(5725), Clay (5554), Monroe (5390), Madison (5380), Lafayette (5269);
and a number of summits rise above 4000 ft. In the Green Mountains the
highest point, Mansfield, is 4364 ft.; Lincoln (4078), Killington
(4241), Camel Hump (4088); and a number of other heights exceed 3000 ft.
The Catskills are not properly included in the system. The Blue Ridge,
rising in southern Pennsylvania and there known as South Mountain,
attains in that state elevations of about 2000 ft.; southward to the
Potomac its altitudes diminish, but 30 m. beyond again reach 2000 ft. In
the Virginia Blue Ridge the following are the highest peaks east of New
river: Mount Weather (about 1850 ft.), Mary's Rock (3523), Peaks of
Otter (4001 and 3875), Stony Man (4031), Hawks Bill (4066). In
Pennsylvania the summits of the Valley Ridges rise generally to about
2000 ft., and in Maryland Eagle Rock and Dans Rock are conspicuous
points reaching 3162 ft. and 2882 ft. above the sea. On the same side of
the Great Valley, south of the Potomac, are the Pinnacle (3007 ft.) and
Pidgeon Roost (3400 ft.). In the southern section of the Blue Ridge are
Grandfather Mountain (5964 ft.), with three other summits above 5000,
and a dozen more above 4000. The Unaka Ranges (including the Black and
Smoky Mountains) have eighteen peaks higher than 5000 ft., and eight
surpassing 6000 ft. In the Black Mountains, Mitchell (the culminating
point of the whole system) attains an altitude of 6711 ft., Balsam Cone,
6645, Black Brothers, 6690, and 6620, and Hallback, 6403. In the Smoky
Mountains we have Clingman's Peak (6611), Guyot (6636), Alexander
(6447), Leconte (6612), Curtis (6588), with several others above 6000
and many higher than 5000.
In spite of the existence of the Great Appalachian Valley, the master
streams are transverse to the axis of the system. The main watershed
follows a tortuous course which crosses the mountainous belt just north
of New river in Virginia; south of this the rivers head in the Blue
Ridge, cross the higher Unakas, receive important tributaries from the
Great Valley, and traversing the Cumberland Plateau in spreading gorges,
escape by way of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers to the Ohio and
Mississippi, and thus to the Gulf of Mexico; in the central section the
rivers, rising in or beyond the Valley Ridges, flow through great
gorges (water gaps) to the Great Valley, and by south-easterly courses
across the Blue Ridge to tidal estuaries penetrating the coastal plain;
in the northern section the water-parting lies on the inland side of the
mountainous belt, the main lines of drainage running from north to
south.
_Geology._--The rocks of the Appalachian belt fall naturally into two
divisions; ancient (pre-Cambrian) crystallines, including marbles,
schists, gneisses, granites and other massive igneous rocks, and a great
succession of Paleozoic sediments. The crystallines are confined to the
portion of the belt east of the Great Valley where Paleozoic rocks are
always highly metamorphosed and occur for the most part in limited
patches, excepting in New England and Canada, where they assume greater
areal importance, and are besides very generally intruded by granites.
The Paleozoic sediments, ranging in age from Cambrian to Permian, occupy
the Great Valley, the Valley Ridges and the plateaus still farther west.
They are rarely metamorphosed to the point of recrystallization, though
locally shales are altered to roofing slates, sandstones are indurated,
limestones slightly marblized, and coals, originally bituminous, are
changed to anthracite in northern Pennsylvania, and to graphite in Rhode
Island. Igneous intrusions consist only of unimportant dikes of trap.
The most striking and uniformly characteristic geologic feature of the
mountains is their internal structure, consisting of innumerable
parallel, long and narrow folds, always closely appressed in the eastern
part of any cross-section (Piedmont Plateau to Great Valley), less so
along a central zone (Great Valley and Valley Ridges), and increasingly
open on the west (Allegheny and Cumberland Plateaus). Asymmetry of the
folds is a marked characteristic in the zones of closer folding, the
anticlines having long gently inclined easterly limbs, and short, steep
and even overturned limbs upon the west. The effect of such folds is
often exaggerated by thrusts, and faulting of this sort is prominent in
the southern section, where the existence of over-thrusts measured by
several miles has been established.
