T A U 



101 



T A U 



In addition to the other reasons which have been al- 

 luded to for the general adoption of the practice of 

 tattooing among savage tribes, it is likely that it may 

 be regarded as an important part of the initiation of a 

 warrior, of whose passive courage it is a severe test. 

 ' Thus,' observes the author of the ' New Zealanders," ' in 

 the account which Rochefort, in his ' History of the An- 

 tilles ' (p. 108), gives of the initiation of a warrior among 

 the people of those islands, it is stated that the father of 

 the young man, after a very rude flagellation of his son, 

 used to proceed to scarify (as he expresses it) his whole 

 body with the tooth of the animal called the acouti ' ; and 

 then, in order to heal the gashes thus made, he nibbed 

 into them an infusion of pimento, which occasioned an 

 agonizing pain to the poor patient ; but it was indispens- 

 able that he should endure the whole, adds our author, 

 without the least, contortion of countenance or other evi- 

 dence of sufferins.' 



(Pictorial Bible, note on Levit. xix., 28 ; Pictorial His- 

 tnry of England, vol. i., pp. 129 and 329 ; New Zea- 

 litndi'i-x. Lib. of Ent. Knowledge,' chapters vi. and xiv.) 



TAUHMANN, FRIEDRKJH, was born at Wonsees, 

 near Baireuth, on the 10th of May. 1565, where his father 

 \vas a shoemaker. His father died very early; and his 

 mother married a tailor, who wished to bring up his step- 

 son Friedrich to his own business ; but as the boy showed 

 little inclination, he was sent, in 1577, to school at Culm- 

 bach, where he was obliged to gain his livelihood by sing- 

 ing and begging. In 15H2 he went to the gymnasium of 

 Heilbronn, when his Latin \crses and the wit displayed 

 in them wen- so much admired, that he was crowned by 

 Paul Melissus as poet-laureate. Ten years later he went 

 to the University of Wittenberg, where he distinguished 

 himself, anil, in 15'J.">, was appointed professor of poetry 

 and eloquence, to which afterwards the honour of court- 

 poet was added. He died at Wittenberg, on the 24th of 

 .March, 1613. 



Taubmann was conscientious in the discharge of his 

 official duties, and he was a witty and humorous man. 

 During his lifetime he had the reputation of being the 

 greatest wit of the age, and persons of the highest rank 

 Miiiiiht his society. From all that, can be learned about 

 him, it is clear that he did not, like many others in similar 

 positions, forget his own dignity as a man : he never acted 

 as a buffoon or flatterer, but always manifested a straight- 

 forward and upright character. In his time philology 

 was sinking very rapidly in Saxony, all attention being 

 absorbed by theological controversies and sophistries, and 

 Taubmann was one of the very few who, both in earnest 

 and in jest, impressed upon his contemporaries the ne- 

 y of resuming a thorough study of tne antient lan- 

 guages as the only means of raising theological studies to 

 their proper position. This he did more especially in his 

 work, ' Dissertatio de Lingua Latina,' the last edition of 

 which appeared at Wittenberg, 1614. With the same 

 view he exerted himself in his lectures, and in his editions 

 of Plautus* Wittenberg, 1621, 4to.) and of Virgil (Witten- 

 berg, 1618, 4to.), in which he made his countrymen ac- 

 quainted with the labours of foreign scholars. His poetical 

 works, though very popular in his time, have no great 

 merit. They appeared in several collections, under the 

 titles of ' Columbae Poeticae,' ' Melodaesia,' ' Schedias- 

 mata Poetica,' and others. After Taubmann's death, the 

 name of Taubmanniana was applied to all kinds of witty 

 sayings and anecdotes. 



(Erasmi Schmidii Oratio in Taubmanni Memoriam, 

 Wittenberg, 1013, 8vo. ; Taubmanniana, oder Fr. Taub- 

 mann's Leben, Anecdoten, witzige Einfdllf und Sitten- 

 i hi>, von Simon von Gyrene, Leipzig, 1797, 8vo. ; Fr. 

 Brandt, Leben und Tod Frid. Taubmanni, Copenhagen, 

 HJ75, 8vo. : the best work however is by Ebert, Leben und 

 I 'i-nliennte Fr. Taubmanns, Eisenberg, 1814, 8vo.) 



TAULER. or THAULER, JOHANN, the most cele- 

 brated German divine of the fourteenth century. He was 

 born in 1294, as some writers say, at Cologne, but accord- 

 ing to others at Strassburg. Respecting his life very little 

 is known. He entered the order of the Dominicans at an 

 early age, and was held in the highest esteem on account 

 if his knowledge of philosophy and mystic theology, as 

 well as for hi pious and unblemished conduct, although 

 he fearlessly attacked the vices and follies of his fellow- 

 monks. The latter part of his life he spent in the convent 

 of the Dominicans at Strassburg, where he died on the 



16th of June, 1361, as is attested by his tomb-stone, which 

 still exists in that city. 



