JERUSALEM (41), the capital of Palestine, holy city of the Jews, belonged originally to the Jebusites, but was captured by David and made his capital; a strong place, built on four hills 2000 ft. above the Mediterranean, enclosed within walls and protected nearly all round by deep valleys and rising grounds beyond; it has been so often besieged, overthrown, and rebuilt that the present city stands on rubbish heaps, the ruins of ancient structures.

JERUSALEM, KINGDOM OF, kingdom founded by Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099 and overthrown by Saladin in 1187.

JERUSALEM DELIVERED, an epic poem in 20 cantos by Tasso and published in 1575, the appearance of which constitutes one of the great epochs in the history of literature.

JERVIS, SIR JOHN, an English admiral, born in Staffordshire; entered the navy at 10, rose to be Rear-Admiral of the White in 1790; his great feat his defeat of the Spanish fleet of 27 ships with one of 15 ships off St. Vincent in 1797, in consequence of which he was raised to the peerage as Earl St. Vincent; was buried in St. Paul’s, London (1734-1823).

JESSICA, Shylock’s daughter, in the “Merchant of Venice”.

JESUITISM, popularly regarded as an attempt to achieve holy ends by unholy means, but really and radically the apotheosis of falsehood and unreality to the dethronement of faith in the true, the genuine and the real, a deliberate shutting of the eyes to the truth, a belief in a lie in the name of God, a belief in symbols and formulas as in themselves sacred, salutary, and divine, fiction superseding fact, and fancy faith in God or the divine reality of things, the embodiment of the genius of cant persuading itself to believe that that which is not is, while atheism, on the other hand, tries to persuade itself to believe that that which is is not.

JESUITS, or SOCIETY OF JESUS, the religious order founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534, and approved of by bull of Paul III. in 1540, for the conversion of heretics and the propagation of the Roman Catholic faith, and reputed, however self-denying at times, to be unscrupulous in the means they employ to achieve their ends, which is, broadly speaking, re-establishing over Christendom the tyranny of the Church; they established themselves in the several countries of Europe, but their policy was found dangerous to political liberty as well as religious, and they are now everywhere nearly stamped out; there are nevertheless still several communities of them in the south of Europe, and even colleges in England, Ireland, and the United States, as well as missions under them in heathen parts.

JESUS, THE SON OF SIRACH, the author of the book of
ECCLESIASTICUS (q. v.).