EADIE, JOHN (1810-1876), Scottish theologian and biblical critic, was born at Alva, in Stirlingshire, on the 9th of May 1810. Having taken the arts curriculum at Glasgow University, he studied for the ministry at the Divinity Hall of the Secession Church, a dissenting body which, on its union a few years later with the Relief Church, adopted the title United Presbyterian. In 1835 he became minister of the Cambridge Street Secession church in Glasgow, and for many years he was generally regarded as the leading representative of his denomination in Glasgow. As a preacher, though he was not eloquent, he was distinguished by good sense, earnestness and breadth of sympathy. In 1863 he removed with a portion of his congregation to a new church at Lansdowne Crescent. In 1843 Eadie was appointed professor of biblical literature and hermeneutics in the Divinity Hall of the United Presbyterian body. He held this appointment along with his ministerial charge till the close of his life. Though not a profound scholar, he was surpassed by few biblical commentators of his day in range of learning, and in soundness of judgment. In the professor’s chair, as in the pulpit, his strength lay in the tact with which he selected the soundest results of biblical criticism, whether his own or that of others, and presented them in a clear and connected form, with a constant view to their practical bearing. He received the degree of LL.D. from Glasgow in 1844, and that of D.D. from St Andrews in 1850.
His publications were connected with biblical criticism and interpretation, some of them being for popular use and others more strictly scientific. To the former class belong the Biblical Cyclopaedia, his edition of Cruden’s Concordance, his Early Oriental History, and his discourses on the Divine Love and on Paul the Preacher; to the latter his commentaries on the Greek text of St Paul’s epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians and Galatians, published at intervals in four volumes. His last work was the History of the English Bible (2 vols., 1876). He rendered good service as one of the revisers of the authorized version. He died at Glasgow on the 3rd of June 1876. His valuable library was bought and presented to the United Presbyterian College.
EADMER, or Edmer (c. 1060-c. 1124), English historian and ecclesiastic, was probably, as his name suggests, of English, and not of Norman parentage. He became a monk in the Benedictine monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, where he made the acquaintance of Anselm, at that time visiting England as abbot of Bec. The intimacy was renewed when Anselm became archbishop of Canterbury in 1093; thenceforward Eadmer was not only his disciple and follower, but his friend and director, being formally appointed to this position by Pope Urban II. In 1120 he was nominated to the archbishopric of St Andrews, but as the Scots would not recognize the authority of the see of Canterbury he was never consecrated, and soon afterwards he resigned his claim to the archbishopric. His death is generally assigned to the year 1124.
Eadmer left a large number of writings, the most important of which is his Historiae novorum, a work which deals mainly with the history of England between 1066 and 1122. Although concerned principally with ecclesiastical affairs scholars agree in regarding the Historiae as one of the ablest and most valuable writings of its kind. It was first edited by John Selden in 1623 and, with Eadmer’s Vita Anselmi, has been edited by Martin Rule for the “Rolls Series” (London, 1884). The Vita Anselmi, first printed at Antwerp in 1551, is probably the best life of the saint. Less noteworthy are Eadmer’s lives of St Dunstan, St Bregwin, archbishop of Canterbury, and St Oswald, archbishop of York; these are all printed in Henry Wharton’s Anglia Sacra, part ii. (1691), where a list of Eadmer’s writings will be found. The manuscripts of most of Eadmer’s works are preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
See M. Rule, On Eadmer’s Elaboration of the first four Books of “Historiae novorum” (1886); and Père Ragey, Eadmer (Paris, 1892).
EADS, JAMES BUCHANAN (1820-1887), American engineer, was born at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, on the 23rd of May 1820. His first engineering work of any importance was in raising sunken steamers. In 1845 he established glass works in St Louis. During the Civil War he constructed ironclad steamers and mortar boats for the Federal government. His next important engineering achievement was the construction of the great steel arch bridge across the Mississippi at St Louis (see [Bridge], fig. 29), upon which he was engaged from 1867 till 1874. The work, however, upon which his reputation principally rests was his deepening and fixing the channel at the mouths of the Mississippi by means of jetties, whereby the narrowed stream was made to scour out its own channel and carry the sediment out to sea. Shortly before his death he projected a scheme for a ship railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in lieu of an isthmian canal. He died at Nassau, in the Bahamas, on the 8th of March 1887.
EAGLE (Fr. aigle, from the Lat. aquila), the name generally given to the larger diurnal birds of prey which are not vultures; but the limits of the subfamily Aquilinae have been very variously assigned by different writers on systematic ornithology, and there are eagles smaller than certain buzzards. By some authorities the Laemmergeier of the Alps, and other high mountains of Europe, North Africa and Asia, is accounted an eagle, but by others the genus Gypaetus is placed with the Vulturidae as its common English name (bearded vulture) shows. There are also other forms, such as the South American Harpyia and its allies, which though generally called eagles have been ranked as buzzards. In the absence of any truly scientific definition of the family Aquilinae it is best to leave these and many other more or less questionable members of the group—such as the genera Spizaetus, Circaetus, Spilornis, Helotarsus, and so forth—and to treat here of those whose position cannot be gainsaid.