History.—Graz may possibly have been a Roman site, but the first mention of it under its present name is in a document of A.D. 881, after which it became the residence of the rulers of the surrounding district, known later as Styria. Its privileges were confirmed by King Rudolph I. in 1281. Surrounded with walls and fosses in 1435, it was able in 1481 to defend itself against the Hungarians under Matthias Corvinus, and in 1529 and 1532 the Turks attacked it with as little success. As early as 1530 the Lutheran doctrine was preached in Graz by Seifried and Jacob von Eggenberg, and in 1540 Eggenberg founded the Paradies or Lutheran school, in which Kepler afterwards taught. But the archduke Charles burned 20,000 Protestant books in the square of the present lunatic asylum, and succeeded by his oppressive measures in bringing the city again under the authority of Rome. From the earlier part of the 15th century Graz was the residence of one branch of the family of Habsburg, a branch which succeeded to the imperial throne in 1619 in the person of Ferdinand II. New fortifications were constructed in the end of the 16th century by Franz von Poppendorf, and in 1644 the town afforded an asylum to the family of Ferdinand III. The French were in possession of the place in 1797 and again in 1805; and in 1809 Marshal Macdonald having, in accordance with the terms of the peace of Vienna, entered the citadel which he had vainly besieged, blew it all up with the exception of the bell-tower and the citizens’ or clock tower. It benefited greatly during the 19th century from the care of the archduke John and received extended civic privileges in 1860.
See Ilwof and Peters, Graz, Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt (Graz, 1875); G. Fels, Graz und seine Umgebung (Graz, 1898); L. Mayer, Die Stadt der Grazien (Graz, 1897), and Hofrichter, Rückblicke in die Vergangenheit von Graz (Graz, 1885).
GRAZZINI, ANTONIO FRANCESCO (1503-1583), Italian author, was born at Florence on the 22nd of March 1503, of good family both by his father’s and mother’s side. Of his youth and education all record appears to be lost, but he probably began early to practise as an apothecary. In 1540 he was one of the founders of the Academy of the Humid (degli Umidi) afterwards called “della Fiorentina,” and later took a prominent part in the establishment of the more famous Accademia della Crusca. In both societies he was known as Il Lasca or Leuciscus, and this pseudonym is still frequently substituted for his proper name. His temper was what the French happily call a difficult one, and his life was consequently enlivened or disturbed by various literary quarrels. His Humid brethren went so far as to expel him for a time from the society—the chief ground of offence being apparently his ruthless criticism of the “Arameans,” a party of the academicians who maintained that the Florentine or Tuscan tongue was derived from the Hebrew, the Chaldee, or some other branch of the Semitic. He was readmitted in 1566, when his friend Salviati was “consul” of the academy. His death took place on the 18th of February 1583. Il Lasca ranks as one of the great masters of Tuscan prose. His style is copious and flexible; abundantly idiomatic, but without any affectation of being so, it carries with it the force and freshness of popular speech, while it lacks not at the same time a flavour of academic culture. His principal works are Le Cene (1756), a collection of stories in the manner of Boccaccio, and a number of prose comedies, La Gelosia (1568), La Spiritata (1561), I Parentadi, La Arenga, La Sibilla, La Pinzochera, L’ Arzigogolo. The stories, though of no special merit as far as the plots are concerned, are told with verve and interest. A number of miscellaneous poems, a few letters and Four Orations to the Cross complete the list of Grazzini’s extant works.
He also edited the works of Berni, and collected Tutti i trionfi, larri, mascherate, e canti carnascialaschi, andati per Firenze dal tempo del magnifico Lorenzo de’ Medici fino all’ anno 1559. In 1868 Adamo Rossi published in his Ricerche per le biblioteche di Perugia three “novelle” by Grazzini, from a MS. of the 16th century in the “Comunale” of Perugia: and in 1870 a small collection of those poems which have been left unpublished by previous editors appeared at Poggibonsi, Alcune Poesie inedite. See Pietro Fanfani’s “Vita del Lasca,” prefixed to his edition of the Opere di A. Grazzini (Florence, 1857).
GREAT AWAKENING, the name given to a remarkable religious revival centring in New England in 1740-1743, but covering all the American colonies in 1740-1750. The word “awakening” in this sense was frequently (and possibly first) used by Jonathan Edwards at the time of the Northampton revival of 1734-1735, which spread through the Connecticut Valley and prepared the way for the work in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut (1740-1741) of George Whitefield, who had previously been preaching in the South, especially at Savannah, Georgia. He, his immediate follower, Gilbert Tennent (1703-1764), other clergymen, such as James Davenport, and many untrained laymen who took up the work, agreed in the emotional and dramatic character of their preaching, in rousing their hearers to a high pitch of excitement, often amounting to frenzy, in the undue stress they put upon “bodily effects” (the physical manifestations of an abnormal psychic state) as proofs of conversion, and in their unrestrained attacks upon the many clergymen who did not join them and whom they called “dead men,” unconverted, unregenerate and careless of the spiritual condition of their parishes. Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Colman (1675-1747), and Joseph Bellamy, recognized the viciousness of so extreme a position. Edwards personally reprimanded Whitefield for presuming to say of any one that he was unconverted, and in his Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion devoted much space to “showing what things are to be corrected, or avoided, in promoting this work.” Edwards’ famous sermon at Enfield in 1741 so affected his audience that they cried and groaned aloud, and he found it necessary to bid them be still that he might go on; but Davenport and many itinerants provoked and invited shouting and even writhing, and other physical manifestations. At its May session in 1742 the General Court of Massachusetts forbade itinerant preaching save with full consent from the resident pastor; in May 1743 the annual ministerial convention, by a small plurality, declared against “several errors in doctrine and disorders in practice which have of late obtained in various parts of the land,” against lay preachers and disorderly revival meetings; in the same year Charles Chauncy, who disapproved of the revival, published Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England; and in 1744-1745 Whitefield, upon his second tour in New England, found that the faculties of Harvard and Yale had officially “testified” and “declared” against him and that most pulpits were closed to him. Some separatist churches were formed as a result of the Awakening; these either died out or became Baptist congregations. To the reaction against the gross methods of the revival has been ascribed the religious apathy of New England during the last years of the 18th century; but the martial and political excitement, beginning with King George’s War (i.e. the American part of the War of the Austrian Succession) and running through the American War of Independence and the founding of the American government, must be reckoned at the least as contributing causes.
See Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening (Boston, 1842); Samuel P. Hayes, “An Historical Study of the Edwardean Revivals,” in The American Journal of Psychology, vol. 13 (Worcester, Mass., 1902); and Frederick M. Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals (New York, 1905), especially chapter viii. pp. 94-131.
(R. We.)