MAURICE (MauriciusFlavius Tiberius), emperor of the East from 582 to 602, was of Roman descent but a native of Arabissus in Cappadocia, where he was born about 539. He spent his youth at the court of Justin II., and, having joined the army, fought with distinction in the Persian war (578-581). At the age of forty-three he was declared Caesar by the dying emperor Tiberius II., who bestowed upon him the hand of his daughter Constantina. In the meagre annals of the reign of Maurice the most conspicuous events are the termination of the long struggle in the East with the restoration to the Persian throne of Chosroes II. by the Roman general Narses (not the conqueror of Italy) in 591, and the successes of Priscus in the protracted war against the Avars. Some inopportune attempts at army reform, and an ill-judged refusal to provide a ransom which might have prevented the massacre of twelve thousand prisoners in the hands of the enemy, led to a rebellion among the legions on the Danube, who declared Maurice unworthy to reign, and, commanded by Phocas, then a simple centurion, but destined to become emperor, marched upon Constantinople. The capital having declared against him, Maurice abdicated and withdrew to Chalcedon, but was pursued and put to death there after having witnessed the murder of five of his sons (November 27, 602). He was the author of a work on military art (στρατηγικά) in twelve books, of which there is an edition by Scheffer, publishèd at Upsala in 1664. There is a Vita Mauricii by Theophylact Simocatta.

MAURICE of Nassau, prince of Orange, the younger son of William the Silent, was born at Dillenburg in 1567, and was made governor of the United Provinces after the assassination of his father in 1584. He succeeded his brother as prince of Orange in 1618, and died at the Hague on April 23, 1625. For the leading features of his character and events of his life see Holland, vol. xii. pp. 77, 78.

MAURICE (1521-1553), duke and elector of Saxony, the son of Duke Henry the Pious, was born on the 21st of March 1521. He received a learned education, and at an early age gave evidence of an energetic and ambitious temper. In 1541 he married Agnes, daughter of the landgrave Philip of Hesse, and succeeded his father as duke of Saxony, of the Albertine line. Although a Protestant, he held cautiously aloof from the League of Smalkald; and in 1542 and 1543 he received imperial favour by supporting Charles V. against the Turks and the French. In 1546, when Charles V. attacked the League of Smalkald, Maurice sided with the emperor, the result being that he was made elector of Saxony in place of his cousin John Frederick (of the Ernestine line), who was taken prisoner and deposed. At this time Maurice was detested by the German Protestants, who considered him a traitor to his religion; but the tide soon turned. Fearing that the emperor’s ultimate aim was to strike at the authority of the princes, he began silently to make preparations for war; and Charles V. was imprudent enough to provide him with a pretext for opposition by detaining the landgrave Philip of Hesse, whose freedom Maurice had guaranteed. In 1551 Maurice concluded a secret treaty with Henry II. of France against the emperor, and an alliance was also formed with several German princes. Charles V. refused to believe in the reality of the danger; butin March 1552 he was startled by the intelligence that Henry II. had entered Germany as an invader, and that Maurice was hastening southward at the head of a powerful army. John Frederick and Philip were at once released, and the emperor, after an ignominious flight, was compelled to sign the treaty of Passau. After the re-establishment of peace Maurice fought for some time against the Turks in Hungary; he then returned to Saxony, and associated himself with the alliance against Margrave Albert of Brandenburg, by whom the treaty of Passau had not been recognized. At Sievershausen, on the 9th of July 1553, the margrave was defeated; but during the battle Maurice was wounded, and two days afterwards he died in his tent. He was not only a great diplomatist and general, but one of the most enlightened rulers of his age, and his early death was sincerely deplored by his subjects. In his last years he was content “with small diet and little sleep.” “Therefore,” says Roger Ascham, who had seen him, “he had a waking and working head, and became so witty and secret, so hardy and ware, so skilful of ways, both to do harm to others and to keep hurt from himself, as he never took enterprise in hand wherein he put not his adversary always to the worse.”

See Roger Ascham, A Report and Discourse of the Affairs and State of Germany ; Langenn, Moritz, Herzog und Kurfürst von Sachsen, 1841; G. Voigt, Moritz von Sachsen 1541-47, 1876.

