GALILAEANS, a fanatical sect, followers of one Judas of Galilee, who fiercely resented the taxation of the Romans, and whose violence contributed to induce the latter to vow the extermination of the whole race.

GALILEE, the northern division of Palestine, divided into Upper, hilly, Lower, level, about 60 m. long and 30 broad.

GALILEE, SEA OF, an expansion of the Jordan, 121/2 m. long, and at the most 8 m. broad, enclosed by steep mountains, except on NW.

GALILEO, an illustrious Italian mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, born at Pisa, demonstrated the isochronism of the pendulum, invented the thermometer and the hydrostatic balance, propounded the law of falling bodies, constructed the first astronomical telescope, and by means of it satisfied himself of, and proved, the truth of the Copernican doctrine, that the sun and not the earth is the centre of the planetary system, and that the earth revolves round it like the other planets which reflect its light; his insistence on this truth provoked the hostility of the Church, and an ecclesiastical decree which pronounced the Copernican theory heresy; for the profession of it he was brought to the bar of the Inquisition, where he was compelled to forswear it by oath, concluding his recantation, it is said, with the exclamation, “still, it moves”; before his end he became blind, and died in Florence at 78, the year Newton was born (1564-1642).

GALITZIN, the name of a Russian family distinguished for their ability and success in both war and peace from the 16th century onwards.

GALL, FRANZ JOSEPH, the founder of phrenology, born at Tiefenbronn, on the borders of Baden and Wuertemberg; in 1785 he established himself as a physician in Vienna, where for many years he carried on a series of elaborate investigations on the nature of the brain and its relation to the outer cranium, visiting with that view lunatic asylums, &c.; in 1796 he gave publicity to his views in a series of lectures in Vienna, which were, however, condemned as subversive of morality and religion; being joined by Spurzheim, who adopted his theories, he undertook a lecturing tour through a large part of Europe, and eventually settled at Paris, where he published his phrenological work “Fonctions du Cerveau”; it is a curious fact that on his death his skull was found to be twice the usual thickness, and that there was a tumour in the cerebellum (1758-1828).

GALL, ST., an Irish monk who, about 585, accompanied St. Columban to France in his missionary labours, banished from which he went to Switzerland, and founded a monastery on the Lake of Constance, which bore his name; d. about 646.

GALLAND, ANTOINE, French Orientalist, born in Picardy, professor of Arabic in the College of France; was the first to translate the “Arabian Nights” into any European tongue (1646-1715).

GALLAS, an Ethiopian race occupying the S. and E. of Abyssinia, energetic, intelligent, and warlike; follow mostly pastoral occupations; number over four millions, and are mostly heathens.