Arminius's works are mostly occasional treatises drawn from him by
controversial emergencies, but they everywhere exhibit a calm,
well-furnished, undogmatic and progressive mind. He was essentially an
amiable man, who hated the zeal for an impossible orthodoxy that
constrained "the church to institute a search after crimes which have
not betrayed an existence, yea, and to drag into open contentions those
who are meditating no evil." His friend Peter Bertius, who pronounced
his funeral oration, closed it with these words: "There lived a man whom
it was not possible for those who knew him sufficiently to esteem; those
who entertained no esteem for him are such as never knew him well enough
to appreciate his merits."
The works of Arminius (in Latin) were published in a single quarto
volume at Leiden in 1629, at Frankfort in 1631 and 1635. Two volumes
of an English translation, with copious notes, by James Nichols, were
published at London, 1825-1828; three volumes (complete) at Buffalo,
1853. A life was written by Caspar Brandt, son of Gerard Brandt, the
historian of the Dutch reformation, and published in 1724; republished
and annotated by J.L. Mosheim in 1725; and translated into English by
the Rev. John Guthrie, 1854. James Nichols also wrote a life (London,
1843).
ARMISTICE (from Lat. _arma_, arms, and _sistere_, to stop), a suspension
of hostilities by mutual agreement between two nations at war, or their
respective forces. An armistice may be either general or particular; in
the first case there is a complete cessation of hostile operations in
every part of the dominions of the belligerent powers; in the second
there is merely a temporary truce between two contending armies, or
between a besieged fortress and the force besieging it. Such a temporary
truce, when for a very limited period and for a special purpose, e.g.
the collection of the wounded and the burial of the dead, is termed a
_suspension of arms_. A general armistice cannot be concluded by the
commanders-in-chief unless special authority has been previously
delegated to them by their respective governments; otherwise any
arrangement entered into by them requires subsequent ratification by the
supreme powers of the states. A partial truce may be concluded by the
officers of the respective powers, without any special authority from
their governments, wherever, from the nature and extent of the commands
they exercise, their duties could not be efficiently discharged without
their possession of such a power. The conduct of belligerent parties
during an armistice is usually regulated in modern warfare by express
agreement between the parties, but where this is not the case the
following general conditions may be laid down. (1) Each party may do,
within the limits prescribed by the truce, whatever he could have done
in time of peace. For example, he can raise troops, collect stores,
receive reinforcements and fortify places that are not actually in a
state of siege. (2) Neither party can take advantage of the armistice to
do what he could not have done had military operations continued. Thus
he cannot throw provisions or reinforcements into a besieged town, and
neither besiegers nor besieged are at liberty to repair their
fortifications or erect new works. (3) All things contained in places
the possession of which was contested, must remain in the state in which
they were before the armistice began. Any infringement by either party
of the conditions of the truce entitles the other to recommence hostile
operations without previous intimation.
ARMOIRE, the French name (cf. ALMERY) given to a tall movable cupboard,
or "wardrobe," with one or more doors. It has varied considerably in
shape and size, and the decoration of its doors and sides has faithfully
represented mutations of fashion and modifications of use. It was
originally exceedingly massive and found its chief decoration in
elaborate hinges and locks of beaten iron. The finer ecclesiastical
armoires or aumbries which have come down to us--used in churches for
the safe custody of vestments, eucharistic vessels, reliquaries and
other precious objects--are usually painted, sometimes even upon the
interior, with sacred subjects or with incidents from the lives of the
saints. The cathedrals of Bayeux and Noyon contain famous examples; the
most typical English one is in York minster. By the end of the 14th
century, when the carpenter and the wood-carver had acquired a better
mastery of their material, the taste for painted surfaces appears to
have given place to the vogue of carving, and the simple rectangular
panels gradually became sculptured with a simple motive, such as the
linen-fold or parchment patterns. In the treasury of St Germain
l'Auxerrois the ends of the 15th-century armoires are treated in this
way. In that and the two following centuries the keys and the
escutcheons of the locks became highly ornamental; usually in forged
iron, they were occasionally made of more precious metals. By slow
degrees the shape of this receptacle changed--from breadth was evolved
height, and the tall form of armoire became characteristic. The
Renaissance exercised a notable effect upon this, as upon so many other
varieties of furniture. It became less obviously and aggressively a
thing of utility; its proportions shrank from the massive to the
elegant; its artistic effectiveness was vastly enhanced by its division
into an upper and a lower part. Enriched with columns and pilasters, its
panels carved with mythology, its canopied niches filled with sculptured
statuettes, and terminating with a rich cornice and perhaps a broken
pediment, it was widely removed in appearance, if not in purpose, from
the uncompromising iron-mounted receptacle of earlier generations.
