Jansenius was the Calvin of the Romish church, but he failed to engraft upon it the doctrines of grace.—B. H. C.
JANSON. See Jenson.
JANSSENS: the name of several Dutch painters of eminence.—Abraham Janssens was born at Antwerp in 1569, and died in 1631. He was the scholar of Hans Snellinck, was a contemporary and rival of Rubens, and a good colourist; he was fond of powerful contrasts, and occasionally painted torch-lights. Many altar-pieces by Janssens are still preserved at Antwerp, Mechlin, and other towns in Belgium.—Cornelius Janssens was born at Amsterdam in 1590; in 1618 he came to this country and resided here many years. He was an excellent portrait-painter, and executed several good portraits of James I. and his family, and was also much employed by the English nobility; but his position being somewhat interfered with by the arrival of Vandyck in England, he left in 1648, and returned to his own country, where he died in Amsterdam in 1665. The portraits of Janssens have not the grace and freedom of Vandyck's; but they are more highly finished, and are in other respects little inferior to those of the great Flemish painter. They still retain their original lustre, and his black draperies have a particularly rich effect. He generally painted on panels.—Victor Honorius Janssens was born at Brussels in 1664, and was the son of a tailor. Victor was patronized by the duke of Holstein, who sent him to Rome. Here he imitated Albano; but after his return to his own country he painted on the usual large scale of the period. His works are still common at Brussels, where he died in 1739.—(Descamps; Walpole; Catalogue du Musée d'Anvers.)—R. N. W.
JANSSENS, Jan Wilhem, a Dutch general, born on 12th October, 1762; died on 1st June, 1835. He entered the army early, but in 1795 was compelled to retire in consequence of wounds. At a later period he again took service, and was made commissary general. In 1802 he was appointed to command the troops at the Cape of Good Hope, and was governor of the colony. The hostile intentions of Great Britain caused the removal of most of his troops to Batavia, and in 1806 General Baird landed at the Cape with ten thousand men. Janssens had no force to oppose the invaders, but was allowed an honourable capitulation and conveyed to Holland, where the king made him councillor of state and war secretary. When Holland was annexed to France he was sent by Napoleon to Batavia, where he was taken prisoner by the British and sent to England. Released on parole he returned to Holland, and was for some time employed in the Dutch war department.—P. E. D.
JANUARIUS (Saint), bishop and martyr, is said to have been born at Naples. The legends tell us that he was bishop of Beneventum, where he was seized during the persecution of Diocletian and carried to Nola. After being variously tortured at Nola, he was taken to Pozzuoli and cast into prison, from which he was brought out to the lions, which would not hurt him; he was therefore beheaded. His body was carried to Beneventum, but removed to Naples by Alexander VI. in 1497. Since that time many miracles have been ascribed to the relics. Baronius fixes the death of Januarius in 305.—B. H. C.
JANVIER, Antide, a celebrated clockmaker, was born at St. Claude in the department of the Jura on the 1st of July, 1751, and died in Paris on the 23rd of September, 1835. He showed wonderful ingenuity and skill in devising and making pieces of clockwork to show the movements of the heavenly bodies, such as equation clocks, showing apparent solar time; lunar and planetary clocks; clocks to show the rotation of the earth, the movement of the tides, &c. He was the author of some writings on such machines, and in particular of a work entitled "Recueil des Machines composées et executées par M. Janvier," Paris, 1827. Having spent the profits of his business in improving his art, he died in poverty.—W. J. M. R.
JANVIER, René-Ambroise, a learned French benedictine, born in 1613 or 1614. He published a Latin version of Rabbi Kimchi on the Psalms in 1666; and an edition of Petrus Cellensis, with a preface by Mabillon. He died in 1682.—B. H. C.
JAQUELOT, Isaac, born at Vassy in 1647; died at Berlin in 1708. He was the son of Abraham Jaquelot, a protestant minister and author, whose colleague he became at the age of twenty-one. He was a popular preacher, but was driven from France at the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and spent the remainder of his life in Holland, Switzerland, and Germany. Frederick I. chose him for his chaplain in 1702. He embraced Arminian principles, which brought him into frequent trouble. His published works are numerous, and consist of sermons, letters, dissertations, polemical treatises, &c.—B. H. C.
