Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/1129

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
JOH
1071
JOH

JOHN of Ragusa, a prelate distinguished for his learning and ability, flourished in the fifteenth century. In his early youth he became a preaching friar; and also devoting himself to assiduous study, he acquired considerable knowledge of the oriental languages. He was admitted to the degree of doctor of the Sorbonne on a visit to Paris; and in 1426 Martin V. sent him to the council of Basle, over which he presided in 1431. Two years later he led the argument against the Hussites; and he was subsequently employed in the long and fruitless negotiations undertaken with a view to reconcile the Eastern and Western churches. The precise year of his death is unknown, but it is supposed to have been after 1443.—W. J. P.

JOHN of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, an ethical writer of mediæval distinction, was born probably about 1120, at the city from which he derives his designation, or rather at its predecessor and neighbour, Old Sarum. According to the interesting account of his early life given in the second book of the Metalogicus, he repaired in 1136 when quite a youth to Paris, and attended the lectures of Abelard and of Abelard's successor. Studying any branch of learning of which there was a professor, he was compelled by poverty to become the instructor of young noblemen, and at last he opened a school of his own, which was not successful. He sought a shelter in the abbey of Moûtier-la-Belle in the diocese of Troyes. where he became clerc or chaplain to the abbot, with letters of recommendation from whom to Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, he returned after three years to England. He was appointed secretary to the archbishop, gained the confidence of his high employer, and became acquainted with Thomas à Becket, then chancellor. Becket presented him to the king, who employed him in many important missions abroad and at home. It was John of Salisbury who brought from Rome the bull of Pope Adrian, authorizing Henry to conquer Ireland. When Becket became archbishop of Canterbury, John of Salisbury remained as his secretary; was called his "eye and arm," and preceded the archbishop in his flight into France. With the reconciliation of Becket to the king, he accompanied his patron back to England, and supported the archbishop so stoutly in all the latter's final proceedings, that he narrowly escaped being assassinated along with him. It was, it is said, in consequence of his zealous support of Becket that he was appointed bishop of Chartres, dying there after a four years' enjoyment of the dignity, on the 25th of October, 1180. As an author, John of Salisbury is notable for his great erudition and general correctness of style. His chief object in the composition of his works seems to have been to expose the corruptions of the age, and to exhibit the corrective and humanizing influences of the scholastic philosophy, which he studied with ardour. His best known work, the "Polycraticus de nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum," appears to have been completed about 1156. It is full of severe criticism on the vices of the age and of princes, and imbued with the spirit of the peripatetic philosophy. His "Entheticus," the composition of a few years later and in verse, is a very curious work, attacking the vices of contemporaries who, however, are concealed under feigned names. In his prose "Metalogicus," he vindicates philosophical studies from the sneers of the vulgar, and it is said to contain valuable materials for the history of scholastic philosophy during the twelfth century, and interesting sketches of the leaders of the different sects of philosophy by a contemporary who had lived and studied in their society. His letters are of considerable importance for the English history of the time during which he was secretary to two archbishops of Canterbury. Mr. Thomas Wright has devoted an interesting chapter of his Biographica Britannica Literaria (Anglo-Norman period) to John of Salisbury, whose works were first published in a collective form and in four volumes, Oxford, 1848, by Dr. J. A. Giles, as part of the series of Patres Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ.—F. E.

JOHN of Yepez, better known as St. John of Santa Cruz, was born at Ontiveros in Old Castile in 1542. His family was noble; but he is chiefly remembered for his active co-operation with Santa Theresa in the reformation of the Carmelite order. A new branch of that order, instituted by them at Valladolid, was known as the "barefooted Carmelites;" and various new monastic establishments were founded, into which, as also into many of the old ones, the "barefooted friars" were introduced. The reforms that these men and their enthusiastic leaders sought to carry out, excited so much dissension and animosity, that in 1580, to end the dispute, Gregory XIII. thought it prudent to separate the new branch from the old order. John died in 1591.—W. J. P.

