useful edition of the Institutiones in graecam linguam (1580) of Nicolaus Clenardus (Cleynaerts, 1495–1542) In 1583 he resigned his post at Lich and moved to Frankfort-on-the-Main to act as corrector and editor of Greek texts for the enterprising publisher Johann Wechel. To his Frankfort period belong the editions of Pausanias, Herodotus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (one of his best pieces of work and highly praised by Niebuhr), Aristotle, the Greek and Latin sources for the history of the Roman emperors and the Περὶ συντάξεως of Apollonius Dyscolus. In 1591 he removed to Heidelberg, where he became librarian to the elector palatine. The Wechel series was continued by Hieronymus Commelinus of Heidelberg, for whom Sylburg edited Clement of Alexander, Justin Martyr, the Etymologicum magnum, the Scriptores de re rustica, the Greek gnomic poets, Xenophon, Nonnus and other works. All Sylburg's editions show great critical power and indefatigable industry. He died on the 17th of February 1596, a victim of over-work.
See F. Koldewey, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie; K. W. Justi, in Strieder's Hessische Gelehrten-Geschichte, xviii. (Marburg, 1819); C. Bursian, Geschichte der classischen Philologie in Deutschland (1883); J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol., ii. (1908), p. 270.
SYLHET, a town and district of British India, in the Surma
valley division of Eastern Bengal and Assam. The town is on
the right bank of the river Surma, on rising ground, embowered
in groves. Pop. (1901), 13,893. There are manufactures of
mats, carved ivory and shells, and furniture. There is an
unaided college, founded in 1892, which is mainly supported by
a native gentleman. There are two dispensaries and an
English church. The great earthquake of the 12th of June
1897 destroyed every substantial building, but caused very
little loss of life. Sylhet is the largest town in Assam, but is
steadily decaying, being 30 m. from a railway and inaccessible
to steamers during the dry season.
The District of Sylhet has an area of 5388 sq. m. It consists of the lower valley of the Surma or Barak river, and for the most part is a uniform level broken only by scattered clusters of sandy hillocks called Mas, and intersected by a network of rivers and drainage channels. It is a broad and densely-cultivated plain, except in the extreme north, where the enormous rainfall converts many square miles of land into one huge lake during the rains, and in the south, where eight low ranges of hills, spurs of the Tippera mountains, run out into the plain, the highest range being about 1500 ft. above sea-level. There is also a small detached group in the centre of the district called the Ita hills. The district is watered by the branches of the Surma (q.v.) which are navigable by large boats, and support a busy traffic. The climate is extremely damp and the rainfall is heavy, reaching an annual average of over 150 in.; the rainy season generally lasts from April to October.
In 1901 the population was 2,241,848, showing an increase of 4% in the decade. More than half are Mahommedans. Tea cultivation is a flourishing industry in the southern hills. The Assam-Bengal railway crosses the district, but trade is still largely river-borne. Great damage was done by the earthquake of June 1897, which was followed by an outbreak of malarial fever.
Sylhet passed into the hands of the British in 1765, with the rest of Bengal, of which it formed an integral part until 1874, being included in the Dacca division. In that year it was annexed, together with the adjoining district of Cachar, to the chief-commissionership of Assam which was amalgamated with eastern Bengal in 1905.
See Sylhet District Gazetteer (Calcutta, 1905).
SYLLABUS (from Gr. συλλαμβάνειν, to take together, cf. “syllable”), literally something taken together, a collection (Late Lat. syllabus), hence a compendium, table or abstract giving the heads, outline or scheme of a course of lectures, teaching, &c. The word in the sense of a list or catalogue is used of a collection of eighty condemned propositions, addressed by order of Pius IX. to all the Catholic episcopate, under the date of the 8th of December 1864. The official title is: “A collection (syllabus) containing the principal errors of our times as noted in the Allocutions, Encyclicals and other Apostolic Letters of our Holy Father Pope Pius IX.” This collection
has a rather curious history. As early as 1849, the council of Spoleto asked the pope for a collective condemnation of all errors concerning the Church, her authority and property. In 1851 the Civiltà cattolica proposed that this should be drawn up in connexion with the definition of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. In 1852, Cardinal Fornari wrote by order of the pope to a certain number of bishops and laymen asking for their assistance in the study of the errors most prevalent in modern society. The answers are unknown; but after the
definition of the Immaculate Conception (December 8, 1854), the commission of theologians charged with the preparatory investigations was entrusted with the further mission of studying modern errors. For six years it gave no outward signs of activity; but in 1860 Mgr Gerbet, bishop of Perpignan, published his Instruction pastorale sur diverses erreurs du temps présent; in it he enumerated 85 erroneous propositions, grouped under eleven heads. Pius IX. was much impressed by this work; he had it printed, and communicated it to the commission, to which he added a few new members, desiring them to take it as a fresh basis for their researches. In 1861 the commission had various meetings, at which the principal propositions were chosen and formulated in Latin, and the theological censure which they incurred applied to them. The result was a collection first of 70, and later of 61 propositions, of which only 27 have the note haeretica; Mgr Gerbet’s divisions, and frequently his text, are adhered to. This Syllabus, which was excellently drawn up, was not promulgated, owing to an indiscretion. On the occasion of the festivals of the canonization of the Japanese martyrs, Pius IX. had gathered around him three hundred
bishops from all parts of the world; he had the projected Syllabus communicated to each of them, under the seal of secrecy for the purpose of asking their opinion on it; each bishop was also, still under the seal of secrecy, empowered to consult a theologian selected by himself. But in October 1862, the Turin Mediatore published the catalogue in full, and Mgr Bourget, bishop of Montreal, thinking that it had been published in Rome, officially promulgated it for his diocese in December 1863. Pius IX. then modified his plans: a new commission
was appointed to extract from the Allocutions, Encyclicals and papal Letters the chief errors dealt with in them. This work lasted about a year; the result of it was the Syllabus, in eighty propositions, arranged under the distinct heads; the propositions are not accompanied by any theological censure, but simply by a reference to the Allocution, Encyclical or Letter from which each had been more or less textually extracted. This was addressed to the episcopate together with a letter from Cardinal Antonelli, and dated the 8th of December 1864, the same date as the Encyclical Quanta cura, from which, however, it remains quite distinct. Its publication aroused the most violent polemics; what was then called the Ultramontane party was loud in its
praise; while the liberals treated it as a declaration of war made
by the Church on modern society and civilization. Napoleon III.’s government forbade its publication, and suspended the newspaper l'Univers for having published it. Controversies were equally numerous as to the theological value of the Syllabus. Most Catholics saw in it as many infallible definitions as condemned propositions; others observed that the pope had neither personally signed nor promulgated the collection, but had intentionally separated it from the Encyclical by sending it merely under cover of a letter from his secretary of state; they said that it was hastily, and sometimes unfortunately drawn up (cf. prop. 61); they saw in it an act of the pontifical authority, but without any of the marks required in the case of dogmatic definitions; they concluded, therefore, that each proposition was to be appreciated separately, and in consequence that each was open to theological comment. That such is the true view is proved by the fact that Rome never censured the theologians who, like Newman, took up this position.
The errors enumerated in the Syllabus are grouped under the ten following heads: (1) Pantheism, naturalism and absolute
