ELZEVIR

elzevir, the name of a celebrated family of dutch printers belonging to the 17th century. the original name of the family was elsevier, or elzevier, and their french editions mostly retain this name; but in their latin editions, which are the more numerous, the name is spelt elzeverius, which was gradually corrupted in english into elzevir as a generic term for their books. the family originally came from louvain, and there louis, who first made the name elzevir famous, was born in 1540. he learned the business of a bookbinder, and having been compelled in 1580, on account of his protestantism and his adherence to the cause of the insurgent provinces, to leave his native country, he established himself as bookbinder and bookseller in leiden. his _eutropius_, which appeared in 1592, was long regarded as the earliest elzevir, but the first is now known to be _drusii ebraicarum quaestionum ac responsionum libri duo_, which was produced in 1583. in all he published about 150 works. he died on the 4th of february 1617. of his five sons, matthieu, louis, gilles, joost and bonaventure, who all adopted their father's profession, bonaventure, who was born in 1583, is the most celebrated. he began business as a printer in 1608, and in 1626 took into partnership abraham, a son of matthieu, born at leiden in 1592. abraham died on the 14th of august 1652, and bonaventure about a month afterwards. the fame of the elzevir editions rests chiefly on the works issued by this firm. their greek and hebrew impressions are considered inferior to those of the aldi and the estiennes, but their small editions in 12mo, 16mo and 24mo, for elegance of design, neatness, clearness and regularity of type, and beauty of paper, cannot be surpassed. especially may be mentioned the two editions of the new testament in greek ([greek: he kaine diatheke], _novum testamentum_, &c.), published in 1624 and 1633, of which the latter is the more beautiful and the more sought after; the _psalterium davidis_, 1653; _virgilii opera_, 1636; _terentii comediae_, 1635; but the works which gave their press its chief celebrity are their collection of french authors on history and politics in 24mo, known under the name of the _petites republiques_, and their series of latin, french and italian classics in small 12mo. jean, son of abraham, born in 1622, had since 1647 been in partnership with his father and uncle, and when they died daniel, son of bonaventure, born in 1626, joined him. their partnership did not last more than two years, and after its dissolution jean carried on the business alone till his death in 1661. in 1654 daniel joined his cousin louis (the third of that name and son of the second louis), who was born in 1604, and had established a printing press at amsterdam in 1638. from 1655 to 1666 they published a series of latin classics in 8vo, _cum notis variorum_; _cicero_ in 4to; the _etymologicon linguae latinae_; and a magnificent _corpus juris civilis_ in folio, 2 vols., 1663. louis died in 1670, and daniel in 1680. besides bonaventure, another son of matthieu, isaac, born in 1593, established a printing press at leiden, where he carried on business from 1616 to 1625; but none of his editions attained much fame. the last representatives of the elzevir printers were peter, grandson of joost, who from 1667 to 1675 was a bookseller at utrecht, and printed seven or eight volumes of little consequence; and abraham, son of the first abraham, who from 1681 to 1712 was university printer at leiden. some of the elzevir editions bear no other typographical mark than simply the words _apud elzeverios_, or _ex officina elseveriana_, under the _rubrique_ of the town. but the majority bear one of their special devices, four of which are recognized as in common use. louis elzevir, the founder of the family, usually adopted the arms of the united provinces, an eagle on a cippus holding in its claws a sheaf of seven arrows, with the motto _concordia res parvae crescunt_. about 1620 the leiden elzevirs adopted a new device, known as "the solitary," and consisting of an elm tree, a fruitful vine and a man alone, with a motto _non solus_. they also used another device, a palm tree with the motto, _assurgo pressa_. the elzevirs of amsterdam used for their principal device a figure of minerva with owl, shield and olive tree, and the motto, _ne extra oleas_. the earliest productions of the elzevir press are marked with an angel bearing a book and a scythe, and various other devices occur at different times. when the elzevirs did not wish to put their name to their works they generally marked them with a sphere, but of course the mere fact that a work printed in the 17th century bears this mark is no proof that it is theirs. the total number of works of all kinds which came from the presses of the elzevirs is given by willems as 1608; there were also many forgeries. see "notice de la collection d'auteurs latins, francais, et italiens, imprimee de format petit en 12, par les elsevier," in brunet's _manuel du libraire_ (paris, 1820); a. de reume, _recherches historiques, genealogiques, et bibliographiques sur les elsevier_ (brussels, 1847); paul dupont, _histoire de l'imprimerie_, in two