NOMAD (Gr. νομάς, νομάδες, wandering), a wanderer. The word is particularly used of tribes who shift continually from place to place in search of pasture (Gr. νέμειν). The νομάδες of ancient Greek writers meant particularly the pastoral tribes of North Africa; hence the Latin name of the Numidians (see Numidia).
NOME, a mining town about 12 m. W. of Cape Nome, on the S.
shore of Seward Peninsula, Alaska, in 1900 the largest settlement
in the district. Pop. (1900) 12,448; (1910) 2600. Gulch gold was
found near Nome on Anvil Creek in September 1898, and diggings
in the ocean beach were first worked in July 1899. The rush to
Nome in 1900 was one of the most remarkable stampedes in
American mining history; the town soon had hotels, banks,
stores, several newspapers and weekly mails from the States,
and for part of the year there were, it was estimated, 20,000
inhabitants. This rapidity of growth and the isolation of the
settlement raised prices to extraordinary heights, and in other
respects created economic conditions remarkable even among
Alaskan mining camps. By 1903 the population had greatly
decreased, and in subsequent years the winter population
averaged about 3500, the summer population from 7000 to 8000.
In 1905 the gold output of the Nome region amounted to about
$2,500,000 nearly all from placers, though some quartz mining
was done. A municipal government and local police force were
early organized after the fashion of American mining communities,
and United States soldiers from the St Michael reservation aided
in the preservation of order. The greatest drawback to the
town’s prosperity is the lack of any good harbour nearer than
Point Clarence, 80 m. W. The winter ice-floes, sometimes 30 ft.
high on the beach, render harbour improvements at Nome
almost impossible. There is connexion with Seattle by steamer
(since 1904) in about 812 days. In 1901 the town was incorporated
under the laws of the United States. It is the north-western
terminus of the United States military telegraph. It was first
called Anvil City; the name “Nome” is derived from Cape
Nome, first so called on a chart dated 1849, and said to have been
a draughtsman’s mistake for the query “? Name” on the
original chart.
NOMENOË, or Nominoë (d. 851), duke of Brittany. The date of his birth is not known, and his origin is obscure; all that is
known is that he was of Breton race. In the hope of pacifying
Brittany, Louis the Debonair named him count of Vannes in
819 and governor or duke of Brittany in 826. Throughout the
reign of Louis, Nomenoë’s fidelity to the emperor never flagged;
he put down several attempted insurrections, and maintained
peace in Brittany for fifteen years. But in 841 he resolved to
make himself independent of Charles the Bald. In 843 Charles
made a vain attempt to subdue Brittany. In 844 Nomenoë
invaded Maine, and in 845 the emperor was completely defeated
at Ballon near Bain-de-Bretagne. In the following year Charles
recognized the independence of Brittany. Having resolved to
detach the duchy from the ecclesiastical province of Tours,
Nomenoé accused the Frankish bishops of Vannes, Quimper,
Dol and Léon of simony at the council of Coëtlouh in 848,
replaced them by Bretons, and erected Dol into a metropolitan
see. In 849 Nomenoë attacked the Frankish county of Anjou.
Charles retaliated by establishing a garrison at Rennes; but
Nomenoé seized Rennes, Nantes and, finally, the whole of Upper
Brittany, and ravaged Maine. In 851 he seized Anjou and
invaded Beauce; but he died suddenly, leaving as his successor
his son Erispoë.
See A. de la Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne, vol. ii. (1898); R. Merlet, “Guerres d’indépendance de la Bretagne,” in the Revue de Bretagne, de Vendée et d’Anjou (1891).
NOMENTANA, VIA, an ancient road of Italy, leading N.E.
from Rome to Nomentum (q.v.), a distance of 14 m. It originally
bore the name Via Ficulensis, from the old Latin village of
Ficulea, about 8 m. from Rome. It was subsequently prolonged
to Nomentum, but never became an important highroad, and
merged in the Via Salaria (see Salaria, Via) a few miles beyond
Nomentum. It is followed as far as Nomentum by the modern
highroad, but some traces of its pavement still exist.