Tauler was a man of extraordinary piety and devotion, a 

 zealous teacher, and a great promoter of mystic theology in 

 Germany, which must regard him not only as the founder 

 of that school of divinity, but at the same time as one of 

 the greatest men that have ever sprung from it. His ser- 

 mons, as well as his other religious and ascetic works, show 

 a glowing imagination and deep feeling: they are less 

 addressed to the understanding than to the heart. But 

 although this leaning and his love of the mysterious fre- 

 quently led him to religious sentimentality and absurdities, 

 yet he never sinks down to the level of some modern mys- 

 tic divines. Tauler was deeply read in scholastic philoso- 

 phy, and although in his sermons he endeavours to steer 

 clear of it, yet they are not quite free from sophistic sub- 

 tleties, and there are passages which must have puzzled move 

 than enlightened his audience. In his love of truth, and 

 the earnestness with which he devoted himself to the instruc- 

 tion of the people, he was a worthy predecessor of Luther 

 Tauler's influence upon the German language and litera- 

 ture has acquired for him as distinguished a" place in the 

 history of German literature as that which he occupies 

 among divines. In his time German prose scarcely existed, 

 and the standaid of sermon-writing was very low. The 

 creation of a prose literature belongs almost exclusively 

 to him : his style seldom aims at oratorical beauty, his 

 sentences are short and abrupt, but always full of mean- 

 ing. His language, which is the dialect of the Upper 

 Rhine, is as pure as can be expected. It appears that 

 Tauler did not himself write his sermons, but they were 

 taken down as they were preached, by many of his hearers. 

 We must therefore suppose that in the editions which 

 were published shortly alter his death, the form has been 

 somewhat altered by the editors. The first edition of his 

 sermons appeared at Leipzig, 1498, in 4to., under the fol- 

 lowing title : ' Sermon deg grossgelarten in gnaden erleuch- 

 teten Doctoris Johannis Tauleri predigerr ordens, weisende 

 auff den nehesten waren wegk, yn geiste czu wandern 

 durch uberschwebenden syn, unvoracht von geistes ynnige 

 vorwandelt I deutsch manchen menschen zu selikeit.' 

 This edition was followed by another at Augsburg, 1508, 

 fol., and a more complete one at Basel, 1521, fol. A 

 translation of these sermons into the dialect of Lower 

 Germany was published at Halberstadt, in 1523, fol., and 

 another into High German by P. J. Spener, at Niirnberg, 

 1088, 4to. A new edition in modern High German was 

 published at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, in 3 vols. 8vo., 1825, 

 &c. The most interesting among his other religious 

 works is that on the imitation of the life of Christ, ' Naci- 

 folgung des armen Lebens Christi,' which was first printed 

 at Frankfurt in 1621. The most recent edition is that by 

 Schlosser, Frankf., 1833. A collection of all the treatises 

 of Tauler was commenced in 1823, at Luzem, by N. Cas - 

 seder, but only two volumes have appeared. 



Most of the works of Tauler were translated into Latin 

 by Laurentius Surius, Cologne, 1548, fol. : this collection 

 has been reprinted at Macerata and Paris. There are 

 also one Italian and three Dutch translations : the best of 

 the Dutch translations is that of Antwerp, 1685, fol. 



A list of the works of Tauler, together with the whole 

 literature on the subject, is given in Jorden's Lexicon 

 Deutscher Dichter und Prosaisten, vol. v., p. 1-9. 



TAUNTON, an antient town in the south-western part 

 of Somersetshire, situated in a fertile vale called Taunton 

 Dean, and distant 141 miles from London, 44 from Bristol, 

 and 33 from Exeter. Roman coins and other antiquities 

 have been found, from which it has been inferred that 

 there was a Roman station here. Taunton was certainly 

 a place of considerable importance in the Anglo-Saxon 



Eeriod ; and in the eighth century a castle was built here 

 y Ina, king of the West Saxons, in which he held his first 

 great council. The building was destroyed by his queen 

 in expelling one of the kings of the South Saxons. An 

 other castle was built after the Conquest by one of the 

 bishops of Winchester, to whom the town and manor were 

 granted ; and the present remains are believed to be those 

 of a still more recent edifice. Perkin Warbeck held pos- 

 session of the castle and town for a short time ; and in the 

 civil wars the town sustained a long siege under Colonel 

 (afterwards Admiral) Blake, against 10,000 royalist troops, 

 until relieved by Fairfax. 

 The town is about a mile long; the principal streets are 



