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ALGEBRA

Algebra is a kind of generalized arithmetic, in which numbers or quantities and operations, often also the results of operations, are represented by symbols. Algebra is an invaluable instrument in intricate calculations of all kinds, and enables operations to be performed and results obtained that by arithmetic would be impossible, and its scope is still being extended.

The beginnings of algebraic method are to be found in Diophantus, a Greek of the fourth century of our era, but it was the Arabians that introduced algebra to Europe and from them it received its name. The first Arabian treatise on algebra was published in the reign of the great Kaliph Al Mamun (813-833) by Mohammed Ben Musa. In 1202 Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa, who had travelled and studied in the East, published a work treating of algebra as then understood in the Arabian school. From this time to the discovery of printing considerable attention was given to algebra, and the work of Ben Musa and another Arabian treatise, called the Rule of Algebra, were translated into Italian.

The first printed work treating on algebra (also on arithmetic, etc) appeared at Venice in 1494, the author being a monk called Luca Pacioli da Bergo. Rapid progress now began to be made, and among the names of those to whom advances are to be attributed are Tarfcaglia and Cardan. About the middle of the sixteenth century the German Stifel introduced the plus, minus and square root symbols, and Recorde the equals sign. Recorde wrote the first English work on algebra. Francois Vieta, a French mathematician (1540-1603), first adopted the method which has led to so great an extension of modern algebra, by being the first who used general symbols for known quantities as well as for unknown. It was he also who first made the application of algebra to geometry.

Albert Girard extended the theory of equations by the supposition of imaginary quantities. The Englishman Harriot, early in the seventeenth century, discovered negative roots, and established the equality between the number of roots and the units in the degree of the equation. He also invented the less than and greater than signs, and Oughthred that of the x multiplication symbol. Descartes, though not the first to apply algebra to geometry, has, by the extent and importance of his applications, commonly acquired the credit of being so. The same discoveries have also been attributed to him as to Harriot, and their respective claims have caused much controversy. He obtained by means of algebra the definition and description of curves. Since his time algebra has been applied so widely in geometry and higher mathematics that we need only mention the names of Fermat, Wallis, Newton, Leibnitz, De Moivre, MacLaurin, Taylor, Euler, D'Alembert, Lagrange, Laplace, Fourier, Poisson, Gauss, Horner, De Morgan, Sylvester, Cayley. Boole, Jevons, and others have applied the algebraic method not only to formal logic but to political economy.
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AUTO DA FE

Auto da fe (Act of Faith) was the ritual execution of heretics by the Inquisition after a confession had been extracted. The ceremony always took place on a Sunday, but not at regular intervals, maybe once every two, three or four years. The victims were walked in procession wearing the san benito, the coroza, the rope around the neck, and carrying a yellow wax candle in their hand. The san benito was a penitential tunic of yellow cloth reaching to the knees and painted on it was a picture of the person who wore it, burning in flames with figures of dragons and devils in the act of fanning the flames. The costume indicated to the watching crowds the wearer was to be burned alive as an incorrigible heretic. If the person was only to do penance, then the san benito had on it a cross, and no painting or flames. If the victim was converted just before being led out, then the san benito was painted with the flames downward (known as fuego resuelto) and indicated that the wearer was not to be burned alive, but to be first strangled before burning.

At one time the san benito were hung up in the churches as monuments to the Inquisition. The coroza was a pasteboard cap, one metre high, ending in a point. On it were likewise painted crosses, flames and devils. Gags were kept on hand in case a victim insulted the tribunal or revealed what had occurred to them as they were led along to the place of execution where a large scaffold was erected.

The stake where the victim was to be burned varied in form, and was either a simple stake mounted in the ground, or was about three metres tall, with a small board near the top where the victim sat and was chained to the stake. Following prayers and attempts to convert the victim to the Roman Catholic faith, burning furzes were thrust into the face until the victim's face was burned before furzes around the base of the stake were ignited and the victim burned to death.

Victims were burned, because the inquisitors were forbidden to 'shed blood', the Roman Catholic church maintaining the line that it is untainted with blood.
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ENGRAVING

Engraving is the art of representing objects and depicting characters on metal, wood, precious stones, etc, by means of incisions made with instruments variously adapted to the substances operated upon and the description of work intended.