MAURICE, John Frederic Denison (1805-1872), better known without his first name, an English clergyman and theologian, was born in the year 1805. He was the son of a Unitarian minister, and educated in his father’s faith, entering Trinity College, Cambridge, as a Nonconformist, for the sake of the university course, at a time when it was impossible for any but members of the Established Church to obtain a degree. Together with John Sterling, Maurice migrated to the smaller college of Trinity Hall, whence he obtained a first class in civil law in 1827; he then came to London, and gave himself to literary work, editing for a short time the Athenaeu/n newspaper. During this period of his life he came under the influence of S. T. Coleridge,—an influence which drew Maurice into conformity, and issued through him in what was known as the Broad-Church school of thought.

When Maurice joined the Church of England, he might no doubt have returned to Cambridge for his degree, or, when he chose Oxford, his terms at Cambridge would have been allowed him, but with characteristic thoroughness he elected to go through the whole Oxford course. He entered Exeter College, and obtained a second class in classics in 1831.

The intellectual stir of Oxford life, and the vehement controversies in the clash of which sparks of truth seemed struck out, were probably among the causes which attracted Maurice to Oxford, and he afterwards took his full share in them, always in a liberal, tolerant, yet strongly Protestant spirit. He was ordained in 1834, and after a short interval spent in parish work in the country was appointed chaplain of Guy’s Hospital, and became thenceforward a sensible factor in the intellectual and social life of London. Carlyle has told us how “going to Guy’s” Sunday after Sunday was a part of Sterling’s routine, and an appreciable number of persons far above the average were attracted to the hospital chapel. In 1840 Maurice was appointed professor of history and literature in King’s College, to which in 1846 was added the chair of divinity. These chairs he held till 1853. In that year he published Theological Essays, wherein were stated opinions which savoured, to the principal, Dr Jelf, and to the council, of unsound theology in regard to eternal punishment. Maurice maintained with great warmth of conviction that his views were in close accordance with Scripture and the Anglican standards, but the council ruled otherwise, and he was deprived of his professorships. He held at the same time the chaplaincy of Lincoln’s Inn (1846-60), but no attempt was made to deprive him of this. Neither was he assailed in the incumbency of St Peter’s, Vere Street, which he held for nine years (1860-69), and where, though his congregation was never large, partly perhaps because no parish or district was apportioned to his church, he drew round him a circle of thoughtful persons, attached in no common degree to himself and to his teaching.

During his residence in London Maurice was specially identified with two important movements for education, the Working Men’s College, and Queen’s College for the education of women, while he threw himself with great energy into all that affected the social life of the people. Certain abortive efforts at a true co-operation among working men, and the movement known as Christian Socialism, were the immediate outcome of his teaching, and directly fostered by himself. In 1866 Maurice was appointed professor of moral philosophy in the university of Cambridge. He died on the 1st of April 1872.

Maurice was before all things a preacher. The actual message he had to proclaim was apparently simple; his two great convictions, which he strove to impress on all other men, were the fatherhood of God, and that all religious systems which had any stability lasted because of a portion of truth which had to be disentangled from the error differentiating them from the doctrines of the Church of England as understood by himself. His love to God as his Father was a passionate adoration which filled his whole heart. No one who ever heard Maurice read the Lord’s Prayer can possibly forget it; the intensity of his convictions in the pulpit made his message seem as luminous and clear as it was brief and concentrated, though his teaching apart from the living voice had by no means the same character.

It was the peculiarity of his congregation that those who wanted his advice sought him; having no parish, he had no definite sphere of work beyond the church. Thus his preaching took the forms now of exposition and now of the resolution of metaphysical difficulties, rather than of direct dealing with the facts, the sins, and the temptations of human life common to all. Feeling this defect, he took for a time a district for parochial visitation, but was perplexed and distressed at the experience to which he was unequal. With all his affectionateness and desire to give sympathy he was unable even to conceive intellectual difficulties which were not his own. To those who did not demand of him all they needed, but took thankfully what he had to give, he was altogether a stimulating and helpful teacher. He opened new views, and encouraged men to think for themselves, and see what their words meant. He was even morbidly fearful of founding a party, and was deeply distressed at the name Broad-Church. Those who surrounded him, and were kept together by his personal charm and influence, were learning to think for themselves, and have dispersed in many directions. There are probably not half a dozen persons who, even nominally, reflect the precise shades of Maurician teaching.

