keeping, and Carlstadt had to fly ignominiously in order to avoid imprisonment. He escaped to Holstein, where in March 1529 he stayed with the Anabaptist Melchior Hofmann. Expelled by the authorities, he took refuge in East Friesland, where he remained till the beginning of 1530 under the protection of a nobleman in sympathy with the Helvetic reformers. His preaching gave him great influence, but towards the close of the year persecution again sent him on his travels. He ultimately reached Zürich, where the recommendations of Bucer and Oecolampadius secured him a friendly reception by Zwingli, who procured him employment. After Zwingli’s death he remained in close intercourse with the Zürich preachers, who defended him against renewed attacks on Luther’s part; and finally, in 1534, on Bullinger’s recommendation, he was called to Basel as preacher at the church of St Peter and professor at the university. Here he remained till his death on the 24th of December 1541.
During these latter years Carlstadt’s attitude became more moderate. His championship of the town council against the theocratic claims of Antistes Myconius and the ecclesiastical council, in the matter of the control of the university, was perhaps in consonance with his earlier views on the relations of clergy and laity. He was, however, also instrumental in restoring the abolished doctorate of theology and other degrees; and, despatched on a mission to Strassburg in 1536, to take part in a discussion on a proposed compromise in the matter of the Lord’s Supper between the theologians of Strassburg and Wittenberg, he displayed a conciliatory attitude which earned him the praise of Bucer. Carlstadt’s historical significance lies in the fact that he was one of the pioneers of the Reformation. But he was a thinker and dreamer rather than a man of affairs, and though he had the moral and physical courage to carry his principles to their logical conclusions (he was the first priest to write against celibacy, and the first to take a wife), he lacked the balance of mind and sturdy common sense that inspired Luther’s policy of consideration for “the weaker brethren” and built up the Evangelical Church on a conservative basis. But though Carlstadt was on friendly terms, and corresponded with Münzer and other Anabaptists, he did not share their antinomian views, nor was he responsible for their excesses. His opinion as to the relation of faith and “good works” was practically that expressed in articles XI. and XII. of the Church of England. In reply to Luther’s violent onslaught on him in his Wider die himmlischen Propheten he issued from Rothenburg his Anzeig etlicher Hauptartikel christlicher Lehre, a compendious exposition of his views, in which he says: “Those who urge to good works do so, not that the conscience may be justified by works, but that their freedom may redound to God’s glory and that their neighbours may be fired to praise God.”
See C. F. Jaeger, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (Stuttgart, 1856); Hermann Barge, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, vol. i. (Leipzig, 1905).
CARLYLE, ALEXANDER (1722–1805), Scottish divine, was born on the 26th of January 1722, in Dumfriesshire, and passed his youth and early manhood at Prestonpans, where he witnessed the battle of 1745. He was educated at Edinburgh (M.A. 1743), Glasgow and Leiden. From 1748 until his death on the 28th of August 1805 he was minister at Inveresk in Midlothian, and during this long career rose to high eminence in his church not only as leader of the moderate or “broad” Church section, but as moderator of the General Assembly 1770 and dean of the Chapel Royal in 1789. His influence was enhanced by his personal appearance, which was so striking as to earn him the name of “Jupiter Carlyle”; and his autobiography (published 1860), though written in his closing years and not extending beyond the year 1770, is abundantly interesting as a picture of Scottish life, social and ecclesiastical, in the 18th century. Carlyle’s memory recalled the Porteous Riots of 1736, and less remotely his friendship with Adam Smith, David Hume, and John Home, the dramatist, for witnessing the performance of whose tragedy Douglas he was censured in 1757. He was distinctly a bon vivant, but withal an upright, conscientious and capable minister.
CARLYLE, JOSEPH DACRE (1759–1804), British orientalist, was born in 1759 at Carlisle, where his father was a physician. He went in 1775 to Cambridge, was elected a fellow of Queens’ College in 1779, taking the degree of B.D. in 1793. With the assistance of a native of Bagdad known in England as David Zamio, then resident at Cambridge, he attained great proficiency in Arabic literature; and after succeeding Dr Paley in the chancellorship of Carlisle, he was appointed, in 1795, professor of Arabic in Cambridge University. His translation from the Arabic of Yusuf ibn Taghri Birdi, the Rerum Egypticarum Annales, appeared in 1792, and in 1796 a volume of Specimens of Arabic Poetry, from the earliest times to the fall of the Caliphate, with some account of the authors. Carlyle was appointed chaplain by Lord Elgin to the embassy at Constantinople in 1799, and prosecuted his researches in Eastern literature in a tour through Asia Minor, Palestine, Greece and Italy, collecting in his travels several valuable Greek and Syriac MSS. for a projected critical edition of the New Testament, collated with the Syriac and other versions—a work, however, which he did not live to complete. On his return to England in 1801 he was presented by the bishop of Carlisle to the living of Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he died on the 12th of April 1804. After his death there appeared a volume of poems descriptive of the scenes of his travels, with prefaces extracted from his journal. Among other works which he left unfinished was an edition of the Bible in Arabic, completed by H. Ford and published in 1811.
CARLYLE, THOMAS (1795–1881), British essayist, historian and philosopher, born on the 4th of December 1795 at Ecclefechan, in Annandale, was the eldest of the nine children of James Carlyle by his second wife, Janet Aitken. The father was by trade a mason, and afterwards a small farmer. He had joined a sect of seceders from the kirk, and had all the characteristics of the typical Scottish Calvinist. He was respected for his integrity and independence, and a stern outside covered warm affections. The family tie between all the Carlyles was unusually strong, and Thomas regarded his father with a reverence which found forcible expression in his Reminiscences. He always showed the tenderest love for his mother, and was the best of brothers. The narrow means of his parents were made sufficient by strict frugality. He was sent to the parish school when seven, and to Annan grammar-school when ten years old. His pugnacity brought him into troubles with his fellows at Annan; but he soon showed an appetite for learning which induced his father to educate him for the ministry. He walked to Edinburgh in November 1809, and entered the university. He cared little for any of the professors, except Sir John Leslie, from whom he learned some mathematics. He acquired a little classical knowledge, but the most valuable influence was that of his contemporaries. A few lads in positions similar to his own began to look up to him as an intellectual leader, and their correspondence with him shows remarkable interest in literary matters. In 1814 Carlyle, still looking forward to the career of a minister, obtained the mathematical mastership at Annan. The salary of £60 or £70 a year enabled him to save a little money. He went to Edinburgh once or twice, to deliver the discourses required from students of divinity. He does not seem, however, to have taken to his profession very earnestly. He was too shy and proud to see many of the Annan people, and found his chief solace in reading such books as he could get. In 1816 he was appointed, through the recommendation of Leslie, to a school at Kirkcaldy, where Edward Irving, Carlyle’s senior by three years, was also master of a school. Irving’s severity as a teacher had offended some of the parents, who set up Carlyle to be his rival. A previous meeting with Irving, also a native of Annan, had led to a little passage of arms, but Irving now welcomed Carlyle with a generosity which entirely won his heart, and the rivals soon became the closest of friends. The intimacy, affectionately commemorated in the Reminiscences, was of great importance to Carlyle’s whole career. “But for Irving,” he says, “I had never known what the communion of man with man means.” Irving had a library, in which Carlyle devoured Gibbon and much French literature, and they made various excursions