Impressions from metal plates are named engravings, prints, or plates those printed from wood being called indifferently wood engravings and wood-cuts. While, however, these impressions are not altogether dissimilar in appearance, the processes are distinct. In plates the lines intended to print are incised, and in order to take an impression the plate is daubed over with a thick ink which fills all the lines. The surface is then wiped perfectly clean, leaving only the incised lines filled with ink. A piece of damp paper is now laid on the face of the plate, and both are passed through the press, which causes the ink to pass from the plate to the paper. This operation needs to be repeated for every impression, for the wood block, on the contrary, the spaces between the lines of the drawing are cut out, leaving the lines standing up like type, the printing being from the inked surface of the raised lines, and effected much more rapidly than plate printing.

Engraving on wood, intended for printing or taking impressing from, long preceded engraving on metals. The art is of eastern origin, and at least as early as the 10th century engraving and printing from wood blocks was common in China. We first hear of wood engraving being cultivated in Europe by the Italians and Germans in the 13th century. For a hundred and fifty years, however, there is small indication of the practice of the art, which was at first confined to the production of block-books, playing cards, and religious prints. In the 15th century the art of printing from engraved plates was discovered in Florence by Maso Finiguerra.

Engraving had long been used as a means of decorating armour, metal vessels, etc, the engravers generally securing duplicates of their works before laying in the niello (a species of metallic enamel) by filling the lines with dark colour, and taking casts of them in sulphur. The discovery of the practicability of taking impressions upon paper led to engraving upon copper plates for the purpose of printing from.

The date of the earliest known niello proof upon paper is 1452. The work of the Florentine engravers, however, was almost at once surpassed in Venice and elsewhere in North Italy by Andrea Mantegna, Girolamo Mocetto, Giovanni Batista del Porto, and others. In Marc Antonio Raimondi, who wrought under the guidance of Raphael, and reproduced many of his works, the art reached its highest point of the earlier period, and Rome became the centre of a new school, which included Marco da Ravenna, Giulio Bonasone, and Agostino de Musis.

In the meantime, in Germany the progress of the art had been not less rapid. Of the oldest school the most important engraver is Martin Schongauer. He was, however, surpassed a generation later by Albert Durer who excelled both in copper and wood engraving, especially in the latter. Among his most famous contemporaries and successors were Burgkmair and Lucas Cranach. The Dutch and Flemish schools, of which Durer's contemporary Lucas van Leyden was the head, did much to enlarge the scope of the art, either by paying increased attention to the rendering of light and shade, and the expression of local colour, as in the case of Cornelius Cort and Bloemart; or by developing freedom and expression of line, as in the case of Goltzius and his pupils.

Rubens influenced engraving through the two Bolswerts, Vorstermann, Pontius, and de Jode, who engraved many of his works on a large size. Towards the end of the 17th century etching, which had before been rarely used, became more common, and was practised with great success by Rembrandt and other painters of that period. In France Noel Garnier founded a school of engraving about the middle of the 16th century; but it produced no work of any high distinction until the reign of Louis XIV, when Nanteuil's pupil Gerard Edelinck and Gerard Audran flourished. The former was skilled in using his graver to produce colour effects, the latter is famed for his engravings from Nicolas Poussin and Le Brun. But these were all surpassed about the middle of the 18th century by Wille, a German resident in Paris.

Before the middle of the 17th century England produced little noteworthy work, availing herself principally of the work of foreign engravers, of whom many took up temporary and even permanent residence. The first English engraver of marked importance was William Hogarth, whose works are distinguished for character and expression. Vivares, a Frenchman by birth, laid the foundation of the English school of landscape-engraving, which was still further developed by William Woollet, who was also an excellent engraver of the human figure.

In historical engraving a not less remarkable advance was made by Sir Robert Strange, and Richard Earlom produced some admirable works in mezzotint. In succession to these came William Sharp, James Bazire, Bartolozzi, James Heath, Bromley, Raimbach, and others.

The substitution of steel for copper plates around 1820 to 1830 gave the power of producing a much larger number of fine impressions, and opened new possibilities for highly-finished work.

