mentioned in the Russian chronicles as early as 1147. From 1320 to 1530 it was under the rule of Lithuania; in the latter year it was taken by Russia, and became one of her chief strongholds against the raids of the Tatars. It is now an important centre for trade in grain, hemp, hemp-seed oil, tobacco and spirits.
MTSKHET, a decayed town of Russian Transcaucasia, in the government of Tiflis, 13 m. by rail N.N.W. of the city of Tiflis,
at the confluence of the Aragva with the Kura, at an altitude of
1515 ft. Pop. (1897), 1221. One of the oldest places in Georgia,
it was the capital of that country until supplanted by Tiflis
in the last year of the 5th century A.D. The most ancient seat of
the Georgian kings was the castle of Arma-tsikhe, Armasis, or
Harmozica, crowning a hill opposite to Mtskhet. The most
memorable relic of the latter is the cathedral, said to have been
originally founded in the 4th century, though the existing
building dates from the 15th century and was restored in the
18th. In the graveyard attached to this convent graves
have been opened which yielded objects of the Iron and Stone
ages, and others of the era of the Roman emperor Augustus.
MUBARRAD, or Mobarrad [Abū-l ‛Abbās Maḥommed ibn
Yazīd ul-Azdī] (c. 826–898), Arabian grammarian, was born in
Baṣra, and became the leader of the Baṣran grammarians against
the Kufan school. His judgment, however, was independent,
as is shown by his attack on some points in the grammar of Sibawaihi,
the greatest writer of his own school. He died at Bagdad.
His main work is the grammatical one known as the Kāmil (Perfect), which has been edited by W. Wright (Leipzig, 1864 seq.), and published at Constantinople (1869) and Cairo (1891). Two or three other works exist in MS.; cf. C. Brockelmann, Gesch. der arabischen Litteratur, i. 109 (Weimar, 1898). (G. W. T.)
MUCH WENLOCK, a market town in the municipal borough
of Wenlock (q.v.), and the Ludlow parliamentary division of
Shropshire, England, 163 m. N.W. from London on the Great
Western railway. It lies at the north end of Wenlock Edge, a
range running south-west from the Severn valley. A priory
was founded here as a nunnery by St Milburg, granddaughter of
Penda, about 680, and after being destroyed by the Danes was
refounded by Leofric in 1017. Afterwards it was remodelled by
Roger de Montgomery for Cluniac monks. There are beautiful
remains of the priory church, chiefly Early English; but there is a
chapter-house of ornate Norman work. The prior’s house, still
inhabited, is a remarkable specimen of 15th-century work, adjoining
and incorporating remains in earlier styles. The parish
church of Holy Trinity, close to the ruins, is of mixed styles from
Norman onwards. There is a picturesque half-timbered guildhall
(1589). Trade is mainly agricultural, but there are limestone
quarries in the neighbourhood. Wenlock received the grant of
a market from Henry III. in 1224. It was incorporated by
Edward IV. in 1448, when it also received the privilege of
returning members to parliament, but in 1885 it ceased to have separate representation.
MUCIANUS, LICINIUS, Roman general and statesman, lived
during the 1st century A.D. His name shows that he had passed
by adoption from the Mucian to the Licinian gens. About A.D. 55
he was sent by Claudius, who had become suspicious of his intimacy
with Messallina, to Armenia with Domitius Corbulo. Under
Nero he regained the imperial favour. After the death of Galba
(69), Mucianus and Vespasian (who was at the time in Judaea)
both swore allegiance to Otho, but when the civil war broke out
Mucianus persuaded Vespasian to take up arms against Vitellius,
who had seized the throne. It was agreed that Vespasian should
stay behind to settle affairs in the East, while Mucianus made his
way through Asia Minor and Thrace to attack Vitellius. He
reached Rome' the day after the death of Vitellius, and found
Domitian, Vespasian’s son, at the head of affairs, but until the
arrival of Vespasian the real master of Rome was Mucianus.
But he never wavered in his allegiance to Vespasian, whose
favour he retained in spite of his arrogance. As no mention is
made of Mucianus during the reigns of Titus or Domitian, he
probably died during the reign of Vespasian. He was a clever
writer and historian. He made a collection of the speeches and
letters of the Romans of the older republican period, probably
including a corpus of proceedings of the senate (Acta senatus),
and was the author of a work, chiefly dealing with the natural
history and geography of the East, which is often quoted by
Pliny as an authority, especially for fabulous statements.
