ROMANS 



ROMANTICISM 



779 



chap, xvi, which stands by itself, the epistle con- 

 sists of two portions, marked oft' respectively by 

 the doxology in xi. 36, and by the benediction in 

 xv. 33. The first portion, which is mainly doc- 

 trinal, again falls into two sections i.-viii. and 

 ix.-xi. in the former of which the Pauline doctrine 

 of justification by faith is explained. The need 

 for a justification through grace and received by 

 faith alone, if there is to be effectual justification 

 at all, is elaborately shown, and the doctrine is 

 vindicated, historically and experimentally, against 

 various conceivable objections, first from the re- 

 ligious, and then from the moral point of view. 

 In the second division of the first portion the dis- 

 paragement and neutralisation of the divinely 

 bestowed privileges of Judaism apparently involved 

 in the preaching of this doctrine without restriction 

 among the Gentiles are considered. The second, or 

 practical, part of the epistle deals with points of 

 Christian morality and problems of Christian toler- 

 ance. 



The epistle is addressed to the Christians in 

 Rome. Who these were whether they were Jews 

 or whether they were Gentiles and how they had 

 come to be Christians, can only be conjectured. 

 It is impossible to infer much about them or their 

 circumstances* from the epistle itself, for the church 

 in Rome was not one with which the apostle, at 

 the time of writing, was personally acquainted. 

 Most probably he aid not exactly know in what 

 numbers or proportions the Jewish-Christian and 

 Gentile-Christian elements existed within it ; but 

 he was warranted in assuming (as he seems to 

 have done) that it contained both, and that the 

 controversies with which he had become only too 

 familiar elsewhere might break out at any moment 

 in Rome also. The epistle gives no support to the 

 tradition that the church in Rome had been founded 

 personally by Peter ; but doubtless it had relations 

 with Jerusalem, and so may well be believed to 

 have owed something to his indirect influence at 

 jeast. The immediate object of the apostle Paul 

 in writing to the Romans when he did is easily 

 explained by the outward and inward circum- 

 stances through which, as we know, he was at 

 the time passing. Having completed his preach- 

 ing in the eastern part of the empire 'from Jeru- 

 salem to Illyricum (xv. 19), he was purposing to 

 extend his apostolic activity among the Gentiles 

 westward as far as to Spain ; and with a view to 

 his success in the new field it was only natural 

 that he should desire, so far as he could, to obviate 

 l>os~ilile misconceptions of his teaching, and to 

 prepare for it a friendly and sympathetic reception 

 in the metropolis of the world. 



The Pauline authorship of the epistle as a whole 

 has never been called in question ; indeed it is one 

 of the four canonical epistles which, along with 

 the Apocalypse, were regarded by Baur as the 

 only quite indubitable relics we possess of the 

 apostolic age. Baur, it is true ( following Marcion ), 

 rejected chaps, xv. and xvi., regarding them as 

 additions of the 2d century. His arguments, which 

 were based chieHy on what he conceived to be the 

 too conciliatory character of certain expressions 

 (such as xv. 8, 14, 15, 19), have not found general 

 acceptance, and their force is disallowed even by 

 ome of his own followers (Hilgenfeld, Schenkel, 

 I'tleiderer). At the same time there is some 

 evidence, both internal and external, which in- 

 dicates that these chapters are somewhat loosely 

 attached to the main body of the epistle ; in some 

 ani-ii-nt copies it closed with xiv. 23, immediately 

 followed by xvi. 25-27 (see Revised Version, margin). 

 A view widely accepted by scholars of various 

 schools is that they consist of a postscript, or post- 

 script*, or (the view of Lightfoot) that at some 

 period after the original composition and trans- 



mission of the epistle the apostle, in order to 

 adapt it for a wider circulation, re-issued it with 

 omission of the last two chapters, as also of the 

 word Rome at the beginning. Schultz in 1829, 

 following up a hint of Semler (1769), suggested 

 that xvi. 1-20 was really a fragment of a Pauline 

 epistle to the Ephesians, and this suggestion, with 

 various modifications, has been accepted by very 

 many critics, among whom may be mentioned 

 Reuss, Renan, and B. Weiss. 



