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487

CAT,1 properly the name of the well-known domesticated feline animal usually termed by naturalists Felis domestica, but in a wider sense employed to denote all the more typical members of the family Felidae. According to the New English Dictionary, although the origin of the word “cat” is unknown, yet the name is found in various languages as far back as they can be traced. In old Western Germanic it occurs, for instance, so early as from a.d. 400 to 450; in old High German it is ŏchazza or catero, and in Middle German kattaro. Both in Gaelic and in old French it is cat, although sometimes taking the form of chater in the latter; the Gaelic designation of the European wild cat being cat fiadhaich. In Welsh and Cornish the name is cath. If Martial’s cattae refer to this animal, the earliest Latin use of the name dates from the 1st century of our era. In the work of Palladius on agriculture, dating from about the year a.d. 350, reference is made to an animal called catus or cattus, as being useful in 488 granaries for catching mice. This usage, coupled with the existence of a distinct term in Gaelic for the wild species, leaves little doubt that the word “cat” properly denotes only the domesticated species. This is confirmed by the employment in Byzantine Greek of the term κάττος or κάττα to designate domesticated cats brought from Egypt. It should be added that the αἴλουρος of the Greeks, frequently translated by the older writers as “cat,” really refers to the marten-cat, which appears to have been partially domesticated by the ancients and employed for mousing.

As regards the origin of the domesticated cats of western Europe, it is well known that the ancient Egyptians were in the habit of domesticating (at least in some degree) the Egyptian race of the African wild cat (Felis ocreata maniculata), and also of embalming its remains, of which vast numbers have been found in tombs at Beni Hasan and elsewhere in Egypt. These Egyptian cats are generally believed by naturalists to have had a large share in the parentage of the European breeds, which have, however, in many cases been crossed to a greater or less extent with the European wild cat (F. catus).

One of the features by which the Egyptian differs from the European wild cat is the longer and less bushy tail; and it has been very generally considered that the same feature is characteristic of European domesticated cats. According, however, to Dr E. Hamilton, “the measurement of a number of tails of the [European] wild cat and of the domestic cat gives a range between 11 in. and 14½ in., the longer length being quite as often found in the wild cats as in the domestic. The bushy appearance depends entirely on the length of the fur, and accords with the thick fur of the rest of the body of the wild cat, while in the domestic race the fur both on the body and tail is thinner and softer.”

Possibly those domesticated cats with unusually short and bushy tails may have a larger share of European wild-cat blood; while, conversely, such wild cats as show long tails may have a cross of domesticated blood.

More importance was attached by Dr A. Nehring of Berlin (SB. Ges. Naturfor., Berlin, 1887) to the colour of the soles of the hind-feet as a means of determining the relationship of the domesticated cat of Europe. According to his observations, in the Egyptian wild cat the pads of the toes are wholly black, while the black extends back either continuously or in long stripes as far as the calcaneum or heel-bone. In the European wild cat, on the other hand, the black is limited to a small round spot on the pads, while the colour of the hair as far back as the heel-bone is yellowish or yellowish-grey. Since in all domesticated cats retaining the colouring of the wild species the soles of the hind-feet correspond in this particular with the Egyptian rather than with the European wild cat, the presumption is in favour of their descent from the former rather than from the latter.

Later, Dr Nehring (op. cit. 1889) came to the conclusion that the domesticated cat has a dual parentage, one stock coming from south-eastern Asia and the other from north-eastern Africa; in other words, from a domesticated Chinese cat (itself derived from a wild Chinese species) on the one hand, and from the Egyptian cat on the other. The ordinary domesticated cats of Europe are, however, mainly of African origin, although they have largely crossed, especially in Germany (and probably also in Great Britain), with the wild cat. The same author was likewise of opinion that the domestication or taming of various species of wild cats took place chiefly among nationalities of stationary or non-nomadic habits who occupied themselves with agricultural pursuits, since it would be of vital importance that their stores of grain should be adequately protected from the depredations of rats and mice.

The foregoing opinion as to the dual parentage of our domesticated cats receives support from observations made many years ago by E. Blyth, which have recently been endorsed and amplified by R.I. Pocock (Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1907). According to these observations, two distinct types of so-called tabby cats are recognizable. In the one the pattern consists of narrow vertical stripes, and in the other of longitudinal or obliquely longitudinal stripes, which, on the sides of the body, tend to assume a spiral or sub-circular arrangement characteristic of the blotched tabby. This latter type appears to be the true “tabby”; since that word denotes a pattern like that of watered silk. One or other of these types is to be found in cats of almost all breeds, whether Persian, short-haired or Manx; and there appear to be no intermediate stages between them. Cats of the striped type are no doubt descended from the European and North African wild cats; but the origin of cats exhibiting the blotched pattern appears to be unknown. As it was to a cat of the latter kind that Linnaeus gave the name of Felis catus, Pocock urges that this title is not available for the European wild cat, which he would call Felis sylvestris. Without accepting this proposed change in nomenclature, which is liable to lead to confusion without any compensating advantage, it may be suggested that the blotched tabby type represents Dr Nehring’s presumed Chinese element in the cat’s parentage, and that the missing wild stock may be one of the numerous phases of the leopard-cat (F. bengalensis), in some of which an incipient spiral arrangement of the markings may be noticed on the shoulder.

As to the introduction of domesticated cats into Europe, the opinion is very generally held that tame cats from Egypt were imported at a relatively early date into Etruria by Phoenician traders; and there is decisive evidence that these animals were established in Italy long before the Christian era. The progeny of these cats, more or less crossed with the indigenous species, thence gradually spread over Europe, to become mingled at some period, according to Dr Nehring’s hypothesis, with an Asiatic stock. The earliest written record of the introduction of domesticated cats into Great Britain dates from about a.d. 936, when Hywel Dda, prince of South Wales, enacted a law for their protection. “The Romans,” writes Dr Hamilton, “were probably the original introducers of this cat, and as the final evacuation of Britain by that nation took place under the emperor Valentinian about a.d. 436, the period of its introduction may certainly be dated some 500 years previous to the Welsh chronicle and even much earlier.” It is added that the remains of cats from Roman villas at Silchester and Dursley are probably referable to the domesticated breed.

Before proceeding to notice some of the different types of domesticated cats, a few lines may be devoted to the wild European species, F. catus. Beyond stating that in colour it conforms very closely to the striped phase of domesticated tabby, it will be unnecessary to describe the species. Its geographical range was formerly very extensive, and included Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Transylvania, Galicia, the Caucasus as far as the Caspian, southern Russia, Italy, Spain, Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria, Servia, and portions of central and northern Asia. “At the present time,” observes Dr Hamilton, “the wild cat has become almost extinct in many of the above districts. Examples may perhaps occasionally still be found in the uninhabited forests of Hungary and Transylvania, and occasionally in Spain and Greece, as well as in the Caucasus and in some of the Swiss cantons, but the original race has in most countries interbred with the domestic cat wherever the latter has penetrated.” In Great Britain wild cats survive only in some of the Scottish forests, and even there it is difficult to decide whether pure-bred specimens are extant. Remains of the wild cat occur in English caverns; while from those of Ireland (where the wild species has apparently been unknown during the historic period) have been obtained jaws and teeth which it has been suggested are referable to the Egyptian rather than to the European wild cat. Such a determination is, however, extremely hazardous, even if it be admitted that the remains of cats from the rock-fissures of Gibraltar pertain to Felis ocreata.

Plate I.

Plate II.

The favourite haunts of the wild cat are mountain forests where masses or rocks or cliffs are interspersed with trees, the crevices in these rocks or the hollow trunks of trees affording sites for the wild cat’s lair, where its young are produced and reared. In the Spanish plains, however, the young are often produced in nests built in trees, or among tall bamboos in 489 cane-brakes. “To fight like a wild cat” is proverbial, and wild cats are described as some of the most ferocious and untamable of all animals. How far this untamable character lends support to the view of the origin of our domesticated breeds has not yet been determined. Hares, rabbits, field-mice, water-rats, rats, squirrels, moles, game-birds, pigeons, and small birds, form the chief food of the wild cat.

Apart from the above-mentioned division of the striped members of both groups into two types according to the pattern of their markings, the domesticated cats of western Europe are divided into a short-haired and a long-haired group. Of these, the former is the one which bears the closest relationship to the wild cats of Africa and of Europe, the latter being an importation from the East. The striped (as distinct from the blotched) short-haired tabby is probably the one most nearly allied to the wild ancestors, the stripes being, however, to a great extent due to the European wild cat. In one direction the tabby shows a tendency to melanism which culminates in complete blackness, while in the other direction there is an equally marked tendency to albinism; grey cats, which may be regarded as tabbies whose stripes have disappeared, forming the connecting link between the tabby and the white cat. A mixture of the melanistic with the albinistic type will of course give rise to parti-coloured cats. A third colour-phase, the “erythristic” or red, is represented by the sandy cat, the female of which takes the form of the “tortoise-shell,” characterized, curiously enough, by the colour being a blend of black, white, and sandy. The so-called orange tabby is one phase of the erythristic type.

As to long-haired cats, there appear originally to have been two closely-allied strains, the Angora and the Persian, of which the former has been altogether replaced in western Europe by the latter. That these long-haired cats have an ancestry, to some extent at any rate distinct from the ordinary short-haired breeds, is practically certain, and it has been suggested that they are derived from the “manul” cat, or Pallas’s cat (Felis manul), of the deserts of central Asia, which is a long-haired and bushy-tailed species with comparatively slight striping. The fact that in tabby Persians the body-markings are never so strong as in the short-haired breeds is in some degree confirmatory of this, as suggesting descent from a nearly whole-coloured type. At the present day, however, Persians exhibit nearly all the colour and pattern types of the short-haired breeds, the “orange Persian” representing the erythristic phase.

Turning to the tailless or so-called Manx cats, in which the tail should be represented merely by a tuft of hair without any remnant of bone, it seems that the strain is to be met with in many parts of Russia, and there is a very general opinion that it originally came from Japan or some other far eastern country. Throughout Japan, China, Siam, and the Malay countries, normal long-tailed cats are indeed seldom seen. Instead of these are cats with more or less abbreviated tails, showing in greater or less degree a decided kink or bend near the tip. In other cases the tail is of the short curling type of that of a bulldog; sometimes it starts quite straight, but divides in a fork-like manner near the tip; and in yet other instances it is altogether wanting, as in the typical Manx cats. These kink-tailed or tailless cats are moreover smaller in size than the ordinary short-tailed breeds, with rather longer hair, whose texture approaches that of rabbit-fur, and a cry said to be like that of the jungle-cat (F. chaus) of India and Africa, and more dog-like habits. Unless the jungle-cat, which is a nearly whole-coloured species, can claim the position, the ancestry of these Manx-Malay cats is still unknown. Kink-tailed cats, it should be added, are also known from Madagascar.

Among the domesticated cats of India a spotted type of colouring, with a more or less decided tendency for the spots to coalesce into stripes, is very noticeable; and it is probable that these cats are derived from the spotted Indian desert-cat (F. ornata), with a certain amount of crossing from other species. The so-called F. torquata of India is probably based on cats of this type which have reverted to the wild state. Other Indian cats with a tawny or fulvous type of colouring are probably the more or less modified descendants of the jungle-cat. From the same stock may be derived the Abyssinian breed, in which the ears are relatively large and occasionally tipped with long hairs (thus recalling the tufted ears of the jungle-cat). The colour is typically reddish-brown, each individual hair being “ticked” like that of a wild rabbit, whence the popular name of “bunny cat.” Another African breed is the Mombasa cat, in which the hair is reported to be unusually short and stiff.

By far the most remarkable of all the Old World domesticated breeds is, however, the royal Siamese cat, which almost certainly has an origin quite distinct from that of the ordinary European breeds; this being rendered evident not only by the peculiar type of colouring, but likewise by the cry, which is quite unmistakable. Siamese cats may have the tail either straight or kinked, but whether the latter feature belongs of right to the breed, or has been acquired by crossing with the ordinary black and tabby kink-tailed cats of the country, is not known. In the royal Siamese breed the head is rather long and pointed, the body also elongated with relatively slender limbs, the coat glossy and close, the eyes blue, and the general colour some shade of cream or pink, with the face, ears, feet, under-parts, and tail chocolate or seal-brown. There is however a wholly chocolate-coloured strain in which the eyes are yellow. The most remarkable feature about the breed is that the young are white. “The kittens,” observes a lady writer, “are born absolutely white, and in about a week a faint pencilling comes round the ears, and gradually all the points come. At four or five months they are lovely, as generally they retain their baby whiteness, which contrasts well with their almost black ears, deep-brown markings, and blue eyes.” In constitution these cats are extremely delicate. The blue eyes and the white coat of the kitten indicate that the Siamese breed is a semi-albino, which when adult tends towards melanism, such a combination of characters being apparently unknown in any other animal. If the frequent presence of a kink in the tail be an inherent feature, the breed is evidently related to the other kink-tailed Malay cats which, as already stated, have a cry differing from that of European cats. Should this be so, then if the ordinary Malay cats are the descendants of the jungle-cat, we shall have to assign the same ancestry to the Siamese breed.

Although definite information on this point is required, it seems probable that the southern part of North America and South America possessed certain native domesticated breeds of cats previous to the European conquest of the country; and if this be so, it will be obvious that these breeds must be derived from indigenous wild species. One of these breeds is the Paraguay cat, which when adult weighs only about three pounds, and is not more than a quarter the size of an ordinary cat. The body is elongated, and the hair, especially on the tail, short, shiny and close. This small size and elongated form suggest origin from the jaguarondi (F. jaguarondi), a chestnut-coloured wild species; but information appears to be lacking with regard to the colouring of the domesticated breed. Another South American breed is said to be free from the hideous “caterwauling” of the ordinary cat. In old days New Mexico was the home of a breed of hairless cats, said to have been kept by the ancient Aztecs, but now well-nigh if not completely extinct. Although entirely naked in summer, these cats developed in winter a slight growth of hair on the back and the ridge of the tail.

CATABOLISM, or Katabolism (Gr. κατἀ, down, βολή, a throw), the biological term for the reverse of anabolism, namely the breaking down of complex into simpler substances, destructive metabolism (see Physiology).

CATACLYSM (Gr. κατακλυσμός, a deluge), a great flood or deluge (q.v.). The term is used in geology to denote an 490 overwhelming catastrophe which has produced sudden changes in the earth’s surface; and also, figuratively, of any great and violent change which sweeps away the existing social or political order.

CATACOMB, a subterranean excavation for the interment of the dead or burial-vault. In this sense the word “catacomb” has gained universal acceptance, and has found a place in most modern languages. The original term, catacumbae, however, had no connexion with sepulture, but was simply the name of a particular locality in the environs of Rome. It was derived from the Greek κατά and κύμβη, “a hollow,” and had reference to the natural configuration of the ground. In the district that bore this designation, lying close to the Appian Way, the basilica of San Sebastiano was erected, and the extensive burial-vaults beneath that church—in which, according to tradition, the bodies of the apostles St Peter and St Paul rested for a year and seven months previous to their removal to the basilicas which bear their names—were, in very early times, called from it coemeterium ad catacumbas, or catacumbas alone. From the celebrity of this cemetery as an object of pilgrimage its name became extensively known, and in entire forgetfulness of the origin of the word, catacumbae came to be regarded as a generic appellation for all burial-places of the same kind. This extension of the term to Christian burial-vaults generally dates from the 9th century, and obtained gradual currency through the Christian world. The original designation of these places of sepulture is crypta or coemeterium.

The largest number of Christian catacombs belong to the 3rd and the early part of the 4th centuries. The custom of subterranean interment gradually died out, and entirely ceased with the sack of Rome by Alaric, a.d. 410. “The end of the catacomb graves,” writes Mommsen (Cont. Rev., May 1871), “is intimately connected with the end of the powerful city itself.... Poverty took the place of wealth, ... the traditions of the Christian tomb-architects sank into utter insignificance, and the expanse of the wasted Campagna now offered room enough to bury the few bodies, without having to descend as once far down below the surface of the earth.” The earliest account of the catacombs, that of St Jerome narrating his visits to them when a schoolboy at Rome, about a.d. 354, shows that interment in them was even then rare if it had not been altogether discontinued; and the poet Prudentius’s description of the tomb of the Christian martyr Hippolytus, and the cemetery in which it stood, leads us to the same conclusion. With the latter part of the 4th century a new epoch in the history of the catacombs arose—that of religious reverence. In the time of Pope Damasus, a.d. 366-384, the catacombs had begun to be regarded with special devotion, and had become the resort of large bands of pilgrims, for whose guidance catalogues of the chief burial-places and the holy men buried in them were drawn up. Some of these lists are still extant.1 Pope Damasus himself displayed great zeal in adapting the catacombs to their new purpose, restoring the works of art on the walls, and renewing the epitaphs over the graves of the martyrs. In this latter work he employed an engraver named Furius Philocalus, the exquisite beauty of whose characters enables the smallest fragment of his work to be recognized at a glance. This gave rise to extensive alterations in their construction and decoration, which has much lessened their value as authentic memorials of the religious art of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Subsequent popes manifested equal ardour, with the same damaging results, in the repair and adornment of the catacombs, and many of the paintings covering their walls, which have been assigned to the period of their original construction, are really the work of these later times. The catacombs shared in the devastation of Rome by the Goths under Vitiges in the 6th century and by the Lombards at a later period; and partly through the spoliation of these barbarian invaders, partly through the neglect of those who should have been their guardians, they sank into such a state of decay and pollution that, as the only means of preserving the holy remains they enshrined from further desecration, Pope Paul I., in the latter part of the 8th century, and Pope Paschal, at the beginning of the 9th, entered upon the work of the translation of the relics, which was vigorously carried on by successive pontiffs until the crypts were almost entirely despoiled of their dead. The relics having been removed, the visits of pilgrims naturally ceased, and by degrees the very existence of those wonderful subterranean cemeteries was forgotten. Six centuries elapsed before the accidental discovery of a sepulchral chamber by some labourers digging for pozzolana earth (May 31, 1578) revealed to the amazed inhabitants of Rome “the existence,” to quote a contemporary record, “of other cities concealed beneath their own suburbs.” Baronius, the ecclesiastical historian, was one of the first to visit the new discovery, and his Annals in more than one place evidence his just appreciation of its importance. The true “Columbus of this subterranean world,” as he has been aptly designated, was the indefatigable Antonio Bosio (d. 1629), who devoted his life to the personal investigation of the catacombs, the results of which were given to the world in 1632 in a huge folio, entitled Roma sotterranea, profusely illustrated with rude but faithful plans and engravings. This was republished in a Latin translation with considerable alterations and omissions by Paolo Aringhi in 1651; and a century after its first appearance the plates were reproduced by Giovanni Bottari in 1737, and illustrated with great care and learning. Some additional discoveries were described by Marc Antonio Boldetti in his Osservazioni, published in 1720; but, writing in the interests of the Roman Church with an apologetic, not a scientific object, truth was made to bend to polemics, and little addition to our knowledge of the catacombs is to be gained from his otherwise important work. The French historian of art, Seroux d’Agincourt, 1825, by his copious illustrations, greatly facilitated the study of the architecture of the catacombs and the works of art contained in them. The works of Raoul Rochette display a comprehensive knowledge of the whole subject, extensive reading, and a thorough acquaintance with early Christian art so far as it could be gathered from books, but he was not an original investigator. The great pioneer in the path of independent research, which, with the intelligent use of documentary and historical evidence, has led to so vast an increase in our acquaintance with the Roman Catacombs, was Padre Marchi of the Society of Jesus. His work, Monumenti delle arti christiane primitive, is the first in which the strange misconception, received with unquestioning faith by earlier writers, that the catacombs were exhausted sand-pits adapted by the Christians to the purpose of interment, was dispelled, and the true history of their formation demonstrated. Marchi’s line of investigation was followed by the Commendatore De Rossi, and his brother Michele, the former of whom was Marchi’s fellow-labourer during the latter part of his explorations; and it is to them that we owe the most exhaustive scientific examination of the whole subject. The Catacombs of Rome are the most extensive with which we are acquainted, and, as might be expected in the centre of the Christian world, are in many respects the most remarkable. No others have been so thoroughly examined and illustrated. These may, therefore, be most appropriately selected for description as typical examples.

Our description of the Roman Catacombs cannot be more appropriately introduced than by St Jerome’s account of his visits to them in his youth, already referred to, which, after the lapse of above fifteen centuries, presents a Catacombs of Rome. most accurate picture of these wonderful subterranean labyrinths. “When I was a boy,” he writes, “receiving my education in Rome, I and my schoolfellows used, on Sundays, to make the circuit of the sepulchres of the apostles and martyrs. Many a time did we go down into the catacombs. These are 491 excavated deep in the earth, and contain, on either hand as you enter, the bodies of the dead buried in the wall. It is all so dark there that the language of the prophet (Ps. lv. 15) seems to be fulfilled, ‘Let them go down quick into hell.’ Only occasionally is light let in to mitigate the horror of the gloom, and then not so much through a window as through a hole. You take each step with caution, as, surrounded by deep night, you recall the words of Virgil—

“Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.”2

In complete agreement with Jerome’s vivid picture the visitor to the Roman Catacombs finds himself in a vast labyrinth of narrow galleries, usually from 3 to 4 ft. in width, interspersed with small chambers, all excavated at successive levels, in the strata of volcanic rock subjacent to the city and its environs, and constructed originally for the interment of the Christian dead. The galleries are not the way of access to the cemeteries, but are themselves the cemeteries, the dead being buried in long low horizontal recesses, excavated in the vertical walls of the passages, rising tier above tier like the berths in a ship, from a few inches above the floor to the springing of the arched ceiling, to the number of five, six or even sometimes twelve ranges. These galleries are not arranged on any definite plan, but, as will be seen from the plan (fig. 1), they intersect one another at different angles, producing an intricate network which it is almost impossible to reduce to any system. They generally run in straight lines, and as a rule preserve the same level. The different storeys of galleries lie one below the other (fig. 2) to the number of four or five (in one part of the cemetery of St Calixtus they reach seven storeys), and communicate with one another by stairs cut out of the living rock. Light and air are introduced by means of vertical shafts (luminaria) running up to the outer air, and often serving for several storeys. The drawing (fig. 3) from Northcote gives a very correct idea of these galleries, with the tiers of graves pierced in the walls. The doorways which are seen interrupting the lines of graves are those of the family sepulchral chambers, or cubicula, of which we shall speak more particularly hereafter.

The graves, or loculi, as they are commonly designated, were, in the Christian cemeteries, with only a few exceptions (Padre Marchi produces some from the cemetery of St Ciriaca, Monum. primitiv. tav. xiv. xliii. xliv.), parallel with the length of the gallery. In the pagan cemeteries, on the other hand, the sepulchral recess as a rule entered the rock like an oven at right angles to the corridor, the body being introduced endways. The plan adopted by the Christians saved labour, economized space, and consulted reverence in the deposition of the corpse. These loculi were usually constructed for a single body only. Some, however, were formed to contain two, three, or four, or even more corpses. Such recesses were known respectively as bisomi, trisomi, quadrisomi, &c., terms which often appear in the sepulchral inscriptions. After the introduction of the body the loculi were closed with the greatest care, either with slabs of marble the whole length of the aperture, or with huge tiles, three being generally employed, cemented together with great exactness so as to prevent the escape of the products of decomposition (fig. 4). Where any epitaph was set up—an immense number are destitute of any inscription at all—it is always painted or engraved on these slabs or tiles. In the earlier interments the 492 epitaph is usually daubed on the slab in red or black paint. In later examples it is incised in the marbles, the letters being rendered clearer by being coloured with vermilion. The enclosing slab very often bears one or more Christian symbols, such as the dove, the anchor, the olive-branch, or the monogram of Christ (figs. 5, 6). The palm branch, which is also of frequent occurrence, is not an indisputable mark of the last resting-place of a martyr, being found in connexion with epitaphs of persons dying natural deaths, or those prepared by persons in their lifetime, as well as in those of little children, and even of pagans. Another frequent concomitant of these catacomb interments, a small glass vessel containing traces of the sediment of a red fluid, embedded in the cement of the loculus (fig. 7), has no better claim. The red matter proves to be the remains of wine, not of blood; and the conclusion of the ablest archaeologists is that the vessels were placed where they are found, after the eucharistic celebration or agape on the day of the funeral or its anniversary, and contained remains of the consecrated elements as a kind of religious charm. Not a few of the slabs, it is discovered, have done double duty, bearing a pagan inscription on one side and a Christian one on the other. These are known as opisthographs. The bodies were interred wrapped in linen cloths, or swathed in bands, and were frequently preserved by embalming. In the case of poorer interments the destruction of the body was, on the contrary, often accelerated by the use of quicklime.

Interment in the wall-recess or loculus, though infinitely the most common, was not the only mode employed in the catacombs. Other forms of very frequent recurrence are the table tomb and arched tomb, or arcosolium. From the annexed woodcuts it will be seen that these only differ in the form of the surmounting recess. In each case the arched tomb was formed by an oblong chest, either hollowed out of the rock, or built of masonry, and closed with a horizontal slab. But in the table-tomb (fig. 8) the recess above, essential for the introduction of the corpse, is square, while in the arcosolium (fig. 9), a form of later date, it is semicircular. Sarcophagi are also found in the catacombs, but are of rare occurrence. They chiefly occur in the earlier cemeteries, and the costliness of their construction confined their use to the wealthiest classes—e.g. in the cemetery of St Domitilla, herself a member of the imperial house. Another unfrequent mode of interment was in graves like those of modern times, dug in the floor of the galleries (Marchi, u.s., tav. xxi. xxvi.). Table-tombs and arcosolia are by no means rare in the corridors of the catacombs, but they belong more generally to the cubicula, or family vaults, of which we now proceed to speak.

These cubicula are small apartments, seldom more than 12 ft. square, usually rectangular, though sometimes circular or polygonal, opening out of the main corridors. They are not unfrequently ranged regularly along the sides of the galleries, the doors of entrance, as may be seen in a previous illustration (fig. 3), following one another in as orderly succession as the bedchamber doors in the passage of a modern house. The roof is sometimes 493 flat, but is more usually vaulted, and sometimes rises into a cupola. Both the roof and the walls are almost universally coated with stucco and covered with fresco paintings—in the earlier works merely decorative, in the later always symbolical or historical. Each side of the cubiculum, except that of the entrance, usually contains a recessed tomb, either a table-tomb or an arcosolium. That facing the entrance was the place of greatest honour, where in many instances the remains of a martyr were deposited, whose tomb, according to primitive usage, served as an altar for the celebration of the eucharist. This was sometimes, as in the Papal crypt of St Calixtus (fig. 10), protected from irreverence by lattice work (transennae) of marble. The cubiculum was originally designed for the reception of a very limited number of dead. But the natural desire to be buried near one’s relatives caused new tombs to be cut in the walls, above and around and behind the original tombs, the walls being thus completely honeycombed with loculi, sometimes as many as seventy, utterly regardless of the paintings originally depicted on the walls. Another motive for multiplying the number of graves operated when the cubiculum contained the remains of any noted saint or martyr. The Christian antiquary has cause continually to lament the destruction of works of art due to this craving. One of the most perfect examples of early Christian pictorial decoration, the so-called “Dispute with the Doctors,” in the catacomb of Calixtus, the “antique style of beauty” of which is noticed by Kugler, has thus suffered irreparable mutilation, the whole of the lower part of the picture having been destroyed by the excavation of a fresh grave-recess (Bottari, vol. ii. tav. 15). The plates of De Rossi, Ferret, and, indeed, all illustrations of the catacombs, exhibit frequent examples of the same destructive superstition. The illustrations (figs. 11 and 12), taken from De Rossi’s great work, representing two of the cubicula in the cemetery of St Calixtus, show the general arrangement of the loculi and the character of the frescoes which ornament the walls and roof. These paintings, it will be seen, are simply decorative, of the same style as the wall-paintings of the baths, and those of Pompeii.

Each cubiculum was usually the burying-place of some one family, all the members of which were interred in it, just as in the chantry-chapels connected with medieval churches. In them was celebrated the funeral-feast on the day of burial and on its anniversary, as well as the eucharist, which was the invariable accompaniment of funerals in the primitive church (Bingham, Orig. Eccl. bk. xxiii. c. iii. 12). The funeral-banquet descended to the Christian church from pagan times, and was too often profaned by heathen licence. St Augustine, in several passages, inveighs against those who thus by “gluttony and insobriety buried themselves over the buried,” and “made themselves drunk in the chapels of the martyrs, placing their excesses to the score of religious reverence for the dead.” (August., De Mor. Eccl. Cathol., c. 34, Contr. Faust, lib. xx. c. 21, Confess., lib vi. c. 2) Some curious frescoes representing these funeral-feasts, found in the cubicula which were the scene of them, are 494 reproduced by Bosio (pp. 355, 391) and others. A romantic air has been thrown over these burial chapels by the notion that they were the places of worship used by the Christians in times of persecution. This to a certain extent is doubtless true, as in the case of the chapel of Santa Priscilla, where the altar or stone coffin of a martyr remains, with a small platform behind it for the priest or bishop to stand upon. But that they can have been so used to any large extent is rendered impossible by their limited dimensions, as none of them could hold more than fifty or sixty persons. In some of the catacombs, however, there are larger halls and connected suites of chapels which may possibly have been constructed for the purpose of congregational worship during the dark periods when the public exercise of the Christian religion was made penal. The most remarkable of these is in the cemetery of Sant’ Agnese (see plan, fig. 13). It consists of five rectangular compartments, three on one side of the corridor and two on the other, connected by a passage intersecting the gallery at right angles. Two of the five compartments are supposed to have been assigned to male, and two to female worshippers, the fifth, at the extremity of the whole, being reserved for the altar and its ministers. In the centre of the end-wall stands a stone chair (fig. 14), considered to have been the episcopal cathedra, with a bench for the clergy on each side. There is no trace of an altar, which may, Marchi thinks, have been portable. The walls of the compartments are occupied by arched sepulchral recesses, above and below which are tiers of ordinary graves or loculi. The arrangements are certainly such as indicate a congregational purpose, but the extreme narrowness of the suite, and still more of the passage which connects the two divisions, must have rendered it difficult for any but a small number to take any intelligent part in the services at the same time. Although the idea of the use of the catacombs for religious worship may have been pressed too far, there can be no doubt that the sacred rites of the church were celebrated within them. We have already spoken of the eucharistic celebrations of which the cubicula were the scene; and still existing baptisteries prove that the other sacrament was also administered there. The most remarkable of these baptisteries is that in the catacomb of San Pontianus (fig. 15). Ten steps lead down to a basin of sufficient depth for immersion, supplied by a spring. Some of the subterranean chambers contain armed seats and benches cut out of the tufa rock. These are supposed by Marchi and others to indicate schoolrooms, where the catechumens were instructed by the bishop or presbyters. But this theory wants verification. It is impossible not to be struck with the remarkable analogy between these rock-hewn chairs and those discovered in the Etruscan tombs, of the purpose of which no satisfactory explanation has been given.