During the closing years of the 18th century line engraving attained a depth of colour and fulness of tone in which earlier works generally are deficient, and during the following century it reached a perfectness of finish which it had not previously attained. A picture, whether figure or Landscuape, may be translated by line engraving with all its depth of colour, delicacy of tone, and effect of light and shade; the various textures, whether of naked flesh, silk, satin, woollen, or velvet, all successfully rendered by ingenious modes of laying the lines and combinations of lines of varying strength, width, and depth. Among engraverswho have produced historical works of large size and in the line manner the names of Raphael Mrghen, Longhi, Anderloni, Garavaglia, and Toschi, in Italy; of Forster, Henriquel-Dupont, Bridoux, and Blanchard, in France; of John Burnet, J H Robinson, Doo, J H Watt, and Lumb Stocks, in England, stand pre-eminent.

Among historical and portrait engravers in the stipple or dotted manner the names of H T Ryall, Henry Robinson, William Holl and Francis Holl, may well be mentioned.

In the period 1820 to 1860 landscape engraving attained a perfection in Great Britain which it had not attained in any other country, or at any other time. Among landscape engravers the names of George Gooke, William Miller, E Goodall, J Cousen, K Brandard, and William Forrest hold the foremost places. In mezzotinto engraving Samuel Cousins is unrivalled.

In the period 1830 to 1845 various publications called Annuals, composed of light literature in prose and verse, and illustrated by highly-finished engravings in steel, were very popular. The engravings were necessarily of small size, and are generally of great excellence. A number of them both figure and landscape are executed with such finish and completeness as to be esteemed perfect works. The unrivalled illustrations of Rogers' Poems and Rogers' Italy after Turner and Stothard belong to this period. Many of the originals of the engravings in the Annuals were finished pictures of large size.

A great part of the difficulty in engraving on a small scale from a large picture, consists in determining what details can be left out, and still preserve the full effect and character of the original. The most noted engravers for work of small size are Charles Heath, Charles Bolls, W Finden, E Finden, E. Portbury, J Goodyear, F Engleheart, Henry Le Keux, E Goodall, and W Miller.

After 1870 many plates were produced by a combination of etching and dry point, a comparatively cheap and rapid process. Such works were fashionable and very popular with collectors. But while some of them have been excellent of their kind, the process is of limited resource, and the best works in this manner will not stand comparison with the masterpieces of line engraving. Through lack of encouragement, change of fashion, and the adoption of other methods of reproduction such as photography, line engraving rapidly becoming a lost art in Great Britain. The men who made line engraving famous died, and there was no sufficient inducement for younger men to pursue that art. In France and in Germany some able line engravers were still in practice at the start of the 20th century.

Line Engraving, as implied by the term, is executed entirely in lines. The tools are few and simple. They consist of the graver or burin, the point, the scraper, and the burnisher; an oil-stone or hone, dividers, a parallel square, a magnifying lens; a bridge on which to rest the hand; a blind or shade of tissue paper, to make the light fall equally on the plate, callipers for levelling important erasures, a small steel anvil, a small pointed hammer, and punches. In etching, the following articles are required: a resinous mixture called etching-ground, capable, when spread very thinly over the plate, of resisting the action of the acids used; a dauber for laying the ground equally; a hand-vice; some hair-pencils of different sizes, and bordering wax, made of burgundy-pitch, bees'-wax, and a little oil.

In engraving, the plate, which is highly polished and must be free from all scratches, is first prepared by spreading over it a thin layer of ground. The surface is then smoked, and the outline of the picture transferred to it by pressure from the paper on which it has been drawn in fine outlines by a black-lead pencil. The picture is then drawn on the ground with the etching-needle, which removes the ground in every form produced by it, and leaves the bright metal exposed. A bank of wax is then put round the plate and diluted acid poured on it, which eats out the metal from the lines from which the ground has been removed, but leaves the rest of the plate untouched. The plate is then gone over with the graver, the etched lines clearly defuned, broken lines connected, new lines added, etc. Sometimes the plate is rebitten more than once, those parts which are sufficiently bitten in the first treatment being stopped with varnish, and only the selected parts exposed to after-biting. Finally the burnisher is brought into play alternately with the graver and point to give perfectness and finish.

Such is the process for landscape engraving. In historical and portrait engraving of the highest class, the lines are first drawn on the metal with a fine point and then cut in by the graver, first making a fine line and afterwards entering and re-entering till the desired width and depth of lines is attained. Much of the excellence of such engravings depends on the mode in which the lines are laid, their relative thickness, and the manner in which they cross each other. In historical engraving etching is but little used, and then only for accessories and the less important parts.

