by the ancients as a Chalcidian colony. An important Oscan inscription relates to a treaty with Nola, regarding a joint temple of Hercules, attributable to the 2nd century B.C. Under the early empire it had already become a colony and had perhaps been one since the time of Sulla. It has remains of the walls of the citadel and of an amphitheatre, and lay on the road from Nola to Abellinum, which was here perhaps joined by a branch from Suessula.
See J. Beloch, Campanien (2nd ed., Breslau, 1890), 411 seq. (T. As.)
AVELLINO, a city and episcopal see of Campania, Italy, the capital of the province of Avellino, 1150 ft. above sea-level, 28 m. direct and 59 m. by rail E.N.E. of Naples, at the foot of Monte Vergine. Pop. (1901) 23,760. There are ruins of the castle constructed in the 9th or 10th century, in which the antipope Anacletus II. crowned Count Roger II. king of Sicily and Apulia. Avellino is the junction of lines to Benevento and Rocchetta S. Antonio. The name is derived from the ancient Abellinum, the ruins of which lie 212 m. north-east, close to the village of Atripalda, and consist of remains of city walls and an amphitheatre in opus reticulatum, i.e. of the early imperial period, when Abellinum appears to have been the chief place of a tribe, to which belonged also the independent communities of the Abellinates cognomine Protropi among the Hirpini, and the Abellinates cognominati Marsi among the Apulians (Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, ii. 822). It lay on the boundary of Campania and the territory of the Hirpini, at the junction of the roads from Nola (and perhaps also from Suessula) and Salernum to Beneventum.
The Monte Vergine (4165 ft.) lies 4 m. to the N.W. of Avellino; upon the summit is a sanctuary of the Virgin, founded in 1119, which contains a miraculous picture attributed to S. Luke (the greatest festival is on the 8th of September). The present church is baroque in style, but contains some works of art of earlier periods. The important archives have been transported to Naples. (T. As.)
AVEMPACE [Abu Bakr Muḥammad ibn Yaḥya, known as Ibn Bājja or Ibn Ṣa‛igh, i.e. son of the goldsmith, the name being corrupted by the Latins into Avempace, Avenpace or Aben Pace], the earliest and one of the most distinguished of the Arab philosophers of Spain. Little is known of the details of his life. He was born probably at Saragossa towards the close of the 11th century. According to Ibn Khāqān, a contemporary writer, he became a student of the exact sciences and was also a musician and a poet. But he was a philosopher as well, and apparently a sceptic. He is said to have rejected the Koran, to have denied the return to God, and to have regarded death as the end of existence. But even in that orthodox age he became vizier to the amir of Murcia. Afterwards he went to Valencia, then to Saragossa. After the fall of Saragossa (1119) he went to Seville, then to Xativa, where he is said to have returned to Islam to save his life. Finally he retired to the Almoravid court at Fez, where he was poisoned in 1138. Ibn ‛Usaibi‛a gives a list of twenty-five of his works, but few of these remain. He had a distinct influence upon Averroes (see Arabian Philosophy).
For his life see M‘G. de Slane’s trans. of Ibn Khallikān’s Biographical Dictionary (Paris and London, 1842), vol. iii. pp. 130 ff., and Ibn ‛Usaibi‛a’s biography translated in P. de Gayangos’ edition of the History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain, by al-Maqqari (London, 1840), vol. ii., appendix, p. xii. List of extant works in C. Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, vol. i. p. 460. For his philosophy cf. T. J. de Boer’s The History of Philosophy in Islām (London, 1903), ch. vi. (G. W. T.)
AVENARIUS, RICHARD HEINRICH LUDWIG (1843–1896), German philosopher, was born in Paris on the 19th of November 1843. His education, begun in Zürich and Berlin, was completed at the university of Leipzig, where he graduated in 1876. In 1877 he became professor of philosophy in Zürich, where he died on the 18th of August 1896. At Leipzig he was one of the founders of the Akademisch-philosophische Verein, and was the first editor of the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie. In 1868 he published an essay on the Pantheism of Spinoza. His chief works are Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemäss dem Princip des kleinsten Kraftmasses (1876) and the Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (1888–1890). In these works he made an attempt to co-ordinate thought and action. Like Mach, he started from the principle of economy of thinking, and in the Kritik endeavoured to explain pure experience in relation to knowledge and environment. He discovers that statements dependent upon environment constitute pure experience. This philosophy, called Empirio-criticism, is not, however, a realistic but an idealistic dualism, nor can it be called materialism.
