Erse

(Irish), Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton.-Religion. The religious systems of E. are comprised under the three grand divisions of Roman Catholics, Protestants, and members of the Greek Church. There are, besides, considerable numbers of Jews, and the Mu ulmans of Turkey.-HIST. The name of E. is mythologically derived from Europa (q. v.), whom Jupiter carried over to its shores from Mount Ida. During the zenith of Asiatic civilization, this continent remained in utter barbarism. Greece was the first state that arose into civilization; next followed Rome in the 8th century B. c. After the fall of the Roman empire came the Dark Ages, when chaos existed again in E. In succe ion, barbarous tribes of Huns, Goths, and Scythians devastated the greater part of its surface, ultimately to settle-the Visigoths in Spain, the Lombards in Italy, the Franks inGaul, the Saxons in N. Germany and Scand in a via, the Avari in S. Germany, and the Anglo-Saxons in Britain.. During this period the Greek or Eastern empire still maintained a feeble existence. About 800 A. D., the acce ion of Charlemagne changed the face of continental E. from the Pyrenees to the Car path i ans. After his death arose, out of the vast empire he had founded, the several kingdoms of France, Germany, Lombardy, Burgundy, Lorraine, . Two centuries later, the Scand in avian powers awoke from the sleep of ages, and gave Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Ru ia to the European family of nations. About the end of the 11th cent., the Moors were driven out of the Iberian peninsula; and, after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks (1453), the European autonomy was definitively established. Then came the supremacy of the Emperor Charles V. over continental E.; in the 16th cent., the War of the Independence of the Netherlands; in the 17th, the ol ar D N IC A E ANT BR Ro ck IT al l IS S. es Ki ld d H Hebri a. C IS Sku M al ini Corth 5 De 0 LE Do b ty Mun Glasgo negalB ling S Ac hi [s. 346]