HILDA, or Hild (614-680), usually called St Hilda, a Saxon lady whose name is intimately associated with the history of the early English church and of early English literature. She was a member of the royal family of Northumbria, her father Hereric being a nephew of King Edwin; and it was along with her royal kinsman that, as a girl of fourteen, she received baptism at the hands of Paulinus. During the pagan reaction which followed Edwin’s defeat and death, Hilda was tempted to settle with her widowed sister Hereswith at the monastery of Chelles, 12 miles from Paris; but she was recalled to England by Bishop Aidan, the missionary from Iona, and in 649, two years after her consecration as a nun, she was appointed to succeed Hern the abbess of Heortea or Hartlepool. When, in fulfilment of the vow which he had made before the decisive battle with Penda, Oswy came to dedicate his daughter to God, it was to the care of Hilda that he entrusted her. In 658 the abbess founded the famous monastery on the cliffs at Streoneshalh or Whitby, and for the next twenty-two years she ruled with rare ability and virtue over the double community of monks and nuns which gathered round her. Among those who shed the most abiding lustre on the establishment were St John of Beverley and the Saxon poet Caedmon. Hilda died, full of years, in 680, mourned by her nuns as their common mother. There is a St Hilda’s church both at South Shields and at Hartlepool, and the latter preserves her effigy on its ancient seal. At Whitby the tradition long lingered that on a summer forenoon, when the sun shone in the highest windows of the north part of the abbey, a figure of Lady Hilda could be discerned; and the fossil ammonites of the neighbourhood are popularly known as St Hilda’s snakes. See Bede, ...

HILDBURGHAUSEN (in old records Hiltpershusia and Villa Hilperti), the chief town of a circle in the duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, Germany, is situated in a wide and fruitful valley on the river Werra and on the Werra railway, 19 miles south-east of Meiningen by rail. It is the seat of a circle court, of a court of appeal, and of the jury court for the duchy. The streets are wide and regular, and the principal buildings are the former castle of the duchy, erected 1685-95, now used as barracks, with a park in which there is a monument to Queen Louise of Prussia; the old town-house, the Government buildings, the gymnasium erected in 1877, the normal seminary, and the lunatic asylum. A monument has been erected to those of the citizens who died in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The manufactures are very various, and include linen fabrics, cloth, papier-mâché, toys, buttons, optical instruments, agricultural machines, knives, mineral waters, condensed soups, and condensed milk. The population in 1875 was 5162.

Hildburghausen belonged in the 14th century to the counts of Henneberg, from whom it passed into the possession of the dukes of Saxony. In 1683 it became the capital of a principality, which in 1826 was united to Saxe-Meiningen.

HILDEBERT (Hydalbert, Gildebert, Aldebert) of Le Mans and afterwards of Tours, a prominent churchleader, and one of the best Latin writers of his. century, was born about 1055 at Lavardin near Vendôme, became a pupil of the famous Berengarius of Tours, and made so great progress in all the learning of the time that he was made head master of the school, archdeacon, and finally, in 1097, bishop of Le Mans. In the beginning of his episcopate much trouble was caused him by the jealousy of his dean, Godfrey, who had accused him of immorality; but finally he succeeded in fully vindicating his innocence. He next had to encounter the persecutions of William Rufus, who had captured the city; and these proved so harassing that he ultimately felt it necessary to withdraw to Rome, with the intention of resigning his charge; but Pope Paschalis II. declined to give him his release. On his return to Le Mans, Hildebert found the diocese in a state of great commotion, which had been caused by the preaching of Henry the Deacon; but he speedily succeeded in restoring order after he had banished the agitator. About 1125 he was translated, much against his will, to the see of Tours; and soon afterwards he held the important synod of Nantes, convened for the purpose of correcting the abuses and terminating the disorder which had so long prevailed in Brittany. A dispute with Louis the Fat about the rights of ecclesiastical patronage brought him into much disfavour with that monarch; but their mutual relations had much improved before the death of Hildebert, which took place on December 18, 1134. From some writers he has received the name of Saint, but his name occurs in no martyrology....

HILDEBRAND. See Gregory VII.

HILDEBRANDSLIED. This invaluable example of Old German alliterative poetry is contained in a MS. originally belonging to the library of Fulda, and now preserved at Cassel. It is written on the first and last pages of a volume of Biblical and theological contents by two contemporary hands apparently belonging to the beginning of the 9th century. The conclusion of the poem is unfortunately wanting, evidently from want of space. From such misreadings as man for inan, axApuas for wuas or was (with p for the Runic w sign sometimes used here as in Old English MSS.), it is manifest that our text was not written down from memory,—as has often been assumed,—but is a transcript from an older original. This conclusion is confirmed by the state of the language of the fragment, which shows a curious mixture of Low and High German forms that can never have existed in any living dialect of Germany, but can only be explained as the result of an attempt made by a Low German scribe to adapt the forms of a High German original to his vernacular idiom....