Very exaggerated statements have been made as to the employment of the catacombs as dwelling-places by the Christians in times of persecution. We have, however, sufficient evidence that they were used as places of refuge from Theories of the use of the catacombs. the fury of the heathen, in which the believers—especially the bishops and clergy, who would naturally be the first objects of attack—might secrete themselves until the storm had blown over. This was a purpose for which they were admirably adapted both by the intricacy of their labyrinthine passages, in which any one not possessing the clue would be inevitably lost, and the numerous small chambers and hiding-places at different levels which might be passed unperceived in the dark by the pursuers. As a rule also the catacombs had 495 more than one entrance, and frequently communicated with an arenaria or sand-quarry; so that while one entrance was carefully watched, the pursued might escape in a totally different direction by another. But, to quote J.H. Parker, “the catacombs were never intended, nor fit for, dwelling-places, and the stories of persons living in them for months are probably fabulous. According to modern physicians it is impossible to live many days in the caves of pozzolana in which many of the catacombs are excavated.” Equally exaggerated are the statements as to the linear and lateral extent of the catacombs, and their intercommunication with one another. Without resorting to this exaggeration, Mommsen can speak with perfect truth of the “enormous space occupied by the burial vaults of Christian Rome, not surpassed even by the cloacae or sewers of Republican Rome,” but the data are too vague to warrant any attempt to define their dimensions. Marchi has estimated the united length of the galleries at from 800 to 900 m., and the number of interments at between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000; Martigny’s estimate is 587 m.; and Northcote’s, lower still, at “not less than 350 m.” The idea of general intercommunication is negatived by the fact that the chief cemeteries are separated by low ground or valleys, where any subterranean galleries would be at once filled with water.

It now remains to speak of the history of these subterranean burial-places, together with the reasons for, and mode of, their construction. From the period of the rediscovery of the catacombs in the 16th century till comparatively recent times a gigantic fallacy prevailed, repeated by writer after writer, identifying the Christian burial-places with disused sand-pits. It was accepted as an unquestionable fact by every one who undertook to describe the catacombs, that the Christians of Rome, finding in the labyrinthine mazes of the exhausted arenariae, which abounded in the environs of the city, whence the sand used in building had been extracted, a suitable place for the interment of their martyred brethren, where also the sacred rites accompanying the interment might be celebrated without fear of interruption, took possession of them and used them as cemeteries. It only needed a comparison of the theory with the visible facts to refute it at once, but nearly three centuries elapsed before the independence of the arenariae and the catacombs was established. The discovery of this independence is due to Marchi. Starting with the firmest belief in the old traditional view, his own researches by degrees opened his eyes to the truth, now universally recognized, that the catacombs were exclusively the work of the Christians, and were constructed for the interment of the dead. It is true that a catacomb is often connected with the earlier sand-quarry, and starts from it as a commencement, but the two are excavated in different strata, suitable to their respective purposes, and their plan and construction are so completely unlike as to render any confusion between them impossible.

The igneous formation of which the greater part of the Roman Campagna is, in its superior portion, composed, contains three strata known under the common name of tufa,—the “stony,” “granular,” and “sandy” tufa,—the last being commonly known as pozzolana.3 The pozzolana is the material required for building purposes, for admixture with mortar; and the sandpits are naturally excavated in the stratum which supplies it. The stony tufa (tufa litoide) is quarried as building-stone. The granular tufa is useless for either purpose, containing too much earth to be employed in making mortar, and being far too soft to be used as stone for building. Yet it is in this stratum, and in this alone, that the catacombs are constructed; their engineers avoiding with equal care the solid stone of the tufa litoide and the friable pozzolana, and selecting the stratum of medium hardness, which enabled them to form the vertical walls of their galleries, and to excavate the loculi and cubicula without severe labour and also without fear of their falling in. The annexed illustration (fig. 16) from Marchi’s work, when compared with that of the catacomb of Sant’ Agnese already given, presents to the eye the contrast between the wide winding irregular passages of the sand-pit, calculated for the admission of a horse and cart, and the narrow rectilinear accurately-defined galleries of the catacomb. The distinction between the two is also plainly exhibited when for some local or private reasons an ancient arenaria has been transformed into a cemetery. The modifications required to strengthen the crumbling walls to support the roof and to facilitate the excavation of loculi, involved so much labour that, as a rule, after a few attempts, the idea of utilizing an old quarry for burial purposes was abandoned.

Another equally erroneous idea was that these vast burial-places of the early Christians remained entirely concealed from the eyes of their pagan neighbours, and were constructed not only without the permission of the municipal authorities but without their cognizance. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Such an idea is justly stigmatized by Mommsen as ridiculous, and reflecting a discredit as unfounded as it is unjust on the imperial police of the capital. That such vast excavations should have been made without attracting attention, and that such an immense number of corpses could have been carried to burial in perfect secrecy is utterly impossible. Nor was there any reason why secrecy should have been desired. The decent burial of the dead was a matter especially provided for by the Roman laws. No particular mode was prescribed. Interment was just as legal as cremation, and had, in fact, been universally practised by the Romans until the later days of the republic.4 The bodies of the Scipios and Nasos were buried in still existing catacombs; and if the Christians preferred to adopt that which Minucius Felix calls “the better, and more ancient custom of inhumation” (Octavius, c. 2), there was absolutely nothing, to quote the words of Northcote (Roma sotterran. pp. 56, 61), “either in their social or religious position to interfere with their freedom of action. The law left them entire liberty,... and the faithful did but use their liberty in the way that suited them best, burying their dead according to a fashion to which many of them had been long accustomed, and which enabled them at the same time to follow in death the example of him who was also their model in life.” Interment in rock-hewn tombs, “as the manner of the Jews is to bury,” had been practised in Rome by the Jewish settlers for a considerable period anterior to the rise of the Christian Church. A Jewish catacomb, now lost, was discovered and described by Bosio (Rom. sott. p. 141), and others are still accessible. They are to be distinguished from Christian catacombs only by the character of their decorations, the absence of Christian symbols and the language of their inscriptions. There would, therefore, be nothing extraordinary in the fact that a community, always identified in the popular heathen mind with the Jewish faith, should adopt the mode of interment belonging to that religion. Nor have we the slightest trace of any official interference with Christian burials, such as would render secrecy necessary or desirable. Their funerals were as much under the protection of the law, which not only invested the tomb itself with a sacred character, but included in its protection the area in which it stood, and the cella memoriae or chapel connected with it, as those of their heathen fellow-citizens, while the same shield would be thrown over the burial-clubs, which, as we learn from Tertullian 496 (Apolog. c. 39), were common among the early Christians, as over those existing among the heathen population of Rome.

We may then completely dismiss the notion of there being any studied secrecy in connexion with the early Christian cemeteries, and proceed to inquire into the mode of their formation. Almost without exception, they had their origin in Mode of formation. small burial areas, the property of private persons or of families, gradually ramifying and receiving additions of one subterranean storey after another as each was required for interments. The first step would be the acquisition of a plot of ground either by gift or purchase for the formation of a tomb, Christians were not beyond the pale of the law, and their faith presented no hindrance to the property being secured to them in perpetuity. To adapt the ground for its purpose as a cemetery, a gallery was run all round the area in the tufa rock at a convenient depth below the surface, reached by staircases at the corners. In the upright walls of these galleries loculi were cut as needed to receive the dead. When these first four galleries were full others were mined on the same level at right angles to them, thus gradually converting the whole area into a net-work of corridors. If a family vault was required, or a burial chapel for a martyr or person of distinction, a small square room was excavated by the side of the gallery and communicating with it. When the original area had been mined in this way as far as was consistent with stability, a second storey of galleries was begun at a lower level, reached by a new staircase. This was succeeded by a third, or a fourth, and sometimes even by a fifth. When adjacent burial areas belonged to members of the same Christian confraternity, or by gift or purchase fell into the same hands, communications were opened between the respective cemeteries, which thus spread laterally, and gradually acquired that enormous extent which, “even when their fabulous dimensions are reduced to their right measure, form an immense work.”5 This could only be executed by a large and powerful Christian community unimpeded by legal enactments or police regulations, “a living witness of its immense development corresponding to the importance of the capital.” But although, as we have said, in ordinary times there was no necessity for secrecy, yet when the peace of the Church was broken by the fierce and often protracted persecutions of the heathen emperors, it became essential to adopt precautions to conceal the entrance to the cemeteries, which became the temporary hiding-places of the Christian fugitives, and to baffle the search of their pursuers. To these stormy periods we may safely assign the alterations which may be traced in the staircases, which are sometimes abruptly cut off, leaving a gap requiring a ladder, and the formation of secret passages communicating with the arenariae, and through them with the open country.

When the storms of persecution ceased and Christianity had become the imperial faith, the evil fruits of prosperity were not slow to appear. Cemetery interment became a regular trade in the hands of the fossores, or grave-diggers, who appear to have established a kind of property in the catacombs, and whose greed of gain led to that destruction of the religious paintings with which the walls were decorated, for the quarrying of fresh loculi, to which we have already alluded. Monumental epitaphs record the purchase of a grave from the fossores, in many cases during the lifetime of the individual, not unfrequently stating the price. A very curious fresco, found in the cemetery of Calixtus, preserved by the engravings of the earlier investigators (Bottari, tom. ii. p. 126, tav. 99), represents a “fossor” with his lamp in his hand and his pick over his shoulder, and his tools lying about him. Above is the inscription, “Diogenes Fossor in Pace depositus.”

It is unnecessary to enter on any detailed description of the frescoes which cover the walls and ceilings of the burial-chapels in the richest abundance. It must suffice to say that the earliest examples are only to be distinguished from the mural decorations employed by their pagan contemporaries (as seen at Pompeii and elsewhere) by the absence of all that was immoral or idolatrous, and that it was only very slowly and timidly that any distinctly Decoration. religious representations were introduced. These were at first purely symbolical, meaningless to any but a Christian eye, such as the Vine, the Good Shepherd, the Sheep, the Fisherman, the Fish, &c. Even the personages of ancient mythology were pressed into the service of early Christian art, and Orpheus, taming the wild beasts with his lyre, symbolized the peaceful sway of Christ; and Ulysses, deaf to the Siren’s song, represented the Believer triumphing over the allurements of sensual pleasure. The person of Christ appeared but rarely, and then commonly simply as the chief personage in an historical picture. The events depicted from the life of Christ are but few, and always conform rigidly to the same traditional type. The most frequent are the miracle at Cana, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the paralytic carrying his bed, the healing of the woman with the issue of blood, the raising of Lazarus, Zacchaeus, and the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The Crucifixion, and subjects from the Passion, are never represented. The cycle of Old Testament subjects is equally limited. The most common are the history of Jonah as a type of the Resurrection, the Fall, Noah receiving the dove with the olive branch, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, Moses taking off his shoes, David with the sling, Daniel in the lions’ den, and the Three Children in the fiery furnace. The mode of representation is always conventional, the treatment of the subject no less than its choice being dictated by an authority to which the artist was compelled to bow. All the more valuable of these paintings have been produced in J.H. Parker’s series of photographs taken in the catacombs by the magnesium light.6 Wilpert’s great work, in which these frescoes are reproduced in colours, now enables the student even better to distinguish the styles of different centuries and follow the course of artistic development or decay.

Beyond Rome and its suburbs the most remarkable Christian catacombs are those in the vicinity of Naples, described by Pelliccia (De Christ. Eccl. Polit. vol. iv. Dissert. 5), and in separate treatises by Bellerman and Schultze. Plans of them are also given by Agincourt in his great work on Christian art. These 497 catacombs differ materially from those of Rome. They were certainly originally stone-quarries, and the hardness of the rock Catacombs of Naples. has made the construction practicable of wide, lofty corridors and spacious halls, very unlike the narrow galleries and contracted chambers in the Roman cemeteries. The mode of interment, however, is the same as that practised in Rome, and the loculi and arcosolia differ by little in the two. The walls and ceilings are covered with fresco paintings of different dates, in some cases lying one over the other. This catacomb contains an unquestionable example of a church, divided into a nave and chancel, with a rude stone altar and bishop’s seat behind it.

At Syracuse also there are very extensive catacombs known as “the Grottos of St John.” They are also figured by Agincourt, and described by Denon (Voyage en Sicile et Malte) and Führer. There is an entire underground city with Syracuse. several storeys of larger and smaller streets, squares and cross ways, cut out of the rock; at the intersection of the cross ways are immense circular halls of a bottle shape, like a glass-house furnace, lighted by air shafts. The galleries are generally very narrow, furnished on each side with arched tombs, and communicating with family sepulchral-chambers closed originally by locked doors, the marks of the hinges and staples being still visible. The walls are in many places coated with stucco adorned with frescoes, including palms, doves, labara and other Christian symbols. The ground-plans (figs. 19, 20), from Agincourt, of the catacomb and of one of the circular halls, show how widely this cemetery differs in arrangement from the Roman catacombs. The frequency of blind passages and of circular chambers will be noticed, as well as the very large number of bodies in the cruciform recesses, apparently amounting in one instance to nineteen. Agincourt remarks that this cemetery “gives an idea of a work executed with design and leisure, and with means very different from those at command in producing the catacombs of Rome.”

Denon also describes catacombs at Malta near the ancient capital of the island. The passages were all cut in a close-grained stone, and are very narrow, with arched ceilings, running very irregularly, and ramifying in all directions. Malta. The greater part of the tombs stand on either side of the galleries in square recesses (like the table-tombs of the Roman catacombs), and are rudely fashioned to imitate sarcophagi. The interments are not nearly so numerous as in other catacombs, nor are there any vestiges of painting, sculpture or inscriptions. At Taormina in Sicily is a Saracenic catacomb, also Taormina. figured by Agincourt. The main corridor is 12 ft. wide, having three or more ranges of loculi on either side, running longitudinally into the rock, each originally closed by a stone bearing an inscription.

Passing to Egypt, a small Christian catacomb at Alexandria is described and figured by de Rossi.7 The loculi here also are set endways to the passage. The walls are abundantly decorated with paintings, one of a liturgical character. But the most extensive Egypt. catacombs at Alexandria are those of Egypto-Greek origin, from the largest of which, according to Strabo (lib. xvii. p. 795), the quarter where it is placed had the name of the Necropolis. The plan, it will be seen, is remarkable for its regularity (figs. 21, 22). Here, too, the graves run endways into the rock. Other catacombs in the vicinity of the same city are described by Pocock and other travellers, and are figured by Agincourt.

Subterranean cemeteries of the general character of those described are very frequent in all southern and eastern countries. A vast necropolis in the Sidon. environs of Saida, the ancient Sidon, is described in Renan’s Mission en Phénicie, and figured in Thobois’s plates. It consists of a series of apartments approached by staircases, 498 the sides pierced with sepulchral recesses running lengthwise into the rock.

The rock-hewn tombs of Etruria scarcely come under the category of catacombs, in the usual sense, being rather independent family burial-places, grouped together in a necropolis. They are, however, far too remarkable Rocktombs of Etruria. to be altogether passed over. These sepulchres are usually hollowed out of the face of low cliffs on the side of a hill. They often rise tier above tier, and are sometimes all on the same level “facing each other as in streets, and branching off laterally into smaller lanes or alleys”; and occasionally forming “a spacious square or piazza surrounded by tombs instead of houses” (Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, ii. 31). The construction of the tombs commonly keeps up the same analogy between the cities of the living and those of the dead. Their plan is for the most part that of a house, with a door of entrance and passage leading into a central chamber or atrium, with others of smaller size opening from it, each having a stone-hewn bench or triclinium on three of its sides, on which the dead, frequently a pair of corpses side by side, were laid as if at a banquet. These benches are often hewn in the form of couches with pillows at one end, and the legs carved in relief. The ceilings have the representation of beams and rafters cut in the rock. In some instances arm-chairs, carved out of the living rock, stand between the doors of the chambers, and the walls above are decorated with the semblance of suspended shields. The walls are often covered with paintings in a very simple archaic style, in red and black. As a typical example of the Etruscan tombs we give the plan and section (figs. 23, 24) of the Grotta detta Sedia at Cervetri from Dennis (pp. 32, 35). The tombs in some instances form subterranean groups more analogous to the general idea of a catacomb. Of this nature is the very remarkable cemetery at Poggio Gaiella, near Chiusi, the ancient Clusium, of a portion of the principal storey of which the woodcut (fig. 25) is a plan. The most remarkable of these sepulchral chambers is a large circular hall about 25 ft. in diameter, supported by a huge cylindrical pillar hewn from the rock. Opening out of this and the other chambers, and connecting them together, are a series of low winding passages or cuniculi, just large enough for a man to creep through on all fours. No plausible suggestion has been offered as to the purpose of these mysterious burrows, which cannot fail to remind us of the labyrinth which, according to Varro’s description as quoted by Pliny (Hist. Nat. lib. xxxvi. c. 19, § 4), was the distinguishing mark of Porsena’s tomb, and which have led some adventurous archaeologists to identify this sepulchre with that of the great king of Etruria (Dennis, u.s., pp. 393 ff.).

Modern Discoveries.—In 1873 was discovered, near the cemetery of St Domitilla, the semi-subterranean basilica of Santi Nereo ed Achilleo, 100 ft. by 60 ft. This is now covered with a roof, and the fallen columns have been raised up. The lower part of a pillar, which once supported a baldachino over the altar, still preserves the name Acilleus, and beneath it a bas-relief of the martyr, with his hands bound, receiving his death-blow from the executioner. The base of a similar column has only feet in the same attitude, and probably bore the name Nereus. In a grave in the apse was found a large fragment of an inscription, composed by Pope Damasus, but set up by his successor Siricius, which, from the note-book of a Salzburg pilgrim of the 8th century, can be completed thus:—

Militiae nomen dederant saevum Officium pariter spectantes juss Praeceptis pulsante metu servi Mira fides rerum subito posue Conversi fugiunt ducis impia castr Projiciunt clypeos faleras tel Confessi gaudent Christi portar Credite per Damasum possit quid

Nereus (see Rom. xvi. 15) and Achilleus, said to have been baptized by St Peter, refused to do the bidding of Domitian as praetorians, and entering the service of Flavia Domitilla, suffered martyrdom with their mistress Petronilla, of the Aurelian family closely connected with the Flavii, and the spiritual daughter of St Peter, who was buried in a sarcophagus with the inscription:—

avreliae · petronillae · fil · dvlcissimae

This is now in St Peter’s, but was probably originally behind the apse of this basilica, for there is a fresco of her in an arcosolium, with a matron named Veneranda. The original entrance to the cemetery leads directly into a spacious corridor with no loculi, but recesses for sarcophagi, and decorations of the classical style of the 2nd century. From this a wide staircase leads directly down to a chamber, discovered in March 1881, of a very early date. Within an arcosolium is a tablet set up by “Aurelius Ampliatus and his son Gordian, to Aurelia Bonifatia, his incomparable wife, a woman of true chastity, who lived 25 years, 2 months, 4 days, and 2 hours.” The letters are of the 2nd century; but above the arcosolium was found a stone with great letters, 5 or 6 in. high: “AMPLIATI, the tomb of Ampliatus.” Now Ampliatus is a servile name: how comes it to be set up with such distinction in the sepulchre of the Flavii? Romans xvi. 8 supplies the answer: “Salute Ampliatus, most 499 beloved to me in the Lord.” De Rossi thinks the identification well grounded (Bullettino, 1881, p. 74). Epitaphs of members of the Flavian family have been found here, and others stating that they are put up “Ex indulgentia flaviae domitillae vespasiani neptis.” So that De Rossi did not hesitate to complete an inscription on a broken stone thus:—

De Rossi began his excavations in the cemetery of Santa Priscilla in 1851, but for thirty years nothing but what had been described by Bosio came to light. In 1880 he unearthed a portion near the Cappella Greca, and found galleries that had not been touched since they were filled in during the Diocletian persecution. The loculi were intact and the epitaphs still in their places, so that “they form a kind of museum, in which the development, the formulae, and the symbolic figures of Christian epigraphy, from its origin to the end of the 3rd or 4th century, can be notified and contemplated, not in artificial specimens as in the Lateran, but in the genuine and living reality of their original condition.” (Bullett., 1884, p. 68). Many of the names mentioned in St Paul’s Epistles are found here: Phoebe, Prisca, Aquilius, Felix Ampliatus, Epenetus, Olympias, Onesimus, Philemon, Asyncritus, Lucius, Julia, Caius, Timotheus, Tychicus, Crescens, Urbanus, Hermogenes, Tryphaena and Trypho(sa) on the same stone. Petrus, a very rare name in the catacombs, is found here several times, both in Greek and in Latin. The neighbouring Coemeterium Ostrianum was anciently known as “Fons S. Petri,” “ubi Petrus baptizavit,” “ubi Petrus prius sedit.” This cemetery derives its name from Priscilla, mother of Pudens, who is said to have given hospitality to St Peter the Apostle. We are reminded of St Paul, and of his friends Aquila and Prisca, by a monument erected by an imperial freedman who was Praepositvs Tabernacvlorvm—chief tentmaker. In 1888 a corridor was discovered which had at one time been isolated from the rest of the cemetery. It had no loculi, but recesses in the wall to receive sarcophagi. At the end of the corridor there was a large chamber, 23 ft. by 13 ft., once lined with marble and the ceiling covered with mosaic, a few fragments of which still remain. The only tomb here was a sarcophagus, of which the broken front bears the letters which show it to have been the epitaph of one of the Acilian family:—

acilio glabrioni filio

In the vicinity are fragments of the epitaphs of Manius Acilius and Priscilla, of Quintus Acilius and Caia Acilia in Greek, another Greek inscription “Acilius Rufinus mayest thou live in God.” After careful examination of the nine Acilii, who were consuls, De Rossi concludes that this was the resting-place of that Acilius Glabrio, consul with Trajan, a.d. 91, who in the year of his consulate was compelled by Domitian to fight with beasts in the arena, and then banished and put to death in 95. The question of his Christianity seems settled by the discovery of the sepulchre of these Christian Acilii. From this crypt a staircase led up to the basilica in which Pope Silvester was buried, and the whole plan of which was laid bare by De Rossi. The tomb of St Silvester could be identified, and that of Pope Siricius “at his feet,” as the pilgrim noted (Bullett., 1890, pp. 106-119).

Just before De Rossi’s death, Mgr. Wilpert discovered in the Cappella Greca a painting of the “Fractio Panis” or eucharistic feast, which he cleansed from the dust with which it had been covered. The picture of the Blessed Virgin and Child, which De Rossi ascribed to the 2nd, if not to the 1st century, has received an unexpected proof of its antiquity. In 1890 the floor of the gallery in which it stands was excavated, and another floor was found to be 6 ft. below its supposed level. The loculi in this lower portion were intact, with inscriptions of the 2nd century still in their places, proving that the niche in which that picture was painted must have been considerably older than the lowering of the floor. A flight of iron steps enables the visitor now to examine this venerable specimen of early Christian art.

After the death of De Rossi, one of his pupils, H. Stevenson, since dead, discovered in 1896 a small subterranean basilica in the catacomb of Santi Pietro e Marcellino on the Via Labicana, with pious acclamations on the plaster similar to those in the Papal crypt in St Calixtus. Near the well-known subterranean chapel in the Coemeterium Ostrianum was discovered by Mgr. Crostarosa, in 1877, another chapel, in which Signor Armellini found traces of St Emerentiana, foster-sister of St Agnes. Near this a whole region of galleries has been brought to light with loculi intact.

Explorations conducted in the cemetery of Domitilla in 1897-1898 brought to light a fine double crypt with frescoes representing Christ seated between six male and female saints; also an inscription relating to a new saint (Eulalius) in a cubiculum of the 3rd century. In 1899-1900 were discovered two opposite cubicula in the catacomb of Santi Pietro e Marcellino. These were unknown to Bosio, and are both covered with frescoes, the vault being in one case decorated with the scene which represents Christ seated among the apostles and pronouncing sentence upon the defunct. An inscription discovered in 1900 on the site of the ancient cemetery of St Ciriaca, and dating from a.d. 405, states that one Euryalus bought a site ad mensam beati martyris Laurentii from a certain fossor whose name has been erased. This is interesting as an example of what was known as memoriae damnatio or the blotting out of a name on account of some dishonourable action. From the end of the 4th to the first half of the 5th century, the fossores had the privilege of selling sites, which frequently led to grave abuses. In 1901-1902 excavations in the cemetery of Santa Priscilla, near the Cappella Greca, revealed a polygonal chamber. This may have originally been the nymphaeum of the great villa of the Acilii Glabriones, the hypogaeum of which was discovered by De Rossi near this spot in 1888. It may have been used as a burial-place for martyrs, and Professor Marucchi is inclined to see in it the sepulchral chapel of Pope Marcellinus, who died in a.d. 304 during the persecutions of Diocletian. In 1902, in that part of the Via Ardeatina which passes between the cemeteries of Calixtus and Domitilla, was discovered a crypt with frescoes and the sanctuary of a martyr: it is thought that this, rather than a neighbouring crypt brought to light in 1897, may prove to be the sepulchral crypt of SS. Marcus and Marcellianus. In a cubiculum leading out of a gallery in the vicinity there was also discovered an interesting impression in plaster of an inscription of the mother of Pope Damasus, beginning:

hic damasi mater posvit lavren[tia membra].

In the same year building operations in the Via di Sant’ Onofrio revealed the presence of catacombs beneath the foundations: examination of the loculi showed that no martyrs or illustrious persons were buried here.

In 1903 a new cemetery with frescoes came to light on the Via Latina, considered by Marucchi to have belonged to a heretical sect. In the same year the Jewish cemetery on the Via Portuense, known to Bosio but since forgotten, was rediscovered. The subterranean basilica of SS. Felix and Adauctus, discovered by Boldetti and afterwards choked up with ruins, was cleared again: the crypt, begun by Damasus and enlarged by Siricius, contains frescoes of the 6th-7th centuries.

A good plan of the catacombs at Albano (at the 15th milestone of the Appian way), discovered by Boldetti and described by De Rossi, has been published by Marucchi (Nuovo Bulletino di archeologia cristiana, 1902, pp. 89 ff.). In 1904 a small subterranean cemetery was discovered at Anagnia. Catacombs have also been recently discovered on the site of Hadrumetum near Sousse in Tunisia.

CATAFALQUE (a word of unknown origin, occurring in various forms in many European languages, meaning a funeral scaffold or temporary stage), a movable structure of wood sometimes richly decorated, erected temporarily at funeral ceremonies in a church to receive the coffin or effigy of the deceased; also an open hearse or funeral car.

CATALANI, ANGELICA (1780-1849), Italian opera-singer, daughter of a tradesman at Sinigaglia, was educated at the convent of Santa Lucia at Gubbio, where her magnificent soprano voice, of extraordinary compass and purity, soon became famous. In 1795 she made her début on the stage at Venice, and from that moment every impresario in Europe was anxious to engage her. For nearly thirty years she sang at all the great houses, receiving very large fees; her first appearance in London being at the King’s theatre in 1806. She remained in England, a prima donna without a serious rival, for seven years. Then she was given the management of the opera in Paris, but this resulted in financial failure, owing to the incapacity and extravagance of her husband, Captain Valabrègue, whom she married in 1806. But her continental tours continued to be enormously successful, until she retired in 1828. She settled at Florence in 1830, where she founded a free singing school for girls; and her charity and kindness were unbounded. She died of cholera in Paris on the 12th of June 1849.

CATALEPSY (from Gr. κατάληψις, a seizure), a term applied to a nervous affection characterized by the sudden suspension of sensation and volition, accompanied with a peculiar rigidity of the whole or of certain muscles of the body. The subjects of catalepsy are in most instances females of highly nervous temperament. The exciting cause of an attack is usually mental emotion operating either suddenly, as in the case of a fright, or more gradually in the way of prolonged depression. The symptoms presented vary in different cases, and even in the same individual in different attacks. Sometimes the typical features of the disease are exhibited in a state of complete insensibility, together with a statue-like appearance of the body which will retain any attitude it may be made to assume during the continuance of the attack. In this condition the whole organic and vital functions appear to be reduced to the lowest possible limit consistent with life, and to such a degree as to simulate actual death. At other times considerable mental excitement will accompany the cataleptic symptoms, and the patient will sing or utter passionate exclamations during the fit, being all the while quite unconscious. The attack may be of short duration, passing off within a few minutes. It may, however, last for many hours, and in some rare instances persist for several days; and it is conceivable that in such cases the appearances presented might be mistaken for real death, as is alleged to have occasionally happened. Catalepsy belongs to the class of functional nervous disorders (see Muscle and Nerve: Pathology) in which morbid physical and psychical conditions are mixed up. Although it is said to occur in persons in perfect health, careful inquiry will usually reveal some departure from the normal state, as is shown by the greater number of the recorded cases. More particularly is this true of females, in whom some form of menstrual derangement is generally found to have preceded the cataleptic affection. Catalepsy is sometimes associated with epilepsy and with grave forms of mental disease. In ordinary cases, however, the mental phenomena bear close resemblance to those witnessed in hysteria. In many of the subjects of catalepsy there appears to be a remarkable weakness of the will, whereby the tendency to lapse into the cataleptic state is not resisted but rather in some measure encouraged, and attacks may thus be induced by the most trivial circumstances.

CATALOGUE (a Fr. adaptation of the Gr. κατάλογος, a register, from καταλέγειν, to enrol or pick out), a list or enumeration, generally in alphabetical order, of persons, things, &c., and particularly of the contents of a museum or library. A catalogue raisonnée is such a list classified according to subjects or on some other basis, with short explanations and notes. (See also articles Bibliography and Bibliology, and Libraries.)

CATALONIA (Cataluña), a captaincy-general, and formerly a province of Spain, formerly also a principality of the crown of Aragon; bounded on the N. by the Pyrenees, W. by Aragon, S. by Valencia, and E. by the Mediterranean Sea. Pop. (1900) 1,966,382; area, 12,427 sq. m. The triangular territory of Catalonia forms the north-eastern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. A full account of the physical features, and of the modern development of commerce, communications, &c., in this area is given in the articles on the four provinces Barcelona, Gerona, Lérida and Tarragona, into which Catalonia was divided in 1833.

The coast, which is partly sandy, partly rocky, extends about 240 m.; its chief harbours are those of the capital, Barcelona, of Mataró, of Rosas and of Tarragona. The surface is much broken by spurs of the Pyrenees, the direction of which is generally south. Running south-west to north-east, and united on the north with one of the offsets of the Pyrenees, is the range of the Sierra Llena, which bisects Catalonia, and forms its central watershed. The principal rivers are the Ter, the Llobrégat, and the Ebro (q.v.), which all run into the Mediterranean. None of them is navigable. The climate, in spite of frequent mists and rains, sudden changes of temperature, and occasional great mid-day heat, is healthy and favourable to vegetation. The dwarf-palm, orange, lime, and olive grow in the warmer tracts; and on the higher grounds the thorn-apple, pomegranate, myrtle, esparto and heaths flourish. There is much woodland, 501 but meadows and pastures are rare. Maize, millet, rye, flax, liquorice and fruits of all sorts—especially nuts, almonds, oranges, figs, walnuts and chestnuts—are produced. Wheat sufficient for one-fourth of the population is grown, and the vine is extensively cultivated. Few cattle, but numbers of sheep, goats and swine are reared. Game is plentiful, and the fisheries on the coast are excellent. The wines are for the most part rough and strong, though some are very good, especially when matured. They are much used to adulterate those of Oporto, or, after undergoing the blending operation termed compage, are passed off as Bordeaux wines in France. The best of them, priorato, is chiefly known in England, under the disguise of second or third-rate port; it was much used in the military hospitals of America during the Civil War.

