lepra morali (Paris, 1473, fol. ; 1489, 4to ; 1514, 8vo) :— Contra perfdos Judxos (Essling, 1475, fol.) : — Consula- torium timoratce conscientice (Paris, 1478, 4to ; Rome, 1604, 8vo) : — .4 U7-ei sermones toiius anni (Spire, 1479, fol.) : — .4 Iphabetum divini amoris (Alost, 1487, 8vo; Paris, 1515, 1526, 4to); this work was sometimes attributed erroneously to Gerson: — Sermones (Strasb. 1489, fol.) : — Dispositorium moriendi (no date nor name of place, 4to) : — De modo betie vivendi (Paris, 1494, l6mo) : — De reformatione religiosorum (ibid. 1512, 12mo) ; — De con- tractibus mercatorum (ibid. 1514, 8vo) : — Formicarium. seu Dialogus ad vitam Christianam exemplo condifionum formicee incitativus (Strasb. 1517, 4to; Paris, 1519, 4to; Douai. 1602, 8vo, etc.) : the author confesses that all he says on sorcerers and magic in the Formicarium he had learned from a judge at Berne and from a Bene- dictine monk. Lenfant considers Nider as the author of De visionibus et revelationibus (Strasb. 1517). See Bzovius, Annales eccles.; Echard et Quetif, Bibl. Scrip- tor, ord. Prcedicat. i, 792 ; Touron, Hisi. des hommes ill. de Vordre de St. Dominique; Dupin, Bibl. des auteurs eccles. X F" siecle ; Lenfant, Hist, du concile de Constance, lib. V ; Quicherat, Proc'es de Jeanne d'A re, iv, 502 ; Wes- senberg, Gesch. der Kirchenversammlungen, ii, 100, 507 ; Neander, Ch. Hist, v, 381. (J. N. P.)
Widhogg is a name for the huge mundane snake of the ancient Scandinavian cosmogony. It is repre- sented as gnawing at the root of the ash Ygdrasill, or the mundane tree. In its ethical import, as Mr. Gross alleges, Nidhogg, composed of nid, which is synonymous with the German neid, or envy, and hoygr, to hew, or gnaw, signifying the envious gnaicer, involves the idea of all moral evil, typified as the destroyer of the root of life. See Thorpe, Northern Mijthol. vol. i ; Keyser, Re- ligion of the No7-thmen.
Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, one of the most acute critics of modern times, noted for his valuable contributions to philology and history, and for his schol- arly criticisms of classical institutions, was born at Co- penhagen Aug. 27, 1776, and was the son of Karsten Niebuhr (see the next article). When two years old Barthold's parents removed to the little Holstein town of Meldorf, and there he spent his youthful days. The quiet of the countrj' afforded him grand opportunities for study; besides, he enjoyed favorable association with the most eminent scholars of the land, who were wont to frequent the house of Karsten Niebuhr. The aptitude for learning which Barthold Georg Niebuhr displayed almost from infancy led him to be regarded as a juvenile prodigy; but, unlike many other precocious children, his powers of acquiring knowledge kept pace with his advancing years, and, after a carefully con- ducted preliminary education, under the superintend- ence of his father, he was sent to the University of Kiel, and two j'ears later to that of Gottingen, to study law. Thence he proceeded in his nineteenth year to Edin- burgh, where he devoted himself more especially to the natural sciences. On his return to Denmark he held several appointments under the Danish government, but his strongly pronoiuiced hatred of Napoleon led him to enter the Prussian civil service in 1806. In 1810 he exchanged his public situation for the post of histori- ographer to the king, and about the same time was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Shortly afterwards he was made a lecturer in the then newly opened university at Berlin, In this jiosition his treatment of Roman history, by making known tlie results of the new and critical theorj' which he had ap- plied to the elucidation of obscure historical evidence, established his jiosition as one of the most original and philosophical of modem historians. He was now the acknowledged master of more than twenty languages, and in the possession of a mass of facts by the aid of a remarkably retentive memory; and these ad- vantages augmented again by an unusual intuitive sa- gacity, it was generaUy conceded, fitted him well for
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the task of the true historian, that is, the sifting of the real from the false historic evidence. But, not satisfied with these remarkable qualifications, he embraced his earliest opportunity to visit liome, and as Prussian am- bassador at the papal court, from 1816 till 1823, seized the occasion for testing on the spot the accuracy of his conjectures in regard to many questions of local and social bearing. On his return from Rome, Niebuhr took up his residence at Bonn as adjunct professor, and by his admirable lectures and expositions contributed very materially to the development of classical and archieological learning at that German high school. He availed himself of every means for promoting and encouraging the labors of other scholars. It was partly with this view that he set on foot the Rheinische Mu- seum, a philological repository, in which the shorter es- says and scattered thoughts of learned men might be given to the world. The first volume of this appeared in 1827, under the joint editorship of Bockh, Niebuhr, and Brandis, three of the greatest lights in the field of philological science. At the same time he undertook, and that mainly for diversion (he was now busy with his life-work, the History of Rome), a new edition of the Byzantine historians. He was thus employed when the Kevolution of 1830 roused him from the calm of his literary pursuits. Niebuhr's sensitive nature, unstrung by i)hysical debility, led him to take an exaggerated view of the consequences of this movement, and to anticipate a recurrence of all the horrors of the former French Rev- olution, and the result was to bring about a state of men- tal depression and bodily prostration which ended in his death, Jan. 2, 1831. Among the many important works with which Niebuhr enriched the literature of his time, the following are some of the most noteworthy : Romische Gtschichte (Berl. 1811-1832, 3 vols.; 2d ed. 1827-1842; 1833, 1853); the first two volumes have been trans- lated by J. C. Hare and C. Thirlwall, and the third by Dr. W. Smith and Dr. L. Schmitz : — Grundzwje fur die Verfassung Niederlands (Berl. 1832) : — Grieck. Heroen- geschichte (Hamb. 1842), written for his son Marcus: — the Kleine historische und philologische Schriflen (Bonn, 1828-1843, 2 vols.) contain his introductory lectures on Roman history, and many of the essays which had appeared in the " Transactions of the Berlin Academy." Besides these, and numerous other essays on philolog- ical, historical, and archreological questions, Niebuhr co- operated with Bekker and other learned annotators in re-editing Scripfores Imtoriai ByzantincB ; he also dis- covered liitherto unprinted fragments of classical au- thors, as, for instance, of Cicero's Orations and portions of Gains, published the Inscripttiones Nuhienses (Rome, 1821), and was a constant contributor to the Rheinische Museum fiir Philologie, and other literary journals and societies of Germany.