In Soft-ground Etching the ground, made by mixing lard with common etching-ground, is laid on the plate and smoked as before, but its extreme softness renders it very liable to injury. The outline of the subject is drawn on a piece of rough paper larger than the plate. The paper is then damped, and laid gently over the ground face upwards, and the margins folded over and pasted down on the back of the plate. When the paper is dry and tightly stretched the bridge is laid across, and with a hardish pencil and firm pressure the drawing is completed in the usual manner. The pressure makes the ground adhere to the back of the paper at all parts touched by the pencil, and on. the paper being lifted carefully off, these parts of the ground are lifted with it, and the corresponding parts of the plate thus left bare are exposed to the subsequent action of the acid. The granulated surface of the paper, causing similar granulations in the touches on the ground, gives the character of a chalk-drawing. The biting-in is effected in the same manner as already described, and the subject is finished by re-biting and dotting with the graver.

Stipple, or Chalk Engraving, in its pure state, is exclusively composed of dots, varying in size and form as the nature of the subject demands, but few stipple plates are now produced without a large admixture of line in all parts, flesh excepted. A great advance, however, was made in stipple engraving by the introduction of large and varied forms of dotting in the draperies, the results almost rivalling line engraving in richness and power.

The Mixed Style is based on mezzotinto, which, still forming the great mass of shading, is in this method combined with etching in the darker, and stipple in the more delicate parts. By this combination a plate will produce a larger number of good impressions than were it done entirely in mezzotinto.

The wood best adapted for engraving is box. It is cut across the grain in thicknesses equal to the height of type, these slices being subjected to a lengthened process of seasoning, and then smoothed for use. Every wood engraving is the representative of a finished drawing previously made on the block; the unshaded parts being cut away, and the lines giving form, shading, texture, etc, left standing in relief by excavations of varied size and character, made between them by gravers of different forms. Drawings on wood are made either with black-lead pencil alone or with pencil and indian ink, the latter being employed for the broader and darker masses. It is now much the practice to photograph drawings made in black and white upon the wood instead of making the drawing on the wood block. When the drawing is put on the wood by washes or by photography instead of being entirely done by pencil lines, the engraver has to devise the width and style of lines to be employed instead of cutting in facsimile, as is the case when the drawing is made entirely in lines. The tools required for wood engraving are similar but more numerous than those of the engraver on copper or steel.
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INQUISITION

The Inquisition was the name of two historic Roman Catholic tribunals. The first, mediaeval Inquisition was established in 1233 by Pope Gregory X in response to the spread of heretical sects, such as the Albigenses and Waldenses in northern Italy, southern France, and Germany. Judges of the Inquisition were chosen from among the Dominicans to try and judge cases of heresy, then considered intolerable by civil and ecclesiastical authorities alike. If found guilty of heresy, the heretic was turned over to secular authorities for punishment. Though burning at the stake was the ultimate penalty for unrecanted heresy, this penalty was uncommon in mediaeval times. The usual punishment was penance, fine, or imprisonment. Torture was used in the civil courts of the time and was also admitted in trials for heresy by Innocent IV in 1252, despite earlier papal denunciations of torture.

During the Catholic Reformation, the functions of the mediaeval Inquisition were assigned to the Holy Office in 1542. Called the Roman Inquisition, it was active against Protestantism and heard charges of heresy against Galileo in what became a famous trial. Its typical function in modern times was the examination of theological writings. The Holy Office was replaced by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1965. The Spanish Inquisition was a quasi- ecclesiastical tribunal established in 1478 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella primarily to examine converted Jews, and later converted Muslims, and punish those who were insincere in the conversion.

Pope Sixtus IV reluctantly approved the Spanish Inquisition, which was largely controlled by the Spanish monarchs. The Grand Inquisitor was always a Dominican, however, and the first and most notorious was T. de Torquemada. The Spanish Inquisition was much harsher than the mediaeval Inquisition and the death penalty was more often exacted, sometimes in mass autos-da-fe. It judged cases of bigamy, seduction, usury, and other crimes, and was active in Spain and her colonies. Estimates of its victims vary widely, ranging from less than 4,000 to more than 30,000 during its existence. By the 17th century the harshness of the Inquisition was greatly reduced and it was abolished altogether in 1834.
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RENAISSANCE