The Catalonians are a frugal, sharp-witted, and industrious people, having much national pride, and a strong revolutionary spirit. They are distinct in origin from the other inhabitants of Spain, from whom they differ in their dialect and costume. In their great energy and their love of enterprise they resemble the Basques. Irrigation, careful husbandry and railroad communications have much developed the resources of their country, in themselves excellent; and there are many manufacturing towns and industrial establishments.

Catalonia was one of the first of the Roman possessions in Spain, and formed the north-eastern portion of Hispania Tarraconensis. About 470 it was occupied by the Alans and Goths. It was conquered by the Moors in 712, but these invaders were in turn dispossessed by the Spaniards and the troops of Charlemagne in 788. Catalonia was subsequently ruled by French counts, who soon, however, made themselves independent of France. By the marriage of Count Raymond Berenger IV. of Barcelona with Petronilla of Aragon, Catalonia became annexed to Aragon; but this union was frequently severed. In 1640, when Philip IV. attempted to deprive Catalonia of its rights and privileges, it gave itself up to Louis XIII. of France. It was restored to Spain in 1659, and was once more occupied by the French from 1694 to 1697. Under Philip V. Catalonia, in 1714, was deprived of its cortes and liberties. From 1808 to 1813 it was held by France. It was the scene of civil war in 1823, and of important revolutionary operations in the Carlist wars.

CATALPA, in botany, a genus belonging to the family Bignoniaceae and containing about ten species in America and eastern Asia. The best known is Catalpa bignonioides, a native of the eastern United States which is often cultivated in parks and gardens. It is a stately tree with large heart-shaped pointed leaves and panicles of white bell-shaped flowers streaked with yellow and brown purple.

CATALYSIS (from the Gr. κατά, down, and λύειν, to loosen), in chemistry, the name given to chemical actions brought about by a substance, termed the “catalyst,” which is recovered unchanged after the action. The term was introduced by Berzelius, who first studied such reactions. It is convenient to divide catalytic actions into two groups:—(1) when the catalyst first combines with one of the reaction components to form a compound which immediately reacts with the other components, the catalyst being simultaneously liberated, and free to react with more of the undecomposed first component; and (2), when the catalyst apparently reacts by mere contact. The theory of catalysis is treated under Chemical Action; in this article mention will be made of some of the more interesting examples.

A familiar instance of a catalytic action is witnessed when a mixture of potassium chlorate and manganese dioxide is heated to 350°, oxygen being steadily liberated, and the manganese dioxide being unchanged at the end of the reaction. The action may be explained as follows:—part of the chlorate reacts with the manganese dioxide to form potassium permanganate, chlorine and oxygen, the chlorine subsequently reacting with the permanganate to produce manganese dioxide, potassium chloride and oxygen, thus

2KClO3 + 2MnO2 = 2KMnO4 + Cl2 + O2 = 2KCl + 2MnO2 + 3O2.

This explanation is supported by the facts that traces of chlorine are present in the gas, and the pink permanganate can be recognized when little dioxide is used. Other oxides bring about the same decomposition at temperatures below that at which the chlorate yields oxygen when heated alone; but since such substances as kaolin, platinum black and some other finely powdered compounds exercise the same effect, it follows that the explanation given above is not quite general. Another example is Deacon’s process for the manufacture of chlorine by passing hydrochloric acid gas mixed with air over heated bricks which had been previously impregnated with a copper sulphate solution. The nitrous gases employed in the ordinary chamber process of manufacturing sulphuric acid also act catalytically. Mention may be made of the part played by water vapour in conditioning many chemical reactions. Thus sodium will not react with dry chlorine or dry oxygen; carbon, sulphur and phosphorus will not burn in perfectly dry oxygen, neither does nitric oxide give red fumes of the peroxide. In organic chemistry many catalytic actions are met with. In the class of reaction known as “condensations,” it may be found that the course of the reaction is largely dependent upon the nature of some substance which acts catalytically. One of the most important is the Friedel and Craft’s reaction, in which an aromatic compound combines with an alkyl haloid in the presence of aluminium, zinc or ferric chloride. It seems in this, as in other cases, that additional compounds are first formed which subsequently react with the re-formation of the catalyst. The formation of benzoin from benzaldehyde in the presence of potassium cyanide is another example; this action has been investigated by G. Bredig and Stern (Zeit. Elektrochem., 1904, 10, p. 582).

The second class of catalytic actions, viz. those occasioned by the presence of a metal or some other substance which undergoes no change, is of especial interest, and has received much attention. The accelerating influence of a clean platinum plate on the rate of combination of hydrogen and oxygen was studied by Faraday. He found that with the pure gases the velocity of reaction increased until the mixture exploded. The presence of minute quantities of carbon monoxide, carbon disulphide, sulphuretted hydrogen and hydrochloric acid inhibited the action; in the case of the first two gases, there is no alteration of the platinum surface, since the plate brings about combination when removed to an atmosphere of pure hydrogen and oxygen; with the last two gases, however, the surface is altered, since the plate will not occasion the combination when placed in the pure gases. M. Bodenstein (Zeit. phys. Chem., 1904, 46, p. 725) showed that combination occurs with measurable velocity at ordinary temperatures in the presence of compact platinum. More energetic combination is observed if the metal be finely divided, as, for instance, by immersing asbestos fibres in a solution of platinum chloride and strongly heating. The “spongy” platinum so formed brings about the combination of ammonia and oxygen to form water and nitric acid, of nitric oxide and hydrogen to form ammonia (see German Patent, 1905, 157,287), and of sulphur dioxide and oxygen to form sulphur trioxide. The last reaction, which receives commercial application in the contact process of sulphuric acid manufacture, was studied by M. Bodenstein and W. Pohl (Zeit. Elektrochem., 1905, 11, p. 373), who found that the equilibrium followed the law of mass-action (see also F. W. Küster, Zeit. anorg. Chem., 1904, 42, p. 453, R. Lucas, Zeit. Elektrochem., 1905, 11, p. 457). Other metals, such as nickel, iron, &c., can also react as catalysts. 502 The use of finely divided nickel (obtained by reducing the oxide in a current of pure hydrogen at a temperature of 350°) has been carefully studied by P. Sabatier and J.B. Senderens; a summary of their results is given in the Ann. Chim. Phys., 1905 (viii.) 4, pp. 319-488. Of special interest is the condensation of acetylene. If this gas mixed with hydrogen be passed over the reduced nickel in the cold, the temperature may rise to as high as 150°, the acetylene disappearing and becoming replaced by a substance like petroleum. If the nickel be maintained at 200°, and the gases circulated for twenty-eight hours, a product, condensible to a yellow liquid having a beautiful fluorescence and boiling at 45°, is obtained. This substance closely resembles ordinary Pennsylvanian petroleum. If acetylene be passed alone over nickel heated to 200°-300°, a mixture, boiling at 60°-70° and having a green colour by diffused and a red by transmitted light, was obtained. This substance closely resembles Caucasian petroleum. The decomposition of carbon monoxide according to the reaction 2CO ⇄ C + CO2 is purely catalytic in the presence of nickel and cobalt, and also in the presence of iron, so long as the amount of carbon dioxide present does not exceed a certain amount (R. Schenck and W. Heller, Ber., 1905, 38, pp. 2132, 2139). It is of interest that finely divided aluminium and magnesium decompose methane, ethane, and ethylene into carbon and hydrogen in the same way as nickel. Charcoal at 350° also reacts catalytically; for example, Senderens found that ethyl alcohol was decomposed by animal charcoal into methane, ethylene, hydrogen, carbon monoxide and a little carbon dioxide, and propyl alcohol gave propylene, ethane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, while G. Lemoine obtained from ethyl alcohol and wood charcoal a mixture of acetaldehyde and hydrogen.

CATAMARAN (a Tamil word, from catta, to tie, and maram wood), a surf-boat or raft used by the natives of Madras and along the Coromandel Coast in India. It is usually made of three tree trunks lashed together, the centre trunk being the largest and longest, and having one end bent upward to form a kind of prow. Catamarans of a larger size are in use in the West Indies and South America. The name is also given to two boats lashed together. Apparently through an erroneous connexion with cat, the name has been applied to a noisy scolding woman.

CATAMARCA, an Andean province of the Argentine Republic, lying W. of Santiago del Estero and Tucuman and extending to the Chilean frontier, with Los Andes and Salta on the N., Cordoba on the S.E., and Rioja on the S. Pop. (1895) 90,161; (1904, estimate) 103,082; area, 47,531 sq. m. The surface of the province is extremely broken, the Andes forming its western boundary, and the Aconquija, Ancaste, Ambato, Gulampaja and other ranges traversing it from north to south. It is composed very largely of high plateaus with a general slope southward broken by a few fertile valleys. The greater part of the province is arid and barren, being sheltered from the moist, eastern winds by the high mountain barriers of Aconquija and Ancaste. The rivers are small, and some of them are lost in the barren, sandy wastes. Others, especially in the foothills of the high sierras, are utilized to irrigate the fertile valleys. The climate of some of the low, sheltered valleys is extremely hot and unhealthy, but on the open plateaus it is peculiarly dry and bracing and is probably beneficial in the treatment of pulmonary diseases. The mineral resources of the province include gold, silver, copper, lead, nickel, iron, coal and malachite, but of these only copper and silver are mined, and these chiefly in the Andalgalá district. Salt deposits also exist, but are worked only to a limited extent. Cereals, alfalfa and fruit are grown. Large numbers of cattle, fattened in the alfalfa fields of Pucará, Tinogasta and Copacabana, are driven into northern Chile across the San Francisco pass (13,124 ft. above sea level) and mules are bred for the Bolivian market. Wine of an excellent quality is produced and exported. Tanning leather is another industry of the province, some of the trees growing in the Catamarca forests being rich in tannin. Catamarca is traversed by the Northern Central railway between Cordoba and the city of Catamarca, its capital, which passes around the southern extremity of the Sierra de Ancaste and makes a long detour to Chumbicha, near the Rioja frontier. The more important towns, after Catamarca, the capital, are Andalgalá and Tinogasta with populations (estimated, 1904) of 5000 to 6000 each. Belen is the oldest Spanish settlement in the province and was founded in 1550, being called Barco at first. The population is largely mixed with Indian blood.

CATAMARCA (San Fernando de Catamarca), capital of the above province on the Rio del Valle de Catamarca, 230 m. (318 m. by rail) N.N.W. of Cordoba. Pop. (1895) 7397; (1905, estimate) 8000, with a large percentage of mestizos. Catamarca is connected by railways with Rioja and Patquia and with Cordoba. The city stands in a narrow, picturesque valley at the foot of the Sierra de Ambato, 1772 ft. above sea level. The valley is highly fertile, partially wooded, and produces fruit in abundance, wine and some cereals. In the city are flour mills and tanneries, and among its exports are leather, fruit, wine, flour, and a curious embroidery for which the women of Catamarca have long been famous. There is a fine church, 220 by 90 ft., and a national college occupies the old Merced convent. The alameda is one of the prettiest in the Argentine Republic, having a reservoir of two acres surrounded by shrubbery and walks. Catamarca was founded in 1685 by Fernando de Mendoza because the town of Chacra, the former provincial capital, a few miles north of Catamarca, had been found unhealthy and subject to inundations. Previous to the selection of Chacra as the provincial capital, the seat of government was at San Juan de Londres, founded in 1558 and named after the capital of England by order of Philip II. in honour of his marriage with Queen Mary. The arid surroundings of Londres led to its partial abandonment and it is now a mere village. Cholla, a suburb of Catamarca, is inhabited wholly by Calchaqui Indians, a remnant of the original inhabitants of this region.

CATANIA (Gr. Katane, Rom. Catina1), a city and episcopal see of Sicily, the chief town of the province of Catania, on the east coast, 59 m. by rail S. of Messina, and 151 m. by rail S.E. of Palermo (102 m. direct). Pop. (1881) 100,417; (1905) 157,722. The principal buildings are handsome, and the main streets, meeting in the Piazzo del Duomo, are fine. The cathedral of S. Agatha, containing the relics of the saint, retains its three original Norman apses (1091), but is otherwise a large baroque edifice. The monument of Don Ferrando d’Acunea, a Spanish viceroy of Sicily, is a fine early Renaissance work (1494). In the west portion of the town is the huge Benedictine abbey of S. Nicola (now suppressed), the buildings of which occupy an area of about 21 acres and contain the museum, a library, observatory, &c. The church, dating, like the rest of the buildings, from 1693-1735, is the largest in Sicily, and the organ, built in 1760 by Donato del Piano, with 72 stops and 2916 pipes, is very fine. The university, founded in 1444, has regained some of its former importance. To the south near the harbour is the massive Castell’ Ursino, erected in 1232 by Frederick II. Remains of several ancient buildings exist, belonging in the main to the Roman period. The theatre, covered by a stream of lava, and built partly of small rectangular blocks of the same material, though in the main of concrete, has been superimposed upon the Greek building, some foundations of which, in calcareous stone, of which the seats are also made, still exist. It is 106 yds. in diameter, and is estimated to have accommodated 7000 spectators. Close to it are the remains of the so-called Odeum, of similar plan to the theatre but without a stage, and to the north is the church of S. Maria Rotonda, originally a Roman domed structure, perhaps part of a bath. To the north, in the Piazza Stesicoro, is the amphitheatre, a considerable portion of which has been uncovered, including the two corridors which ran round the whole building and gave access to the seats, while a part of the arcades of the exterior has been excavated and left open; the pillars are made of blocks of lava, and the arches of brick. The external diameters of the amphitheatre are 410 and 348 ft., while the corresponding diameters of the arena are 233 and 167 ft. It is thus the third largest Roman amphitheatre known, being surpassed only by that at Verona and the Colosseum. Remains 503 of many other Roman buildings also exist beneath the modern town, among the best preserved of which may be noted the public baths (Thermae Achilleae) under the cathedral, and those under the church of S. Maria dell’ Indirizzo. The number of baths is remarkable, and gives some idea of the luxury of the place in Roman times. Their excellent preservation is accounted for by their burial under the lava. The majority were excavated by Prince Ignazio Biscari (1719-1786), who formed an important private collection of antiquities. Of the ancient city walls no authenticated remains exist.

Catania has a considerable export trade in sulphur, pumice stone, asphalt, oranges and lemons, almonds, filberts, cereals, wine (the total production of wine in the province amounted to 28,600,000 gallons in 1905) and oil. The total value of exports in 1905 was £1,647,075, and of imports £1,326,055, the latter including notably coal, almost entirely from the United Kingdom, and wheat, from Russian ports. The harbour is a good one, and has been considerably enlarged since 1872; £128,000 was voted in 1905 towards the completion of the harbour works by the Italian government. Sulphide of carbon is produced here; and there are large dyeworks, and a factory for making bed-stuffing from seaweed.

The ancient Catina was founded in 729 b.c. by colonists from Naxos, perhaps on the site of an earlier Sicel settlement—the name is entirely un-Greek, and may be derived from κάτινον, which in the Sicel language, as catinum in Latin, meant a basin, and would thus be descriptive of the situation of the town. Charondas, a citizen of Catina, is famous as its lawgiver, but his date and his birthplace are alike uncertain; the fragments preserved of his laws show that they belong to a somewhat primitive period. The poet Stesichorus of Himera died here. Very little is heard of Catina in history until 476 b.c., when Hiero I. removed its inhabitants to Leontini, repeopled it with 5000 Syracusans and 5000 Peloponnesians, and changed its name to Aetna. In 461 b.c., however, with the help of Ducetius and the Syracusans, the former inhabitants recovered possession of their city and revived the old name. Catina was, however, an ally of Athens during the Syracusan expedition (415-413 b.c.), and served as the Athenian base of operations in the early part of the war. In 403 b.c. it was taken by Dionysius of Syracuse, who plundered the city, sold the inhabitants into slavery and replaced them with Campanian mercenaries. In the First Punic War it was one of the first cities of Sicily to be taken by the Romans (263 b.c.). Marcellus constructed a gymnasium here out of the booty of Syracuse. In 123 b.c. there was an eruption of Etna so violent that the tithe on the territory of Catina payable to Rome was remitted for ten years. It appears to have been a flourishing city in the ist century b.c., but to have suffered from the ravages of Sextus Pompeius. It became a Roman colonia under Augustus, and it is from this period that the fertile plain, hitherto called the plain of Leontini, begins to be called the plain of Catina. It seems to have been at this time the most important city in the island, to judge from the language of Strabo and the number of inscriptions found there. In a.d. 251 a lava stream threatened the town and entered the amphitheatre, which in the time of Theodoric had fallen into ruins, as is clear from the fact that he permitted the use of its fallen stones to build the city wall. It was recovered by Belisarius in 535, sacked by the Saracens in 902 and taken by the Normans. The latter founded the cathedral; but the town was almost entirely destroyed by earthquake in 1170, and devastated by Henry VI. in 1197. It became the usual residence of the Aragonese viceroys of the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1669 an eruption of Etna partly filled up the harbour, but spared the town, which was, however, almost entirely destroyed by the earthquake of 1693. Since that catastrophe it has been rebuilt, and has not further suffered from its proximity to Etna.

CATANZARO, a town and episcopal see of Calabria, Italy, capital of the province of Catanzaro, 1125 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 22,799 (town); 32,005 (commune). The station for the town (Catanzaro Sala) is situated on a branch line connecting the two main lines along the east and west coasts of Calabria, 6 m. N. by W. of Catanzaro Marina on the east coast, and 20 m. E. of S. Eufemia Biforcazione, on the west coast line. The town enjoys a comparatively cool climate in summer, and commands fine views. Numerous wealthy families reside here, and the town has a trade in olive-oil, silk and velvet. The castle, built by Robert Guiscard, has been modernized, and so has the cathedral. The see was founded in 1121. The provincial museum contains antiquities and especially coins from the ancient cities of Magna Graecia, and a few pictures.

CATAPHYLL (Gr. κατά, down, φύλλον, leaf), a botanical term for the early leaf-forms produced in the lower part of a shoot, such as bud-scales, or scales on underground stems.

CATAPULT (Lat. catapulta, Gr. καταπέλτης) a generic name for warlike engines of the cross-bow type used by the ancients. Although engines of war appear on Assyrian remains, and are mentioned in 2 Chronicles xxvi. 15, it appears that Greek armies, even of the 5th century, did not possess them, and the first record of a large siege train in classical literature is of the year 399 b.c., when Dionysius I. of Syracuse, contemplating an expedition against Carthage, provided himself with engines. From Sicily siege engines found their way some years later into Greece; they were used by Philip of Macedon at the siege of Byzantium in 340, and thereafter, as a natural consequence of the regularizing or professionalizing of armies, artillery, as we may call it, came into prominence and called into existence technical corps to work it.

The war engines of the Romans, during the republic and early principate, are of the same type as those of Alexander’s successors in Greece. They are usually classed as (a) catapults and (b) ballistae (λιθοβόλοι). The former were smaller and were used with arrows for what is now called direct fire (i.e. at low angles of elevation); the latter were large siege engines discharging heavy bolts or stones at a high angle of elevation, like the modern howitzer. They were, of course, principally siege engines, but the smaller natures of catapult appear in field warfare from time to time, and eventually, during the early principate, they are found as part of the regulation equipment of infantry units. Both were constructed on the same principle.

The essential parts of the catapult (see illustration) were the frame, the propelling gear, the trough (corresponding to the modern barrel) and the pedestal. The frame consisted of two horizontal beams forming top and bottom sills, and four strong upright bars mortised into them. The three open spaces or compartments, resembling narrow windows, between these four uprights carried the propelling and laying gear. The propelling gear occupied the two outer “windows.” In each a thick skein of cord or sinews was fastened to the top and bottom sills and tightly twisted. Two stiff wooden arms were inserted in the two skeins, and a specially strong bowstring joined the tips of these arms. In the middle compartment was the hinged fore-end of the trough, which was at right angles to the frame and at the back of it. The trough could be laid for elevation by a movable prop, the upper end of which was hinged to the trough, while the lower ran up and down a sort of trail fastened to the pedestal. The whole equipment was laid for “line” by turning the frame, and with it the trough, prop and trail by a pivot in the head of the pedestal. Sliding up and down in the trough was a block, fitted with a trigger mechanism, through which passed the middle of the bowstring. The pedestal was a strong and solid upright resting upon, and strutted to, a framework on the ground; its upper end, as mentioned above, took the pivot of the frame and the head of the trail.

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On coming into action the machine was laid for direction and elevation. The block and with it the bowstring was next forced back against the resistance of the twisted skeins to the rear end of the trough, this being effected by a windlass attachment. The trigger being then pressed or struck with a hammer, the bowstring was released from the block, the stiff arms were violently brought back to the frame by the untwisting of the skeins, and the arrow was propelled through the centre “window” with great velocity. A small machine of the type described weighed about 85 ℔, and sent a “three-span” (26-in.) arrow weighing ½ ℔ at an effective man-killing velocity somewhat over 400 yds.

The ballista was considerably larger and more expensive than this. In Scipio’s siege train, at the attack of New Carthage (Livy xxvi. 47. 5), the number of the ballistae was only one-sixth that of the catapults. In the ballista the rear end of the trough (which projected in front of the frame) always rested upon the ground, or rather was fixed to the framework of the pedestal—which was a heavy trestle construction—and the trough was thus restricted to the angle of elevation, giving the maximum range (45°). Even so the range was not appreciably greater than that of a catapult, and in the case of the largest ballistae (ninety-pounder) it was much less. These enormous engines, which, once in position, could not be laid on any fresh target, were used for propelling beams and stones rather than for shooting arrows, that is, more for the destruction of material than for man-killing effect. The skeins that supplied the motive force of all these engines were made of the sinews of animals, twisted raw hide, horsehair rope, and, in at least one celebrated case, of women’s hair. In 146 b.c., the authorities of Carthage having surrendered their engines to the Romans in the vain hope of staying their advance, new ones were hurriedly constructed, and the women and virgins of the city cut off their hair to supply the needed skeins.

The modern implement known as a “catapult” is formed by a forked stick, to the forks of which are attached the ends of a piece of elastic. To the middle of this elastic a pocket is fitted to contain a bullet or small stone. In use the forked stick is held in the left hand and the pocket drawn back with the right. Aim is taken and, the pocket being released, the missile flies through the fork of the stick. Though classed as a toy, this weapon can do considerable execution among birds, &c., when skilfully used. The name of “catapult” has also been given to a bowling machine which is used for cricket practice.

CATARACT (from the Lat. form cataracta of the Gr. καταρράκτης, a floodgate, or waterfall, properly something which rushes down), a downpour of water, a waterfall. The earliest use in English is of a floodgate or portcullis, and this survives in the name of a disease of the eye (see Eye: Eye Diseases), in which the crystalline lens becomes opaque, and forms an apparent grating over the eye. The term is also used of a device to regulate the strokes in certain types of steam-engine.

CATARGIU (or Catargi), LASCAR (1823-1899), Rumanian statesman, was born in Moldavia in November 1823. He belonged to an ancient Walachian family, one of whose members had been banished in the 17th century by Prince Matthew Bassaraba, and had settled in Moldavia. Under Prince Gregory Ghica (1849-1856), Catargiu rose to be prefect of police at Jassy. In 1857 he became a member of the Divan ad hoc of Moldavia, a commission elected in accordance with the treaty of Paris (1856) to vote on the proposed union of Moldavia and Walachia. His strongly conservative views, especially on agrarian reform, induced the Conservatives to support him as a candidate for the throne in 1859. During the reign of Prince Cuza (1859-1866), Catargiu was one of the Opposition leaders, and received much assistance from his kinsman, Barbu Catargiu (b. 1807), a noted journalist and politician, who was assassinated at Bucharest on the 20th of June 1862. On the accession of Prince Charles in May 1866, Lascar Catargiu became president of the council, or prime minister; but, finding himself unable to co-operate with his Liberal colleagues, I.C. Bratianu and C.A. Rosetti, he resigned in July. After eight more ministerial changes, culminating in the anti-dynastic agitation of 1870-1871, Catargiu formed, for the first time in Rumanian history, a stable Conservative cabinet, which lasted until 1876. His policy, which averted revolution and revived the popularity of the crown, was regarded as unpatriotic and reactionary by the Liberals, who resumed office in 1876; and a proposal to impeach the whole Catargiu cabinet was only withdrawn in 1878. Catargiu remained in opposition until 1889, when he formed another cabinet, taking the portfolio of the Interior; but this administration fell after seven months. In the Florescu ministry of March 1891 he occupied the same position, and in December he again became president of the council, retaining office until 1895. During this period he was responsible for several useful reforms, chiefly financial and commercial. He died suddenly at Bucharest on the 11th of April 1899.

CATARRH (from the Gr. καταρρεῖν, to flow down), a term principally employed to describe a state of irritation of the mucous membrane of the respiratory passages, or what is called in popular language a “cold.” It is the result of infection by a micro-organism in one or more of various predisposing conditions, damp, chill, fatigue, &c. The complaint usually begins as a nasal catarrh or coryza (Gr. κόρυς, head), with a feeling of weight about the forehead and some degree of difficulty in breathing through the nose, increased on lying down. Fits of sneezing accompanied with a profuse watery discharge from the nostrils and eyes soon follow, while the sense of smell and to some extent that of taste become considerably impaired. There is usually present some amount of sore throat and of bronchial irritation, causing hoarseness and cough. Sometimes the vocal apparatus becomes so much inflamed (laryngeal catarrh) that temporary loss of voice results. There is always more or less feverishness and discomfort, and frequently an extreme sensitiveness to cold. After two or three days the symptoms begin to abate, the discharge from the nostrils and chest becoming thicker and of purulent character, and producing when dislodged considerable relief to the breathing. On the other hand the catarrh may assume a more severe aspect and pass into some form of pulmonary inflammation (see Bronchitis) or influenza (q.v.).

When the symptoms are first felt it is well to take a good purge, and to encourage free perspiration by a hot bath, some diaphoretic drug, as spirits of nitrous ether, being taken before retiring to bed. Some of the older school of physicians still pin their faith to a dose of Dover’s powder. When the cold manifests itself by aches and pains in back and limbs, aspirin taken three or four times in the first twenty-four hours will often act like magic. Locally a snuff made of menthol 1 part, ammonium chloride 3 parts and boracic acid 2 parts will relieve the discomfort of the nose. Also, remembering the microbic origin of the disease, gargling and nasal syringing should be repeated at intervals. As soon as the attack shows signs of subsiding, a good tonic and, still better, a change of air are very helpful.

The term catarrh is used in medical nomenclature in a wider sense to describe a state of irritation of any mucous surface in the body, which is accompanied with an abnormal discharge of its natural secretion, hence the terms gastric catarrh, intestinal catarrh, &c.

CATARRHINE APE, the term used to describe those apes which have the nostrils approximated, the aperture pointing downward, and the intervening septum narrow; distinguishing features of both the lower “doglike” apes (Cynomorpha) and the higher “manlike” apes (Anthropomorpha). The Catarrhini are restricted entirely to the Old World, and include the gorilla, the chimpanzee and orang-utan.

CATASTROPHE (Gr. καταστροφή, from καταστρέφειν, to overturn), a term of the ancient Greek drama for the change in the plot which leads up to the conclusion. The word is thus used of any sudden change, particularly of a violent or disastrous nature, and in geology of a cataclysm or great convulsion of the earth’s surface.

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CATAUXI, a numerous cannibal tribe of South American Indians of the Purus river district, Brazil. They are a fine warlike race, with remarkably clear complexions and handsome features; round wrists and ankles they wear rings of twisted hair. They cultivate mandioc, and make pottery and bark canoes.

CATAWBAS (from the Choctaw for “divided”), a tribe of North American Indians of Siouan stock; formerly the dominant people of South Carolina. Some of their divisions extended into North Carolina. They are now almost extinct, but were at one time able to send nearly 2000 “braves” into battle. In the American War of Independence they furnished a valuable contingent to the South Carolina troops. They then occupied a number of small towns on the Catawba river, but they afterwards leased their land and removed to the territory of the Cherokees, with whom they had been formerly at war. There, however, they did not long remain, but returned to a reservation in their original district. Their affinities have not been very clearly made out, and by Albert Gallatin they were grouped with the Cherokees, Choctaws, Muskogees and Natchez. A vocabulary of sixty of their words was published by Horatio Hale in vol. ii. of the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society in 1848; and a much fuller list—about 300—collected by Oscar M. Lieber, the geologist, in 1856, made its appearance in vol. ii. of Collections of the South Carolina Historical Society, 1858. Of the one hundred Catawbas still said to be surviving, few, if any, can claim to be full-blooded. They are in the Catawba Reservation in York county, South Carolina. The name is familiar in connexion with the white American wine, the praises of which have been sung by Longfellow. The grape from which the wine is obtained was first discovered about 1801, near the banks of the Catawba river, and named by Major Adlum in 1828, but it is now cultivated extensively in Illinois, Ohio and New York, and especially on the shores of Lake Erie.

CATCH THE TEN, sometimes Called Scotch Whist, a game played with a pack of 36 cards, from ace, king, queen to six in each suit, the ace being highest both in play and cutting. In trumps, however, the knave ranks highest. Any number from two to eight may play. If an even number, partners are cut for; if odd, each plays for himself. An odd number of players sit as they like; four players sit as at whist; six playing in two sides sit so that no two partners shall be next each other; six playing three sides sit so that two opponents shall divide each pair; eight are arranged in alternate pairs. After cutting, the cards are dealt according to the number of players. The last card is turned up for the trump. When five or seven play, the six of spades is usually omitted; when eight play, the four sixes are thrown out. The eldest hand leads any card he chooses and all must follow suit if able, the penalty for a revoke being the loss of the game. The tricks are not kept separate but gathered in by one player for his side. At the end of the deal there are six hands of six cards on the table. The players first play out the first two hands, next the second two and finally the last two, the trump card remaining on the table until the first four hands are played out. The game is 41 points, the object of the play being to win the cards which have a special value. These are, with their values: knave of trumps 11, ace of trumps 4, king of trumps 3, queen of trumps 2, ten of trumps 10. All other cards have no counting value. As the ten can be taken by any other honour the object is to “catch the ten.”

CATECHISM (from Gr. κατηχεῖν, teach by word of mouth), a compendium of instruction (particularly of religious instruction) arranged in the form of questions and answers. The custom of catechizing, common to all civilized antiquity, was followed in the schools of Judaism and in the Early Church, where it helped to preserve the Gospel narrative (see Catechumen).

