LAACHER SEE, a lake of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine Province, 5 m. W. of Brohl on the Rhine, and N. of the village of Niedermendig. It occupies what is supposed to be a crater of the Eifel volcanic formation, and the pumice stone and basalt found in great quantities around it lend credence to this theory. It lies 850 ft. above the sea, is 5 m. in circumference and 160 ft. deep, and is surrounded by an amphitheatre of high hills. The water is sky blue in colour, very cold and bitter to the taste. The lake has no natural outlet and consequently is subjected to a considerable rise and fall. On the western side lies the Benedictine abbey of St Maria Laach (Abballa Lacensis) founded in 1093 by Henry II., count palatine of the Rhine. The abbey church, dating from the 12th century, was restored in 1838. The history of the monastery down to modern times appears to have been uneventful. In 1802 it was abolished and at the close of the Napoleonic wars it became a Prussian state demesne. In 1863 it passed into the hands of the Jesuits, who, down to their expulsion in 1873, published here a periodical, which still appears, entitled Stimmen aus Maria Laach. In 1892 the monastery was again occupied by the Benedictines.
LAAGER, a South African Dutch word (Dutch leger, Ger. lager, connected with Eng. “lair”) for a temporary defensive encampment, formed by a circle of wagons. The English word is “leaguer,” an armed camp, especially that of a besieging or “beleaguering” army. The Ger. lager, in the sense of “store,” is familiar as the name of a light beer (see [Brewing]).
LAAS, ERNST (1837-1885), German philosopher, was born on the 16th of June 1837 at Fürstenwalde. He studied theology and philosophy under Trendelenburg at Berlin, and eventually became professor of philosophy in the new university of Strassburg. In Kant’s Analogien der Erfahrung (1876) he keenly criticized Kant’s transcendentalism, and in his chief work Idealismus und Positivismus (3 vols., 1879-1884), he drew a clear contrast between Platonism, from which he derived transcendentalism, and positivism, of which he considered Protagoras the founder. Laas in reality was a disciple of Hume. Throughout his philosophy he endeavours to connect metaphysics with ethics and the theory of education.
His chief educational works were Der deutsche Aufsatz in den obern Gymnasialklassen (1868; 3rd ed., part i., 1898, part ii, 1894), and Der deutsche Unterricht auf höhern Lehranstalten (1872; 2nd ed. 1886). He contributed largely to the Vierteljahrsschr. f. wiss. Philos. (1880-1882); the Litterarischer Nachlass, a posthumous collection, was published at Vienna (1887). See Hanisch, Der Positivismus von Ernst Laas (1902); Gjurits, Die Erkenntnistheorie des Ernst Laas (1903); Falckenberg, Hist. of Mod. Philos. (Eng. trans., 1895).
LA BADIE, JEAN DE (1610-1674), French divine, founder of the school known as the Labadists, was born at Bourg, not far from Bordeaux, on the 13th of February 1610, being the son of Jean Charles de la Badie, governor of Guienne. He was sent to the Jesuit school at Bordeaux, and when fifteen entered the Jesuit college there. In 1626 he began to study philosophy and theology. He was led to hold somewhat extreme views about the efficacy of prayer and the direct influence of the Holy Spirit upon believers, and adopted Augustinian views about grace, free will and predestination, which brought him into collision with his order. He therefore separated from the Jesuits, and then became a preacher to the people, carrying on this work in Bordeaux, Paris and Amiens. At Amiens in 1640 he was appointed a canon and teacher of theology. The hostility of Cardinal Mazarin, however, forced him to retire to the Carmelite hermitage at Graville. A study of Calvin’s Institutes showed him that he had more in common with the Reformed than with the Roman Catholic Church, and after various adventures he joined the Reformed Church of France and became professor of theology at Montauban in 1650. His reasons for doing so he published in the same year in his Déclaration de Jean de la Badie. His accession to the ranks of the Protestants was deemed a great triumph; no such man since Calvin himself, it was said, had left the Roman Catholic Church. He was called to the pastorate of the church at Orange on the Rhone in 1657, and at once became noted for his severity of discipline. He set his face zealously against dancing, card-playing and worldly entertainments. The unsettled state of the country, recently annexed to France, compelled him to leave Orange, and in 1659 he became a pastor in Geneva. He then accepted a call to the French church in London, but after various wanderings settled at Middelburg, where he was pastor to the French-speaking congregation at a Walloon church. His peculiar opinions were by this time (1666) well known, and he and his congregation found themselves in conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities. The result was that la Badie and his followers established a separate church in a neighbouring town. In 1669 he moved to Amsterdam. He had enthusiastic disciples, Pierre Yvon (1646-1707) at Montauban, Pierre Dulignon (d. 1679), François Menuret (d. 1670), Theodor Untereyk (d. 1693), F. Spanheim (1632-1701), and, more important than any, Anna Maria v. Schürman (1607-1678), whose book Eucleria is perhaps the best exposition of the tenets of her master. At the head of his separatist congregation, la Badie developed his views for a reformation of the Reformed Churches: the church is a communion of holy people who have been born again from sin; baptism is the sign and seal of this regeneration, and is to be administered only to believers; the Holy Spirit guides the regenerate into all truth, and the church possesses throughout all time those gifts of prophecy which it had in the ancient days; the community at Jerusalem is the continual type of every Christian congregation, therefore there should be a community of goods, the disciples should live together, eat together, dance together; marriage is a holy ordinance between two believers, and the children of the regenerate are born without original sin, marriage with an unregenerate person is not binding. They did not observe the Sabbath, because—so they said—their life was a continual Sabbath. The life and separatism of the community brought them into frequent collision with their neighbours and with the magistrates, and in 1670 they accepted Society is in Miss Edith Sichel’s Women and Men of the French Renaissance (1901). See also J. Favre, Olivier de Magny (1885).
LABEL (a French word, now represented by lambeau, possibly a variant; it is of obscure origin and may be connected with a Teutonic word appearing in the English “lap,” a flap or fold), a slip, ticket, or card of paper, metal or other material, attached to an object, such as a parcel, bottle, &c., and containing a name, address, description or other information, for the purpose of identification. Originally the word meant a band or ribbon of linen or other material, and was thus applied to the fillets (infulae) attached to a bishop’s mitre. In heraldry the “label” is a mark of “cadency.”