HEREFORD. 813 HEREST. 1804; new ed., London. 1882) ; Fisher, Uereford Vuihcdrul (London, 1898). HEREFORDSHIRE. An inland county in the wust of Kngliuul. bounded on the west by South Wales, and on tlic east by the counties of Worcester and CUoucpster (ilap: England, D 4). The surface of the county is hilly, with occasional valleys. Among the chief hillrangea are the lilack Jlounlains on the western, and the Malvern Hills on the eastern border. The Wyo and its affluents, with the I.ngg. the Arrow, and the Teme, are the principal rivers. Herefordshire is essentially an agricultural county, with four- fifths of its area of 840 square miles under culti-. vation. Population, in 1801, 115.040; in 1001, 114,400. Capital, Hereford. Herefordshire formed a portion of the territory of the ancient Silures, and was conquered by the Romans about a.d. To. During the iieptarchy it was included in Mercia. From its position on the Welsh border — a portion of the county being included in the deliatable land called the "Marelies" — Herefordshire was long the scene of frequent contests. HEREMANS, her'e-nians, Jacob Frans Jan (1825-84). A Dutch philologist, horn at Ant- werp. He studied at the Antwerp Athenaeum, and in 1843 was appointed assistant librarian of the city. In 1804 he was appointed professor of the Dutch language and literature at the Uni- versity of Ghent. He was a specialist also in Flemish literature, and wrote biographies of the Flemisli poets Ledeganck (1847) and van Rijs- wijck I 1850) , and of the historian David ( 1868) , His other books include: Sederland.ichc dichter- halle (1S58-C4); nnffiiiaiin ron Fdllcrslehrii en de Xedcrlandsche lellerkundc (1874) ; Oi-ec den ini-loed ran Noord-Nederland op de lettcrkunde in de zmdcUjke provincien qedurende het tijdperk 1815-30 (1874), all on literary topics; and Neder- landsche spraaklcer (1846); Nederlandsche me- triek (1S62); and his Dutch-French dictionary (1865-60). He founded the Ned^rlandsch Mu- seum in 1874. HEREROLAND, hS-ra'ro-lant, or Damaka- LAND. A northern part of German Southwest Africa (q.v.), inhabited by the Herero or Ova- herero tribe, HERESY (OF. heresie. Fr. her^sie, from Lat. hwresis, school of thought, from Gk, a'ipecrtt, hai- resis, choice, from alpetn, liairrin, to take). The name given to religious opinion declared by eccle- siastical authority to he erroneous and contrary to the accepted standards of the Church. In the Septuagint the word is used of the various .Jew- ish parties — Pharisees. Sadducees, and Es.senes — and similarly in the ."^cts of the .postles. Paul employs it to denote the- party divisions into which the Corinthian Christians have fallen, and he rebukes them because they destroy the unity of Christ's tlock. Once only in the New Testament (IL Peter ii. 1) has the word its later meaning of tcronf/ belief. For some time the boundary line between right and wrong doctrine, orthodoxy and heresy, was not perfectly clear, but « dis- tinction was soon rendered possible by the growth of ancient Catholic Christianity. Before the close of the second century the bishops had begun to test doctrinal soimdness by the Rule of Faith (q.v.) and the Canon of Scripture as standards, the interpretation of which was held to rest with themselves. Thus judged, the Gnostics (q.v.) are heretics to Irenoeus (180) and TcrtuUian (C.200). iiegiimiug with Nica>a (325) the oecumenical councils gave united expression to the doctrinal liclicf of ("hristcndoni, so that the determination of what constituted heresy became much easier than before. With the adoption of Christianity as the State religion under Constantine, the civil CJovernment was led to take cognizance of heresy, on the ground that it imperiled the public wel- fare. The first Imperial edicts to be mentioned in this connection arc those of Constantine against the Donatists (q.v.), in 316. Under succeeding emperors similar decrees become fre- quent, and increasingly severe. Especially im- portant are the edicts of Theodosius the Great, who in 381 set abovit enforcing orthodoxy throughout his whole empire. Saint .ugustine lent his support to a policy of coercion, and sought to rest it up(m the a"uthority of Christ, wlio said: "Compel them to come in" (Luke xiv. 23). The first Cliristian to sutler death for his belief, at the hands of fellow Christians, was the Spaniard Priscillian (ii.v.), who was charL'cd with holding doctrines akin to those of Manicnae- ism (q.v.). Priscillian was executed at Treves, in 385, by order of the usurjiing Emperor Maximus. In the sixth century .Justinian, the great codifier of* Roman law, collected the Imperial edicts against heresy in the first book of his celebrated Codex. The spirit which had already taken pos- session of the Christian Church is well illustrated by the saying of Pope Gelasius 1. (402-406) : "Toleration of heretics is more injurious than the worst devastation of the provinces by the bar- barians." Anti-heretical laws were more full^' developed from the eleventh century onward, when the va- rious sects of the Cathari (q.v.) began to infest Southern Europe. It was in connection with the Albigensian Crusade (see Albigense.s) , in the thirteenth century, that the Dominican courts of inquisition were established. (See Inqi'isition.) During this period the close alliance between Empire and Papacy made it possible for each to aid the other in detecting and punishing offend- ers. The penalties for heresy included loss of civil rights, banishment, and confiscation of property. In addition, the Church could inflict punishments of her own, .such as excommunica- tion. A clergyman, if convicted, could be de- posed and degraded from oOice. Like treason, heresy was construed as a capital offense. But it was an established Catholic axiom that "the Church does not thirst for blood." .Vccording to media-val usage, therefore, a heretic, declared guilty by the ecclesiastical courts, was handed over to 'the secular arm' for execution. The earliest recorded instance of the legal use of burning, as a form of inflicting the death penaltv, occurs in Lomhardy in 1224. This soon became the favorite method of executing obstinate of- fenders. The English law. de hceretico com- hiirendo, was enacted in 1401, in which year the first burning in England took place. 'The last execution by this means in England was in 1612. According to the canon law, 'format heresy' (hwresist formnli.<i externa) exists, in the case of a baptized Christian, when he consciously adopts and persistently maintains an opinion known to be contrary to the doctrinal standards of the Church. What is called 'material heresy' consists in falling into heretical opinion through