The catechism as we know it is intended primarily for children and uneducated persons. Its aim is to instruct, and it differs from a creed or confession in not being in the first instance an act of worship or a public profession of belief. The first regular catechisms seem to have grown out of the usual oral teaching of catechumens, and to have been compiled in the 8th and 9th centuries. Among them the work of Notker Labeo and of Kero, both monks of St Gall, and that of Ottfried of Weissenburg in Alsace deserve mention. But it is not until the first stirrings of revolt against the hierarchy, which preceded the Reformation, that they became at all widespread or numerous. The Waldenses of Savoy and France, the Brethren (small communities of evangelical dissenters from the medieval faith) of Germany, and the Unitas Fratrum of Bohemia all used the same catechism (one that was first printed in 1498, and which continued to be published till 1530) for the instruction of their children. It was based on St Augustine’s Enchiridion, and considers (a) Faith, i.e. the Creed, (b) Hope, i.e. the Lord’s Prayer, and (c) Love, i.e. the Decalogue.

The age of the Reformation gave a great stimulus to the production of catechisms. This was but natural at a time when the invention of printing had thrown the Bible open to all, and carried the war of religious opinion from the schools into the streets. The adherents of the “old” and the “new” religions alike had to justify their views to the unlearned as well as to the learned, and to give in simple formulas their reasons for the faith that was in them. Moreover, in the universal unrest and oversetting of all authority, Christianity itself was in danger of perishing, not only as the result of the cultured paganism of the Renaissance, but also through the brutish ignorance of the common folk, deprived now of their traditional religious restraints. To the urgency of this peril the reformers were fully alive; and they sought its remedy in education. “Let the people be taught,” said Luther, “let schools be opened for the poor, let the truth reach them in simple words in their own mother tongue, and they will believe.”

Catechisms of the Chief Religious Communions.—(a) Evangelical (Lutheran and Reformed).—It was the ignorance of the peasantry, as revealed by the horrors of the Peasants’ War of 1524-25, and his pastoral visitation of the electorate of Saxony 1525-1527, that drew the above exclamation from Luther, and impelled him to produce his two famous catechisms (1529). In 1520 he had brought out a primer of religion dealing briefly with the Decalogue, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer; and Justus Jonas, Johannes Agricola and other leaders had done something of the same kind. Now all these efforts were superseded by Luther’s Smaller Catechism meant for the people themselves and especially for children, and by his Larger Catechism intended for clergy and schoolmasters. These works, which did much to mould the character of the German people, were set among the doctrinal standards of the Lutheran Church and powerfully influenced other compilations. The Smaller Catechism, with the Augsburg Confession, was made the Rule of Faith in Denmark in 1537.

In this same year (1537) John Calvin at Geneva published his catechism for children. It was called Instruction and Confession of Faith for the Use of the Church of Geneva (a reprint edited by A. Rilliet and T. Dufour Was published in 1878), and explained the Decalogue, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Sacraments. Though it was meant, as he said, to give expression to a simple piety rather than to exhibit a profound knowledge of religious truth, it was the work of a man who knew little of the child mind, and, though it served as an admirable and transparent epitome of his famous Institutes, it was too long and too minute for the instruction of children. Calvin came to see this, and in 1542, after his experience in Strassburg, drafted a new one which was much more suitable for teaching purposes, though, judged by modern standards, still far beyond the theological range of childhood. It was used at the Sunday noon instruction of children, on which Calvin laid much stress, and was adopted and similarly used by the Reformed Church of Scotland. The Reformed churches of the Palatinate, on the other hand, used the Heidelberg Catechism (1562-1563), “sweet-spirited, experiential, clear, moderate and happily-phrased,” mainly the work of two of Calvin’s younger disciples, Kaspar Olevianus and Zacharias Ursinus. The Heidelberg Catechism, set forth by order of the elector, is perhaps the most widely accepted symbol of the Calvinistic faith, and is noteworthy for its 506 emphasis on the less controversial aspects of the Genevan theology. As revised by the synod of Dort in 1619, this catechism became the standard of most of the Reformed churches of central Europe, and in time of the Dutch and German Reformed churches of America. Other compilations were those of Oecolampadius (Basel, 1526), Leo Juda (Zürich, 1534), and Bullinger (Zürich, 1555). In France, after Calvin’s day, the Reformed church used besides Calvin’s book the catechisms of Louis Capell (1619), and Charles Drelincourt (1642), and at the present time Bonnefon’s Nouveau Catéchisme élémentaire (14th ed., 1900) seems most in favour. In Scotland both Calvin’s Geneva Catechism and then the Heidelberg Catechism were translated by order of the General Assembly and annotated. In 1592 these were superseded by that of John Craig, for a time the colleague of John Knox at the High Church, Edinburgh.

Since 1648 the standard Presbyterian catechisms have been those compiled by the Westminster Assembly, presented to parliament in 1647, and then authorized by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (July 1648) and by the Scottish parliament (January 1649). The Larger Catechism is “for such as have made some proficiency in the knowledge of the Christian religion,” but is too detailed and minute for memorizing, and has never received anything like the reception accorded to the Shorter Catechism, which is “for such as are of weaker capacity.” The work was done by a committee presided over first by Herbert Palmer, master of Queens’, Cambridge, and then by Anthony Tuckney, master of Emmanuel. The scriptural proof texts were added at the request of the English parliament. In his negotiations with the parliament in 1648 Charles I. offered to license the printing of the catechism, but, as the negotiations were broken off, this was not done. The Shorter Catechism, after a brief introduction on the end, rule and essence of religion, is divided into two parts:—I. The doctrines we are to believe (1) concerning the nature of God, (2) concerning the decrees of God and their execution—(a) in creation and providence, (b) in the covenant of works, (c) in the covenant of grace; II. The duties we are to perform (1) in regard to the moral law, (2) in regard to the gospel—(a) inward duties, i.e. faith and repentance, (b) outward duties as to the Word, the sacraments and prayer. It has 107 questions and answers, while that of the Anglican Church has but 24, grouping as it does the ten commandments and also the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, instead of dealing with them singly. Though the Shorter Catechism, closely associated as this has been from the first with Scottish public elementary education, has had very great influence in forming and training the character of Presbyterians in Scotland, America and the British colonies, it is, like most other catechisms drawn up by dogmatic theologians, more admirable as an epitome of a particular body of divinity than as an instruction for the young and the unlearned. Its use is now generally preceded by something more adapted to the child-mind, and this is true also in other communions and in the case of other catechisms.

(b) Roman Catholic.—There was no universal catechism published by the Latin Church before the council of Trent, but several provincial councils, e.g. in Germany and Scotland (where Archbishop Hamilton’s catechism appeared in 1552 and was ordered to be read in church by the parish priest), moved in self-defence along the lines already adopted by the reformers. The council of Trent in 1563 resolved on an authoritative work which was finally carried through by two small papal commissions, and issued in 1566 by Pius V. (Eng. trans, by Donovan, Dublin, 1829). Being uncatechetical in form and addressed to the clergy rather than to the people, it missed its intention, and was superseded by others of less exalted origin, especially by those of the Jesuit Peter Canisius, whose Summa Doctrinae et Institutionis Christianae (1554) and its shorter form (1556) were already in the field. The catechisms of Bellarmine (1603) and Bossuet (1687) had considerable vogue, and a summary of the former known as Schema de Parvo was sanctioned by the Vatican council of 1870. But the Roman Catholic Church as a whole has never had any one official catechism, each bishop being allowed to settle the matter for his own diocese. In England the Roman Catholic bishops have agreed on the use of what is known as “The Penny Catechism,” which is very lucid and well constructed.

(c) Orthodox Eastern Church.—Peter Mogilas, metropolitan of Kiev, drew up in 1643 the Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church. This bulwark against the encroachments of the Jesuits and the Reformed Church was standardized by the synod of Jerusalem in 1672. A smaller catechism was drawn up by order of Peter the Great in 1723. The catechisms of Levshin Platon (1762) and V.D. Philaret (1839), each in his day metropolitan of Moscow, are bulky compilations which cannot be memorized, though there is a short introductory catechism prefaced to Philaret’s volume (Eng. trans, in Blackmore’s Doctrine of the Russian Church, 1845). These works are not to any extent in the hands of the people, but are used by the Russian clergy and schoolmasters as guides in giving instruction. The Coptic and Armenian churches also have what H. Bonar describes as “mere pretences at catechisms.”

(d) Anglican.—The catechism of the Church of England is included in the Book of Common Prayer between the Orders for Baptism and Confirmation. It has two parts: (i.) the baptismal covenant, the Creed, the Decalogue and the Lord’s Prayer, drawn up probably by Cranmer1 and Ridley in the time of Edward VI., and variously modified between then (1549) and 1661; (ii.) the meaning of the two sacraments, written on the suggestion of James I. at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 by John Overall, then dean of St Paul’s, and afterwards bishop successively of Coventry and Lichfield and of Norwich. This supplement to what had become known as the Shorter Catechism established its use as against the longer one, King Edward VIth’s Catechisme, which had been drawn up in 1553 by John Ponet or Poynet, bishop of Winchester, and then revised and enlarged in 1570 by Alexander Nowell, Overall’s predecessor as dean of St Paul’s. The Anglican catechism with occasional modification, especially in the sacramental section, is used not only in the Church of England but in the Episcopal churches of Ireland, Scotland, the British dominions and the United States of America. By the rubric of the Prayer Book and by the 59th canon of 1603 the clergy are enjoined to teach the catechism in church on Sundays and holidays after the second lesson at Evening Prayer. This custom, long fallen into disuse, has largely been revived during recent years, the children going to church for a special afternoon service of which catechizing is the chief feature. Compared with the thoroughness of most other catechisms this one seems very scanty, but it has a better chance of being memorized, and its very simplicity has given it a firm hold on the inner life and conscience of devout members of the Anglican communion throughout the world.

(e) Other Communions.—Almost every section of the church, e.g. the Wesleyan Methodist, has its catechism or catechisms, but in addition to those already enumerated only a few need be mentioned. The Socinians embodied their tenets in the larger and smaller works drawn up by Fausto Sozzini and Schmalz, and published at Rakow in Poland in 1605;2 modern Unitarians have modern catechisms. The Quakers or Friends possess a kind of catechism said to have been written by George Fox in 1660, in which father and son are respectively questioner and answerer, and an interesting work by Robert Barclay, in which texts of Scripture form the replies. Congregationalists for some time used Isaac Watts’s Catechisms for Children and Youth (1730), since superseded by the manuals of J.H. Stowell, J.H. Riddette and others. In 1898 the National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches in England and Wales published 507 an Evangelical Free Church Catechism, the work of a committee (convened by Rev. Hugh Price Hughes) comprising Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists (Wesleyan, Primitive and others), and Presbyterians, and thus representing directly or indirectly the beliefs of sixty or seventy millions of avowed Christians in all parts of the world, a striking example of inter-denominational unity. More remarkable still in some respects is The School Catechism, issued in 1907 by a conference of members of the Reformed churches in Scotland, which met on the invitation of the Church of Scotland. In its compilation representatives of the Episcopal Church in Scotland co-operated, and the book though “not designed to supersede the distinctive catechisms officially recognized by the several churches for the instruction of their own children,” certainly “commends itself as suitable for use in schools where children of various churches are taught together.”

CATECHU, or Cutch (Malay, kachu), an extract obtained from several plants, its chief sources being the wood of two species of acacia (A. catechu and A. suma), both natives of India. This extract is known as black catechu. A similar extract, known in pharmacy as pale catechu (Catechu pallidum), and in general commerce as gambir, or terra japonica, is produced from the leaves of Uncaria gambir and U. acida, cinchonaceous plants growing in the East Indian Archipelago. A third product to which the name catechu is also applied, is obtained from the fruits of the areca or betel palm, Areca catechu.

Ordinary black catechu is usually imported in three different forms. The first and best quality, known as Pegu catechu, is obtained in blocks externally covered with large leaves; the second and less pure variety is in masses, which have been moulded in sand; and the third consists of large cubes packed in coarse bags. The wood of the two species of Acacia yielding catechu is taken for the manufacture when the trees have attained a diameter of about 1 ft. The bark is stripped off and used for tanning, and the trunk is split up into small fragments, which are covered with water and boiled. When the extract has become sufficiently thick it is cast into the forms in which the catechu is found in commerce. Catechu so prepared is a dark brown, or, in mass, almost black, substance, brittle, and having generally a shining lustre. It is astringent, with a sweetish taste. In cold water it disintegrates, and in boiling water, alcohol, acetic acid and strong caustic alkali it is completely dissolved. Chemically it consists of a mixture of a peculiar variety of tannin termed catechu-tannic acid with catechin or catechuic acid, and a brown substance due to the alteration of both these principles. Catechu-tannic acid is an amorphous body soluble in cold water, while catechin occurs in minute, white, silky, needle-shaped crystals, which do not dissolve in cold water. A very minute proportion of quercetin, a principle yielded by quercitron bark, has been obtained from catechu.

Gambir, which is similar in chemical composition to ordinary catechu, occurs in commerce in the form of cubes of about an inch in size, with a pale brown or yellow colour, and an even earthy fracture. For the preparation of this extract the plants above mentioned are stripped of their leaves and young twigs, and these are boiled down in shallow pans. The juice is strained off, evaporated, and when sufficiently concentrated is cast into shallow boxes, where, as it hardens and dries, it is cut into small cubes.

Gambir and catechu are extensively employed in dyeing and tanning. For dyeing they have been in use in India from the most remote period, but it was only during the 19th century that they were placed on the list of European dyeing substances. Catechu is fixed by oxidation of the colouring principle, catechin, on the cloth after dyeing or printing; and treated thus it yields a variety of durable tints of drabs, browns and olives with different mordants (see Dyeing). The principal consumption of catechu occurs in the preparation of fibrous substances exposed to water, such as fishing-lines and nets, and for colouring stout canvas used for covering boxes and portmanteaus under the name of tanned canvas. Black catechu is official in most pharmacopoeias except that of Great Britain, in which pale catechu is the official drug. The actions and uses of the two are similar, but black catechu is the more powerful. The dose is from five to twenty grains. The pulvis catechu compositus contains catechu and kino, and may be given in doses twice as large as those named. The drug has the actions and uses of tannic acid, but owing to the relative insolubility of catechu-tannic acid, it is more valuable than ordinary tannic acid in diarrhoea, dysentery and intestinal haemorrhage.

CATECHUMEN (Lat. catechumenus, Gr. κατηχούμενος, instructed, from κατηχεῖν, to teach orally), an ecclesiastical term applied to those receiving instruction in the principles of the Christian religion with a view to baptism. As soon as Christianity became a missionary religion, it was found necessary to make arrangements for giving instruction to new converts. At the beginning the Apostles themselves seem to have undertaken this duty, and the instruction was apparently given after baptism, for in Acts ii. 41, 42, we are told that “they that gladly received the word were baptized ... and they continued stedfastly in the Apostles’ teaching.” There are two instances in the New Testament where reference is made to individual instruction in this technical sense. Luke (i. 4) in dedicating the third Gospel to Theophilus tells him that his aim in writing the book was “that thou mightest have certainty in the things in which thou has been instructed” (κατηχήθης) and we are told that Apollos was instructed (κατηχημένος) “in the way of the Lord” (Acts xviii. 25).

With the development of Christianity the instruction became more definite and formal. It is probable that the duty of instructing converts was assigned to “the teachers,” who are ranked by Paul immediately after the Apostles and prophets (1 Cor. xii. 28), and occupied an important position in the Christian ministry. In the Didache, or Teaching of the Apostles, we have an excellent illustration of the teaching which was given to candidates for baptism in early times. There can be little doubt that the Didache was used as a manual for catechumens for several centuries. Athanasius (Festal Epistles, 39), for instance, says that “it was appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who are just recently coming to us, and wish to be instructed in the word of godliness” (κατηχεῖσθαι τὸν τῆς εὐσεβείας λόγον). The instruction prescribed by the Didache is very largely ethical, and stands in striking contrast to the more elaborate doctrinal teaching which came into vogue in later days. The Shepherd of Hermas too is another book which seems to have been used for the purpose of catechesis, for Eusebius says that it “was deemed most necessary for those who have need of elementary instruction” (Eccles. Hist. iii. 3-6).

With the rise of theological controversy and the growth of heresy catechetical instruction became of vital importance to the Church, and much greater importance was attached to it. After the middle of the 4th century it was regarded as essential that the candidate for baptism should not only be acquainted 508 with the spiritual truths and ethical demands which form the basis of practical Christianity, but should also be trained in theology and the interpretation of the creeds. Two books have been preserved which throw a striking light upon the transformation which had taken place in the conception of catechesis; (1) the Catechetical Lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem; (2) the De rudibus Catechizandis of Augustine. Cyril’s Lectures may be termed the Pearson on the Creed of the 4th century. He takes each article separately, discusses it clause by clause, explains the meaning of each word, and justifies each statement from Scripture. Augustine’s treatise was written at the request of a catechist, named Deogratias, who had asked him for advice. After replying to the question of Deogratias, and giving sundry counsels as to the best method of interesting catechumens, Augustine concludes by giving a model catechetical lecture, in which he covers the whole of biblical history, beginning from the opening chapters of Genesis, and laying particular stress on the doctrinal parts of Scripture. Cyril and Augustine differ, as we should expect, in the doctrines which they select for emphasis, but they both agree in requiring a knowledge of sound doctrine on the part of the candidates.

In spite of the numerous references to catechumens in Patristic literature, our knowledge of the details of the system is often very deficient, and upon some points there is considerable diversity of opinion amongst experts. The following are the most important questions which come under consideration.

CATEGORY (Gr.: κατηγορία, “accusation”), a term used both in ordinary language and in philosophy with the general significance of “class” or “group.” In popular language it is used for any large group of similar things, and still more generally as a mere synonym for the word “class.” The word was introduced into philosophy as a technical term by Aristotle, who, however, several times used it in its original sense of “accusation.” He also used the verb κατηγορεῖν, to accuse, in the specific logical sense, to predicate; τὸ κατηγορούμενον becomes the predicate; and κατηγορικὴ πρότασις may be translated as affirmative proposition. But though the word thus received a new signification from Aristotle, it is not on that account certain that the thing it was taken to signify was equally a novelty in philosophy. In fact we find in the records of Oriental and early Greek thought something corresponding to the Aristotelian classification.

CATENARY (from Lat. catena, a chain), in mathematics, the curve assumed by a uniform chain or string hanging freely between two supports. It was investigated by Galileo, who erroneously determined it to be a parabola; Jungius detected Galileo’s error, but the true form was not discovered until 1691, when James Bernoulli published it as a problem in the Acta Eruditorum. Bernoulli also considered the cases when (1) the chain was of variable density, (2) extensible, (3) acted upon at each point by a force directed to a fixed centre. These curves attracted much attention and were discussed by John Bernoulli, Leibnitz, Huygens, David Gregory and others.

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CATERAN (from the Gaelic ceathairne, a collective word meaning “peasantry”), the band of fighting men of a Highland clan; hence the term is applied to the Highland, and later to any, marauders or cattle-lifters.

CATERHAM, an urban district in the Wimbledon parliamentary division of Surrey, England, 20 m. S. of London by the South-Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1901) 9486. It lies in a healthy, hilly district, and has grown in modern times from a village into a large residential town. There are large barracks in the neighbourhood, and the Metropolitan lunatic asylum is close to the town.

CATERPILLAR, the popular name of the larva of various insects, particularly of butterflies and moths (see Lepidoptera, Hexapoda, Metamorphosis). The word appears first in the form caterpyl (Promptorium Parvulorum, about the middle of the 15th century). This may be the original form, with the addition of -ar or -er; if so, it represents the O. Fr. chatepelose or chatepeleuse, i.e. “hairy-cat” (chat, cat, and pelouse, hairy, Lat. pilosus), a name applied to the hairy caterpillar, and also according to Cotgrave to a weevil. The use of “cat” in this connexion is paralleled by the Swiss name for a caterpillar, teufelskatz, and the popular English name for the blossom of the willow, “catkin,” somewhat resembling a caterpillar (cf. “palmer”); the modern French is chenille, Latin canicula, a little dog. The termination of the word seems to have been early connected with “piller,” a robber, plunderer from the destructive habits of the larva, cf. Joel i. 4—”That which the palmer-worm hath left, hath the locust eaten.” The spelling “caterpillar,” a 17th century corruption, has been the usual form since Johnson.

CATESBY, ROBERT (1573-1605), English conspirator, son of Sir William Catesby of Lapworth in Warwickshire, a prominent recusant who was a descendant of Sir William Catesby, speaker of the House of Commons in 1484, executed by Henry VII. after the battle of Bosworth, was born in 1573, and entered Gloucester Hall (now Worcester College), Oxford, in 1586. He possessed a considerable estate, and was said to be wild and extravagant in his youth. In 1596 he was one of those arrested on suspicion during an illness of Queen Elizabeth. In 1601 he took part in the rebellion of Essex, was wounded in the fight and imprisoned, but finally pardoned on the payment of an enormous fine, to obtain which he was forced to sell a portion of his property. In 1602 he despatched Thomas Winter and the Jesuit Tesimond alias Greenway to Spain to induce Philip III. to organize an invasion of England, and in 1603, after James’s accession, he was named as an accomplice in the “Bye Plot.” Catesby was a man of great beauty of person, “above 2 yards high,” says Father Gerard, “and though slender, yet as well-proportioned to his height as any man one should see.” He possessed a clear head and unflinching courage, and with a strong determination and fascinating manner mastered the minds of his associates and overpowered all opposition. He was, however, headstrong, wilful and imprudent, fit for action, but incapable of due deliberation, and entirely wanting in foresight. Exasperated by his personal misfortunes and at the repressive measures under which his co-religionists were suffering, and blinded by a religious zeal which amounted to fanaticism, he was now to be the chief instigator of the famous Gunpowder Plot, which must in any event have brought disaster upon the Roman Catholic cause. The idea of some great stroke seems to have first entered his mind in May 1603. About the middle of January 1604 he imparted his scheme of blowing up the Parliament House to his cousin Thomas Winter, subsequently taking in Guy Fawkes and several other conspirators and overcoming all fears and scruples. But it was his determination, from which he would not be shaken, not to allow warning to be given to the Roman Catholic peers that was the actual cause of the failure of the plot. A fatal mistake had been made in imparting the secret to Francis Tresham (q.v.), in order to secure his financial assistance; and there is scarcely any doubt that he was the author of the celebrated letter to his brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, which betrayed the conspiracy to the government, on the 26th of October. On receiving the news of the letter on the 28th, Catesby exhibited extraordinary coolness and fortitude, and refused to abandon the attempt, hoping that the government might despise the warning and still neglect precautions; and his confidence was strengthened by Fawkes’s report that nothing in the cellar had been touched or tampered with. On the 2nd of November his resolution was shaken by Tresham’s renewed entreaties that he would flee, and his positive assurance that Salisbury knew everything. On the evening of the 3rd, however, he was again, through Percy’s insistence, persuaded to stand firm and hazard the great stroke. The rest of the story is told in the article Gunpowder Plot. Here it need only be said that Catesby, after the discovery of the conspiracy, fled with his fellow-plotters, taking refuge ultimately at Holbeche in Staffordshire, where on the night of the 8th of November he was overtaken and killed. He had married Catherine, daughter of Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, and left one son, Robert, who inherited that part of the family estate which had been settled on Catesby’s mother and was untouched by the attainder, and who is said to have married a daughter of Thomas Percy.

CAT-FISH, the name usually applied to the fishes of the family Siluridae, in allusion to the long barbels or feelers about the mouth, which have been compared to the whiskers of a cat. The Siluridae are a large and varied group, mostly inhabitants of fresh waters; some of them by their singular form and armature are suggestive of the Devonian mailed fishes, and were placed at one time in their vicinity by L. Agassiz. Even such authorities as T.H. Huxley and E.D. Cope were inclined to ascribe ganoid affinities to the Siluridae; but this view has gradually lost ground, and most modern ichthyologists, if not all, have adopted the conclusions of M. Sagemehl, who has placed the Siluridae near the carps and Characinids in the group Ostariophysi. The Silurids and Cyprinids may be regarded as two parallel series derived from some common stock which cannot have been very different from the existing Characinids. In spite of the archaic appearance of some of its members, the family Siluridae does not appear to extend far back in time, its oldest known representative being the Bucklandium diluvii of the Lower Eocene (London Clay) of Sheppey. A great number of forms were placed by Cuvier and his successors in the family Siluridae, which has since been broken up by T. Gill and other American authors into several families, united under the name of Nematognathi. A middle course appears the more reasonable to the 513 present writer, who has divided the Siluridae of Cuvier into three families, with the following definitions:—

Siluridae—ribs attached to strong parapophyses; operculum well developed.

Loricariidae—ribs sessile; parapophyses absent; operculum more or less developed.

Aspredinidae—ribs sessile; strong parapophyses; operculum absent.

These three families may be defined among the Ostariophysi by having the parietal bones fused with the supraoccipital, no symplectic, the body naked or with bony scutes, the mouth usually toothed, with barbels, and usually an adipose dorsal fin.

The Siluridae embrace more than one thousand species, spread over the fresh waters of all parts of the world, but mostly from between the tropics. They are absent from western Europe and north-west Africa, and from North America west of the Rocky Mountains, but this deficiency has been made good by now, the introduction of Amiurus nebulosus and allied species in various parts of continental Europe and California having proved a success. Only a few forms are marine (Plotosus, Arius, Galeichthys).

The species which has given the name to the whole family is the “Wels” of the Germans, Silurus glanis, the largest European fresh-water fish, inhabiting the greater part of Europe from the Rhine eastwards and north of the Alps. Its head is large and broad, its mouth wide, furnished with six barbels, of which those of the upper jaw are very long. Both jaws and the palate are armed with broad bands of small closely-set teeth, which give the bones a rasp-like appearance. The eyes are exceedingly small. The short body terminates in a long, compressed, muscular tail, and the whole fish is covered with a smooth, scaleless, slippery skin. Specimens of 4 and 5 ft. in length, and of 50 to 80 ℔ in weight, are of common occurrence, and the fish grows to 10 ft., with a weight of 400 ℔, in the Danube. Its food consists chiefly of other bottom-feeding fishes, and in inland countries it is considered one of the better class of food fishes. Stories about children having been found in the stomach of very large individuals are probably inventions. An allied species (S. aristotelis) is found in Greece.

The Clarias and Heterobranchus of Africa and south-eastern Asia have an elongate, more or less eel-shaped body, with long dorsal and anal fins, and are known to be able to live a long time out of water, being provided with an accessory dendritic breathing organ situated above the gills. Some species live in burrows during the dry season, crawling about at night in search of food. The common Nile species, the “Harmoot” (Clarias lazera), occurs abundantly in the Lake of Galilee and was included in, if not chiefly aimed at, by the Mosaic law which forbade the Jews to eat scaleless fishes, a prohibition which has been extended to eels in spite of the obvious presence of minute scales in the latter.

The Saccobranchus of India and Ceylon, a genus more nearly related to Silurus, have also an accessory organ for breathing atmospheric air. It consists of a long sac behind the gill-cavity, extending far back on each side of the body under the muscles.

In the majority of the Siluridae, called by A. Gunther the Proteropterae, a section extremely numerous in species, and represented throughout the tropics, the dorsal fin consists of a short-rayed and an adipose portion, the former belonging to the abdominal vertebral column; the anal is always much shorter than the tail. The gill-membranes are not confluent with the skin of the isthmus; they have a free posterior margin. When a nasal barbel is present, it belongs to the posterior nostril. This section includes among many others the genus Bagrus, of which the bayad (B. bayad) and docmac (B. docmac) frequently come under the notice of travellers on the Nile; they grow to a length of 5 ft. and are eaten.

Of the “cat-fishes” of North America (Amiurus), locally called “bull-heads” or “horned-pouts,” with eight barbels, some twenty species are known. Some of them are valued as food, especially one which is abundant in the ponds of New England, and capable of easy introduction into other localities (A. nebulosus). Others which inhabit the great lakes (A. nigricans) and the Mississippi (A. ponderosus) often exceed the weight of 100 ℔ Platystoma and Pimelodus people the rivers and lakes of tropical America, and many of them are conspicuous in this fauna by the ornamentation of their body, by long spatulate snouts, and by their great size.

The genus Arius is composed of a great number of species and has the widest distribution of all Silurids, being represented in almost all tropical countries which are drained by large rivers. Most of the species live in salt water. They possess six barbels, and their head is extensively osseous on its upper surface; their dorsal and pectoral spines are generally developed into powerful weapons. Bagarius, one of the largest Silurids of the rivers of India and Java, exceeding a length of 6 ft., differs from Arius in having eight barbels and the head covered with skin.

R. Semon has made observations in Queensland on the habits of Arius australis, which builds nests in the sandy bed of the Burnett river. These nests consist of circular basin-like excavations about 20 in. in diameter, at the bottom of which the eggs are laid and covered over by several layers of large stones. In the marine and estuarine species of Arius, Galcichthys and Osteogeniosus, the male, more rarely the female, carries the eggs in the mouth and pharynx; these eggs, few in number, are remarkably large, measuring as much as 17 or 18 millimetres in diameter in Arius commusonii, a fish 3 or 4 ft. in length.

The common North American Amiurus nebulosus also takes care of its eggs, which are deposited beneath protecting objects at the bottom of the water, failing which both parents join in excavating a sort of nest in the mud. The male watches over the eggs, and later leads the young in great schools near the shore, seemingly caring for them as the hen for her chickens.

In the Siluridae Stenobranchiae of Gunther the dorsal fin consists of an adipose portion and a short-rayed fin which belongs to the abdominal vertebral column, and, like the adipose fin, may be sometimes absent. The gill-membranes are confluent with the skin of the isthmus. The Silurids belonging to this section are either South American or African. Among the former we notice specially the genus Doras, which is distinguished by having a series of bony scutes along the middle of the side. The narrowness of their gill-openings appears to have developed in them a habit which has excited the attention of all naturalists who have visited the countries bordering upon the Atlantic rivers of tropical America, viz. the habit of travelling during seasons of drought from a piece of water about to dry up to ponds of greater capacity. These journeys are occasionally of such a length that the fish have to travel all night; they are so numerous 514 that the Indians fill many baskets of them. J. Hancock supposes that the fish carry a small supply of water with them in their gill-cavity, which they can easily retain by closing their branchial apertures. The same naturalist adds that they make regular nests, in which they cover up their eggs with care and defend them—male and female uniting in this parental duty until the eggs are hatched. Synodontis is an African genus and common in the Nile, where the various species are known by the name of “Shal.” They frequently occur among the representations of animals left by the ancient Egyptians. The upper part of their head is protected by strong osseous scutes, and both the dorsal and pectoral fins are armed with powerful spines. Their mouth is small, surrounded by six barbels, which are more or less fringed with a membrane or with branched tentacles.

The curious fact of some species of Synodontis having the lower parts darker than the upper, some being whitish above and blackish beneath, appears to be connected with their habit of swimming in a reversed position, the Belly turned upwards. This habit, known to the ancient Egyptians, who have frequently represented them in that attitude, has been described by E. Geoffrey, who says they nearly constantly swim on their back, moving quite freely forwards and sidewards; but if alarmed, they revert to the normal position to escape more rapidly.