JAQUOTOT, Marie Victoire, a celebrated French painter on porcelain, was born at Paris in 1778. Mme. Jaquotot received at the exposition of 1808 a gold medal, being the first awarded for painting on porcelain. Her skill attracting the notice of the authorities, she was engaged as a principal painter at the manufactory of Sèvres, and in that capacity painted the magnificent dessert service presented by Napoleon I. to Alexander of Russia after the peace of Tilsit. From 1808 to 1827 the paintings of Mme. Jaquotot were always among the attractions of the annual expositions. A large proportion of them were reduced copies from the more famous pictures of the great masters; but many were from original designs, and others from state portraits of royal personages, with some from the life. Mme. Jaquotot was appointed in 1817 cabinet painter to Louis XVIII., and in 1828 principal painter on porcelain to Charles X., which post she retained under Louis Philippe. She died at Florence in 1855.—J. T—e.
JARCHI, Solomon Ben, one of the most celebrated of the rabbinical commentators, was born at Troyes, in Champagne, in the year 1040. A much later date, 1108, has been assigned by many writers, both Jewish and Christian, who have spoken of him as a contemporary of Maimonides, and as having met and conversed with him in Egypt, but the date here given is best supported, and is now generally received. His father's name was Isaac, after whom he was usually styled by the old Jewish writers, Rabbenu Schelomo Izaaki, or by combining the initials of these three words, Raschi, the name by which he is most commonly known. It has been usual for his biographers to narrate that, after studying at home with great diligence and success, he set out upon his travels in search of knowledge, and spent several years in visiting Italy, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Persia, and other countries, where he conversed with all the most learned rabbis of his nation, and took notes of their opinions on all the most difficult questions of scripture interpretation, and Jewish tradition and law; but modern critics, both Jewish and Christian, have concurred in rejecting these accounts as entirely fabulous; and little more of his life is known with certainty, than that he taught publicly as a rabbi in France, and for a short time also in Germany, and that he married and had three daughters, by whom he had a numerous posterity, including many men of learning and distinction. He died in France in 1105, at the age of sixty-five years. His writings were very numerous, and were partly elucidations of the Talmud, and partly commentaries upon the Old Testament. As a talmudist, he acquired great weight and authority among the Jews, from whom he received the honourable title of "Father of the Talmud;" but his fame as an author, among both Jews and Christians, rests chiefly upon his merits as a commentator on the sacred books. Writing considerably earlier than Aben Ezra, and Joseph and David Kimchi, he is the oldest of the Jewish interpreters subsequent to the temporary revival of learning which took place in the eleventh century; and by general consent he is not only the oldest but the best. His commentaries, especially that on the Pentateuch, have been always held in the highest esteem, and were long in constant use both in the synagogue and in the christian church. Many super-commentaries, as Zunz terms them, were made upon them by Jewish scholars; and he computes that between 1531 and 1775, no fewer than thirteen editions of portions of the commentaries were published in the original language, and of Latin translations of them an equal number. Buxtorf the Elder made large use of them in his Biblia Rabbinica. Pellicanus made a translation of the whole; and as late as 1710-14, Breithaupt published at Gotha a new Latin version of the whole, with valuable notes. Rosenmüller also makes frequent use of his elucidations in particular passages. His chief characteristic is his decided preference for the literal and grammatical sense of the ancient scriptures, upon which he habitually lays the main stress of his exegesis, though not to the exclusion of those mystical or allegorical meanings, which tradition has handed down. There is a German translation of the Commentary on the Pentateuch, by Haymann, 1833, with a preface by Dr. Augusti.—P. L.
JARDINE, George, A.M., professor of logic in the university of Glasgow, was the son of a farmer in the upper ward of Lanarkshire, and was born in 1742. He entered the university