During the 16th century, when the surging impulses of the Renaissance
had died away, the armoire relapsed into plainness, its proportions
increased, and it was again constructed in one piece. Ere long, however,
it grew more sumptuous than ever. Boulle encrusted it with marqueterie
from designs by Berain; it glowed with _amorini_, with the torches and
arrows of Cupid, with the garlands which he weaves for his captives, and
when allusiveness left a corner vacant, it was filled with arabesques in
ebony or ivory, in brass or white metal. While the royal palaces and the
hotels of the great nobility were filled with those costly splendours,
the ordinary cabinetmaker continued to construct his modest pieces, and
by the middle of the 18th century the armoire was found in every French
house, ample in width and high in proportion to the lofty rooms of the
period. It is not to be supposed that so useful a piece of furniture was
confined to France. It was used, more or less, throughout a considerable
part of Europe, but it was distinctively Gallic nevertheless, and never
became thoroughly acclimatized elsewhere until about the beginning of
the 19th century, when it developed into the glass-fronted wardrobe
which is now an essential detail in the plenishing of the bed-chamber,
not merely in France and England, but in many other countries. The
_armoire a glace_ was known and occasionally made in France as far back
as the middle of the 18th century, and almost the earliest mention of it
connects it with the scandalous relations of the Marechal de Richelieu
and the beautiful _fermiere generale_, Mme de la Popeliniere, who had
one made to mask a secret door. In the conventional and not very
attractive wardrobe of commerce it is difficult to descry the gracious
characteristics of the armoire of the Renaissance or the 17th century,
and it is not altogether surprising that Theodore de Banville should
have condemned one of the most solidly useful of household necessaries
as a "hideous monster."
ARMORICA (AREMORICA), the Roman name, derived from two Celtic words
meaning the "seaside" (_ar_, on, and _mor_, sea), for the land of the
Armorici, roughly the peninsula of Brittany. At the time of the Roman
advance on Gaul there were five principal tribes in Armorica, the
Namneti, the Veneti, the Osismii, the Curiosolitae and the Redones. It
was subdued by Caesar, who entirely destroyed the seafaring tribe of its
south coast, the Veneti. Under the Empire it formed part of the province
of Gallia Lugudunensis (Lugdunensis). It contained hardly any towns,
though many large country houses, and was perhaps less Romanized than
the rest of Gaul. In and after the later part of the 5th century it
received many Celtic immigrants from the British Isles, fleeing (it is
said) from the Saxons; and the Celtic dialect which the Bretons still
speak is thought to owe its origin to these immigrants. (See further
BRITTANY.)
ARMOUR, PHILIP DANFORTH (1832-1901), American merchant and
philanthropist, was born in Stockbridge, New York, on the 16th of May
1832. He was educated at Cazenovia Academy, Cazenovia, N.Y., worked for
several years on his father's farm, and in 1852 with a small party went
overland to California, a large part of the journey being made on foot.
Here during the next four years he laid the foundations of his fortune.
In 1856 he became associated with his friend, Frederick S. Miles, in a
wholesale grocery and commission business at Milwaukee. In 1863 he
became the head of the firm of Armour, Plankington & Co., pork packers,
whose headquarters were at Milwaukee. He also obtained a large interest
in the firm H.O. Armour & Co., which was founded by his brother, Herman
Ossian Armour (1837-1901), and which, starting as a grain commission
business, in 1868 established also a large pork-packing plant. Of this
firm, the name of which was changed to Armour & Co. in 1870, he became
the head in 1875, and thereafter the business made such rapid progress
that in 1901 as many as 11,000 hands were employed. Besides contributing
to many charitable enterprises, Armour founded the Armour Institute of
Technology at Chicago in 1892 and the Armour Flats in Chicago, built for
the purpose of supplying at a low rental good homes for working men and
their families. He also contributed liberally to the Armour Mission in
Chicago, which was founded in 1881 by his brother, Joseph Armour. At the
time of his death, on the 6th of January 1901, Philip D. Armour's
private fortune was supposed to exceed $50,000,000.