Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Lancaster, Joseph, 1778–1838, English educator. In 1801 he founded a free elementary school, using a type of monitorial system for which he acknowledged his debt to Andrew Bell. The Royal Lancasteri...

(Encyclopedia) Schaff, Philip shäf [key], 1819–93, biblical scholar and church historian in America, b. Switzerland. He went to the United States in 1844 to teach in the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Churc...

(Encyclopedia) Hamann, Johann Georg yōˈhän gāˈôrk häˈmən [key], 1730–88, German Protestant theologian, b. Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). Although opposed to the rationalism of Kant and the German Enlighte...

(Encyclopedia) Northumberland, John Dudley, duke of, 1502?–1553, English statesman. The son of Edmund Dudley, minister of Henry VII, John was restored to his inheritance in 1512 after his father's attainder and ex...

(Encyclopedia) prejudice, unsubstantiated prejudgment of an individual or group, favorable or unfavorable in character, tending to action in a consonant direction. The hostility that prejudice can engender and the d...

(Encyclopedia) Sanhedrin sănhĕdˈrĭn [key], ancient Jewish legal and religious institution in Jerusalem that appears to have exercised the functions of a court between c.63 b.c. and c.a.d. 68. The accounts of it ...

(Encyclopedia) Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3d earl of, 1671–1713, English philosopher. The philosopher John Locke, adviser to the 1st earl, his grandfather, was in charge of Shaftesbury's education, which ...

(Encyclopedia) mask, cover or partial cover for the face or head used as a disguise or protection. Masks have been worn from time immemorial throughout the world. They are used by primitive peoples chiefly to impers...

(Encyclopedia) Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de märēˈ də räbütăNˈ-shäNtälˈ märkēzˈ də sāvēnyāˈ [key], 1626–96, French woman of letters. Her correspondence of more than 1,500 lett...

(Encyclopedia) Wise, Isaac Mayer, 1819–1900, American rabbi, founder of organized Reform Judaism in the United States, b. Bohemia, studied at the Univ. of Vienna. He settled in the United States in 1846. Wise was ...