The electric cat- or sheath-fishes (Malopterurus) have been referred to the same section. Externally they are at once recognized by the absence of a rayed dorsal fin, of which only a rudiment remains as a small interneural spine concealed below the skin. The entire fish is covered with soft, villose skin, an osseous defensive armour having become unnecessary in consequence of the development of a powerful electric apparatus, the strength of which, however, is exceeded by that of the electric eel and the large species of Torpedo.

The electric organ of Malopterurus differs essentially from that of other fishes provided with such batteries, being part of the tegumentary system instead of being derived from the muscles. It consists of rhomboidal cells of a fine gelatinous substance immediately under the skin. It is put into action by a single ganglionic cell at the anterior extremity of the spinal cord. Contrary to what takes place in other electric fishes, the current proceeds from the head to the tail.

The electric cat-fish, which grows to a length of 3 ft. in the Congo, has a wide distribution in Africa, extending from the Nile to the Zambezi and from the Senegal to the Congo. It was well known to the ancient Egyptians, who have depicted it in their mural paintings and elsewhere, and an account of its electric properties was given by an Arab physician of the 12th century; then as now the fish was known under the suggestive name of Raad or Raash, which means “thunder.”

Günther’s Siluridae Branchicolae comprise the smallest and least developed members of the family; they are referred to two genera only from South America, Stegophilus and Vandellia, the smallest of which does not exceed the length of 2 in. Their body is soft, narrow, cylindrical and elongate; the dorsal and anal fins short; the vent far behind the middle of the length of the body; gill-membranes confluent with the skin of the isthmus. Each maxillary is provided with a small barbel; and the gill-covers are armed with short stiff spines. Their small size notwithstanding, these Silurids are well known to the Brazilians, who accuse them of entering and ascending the urethra of persons while bathing, causing inflammation and sometimes death. Some certainly live parasitically in the gill-cavity of large Silurids, and F. Silvestri has observed Stegophilus insidiosus to suck the blood in the gills of Platystoma coruscans, a Silurid growing to a length of 6 ft.

The mailed cat-fish of the South American genus Callichthys builds regular nests of grass on leaves, sometimes placed in a hole scooped out in the bank, in which they cover their eggs and defend them, male and female sharing in this parental duty. In the allied Corydoras a lengthy courtship takes place, followed by an embrace, during which the female receives the seminal fluid in a sort of pouch formed by the folded membranes of her ventral fins; immediately after, five or six eggs are produced and received in the pouch, to be afterwards carefully placed in a secluded spot. This operation is repeated many times, until the total number of eggs, about 250, have been deposited. In accordance with these pairing habits, the pectoral spines of the male, which are used in amplexation, are larger and stronger than those of the female. These fish are monogamous, and both parents remain by the side of the nest, furiously attacking any assailant.

The allied family Loricariidae is entirely confined to the fresh waters of Central and South America. C.T. Regan, who has recently published an elaborate monograph of them, recognizes 189 species, referred to 17 genera. Many of them are completely mailed; but all have in common a short-rayed dorsal fin, with the 515 ventrals below or rarely in front of it. Their gill-openings are reduced to a short slit. The first group of this section comprises alpine forms of the Andes, without any armature, and with a very broad and pendent lower lip. They have been referred to several genera (Stygogenes, Arges, Brontes, Astroblepus), but are collectively called “preñadillas” by th natives, who state that they live in subterranean craters within the bowels of the volcanoes of the Andes, and are ejected with streams of mud and water during eruptions. These fishes may, however, be found in surface waters at all times, and their appearance in great quantities in the low country during volcanic eruptions can be accounted for by numbers being killed by the sulphuretted gases which escape during an eruption and by their being swept down with the torrents of water issuing from the volcano. The lowland forms have their body encased in large scutes, either rough, scale-like, and arranged in four or five series (Chaetostomus), or polished, forming broad rings round the slender and depressed tail (Loricaria, fig. 5). They are mostly of small size.

In certain of the mailed genera the secondary sexual differences may be very pronounced, and have given rise to many nominal species. The shape of the snout may differ according to the sex, and its margin may be beset with tentacles in the male, whilst it frequently happens that the head of the latter is margined with spines or bristles which are either absent or considerably shorter in the female.

The Aspredinidae, which are also closely related to the Siluridae, are represented by four genera and eighteen species from South America. Aspredo batrachus (fig. 6), of the Guianas, the largest form, reaching to about a foot in length, deserves notice from the manner in which the female carries her eggs attached to the belly and paired fins, in a single layer, each egg being connected with the skin by a cup-shaped pedunculate base supplied with blood-vessels and coated with a layer of epithelium, the formation of which is still unexplained.

CATGUT, the name applied to cord of great toughness and tenacity prepared from the intestines of sheep, or occasionally from those of the horse, mule and ass. Those of the cat are not employed, and therefore it is supposed that the word is properly kitgut, kit meaning “fiddle,” and that the present form has arisen through confusion with kit = cat. The substance is used for the strings of harps and violins, as well as other stringed musical instruments, for hanging the weights of clocks, for bow-strings, and for suturing wounds in surgery. To prepare it the intestines are cleaned, freed from fat, and steeped for some time in water, after which their external membrane is scraped off with a blunt knife. They are then steeped for some time in an alkaline ley, smoothed and equalized by drawing out, subjected to the antiseptic action of the fumes of burning sulphur, if necessary dyed, sorted into sizes, and twisted together into cords of various numbers of strands according to their uses. The best strings for musical instruments are imported from Italy (“Roman strings”); and it is found that lean and ill-fed animals yield the toughest gut.

CATHA, the khat of the Arabs, a shrub widely distributed and much cultivated in Arabia and tropical Africa from, Abyssinia to the Cape. The dried leaves are used for the preparation of a kind of tea and also as tobacco. The plant is a member of the natural order Celastraceae, a family of shrubs and trees found in temperate and tropical climates and represented in Britain by the spindle-tree (Euonymus europaeus).

CATHARS (Cathari or Catharists), a widespread heretical sect of the middle ages. They were the débris of an early Christianity, scattered in the 10th to 14th centuries over East and West, having their analogues in the Mahommedan world as well. In the East they were called Bogomils (q.v.) and Paulicians; in the West, Patarenes, Tixerands (i.e. Weavers), Bulgars, Concorricii, Albanenses, Albigeois, &c.; in both, Cathars and Manicheans. This article relates to the Western Cathars, as they appear (1) in the Cathar Ritual written in Provençal and preserved in a 13th-century MS. in Lyons, published by Clédat, Paris, 1888; (2) in Bernard Gui’s Practica inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis, edited by Canon C. Douais, Paris, 1886; and (3) in the procès verbal of the inquisitors’ reports. Some were downright dualists, and believed that there are two gods or principles, one of good and the other of evil, both eternal; but as a rule they subordinated the evil to the good. All were universalists in so far as they believed in the ultimate salvation of all men.1

Their tenets were as follows:—The evil god, Satan, who inspired the malevolent parts of the Old Testament, is god and lord of this world, of the things that are seen and are temporal, and especially of the outward man which is decaying, of the earthen vessel, of the body of death, of the flesh which takes us captive under the law of sin and desire. This world is the only true purgatory and hell, being the antithesis of the world eternal, of the inward man renewed day by day, of Christ’s peace and kingdom which are not of this world. Men are the result of a primal war in heaven, when hosts of angels incited by Satan or Lucifer to revolt were driven out, and were imprisoned in terrestrial bodies created for them by the adversary. But there are also celestial bodies, bodies spiritual and not natural. These the angel souls left behind in heaven, and they are buildings from God, houses not made with hands, tunics eternal. 516 Imprisoned in the garment of flesh, burdened with its sin, souls long to be clothed upon with the habitations they left in heaven. So long as they are at home in the body, they are absent from the Lord. They would fain be at home with the Lord, and absent from the body, for which there is no place in heaven since flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor corruption inherit incorruption. There is no resurrection of the flesh. The true resurrection is the spiritual baptism bequeathed by Christ to the boni homines. How shall man escape from his prison-house of flesh, and undo the effects of his fall? For mere death brings no liberation, unless a man is become a new creation, a new Adam, as Christ was; unless he has received the gift of the spirit and become a vehicle of the Paraclete. If a man dies unreconciled to God through Christ, he must pass through another cycle of imprisonment in flesh; perhaps in a human, but with equal likelihood in an animal’s body. For when after death the powers of the air throng around and, persecute, the soul flees into the first lodging of clay that it finds.2 Christ was a life-giving spirit, and the boni homines, the “good men,” as the Cathars called themselves, are his ambassadors. They alone have kept the spiritual baptism with fire which Christ instituted, and which has no connexion with the water baptism of John; for the latter was an unregenerate soul, who failed to recognize the Christ, a Jew whose mode of baptism with water belongs to the fleeting outward world and is opposed to the kingdom of God. It would be interesting to trace Bardesanes and the Syriac Hymn of the Soul in all this.

The Cathars fell into two classes, corresponding to the Baptized and the Catechumens of the early church, namely, the Perfect, who had been “consoled,” i.e. had received the gift of the Paraclete; and the credentes or Believers. The Perfect formed the ordained priesthood, were women no less than men, and controlled the church; they received from the Believers unquestioning obedience, and as vessels of election in whom the Holy Spirit already dwelt, they were adored by the faithful, who were taught to prostrate themselves before them whenever they asked for their prayers. For none but the Consoled had received into their hearts the spirit of God’s Son, which cries “Abba, Father.” They alone were become adopted sons, and so able to use the Lord’s Prayer, which begins, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” The Perfect alone knew God and could address him in this prayer, the only one they used in their ceremonies. The mere credens could at best invoke the living saint, and ask him to pray for him.

All adherents of the sect seem to have kept three Lents in the year, as also to have fasted Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays of each week; in these fasts a diet of bread and water was usual. But a credens under probation for initiation, which lasted at least one and often several years, fasted always. The life of a Perfect was so hard, and, thanks to the inquisitors, so fraught with danger, that most Believers deferred the rite until the death-bed, as in the early centuries many believers deferred baptism. The rule imposed complete chastity. A husband at initiation left his wife, committing her “to God and the gospel”; a wife her husband. A male Perfect could not lay his hand on a woman without incurring penance of a three-days’ fast. All begetting of children is evil, for Adam’s chambering with Eve was the forbidden fruit. It is good for a man not to touch a woman; a man’s relations with his own wife are merely a means of fornication, and marriage and concubinage are indistinguishable as against the kingdom of God, in which there is no marrying or giving in marriage. Those only have been redeemed from earth who were virgins, undefiled with women. The passages of the New Testament which seem to connive at the married relation were interpreted by the Cathars as spoken in regard of Christ and the church. The Perfect must also leave his father and mother, and his children, for a man’s foes are they of his own household. The family must be sacrificed to the divine kinship. He that loveth father or mother more than Christ is not worthy of him, nor he that loveth more his son or daughter. The Perfect takes up his cross and follows after Christ.

Next he must abstain from all flesh diet except fish. He may not even eat cheese or eggs or milk, for they, like meat, are produced per viam generationis seu coitus. Everything that is sexually begotten is impure. Fish were supposed to be born in the water without sexual connexion, and on the basis of this old physiological fallacy the Cathars equally with the Catholic framed their rule of fasting. And there was yet another reason why the Perfect should not eat animals, for a human soul might be doing time in its body. Nor might a Perfect or one in course of probation kill anything, for the Mosaic commandment applies to all life. He might not lie nor take an oath, for the precept “Swear not at all” was, like the rest of the gospel, taken seriously. This was the chief of their “anarchist doctrines.”3

The Cathar rites, which remain to us in a manual of the sect, “recall,” says the Abbé Guiraud, no too favourable a witness, “those of the primitive church with a truth and precision the more striking the nearer we go back to the apostolic age.” The medieval inquisitor saw in them an aping of the rites of the Catholic church as he knew them; but they were really, says the same authority, “archaeological vestiges (i.e. survivals) of the primitive Christian liturgy. In the bosom of medieval society they were the last witness to a state of things that the regular development of Catholic cult had amplified and modified. They resemble the erratic blocks which lost amid alien soils recall, where we find them, the geological conditions of earlier ages. This being so, it is of the deepest interest to study the Cathar cult, since through its rites we can get a glimpse of those of the primitive church, about which want of documents leaves us too often in the dark.”

The central Cathar rite was consolamentum, or baptism with spirit and fire. The spirit received was the Paraclete derived from God and sent by Christ, who said, “The Father is greater than I.” Of a consubstantial Trinity the Cathars naturally had never heard. Infant baptism they rejected because it was unscriptural, and because all baptism with water was an appanage of the Jewish demiurge Jehovah, and as such expressly rejected by Christ.

The consolamentum removes original sin, undoes the sad effects of the primal fall, clothes upon us our habitation which is from heaven, restores to us the lost tunic of immortality. A Consoled is an angel walking in the flesh, whom the thin screen of death alone separates from Christ and the beatific vision. The rite was appointed by Christ, and has been handed down from generation to generation by the boni homines.

The long probation called “abstinence” which led up to it is a survival of the primitive catechumenate with its scrutinies. The prostrations of the credens before the Perfect were in their manner and import identical with the prostrations of the catechumen before the exorcist. We find the same custom in the Celtic church of St Columba. Just as at the third scrutiny the early catechumen passed a last examination in the Gospels, Creed and Lord’s Prayer, so after their year of abstinence the credens receives creed and prayer; the allocution with which the elder “handed on” this prayer is preserved, and of it the Abbé Guiraud remarks that, if it were not in a Cathar ritual, one might believe it to be of Catholic origin. It is so Christian in tone, he quaintly remarks elsewhere, that an inquisitor might have used it quite as well as a heretic. In it the Perfect addresses the postulant, as in the corresponding Armenian rite, by the name of Peter; and explains to him from Scripture the indwelling of the spirit in the Perfect, and his adoption as a son by God. The Lord’s Prayer is then repeated by the postulant after the elder, who explains it clause by clause; the words panis 517 superstantialis being interpreted not of the material but of the spiritual bread, which consists of the Words of Life.

There followed the Renunciation, primitive enough in form, but the postulant solemnly renounced, not Satan and his works and pomp, but the harlot church of the persecutors, whose prayers were more deadly than desirable. He renounced the cross which its priests had signed on him with their chrism, their sham baptisms and other magical rites. Next followed the spiritual baptism itself, consisting of imposition of hands, and holding of the Gospel on the postulant’s head. The elder begins a fresh allocution by citing Matt. xxviii. 19, Mark xvi. 15, 16, John iii. 3 (where the Cathars’ text must originally have omitted in v. 5 the words “of water and,” since their presence contradicts their argument). Acts ix. 17, 18, viii. 14-17, are then cited; also John xx. 21-23, Matt. xvi. 18, 19, Matt. xviii. 18-20, for the Perfect one receives in this rite power to bind and loose. The Perfect’s vocation is then defined: he must not commit adultery nor homicide, nor lie, nor swear any oath, nor pick and steal, nor do unto another that which he would not have done unto himself. He shall pardon his wrongdoers, love his enemies, pray for them that calumniate and accuse him, offer the other cheek to the smiter, give up his mantle to him that takes his tunic, neither judge nor condemn. Asked if he will fulfil each of these, the postulant answers: “I have this will and determination. Pray God for me that he give me his strength.”

The next episode of the rite exactly reproduces the Roman confiteor as it stood in the 2nd century; “the postulant says: ’Parcite nobis. For all the sins I have committed, in word or thought or deed, I come for pardon to God and to the church and to you all.’ And the Christians shall say: ‘By God and by us and by the church may they be pardoned thee, and we pray God that he pardon you them.’”

There follows the act of “consoling.” The elder takes the Gospel off the white cloth, where it has lain all through the ceremony, and places it on the postulant’s head, and the other good men present place their right hands on his head; they shall say the parcias (spare), and thrice the “Let us adore the Father and Son and Holy Spirit,” and then pray thus: “Holy Father, welcome thy servant in thy justice and send upon him thy grace and thy holy spirit.” Then they repeat the “Let us adore,” the Lord’s Prayer, and read the Gospel (John i. 1-17).

This was the vital part of the whole rite. The credens is now a Perfect one. He is girt with the sacred thread round his naked body under the breasts. Where the fear of the persecutor was absent he was also clad in a black gown. The Perfect ones present give him the kiss of peace, and the rite is over. This part of the rite answers partly to the Catholic confirmation of a baptized person, partly to the ordination of a pope of Rome or Alexandria. The latter in being ordained had the Gospel laid on their heads, and the same feature occurs in old Gallican and Coptic rites of ordaining a bishop.

Thus the Cathar ritual, like that of the Armenian dissenters (see Paulicians), reflects an age when priestly ordination was not yet differentiated from confirmation. “Is it not curious,” says the Abbé Guiraud, “to remark that the essential rite of the consolamentum is in effect nothing but the most ancient form of Christian ordination?”

The Cathar Eucharist was equally primitive, and is thus described by a contemporary writer in a 13th-century MS. of the Milan Library:—”The Benediction of bread is thus performed by the Cathars. They all, men and women, go up to a table, and standing up say the ‘Our Father.’4 And he who is prior among them, at the close of the Lord’s Prayer, shall take hold of the bread and say: ‘Thanks be to the God of our Jesus Christ. May the Spirit be with us all.’ And after that he breaks and distributes to all. And such bread is called bread blessed, although no one believes that out of it is made the body of Christ. The Albanenses, however, deny that it can be blessed or sanctified, because it is corporeal” (i.e. material).

As Tertullian relates of his contemporaries in the 2nd century, so the Cathars would reserve part of their bread of blessing and keep it for years, eating of it occasionally though only after saying the Benedicite. The Perfect kept it wrapped up in a bag of pure white cloth, tied round the neck,5 and sent it long distances to regions which through persecution they could not enter. On the death-bed it could even, like the Catholic Viaticum, take the place of the rite of Consolamentum, if this could not be performed. Once a month this solemn rite of breaking bread was held, the credentes assisting. The service was called apparellamentum, because a table was covered with a white cloth and the Gospel laid on it. The Perfect were adored, and the kiss of peace was passed round.

The influence of Catharism on the Catholic church was enormous. To counteract it celibacy was finally imposed on the clergy, and the great mendicant orders evolved; while the constant polemic of the Cathar teachers against the cruelty, rapacity and irascibility of the Jewish tribal god led the church to prohibit the circulation of the Old Testament among laymen. The sacrament of “extreme unction” was also evolved by way of competing with the death-bed consolamentum.

CATHAY, the name by which China (q.v.) was known to medieval Europe and is still occasionally referred to in poetry, as in Tennyson’s “Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” It is derived from Khitāī, or Khitāt, the name which was properly that of the kingdom established by the Khitān conquerors in the northern provinces of China about a.d. 907, which after the fall of this dynasty in 1125 remained attached to their former territory, and was subsequently applied by the nations of Central Asia to the whole of China. Thus “Kitai” is still the Russian name for China. The name penetrated to Europe in the 13th century with the fame of the conquests of Jenghiz Khan. After the discovery of southern China by European navigators Cathay was erroneously believed to be a country to the north of China, and it was the desire to reach it that sent the English adventurers of the 16th century in search of the north-east passage.

CATHCART, SIR GEORGE (1794-1854), English soldier, third son of the 1st Earl Cathcart, was born in London on the 12th of May 1794. He was educated at Eton and Edinburgh University. In 1810 he entered the army, and two years later accompanied his father to Russia as aide-de-camp. With him he joined the Russian headquarters in March 1813; and he was present at all the great battles of that year in Germany, and of the following year in France, and also at the taking of Paris. The fruits of his careful observation and critical study of these operations appeared in the Commentaries on the war in Russia and Germany 1812-1813, a plain soldier-like history, which he published in 1850. After the peace of 1814 he accompanied his father to the congress of Vienna. He was present at Quatre Bras and at Waterloo, as an aide-de-camp to the duke of Wellington, and remained on the staff till the army of occupation quitted France. 518 Reappointed almost immediately, he accompanied the duke to the congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle and Verona, and in 1826 to Prussia. Promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1826, he was placed on half-pay in 1834. He was recalled to active service in 1838, and sent as commander of the King’s Dragoon Guards to Canada, where he played an important part in suppressing the rebellion and pacifying the country. In 1844 he returned to England, and two years later was appointed deputy-lieutenant of the Tower, a post which he held up to the time of his promotion to major-general in 1851. In March 1852 he succeeded Sir Harry Smith as governor and commander-in-chief at the Cape, and brought the Kaffir war, then in progress, to a successful conclusion. He promulgated the first constitution of Cape Colony, and conducted operations against the Basuto. Cathcart was made a K.C.B. and received the thanks of both Houses for his services (1853). In December 1853 he was made adjutant-general of the army, but never entered upon his duties, being sent out to the Crimean War as soon as he arrived in England. He was even given a dormant commission entitling him to the chief command in case of accident to Lord Raglan, and the highest hopes were fixed on him as a scientific and experienced soldier. But these hopes were not to be fulfilled; for he fell at the battle of Inkerman (November 5, 1854). His remains, with those of other officers, were buried on Cathcart’s Hill. Sir George Cathcart married in 1824 Lady Georgiana Greville, who survived him, and by whom he had a family.

CATHCART, WILLIAM SCHAW CATHCART, 1st Earl (1755-1843), English soldier and diplomatist, was born at Petersham on the 17th of September 1755, and educated at Eton. In 1771 he went to St Petersburg, where his father, Charles, 9th Baron Cathcart (1721-1776), a general in the army, was ambassador. From 1773 to 1777 he studied law, but after succeeding to the barony in 1776 he obtained a commission in the cavalry. Proceeding to America in 1777, he had before the close of his first campaign twice won promotion on the field of battle. In 1778 he further distinguished himself in outpost work, and at the battle of Monmouth he commanded an irregular corps, the “British Legion,” with conspicuous success; for a time also he acted as quartermaster-general to the forces in America. He returned home in 1780, and in February 1781 was made captain and lieutenant-colonel in the Coldstream Guards. He was elected a representative peer for Scotland in 1788, and in 1792 he became colonel of the 29th foot. He served with distinction in the campaigns in the Low Countries, 1793-1795, in the course of which he was promoted major-general; and in 1801 he was made a lieutenant-general, having in the meanwhile received the appointments of vice-admiral of Scotland (1795), privy councillor (1798), and colonel of the 2nd Life Guards (1797). From 1803 to 1805 Lord Cathcart was commander-in-chief in Ireland, and in the latter year he was sent by Pitt in command of the British expedition to Hanover (see Napoleonic Campaigns). After the recall of this expedition Cathcart commanded the forces in Scotland until 1807, when he was placed in charge of the expedition to Copenhagen, which surrendered to him on the 6th of September. Four weeks later he was created Viscount Cathcart of Cathcart and Baron Greenock of Greenock in the peerage of the United Kingdom, resuming the Scottish command on his return from the front. On the 1st of January 1812 he was promoted to the full rank of general, and a few months later he proceeded to Russia as ambassador and military commissioner. In the latter capacity he served with the headquarters of the allies throughout the War of Liberation (1812-1814); his success in the delicate and difficult task of maintaining harmony and devotion to the common cause amongst the generals of many nationalities was recognized after the war by his elevation to the earldom (July 1814). He then went to St Petersburg, and continued to hold the post of ambassador until 1820, when he returned to England. He died at his estate near Glasgow on the 16th of June 1843.

His son, Charles Murray Cathcart, 2nd earl (1783-1859), succeeded to the title in 1843. He entered the 2nd Life Guards in 1800, and saw active service under Sir James Craig in the Mediterranean, 1805-1806. In 1807 he became by courtesy Lord Greenock. He took part in the Walcheren expedition of 1809 as a major, and as a lieutenant-colonel served at Barossa, Salamanca and Vittoria. He had already gained staff experience, and he now served under Graham in Holland, 1814, as quartermaster-general. He was present at Waterloo, and for his services received the C.B. and several foreign orders. During the peace he became deeply interested in scientific pursuits, and a new mineral discovered by him in 1841 was named Greenockite. His later military services included the chief command in Canada during a period of grave unrest (1846-1849). He retired from active service in 1850, becoming a full general just before his death. The title passed to his son and grandson as 3rd and 4th earls.

CATHCART, a parish situated partly in Renfrewshire and partly in Lanarkshire, Scotland. The Renfrewshire portion has the larger area (2387 acres), but the smaller population (7375), the area of the Lanarkshire portion being 745 acres and the population (1901) 20,983. The industries include paper-making, dyeing and sandstone quarrying, but limestone and coal have also been worked. The parish includes the town of Cathcart (pop. 4808), and the villages of Old and New Cathcart, but much of it, though outside the city boundaries, is practically continuous with some of the southern suburbs of Glasgow, with which there is communication by electric tram and the Caledonian railway’s circular line. The White Cart flows through the parish. In the 12th century Cathcart became a barony of the Cathcarts, who derived the title of their lordship (1460) and earldom (1814) from it. On the Queen’s Knowe, a hillock near the ruins of Cathcart Castle, a memorial marks the spot where Queen Mary watched the progress of the battle of Langside (1568), the site of which lies within the parish.

CATHEDRAL, more correctly “cathedral church” (ecclesia cathedralis), the church which contains the official “seat” or throne of a bishop—cathedra, one of the Latin names for this, giving us the adjective “cathedral.” The adjective has gradually, for briefness of speech, assumed the character of a substantive, but though an instance of this (strictly incorrect) use of the word as a substantive has been found as far back as 1587, it became common only at the end of the 18th, or first half of the 19th, century. One of the earliest instances of the term ecclesia cathedralis is said to occur in the acts of the council of Tarragona in 516. Another name for a cathedral church is ecclesia mater, indicating that it is the mother church. As being the one important church, it was also known as ecclesia major. This is the formal expression used by Archbishop Walter Gray of York (1216-1255), and it is preserved in modern times by the name of “La Majeure,” by which the old cathedral church of Marseilles is popularly known. Again, as the chief house of God, the cathedral church was the Domus Dei, and from this name the German Domkirche, or Dom, is derived, as also the Swedish Domkyrka, and the Italian Duomo.

History and Organization.—It was early decreed that the cathedra of a bishop was not to be placed in the church of a village, but only in that of a city. There was no difficulty as to this on the continent of Europe, where towns were numerous, and where the cities were the natural centres from which Christianity was diffused among the people who inhabited the surrounding districts. In the British islands, however, the case was different; towns were few, and owing to other causes, instead of exercising jurisdiction over definite areas or districts, many of the bishops were bishops of tribes or peoples, as the bishops of the south Saxons, the west Saxons, the Somersaetas and others. The cathedra of such a bishop was often migratory, and was at times placed in one church, and then another, and sometimes in the church of a village. In 1075 a council was held in London, under the presidency of Archbishop Lanfranc, which, reciting the decrees of the council of Sardica held in 347 and that of Laodicea held in 360 on this matter, ordered the 519 bishop of the south Saxons to remove his see from Selsey to Chichester; the Wilts and Dorset bishop to remove his cathedra from Sherborne to Old Sarum, and the Mercian bishop, whose cathedra was then at Lichfield, to transfer it to Chester. Traces of the tribal and migratory system may still be noted in the designations of the Irish see of Meath (where the result has been that there is now no cathedral church) and Ossory, the cathedral church of which is at Kilkenny. Some of the Scottish sees were also migratory.

By the canon law the bishop is regarded as the pastor of the cathedral church, the parochia of which is his diocese. In view of this, canonists speak of the cathedral church as the one church of the diocese, and all others are deemed chapels in their relation to it.

Occasionally two churches jointly share the distinction of containing the bishop’s cathedra. In such case they are said to be con-cathedral in relation to each other. Instances of this occurred in England before the Reformation in the dioceses of Bath and Wells, and of Coventry and Lichfield. Hence the double titles of those dioceses. In Ireland an example occurs at Dublin, where Christ Church and St Patrick’s are jointly the cathedral churches of that diocese. In France the bishop of Couserans (a see suppressed at the Revolution) had two con-cathedral churches at St Lizier, and the bishop of Sisteron (a see also suppressed) had a second throne in the church of Forcalquier which is still called “La Con-cathédrale.” Other instances might be named. In the case of York the collegiate churches of Beverley, Ripon and Southwell were almost in the same position, but although the archbishop had a stall in each he had no diocesan cathedra in them, and the chapters were not united with that of the metropolitical church in the direct government of the diocese, or the election of the archbishop, nor had they those other rights which were held to denote the cathedral character of a church.

Cathedral churches are reckoned as of different degrees of dignity: (1) the simple cathedral church of a diocesan bishop, (2) the metropolitical church to which the other diocesan cathedral churches of a province are suffragan, (3) the primatial church under which are ranged metropolitical churches and their provinces, (4) patriarchal churches to which primatial, metropolitical, and simple cathedral churches alike owe allegiance. The title of “primate” was occasionally conferred on metropolitans of sees of great dignity or importance, such as Canterbury, York, Rouen, &c., whose cathedral churches remained simply metropolitical. Lyons, where the cathedral church is still known as “La Primatiale,” and Lund in Sweden, may be cited as instances of churches which were really primatial. Lyons had the archbishops of Sens and Paris and their provincial dioceses subject to it till the Revolution, and Lund had the archbishop of Upsala and his province subject to it. As with the title of primate, so also that of “patriarch” has been conferred on sees such as Venice and Lisbon, the cathedral churches of which are patriarchal in name alone. The cathedral church of St John Lateran, the cathedral church of the pope as bishop of Rome and patriarch of the West, alone in western Europe possesses potentially a patriarchal character. Its formal designation is “Patriarchalis Basilica, Sacrosancta Romana Cathedralis Ecclesia Lateranensis.”

The removal of a bishop’s cathedra from a church deprives that church of its cathedral dignity, although often the name clings in common speech, as for example at Antwerp, which was deprived of its bishop at the French Revolution.

The history of the body of clergy attached to the cathedral church is obscure, and as in each case local considerations affected its development, all that can be attempted is to give a general outline of the main features which were more or less common to all. Originally the bishop and cathedral clergy formed a kind of religious community, which, in no true sense a monastery, was nevertheless often called a monasterium. The word had not the restricted meaning which it afterwards acquired. Hence the apparent anomaly that churches like York and Lincoln, which never had any monks attached to them, have inherited the name of minster or monastery. In these early communities the clergy often lived apart in their own dwellings, and were not infrequently married. In the 8th century, however, Chrodegang, bishop of Metz (743-766), compiled a code of rules for the clergy of the cathedral churches, which, though widely accepted in Germany and other parts of the continent, gained little acceptance in England. According to Chrodegang’s rule the cathedral clergy were to live under a common roof, occupy a common dormitory and submit to the authority of a special officer. The rule of Chrodegang was, in fact, a modification of the Benedictine rule. Gisa, a native of Lorraine, who was bishop of Wells from 1061 to 1088, introduced it into England, and imposed its observance on the clergy of his cathedral church, but it was not followed for long there, or elsewhere in England.