See monograph by L. Brunn (Leipzig, 1870).
MUCIC ACID, C6H10O8 or HOOC⋅(CHOH)4·COOH, is obtained by the oxidation of milk, sugar, dulcite, galactose, quercite and
most varieties of gum by nitric acid. It forms a crystalline
powder which melts at 213° C. It is insoluble in alcohol, and
nearly insoluble in cold water. When heated with pyridine to
140° C., it is converted into allomucic acid. When digested with
fuming hydrochloric acid for some time it is converted into αα′
furfurane dicarboxylic acid (see Furfurane); while on heating
with barium sulphide it is transformed into α—thiophene carboxylic
acid (see Thiophene). The ammonium salt yields on
dry distillation carbon dioxide, ammonia, pyrrol and other
substances. The acid when fused with caustic alkalies yields
oxalic acid.
MUCILAGE (from Late Lat. mucilago, a mouldy juice, from
mucere, to be mouldy), a term which denotes a viscid or glutinous
mixture of water and any gummy vegetable substance (see Gum).
Mucilages are useful in medicine as vehicles for various insoluble
and other drugs, and in the arts as thickeners (in calico-printing,
dyeing, &c.). The British pharmacopoeia contains the mucilage’s
of acacia and tragacanth.
MUCKERS (Ger. Muckern, i.e. canting bigots, hypocrites), the nickname given to the followers of the teaching of Johann Heinrich Schönherr (1770–1826) and Johann Wilhelm Ebel (1784–1861). Schönherr, the son of a non-commissioned officer at Memel in Prussia, was educated at the university of Königsberg, where at that time the theological faculty, under the influence of Kantian idealism, was strongly rationalist in tendency. The lad, who was miserably poor, was dissatisfied with a philosophy which stopped short of an explanation of the “thing in itself,” and, having been reared in the strictest orthodoxy, he set to work to develop, with the aid of the Bible, a philosophy of his own. In the end he believed himself to have reached ultimate knowledge, and became the prophet of a dualistic theosophy[1] so closely analogous to Gnosticism that it might have been taken for a deliberate revival, had not Schönherr’s lack of education precluded any such idea. Among his converts was Ebel, who from 1810 onwards gained a great reputation in Königsberg as an earnest preacher of the orthodox doctrines of sin, grace and redemption, and in 1816 was appointed “archdeacon,” i.e. principal pastor, at the old church in Königsberg. In the pulpit he was orthodox; but he gathered about him a select circle of the initiated, to whom in private he taught Schönherr’s doctrines. Schönherr himself sank into the background, and eventually died in 1826. But Ebel continued his teaching, and was joined in 1827 by Heinrich Diestel, also a Lutheran pastor of Königsberg. They became father confessors to a wide circle of silly fashionable people in the Prussian capital. In view of their peculiar teaching as to “the purification of the flesh,” which involved the minute regulation of the intercourse of married people, scandal was
- ↑ Schönherr distinguished two primal powers or principles—one male and active, the other female and passive—having both personality and volition; he called them Light and Darkness, Fire and Water. They moved freely in the void, and from their ultimate contact God and the world sprang into being. Evil came into existence owing to the fall of Lucifer, a Light-being created by God, who in revenge lent his aid to the powers of Darkness. Sin came with the Fall of Man; and this infection, inherited with the blood, necessitated redemption in order to restore the harmony of the primal powers. This was the work of Christ, who descended into a world the inhabitants of which are divided into children of Light and children of Darkness. The power of the Holy Ghost, emanating from Christ, perfects the higher natures in whom Christ’s “law of righteousness” is represented and who to a certain extent share in his being; it becomes their duty to obtain control over the lower natures so as to struggle against the powers of Darkness in them—powers which can be overcome by prayer, fasting and self-mortification generally. The end was near and the triumph of the Light assured. Anti-christ (Napoleon) had already appeared, and when Christ came he would find no faith on the earth (Luke xviii. 8) because faith would be swallowed up in knowledge.