What may be termed the ancestral Appalachian system was formed during
the post-carboniferous revolution, though certain of its elements had
been previously outlined, and perhaps at different dates. Folding of the
rocks resulted from the operation of great compressive forces acting
tangentially to the figure of the earth. Extensive and deep-seated
crumpling was necessarily accompanied by vertical uplift throughout the
zone affected, but once at least since their birth the mountains have
been worn down to a lowland, and the mountains of to-day are the
combined product of subsequent uplift of a different sort, and
dissection by erosion. Produced by long-continued subaerial decay and
erosion, in later Cretaceous times this lowland extended from the
Atlantic Ocean well toward the interior of North America; since then the
whole continent has been generally elevated, and by successive steps the
Appalachian belt has been raised to form a wide but relatively low arch.
The crosswise courses of the greater rivers result from the rivers being
older than the mountains, which indeed have been produced by
circumdenudation. The master streams of the present have inherited their
channels from the drainage systems of the Cretaceous lowland, and though
raised athwart the courses of the lowland trunk streams the great arch
was developed so slowly that these channels could be maintained through
_pari passu_ deepening. Former tributaries have given place to others
developed with reference to the distribution of more or less easily
eroded strata, the present longitudinal valleys being determined by the
out-crop of soft shales or soluble limestones, and the parallel ridges
upheld by hard sandstones or schists. Parallelism of mountain ridges and
intervening valleys is thus attributable to the folding of the rocks,
but the origin of the interior structure of the mountains is to be kept
distinct from the origin of the mountains as features of topography.
_Flora and Fauna._--Much of the region is covered with forest yielding
quantities of valuable timber, especially in Canada and northern New
England. The most valuable trees for lumber are spruce, white pine,
hemlock, cedar, white birch, ash, maple and basswood; all excepting pine
and hemlock and poplar in addition are ground into wood pulp for the
manufacture of paper. In the central and southern parts of the belt oak
and hickory constitute valuable hard woods, and certain varieties of the
former furnish quantities of tan bark. The tulip tree produces a good
clear lumber known as white wood or poplar, and is also a source of
pulp. In the south both white and yellow pine abounds. Many flowering
and fruit-bearing shrubs of the heath family add to the beauty of the
mountainous districts, rhododendron and kalmia often forming
impenetrable thickets. Bears, mountain lions (pumas), wild cats (lynx)
and wolves haunt the more remote fastnesses of the mountains; foxes
abound; deer are found in many districts and moose in the north.
_Influence on History._--For a century the Appalachians were a barrier
to the westward expansion of the English colonies; the continuity of the
system, the bewildering multiplicity of its succeeding ridges, the
tortuous courses and roughness of its transverse passes, a heavy forest
and dense undergrowth all conspired to hold the settlers on the
seaward-sloping plateaus and coastal plains. Only by way of the Hudson
and Mohawk valleys, and round about the southern termination of the
system were there easy routes to the interior of the country, and these
were long closed by hostile aborigines and jealous French or Spanish
colonists. In eastern Pennsylvania the Great Valley was accessible by
reason of a broad gateway between the end of South Mountain and the
Highlands, and here in the Lebanon Valley settled German Moravians,
whose descendants even now retain the peculiar patois known as
"Pennsylvania Dutch." These were late comers to the New World forced to
the frontier to find unclaimed lands. With their followers of both
German and Scotch-Irish origin, they worked their way southward and soon
occupied all of the Virginia Valley and the upper reaches of the Great
Valley tributaries of the Tennessee. By 1755 the obstacle to westward
expansion had been thus reduced by half; outposts of the English
colonists had penetrated the Allegheny and Cumberland plateaus,
threatening French monopoly in the transmontane region, and a conflict
became inevitable. Making common cause against the French to determine
the control of the Ohio valley, the unsuspected strength of the
colonists was revealed, and the successful ending of the French and
Indian War extended England's territory to the Mississippi. To this
strength the geographic isolation enforced by the Appalachian mountains
had been a prime contributor. The confinement of the colonies between an
ocean and a mountain wall led to the fullest occupation of the coastal
border of the continent, which was possible under existing conditions of
agriculture, conducing to a community of purpose, a political and
commercial solidarity, which would not otherwise have been developed. As
early as 1700 it was possible to ride from Portland, Maine, to southern
Virginia, sleeping each night at some considerable village. In contrast
to this complete industrial occupation, the French territory was held by
a small and very scattered population, its extent and openness adding
materially to the difficulties of a disputed tenure. Bearing the brunt
of this contest as they did, the colonies were undergoing preparation
for the subsequent struggle with the home government. Unsupported by
shipping, the American armies fought toward the sea with the mountains
at their back protecting them against Indians leagued with the British.