vols. (paris, 1854); pieters, _annales de l'imprimerie elsevirienne_ (2nd ed., ghent, 1858); walther, _les elseviriennes de la bibliotheque imperiale de st-petersbourg_ (st petersburg, 1864); alphonse willems, _les elzevier_ (brussels, 1880), with a history of the elzevir family and their printing establishments, a chronological list and detailed description of all works printed by them, their various typographical marks, and a plate illustrating the types used by them; kelchner, _catalogus librorum officinae elsevirianae_ (paris, 1880); frick, _die elzevirschen republiken_ (halle, 1892); berghman, _etudes sur la bibliographie elzevirienne_ (stockholm, 1885), and _nouvelles etudes, &c._ (_ib._ 1897). emanation (lat. _emanatio_, from _e-_, out, _manare_, to flow), in philosophy and theology, the name of one of the three chief theories of existence, i.e. of the relation between god and men--the one and the many, the universal and the particular. this theory has been propounded in many forms, but the central idea is that the universe of individuals consists of the involuntary "outpourings" of the ultimate divine essence. that essence is not only all-inclusive, but absolutely perfect, while the "emanated" individuals degenerate in proportion to the degree of their distance from the essence. the existence of evil in opposition to the perfect goodness of god, as thus explained, need not be attributed to god's agency, inasmuch as the whole emanation-process is governed by necessary--as it were mechanical--laws, which may be compared to those of the physical universe. the doctrine of emanation is thus to be distinguished from the cosmogonic theory of judaism and christianity, which explains human existence as due to a single creative act of a moral agent. the god of judaism and christianity is essentially a _person_ in close _personal_ relation to his creatures; emanation is the denial of personality both for god and for man. the emanation theory is to be contrasted, on the other hand, with the theory of evolution. the two theories are alike in so far as both recognize the existence of individuals as due to a necessary process of differentiation and a scale of existence. they differ, however, fundamentally in this respect, that, whereas evolution regards the process as from the indeterminate lower towards the determinate higher, emanation regards it as from the highest to the indefinitely lower. there is considerable superficial similarity between evolution and emanation, especially in their formal statements. the process of evolution from the indeterminate to the determinate is often expressed as a progress from the universal to the particular. thus the primordial matter assumed by the early greek physicists may be said to be the universal substance out of which particular things arise. the doctrine of emanation also regards the world as a process of particularization. yet the resemblance is more apparent than real. the universal is, as herbert spencer remarked, a subjective idea, and the general forms, existing _ante res_, which play so prominent a part in greek and medieval philosophy, do not in the least correspond to the homogeneous matter of the physical evolutionists. the one process is a logical operation, the other a physical. the theory of emanation, which had its source in certain moral and religious ideas, aims first of all at explaining the origin of mental or spiritual existence as an effluence from the divine and absolute spirit. in the next place, it seeks to account for the general laws of the world, for the universal forms of existence, as ideas which emanate from the deity. by some it was developed into a complete philosophy of the world, in which matter itself is viewed as the lowest emanation from the absolute. in this form it stands in sharp antithesis to the doctrine of evolution, both because the former views the world of particular things and events as essentially unreal and illusory, and because the latter, so far as it goes, looks on matter as eternal, and seeks to explain the general forms of things as we perceive them by help of simpler assumptions. in certain theories known as doctrines of emanation, only mental existence is referred to the absolute source, while matter is viewed as eternal and distinct from the divine nature. in this form the doctrine of emanation approaches certain forms of the evolution theory (see evolution). the doctrine of emanation is correctly described as of oriental origin. it appears in various forms in indian philosophy, and is the characteristically oriental element in syncretic systems like neoplatonism and gnosticism. none the less it is easy to find it in embryo in the speculations of the essentially european philosophers of greece. plato, whose philosophy was strongly opposed to the evolution theory, distinctly inclines to the emanation idea in his doctrine that each particular thing is what it is in virtue of a pre-existent idea, and that the particulars are the lowest in the scale of existence, at the head of, or above, which is the idea of the good. the view of xenocrates is based on the same ideas. or again, we may compare the stoic doctrine of [greek: aporroiai] (literally "emanations") from