During the two centuries, roughly bounded by the years 900 and 1100, the cathedral clergy became more definitely organized, and were also divided into two classes. One was that of a monastic establishment of some recognized order of monks, very often that of the Benedictines, while the other class was that of a college of clergy, living in the world, and bound by no vows, except those of their ordination, but governed by a code of statutes or canons. Hence the name of “canon” given to them. In this way arose the distinction between the monastic and secular cathedral churches. In England the monastic cathedral churches were Bath, Canterbury, Carlisle, Coventry, Durham, Ely, Norwich, Rochester, Winchester and Worcester, all of them Benedictine except Carlisle, which was a church of Augustinians. The secular churches were Chichester, Exeter, Hereford, Lichfield, Lincoln, St Paul’s (London), Salisbury, Wells, York, and the four Welsh cathedral churches. In Ireland all were secular except Christ Church, Dublin (Augustinian), and Down (Benedictine), and none, even in their earliest days, were ever, it is believed, churches of recognized orders of monks, except the two named. In Scotland St Andrew’s was Augustinian, Elgin (or Moray), Glasgow and Aberdeen were always secular, and ordered on the models of Lincoln and Salisbury. Brechin had a community of Culdees till 1372, when a secular chapter was constituted. The cathedral church of Galloway, at Whithorn, of English foundation, was a church of Praemonstratensians. In Germany, as in England, many of the cathedral churches were monastic. In Denmark all seem to have been Benedictine at first, except Borglum, which was Praemonstratensian till the Reformation. The others were changed to churches of secular canons. In Sweden, Upsala was originally Benedictine, but was secularized about 1250, and it was ordered that each of the cathedral churches of Sweden should have a chapter of at least fifteen secular canons. In France monastic chapters were very common, but nearly all the monastic cathedral churches there had been changed to churches of secular canons before the 17th century. One of the latest to be so changed was that of Seez, in Normandy, which was Augustinian till 1547, when Pope Paul III. dispensed the members from their vows, and constituted them a chapter of secular canons. The chapter of Senez was monastic till 1647, and others perhaps even later, but the majority were secularized about the time of the Reformation.

In the case of monastic cathedral churches there were no dignitaries, the internal government was that of the order to which the chapter belonged, and all the members kept perpetual residence. The reverse of this was the case with the secular chapters; the dignities of provost, dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, &c., soon came into being, for the regulation and good order of the church and its services, while the non-residence of the canons, rather than their perpetual residence, became the rule, and led to their duties being performed by a body of “vicars,” who officiated for them at the services of the church.

Abroad, the earliest head of a secular church seems to have been the provost (praepositus, Probst, &c.), who was charged, not only with the internal regulation of the church, and oversight of the members of the chapter and control of the services, but was also the steward or seneschal of the lands and possessions of the church. The latter often mainly engaged his attention, 520 to the neglect of his domestic and ecclesiastical duties, and complaints were soon raised that the provost was too much mixed in worldly affairs, and was too frequently absent from his spiritual duties. This led, in many cases, to the institution of a new officer called the “dean,” who had charge of that portion of the provost’s duties which related to the internal discipline of the chapter and the services of the church. In some cases the office of provost was abolished, but in others it was continued, the provost, who was also occasionally archdeacon as well, remaining head of the chapter. This arrangement was most commonly followed in Germany. In England the provost was almost unknown. Bishop Gisa introduced a provost as head of the chapter of Wells, but the office was afterwards subordinated to the other dignities, and the provost became simply the steward of certain of the prebendal lands. The provost of the collegiate church of Beverley was the most notable instance of such an officer in England, but at Beverley he was an external officer with no authority in the government of the church, no stall in the choir and no vote in chapter. The provost of Eton, introduced by Henry VI., occupied a position most nearly approaching that of a foreign cathedral provost. In Germany and in Scandinavia, and in a few of the cathedral churches in the south of France, the provost was the ordinary head of the cathedral chapter, but the office was not common elsewhere. As regards France, of one hundred and thirty-six cathedral churches existing at the Revolution, thirty-eight only, and those either on the borders of Germany or in the extreme south, had a provost as the head of the chapter. In others the provost existed as a subordinate officer. There were two provosts at Autun, and Lyons and Chartres had four each, all as subordinate officers.

The normal constitution of the chapter of a secular cathedral church comprised four dignitaries (there might be more), in addition to the canons. The dean (decanus) seems to have derived his designation from the Benedictine dean who had ten monks under his charge. The dean, as already noted, came into existence to supply the place of the provost in the internal management of the church and chapter. In England the dean was the head of all the secular cathedral churches, and was originally elected by the chapter and confirmed in office by the bishop. He is president of the chapter, and in church has charge of the due performance of the services, taking specified portions of them by statute on the principal festivals. He sits in the chief stall in the choir, which is usually the first on the right hand on entering the choir at the west. Next to the dean (as a rule) is the precentor (primicerius, cantor, &c.), whose special duty is that of regulating the musical portion of the services. He presides in the dean’s absence, and occupies the corresponding stall on the left side, although there are exceptions to this rule, where, as at St Paul’s, the archdeacon of the cathedral city ranks second and occupies what is usually the precentor’s stall. The third dignitary is the chancellor (scholasticus, écolâtre, capiscol, magistral, &c.), who must not be confounded with the chancellor of the diocese. The chancellor of the cathedral church is charged with the oversight of its schools, ought to read divinity lectures, and superintend the lections in the choir and correct slovenly readers. He is often the secretary and librarian of the chapter. In the absence of the dean and precentor he is president of the chapter. The easternmost stall, on the dean’s side of the choir, is usually assigned to him. The fourth dignitary is the treasurer (custos, sacrista, cheficier). He is guardian of the fabric, and of all the furniture and ornaments of the church, and his duty was to provide bread and wine for the eucharist, and candles and incense, and he regulated such matters as the ringing of the bells. The treasurer’s stall is opposite to that of the chancellor. These four dignitaries, occupying the four corner stalls in the choir, are called in many of the statutes the “quatuor majores personae” of the church. In many cathedral churches there were additional dignitaries, as the praelector, subdean, vice-chancellor, succentor-canonicorum, and others, who came into existence to supply the places of the other absent dignitaries, for non-residence was the fatal blot of the secular churches, and in this they contrasted very badly with the monastic churches, where all the members were in continuous residence. Besides the dignitaries there were the ordinary canons, each of whom, as a rule, held a separate prebend or endowment, besides receiving his share of the common funds of the church. For the most part the canons also speedily became non-resident, and this led to the distinction of residentiary and non-residentiary canons, till in most churches the number of resident canons became definitely limited in number, and the non-residentiary canons, who no longer shared in the common funds, became generally known as prebendaries only, although by their non-residence they did not forfeit their position as canons, and retained their votes in chapter like the others. This system of non-residence led also to the institution of vicars choral, each canon having his own vicar, who sat in his stall in his absence, and when the canon was present, in the stall immediately below, on the second form. The vicars had no place or vote in chapter, and, though irremovable except for offences, were the servants of their absent canons whose stalls they occupied, and whose duties they performed. Abroad they were often called demi-prebendaries, and they formed the bas choeur of the French churches. As time went on the vicars were themselves often incorporated as a kind of lesser chapter, or college, under the supervision of the dean and chapter.

There was no distinction between the monastic cathedral chapters and those of the secular canons, in their relation to the bishop or diocese. In both cases the chapter was the bishop’s consilium which he was bound to consult on all important matters and without doing so he could not act. Thus, a judicial decision of a bishop needed the confirmation of the chapter before it could be enforced. He could not change the service books, or “use” of the church or diocese, without capitular consent, and there are many episcopal acts, such as the appointment of a diocesan chancellor, or vicar general, which still need confirmation by the chapter, but the older theory of the chapter as the bishop’s council in ruling the diocese has become a thing of the past, not in England only, but on the continent also. In its corporate capacity the chapter takes charge sede vacante of a diocese. In England, however (except as regards Salisbury and Durham), this custom has never obtained, the two archbishops having, from time immemorial, taken charge of the vacant dioceses in their respective provinces. When, however, either of the sees of Canterbury or York is vacant, the chapters of those churches take charge, not only of the diocese, but of the province as well, and incidentally, therefore, of any of the dioceses of the province which may be vacant at the same time.

All the English monastic cathedral chapters were dissolved by Henry VIII., and, except Bath and Coventry, were refounded by him as churches of secular chapters, with a dean as the head, and a certain number of canons ranging from twelve at Canterbury and Durham to four at Carlisle, and with certain subordinate officers as minor canons, gospellers, epistolers, &c. The precentorship in these churches of the “New Foundation,” as they are called, is not, as in the secular churches of the “Old Foundation,” a dignity, but is merely an office held by one of the minor canons.

English cathedral churches, at the present day, may be classed under four heads: (1) the old secular cathedral churches of the “Old Foundation,” enumerated in the earlier part of this article; (2) the churches of the “New Foundation” of Henry VIII., which are the monastic churches already specified, with the exception of Bath and Coventry; (3) the cathedral churches of bishoprics founded by Henry VIII., viz. Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Oxford and Peterborough (the constitution of the chapters of which corresponds to those of the New Foundation); (4) modern cathedral churches of sees founded since 1836, viz. (a) Manchester, Ripon and Southwell, formerly collegiate churches of secular canons; (b) St Albans and Southwark, originally monastic churches; (c) Truro, Newcastle and Wakefield, formerly parish churches, (d) Birmingham and Liverpool, originally district churches. The ruined cathedral church of the diocese of Sodor (i.e. the Southern Isles) and Man, at Peel in the latter island, appears never to have had a chapter of clergy attached to it.

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Architecture.—From the architectural point of view there is no special treatment as regards dimensions or style for a cathedral other than that required for a church or abbey, as there are cases when the former are comparatively small buildings (like the old cathedral at Athens), and some parish churches and abbeys are larger than many cathedrals. In recent times, indeed, some English abbeys or minsters, such as those of Ripon, Manchester, St Albans and Southwell, partly on account of their dimensions, have been raised to the rank of cathedrals, in consequence of the demand for additional sees; others, such as those of Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, Chester and Peterborough, became cathedrals only on the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII.

Under the headings Nave, Aisle, Choir, Apse, Chevet, and Lady-chapel, the principal arrangements of the plan of a cathedral are dealt with, and its architectural features, such as Tower and Spire, Porch, Triforium, Clerestory and Vault, are separately defined; while in the article Architecture the evolution of the various styles in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, is set forth. It is only necessary here to deal with the development of the eastern end of English and foreign cathedrals, as it was in those that the greatest changes from the middle of the 11th century to the close of the 16th century took place.

The earliest extended development of the eastern end of the cathedral is that which was first set out in Edward the Confessor’s church at Westminster, probably borrowed from the ancient church of St Martin at Tours; in this church, dating probably from the 10th century, two new elements are found, (1) the carrying of the choir aisle round a circular apse so as to provide a processional aisle round the eastern end of the church, and (2) five apsidal chapels, constituting the germ of the chevet, which transformed the eastern terminations of the French cathedrals in the 12th and 13th centuries. It is only within recent times that the foundations of the early church at Tours with its choir aisle and chapels have been traced under the existing church. In Edward the Confessor’s church (1050) there were probably only three chapels and a processional aisle; in the next example at Gloucester (1089) were also three chapels, two of which, on the north and south sides of the aisle, still remain; the same is found in Canterbury (1096-1107) and Norwich (1089-1119), the eastern chapel in all three cases having been taken down to make way for the Lady-chapel in Gloucester and Norwich, and for the Trinity chapel in Canterbury cathedral (fig. 1). The semicircular aisle is said to have existed in the Anglo-Norman cathedral of Winchester, but the eastern end being square, two chapels were arranged filling the north and south ends, and an apsidal chapel projecting beyond the east wall. This semicircular processional aisle with chevet chapels was the favourite type of plan in the Anglo-Norman cathedrals, and was followed up to about the middle of the 12th century, when the English builders in some cases returned to the square east end instead of the semicircular apsidal termination. The earliest example of this exists in Romsey Abbey (c. 1130), where the processional path crosses behind the presbytery, there being eastern apsidal chapels in the axis of the presbytery aisle and a central rectangular chapel beyond. A similar arrangement is found in Hereford cathedral, and exists in Winchester, Salisbury (fig. 2), Durham, St Albans, Exeter, Ely, Wells and Peterborough, except that in all those cases (except Wells) the eastern chapels are square ended; in Wells cathedral the most eastern chapel (the Lady-chapel) has a polygonal termination; in Durham (fig. 3), the eastern chapels are all in one line, constituting the chapel of the nine altars, which was probably borrowed from the eastern end of Fountains Abbey. It should be noted that in some of the above the original design has been transformed in rebuilding; thus in St Albans, Durham, York and Exeter cathedrals, there was no eastern ambulatory but three parallel apses, in some cases rectangular externally. In Southwell, Rochester, Ely and Chester, there was no processional path or ambulatory round the east end; in Carlisle no eastern chapels; and in Oxford only one central apse. In Ely cathedral (fig. 4) the great central tower built by the first Norman abbot (1082-1094) fell down in 1321, carrying with it portions of the adjoining bays of the nave, transept and choir; instead of attempting to rebuild the tower, 522 Alan of Walsingham conceived the idea of obtaining a much larger area in the centre of the cathedral, and instead of rebuilding the piers of the tower he took as the base of his design a central octagonal space, the width of which was equal to that of nave and aisles, with wide arches to nave, transepts and choir, and smaller arches across the octagonal sides; from shafts in the eight pier angles, ribs in wood project forward and carry a smaller octagon on which the lantern rests. Internally the effect of this central octagon is of great beauty and originality, and it is the only instance of such a feature in English Gothic architecture. (See Architecture, Plate VIII., fig. 82.)

The earliest example of the chevet is probably to be found in the church of St Martin at Tours; this was followed by others at Tournus, Clermont-Ferrand, Auxerre, Chartres, Le Mans and other churches built during the great church-building period of the 11th century. In the still greater movement in the 12th century, when the episcopacy, supported by the emancipated communes, undertook the erection of cathedrals of greater dimensions and the reconstruction of others, in some cases they utilized the old foundations, as in Chartres (fig. 5), Coutances and Auxerre cathedrals, while in others (as at Le Mans) they extended the eastern termination, much in the same way as in many of the early examples in England, with this important difference, that when the apsidal east end was given up (about the middle of the 12th century) in favour of the square east end in England, the French, on the other hand, developed it by doubling the choir aisles and adding to the number of extra chapels; thus in Canterbury, Norwich and Gloucester, there were only three apsidal chapels in the chevet, whereas in Noyon (1150), Soissons (1190), Reims (1212), Tours, Seez, Bayeux (1230), Clermont (1275), Senlis, Limoges, Albi and Narbonne cathedrals there were five; in Amiens, Le Mans and Beauvais, there were seven apsidal chapels, and in Chartres cathedral nine. Double aisles round the choir, of which there are no examples in England, are found in the cathedrals of Paris, Bourges and Le Mans; the cathedral of Sens (fig. 6) (1144-1168) possesses one feature which is almost unique, viz. the coupled columns of the alternate bays of nave and choir and of the apse; and these were introduced into the chapel of the Trinity in Canterbury cathedral, probably from the designs of William of Sens, by his successor William the Englishman. The square east end found no favour in France—Laon, Poiters and Dol being the only cathedral examples; and of the triapsal arrangement, viz. with apses in the axes of the choir aisle and a central apse, the only example is that of the cathedral of Autun. The immense development given to the eastern limb of the French cathedrals was sometimes obtained at the expense of the nave, so that, notwithstanding the much greater dimensions compared with English examples, in the latter the naves are much longer and consist of more bays than those in France.

In one of the French cathedrals, Bourges, there is no transept; on the other hand there are many examples in which this part of the church is emphasized by having aisles on each side, as at Laon, Soissons, Chartres, Reims, Amiens, Rouen and Clermont cathedrals. Transept aisles in England are found in Ely, York, Wells and Winchester cathedrals, in the last being carried round the south and north ends of the transept; aisles on the east side of the transept only, in some cases probably for 523 additional altars, exist in Durham, Salisbury, Lichfield, Peterborough and Ripon cathedrals; and on the north side only in Hereford cathedral. In Rouen cathedral, east of the transept aisles, there are apsidal chapels, which with the three chapels in the chevet make up the usual number. The cathedral of Poitiers has been referred to as an example of a square east end, but a sort of compromise has been made by the provision of three segmental apses, and there are no windows in the east front; the most remarkable divergence from the usual design is found here in the absence of any triforium or clerestory, owing to the fact that the vault of the aisles is nearly as high as that of the nave, so that it constitutes an example of what in Germany (where there are many) are called Hallen Kirchen; the light being obtained through the aisle windows only gives a gloomy effect to the nave. Another departure from the usual plan is that found in Albi cathedral (1350), in which there are no aisles, their place being taken by chapels between the buttresses which were required to resist the thrust of the nave vault, the widest in France. The cathedral is built in brick and externally has the appearance of a fortress. In the cathedrals of the south-west of France, where the naves are covered with a series of domes—as at Cahors, Angoulême and St Front de Périgueux— the immense piers required to carry them made it necessary to dispense with aisles. The cathedral of Angoulême (fig. 7) consists of a nave covered with three domes, a transept of great length with lofty towers over the north and south ends, and an apsidal choir with four chevet chapels. In St Front de Périgueux (1150), based on St Mark’s at Venice, the plan consists of nave, transept and choir, all of equal dimensions, each of them, as well as the crossing, vaulted over with a dome, while originally there was a simple apsidal choir.

Returning now to the great cathedrals in the north of France, we give an illustration (fig. 8) of Amiens cathedral (from Viollet le Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné) which shows the disposition of a cathedral, with its nave-arches, triforium, clerestory windows and vault, the flying buttresses which were required to carry the thrust of the vault to the outer buttresses which flanked the aisle walls, and the lofty pinnacles which surmounted them. In this case there was no triforium gallery, owing to the greater height given to the aisles. In Notre Dame at Paris the triforium was nearly as high as the aisles; in large towns this feature gave increased accommodation for the congregation, especially on the occasion of great fêtes, and it is found in Noyon, Laon, Senlis and Soissons cathedrals, built in the latter part of the 12th century; later it was omitted, and a narrow passage in the thickness of the wall only represented the triforium; at a still later period the aisles were covered with a stone pavement of slight fall so as to allow of loftier clerestory windows.

The cathedrals in Spain follow on the same lines as those in France. The cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is virtually a copy of St Sernin at Toulouse, consisting of nave and aisles, transepts and aisles, and a choir with chevet of five chapels; at Leon there is a chevet with five apsidal chapels, and at Toledo an east end with double aisles round the apse with originally seven small apsidal chapels, two of them rebuilt at a very late period. At Leon, Barcelona and Toledo the processional passage round the apse with apsidal chapels recalls the French disposition, there being a double aisle around the latter, but in Leon and Toledo cathedrals the east end is masked externally by other buildings, so that the beauty of the chevet is entirely lost. At Avila and Salamanca (old cathedral) the triapsal arrangement is adopted, and the same is found in the German cathedrals, with one important exception, the cathedral of Cologne, which was based on that of Amiens, the comparative height of the former, however, being so exaggerated that scale has been lost, and externally it has the appearance of an overgrown monster.

CATHELINEAU, JACQUES (1759-1793), French Vendean chieftain during the Revolution, was born at Tin-en-Manges, in the country now forming the department of Maine-et-Loire. He became well known in the country of Anjou, over which he travelled as a pedlar and dealer in contraband goods. His physical strength and his great piety gave him considerable ascendancy over the peasants, who surnamed him “the saint of Anjou.” In the first years of the Revolution, Cathelineau listened to the exhortations of Catholic priests and royalist émigrés, and joined the insurrection provoked by them against the revolutionary government. Collecting a band of peasants and smugglers, he took the chateau of Gallais, where he captured a cannon, christened by the Vendeans the “Missionary”; he then took the towns of Chemillé, Cholet, Vihiers and Chalonnes (March 1793). His companions committed atrocities which brought upon them terrible reprisals on the part of the 524 Republicans. Meanwhile Cathelineau’s troops increased, and he combined with the other Vendean chiefs, such as N. Stofflet and Gigot d’Elbée, taking the towns of Beaupréau, Fontenay and Saumur. The first successes of the Vendeans were due to the fact that the Republicans had not expected an insurrection. When the resistance to the insurgents became more serious, differences arose among their leaders. To avoid these rivalries, it is thought that Cathelineau was named generalissimo of the rebels, though his authority over the undisciplined troops was not increased by the new office. In 1793 all the Royalist forces tried to capture Nantes. Cathelineau entered the town in spite of the resistance of General J.B.C. Canclaux, but he was killed, and the Vendean army broke up. Numerous relatives of Cathelineau also perished in the war of La Vendée. His grandson, Henri de Cathelineau, figured in the war of 1870 between France and Germany (see also Vendée; Chouans).

CATHERINE, SAINT. The Roman hagiology contains the record of six saints of this name. 1. St Catherine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr, whose day of commemoration recurs on the 25th of November, and in some places on the 5th of March. 2. St Catherine of Sweden, a daughter of St Bridget, who died abbess of Watzen in March 1381, and is commemorated on the 22nd of that month. 3. St Catherine of Siena, 1347-1380, whose festal day is observed on the 30th of April. 4. St Catherine of Bologna, 1413-1463, a visionary, abbess of the convent of the Poor Clares in Bologna, canonized by Pope Benedict XIII., and commemorated throughout the Franciscan order on the 9th of March. 5. St Catherine of Genoa,1 who belonged to the noble family of Fieschi, was born about 1447, spent her life and her means in succouring and attending on the sick, especially in the time of the plague which ravaged Genoa in 1497 and 1501, died in that city in 1510, was beatified by Clement V. in 1675 and canonized by Clement XII. in 1737; her name was placed in the calendar on the 22nd of July by Benedict XIV. 6. St Catherine de’ Ricci, of Florence, daughter of a wealthy merchant prince, was born in 1522, became a nun in the convent of the Dominicans at Prato in 1536, and died in 1589. She was famous during her life-time for the weekly ecstasy of the Passion, during which in a trance she experienced the sufferings of the Holy Virgin contemplating the Passion of her Son. She was canonized in 1746 by Benedict XIV., who fixed her festal day on the 13th of February. In Celtic and English martyrologies (November 25) there is also commemorated St Catherine Audley (c. 1400), a recluse of Ledbury, Hereford, who was reputed for piety and clairvoyance.

Of two of these saints, St Catherine of Alexandria, the St Catherine par excellence, and St Catherine of Siena, something more must be said. Of the former history has little or nothing to tell. The Maronite scholar, Joseph Simon St Catherine, virgin and martyr. Assemani (1687-1768), first identified her with the royal and wealthy lady of Alexandria (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. viii. 14) who, for refusing the solicitations of the emperor Maximinus, was deprived of her property and banished. But Rufinus (Hist. Eccl. viii. 17) called this lady Dorothea, and the old Catherine legend, as recorded in the Roman martyrology and by Simeon Metaphrastes, has quite other features. According to it Catherine was the daughter of King Konetos, eighteen years old, beautiful and wise. During the persecution under Maximinus she sought an interview with the emperor, upbraided him for his cruelties, and adjured him to give up the worship of false gods. The angry tyrant, unable to refute her arguments himself, sent for pagan scholars to argue with her, but they were discomfited. Catherine was then scourged and cast into prison, and the empress was sent to reason with her; but the dauntless virgin converted not only the empress but the Roman general and his soldiers who had accompanied her. Maximinus now ordered her to be broken on the wheel; but the wheel was shattered by her touch. The headsman’s axe proved more fatal, and the martyr’s body was borne by angels to Mount Sinai, where Justinian I. built the famous monastery in her honour. Another development of the legend is that in which, having rejected many offers of marriage, she was taken to heaven in vision and betrothed to Christ by the Virgin Mary.

Of all these marvellous incidents very little, by the universal admission of Catholic scholars, has survived the test of modern criticism. That St Catherine actually existed there is, indeed, no evidence to disprove; and it is possible that some of the elements in her legend are due to confusion with the story of Hypatia (q.v.), the neo-platonic philosopher of Alexandria, who was done to death by a Christian mob. To the men of the middle ages, in any case, St Catherine was very real; she was ranked with the fourteen most helpful saints in heaven, and was the constant theme of preachers and of poets. Her festival was celebrated in many places with the utmost splendour, and in certain dioceses in France was a holy day of obligation as late as the beginning of the 17th century. Numberless chapels were dedicated to her, and in nearly all churches her statue was set up, the saint being represented with a wheel, her instrument of torture, and sometimes with a crown and a book. The wheel being her symbol she was the patron saint of wheelwrights and mechanics; as the confounder of heathen sophistry she was invoked by theologians, apologists, preachers and philosophers, and was chosen as the patron saint of the university of Paris; as the most holy and illustrious of Christian virgins she became the tutelary saint of nuns and virgins generally. So late as the 16th century, Bossuet delivered a panegyric upon her, and it was the action of Dom Deforis, the Benedictine editor of his works, in criticizing the accuracy of the data on which this was based, that first discredited the legend. The saint’s feast was removed from the Breviary at Paris about this time, and the devotion to St Catherine has since lost its earlier popularity. See Leon Clugnet’s article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia, vol. iii. (London, 1908).

St Catherine of Siena was the youngest of the twenty-five children of Giacomo di Benincasa, a dyer, and was born, with a twin-sister who did not survive her birth, on the 25th of March 1347. A highly sensitive and imaginative St Catherine of Siena. child, she very early began to practise asceticism and see visions, and at the age of seven solemnly dedicated her virginity to Christ. She was attracted by what she had heard of the desert anchorites, and in 1363-1364, after much struggle, persuaded her parents to allow her to take the habit of the Dominican tertiaries. For a while she led at home the life of a recluse, speaking only to her confessor, and spending all her time in devotion and spiritual ecstasy. Her innate humanity and sound sense, however, led her gradually to return to her place in the family circle, and she began also to seek out and help the poor and the sick. In 1368 her father died, and she assumed the care of her mother Lapa. During the following years she became known to an increasingly wide circle, especially as a peacemaker, and entered into correspondence with many friends. Her peculiarities excited suspicion, and charges seem to have been brought against her by some of the Dominicans to answer which she went to Florence in 1374, soon returning to Siena to tend the plague-stricken. Here first she met the Dominican friar, Raimondo of Capua, her confessor and biographer.

The year 1375 found Catherine entering on a wider stage. At the invitation of Piero Gambacorti, the ruler of the republic of Pisa, she visited that city and there endeavoured to arouse enthusiasm for the proposed crusade, urging princes and presidents, commanders and private citizens alike to join in “the holy passage.” To this task was added that of trying to keep Pisa and Lucca from joining the Tuscan League against the pope. It was at Pisa, in the church of Santa Cristina, on the fourth Sunday in Lent (April 1), while rapt in ecstasy after the communion, that Catherine’s greatest traditional glory befell her, viz. the stigmata or impression on her hands, feet and heart, of the wounds corresponding with those received by Christ at his 525 crucifixion. The marks, however, were at her prayer not made visible. There is no need to doubt the reality of Catherine’s exaltation, but it should be remembered that she and her circle were Dominicans, and that the stigmata of St Francis of Assisi were considered the crowning glory of the saint, and hitherto the exclusive boast of the Franciscans. The tendency observable in many of the austerities and miracles attributed to St Catherine to outstrip those of other saints, particularly Francis, is especially remarkable in this marvel of the stigmata, and so acute became the rivalry between the two orders that Pope Sixtus IV., himself a Franciscan, issued a decree asserting that St Francis had an exclusive monopoly of this particular wonder, and making it a censurable offence to represent St Catherine receiving the stigmata.

In the year 1376, the 29th of Catherine’s life, Gregory XI. was living and holding the papal court at Avignon. He was the last of seven French popes in succession who had done so, and had perpetuated for seventy-three years what ecclesiastical writers are fond of terming “the Babylonian captivity of the church.” To put an end to this absenteeism, and to bring back the papacy to Italy was the cherished and anxious wish of all good Italians, and especially of all Italian churchmen. Petrarch had urgently pressed Urban V., Gregory’s immediate predecessor, to accomplish the desired change; and Dante had at an earlier date laboured to bring about the same object. But these and all the other influences which Italy had striven to bring to bear on the popes had hitherto failed to induce them to return. In these circumstances Catherine determined to try her powers of persuasion and argument, attempting first by correspondence to reconcile Gregory and the Florentines, who had been placed under an interdict, and then going in person as the representative of the latter to Avignon, where she arrived on the 18th of June. Gregory empowered her to treat for peace, but the Florentine ambassadors were first tardy and then faithless. Nothing daunted, Catherine herself besought Gregory, who, indeed, was himself so minded, to return, and he did so, in September (taking the sea route from Marseilles to Genoa), though perhaps intending only to make a temporary stay in Italy. Catherine went home by land and stayed for a month in Genoa with Madonna Orietta Scotti, a noble lady of that city, at whose house Gregory had a long colloquy with her, which encouraged him to push on to Rome. To this year, 1376, belongs the admission to Catherine’s circle of disciples of Stefano di Corrado Maconi, a Sienese noble distinguished by a character full of charm and purity, and her healing of the bitter feud between his family and the Tolomei. Another family quarrel, that of the Salimbeni at Rocca D’Orcia, was ended by her intervention in 1377. This year also she turned the castle of Belcaro, which had been given to her, into a monastery.

Meanwhile the returned pope was not having an easy time. Besides perpetuating the strife with his enemies he was alienating his friends, and finding it increasingly difficult to pay his mercenaries. He vented his anger upon Catherine, who reproved him for minding temporal rather than spiritual things, but in the beginning of 1378 sent her on an embassy to Florence and especially to the Guelph party. While she was urging the citizens to make peace with the pope there came the news of his death. During the troubles that ensued in Florence Catherine nearly lost her life in a popular tumult, and sorely regretted not winning her heart’s desire, “the red rose of martyrdom.” Peace was signed with the new pope, Urban VI., and Catherine, having thus accomplished her second great political task, went home again to Siena. Thence on the outbreak of the schism Urban summoned her to Rome, whither, somewhat reluctantly, she journeyed with her now large spiritual family in November. Once arrived she gave herself heartily to Urban’s cause, and wore her slender powers out in restraining his impatient temper, quieting the revolt of the people of Rome, and trying to win for Urban the support of Europe. After prolonged and continual suffering she died on the 29th of April 1380.