See the introductions of Reuss (Cth ed. 1887), B. 

 \Veiss (2ded. 1889; Eng. trans.), and Holtzmann ( 2d ed. 

 1886 ; this account is the fullest ) ; and the commentaries 

 by Philippi, Jowett, Godet, Gifford (in Speaker's Com- 

 mentary), Moule (in Cnmlrridije BMc), Liddon (1893), 

 Lipsius, and Sanday and Headlam (1895). 



Romansch (Ger. Churwalsch, from the town 

 of Chur), a name applied to the Romance dialect, 

 or rather agglomeration of cognate dialects, spoken 

 from the Grisons to Friuli on the Adriatic. Ascoli 

 includes all varieties under the common name of 

 Ladino, although strictly that term applies to the 

 dialect of the Engadine, as Rumonsch does to that 

 of the upper Rhine valley. There are dictionaries 

 by Conradi (Zur. 1820) and Carisch (Chur, 1821). 

 See also J. Ulrich's Rhatoromanische Chrestomathie 

 (1882-83) and Rhcitoromunische Texte ( 1883-84). 



Romanticism (through the adjective roman- 

 tic, from romant or romaunt, 'romance;' see 

 ROMANCES), a movement in feeling and thought 

 that has transformed the literature and art of most 

 nations, has been defined by Mr Theodore Watts 

 as ' the renascence of the spirit of wonder in poetry 

 and art. ' It was a revolt against pseudo-classicism ; 

 a return from the monotonous commonplace of 

 everyday life to the quaint and unfamiliar world of 

 old romance ; a craving for the novel, original, and 

 adventurous ; an emphasising of the interesting, 

 the picturesque, the ' romantic,' at the expense, il 

 need be, of correctness and elegance, and tl:fs 

 current canons of 'good taste.' Deep humour, 

 strong pathos, profound pity are amongst its note?. 

 Romanticism is not necessarily limited to any onn 

 period ; there are romantic elements in Homer,, 

 jEschylus, Sophocles; the poetry of Dante is 

 eminently romantic when contrasted with ancient 

 classical poetry as a whole ; but though what is 

 romantic for one generation tends to become classic 

 and so tame, though not really insipid for a later 

 one, and though the romantic is almost inevitably 

 one side of a truly artistic temperament, there are 

 certain epochs that are specially romantic, and cer- 

 tain writers in those epochs more romantic than their 

 fellows. The 18th century was notoriously classic 

 in ideal, or pseudo-classic conventional, pedantic, 

 academic ; and the revolt against spiritual ennui 

 which followed is the romantic movement par excel- 

 lence. The movement arose under various conditions 

 in the several countries, had a somewhat varying 

 character and course, and sometimes tended towards ' 

 the merely crude and grotesque. In England, the 

 fountainhead of the movement which culminated 

 in the beginning of the 19th century, it may be 

 traced from the Percy Ballads and Chatterton, 

 from Cowper and Blake and Burns, to Scott and 

 Byron, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Keats and Ros- 

 aetti. In Germany there were tendencies in that 

 direction in Lessing, in Schiller, in Goethe, as well 

 as in the philosophy of Sclielling, and the ' Sturm 

 und Drang ' period was largely romantic in its 

 temper ; but it was Novalis who was the prophet 

 of ' romanticism,' and among the other representa- 

 tives of the school were the Schlegels, Tieck, 

 Kleist, Fouque, and Hoffmann. In France begin- 

 nings are found in Rousseau, in Chateaubriand, 

 and others ; but the great chief of French roman- 

 ticism is Victor Hugo. Other French romantics are 

 Lamartine, Dumas, Gautier, George Sand, Flaubert* 