the divine essence. it is, however, only in the last eclectic period of greek philosophy that the emanation doctrine was definitely established in the doctrines, e.g. plotinus. see especially articles evolution, neoplatonism, gnosticism. emanuel i. [portuguese _manoel_] (1469-1521), fourteenth king of portugal, surnamed the happy, knight of the garter and of the golden fleece, was the son of duke ferdinand of vizeu and of beatrice of beja, grandchildren of john i. of portugal. he was born at alcochete on the 3rd of may 1469, or, according to barbosa machado, on the 1st of june. his early education was directed by a sicilian named cataldo. in 1495 he became king in succession to his cousin john ii. in 1497 he married isabella, daughter of ferdinand and isabella of castile, who had previously been married to alphonso, the heir of john ii. she died in the next year in giving birth to a son named miguel, who until his death two years later was considered heir to the entire iberian peninsula. emanuel's next wife was maria, another daughter of ferdinand and isabella, whom he married in 1500. two of their children, john and henry, later became kings of portugal. maria died in 1516, and in 1518 her niece leonora, a sister of the emperor charles v., became emanuel's third wife. emanuel's reign is noteworthy for the continuance of the portuguese discoveries and the extension of their chain of trading-posts, vasco da gama's opening an all-sea route to india, cabral's landing in brazil, corte-real's voyage to labrador, the exploration of the indian seas and the opening of commercial relations with persia and china, bringing portugal international prominence, colonial pre-eminence and a hitherto unparalleled degree of national prosperity. his intense religious zeal variously manifested itself in his persecutions of the jews, whom at the beginning of his reign he had been disposed to tolerate, his strenuous endeavours to promote an international crusade against the turks, his eager missionary enterprise throughout his new possessions, and his erection of twenty-six monasteries and two cathedrals, including the stately monastic church of the jeronymos at belem (see lisbon). his jealously despotic character was accentuated by the enormous increase the indies furnished to his personal wealth, and exemplified in his assumption of new titles and in a magnificent embassy to pope leo x. he died at lisbon on the 13th of december 1521. the best authorities for the history of emanuel's reign are the contemporary 16th-century _chronica d'el rei d. manoel_, by damiao de goes, and _de rebus emanuelis_, by j. osorio. _el rei d. manoel_, by m.b. branco (lisbon, 1888), is a valuable but ill-arranged biography. see also the _ordenacoes do s.r.d. manoel_ (coimbra university press, 1797). for further bibliography see barbosa machado, _bibliographica lusitana_, vol. iii. pp. 161-166. embalming (gr. [greek: balsamon], balsam; ger. _einbalsamiren_; fr. _embaumement_), the art of preparing dead bodies, chiefly by the use of medicaments, in order to preserve them from putrefaction and the attacks of insects. the ancient egyptians carried the art to great perfection, and embalmed not only human beings, but cats, crocodiles, ichneumons, and other sacred animals. it was at one time suggested that the origin of embalming in egypt was to be traced to a want of fuel for the purpose of cremation, to the inadvisability or at some times impossibility of burial in a soil annually disturbed by the inundation of the nile, and to the necessity, for sanitary reasons, of preventing the decomposition of the bodies of the dead when placed in open sepulchres. as, however, the corpses of the embalmed must have constituted but a small proportion of the aggregate mass of animal matter daily to be disposed of, the above explanation would in any case be far from satisfactory; and there is no doubt (see mummy) that embalming originated in the idea of preserving the body for a future life. according to w.h. prescott, it was a belief in a resurrection of the body that led the ancient peruvians to preserve the air-dried corpses of their dead with so much solicitude (see _conquest of peru_, bk. i. chap. iii.). and j.c. prichard (_egyptian mythology_, p. 200) properly compared the egyptian practice with the views which rendered "the greeks and romans so anxious to perform the usual rites of sepulture to their departed warriors, namely, ... that these solemnities expedited the journey of the soul to the appointed region, where it was to receive judgment for its former deeds, and to have its future doom fixed accordingly." it has been supposed by some that the discovery of the preservation of bodies interred in saline soils may have been the immediate origin of embalming in egypt. in that country certain classes of the community were specially appointed for the practice of the art. joseph, we are told in gen. l. 2, "commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father." herodotus (ii. 86) gives an account of three of the methods of embalming followed by the egyptians. the most expensive of these, which cost a talent of silver (l243: 15s.), was as follows. the brains were in part removed through the nostrils by means of a bent iron implement, and in part by the injection of drugs. the intestines having been drawn out through an incision in the left side, the abdomen was cleansed with palm-wine, and filled with myrrh, cassia and other materials, and the opening was sewed up. this done, the body was steeped seventy days in a solution of litron or natron.