CATHERINE I. (1683-1727), empress of Russia. The true character and origin of this enigmatical woman were, until quite recently, among the most obscure problems of Russian history. It now appears that she came of a Lithuanian stock, and was one of the four children of a small Catholic yeoman, Samuel Skovronsky; but her father died of the plague while she was still a babe, the family scattered, and little Martha was adopted by Pastor Glück, the Protestant superintendent of the Marienburg district. Frau Glück finally rid herself of the girl by marrying her to a Swedish dragoon called Johan. A few months later, the Swedes were compelled by the Russians to evacuate Marienburg, and Martha became one of the prisoners of war of Marshal Sheremetev, who sold her to Prince Menshikov, at whose house, in the German suburb of Moscow, Peter the Great first beheld and made love to her in his own peculiar fashion. After the birth of their first daughter Catherine, Peter made no secret of their relations. He had found, at last, the woman he wanted, and she soon became so indispensable to him that it was a torment to be without her. The situation was regulated by the reception of Martha into the Orthodox Church, when she was rechristened under the name of Catherine Alekseyevna, the tsarevich Alexius being her godfather, by the bestowal upon her of the title Gosudaruinya or sovereign (1710), 526 and, finally (1711), by her public marriage to the tsar, who divorced the tsaritsa Eudoxia to make room for her. Henceforth the new tsaritsa was her husband’s inseparable companion. She was with him during the campaign of the Pruth, and Peter always attributed the successful issue of that disastrous war to the courage and sang-froid of his consort. She was with him, too, during his earlier Caspian campaigns, and was obliged on this occasion to shear off her beautiful hair and wear a close-fitting fur cap to protect her from the rays of the sun.

By the ukaz of 1722 Catherine was proclaimed Peter’s successor, to the exclusion of the grand-duke Peter, the only son of the tsarevich Alexius, and on the 7th of May 1724 was solemnly crowned empress-consort in the Uspensky cathedral at Moscow, on which occasion she wore a crown studded with no fewer than 2564 precious stones, surmounted by a ruby, as large as a pigeon’s egg, supporting a cross of brilliants. Within a few months of this culminating triumph, she was threatened with utter ruin by the discovery of a supposed liaison with her gentleman of the bedchamber, William Mons, a handsome and unscrupulous upstart, and the brother of a former mistress of Peter. A dangerously familiar but perfectly innocent flirtation is, however, the worst that can fairly be alleged against Catherine on this occasion. So Peter also seemed to have thought, for though Mons was decapitated and his severed head, preserved in spirits, was placed in the apartments of the empress, she did not lose Peter’s favour, attended him during his last illness, and closed his eyes when he expired (January 28, 1725). She was at once raised to the throne by the party of progress, as represented by Prince Menshikov and Count Tolstoy, whose interests and perils were identical with those of the empress, before the reactionary party had time to organize opposition, her great popularity with the army powerfully contributing to her success. The arch-prelates of the Russian church, Theodosius, archbishop of Novgorod, and Theophanes, archbishop of Pskov, were also on her side for very much the same reason, both of them being unpopular innovators who felt that, at this crisis, they must stand or fall with Tolstoy and Menshikov.

The great administrative innovation of Catherine’s reign was the establishment of the Verkhovny Tainy Sovyet, or supreme privy council, by way of strengthening the executive, by concentrating affairs in the hands of a few persons, mainly of the party of Reform (Ukazoi February 26, 1726). As to the foreign policy of Catherine I. (principally directed by the astute Andrei Osterman), if purely pacific and extremely cautious, it was, nevertheless, dignified, consistent and independent. Russia, by the mere force of circumstances, now found herself opposed to England, chiefly because Catherine protected Charles Frederick, duke of Holstein, and George I. found that the Schleswig-Holstein question might be reopened to the detriment of his Hanoverian possessions. Things came to such a pass that, in the spring of 1726, an English squadron was sent to the Baltic and cast anchor before Reval. The empress vigorously protested, and the fleet was withdrawn, but on the 6th of August Catherine acceded to the anti-English Austro-Spanish league. Catherine died on the 16th of May 1727. Though quite illiterate, she was an uncommonly shrewd and sensible woman, and her imperturbable good nature under exceptionally difficult circumstances, testifies equally to the soundness of her head and the goodness of her heart.

CATHERINE II. (1729-1796), empress of Russia, was the daughter of Christian Augustus, prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, and his wife, Johanna Elizabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. The exact date and place of her birth have been disputed, but there appears to be no reason to doubt that she was right in saying that she was born at Stettin on the 2nd of May 1729. Her father, who succeeded to the principality of Anhalt-Zerbst in 1746 and died in 1747, was a general in the Prussian service, and, at the time of her birth, was military commandant at Stettin. Her baptismal name was Sophia Augusta Frederica. In accordance with the custom then prevailing in German princely families, she was educated chiefly by French governesses and tutors. In 1744 she was taken to Russia, to be affianced to the grand-duke Peter, the nephew of the empress Elizabeth (q.v.), and her recognized heir. The princess of Anhalt-Zerbst was the daughter of Christian Albert, bishop of Lübeck, younger brother of Frederick IV., duke of Holstein-Gottorp, Peter’s paternal grandfather. The choice of her daughter as wife of the future tsar was the result of not a little diplomatic management in which Frederick the Great took an active part, the object being to strengthen the friendship between Prussia and Russia, to weaken the influence of Austria and to ruin the chancellor Bestuzhev, on whom Elizabeth relied, and who was a known partisan of the Austrian alliance. The diplomatic intrigue failed, largely through the flighty intervention of the princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, a clever but very injudicious woman. But Elizabeth took a strong liking to the daughter, and the marriage was finally decided on. The girl had spared no effort to ingratiate herself, not only with the empress, but with the grand-duke and the Russian people. She applied herself to learning the language with such zeal that she rose at night and walked about her bedroom barefoot repeating her lessons. The result was a severe attack of congestion of the lungs in March 1744. During the worst period of her illness she completed her conquest of the good-will of the Russians by declining the religious services of a Protestant pastor, and sending for Simon Todorskiy, the orthodox priest who had been appointed to instruct her in the Greek form of Christianity. When she wrote her memoirs she represented herself as having made up her mind when she came to Russia to do whatever had to be done, and to profess to believe whatever she was required to believe, in order to be qualified to wear the crown. The consistency of her character throughout life makes it highly probable that even at the age of fifteen she was mature enough to adopt this worldly-wise line of conduct. Her father, who was a convinced Lutheran, was strongly opposed to his daughter’s conversion, and supplied her with books of controversy to protect her Protestantism. She read them, and she listened to Todorskiy, and to other advisers who told her that the Russian crown was well worth a mass, or that the differences between the Greek and Lutheran churches were mere matters of form. On the 28th of June 1744 she was received into the Orthodox Church at Moscow, and was renamed Catherine Alexeyevna. On the following day she was formally betrothed, and was married to the archduke on the 21st of August 1745 at St Petersburg.

At that time Catherine was essentially what she was to remain till her death fifty-one years later. It was her boast that she was as “frank and original as any Englishman.” If she meant that she had a compact character, she was right. She had decided on her line in life and she followed it whole-heartedly. It was her determination to become a Russian in order that she might the better rule in Russia, and she succeeded. She acquired a full command of all the resources of the language, and a no less complete understanding of the nature of the Russian people. It is true that she remained quite impervious to religious influences. The circumstances of her conversion may have helped to render her indifferent to religion, but their influence need not be exaggerated. Her irreligion was shared by multitudes of contemporaries who had never been called upon to renounce one form of Christianity and profess belief in another in order to gain a crown. Her mere actions were, like those of other and humbler people, dictated by the conditions in which she lived. The first and the most important of them was beyond all question the misery of her married life. Her husband was a wretched creature. Nature had made him mean, the smallpox had made him hideous, and his degraded habits made him loathsome. And Peter had all the sentiments of the worst kind of small German prince of the time. He had the conviction that his princeship entitled him to disregard decency and the feelings of others. He planned brutal practical jokes, in which blows had always a share. His most manly taste did not rise above the kind of military interest which has been defined as “corporal’s 527 mania,” the passion for uniforms, pipeclay, buttons, the “tricks of parade and the froth of discipline.” He detested the Russians, and surrounded himself with Holsteiners. For ten years the marriage was barren, and the only reason for supposing that the future tsar Paul (q.v.), who was born on the 2nd of October 1754, was the son of Peter, is the strong similarity of their characters. Living in the grossly animal court of the empress Elizabeth, bound to a husband whom she could not but despise and detest, surrounded by suitors, and entirely uninfluenced by religion, Catherine became and remained perfectly immoral in her sexual relations to men. The scandalous chronicle of her life was the commonplace of all Europe. Her male favourites were as openly paraded as the female favourites of King Louis XV. It may be said once and for all that her most trusted agents while she was still grand-duchess, and her chief ministers when she became empress, were also her lovers, and were known to be so.

For some time after the marriage, the young couple were controlled by the empress Elizabeth, who appointed court officials to keep a watch on their conduct; but before long these custodians themselves had become the agents of Catherine’s pleasures and ambition. After the birth of Paul she began to take an active part in political intrigues. Her abilities forced even her husband to rely on her judgment. When in difficulty he ran to her and flattered her with the name of Madame La Ressource—Madame Quick Wit—which did not prevent him from insulting and even kicking her when the immediate need of her help was over. In 1758 he endeavoured to turn the empress Elizabeth against her, and for a time Catherine was in danger. She faced the peril boldly, and reconquered her influence over the sovereign, but from this time she must have realized that when the empress was dead she would have to defend herself against her husband. That Peter both hated and dreaded her was notorious. The empress Elizabeth died on the 5th of January 1762. The grand duke succeeded without opposition as Peter III. His behaviour to his wife continued to be brutal and menacing, and he went on as before offending the national sentiment of the Russian people. In July he committed the insane error of retiring with his Holsteiners to Oranienbaum, leaving his wife at St Petersburg. On the 13th and 14th of that month a “pronunciamiento” of the regiments of the guard removed him from the throne and made Catherine empress. The history of this revolt is still obscure. It has naturally been said that she organized the mutiny from the first, and some plausibility is conferred on this belief by the fact that the guards were manipulated by the four Orlov brothers. The eldest, Gregory, was her recognized chief lover, and he was associated with his brother Alexis in the office of favourite. On the other hand, there does not appear to have been any need for organization. The hatred felt for Peter III. was spontaneous, and Catherine had no need to do more than let it be known that she was prepared to profit by her husband’s downfall. Peter, who behaved with abject cowardice, was sent to a country house at Ropcha, where he died on the 15th or 18th of July of official “apoplexy.” The truth is not known, and Frederick the Great at least professed long afterwards to believe that Catherine had no immediate share in the murder. She had no need to speak. Common-sense must have shown the leaders of the revolt that they would never be safe while Peter lived, and they had insults to avenge.

The mere fact that Catherine II., a small German princess without hereditary claim to the throne, ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796 amid the loyalty of the great mass of the people, and the respect and admiration of her neighbours, is sufficient proof of the force of her character. Her title to be considered a great reforming ruler is by no means equally clear. Voltaire and the encyclopaedists with whom she corresponded, and on whom she conferred gifts and pensions, repaid her by the grossest flattery, while doing their best to profit by her generosity. They made her a reputation for “philosophy,” and showed the sincerity of their own love of freedom by finding excuses for the partition of Poland. There is a very great difference between Catherine II. as she appears in the panegyrics of the encyclopaedists and Catherine as she appears in her correspondence and in her acts. Her foreign admirers amused her, and were useful in spreading her reputation. The money they cost her was a small sum in comparison to the £12,000,000 she lavished on her long series of lovers, who began with Soltykov and Stanislaus Poniatowski (q.v.) before she came to the throne, and ended with the youthful Platon Zubov, who was tenant of the post at her death. She spent money freely on purchasing works of art and curios. Yet she confessed with her usual candour that she had no taste for painting, sculpture or music. Her supposed love of literature does not appear to have amounted to more than a lively curiosity, which could be satisfied by dipping into a great number of books. She had a passion for writing, and produced not only a mass of letters written in French, but pamphlets and plays, comic and serious, in French and Russian. One on the history of Oleg, the more or less legendary Varangian, who was guardian to the son of Rurik, was described by her as an “imitation of Shakespeare.” The scheme is not unlike that of a “chronicle play.” Her letters are full of vivacity, of colour, and at times of insight and wit, but she never learnt to write either French or German correctly. The letters to Voltaire attributed to her are not hers, and were probably composed for her by Andrei Shuvalov. The philosophers and encyclopaedists who, by the mouth of Diderot, complimented Catherine on being superior to such female affectations as modesty and chastity, flattered her to some extent even here. She enforced outward decency in her household, was herself temperate in eating and drinking, and was by no means tolerant of disorderly behaviour on the part of the ladies of her court. They flattered her much more when they dwelt on her philanthropy and her large share of the enlightenment of the age. She was kind to her servants, and was very fond of young children. She was rarely angry with people who merely contradicted her or failed to perform their service in her household. But she could order the use of the knout and of mutilation as freely as the most barbarous of her predecessors when she thought the authority of the state was at stake, and she did employ them readily to suppress all opinions of a heterodox kind, whether in matters of religion or of politics, after the beginning of the French Revolution. Her renowned toleration stopped short of allowing the dissenters to build chapels, and her passion for legislative reform grew cold when she found that she must begin by the emancipation of the serfs. There were exceptions even to her personal kindness to those about her. She dropped her German relations. She kept a son born to her shortly before the palace revolution of 1762, whose paternity could not be attributed to Peter, at a distance, though she provided for him. He was brought up in a private station under the name of Bobrinski. She was a harsh mother to her son Paul. It seems highly probable that she intended to exclude him from the succession, and to leave the crown to her eldest grandson Alexander, afterwards the emperor Alexander I. Her harshness to Paul was probably as much due to political distrust as to what she saw of his character. Whatever else Catherine may have been she was emphatically a sovereign and a politician who was in the last resort guided by the reason of state. She was resolved not to allow her authority to be disputed by her son, or shared by him.

As a ruler, Catherine professed a great contempt for system, which she said she had been taught to despise by her master Voltaire. She declared that in politics a capable ruler must be guided by “circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.” Her conduct was on the surface very unstable. In a moment of candour she confessed that she was a great commenceuse—that she had a mania for beginning innumerable enterprises which she never pursued. This, however, is chiefly true of her internal administration, and even there it should be qualified. Many of her beginnings were carried on by others and were not barren. Her foreign policy was as consistent as it could be considering the forces she had to contend against. It was steadily aimed to secure the greatness and the safety of Russia. There can be no question, that she loved her adopted country sincerely, and had an affection for her people, and an opinion of their great qualities which she did not hesitate to express in hyperbolical terms. Her zeal for the reputation of the Russians 528 was almost comically shown by the immense trouble she took to compile an answer to the Voyage en Sibérie of the French astronomer Chappe d’Auteroche. The book is in three big quartos, and Catherine’s answer—which was never finished—is still larger. Chappe d’Auteroche had discovered that Siberia was not a paradise, and had observed that the Russians were dirty in their habits, and that masters whipped their servants, male and female. Her patriotism was less innocently shown by her conquests. Yet it may be doubted whether any capable ruler of Russia could have abstained from aggressions at the expense of the rights of the Saxon family in Courland, of Poland, and of Turkey (see Russia: History). It does seem now to be clearly proved that the partition of Poland was not suggested by her, as has been frequently asserted. Catherine would have preferred to control the country through a vassal sovereign of the type of Stanislaus Poniatowski, the old lover whose election she secured in 1763. Poland was incapable of maintaining its independence at the time of the first partition (1772), and the division of the unhappy country was forced on by Austria and Prussia. In the case of the second partition in 1793, she did show herself to be very unscrupulous. Her opposition to the reform of the Polish government was plainly due to a wish to preserve an excuse for further spoliation, but her conduct was less cruel and base than that of Prussia.

Catherine had adhered to her husband’s policy of a Prussian alliance. While Frederick the Great lived she was impressed by his ability. But the Prussian alliance became hateful to her, and her later correspondence with Grimm overflows with contempt of his successor Frederick William II., who is always spoken of by her as “Brother Gu.” Her exasperation with the affectations of the Prussian king was unquestionably increased by her discovery that he would not be induced to apply himself to a crusade against the French Revolution, which by employing all his forces would have left Russia free to annex the whole of what remained of Poland. But at least she did not enter into a solemn engagement to defend the Poles who were engaged in reforming their constitution, and then throw them over in order to share in the plunder of their country.

Catherine’s Turkish policy was at first marked by a certain grandiosity. When the Turks declared war in 1768 in order to support Poland, which they looked upon as a necessary buffer state, she retaliated by the great Greek scheme. For a time it was a pet idea with her to revive the Greek empire, and to plant the cross, with the double-headed Russian eagle, at Constantinople. She formed a corps of Greek cadets, caused her younger grandson to be christened Constantine, and began the policy of presenting Russia to the Christian subjects of the Porte as their deliverer. In pursuit of this heroic enterprise, which excited the loud admiration of Voltaire, she sent a fleet under Alexis Orlov into the Mediterranean in 1770. Orlov tempted the Greeks of the Morea to take up arms, and then left them in the lurch. When Catherine found herself opposed by the policy of France and England, and threatened by the jealousy of Prussia and Austria, she dropped the Greek design, observing to Voltaire that the descendants of the Spartans were much degenerated. The introduction into the treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji of 1774 of a clause by which the Porte guaranteed the rights of its Christian subjects, and of another-giving Russia the right to interfere on behalf of a new Russian church in Constantinople, advertised the claim of the tsars to be the natural protectors of the Orthodox in the Ottoman dominions; but when she took up arms again in 1788 in alliance with Joseph II. (q.v.), it was to make a mere war of conquest and partition. The Turkish wars show the weak side of Catherine as a ruler. Though she had mounted the throne by a military revolt and entered on great schemes of conquest, she never took an intelligent interest in her army. She neglected it in peace, allowed it to be shamefully administered in war, and could never be made to understand that it was not in her power to improvise generals out of her favourites. It is to her credit that she saw the capacity of Suvarov, yet she never had as much confidence in him as she had in Potemkin, who may have been a man of genius, but was certainly no general. She took care never to have to deal with a disciplined opponent, except the Swedes, who beat her, but who were very few.

It was the misfortune of Catherine that she lived too long. She disgraced herself by living with her last lover, Zubov, when she was a woman of sixty-seven, trusting him with power and lavishing public money on him. The outbreak of the French Revolution stripped off the varnish of philosophy and philanthropy which she had assumed in earlier years. She had always entertained a quiet contempt for the French writers whom she flattered and pensioned, and who served her as an advertising agency in the west. When the result of their teaching was seen in Paris, good-natured contempt was turned to hatred. She then became a persecutor in her own dominions of the very ideas she had encouraged in former years. She scolded and preached a crusade, without, however, departing from the steady pursuit of her own interests in Poland, while endeavouring with transparent cunning to push Austria and Prussia into an invasion of France with all their forces. Her health began to break down, and it appears to be nearly certain that towards the end she suffered from hysteria of a shameful kind. It is plain that her intellect had begun to fail just before her death, for she allowed the reigning favourite, Platon Zubov, to persuade her to despatch his brother Valerian, with the rank of field marshal and an army of 20,000 men, on a crack-brained scheme to invade India by way of Persia and Tibet. The refusal of the king of Sweden to marry into her family unless the bride would become a Lutheran is said to have thrown her into a convulsion of rage which hastened her death. On the 9th of November 1796, she was seized by a fit of apoplexy, and died on the evening of the 10th.

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI (1519-1589), queen of France, the wife of one French king and the mother of three, was born at Florence in 1519. She was a daughter of Lorenzo II. de’ Medici and a French princess, Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne. Having lost both her parents at an early age, Catherine was sent to a convent to be educated; and she was only fourteen when she was married (1533) at Marseilles to the duke of Orléans, afterwards Henry II. It was her uncle, Pope Clement VII., who arranged the marriage with Francis I. Francis, still engaged in his lifelong task of making head against Charles V., was only too glad of the opportunity to strengthen his influence in the Italian peninsula, while Clement, ever needful of help against his too powerful protector, was equally ready to hold out a bait. During the reign of Francis, Catherine exercised no influence in France. She was young, a foreigner, a member of a state that had almost no weight in the great world of politics, had not given any proof of great ability, and was thrown into the shade by more important persons. For ten years after her marriage she had no children. In consequence, a divorce began to be talked of at court; and it seemed not impossible that Francis, alarmed at the possible extinction of the royal house, might listen to such a proposal. But Catherine had the happiness of bringing him grandchildren ere he died. During the reign of her husband, too (1547-1559), Catherine lived a quiet and passive, but observant life. Henry being completely under the influence of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, she had little authority. In 1552, when the king left the kingdom for the campaign of Metz, she was nominated regent, but with very limited powers. This continued even after the accession of her son Francis II. Francis was under the spell of Mary Stuart, and she, little disposed to meddle with politics on her own account, was managed by her uncles, the cardinal of Lorraine and the duke of Guise. The queen-mother, however, soon grew weary of the domination of the Guises, and entered upon a course of secret opposition. On the 1st of April 1560 she placed in the 529 chancellorship Michel de l’Hôpital (q.v.), who advocated the policy of conciliation.

On the death of Francis (5th of December 1560), Catherine became regent during the minority of her second son, Charles IX., and now found before her a career worthy of the most soaring ambition. She was then forty-one years old, but, although she was the mother of nine children, she was still very vigorous and active. She retained her influence for more than twenty years in the troubled period of the wars of religion. At first she listened to the moderate counsels of l’Hôpital in so far as to avoid siding definitely with either party, but her character and the habits of policy to which she had been accustomed, rendered her incapable of any noble aim. She had only one virtue, and that was her zeal for the interests of her children, especially of her favourite third son, the duke of Anjou. Like so many of the Italians of that time, who were almost destitute of a moral sense, she looked upon statesmanship in particular as a career in which finesse, lying and assassination were the most admirable, because the most effective weapons. By habit a Catholic, but above all things fond of power, she was determined to prevent the Protestants from getting the upper hand, and almost equally resolved not to allow them to be utterly crushed, in order to use them as a counterpoise to the Guises. This trimming policy met with little success: rage and suspicion so possessed men’s minds, that she could no longer control the opposing parties, and one civil war followed another to the end of her life. In 1567, after the “Enterprise of Meaux,” she dismissed l’Hôpital and joined the Catholic party. But, having failed to crush the Protestant rebellion by arms, she resumed in 1570 the policy of peace and negotiation. She conceived the project of marrying her favourite son, the duke of Anjou, to Queen Elizabeth of England, and her daughter Margaret to Henry of Navarre. To this end she became reconciled with the Protestants, and allowed Coligny to return to court and to re-enter the council. Of this step she quickly repented. Charles IX. conceived a great affection for the admiral and showed signs of taking up an independent attitude. Catherine, thinking her influence menaced, sought to regain it, first by the murder of Coligny, and, when that had failed, by the massacre of St Bartholomew (q.v.). The whole of the responsibility for this crime, therefore, rests with Catherine; unlike the populace, she had not even the excuse of fanaticism. This responsibility, however, weighed but lightly on her; while her son was overwhelmed with remorse, she calmly enjoyed her short-lived triumph. After the death of Charles in 1574, and the succession of Anjou under the name of Henry III., Catherine pursued her old policy of compromise and concessions; but as her influence is lost in that of her son, it is unnecessary to dwell upon it. She died on the 5th of January 1589, a short time before the assassination of Henry, and the consequent extinction of the House of Valois. In her taste for art and her love of magnificence and luxury, Catherine was a true Medici; her banquets at Fontainebleau in 1564 were famous for their sumptuousness. In architecture especially she was well versed, and Philibert de l’Orme relates that she discussed with him the plan and decoration of her palace of the Tuileries. Catherine’s policy provoked a crowd of pamphlets, the most celebrated being the Discours merveilleux de la vie, actions et déportemens de la reine Catherine de Médicis, in which Henri Estienne undoubtedly collaborated.

CATHERINE OF ARAGON (1485-1536), queen of Henry VIII. of England, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was born on the 15th or 16th of December 1485. She left Spain in 1501 to marry Arthur, prince of Wales, eldest son of King Henry VII., and landed at Plymouth on the 2nd of October. The wedding took place on the 14th of November in London, and soon afterwards Catherine accompanied her youthful husband to Wales, where, in his sixteenth year, the prince died on the 2nd of April 1502. On the 25th of June 1503, she was formally betrothed to the king’s second son, Henry, now prince of Wales, and a papal dispensation for the alliance was obtained. The marriage, however, did not take place during the lifetime of Henry VII. Ferdinand endeavoured to cheat the English king of the marriage portion agreed upon, and Henry made use of the presence of the unmarried princess in England to extort new conditions, and especially to secure the marriage of his daughter Mary to the archduke Charles, grandson of Ferdinand, and afterwards Charles V. Catherine was thus from the first the unhappy victim of state politics. Writing to Ferdinand on the 11th of March 1509, she describes the state of poverty to which she was reduced, and declares the king’s unkindness impossible to be borne any longer.1 On the old king’s death, however, a brighter prospect opened, for Henry VIII. decided immediately on marrying her, the wedding taking place on the 11th of June and the coronation on the 24th. Catherine now enjoyed a few years of married happiness; Henry showed himself an affectionate husband, and the alliance with Ferdinand was maintained against France. She was not without some influence in state affairs. During Henry’s invasion of France in 1513 she was made regent; she showed great zeal and ardour in the preparations for the Scottish expedition, and was riding towards the north to put herself at the head of the troops when the victory of Flodden Field ended the campaign. The following year an affectionate meeting took place between the king and queen at Richmond on the return of the former. Ferdinand’s treachery, however, in making a treaty with France roused Henry’s wrath, and his angry reproaches fell upon his unfortunate wife; but she took occasion in 1520, during the visit of her nephew Charles V. to England, to urge the policy of gaining his alliance rather than that of France. Immediately on his departure, on the 31st of May 1520, she accompanied the king to France, on the celebrated visit to Francis I., called from its splendour the Field of the Cloth of Gold; but in 1522 war was declared against France and the emperor again welcomed to England. In 1521 she is represented by Shakespeare as pleading for the unfortunate duke of Buckingham.

These early years of happiness and of useful influence and activity had, however, been gradually giving way to gloom and disappointment. Between January 1510 and November 1518 Catherine gave birth to six children (including two princes), who were all stillborn or died in infancy except Mary, born in 1516, and rumour did not fail to ascribe this series of disasters to the curse pronounced in Deuteronomy on incestuous unions. In 1526 the condition of Catherine’s health made it highly improbable that she would have more children. No woman had ever reigned in England, alone and in her own right, and to avoid a fresh dispute concerning the succession, and the revival of the civil war, a male heir to the throne was a pressing necessity. The act of marriage, which depended for its validity on the decision of the ecclesiastical courts, had, on account of the numerous dissolutions and dispensations granted, not then attained the security since assured to it by the secular law. For obtaining dissolutions of royal marriages the facilities were especially great. Pope Clement VII. himself permitted such a dissolution in the case of Henry’s own sister Margaret, in 1528, proposed later as a solution of the problem that Henry should be allowed two wives,2 and looked not unfavourably, with the same aim, on the project for marrying the duke of Richmond to Mary, a brother to a sister.3 In Henry’s case also the irregularity of a union, which is still generally reprobated and forbidden in Christendom, and which it was very doubtful that the pope had the power to legalize, provided a moral justification for a dissolution which in other cases did not exist. It was not therefore the immorality of the plea which obstructed the papal decree in 530 Henry’s favour, but the unlucky imprisonment at this time of Clement VII. at the hands of Charles V., Catherine’s nephew, which obliged the pope, placed thus “between the hammer and the anvil,” to pursue a policy of delay and hesitation. Nor was the immorality of Henry’s own character the primary cause of the project of divorce. Had this been so, a succession of mistresses would have served as well as a series of single wives. The real occasion was the king’s desire for a male heir. But, however clear this may be, the injustice done to Catherine was no less cruel and real. Rumours, probably then unfounded, of an intended divorce had been heard abroad as early as 1524. But the creation in 1525 of the king’s illegitimate son Henry, as duke of Richmond—the title borne by his grandfather Henry VII—and the precedence granted to him over all the peers as well as the princess Mary, together with the special honour paid at this time by the king to his own half-sister Mary, were the first real indications of the king’s thoughts. In 1526, and perhaps earlier, Wolsey had been making tentative inquiries at Rome on the subject. In May 1527 a collusive and secret suit was begun before the cardinal, who, as legate, summoned the king to defend himself from the charge of cohabitation with his brother’s wife; but these proceedings were dropped. On the 22nd of June Henry informed Catherine that they had been living in mortal sin and must separate. During Wolsey’s absence in July at Paris, where he had been commissioned to discuss vaguely the divorce and Henry’s marriage with Renée, daughter of Louis XII., Anne Boleyn is first heard of in connexion with the king, his affection for her having, however, begun probably as early as 1523, and the cardinal on his return found her openly installed at the court. In October 1528 the pope issued a commission to Cardinal Campeggio and Wolsey to try the cause in England, and bound himself not to revoke the case to Rome, confirming his promise by a secret decretal commission which, however, was destroyed by Campeggio. But the trial was a sham. Campeggio was forbidden to pronounce sentence without further reference to Rome, and was instructed to create delays, the pope assuring Charles V. at the same time that the case should be ultimately revoked to Rome.4

The object of all parties was now to persuade Catherine to enter a nunnery and thus relieve them of further embarrassment. While Henry’s envoys were encouraged at Rome in believing that he might then make another marriage, Henry himself gave Catherine assurances that no other union would be contemplated in her lifetime. But Catherine with courage and dignity held fast to her rights, demanded a proper trial, and appealed not only to the bull of dispensation, the validity of which was said to be vitiated by certain irregularities, but to a brief granted for the alliance by Pope Julius II. Henry declared the latter to be a forgery, and endeavoured unsuccessfully to procure a declaration of its falsity from the pope. The court of the legates accordingly opened on the 31st of May 1529, the queen appearing before it on the 18th of June for the purpose of denying its jurisdiction. On the 21st both Henry and Catherine presented themselves before the tribunal, when the queen threw herself at Henry’s feet and appealed for the last time to his sense of honour, recalling her own virtue and helplessness. Henry replied with kindness, showing that her wish for the revocation of the cause to Rome was unreasonable in view of the paramount influence then exercised by Charles V. on the pope. Catherine nevertheless persisted in making appeal to Rome, and then withdrew. After her departure Henry, according to Cavendish, Wolsey’s biographer, praised her virtues to the court. “She is, my lords, as true, as obedient, as conformable a wife as I could in my phantasy wish or desire. She hath all the virtues and qualities that ought to be in a woman of her dignity or in any other of baser estate.” On her refusal to return, her plea was overruled and she was adjudged contumacious, while the sittings of the court continued in her absence. Subsequently the legates paid her a private visit of advice, but were unable to move her from her resolution. Finally, however, in July 1529, the case was, according to her wish, and as the result of the treaty of Barcelona and the pope’s complete surrender to Charles V., revoked by the pope to Rome: a momentous act, which decided Henry’s future attitude, and occasioned the downfall of the whole papal authority in England. On the 7th of March 1530 Pope Clement issued a brief forbidding Henry to make a second marriage, and ordering the restitution of Catherine to her rights till the cause was determined; while at the same time he professed to the French ambassador, the bishop of Tarbes, his pleasure should the marriage with Anne Boleyn have been already made, if only it were not by his authority.5 The same year Henry obtained opinions favourable to the divorce from the English, French and most of the Italian universities, but unfavourable answers from Germany, while a large number of English peers and ecclesiastics, including Wolsey and Archbishop Warham, joined in a memorial to the pope in support of Henry’s cause.