The Renaissance was that change in the outlook of Europe which took place during the centuries from the fourteenth to the sixteenth. In its broadest sense the Renaissance affected every department of human life. But in its narrower sense it refers to the revival of the learning of ancient Greece, and to the effects of that revival on the arts and literature of modern peoples. The Church in the Middle Ages had taught men to revere authority and to find in her teaching an answer to all the problems of life, whereas the Greeks taught men to inquire and to explore rather than to accept, and to enjoy rather than to suffer. It was this attitude of mind, more than anything else, which shook the medieval world to its foundations. The views of the ancient Greeks, now re-born into the world, were in sharp contrast with the ideals of the Middle Ages. From these ideals many men for a time turned with a feeling of contempt.

The Renaissance was a many-sided movement: it deeply influenced learning and education, art and architecture, science and invention, geography and exploration, and, above all, religion. After the fall of Rome, a knowledge of Greek had rapidly died out in the West and no provision was made for its teaching similar to that made for Latin. In Italy, owing to the closeness of its relations with the East, the number of scholars, monks, and others, who learnt some Greek was greater than elsewhere. It is not, surprising, therefore, that the revival of learning received its main impulse from Italy. From the time of Petrarch and Boccaccio, Italian scholars became more and more devoted to ancient studies, and they began to visit Constantinople, where Greek learning had been preserved. There they hunted out, copied, and eagerly studied the precious manuscripts of the past, and these opened up a new world of thought. Further, from the time that the Turks' crossed from Asia into Europe, some of the Greeks themselves began to travel westwards and to accept well-paid teaching posts in the wealthy Italian cities. And, though the revival began in Italy, the new ideas were rapidly circulated by the new printing presses invented at the time, and every nation in due course played its part in the Renaissance.

The great and wealthy city of Florence was the centre of the Italian Renaissance. Cosimo de Medici, a merchant prince who became ruler of the city, was a patron of the New Learning, and he encouraged Greek scholars to settle in Florence. His grandson, Lorenzo de Medici, known as The Magnificent, loved to gather round him the learned men of the day; he spent 60,000 pounds a year on books; and he caused 200 rare manuscripts to be brought from the East to the Medici library. Rome was second only to Florence as a centre of the New Learning. The Popes themselves became great patrons of learning. Nicholas V founded the Vatican Library. When the son of Lorenzo de Medici became Pope as Leo X, the Renaissance in Rome reached its highest point. Leo made Rome, as he said, ' the capital of the world in literature, as it is in everything else'. He provided a hundred professors for his Greek college in Rome, and he brought his father's library to the Holy City. The library was afterwards restored to Florence by his cousin Clement VII, another member of this remarkable Medici family. The New Learning influenced England from the time of Edward IV, and it made great headway in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII when the scholars known as the Oxford Reformers were flourishing.

The first Englishman to bring Greek manuscripts to England was William Selling. One of his pupils was Thomas Linacre, who went to Florence and shared the instruction given to the young Medici princes; he read in the Vatican Library, and made the acquaintance of Aldo at Venice. Another Oxford teacher who drew his inspiration from Italian sources was William Grocyn, one of the first men to give lectures on Greek literature at his University.

One of Grocyn's pupils was John Colet, who visited Italy in 1496 and returned to lecture on the Gospels in the Greek original at Oxford. He and Sir Thomas More, were friends of Erasmus, a Dutch scholar of international fame. Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, was herself a patroness of the New Learning. She founded two Cambridge colleges, Christ's and St. John's, and two Lady Margaret Professorships of Divinity, one at Oxford and one at Cambridge. The Revival of Learning was one aspect of the Renaissance; the outburst of artistic energy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was another. The painters of the new period broke away from the conventional art of the Middle Ages and began again to draw from living models. As with the artists, so with the sculptors. Donatello 'went straight with his mighty chisel to original sources - to youth and manhood, and the love of living'. The great figures of that age - Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian - still dominate the history of European art. Examples of their works, and of many other Italian artists of the Renaissance, as well as of the Northern artists - Holbein, Durer, and others - are to be seen in the magnificent collection at the National Gallery.