[1] diodorus (i. 91) relates that the cutter ([greek: paraschistes]) appointed to make the incision in the flank for the removal of the intestines, as soon as he had performed his office, was pursued with stones and curses by those about him, it being held by the egyptians a detestable thing to commit any violence or inflict a wound on the body. after the steeping, the body was washed, and handed over to the swathers, a peculiar class of the lowest order of priests, called by plutarch _cholchytae_, by whom it was bandaged in gummed cloth; it was then ready for the coffin. mummies thus prepared were considered to represent osiris. in another method of embalming, costing twenty-two minae (about l90), the abdomen was injected with "cedar-tree pitch" ([greek: kedria]), which, as it would seem from pliny (_nat. hist._ xvi. 21), was the liquid distillate of the pitch-pine. this is stated by herodotus to have had a corrosive and solvent action on the viscera. after injection the body was steeped a certain number of days in natron; the contents of the abdomen were allowed to escape; and the process was then complete. the preparation of the bodies of the poorest consisted simply in placing them in natron for seventy days, after a previous rinsing of the abdomen with "syrmaea." the material principally used in the costlier modes of embalming appears to have been asphalt; wax was more rarely employed. in some cases embalming seems to have been effected by immersing the body in a bath of molten bitumen. tanning also was resorted to. occasionally the viscera, after treatment, were in part or wholly replaced in the body, together with wax figures of the four genii of amenti. more commonly they were embalmed in a mixture of sand and asphalt, and buried in vases, or _canopi_, placed near the mummy, the abdomen being filled with chips and sawdust of cedar and a small quantity of natron. in one jar were placed the stomach and large intestine; in another, the small intestines; in a third, the lungs and heart; in a fourth, the gall-bladder and liver. porphyry (_de abstinentia_, iv. 10) mentions a custom of enclosing the intestines in a box and consigning them to the nile, after a prayer uttered by one of the embalmers, but his statement is regarded by sir j.g. wilkinson as unworthy of belief. the body of nero's wife poppaea, contrary to the usage of the romans, was not burnt, but as customary among other nations with the bodies of potentates, was honoured with embalmment (see tacitus, _ann._ xvi. 6). the body of alexander the great is said to have been embalmed with honey (statius, _silv._ iii. 2. 117), and the same material was used to preserve the corpse of agesipolis i. during its conveyance to sparta for burial. herodotus states (iii. 24) that the ethiopians, in embalming, dried the body, rubbed it with gypsum (or chalk), and, having painted it, placed it in a block of some transparent substance. the guanches, the aborigines of the canaries, employed a mode of embalming similar to that of the egyptians, filling the hollow caused by the removal of the viscera with salt and an absorbent vegetable powder (see bory de saint vincent, _essais sur les iles fortunees_, 1803, p. 495). embalming was still in vogue among the egyptians in the time of st augustine, who says that they termed mummies _gabbarae_ (_serm._ 120, cap. 12). in modern times numerous methods of embalming have been practised. dr frederick ruysch of amsterdam (1665-1717) is said to have utilized alcohol for this purpose. by william hunter essential oils, alcohol, cinnabar, camphor, saltpetre and pitch or rosin were employed, and the final desiccation of the body was effected by means of roasted gypsum placed in its coffin. j.p. boudet (1778-1849) embalmed with tan, salt, asphalt and peruvian bark, camphor, cinnamon and other aromatics and corrosive sublimate. the last-mentioned drug, chloride and sulphate of zinc, acetate and sulphate of alumina, and creasote and carbolic acid have all been recommended by various modern embalmers. see mummy; louis penicher, _traite des embaumements_ (paris, 1669); s. blancard, _anatomia reformata, et de balsamatione nova methodus_ (lugd. bat., 1695); thomas greenhill, _the art of embalming_ (london, 1705); j.n. marjolin, _manuel d'anatomie_ (paris, 1810); pettigrew, _history of mummies_ (london, 1834); gannal, _traite d'embaumements_ (paris, 1838; 2nd ed., 1841); magnus, _das einbalsamiren der leichen_ (brunsw., 1839); sucquet, _embaumement_ (paris, 1872); lessley, _embalming_ (toledo, ohio, 1884); myers, _textbook of embalming_ (springfield, ohio, 1900); rawlinson, _herodotus_, vol. ii. p. 141; g. elliot smith, _a contribution to the study of mummification in egypt_ (cairo, 1906). footnote: [1] neutral carbonate of sodium, na2co3, found at the natron lakes in the libyan desert, and at el hegs, in upper egypt.