Hug’s earliest publication was the first instalment of his Einleitung; in it he argued with much acuteness against J. G. Eichhorn in favour of the “borrowing hypothesis” of the origin of the synoptical gospels, maintaining the priority of Matthew, the present Greek text having been the original. His subsequent works were dissertations on the origin of alphabetical writing (Die Erfindung der Buchstabenschrift, 1801), on the antiquity of the Codex Vaticanus (1810), and on ancient mythology (Über den Mythos der alten Völker, 1812); a new interpretation of the Song of Solomon (Das hohe Lied in einer noch unversuchten Deutung, 1813), to the effect that the lover represents King Hezekiah, while by his beloved is intended the remnant left in Israel after the deportation of the ten tribes; and treatises on the indissoluble character of the matrimonial bond (De conjugii christiani vinculo indissolubili commentatio exegetica, 1816) and on the Alexandrian version of the Pentateuch (1818). His Einleitung in die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, undoubtedly his most important work, was completed in 1808 (fourth German edition, 1847; English translations by D. G. Wait, London, 1827, and by Fosdick, New York, 1836; French partial translation by J. E. Cellerier, Geneva, 1823). It is specially valuable in the portion relating to the history of the text (which up to the middle of the 3rd century he holds to have been current only in a common edition (κοινὴ ἔκδοσις), of which recensions were afterwards made by Hesychius, an Egyptian bishop, by Lucian of Antioch, and by Origen) and in its discussion of the ancient versions. The author’s intelligence and acuteness are more completely hampered by doctrinal presuppositions when he comes to treat questions relating to the history of the individual books of the New Testament canon. From 1839 to his death Hug was a regular and important contributor to the Freiburger Zeitschrift für kathol. Theologie.
See A. Maier, Gedächtnisrede auf J. L. Hug (1847); K. Werner, Geschichte der kath. Theol. in Deutschland, 527-533 (1866).
HUGGINS, SIR WILLIAM (1824-1910), English astronomer, was born in London on the 7th of February 1824, and was educated first at the City of London School and then under various private teachers. Having determined to apply himself to the study of astronomy, he built in 1856 a private observatory at Tulse Hill, in the south of London. At first he occupied himself with ordinary routine work, but being far from satisfied with the scope which this afforded, he seized eagerly upon the opportunity for novel research, offered by Kirchhoff’s discoveries in spectrum analysis. The chemical constitution of the stars was the problem to which he turned his attention, and his first results, obtained in conjunction with Professor W. A. Miller, were presented to the Royal Society In 1863, in a preliminary note on the “Lines of some of the fixed stars.” His experiments, in the same year, on the photographic registration of stellar spectra, marked an innovation of a momentous character. But the wet collodion process was then the only one available, and its inconveniences were such as to preclude its extensive employment; the real triumphs of photographic astronomy began in 1875 with Huggins’s adoption and adaptation of the gelatine dry plate. This enabled the observer to make exposures of any desired length, and, through the cumulative action of light on extremely sensitive surfaces, to obtain permanent accurate pictures of celestial objects so faint as to be completely invisible to the eye, even when aided by the most powerful telescopes. In the last quarter of the 19th century spectroscopy and photography together worked a revolution in observational astronomy, and in both branches Huggins acted as pioneer. Many results of great importance are associated with his name. Thus in 1864 the spectroscope yielded him evidence that planetary and irregular nebulae consist of luminous gas—a conclusion tending to support the nebular hypothesis of the origin of stars and planets by condensation from glowing masses of fluid material. On the 18th of May 1866 he made the first spectroscopic examination of a temporary star (Nova Coronae), and found it to be enveloped in blazing hydrogen. In 1868 he proved incandescent carbon-vapours to be the main source of cometary light; and on the 23rd of April in the same year applied Doppler’s principle to the detection and measurement of stellar velocities in the line of sight. Data of this kind, which are by other means inaccessible to the astronomer, are obviously indispensable to any adequate conception of the stellar system as a whole or in its parts. In solar physics Huggins suggested a spectroscopic method for viewing the red prominences in daylight; and his experiments went far towards settling a much-disputed question regarding the solar distribution of calcium. In the general solar spectrum this element is represented by a large number of lines, but in the spectrum of the prominences and chromosphere one pair only can be detected. This circumstance appeared so anomalous that some astronomers doubted whether the surviving lines were really due to calcium; but Sir William and Lady Huggins (née Margaret Lindsay Murray, who, after their marriage in 1875, actively assisted her husband) successfully demonstrated in the laboratory that calcium vapour, if at a sufficiently low pressure, gives under the influence of the electric discharge precisely these lines and no others. The striking discovery was, in 1903, made by the same investigators that the spontaneous luminosity of radium gives a spectrum of a kind never before obtained without the aid of powerful excitation, electrical or thermal. It consists, that is to say, in a range of bright lines, the agreement of which with the negative pole bands of nitrogen, together with details of interest connected with its mode of production, was ascertained by a continuance of the research. Sir William Huggins, who was made K.C.B. in 1897, received the Order of Merit in 1902, and was awarded many honours, academic and other. He presided over the meeting of the British Association in 1891, and during the five years 1900-1905 acted as president of the Royal Society, from which he at different times received a Royal, a Copley and a Rumford medal. Four of his presidential addresses were republished in 1906, in an illustrated volume entitled The Royal Society. A list of his scientific papers is contained in chapter ii. of the magnificent Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra, published in 1899, by Sir William and Lady Huggins conjointly, for which they were adjudged the Actonian prize of the Royal Institution. Sir William Huggins died on the 12th of May 1910.