It was natural that men who sought their inspiration from the Greeks should turn with renewed interest to classical architecture. The ruins of ancient Rome provided examples ready to hand; and soon churches planned like classical temples were rising in every city in Italy. St. Peter's, Rome, was designed by Bramante, and the famous dome added by Michelangelo. But great as was the enthusiasm for this architecture Renaissance architecture did not establish itself in England until the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, though Henry VII's tomb at Westminster Abbey is an example of the Florentine art of the period.

The Renaissance period, filled as it was with a love of experiment, naturally produced a renewed interest in science. With the exception of isolated geniuses like Friar Roger Bacon, there were no medieval scientists worthy of the name. Practically no scientific discoveries had been made for centuries. Modern Science begins its history with the Renaissance and owes a good deal to Leonardo da Vinci. He was the first of a long line of experimenters whose work has continued to the present day. The greatest shock to the medieval notions of the universe was given by Copernicus. For two thousand years mankind with few exceptions had believed that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun revolved round our planet every twenty-four hours. Such had been the teaching of Ptolemy, the Greek scientist. Another Greek, Pythagoras, had questioned it, and advanced the extraordinary notion that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the universe; but there were few who accepted his theory until Copernicus turned his attention to the 'solar system'. Through slits cut in the walls of his house, Copernicus watched the movements of the planets. Just before he died in 1543 he published a book - 'The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies' - giving to the world the results of his observations.

Twenty years later the famous Galileo was born at Pisa, and it was he who perfected the telescope. He lived to popularise the theory of Copernicus, but he was nearly put to death for his pains and was forced by the Court of Inquisition to recant. The Italian Galileo, and the English Newton who discovered the laws of gravity, were the two greatest scientists of the seventeenth century. In the realm of geographical discovery, no age in the world' s history was more momentous than the Age of the Renaissance. Columbus, who discovered America; Vasco De Gama, who found the Cape Route to India; Cabot, Cartier, and Cortez, the discoverers of Newfoundland, Canada, and Mexico; Balboa, who first sailed on the Pacific; Magellan, whose ship was the first to sail round the world - all these and many more make the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries an era without parallel in the annals of discovery.

The new ideas which came surging into the world during the Renaissance acted in many respects as disruptive forces. This was particularly true in the realm of religion. An unquestioning acceptance of authority - i.e. of the teaching of the Catholic Church - was the keynote of the medieval attitude to life, but an eager, inquiring generation began to question this attitude. Men, too, were shocked by the moral decay of the Church and of the Papacy; voices were raised demanding reforms. Some reformers, like Colet and Erasmus, tried to reconcile the new ideas with the Church of Rome and worked to reform it; others, of whom Luther was the greatest, rejected altogether its authority.
The revolution in European history known as the Reformation was an indirect result of the Renaissance - of the New Learning which invited comparison between the present and the past; of the invention of printing which scattered broadcast the new ideas; and again, of the growing idea of the Nation and with it the supremacy of the State.
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ASP

The Asp, or Aspic (Naja, or Vipera haje) is a species of viper found in Egypt, resembling the cobra da capello or spectacle-serpent of the East Indies, and having a very venomous bite. When approached or disturbed it elevates its head and body, swells out its neck, and appears to stand erect to attack the aggressor. Hence the ancient Egyptians believed that the asps were guardians of the spots they inhabited, and the figure of this Asp, from ancient reptile was adopted as Egyptian monument. an emblem of the protecting genius of the world. The balancing motions made by it in the endeavour to maintain the erect attitude have led to the employment of the asp as a dancing Serpent by the African jugglers. The deaf adder that stoppeth her ear of Psalm LVIII. 4, 5 is translated asp in the margin, and seems to have been this species. Cleopatra is said to have committed suicide by means of an asp's bite, but the incident is generally associated with the Cerastes or horned viper, not with the haje. The name asp is also given to a viper (Vipera aspis) common on the continent of Europe.
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ADRIAN V

Adrian V was Pope. He was born Ottoboni da Fiesco. A native of Genoa, he settled, as legate of the pope, the dispute between King Henry III of England and his nobles, in favour of the former; but died a month after his election to the papal chair in 1276.
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ALIGHIERI DANTE

Alighieri Dante was an Italian poet. He was born in 1265 at Florence and died in 1321. Of a family belonging to the lower nobility, his education was confided to the learned Brunetto Latini. He is said also to have studied in various seats of learning, and it is certain that either at this time or in the course of his wandering life he made himself master of all the knowledge of his time.