The few settlements beyond the Great Valley were free for self-defence
because debarred from general participation in the conflict by reason of
their position.
See the separate articles on the states, and also the following
references:--Topographic maps and Geologic Folios of the United States
Geological Survey; Bailey Willis, "The Northern Appalachians," and
C.W. Hayes, "The Southern Appalachians," both in _National Geographic
Monographs_, vol. i.; and chaps, iii., iv. and v. of Miss E.C.
Semple's _American History and its Geographic Conditions_ (Boston,
1903). (A. C. Sp.)
APPANAGE, or APANAGE (a French word from the late Lat. _apanagium_,
formed from _apanare, i.e. panem porrigere_, to give bread, i.e.
sustenance), in its original sense, the means of subsistence given by
parents to their younger children as distinct from the rights secured
to the eldest born by the custom of primogeniture. In its modern usage
it is practically confined to the money endowment given to the younger
children of reigning or mediatized houses in Germany and Austria, which
reverts to the state or to the head of the family on the extinction of
the line of the original grantee. In English history the system of
appanages never played any great part, and the term is now properly
applied only to the appanages of the crown: the duchy of Cornwall,
assigned to the king's eldest son at birth, or on his father's accession
to the crown, and the duchy of Lancaster. In the history of France,
however, the appanage was a very important factor. The word denotes in
very early French law the portion of lands or money given by fathers and
mothers to their sons or daughters on marriage, and usually connotes a
renunciation by the latter of any future inheritance; or it may denote
the portion given by the eldest son to his brothers and sisters when he
was sole inheritor. The word _apanage_ is still employed in this sense
in French official texts of some _Customs_; but it was in old public law
that it received its definite meaning and importance. Under the kings of
the third dynasty, the division of the kingdom among the sons of the
dead monarch which had characterized the Merovingian and Carolingian
dynasties, ceased. The eldest son alone succeeded to the crown; but at
the same time a custom was established by which the king made
territorial provision suitable to their rank for his other children or
for his brothers and sisters; custom forbade their being left landless.
Lands and lordships thus bestowed constituted the appanages, which
interfered so greatly with the formation of ancient France. While the
persevering policy of the Capets, which aimed at reuniting the great
fiefs, duchies, countships, baronies, &c., to the domain of the crown,
gradually reconstructed for their benefit a territorial sovereignty over
France, the institution of the appanage periodically subtracted large
portions from it. Louis XI., in particular, had to struggle against the
appanaged nobles. The old law, however, never abolished this
institution. The edict of Moulins (1566) maintained it, as one of the
exceptions to the inalienability of the crown-lands; only it was then
decided that daughters of France should be appanaged in money, or that
if, in default of coin, lands were assigned to them, these lands should
be redeemable by the crown in perpetuity. The efforts of the kings to
minimize this evil, and of the old jurisprudence to deal with the
matter, resulted in two expedients: (1) the reversion of the appanage to
the crown was secured as far as possible, being declared inalienable and
transmissible only to male descendants in the male line of the person
appanaged; (2) originally the person appanaged had possessed all the
rights of a duke or count--that is to say, in the middle ages nearly all
the attributes of sovereignty; the more important of these attributes
were now gradually reserved to the monarch, including public authority
over the inhabitants of the appanage in all essential matters. However,
it is evident from the letters of appanage, dated April 1771, in favour
of the count of Provence, how many functions of public authority an
appanaged person still held. The Constituent Assembly, by the law dated
the 22nd of November 1790, decided that in future there should be no
appanages in real estate, and that younger sons of monarchs, married and
over twenty-five years of age, should be provided for by yearly grants
(_rentes apanageres_) from the public funds. The laws of the 13th of
August and the 21st of December 1790 revoked all the existing appanages,
except those of the Luxembourg Palace and the Palais Royal. To each
person hitherto appanaged an annual income of one million _livres_ was
assigned, and two millions for the brothers of the king. All this came
to an end with the monarchy. Napoleon, by the _senatus-consulte_ of the
30th of January 1810, resolved to create appanages for the emperor's
princely descendants, such appanages to consist for the most part of
lands on French soil. The fall of the empire again annulled this
enactment. The last appanage known in France was that enjoyed by the
house of Orleans. Having been re-established, or recognized as still
existing, by the Restoration, it was formally confirmed by the law of
the 15th of January 1825. On the accession of Louis Philippe it was
united to the national property by the law of the 2nd of March 1832.
