646 L I Vienna (1815) it formed one of the nineteen provinces of the king dom of the Netherlands, and by that of London (1831) the eastern portion was ceded to Holland, becoming a Dutch province, the remainder constituting the present province of Belgium. LIMBURG, or LIMBOURG, one of the eleven provinces of Holland, is bounded on the W. by Belgium (Limburg) and North Brabant, on the N. by North Brabant and Guelderland, on the E. by Rhenish Prussia, and on the S. by Belgium (Liege), and has an area of 851 square miles, with a population in 1876 of 235,135 (97 per cent, being Roman Catholics). The surface, which is flat, is partly covered with heaths and fens ; of the latter the most considerable is the " peel " or marsh in the north, which extends into North Brabant. The province is traversed by the Maas, of which the chief affluents here are the Geule, the Geleen, and the Roer, all on the right ; means of water communication are also supplied by the Zuid Willem s canal and its branches. The agricultural products are similar to those of Belgian Limburg ; bee-keeping is also engaged in. Coal occurs within the province, and there is a mine at Kerkrade. The arrondissements are two in number, Maestricht and Roermonde, Maestricht being the capital. For the history of the province see the preceding article. LIMBURG, a town in the circle of Unterlahn and district of Wiesbaden, Prussia, is situated 3GO feet above the sea-level, on the Lahn, here crossed by a bridge dating from 1315, and on the Nassau Railway midway between Coblentz and Wetzlar. A local branch line connects it with Hadamar, It is the seat of a Catholic bishop, and has one evangelical and four Catholic churches. The only prominent architectural feature is the small seven-towered semi-Byzantine cathedral, picturesquely situated on a rocky site overhanging the river ; it was founded by Conrad Kurzbold, count of Niederlahngau, in 905, and finally consecrated in 1235 (restored 1872-78). Limburg has a seminary for the education of priests, and a variety of schools ; the industries, which are unimportant, include manufactures of cloth, tobacco, machinery, pottery, and leather. The population in 1875 was 51 Gl. Limburg, which was a flourishing town during the Middle Ages, passed in 1404 into the possession of the archbishops of Treves after the extinction of its own line of counts, and in 1803 fell to the duke of Nassau. It was the scene of a victory of the archduke Charles of Austria over the French under Jourdain on September 16, 1796. It possesses an interesting MS. fragment of its chronicles, the Fasti JLimpurgenses. The original writer is supposed to have been the recorder Tilliuann (ob. 1400), additions being made by subsequent copyists; the document, which has been more than once printed, is valuable especially for the ancient rhymes it embodies, and for its notices of old German poets. LIMBUS. The Limbus Infantum or Puerorum in mediaeval theology is the " margin " or " border " (limbus) of hell to which human beings dying without actual sin, but with their original sin unwashed away by baptism, were held to be consigned ; the category included, not unbaptized infants merely, but also idiots, cretins, and the like. The word " limbus," in the theological application, occurs first in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas ; for its extensive currency it is perhaps most indebted to the Commedia of Dante (Inf., c. 4). The question as to the destiny of infants dying unbaptized presented itself to theologians at a comparatively early period, and received very various answers. Generally speaking it may be said that the Greek fathers inclined to a cheerful and the Latin to a gloomy view. Thus Gregory of Nazianzus (Oral. 40) says " that such children as die unbaptized without their own fault shall neither be glorified nor punished by the righteous Judge, as having done no wickedness, though they die unbaptized, and as rather suffering loss than being the authors of it." Similar opinions have been expressed by Gregory of Nyssa, Severus of Antioch, and others, -L I M opinions which it is almost impossible to distinguish from the Pelagian view that children dying unbaptized might be admitted to eternal life, though not to the kingdom of God. In his recoil from Pelagian heresy, Augustine was compelled to sharpen the antithesis between the state of the saved and that of the lost, and taught that there are only two alternatives, to be with Christ or with the devil, to be with Him or against Him. Following up, as he thought, his master s teaching, Fulgentius declared that it is to be believed as an indubitable truth that, " not only men who have come to the use of reason, but infants dying, whether in their mother s womb or after birth, without baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are punished with everlasting punishment in eternal fire." Later theologians and schoolmen followed Augustine in rejecting the notion of any final position intermediate between heaven and hell, but otherwise inclined with practical unanimity to take the mildest possible view of the destiny of the irresponsible and unbaptized. Thus the proposition of Innocent III. that " the punishment of original sin is deprivation of the vision of God " is practically homologated by Thomas, Scotus, and all the other great theologians of the scholastic period, the only outstanding exception being that of Gregory of Rimini, who on this account was afterwards called " tortor in- fantum." The first authoritative declaration of the Latin Church upon this subject was that made by the second council of Lyons (1274), and confirmed by the council of Florence (1439), with the concurrence of the representa tives of the Greek Church, to the effect that " the souls of those who die in mortal sin or in original sin only forthwith descend into hell, but to be punished with unequal punish ments." Perrone remarks (Prael. ThcoL, pt. iii. chap. G, art. 4) that the damnation of infants and also the compara tive lightness of the punishment involved in this are thus de fide ; but nothing is determined as to the place which they occupy in hell, as to what constitutes the disparity of their punishment, or as to their condition after the day of judgment. In the council of Trent there was considerable difference of opinion as to what was implied in deprivation of the vision of God, and no definition was attempted, the Dominicans maintaining the severer view that the " limbus infantum " was a dark subterranean fireless chamber, while the Franciscans placed it in a lightsome locality above the earth. Some theologians continue to maintain with Bellarmine that the infants " in limbo " are affected with some degree of sadness on account of a felt privation ; others, following Sfrondati, hold that they enjoy every kind of natural felicity, as regards their souls now, and as regards their bodies after the resurrection, just as if Adam had not sinned. In the condemnation (1794) of the synod of Pistoia (1786), the twenty-sixth article declares it to be false, rash, and injurious to treat as Pelagian the doctrine that those dying in original sin are not punished with fire, as if that meant that there is an intermediate place, free from fault and punishment, between the kingdom of God and everlasting damnation. The Limbus Patrum, Limbus Inferni, or Sinus Abrahse is defined in Roman Catholic theology as the place in the underworld where the saints of the Old Testament were confined until liberated by Christ on his "descent into hell." Regarding the locality, and its pleasantness or painfulness, nothing has been taught as defide, and opinions have been various. It is sometimes regarded as having been closed and empty since Christ s descent, but other authors do not think of it as separate in place from the limbus infantum. The whole idea, in the Latin Church, has been justly described as the mere caput mortuum of the old catholic doctrine of hades, which was gradually super seded in the West by that of purgatory.