He seems to have been quite a boy, no more than nine years of age, when he first saw Beatrice Portinari, and the love she awakened in him he has described in that record of his early years, the Vita Nuova, as well as in his later great work, the Divina Cornmedia, in terms which make it hard to distinguish the real personality of Beatrice from some ideal power of beauty and virtue of which she is to Dante the symbol. Their actual lives at least went far enough apart, Beatrice marrying a noble Florentine, Simone Bardi, in 1287, and dying three years afterwards; while the year following Dante married Gemma dei Donati, by whom he had seven children. At this time the Guelfic party in Florence became divided into the rival factions of Bianchi and Neri (Whites and Blacks), the latter being an extreme party while the former leaned to reconciliation with the Ghibellines. Dante's sympathies were with the Bianchi, and being a prior of the trades and a leading citizen in Florence he went on an embassy to Rome to influence the pope on behalf of the Bianchi.

The rival faction of the Neri, however, had got the upper hand in the city, and in the usual fashion of the time were burning the houses of their rivals and slaying them in the open street. In Dante's absence his enemies obtained a decree of banishment;
against him, coupled with a heavy fine, a sentence which was soon followed by another condemning him to be burned alive for malversation and peculation.

From this time the poet became, and to the end of his life remained, an exile; and his history, first lost by the indifference of contemporaries and then hallowed by the legends of later generations, becomes semi-mythical. He has told us himself how he wandered 'through almost all parts where this language is spoken,' and how hard he felt it 'to climb the stairs and eat the bitter bread of strangers.' During this period he is said to have visited many cities, Arezzo, Bologna, Sienna, etc, and even Paris.

In 1314 he found shelter with Can Grande della Scala at Verona, where he remained until 1318. In 1320 we find him staying at Ravenna with his friend Guido da Polenta. In September 1321 his sufferings and wanderings were ended by death. He was buried at Ravenna, where his bones still lie.

His great poem, the Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy), written in great part, if not altogether, during his exile, is divided into three parts, entitled Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The poet dreams that he has wandered into a dusky forest, when the shade of Virgil appears and offers to conduct him through hell and purgatory. Further the pagan poet may not go, but Beatrice herself shall lead him through paradise. The journey through hell is first described, and the imaginative power with which the distorted characters of the guilty and the punishments laid upon them are brought before us; the impressive pathos of these short histories - often compressed in Dante's severe style into a couple of lines - of Pope and Grhibelline, Italian lord and lady; the passionate depth of characterization, the subtle insight and intense faith, make up a whole which for significance and completeness has perhaps no rival in the work of any one man.

From hell the poet, still in the company of Virgil, ascends to purgatory, where the scenes are still mostly of the same kind though the punishments are only temporary. In the earthly paradise Dante beholds Beatrice in a scene of surpassing magnificence, ascends with her into the celestial paradise, and after roaming over seven spheres reaches the eighth, where he beholds 'the glorious company which surrounds the triumphant Redeemer.' In the ninth Dante feels himself in presence of the divine essence, and sees the souls of the blessed on thrones in a circle of infinite magnitude. The Deity himself, in the tenth, he cannot see for excess of light.

There are many notable translations of Dante's great poem. Amongst English versions we may mention those of Gary, Longfellow, and Dean Plumptre, and an excellent prose translation by Dr. John Carlyle. The Vita Nuova has been admirably translated by D. G. Rossetti in his Early Italian Poets.

Dante's other works are: Il Convito (the Banquet), a series of philosophical commentaries on the author's canzoni; Il Canzoniere, a collection of poems; a Latin treatise, De Monarchia, a work intended to prove the supremacy of the head of the holy Roman Empire; a treatise on the Italian language entitled, De Vulgari Eloquio; and an inquiry into the relative altitude of the water and the land, De Aqua et Terra.
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ALOIS DA CADAMOSTO

Alois da Cadamosto was a Venetian explorer. He was born about 1432 and died in 1464. He explored the west coast of Africa as far south as the Gambia. His Book of the First Voyage over the Ocean to the Land of Negroes in Lower Ethiopia was published in 1507.
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ALVISE DA CADAMOSTO

Alvise Da Cadamosto was a Venetian explorer. He was born in 1432 and died in 1477. He explored the west coast of Africa as far south as the Rio Grande, and discovered the Cape Verde Islands in 1457.
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