HILDEBRANDT, Eduard (1817-1868), was born in 1817, and served his term as apprentice to his father, a house-painter at Dantzic. He was not twenty when he came to Berlin, where he was taken in hand by Wilhelm Krause, a painter of sea-pieces. Like other artists who have earned a name for subtle and rapid execution, he worked at first in a formal, smooth, and timid fashion. Several early pieces exhibited after his death,—a breakwater, dated 1838, ships in a breeze off Swinemiinde (1840), and other canvases of this and the following year,—show Hildebrandt to have been a careful student of nature, with inborn talents kept down by the conventionalisms of the formal school to which Krause belonged. It is difficult to say what the outcome of his art would have been if Hildebrandt had not felt other influences than those of his native schools. Accident made him acquainted with masterpieces of French art displayed at the periodical exhibitions of the Berlin Academy, and these awakened his curiosity and envy. He made up his bundle and wandered to Paris, where, about 1842, he entered the atelier of Isabey and became the companion of Lepoittevin. In a short time he sent home pictures which might have been taken for copies from these artists. Gradually he mastered the tricks of touch and the mysterious secrets of effect in which the French at this period were already so perfect. He also acquired the necessary skill in painting figures, and having done this he returned to Germany, unsurpassable in technical execution, and well skilled in the rendering of many kinds of landscape forms. His pictures of French street life, done about 1843, are impressed with the stamp of the Paris school, but they reveal at the same time a spirit eager for novelty, quick at grasping, equally quick at ...

HILDEGARD (1098-1179), commonly referred to as St Hildegard, abbess, “prophetess,” and a figure of some consequence in the history of mediaeval mysticism, was born of noble parents at Böckheleim in the countship of Sponheim, diocese of Mainz, in 1098 (or 1099), and from her eighth year was educated at the Benedictine cloister of Disiboden-berg (Mons Disibodi) in the principality of Zweibrücken, now in Rhenish Bavaria, where Jutta, sister of the count of Sponheim, was at that time abbess. From earliest childhood, we learn from Hildegard herself, she was accustomed to see visions which increased in frequency and vividness as she approached the age of womanhood; these, however, she for many years, though with great pain, kept almost wholly secret, nor was it until she had reached her forty-third year (1141) that she felt constrained at last to divulge them. Committed to writing by her intimate friend the monk Godefridus, they now form the first and most important of her printed works, entitled Scivias (probably an abbreviation for “sciens vias” or “nosce vias Domini ”) & Visionum et Revelationum Libri ITI. i and completed in 1151. In 1147 St Bernard of Clairvaux, having come to Bingen while engaged in preaching the new crusade throughout Germany, chanced to hear of Hildegard’s revelations, and on inquiry became so convinced of their reality that he not only wrote to her a letter cordially acknowledging her as a prophetess of God, but also successfully advocated her recognition as such by his friend and former pupil Pope Eugenius III. in the synod of Trêves (1148). In the same year Hildegard, who meanwhile had succeeded Jutta as abbess at Disibo-denberg, and had attracted overflowing numbers to that cloister, migrated along with eighteen of her nuns to a ...

HILDEN, a towu of Prussia, in the government and circle of Diisseldorf, on the Itterbach. It is a station on the Rhenish railway, and has a considerable manufacture of silks, both pure and mixed, calico, and machinery; it also possesses a deaconess institute. During the last half century its growth has been rapid. While in 1816 the population numbered only 2056, it amounted in 1875 to 6789. Hilden was constituted a town in 1861.

HILDESHEIM, the chief town of a district in the province of Hanover, Prussia, is beautifully situated on the right bank of the Innerste, 18 miles south-east of Hanover by railway. It has a very antique and quaint appearance, and is surrounded by old ramparts which have been converted into shady alleys and promenades. The streets are for the most part narrow and irregular, and contain many old houses with overhanging upper stories and richly and curiously adorned wooden façades. The town is the seat of a district governorship, a high court of justice, two justice courts, a general superintendency of the Evangelical Church, and a Roman Catholic chapter. The Catholic cathedral, which occupies the site of a building founded by Louis the Pious in 818, dates from the middle of the 11th century. It is chiefly remarkable for the antiquities and notable works of art connected with it, including the bronze doors executed by Bishop Bernward, with reliefs from the history of Adam and Christ; the so-called Trmensäule, at one time believed to have been erected, before it was transferred to its present site, in honour of the Saxon idol Irmin, but now regarded as belonging to an old Roman aqueduct; the Christ column by Bishop Bernward, adorned with reliefs from the history of the Saviour; a brazen font of the 13th century, two candelabra of the 12th century, the sarcophagus of St Godehard, the tomb of St Epiphanius, and an immense number of minor articles of ecclesiastical furniture. The rose-bush on the wall of the crypt is alleged to be a thousand years old. Among the other churches those of special interest are St Godehard’s church, completed in 1172 and restored in 1863, a remarkably fine specimen of the Romanesque style, with three massive pyramidal towers; the church of St ...

HILDRETH, Richard (1807-1865), an American journalist and author, was born at Deerfield, Massachusetts, June 28, 1807. He was educated at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1826; and after studying law at Newburyport, he was called to the Boston bar in 1830. He had, however, already conceived a predilection for literature, and in 1832 he became joint founder and editor of a daily newspaper, The Boston Atlas. Having in 1834 gone to the south for the benefit of his health, he was led by what he witnessed of the evils of slavery to write the anti-slavery novel Archy Moore, which, chiefly on account of its subject, met with considerable success in America and England. An enlarged edition of it appeared in 1852 under the title of the White Slave. In 1837 he wrote Banks, Banking, and Paper Currency, a work which had some influence in fostering the growth of the free banking system in America. In 1838 he resumed his editorial duties on the Atlas, but in 1840 he found it necessary on account of his health to remove to British Guiana, where lie was editor of two weekly newspapers in succession at Georgetown. He published in the same year Despotism in America, and he also made the columns of his newspapers the medium for the dissemination of antislavery opinions. In 1849 he published the first three volumes of a History of the United States, a work which, if its narrative is rather bald and tame, is characterized by perfect fairness and candour, and displays great industry and care in the representation of facts. Other three volumes, completing the work, appeared in 1855. His Japan as it was and is is a valuable digest of the information contained in other works on that country. He also wrote Theory of Morals (1844), and Theory of Politics (1853), as well as Lives of ...