See Fritzsche, Handb. zu den Apok., 1851; Gifford, in Speaker’s Apoc. ii. 286-303; Marshall, in Hastings’ Dict. Bible, ii. 578-579.
(R. H. C.)
JERÉZ DE LA FRONTERA (formerly Xeres), a town of southern Spain, in the province of Cadiz, near the right bank of the river Guadalete, and on the Seville-Cadiz railway, about 7 m. from the Atlantic coast. Pop. (1900), 63,473. Jeréz is built in the midst of an undulating plain of great fertility. Its whitewashed houses, clean, broad streets, and squares planted with trees extend far beyond the limits formerly enclosed by the Moorish walls, almost entirely demolished. The principal buildings are the 15th-century church of San Miguel, the 17th-century collegiate church with its lofty bell-tower, the 16th-century town-hall, superseded, for official purposes, by a modern edifice, the bull-ring, and many hospitals, charitable institutions and schools, including academies of law, medicine and commerce. But the most characteristic features of Jeréz are the huge bodegas, or wine-lodges, for the manufacture and storage of sherry, and the vineyards, covering more than 150,000 acres, which surround it on all sides. The town is an important market for grain, fruit and livestock, but its staple trade is in wine. Sherry is also produced in other districts, but takes its name, formerly written in English as sherris or xeres, from Jeréz. The demand for sherry diminished very greatly during the last quarter of the 19th century, especially in England, which had been the chief consumer. In 1872 the sherry shipped from Cadiz to Great Britain alone was valued at £2,500,000; in 1902 the total export hardly amounted to one-fifth of this sum. The wine trade, however, still brings a considerable profit, and few towns of southern Spain display greater commercial activity than Jeréz. In the earlier part of the 18th century the neighbourhood suffered severely from yellow fever; but it was rendered comparatively healthy when in 1869 an aqueduct was opened to supply pure water. Strikes and revolutionary disturbances have frequently retarded business in more recent years.
Jeréz has been variously identified with the Roman Municipium Seriense; with Asido, perhaps the original of the Moorish Sherish; and with Hasta Regia, a name which may survive in the designation of La Mesa de Asta, a neighbouring hill. Jeréz was taken from the Moors by Ferdinand III. of Castile (1217-1252); but it was twice recaptured before Alphonso X. finally occupied it in 1264. Towards the close of the 14th century it received the title de la Frontera, i.e. “of the frontier,” common to several towns on the Moorish border.
JERÉZ DE LOS CABALLEROS, a town of south-western Spain, in the province of Badajoz, picturesquely situated on two heights overlooking the river Ardila, a tributary of the Guadiana, 12 m. E. of the Portuguese frontier. Pop. (1900), 10,271. The old town is surrounded by a Moorish wall with six gates; the newer portion is well and regularly built, and planted with numerous orange and other fruit trees. Owing to the lack of railway communication Jeréz is of little commercial importance; its staple trade is in agricultural produce, especially in ham and bacon from the large herds of swine which are reared in the surrounding oak forests. The town is said to have been founded by Alphonso IX. of Leon in 1229; in 1232 it was extended by his son St Ferdinand, who gave it to the knights templar. Hence the name Jeréz de los Caballeros, “Jeréz of the knights.”
JERICHO (יריחו, ירחו, once יריחה, a word of disputed meaning, whether “fragrant” or “moon [-god] city”), an important town in the Jordan valley some 5 m. N. of the Dead Sea. The references to it in the Pentateuch are confined to rough geographical indications of the latitude of the trans-Jordanic camp of the Israelites in Moab before their crossing of the river. This was the first Canaanite city to be attacked and reduced by the victorious Israelites. The story of its conquest is His Sundays were spent in the catacombs in discovering graves of the martyrs and deciphering inscriptions. Pope Liberius baptized him in 360; three years later the news of the death of the emperor Julian came to Rome, and Christians felt relieved from a great dread.
When his student days were over Jerome returned to Strido, but did not stay there long. His character was formed. He was a scholar, with a scholar’s tastes and cravings for knowledge, easily excited, bent on scholarly discoveries. From Strido he went to Aquileia, where he formed some friendships among the monks of the large monastery, notably with Rufinus, with whom he was destined to quarrel bitterly over the question of Origen’s orthodoxy and worth as a commentator; for Jerome was a man who always sacrificed a friend to an opinion, and when he changed sides in a controversy expected his acquaintances to follow him. From Aquileia he went to Gaul (366-370), visiting in turn the principal places in that country, from Narbonne and Toulouse in the south to Treves on the north-east frontier. He stayed some time at Treves studying and observing, and it was there that he first began to think seriously upon sacred things. From Treves he returned to Strido, and from Strido to Aquileia. He settled down to literary work in Aquileia (370-373) and composed there his first original tract, De muliere septies percussa, in the form of a letter to his friend Innocentius. Some dispute caused him to leave Aquileia suddenly; and with a few companions, Innocentius, Evagrius, and Heliodorus being among them, he started for a long tour in the East. The epistle to Rufinus (3rd in Vallarsi’s enumeration) tells us the route. They went through Thrace, visiting Athens, Bithynia, Galatia, Pontus, Cappadocia and Cilicia, to Antioch, Jerome observing and making notes as they went. He was interested in the theological disputes and schisms in Galatia, in the two languages spoken in Cilicia, &c. At Antioch the party remained some time. Innocentius died of a fever, and Jerome was dangerously ill. This illness induced a spiritual change, and he resolved to renounce whatever kept him back from God. His greatest temptation was the study of the literature of pagan Rome. In a dream Christ reproached him with caring more to be a Ciceronian than a Christian. He disliked the uncouth style of the Scriptures. “O Lord,” he prayed, “thou knowest that whenever I have and study secular MSS. I deny thee,” and he made a resolve henceforth to devote his scholarship to the Holy Scripture. “David was to be henceforth his Simonides, Pindar and Alcaeus, his Flaccus, Catullus and Severus.” Fortified by these resolves he betook himself to a hermit life in the wastes of Chalcis, S.E. from Antioch (373-379). Chalcis was the Thebaid of Syria. Great numbers of monks, each in solitary cell, spent lonely lives, scorched by the sun, ill-clad and scantily fed, pondering on portions of Scripture or copying MSS. to serve as objects of meditation. Jerome at once set himself to such scholarly work as the place afforded. He discovered and copied MSS., and began to study Hebrew. There also he wrote the life of St Paul of Thebes, probably an imaginary tale embodying the facts of the monkish life around him. Just then the Meletian schism, which arose over the relation of the orthodox to Arian bishops and to those baptized by Arians, distressed the church at Antioch (see [Meletius of Antioch]), and Jerome as usual eagerly joined the fray. Here as elsewhere he had but one rule to guide him in matters of doctrine and discipline—the practice of Rome and the West; for it is singular to see how Jerome, who is daringly original in points of scholarly criticism, was a ruthless partisan in all other matters; and, having discovered what was the Western practice, he set tongue and pen to work with his usual bitterness (Altercatio luciferiani et orthodoxi).