See Wundt, Philos. Stud. xiii. (1897); Carstanjen and Willy in Zeitsch. f. wiss. Philos. xx. (1896), 361 ff.; xx. 57 ff.; xxii. 53 ff.; J. Petzoldt’s Einführung in d. Philos. d. reinen Erfahrung (1900).
AVENGER OF BLOOD, the person, usually the nearest kinsman of the murdered man, whose duty it was to avenge his death by killing the murderer. In primitive societies, before the evolution of settled government, or the uprise of a systematized criminal law, crimes of violence were regarded as injuries of a personal character to be punished by the sufferer or his kinsfolk. This right of vengeance was common to most countries, and in many was the subject of strict regulations and limitations. It was prevented from running into excesses by the law of sanctuary (q.v.) and in many lands the institution of blood-money, and the wergild offered the wrong-doer a mode of escaping from his enemies’ revenge. The Mosaic law recognized the right of vengeance, but not the money-compensation. The Koran, on the contrary, while sanctioning the vengeance, also permits pecuniary commutation for murder.
AVENGERS, or Vendicatori, a secret society formed about 1186 in Sicily to avenge popular wrongs. The society was finally suppressed by King William II., the Norman, who hanged the grand master and branded the members with hot irons.
AVENTAIL, or Avantaille (O. Fr. esventail, presumably from a Latin word exventaculum, air-hole), the mouthpiece of an old-fashioned helmet, movable to admit the air.
AVENTINUS (1477–1534), the name taken by Johann Turmair, author of the Annales Boiorum, or Annals of Bavaria, from Aventinum, the Latin name of the town of Abensberg, where he was born on the 4th of July 1477. Having studied at Ingolstadt, Vienna, Cracow and Paris, he returned to Ingolstadt in 1507, and in 1509 was appointed tutor to Louis and Ernest, the two younger sons of Albert the Wise, the late duke of Bavaria-Munich. He retained this position until 1517, wrote a Latin grammar, and other manuals for the use of his pupils, and in 1515 travelled in Italy with Ernest. Encouraged by William IV., duke of Bavaria, he began to write the Annales Boiorum, about 1517, and finishing this book in 1521, undertook a German version of it, entitled Bayersche Chronik, which he completed some years later. He assisted to found the Sodalitas litteraria Angilostadensis, under the auspices of which several old manuscripts were brought to light. Although Aventinus did not definitely adopt the reformed faith, he sympathized with the reformers and their teaching, and showed a strong dislike for the monks. On this account he was imprisoned in 1528, but his friends soon effected his release. The remainder of his life was somewhat unsettled, and he died at Regensburg on the 9th of January 1534. The Annales, which are in seven books, deal with the history of Bavaria in conjunction with general history from the earliest times to 1460, and the author shows a strong sympathy for the Empire in its struggle with the Papacy. He took immense pains with his work, and to some degree anticipated the modern scientific method of writing history. The Annales were first published in 1554, but many important passages were omitted in this edition, as they reflected on the Roman Catholics. A more complete edition was published at Basel in 1580 by Nicholas Cisner. Aventinus, who has been called the “Bavarian Herodotus,” wrote other books of minor importance, and a complete edition of his works was published at Munich (1881–1886). More recently a new edition (six vols.) has appeared.
See T. Wiedemann, Johann Turmair gen. Aventinus (Freising, 1858); W. Dittmar, Aventin (Nördlingen, 1862); J. von Döllinger, Aventin und seine Zeit (Munich, 1877); S. Riezler, Zum Schutze der neuesten Edition von Aventins Annalen (Munich, 1886); F. X. von Wegele, Aventin (Bamberg, 1890).