See ch. i. of Atlas of Stellar Spectra, containing a history of the Tulse Hill observatory; Sir W. Huggins’s personal retrospect in the Nineteenth Century for June 1897; “Scientific Worthies,” with photogravure portrait (Nature); Astronomers of To-Day, by Hector Macpherson, junr. (1905) (portrait); Month. Notices Roy. Astr. Society, xxvii. 146 (C. Pritchard).
(A. M. C.)
HUGH, ST. St Hugh of Avalon (c. 1140-1200), bishop of Lincoln, who must be distinguished from Hugh of Wells, and also from St Hugh of Lincoln (see below), was born of a noble family at Avalon in Burgundy. At the age of eight he entered along with his widowed father the neighbouring priory of canons regular at Villard-Benoît, where he was ordained deacon at nineteen. Appointed not long after prior of a dependent cell, Hugh was attracted from that position by the holy reputation of the monks of the Grande Chartreuse, whose house he finally entered despite an oath to the contrary which he had given his superior. There he remained about ten years, receiving priest’s orders, and rising to the important office of procurator, which brought him into contact with the outer world. The wide reputation for energy and tact which Hugh speedily attained penetrated to the ears of Henry II. of England, and induced that monarch to request the procurator’s assistance in establishing at Witham in Somersetshire the first English Carthusian monastery. Hugh reluctantly consented to go to England, where in a short time he succeeded in overcoming every obstacle, and in erecting and organizing the convent, of which he was appointed first prior. He speedily became prime favourite with Henry, who in 1186 procured his election to the see of Lincoln. He took little part in political matters, maintaining as one of his chief principles that a churchman should hold no secular office. A sturdy upholder of what he believed to be right, he let neither royal nor ecclesiastical influence interfere with his conduct, but fearlessly resisted whatever seemed to him an infringement of the rights of his church or diocese. But with all his bluff firmness Hugh had a calm judgment and a ready tact, which almost invariably left him a better friend than before of those whom he opposed; and the astute Henry, the impetuous Richard, and the cunning John, so different in other points, agreed in respecting the bishop of Lincoln. Hugh’s manners were a little rigid and harsh; but, though an ascetic to himself, he was distinguished by a broad kindliness to others, so that even the Jews of Lincoln wept at his funeral. He had great skill in taming birds, and for some years had a pet swan, which occupies a prominent place in all histories and representations of the saint. In 1200 Bishop Hugh revisited his native country and his first convents, and on the return journey was seized with an illness, of which he died at London on the 16th of November 1200. He was canonized by Honorius III. on the 17th of February 1220. His feast day is kept on the 17th of November in the Roman Church.
The chief life of St Hugh, the Magna vita S. Hugonis, probably written by Adam, afterwards abbot of Eynsham, the bishop’s chaplain, was edited by J. F. Dimock in Rer. Britan. med. aevi script. No. xxxvii, (London, 1864). MSS. of this are in the Bodleian Library (Digby, 165 of the 13th century) and in Paris (Bib. Nat. 5575, Fonds Latin); the Paris MS. fortunately makes good the portions lacking in the Oxford one. Mr Dimock also edited a Metrical Life of St Hugh of Avalon (London, 1860), from two MSS. in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library. The best modern source for information as to St Hugh and his time is the Vie de St Hugues, évêque de Lincoln (1140-1200) par un religieux de la Grande Chartreuse (Montreuil, 1890), Eng. trans. edited by H. Thurston, S.J., with valuable appendices and notes (London, 1898). A complete bibliography is given in U. Chevalier, Bio-bibliographie (Paris, 1905, 2206-2207); see also A. Potthast, Bibliotheca med. aev., 1380.
Hugh of Wells, one of King John’s officials and councillors, became bishop of Lincoln in 1209. He soon fell into disfavour with John, and the earlier years of his bishopric were mainly spent abroad, while the king seized the revenues of his see. However, he was one of John’s supporters when Magna Carta was signed, and after the accession of Henry III. he was able to turn his attention to his episcopal duties. His chief work was the establishment of vicarages in his diocese, thus rendering the parish priest more independent of the monastic houses; this policy, and consequently Hugh himself, was heartily disliked by Matthew Paris and other monastic writers. The bishop, who did some building at Lincoln and also at Wells, died on the 7th of February 1235.