For appanages in ancient law see the _Essai sur les apanages ou
memoires historiques de leur etablissement_, attributed to Du Vaucel,
about 1780. (J. P. E.)
APPAREL (from O. Fr. _aparail_, _aparailler_, mod. _appareil_, from Low
Lat. _adpariculare_, to make fit or equal), equipment, outfit, things
furnished for the proper performance of anything, now chiefly used of
dress. The word is also applied to the "orphreys," i.e. embroidered
strips or borders, on ecclesiastical vestments.
APPARITIONS. An apparition, strictly speaking, is merely an appearance
(Lat. _apparere_, to appear), the result of perception exercised on any
stimulus of any of the senses. But in ordinary usage the word apparition
denotes a perception (generally through the sense of sight) which
cannot, as a rule, be shown to be occasioned by an object in external
nature. We say "as a rule" because many so-called apparitions are merely
illusions, i.e. misconstructions of the perceptive processes, as when a
person in a bad light sees a number of small children leading a horse,
and finds, on nearer approach, that he sees two men carrying bee-hives
suspended from a pole. Again, Sir Walter Scott's vision of Byron, then
lately dead, proved to be a misconstruction of certain plaids and cloaks
hanging in the hall at Abbotsford, or so Sir Walter declared. Had he not
discovered the physical basis of this illusion (which, while it lasted,
was an apparition, technically speaking), he and others might have
thought that it was an apparition in the popular sense of the word, a
ghost. In popular phraseology a ghost is understood to be a phantasm
produced in some way by the spirit of a dead person, the impression
being usually visual, though the ghost, or apparition, may also affect
the sense of hearing (by words, knocks, whistles, groans and so forth),
or the sense of touch, or of weight, as in the case of the "incubus." In
ordinary speech an apparition of a person not known to the percipient to
be dead is called a wraith, in the Highland phrase, a spirit of the
living. The terms _ghost_ and _wraith_ involve the hypothesis that the
false perceptions are caused by spirits, a survival of the archaic
animistic hypothesis (see ANIMISM), an hypothesis as difficult to prove
as to disprove. Apparitions, of course, are not confined to
anthropomorphic phantasms; we hear of phantom coaches (sometimes seen,
but more frequently heard), of phantom dogs, cats, horses, cattle, deer,
and even of phantom houses.
Whatever may be the causes of these and other false perceptions,--most
curious when the impression is shared by several witnesses,--they may
best be considered under the head of hallucination (q.v.).
Hallucinations may be pathological, i.e. the result of morbid conditions
of brain or nerve, of disease, of fever, of insanity, of alcoholism, of
the abuse of drugs. Again, they may be the result of dissociation, or
may occur in the borderland of sleep or waking, and in this case they
partake of the hallucinatory nature of dreams (q.v.). Again,
hallucinations may, once or twice in a lifetime, come into the
experience of the sane, the healthy, and, as far as any tests can be
applied, of the wide-awake. In such instances the apparition (whether it
take the form of a visual phantasm, of a recognized voice, of a touch,
or what not) may be coincidental or non-coincidental. The phantasm is
called coincidental if it represents a known and distant person who is
later found to have been dying or in some other crisis at the moment of
the percipient's experience. When the false perception coincides with
nothing of the sort, it is styled non-coincidental. Coincidental
apparitions have been explained by the theory of telepathy (q.v.), one
mind or brain impressing another in some unknown way so as to beget an
hallucinatory apparition or phantasm. On the evidence, so far as it has
been collected and analysed, it seems that the mind which, on the
hypothesis, begets the hallucinations, usually does so without
_conscious_ effort (see SUBLIMINAL SELF). There are, however, a few
cases in which the experiment of begetting, in another, an hallucination
from a distance, is said to have been experimentally and consciously
made, with success.