JOHN, Friederich, German engraver, was born at Marienburg in 1770. He served for a time in a mercantile establishment in Warsaw, but abandoned commerce for art, and eventually attained great success as an engraver. His best prints were engraved in Vienna, where he resided till 1832, when he retired to Marburg in Styria. The date of his death is not told. His best plates are the "Death of Abel," and a portrait of Joseph II., after Füger; St. Catherine, after C. Dolce; and St. John, after Raphael. He also engraved illustrations to the works of Klopstock and Wieland, and many other book-plates.—J. T—e.

JOHNES, Thomas, an estimable country gentleman and bibliomaniac, was born in 1749. Educated at Eton, he entered parliament while yet young as member for Radnor, and subsequently represented Cardiganshire. As a politician he was a supporter of Mr. Fox. In 1800 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in the following year published a translation of St. Palaye's Life of Froissart. He then began the more important task of translating Froissart's Chronicle, and printed the work when completed, in 4 vols. 4to, 1803-5, at a private press he had set up at Hafod, his beautiful seat in Wales. Several subsequent editions of this translation have been published. Mr. Johnes also translated and printed in 1807 the Travels of Bertrandon de la Brocquière, Memoirs of John Lord de Joinville, 2 vols. 4to, and in 1809 Monstrelet's Chronicles, 5 vols. 4to, of which several editions have appeared. In 1807 he sustained a great loss, his fine mansion, with many of its precious literary contents, being destroyed by fire. He rebuilt the house and formed his library anew. His affections were not, however, wholly centred in Alduses and other black-letter books. He was a zealous agricultural improver, and rendered much service to the wild district in which he lived by making roads, erecting bridges, planting trees, introducing Scotch farming, and promoting many other useful schemes. His projects, indeed, were so numerous, as to exceed his power of accomplishment. Not the least useful among his publications was a tract entitled "A Cardiganshire Landlord's Advice to his Tenants." He died on the 23rd of April, 1816, at Dawlish in Devonshire. An account of Mr. Johnes, and of his seat at Hafod, by Sir J. E. Smith, was published in 1810 in a handsome folio volume.—(See Dibdin's Bibl. Decameron, iii. 356.)—R. H.

JOHNSON, Charles, a dramatist, was born in 1679. Having been bred to the law he was admitted a member of the Middle temple, but found more pleasure in the society of the wits at Will's and Button's coffee-houses, than in the practice of his profession. By the friendship of Wilks the actor, he was enabled to get his first play, "The Gentleman Cully," put upon the stage in 1702. Encouraged by success, he wrote various dramatic pieces, a list of which, nineteen in all, will be found in the Biographia Dramatica, i. 402. His comedies are superior to his tragedies, and exhibit a talent for natural and sprightly dialogue. Having affronted Pope by some lines in the prologue to "The Sultaness," that poet gibbeted Johnson in the Dunciad, and even condescended in a foot-note to sneer at the playwright's obesity. After his marriage Johnson set up a tavern in Bow Street, but on the death of his wife he retired into private life. He died March 11, 1748.—R. H.

JOHNSON, James, a distinguished physician, born at Ballinderry in Ireland in 1777. After completing his medical studies at the schools in London he entered the royal navy. In 1809 he was attached as surgeon to the unfortunate Walcheren expedition; in 1812 was appointed physician to the fleet in the North Seas; in 1814 was nominated to the post of surgeon-in-ordinary to the duke of Clarence, and upon the accession of his royal highness to the throne, was made surgeon-extraordinary to his majesty. Dr. Johnson for many years enjoyed a large share of practice in London, where he was much esteemed. He was especially consulted by invalids whose health had suffered from a residence in hot climates. He published a number of medical works; amongst which we may particularly mention his celebrated practical treatise on "The Influence of Tropical Climates on European Constitutions." This work has undergone five or six editions, and is still much consulted, and regarded as one of the best that has ever appeared upon the subject. His "Essay upon Indigestion, or morbid sensibility of the stomach and bowels," has gone also through many editions, and still holds