As a writer it is extremely doubtful if his work will have a great and permanent place in the future. His one novel, Eustace Conway, is even now unread; his theological works, though abounding in passages of great beauty, full now and then of a fiery eloquence, are as a whole somewhat obscure. He published too much, and a large number of his works are sermons recast. We miss the human voice, and we find a class of writing which only the highest excellence can make tolerable out of the pulpit.

Maurice’s greatest effect on his time is in his educational work. The Working Men’s College, which owes more to him than to any one else, for which he rendered great sacrifices, and which was and is more full of his spirit than are most institutions of that of their founders, was a totally new departure in education. It was intended to give, and it has largely succeeded in giving, not what is called a popular education, but “higher education” to working men, and in combining teachers and taught in a college with its social life, and a bond of common interests. Queen’s College, in like manner for the higher education of girls, is scarcely less identified with his life, though its influence is not so great, nor can its work be so widely known.

Both at King’s College and at Cambridge Maurice gathered round him a band of earnest students, to whom he directly taught much that was valuable drawn from wide stores of his own reading, wide rather than deep, for he never was, strictly speaking, a learned man. Still more did he encourage the habit of inquiry and research, more valuable than his direct teaching. In his power, which has been truly called Socratic, of convincing his pupils of their ignorance he did more than perhaps any other man of our time to awaken in those who came under his sway the desire for knowledge and the process of independent thought.

If, as a social reformer, Maurice’s name be forgotten in the future, it will be because in much he was before his time, and gave his eager support to schemes for which the world was not ready. From a very early period of his life in London the condition of the poor pressed upon him with consuming force; the enormous magnitude of the social questions involved was a burthen which he could hardly bear. He threw himself with characteristic energy into schemes for a true co-operative system, in which some ardent young men were then engaged, and in spite of his dislike for systems and party names did not shrink from being known as a Christian Socialist, and taking a keen interest in the paper which bore that name, and was the organ of the movement. That and the Politics for the People, much the same paper under a different name, received his sanction and aid; many strifes between masters and workmen were appeased, if not directly by himself, by those who were aided by his counsel, and were in constant intercourse with him. For many years he was the clergyman whom working men of all opinions seemed to trust even if their faith in other religious men and all religious systems had faded, and his power of attracting the zealot and the outcast resembled that of the Master whom he followed.

Maurice was twice married, first to a sister of John Sterling, secondly to a sister of his friend Archdeacon Hare. By his family ties and his closest friendships he came in contact with few but intellectual people. Thus while he wrote and spoke and worked for the average man he set that average somewhat high. Those who were privileged to know him did not know a more beautiful soul.

The following are Maurice’s more important works. Some of them were rewritten and in a measure recast, and the date given is not necessarily that of the first appearance of the book, but of its more complete and abiding form. Eustace Conway, or the Brother and Sister, a novel, 1834; The Kingdom of Christ, 1842; Christmas Day and other Sermons, 1843; The Unity of the New Testament, 1844; The Epistle to the Hebrews, 1846; The Religions of the World, 1847; Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy (at first an article in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana), 1848; The Church a Family, 1850; The Old Testament, 1851; Theological Essays, 1853; The Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, 1853; Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, 1854; The Doctrine of Sacrifice, 1854; The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, 1855; The Epistles of St John, 1857; The Commandments as Instruments of National Reformation, 1866; On the Gospel of St Luke, 1868; The Conscience: Lectures on Casuistry, 1868; The Lord's Prayer, a Manual, 1870. The greater part of these works were, as has been already noticed, first delivered as sermons or lectures. Besides this more formal work, Maurice contributed many prefaces and introductions to the works of friends, as to Archdeacon Hare’s Charges, Kingsley’s Saint’s Tragedy, &c. His occasional sermons, speeches, periodical writings, and letters to various newspapers need not be here noticed, though they were at the time evidence of his interest in all the life of his time, and his eager and abounding energy.