If the telepathic theory of coincidental hallucinations be accepted, we
have still to account for the much more common non-coincidental
apparitions of the living who do not happen to be in any particular
crisis. In these instances it cannot be demonstrated that telepathy has
_not_ been at work, as when a person is seen at a place which he thought
of visiting, but did not visit. F.W. Myers even upheld a theory of
psychorhagy, holding that the spirits of some persons have a way of
manifesting themselves at a distance by a psychic invasion. This
involves, as he remarked, paleolithic psychology, and the old savage
doctrine of animism, rather than telepathy (see Myers, _Human
Personality_). Of belief in coincidental hallucinations or wraiths among
savages, records are scanty; the belief, however, is found among Maoris
and Fuegians (see Lang, _Making of Religions_). The perception of
apparitions of distant but actual scenes and occurrences is usually
called clairvoyance (q.v.). The belief is also familiar under the name
of second sight (see SECOND SIGHT), a term of Scots usage, though the
belief in it, and the facts if accepted, are of world-wide diffusion.
The apparitions may either represent actual persons and places, or may
be symbolical, taking the form of phantasmic lights, coffins, skeletons,
shrouds and so forth. Again, the appearances may either represent
things, persons and occurrences of the past (see RETROCOGNITION), or of
the present (clairvoyance), or of the future (see PREMONITION). When the
apparitions produce themselves in given rooms, houses or localities, and
are exhibited to various persons at various times, the locality is
popularly said to be haunted by spirits, that is, of the dead, on the
animistic hypothesis (see HAUNTINGS). Like the other alleged facts,
these are of world-wide diffusion, or the belief in them is world-wide,
and peculiar to no race, age, or period of culture. A haunted place is a
centre of permanent possibilities of hallucinations, or is believed to
be so. A distinct species of hauntings are those in which unexplained
sounds and movements of objects, apparently untouched, occur. The German
term _Poltergeist_ (q.v.) has been given to the supposed cause of these
occurrences where the cause is not ascertained to be sportive imposture.
In the performances of modern spiritualists the Poltergeist appears, as
it were, to be domesticated, and to come at the call of the medium.
An intermittent kind of ominous haunting attached, not to places, but to
families, is that of the banshee (Celtic) or family death omen, such as
the white bird of the Oxenhams, the Airlie drummer, the spectral rider
of Clan Gilzean, the rappings of the Woodde family. These apparitions,
with fairies and _djinns_ (the Arab form of fairy), haunt the borderland
between folk-lore and psychical research.
So far we have been concerned with spontaneous apparitions, or with the
belief in them. Among induced apparitions may be reckoned the
materialized forms of spiritual _seances_, which have a material basis
of veils, false moustaches, wigs and the _corpus vile_ of the medium. It
is also possible that mere expectancy and suggestion induce
hallucinatory perceptions among the members of the circle. That
apparitions of a sort can be induced by hypnotic and posthypnotic
suggestion is certain enough (see HYPNOTISM). Savages produce
apparitions in similar ways by suggestion, accompanied by dances,
fumigations, darkness, fasting, drugs, and whatever can affect the
imaginations of the onlookers (see MAGIC). Both in savage and civilized
life, some persons can provoke themselves into beholding apparitions
usually fantastic, but occasionally coincidental, by sedulously staring
into any clear deep water, a fragment of rock crystal, a piece of
polished basalt or obsidian, a mirror, a ring, a sword blade, or a glass
of sherry (see CRYSTAL GAZING). Indeed any object, a wall, the palm of
the hand, the shoulder-blade-bone of a sheep, may be, and has been used
to this end (see DIVINATION).
Almost all known apparitions may accommodate themselves to one or other
of the categories given, whether they be pathological, coincidental or
spontaneous, induced, permanently localized, or sporadic.