See T. Ashby in Papers of Brit. School at Rome, iii. 38 sqq. (T. As.)
NOMENTUM (mod. Mentana), an ancient town of Italy, 14 m.
N.E. of Rome by the Via Nomentana. It was a Latin town,
but was by some considered to be Sabine, and, like Fidenae
and Ficulea, was excluded from the first region by Augustus,
who made the Anio its northern boundary. Nomentum received
the civitas sine suffragio after the last war of the Latins
against Rome (338 B.C.); in its municipal constitution the chief
magistrate even in imperial times bore the title of dictator.
Pliny and Martial often praise the fertility of its neighbourhood.
The site of the town is well protected by ravines except on the
east; no ancient remains exist in situ, but inscriptions and
other relics have been found.
See T. Ashby in Papers of the British School at Rome, iii. 68 sqq. (T. As.)
NOMINALISM (from Lat. nomen, name), the name of one
of the two main tendencies of medieval philosophy, the other
being Realism. The controversy between nominalists and
realists arose from a passage in Boéthius’ translation of Porphyry’s
Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle, which propounded the
problem of genera and species, (1) as to whether they subsist
in themselves or only in the mind; (2) whether, if subsistent,
they are corporeal or incorporeal; and (3) whether separated
from sensible things or placed in them. The Realists held that
universals alone have substantial reality, existing ante res;
the Nominalists that universals are mere names invented to
express the qualities of particular things and existing post res;
while the Conceptualists, mediating between the two extremes,
held that universals are concepts which exist in our minds and
express real similarities in things themselves. Though a strong
realist tendency is evident in the system of Erigena (9th century),
the controversy was not definitely started till the 11th century:
it lasted till the middle of the 12th, when the first period of
scholastic philosophy ends. Under an appearance of much vain
subtlety the controversy about universals involved issues of the
greatest speculative and practical importance: realism represented
a spiritual, nominalism an anti-spiritual, view of the world;
while realism was evidently favourable, and nominalism unfavourable,
to the teaching of the Church on the dogmas of the Trinity
and the Eucharist. Nominalism was a doctrine of sceptics and
suspected heretics, such as Berengar of Tours and Roscellinus.
Even Abelard’s mediating doctrine of conceptualism (q.v.) was
sufficiently near to obnoxious ideas to involve him in lifelong
persecution. The principles of the great orthodox philosophers
of the later scholastic period which begins in the 13th century,
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, were those of moderate
realism. When nominalism was revived in the 14th century
by the English Franciscan, William of Occam, it gave evidence
of a new tendency in thought, a distrust of abstractions and an
impulse towards direct observation and inductive research, a
tendency which had its fulfilment in the scientific movement
of the Renaissance. Occam’s dictum “Entia non multiplicanda
sunt praeter necessitatem” was inspired by a spirit similar to
that of Bacon. Though nominalism is properly a medieval
theory, the tendency has passed over into modern philosophy:
the term “nominalist” is often applied to thinkers of the
empirical, sensationalist school, of whom J. S. Mill may be
taken as the chief representative. (H. St.)
NONCONFORMIST, a term denoting historically (a) those persons who at the beginning of the 17th century refused to conform to certain practices, e.g. the wearing of the surplice, kneeling at the reception of the Sacrament, &c., of the Church of England; (b) those who, after the passing of the Act of Uniformity 1662, refused to conform to that act and ceased to be members of the church. In current usage the term “nonconformist” is applied in Great Britain to any member of a church not conforming to the ceremonies, worship and doctrines (“forms”) of the Church of England, but is generally used of a member of the so-called Free Churches, or Protestant Dissenters, and is not usually applied to Roman Catholics. The name can also be applied, in other countries, to those who do not belong to the established religion. Strictly a “dissenter” is one who dissents from the church as an “established” body, or who