Meanwhile, Catherine, while the great question remained unsolved, was still treated by Henry as his queen, and accompanied him in his visits in the provinces and in his hunting expeditions. On the 31st of May 1531 she was visited by thirty privy councillors, who urged the trial of the case in England, but they met only with a firm refusal. On the 14th of July Henry left his wife at Windsor, removing himself to Woodstock, and never saw her again. In August she was ordered to reside at the Moor in Hertfordshire, and at the same time separated from the princess Mary, who was taken to Richmond. In October she again received a deputation of privy councillors, and again refused to withdraw the case from Rome. In 1532 she sent the king a gold cup as a new year’s gift, which the latter returned, and she was forbidden to hold any communication with him. Alone and helpless in confronting Henry’s absolute power, her cause found champions and sympathizers among the people, among the court preachers, and in the House of Commons, while Bishop Fisher had openly taken her part in the legatine trial. Subsequently Catherine was removed to Bishops Hatfield, while Henry and Anne Boleyn visited Francis I. Their marriage, anticipating any sentence of the nullity of the union with Catherine, took place after their return about the 25th of January 1533, in consequence of Anne’s pregnancy. On the 10th of May Cranmer, for whose consecration as archbishop of Canterbury Henry had obtained bulls from Rome, opened his court, and declared on the 23rd the nullity of Catherine’s marriage and the validity of Anne’s. On the 10th of August the king caused proclamation to be made forbidding her the style of queen; but Catherine refused resolutely to yield the title for that of princess-dowager. Not long afterwards she was removed to Buckden in Huntingdonshire. Here her household was considerably reduced, and she found herself hemmed in by spies, and in fact a prisoner. In July she had refused Henry the loan of a certain rich cloth, which had done service at the baptism of her children, for the use of Anne Boleyn’s expected infant; and on the birth of Elizabeth and the refusal of Mary to give up the title of princess, the latter’s household was entirely dismissed and she herself reduced to the position of attendant in Elizabeth’s retinue. A project for removing Catherine from Buckden to Somersham, an unhealthy solitude in the isle of Ely, with a still narrower maintenance, was only prevented by her own determined resistance. The attempt in November to incriminate the queen in connexion with Elizabeth Barton failed. She passed her life now in religious devotions, taking strict precautions against the possibility of being poisoned. On the 23rd of March 1534 the pope pronounced her marriage valid, but by this time England had thrown off the papal jurisdiction, the parliament had transferred Catherine’s jointure to Anne Boleyn, and the decree had no effect on Catherine’s fortunes. She refused to swear to the new act of succession, which declared her marriage null and Anne’s infant the heir to the throne, and soon afterwards she was removed to Kimbolton, where she was well treated. On the 21st of May she was visited by the archbishop of York and Tunstall, bishop of Durham, who threatened her with death if she persisted in her refusal, but only succeeded in confirming her resolution. She was kept in strict seclusion, separated from Mary 531 and from all outside communications, and in December 1535 her health gave way, her death taking place on the 8th of January 1536, not without suspicions of poison, which, however, may be dismissed. She was buried by the king’s order in Peterborough cathedral. Before her death she dictated a last letter to Henry, according to Polydore Vergil, expressing her forgiveness, begging his good offices for Mary, and concluding with the astounding assurance—”I vow that mine eyes desire you above all things.” The king himself affected no sorrow at her death, and thanked God there was now no fear of war.

Catherine is described as “rather ugly than otherwise; of low stature and rather stout; very good and very religious; speaks Spanish, French, Flemish, English; more beloved by the islanders than any queen that has ever reigned.” She was a woman of considerable education and culture, her scholarship and knowledge of the Bible being noted by Erasmus, who dedicated to her his book on Christian Matrimony in 1526. She endured her bitter and undeserved misfortunes with extraordinary courage and resolution, and at the same time with great womanly forbearance, of which a striking instance was the compassion shown by her for the fallen Wolsey.

CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA (1638-1705), queen consort of Charles II. of England, daughter of John IV. of Portugal, and of Louisa de Gusman, daughter of the duke of Medina Sidonia, was born on the 15⁄25 of November 1638 at Villia Viçosa. She was early regarded as a useful medium for contracting an alliance with England, more necessary than ever to Portugal after the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 whereby Portugal was ostensibly abandoned by France. Negotiations for the marriage began during the reign of Charles I., were renewed immediately after the Restoration, and on the 23rd of June, in spite of Spanish opposition, the marriage contract was signed, England securing Tangier and Bombay, with trading privileges in Brazil and the East Indies, religious and commercial freedom in Portugal and two million Portuguese crowns (about £300,000); while Portugal obtained military and naval support against Spain and liberty of worship for Catherine. She reached England on the 13th of May 1662, but was not visited by Charles at Portsmouth till the 20th. The next day the marriage was solemnized twice, according to the Roman Catholic and Anglican usages. Catherine possessed several good qualities, but had been brought up in a conventual seclusion and was scarcely a wife Charles would have chosen for himself. Her personal charms were not potent enough to wean Charles away from the society of his mistresses, and in a few weeks after her arrival she became aware of her painful and humiliating position as the wife of the selfish and licentious king. On the first presentation to her of Lady Castlemaine, Charles’s mistress en titre, whom he insisted on making lady of her bedchamber, she fainted away. She withdrew from the king’s society, and in spite of Clarendon’s attempts to moderate her resentment, declared she would return to Portugal rather than consent to a base compliance. To overcome her resistance nearly the whole of her Portuguese retinue was dismissed. She was helpless, and the violence of her grief and anger soon changed to passive resistance, and then to a complete forbearance and complaisance which gained the king’s regard and favour. In the midst of Charles’s debauched and licentious court, she lived neglected and retired, often deprived of her due allowance, having no ambitions and taking no part in English politics, but keeping up rather her interest in her native country.

As the prospect diminished of her bearing children to Charles, several schemes were set on foot for procuring a divorce on various pretexts. As a Roman Catholic and near to the king’s person Catherine was the special object of attack by the inventors of the Popish Plot. In 1678 the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was ascribed to her servants, and Titus Oates accused her of a design to poison the king. These charges, of which the absurdity was soon shown by cross-examination, nevertheless placed the queen for some time in great danger. On the 28th of November Oates accused her of high treason, and the Commons passed an address for her removal and that of all the Roman Catholics from Whitehall. A series of fresh depositions were sent in against her, and in June 1679 it was decided that she must stand her trial; but she was protected by the king, who in this instance showed unusual chivalry and earned her gratitude. On the 17th of November Shaftesbury moved in the House of Lords for a divorce to enable the king to marry a Protestant and have legitimate issue; but he received little support, and the bill was opposed by Charles, who continued to show his wife “extraordinary affection.” During the winter the calumnies against the queen were revived by Fitzharris, who, however, before his execution in 1681 confessed to their falsity; and after the revival of the king’s influence subsequent to the Oxford parliament, the queen’s position was no more assailed.

During Charles’s last illness in 1685 she showed great anxiety for his reconciliation with the Romish Church, and it was probably effected largely through her influence. She exhibited great grief at his death. She afterwards resided at Somerset House and at Hammersmith, where she had privately founded a convent. She interceded with great generosity, but ineffectually, for Monmouth the same year. On the 10th of June 1688 she was present at the birth of the prince of Wales and gave evidence before the council in favour of the genuineness of the child. She was still in England at the Revolution, having delayed her return to Portugal to prosecute a lawsuit against the second earl of Clarendon, formerly her chamberlain. She maintained at first good terms with William and Mary; but the practice of her religion aroused jealousies, while her establishment at Somerset House was said to be the home of cabals against the government; and in 1691 she settled for a short time at Euston. She left England finally with a train of one hundred persons in March 1692, travelling through France and arriving at Lisbon on the 20th of January 1693. She took up her residence at the palace of Bemposta, built by herself, near Lisbon. In 1703 she supported the Methuen Treaty, which cemented still further the alliance between Portugal and England, and in 1704 she was appointed regent of Portugal during the illness of her brother King Pedro II., her administration being distinguished by several successes gained over the Spaniards. She died on the 31st of December 1705, bequeathing her great wealth, the result of long hoarding, after the payment of divers charitable legacies, to King Pedro; and was buried with great ceremony and splendour at Belem.

CATHERINE OF VALOIS (1401-1437), queen of Henry V. of England, daughter of Charles VI. of France by his wife Isabel of Bavaria, was born in Paris on the 27th of October 1401. The lunacy of her father and the depravity of her mother were serious drawbacks to Catherine, and her only education was obtained in a convent at Poissy. About 1408 a marriage was suggested between the princess and Henry, prince of Wales, afterwards Henry V., who renewed this proposal after he became king in March 1413. In addition to the hand of Catherine, however, the English king asked for a large dowry both in money and lands, and when these demands were rejected war broke out. Once or twice during short intervals of peace the marriage project was revived, and was favoured by Queen Isabel. When peace was eventually made at Troyes in May 1420 Henry and Catherine were betrothed, and the marriage took place at Troyes on the 2nd of June 1420. Having crossed to England with Henry, the queen was crowned in Westminster Abbey on the 23rd of February 1421, and in the following December gave birth to a son, afterwards King Henry VI. She joined Henry in France in May 1422, returning to England after his death in the succeeding August. Catherine’s name soon began to be coupled with that of Owen Tudor, a Welsh gentleman, and in 1428 Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, secured the passing of an act to prevent her from marrying without the 532 consent of the king and council. It appears, however, that by this time Catherine and Tudor were already married. They lived in obscurity till 1436, when Tudor was imprisoned, and Catherine retired to Bermondsey Abbey, where she died on the 3rd of January 1437. Her body was buried in the Lady chapel of Westminster Abbey, and when the chapel was pulled down during the reign of Henry VII., was placed in Henry V.’s tomb. It lay afterwards under the Villiers monument, and in 1878 was re-buried in Henry V.’s chantry. By Tudor Catherine had three sons and a daughter. Her eldest son by this marriage, Edmund, was created earl of Richmond in 1452, and was the father of Henry VII.

CATHETUS (Gr. κάθετος, a perpendicular line), in architecture the eye of the volute, so termed because its position is determined, in an Ionic or voluted capital, by a line let down from the point in which the volute generates.

CATHOLIC (Gr. καθολικός, general, universal), a designation adopted in the 2nd century by the Christian Church to indicate Christendom as a whole, in contrast with individual churches. With this idea went the notions that Christianity had been diffused throughout the whole earth by the apostles, and that only what was found everywhere throughout the church could be true. The term thus in time became full of dogmatic and political meaning, connoting, when applied to the church, a universal authoritative and orthodox society, as opposed to Gnostic and other “sects” (cf. the famous canon of Vincent of Lerins a.d. 434; quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est). The term “Catholic” does not occur in the old Roman symbol; but Professor Loofs includes it in his reconstruction, based on typical phrases in common use at the time of the ante-Nicene creeds of the East. In the original form of the Nicene creed itself it does not occur; but in the creed of Jerusalem (348), an amplification of the Nicene symbol, we find “one Holy Catholic Church,” and in the revision by Cyril of Alexandria (362) “Catholic and Apostolic Church” (see Creeds). Thus, though the word “Catholic” was late in finding its way into the formal symbols of the church, it is clear that it had long been in use in the original sense defined above. It must be borne in mind, however, that the designation “Catholic” was equally claimed by all the warring parties within the church at various times; thus, the followers of Arius and Athanasius alike called themselves Catholics, and it was only the ultimate victory of the latter that has reserved for them in history the name of Catholic, and branded the former as Arian.

With the gradual development and stereotyping of the creed it was inevitable that the term “Catholic” should come to imply a more narrowly defined orthodoxy. In the Eastern churches, indeed, the conception of the church as the guardian of “the faith once delivered to the saints” soon overshadowed that of interpretation and development by catholic consent, and, though they have throughout claimed the title of Catholic, their chief glory is that conveyed in the name of the Holy Orthodox Church. In the West, meanwhile, the growth of the power of the papacy had tended more and more to the interpretation of the word “catholic” as implying communion with, and obedience to, the see of Rome (see Papacy); the churches of the East, no less than the heretical sects of the West, by repudiating this allegiance, had ceased to be Catholic. This identification of “Catholic” with “Roman” was accentuated by the progress of the Reformation. The Reformers themselves, indeed, like other dissidents and reformers before them, did not necessarily repudiate the name of Catholic; they believed, in fact, in Catholicism, i.e. the universal sanction of their beliefs, as firmly as did the adherents of “the old religion”; they included the Catholic creeds, definitions formulated by the universal church, in their service books; they too appealed, as the fathers of Basel and Constance had done, from the papal monarchy to the great ecclesiastical republic. The Church of England at least, emphasizing her own essential catholicity, retained in her translations of the ancient symbols the word “catholic” instead of replacing it by “universal.” But the appeal to the verbally inspired Bible was stronger than that to a church hopelessly divided; the Bible, and not the consent of the universal church, became the touchstone of the reformed orthodoxy; in the nomenclature of the time, “evangelical” arose in contradistinction to “Catholic,” while, in popular parlance, the “protest” of the Reformers against the “corruptions of Rome” led to the invention of the term “Protestant,” which, though nowhere assumed in the official titles of the older reformed churches, was early used as a generic term to include them all.

“Catholic” and “Catholicism” thus again changed and narrowed their meaning; they became, by universal usage, identified definitely with “Romanist” and the creed and obedience of Rome. Even in England, where the church retained most strongly the Catholic tradition, this distinction of “Protestant” and “Catholic” was clearly maintained, at least till the “Catholic revival” in the Church of England of the 19th century. On the continent of Europe the equivalent words (e.g. Ger. Katholik, Katholizismus; Fr. catholique, catholicisme) are even more definitely associated with Rome; they have lost the sense which they still convey to a considerable school of Anglicans. The dissident “Catholic” churches are forced to qualify their titles: they are “Old Catholics” (Alt-Katholiken) or “German Catholics” (Deutsch-Katholiken). The Church of Rome alone, officially and in popular parlance, is “the Catholic Church” (katholische Kirche, église catholique), a title which she proudly claims as exclusively her own, by divine right, by the sanction of immemorial tradition, and by reason of her perpetual protest against the idea of “national” churches, consecrated by the Reformation (see Church History, and Roman Catholic Church). The additional qualification of “Roman” she tolerates, since it proclaims her doctrine of the see of Rome as the keystone of Catholicism; but to herself she is “the Catholic Church,” and her members are “Catholics.”

Yet to concede this claim and surrender without qualification the word “Catholic” to a connotation which is at best only universal in theory, is to beg several very weighty questions. The doctrine of the Catholic Church, i.e. the essential unity and interdependence of “all God’s faithful people scattered throughout the world,” is common to all sections of Christians. The creed is one; it is the interpretation that differs. In a somewhat narrower sense, too, the Church of England at least has never repudiated the conception of the Catholic Church as a divinely instituted organization for the safe-guarding and proclamation of the Christian revelation. She deliberately retained the Catholic creeds, the Catholic ministry and the appeal to Catholic antiquity (see England, Church of). A large section of her members, accordingly, laying stress on this side of her tradition, prefer to call themselves “Catholics.” But, though the invention of the terms “Roman Catholic” and “Roman Catholicism” early implied the retention by the English Church of her Catholic claim, her members were never, after the Reformation, called Catholics; even the Caroline divines of the 17th century, for all their “popish practices,” styled themselves Protestants, though they would have professed their adherence to “the Catholic faith” and their belief in “the Holy Catholic Church.”

Clearly, then, the exact meaning of the term varies according to those who use it and those to whom it is applied. To the Romanist “Catholic” means “Roman Catholic”; to the high Anglican it means whatever is common to the three “historic” branches into which he conceives the church to be divided—Roman, Anglican and Orthodox; to the Protestant pure and simple it means either what it does to the Romanist, or, in expansive moments, simply what is “universal” to all Christians. In a yet broader sense it is used adjectivally of mere wideness or universality of view, as when we speak of a man as “of catholic sympathies” or “catholic in his tastes.”

The name of Catholic Epistles is given to those letters (two of Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude) incorporated in the New Testament which (except 2 and 3 John) are not, like 533 those of St Paul, addressed to particular individuals or churches, but to a larger and more indefinite circle of readers. (See BIBLE: New Testament, Canon.)

The title of Catholicus (καθολικός) seems to have been used under the Roman empire, though rarely, as the Greek equivalent of consularis and praefectus. Thus Eusebius (Hist. eccl. viii. 23) speaks of the catholicus of Africa (καθολικὸν τῆς Άφρικῆς). As an ecclesiastical title it was used to imply, not universal (ecumenical), but a great and widespread jurisdiction. Thus the bishop of the important see of Seleucia (Bagdad), though subordinate to the patriarch of Antioch, had the title of Catholicus and power to consecrate even archbishops; and on the division of the see there were two Catholici under the patriarch of Antioch. In Ethiopia, too, there were Catholici with less extensive powers, subject to the patriarch of Alexandria. The title now survives, however, only as that of the head of the Armenian Church (q.v.). A bishop’s cathedral church is, however, in Greek the Catholicon.

An isolated use of the word “catholic” as a secular legal term survives in Scots law; a catholic creditor is one whose debt is secured over several or over all of the subjects belonging to the debtor.

CATHOLIC APOSTOLIC CHURCH, THE, a religious community often called “Irvingites,” though neither actually founded nor anticipated by Edward Irving (q.v.). Irving’s relation to this community was, according to its members, somewhat similar to that of John the Baptist to the early Christian Church, i.e. he was the forerunner and prophet of the coming dispensation, not the founder of a new sect; and indeed the only connexion which Irving seems to have had with the existing organization of the Catholic Apostolic body was in “fostering spiritual persons who had been driven out of other congregations for the exercise of their spiritual gifts.” Shortly after Irving’s trial and deposition (1831), certain persons were, at some meetings held for prayer, designated as “called to be apostles of the Lord” by certain others claiming prophetic gifts. In the year 1835, six months after Irving’s death, six others were similarly designated as “called” to complete the number of the “twelve,” who were then formally “separated,” by the pastors of the local congregations to which they belonged, to their higher office in the universal church on the 14th of July 1835. This separation is understood by the community not as “in any sense being a schism or separation from the one Catholic Church, but a separation to a special work of blessing and intercession on behalf of it.” The twelve were afterwards guided to ordain others—twelve prophets, twelve evangelists, and twelve pastors, “sharing equally with them the one Catholic Episcopate,” and also seven deacons for administering the temporal affairs of the church catholic. The apostles were the channels of the Holy Ghost and the mysteries of God, and the authoritative interpreters of “prophetic utterance”; their teaching was brought home to the people by the “evangelists.” The function of the prophets was to explain scripture and exhort to holiness, that of the “pastors” is explained by their title. The central episcopacy of forty-eight was regarded as “indicated by prophecy,” being foreshown in the forty-eight boards of the Mosaic tabernacle. For ecclesiastical purposes the church universal is under their charge in twelve tribes; for Christendom is considered to be divided into twelve portions or tribes, each tribe being under the special charge of an apostle and his co-ministers, and the seat of the Apostolic College being at Albury, near Guildford. This is an ideal outline which has never been fulfilled. There has never been a “central episcopacy” of forty-eight. The “apostles” alone always held the supreme authority, though, as their number dwindled, “coadjutors” were appointed to assist the survivors, and to exercise the functions of the “apostolate.” The last “apostle” died on the 3rd of February 1901.

For the service of the church a comprehensive book of liturgies and offices was provided by the “apostles.” It dates from 1842 and is based on the Anglican, Roman and Greek liturgies. Lights, incense, vestments, holy water, chrism, and other adjuncts of worship are in constant use. The ceremonial in its completeness may be seen in the church in Gordon Square, London, and elsewhere. The daily worship consists of “matins” with “proposition” (or exposition) of the sacrament at 6 a.m., prayers at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., and “vespers” with “proposition” at 5 p.m. On all Sundays and holy days there is a “solemn celebration of the eucharist” at the high altar; on Sundays this is at 10 a.m. On other days “low celebrations” are held in the side-chapels, which with the chancel in all churches correctly built after apostolic directions are separated or marked off from the nave by open screens with gates. The community has always laid great stress on symbolism, and in the eucharist, while rejecting both transubstantiation and consubstantiation, holds strongly to a real (mystical) presence. It emphasizes also the “phenomena” of Christian experience and deems miracle and mystery to be of the essence of a spirit-filled church.

Each congregation is presided over by its “angel” or bishop (who ranks as angel-pastor in the Universal Church), under him are four-and-twenty priests, divided into the four ministries of “elders, prophets, evangelists and pastors,” and with these are the deacons, seven of whom regulate the temporal affairs of the church—besides whom there are also “sub-deacons, acolytes, singers, and door-keepers.” The understanding is that each elder, with his co-presbyters and deacons, shall have charge of 500 adult communicants in his district; but this has been but partially carried into practice. This is the full constitution of each particular church or congregation as founded by the “restored apostles,” each local church thus “reflecting in its government the government of the church catholic by the angel or high priest Jesus Christ, and His forty-eight presbyters in their fourfold ministry (in which apostles and elders always rank first), and under these the deacons of the church catholic.” The priesthood is supported by tithes; it being deemed a duty on the part of all members of the church who receive yearly incomes to offer a tithe of their increase every week, besides the free-will offering for the support of the place of worship, and for the relief of distress. Each local church sends “a tithe of its tithes” to the “Temple,” by which the ministers of the Universal Church are supported and its administrative expenses defrayed; by these offerings, too, the needs of poorer churches are supplied. It claims to have among its clergy many of the Roman, Anglican and other churches, the orders of those ordained by Greek, Roman and Anglican bishops being recognized by it with the simple confirmation of an “apostolic act.” The community has not changed recently in general constitution or doctrine. It does not publish statistics, and its growth during late years is said to have been more marked in the United States and in certain European countries, such as Germany, than in Great Britain. There are nine congregations enumerated in The Religious Life of London (1904).

CATILINE [Lucius Sergius Catilina] (c. 108-62 b.c.), a member of an ancient but impoverished patrician family of Rome, the prime mover in the conspiracy known by his name. He appears in history first as a supporter of Sulla, and during the proscription he was conspicuous for his greed and cruelty. He slew his inoffensive brother-in-law with his own hand, and tortured and mutilated the much-loved Marius Gratidianus. He was believed to have made away with his wife and his son to win the profligate and wealthy Aurelia Orestilla; it was even suspected that he had been guilty of an intrigue with the Vestal Fabia. In 77 he was quaestor, in 68 praetor, and in 67-66 governor of Africa. His extortions and subsequent impeachment by P. Clodius Pulcher having disqualified him as a candidate for the consulship, he formed a conspiracy, in which he was joined by young men of all classes, even Crassus and Caesar, according to rumour, being implicated. The new consuls were to be murdered on the 1st of January; but the plot—the 534 execution of which was deferred till the 5th of February—failed in consequence of the impatience of Catiline, who gave the signal too hastily. Soon after, Catiline, having bribed both judges and accuser, was acquitted in the trial for extortion. His scheme was forthwith immensely widened. The city was to be fired, and those who opposed the revolution were to be slain; all debts were to be cancelled; and there was to be a proscription of all the wealthy citizens. Among the conspirators were many men of the first rank and influence. Arms and money were collected, soldiers were enlisted, and the assistance of the slaves was sought. But Catiline’s hopes were again disappointed; once more he failed to obtain the consulship (64); and, moreover, it soon became apparent that one of the new consuls, Cicero, was mysteriously able to thwart all the schemes of the conspirators. He was, in fact, informed of every detail, through Fulvia, the mistress of Curius, one of the plotters, who was himself soon persuaded to turn informer. The other consul, C. Antonius, in whom Catiline hoped to find a supporter, was won over and got out of the way by Cicero, who resigned the province of Macedonia in his favour. Before the next comitia consularia assembled, the orator had given so impressive a warning of the danger which was impending, that Catiline was once more rejected (63), and the consuls were invested with absolute authority. Catiline now resolved upon open war; preparations were set on foot throughout Italy, especially in Etruria, where the standard of revolt was raised by the centurion C. Manlius (or Mallius), one of Sulla’s veterans. A plan to murder Cicero in his own house on the morning of the 7th of November was frustrated. On the next day Cicero attacked Catiline so vigorously in the senate (in his first Catilinarian oration) that he fled to his army in Etruria. Next day Cicero awoke the terror of the people by a second oration delivered in the forum, in consequence of which Catiline and Manlius were declared public enemies, and the consul Antonius was despatched with an army against them. Meanwhile the imprudence of the conspirators in Rome brought about their own destruction. Some deputies from the Allobroges, who had been sent to Rome to obtain redress for certain grievances, were approached by P. Lentulus Sura, the chief of the conspirators, who endeavoured to induce them to join him. After considerable hesitation, the deputies decided to turn informers. The plot was betrayed to Cicero, at whose instigation documentary evidence was obtained, implicating Lentulus and others. They were arrested, proved guilty, and on the 5th of December condemned to death and strangled in the underground dungeon on the slope of the Capitol. This act, which was opposed by Julius Caesar and advocated by Cato Uticensis (and, indirectly, by Cicero), was afterwards vigorously attacked as a violation of the constitution, on the ground that the senate had no power of life and death over a Roman citizen. Thus a heavy blow was dealt to the cause of Catiline, who, in the beginning of 62, saw his legions, only partially armed and diminished by desertion, shut in between those of Metellus Celer and C. Antonius. Near Pistoria he hazarded battle with the forces of the latter, but was completely defeated in a desperate encounter. He himself, fighting with the utmost bravery, rushed into the ranks of the enemy and met his death.

Such was the conspiracy of Catiline and the character of its author, as we find them in the speeches of Cicero, and the histories of Sallust and Dio Cassius (see also Plutarch, Cicero; Vell. Pat. ii. 35; Florus iv. 1; Appian, B.C. ii. 6; Eutropius vi. 15). It must not be forgotten, however, that our authorities were all members of the aristocratic party. Some of the incidents given as facts by Dio Cassius are manifest absurdities; and Cicero paid more regard to the effect than to the truthfulness of an accusation. We find him at one time admitting that Catiline had almost persuaded him of his honesty and merit, and even seeking a political union with him; at another, when his alliance had been rejected and an election was at hand, declaiming against him as a murderer and a profligate. Lastly, though Sallust’s vivid narrative is consistent throughout, it is obvious that he cherished very bitter feelings against the democratic party. Nevertheless, we cannot regard Catiline as an honest enemy of the oligarchy, or as a disinterested champion of the provincials. It is held by some historians that there was at the time on the part of many of the Roman nobles a determination to raise themselves to power, despite the opposition of the senate: others with greater probability maintain that Catiline’s object was simply the cancelling of the huge debts which he and his friends had accumulated. Catiline, by his bravery, his military talents, his vigorous resolution, and his wonderful power over men, was eminently qualified as a revolutionary leader. He is the subject of tragedies by Ben Jonson and P. Crébillon, and of the Rome sauvée of Voltaire.

CATINAT, NICOLAS (1637-1712), marshal of France, entered the Gardes Françaises at an early age and distinguished himself at the siege of Lille in 1667. He became a brigadier ten years later, maréchal de camp in 1680, and lieutenant-general 1688. He served with great credit in the campaigns of 1676-1678 in Flanders, was employed against the Vaudois in 1686, and after taking part in the siege of Philipsburg at the opening of the War of the League of Augsburg, he was appointed to command the French troops in the south-eastern theatre of war. In 1690 he conquered Savoy, and in 1691 Nice; the battle of Staffarda, won by him over the duke of Savoy in 1690, and that of Marsaglia in 1693, were amongst the greatest victories of the time. In 1696 Catinat forced the duke to make an alliance with France. He had in 1693 been made a marshal of France. At the beginning of the war of the Spanish Succession, Catinat was placed in charge of operations in Italy, but he was much hampered by the orders of the French court and the weakness of the forces for their task. He suffered a reverse at Carpi (1701) and was soon afterwards superseded by Villeroy, to whom he acted as second-in-command during the campaign of Chiari. He died at St Gratien in 1712. His memoirs were published in 1819.

CATLIN, GEORGE (1796-1872), American ethnologist, was born at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1796. He was educated as a lawyer and practised in Philadelphia for two years; but art was his favourite pursuit, and forsaking the law he established himself at New York as a portrait painter. In 1832, realizing that the American Indians were dying out, he resolved to rescue their types and customs from oblivion. With this object he spent many years among the Indians in North and South America. He lived with them, acquired their languages, and studied very thoroughly their habits, customs and mode of life, making copious notes and many studies for paintings. In 1840 he came to Europe with his collection of paintings, most of which are now in the National Museum, Washington, as the Catlin Gallery; and in the following year he published the Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indians in two volumes, illustrated with 300 engravings. This was followed in 1844 by The North American Portfolio, containing 25 plates of hunting scenes and amusements in the Rocky Mountains and the prairies of America, and in 1848 by Eight Years’ Travels and Residence in Europe. In 1861 he published a curious little volume, in “manugraph,” entitled The Breath of Life, on the advantage of keeping one’s mouth habitually closed, especially during sleep; and in 1868, Last Rambles amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes. He died in Jersey City, New Jersey, on the 22nd of December 1872.

535

CATO, DIONYSIUS, the supposed author of the Dionysii Catonis Disticha de Moribus ad Filium. The name usually given is simply Cato, an indication of the wise character of the maxims inculcated, but Dionysius is added on the authority of a MS. declared by Scaliger to be of great antiquity. This MS. also contains Priscian’s translation of the Periegesis of the geographer Dionysius Periegetes; this has probably led to the Disticha also being attributed to him. In the middle ages the author on the Disticha was supposed to be Cato the Elder, who wrote a Carmen de Moribus, but extracts from this in Aulus Gellius show that it was in prose. Nothing is really known of the author or date of the Disticha; it can only be assigned to the 3rd or 4th century a.d. It is a small collection of moral apophthegms, each consisting of two hexameters, in four books. They are monotheistic in character, not specially Christian. The diction and metre are fairly good. The book had a great reputation in the middle ages, and was translated into many languages; it is frequently referred to by Chaucer, and in 1483 a translation was issued from Caxton’s press at Westminster.

CATO, MARCUS PORCIUS (234-149 b.c.), Roman statesman, surnamed “The Censor,” Sapiens, Priscus, or Major (the Elder), to distinguish him from Cato of Utica, was born at Tusculum. He came of an ancient plebeian family, noted for some military services, but not ennobled by the discharge of the higher civil offices. He was bred, after the manner of his Latin forefathers, to agriculture, to which he devoted himself when not engaged in military service. But, having attracted the notice of L. Valerius Flaccus, he was brought to Rome, and became successively quaestor (204), aedile (199), praetor (198), and consul (195) with his old patron. During his term of office he vainly opposed the repeal of the lex Oppia, passed during the Second Punic War to restrict luxury and extravagance on the part of women. Meanwhile he served in Africa, and took part in the crowning campaign of Zama (202). He held a command in Sardinia, where he first showed his strict public morality, and again in Spain, which he reduced to subjection with great cruelty, and gained thereby the honour of a triumph (194). In the year 191 he acted as military tribune in the war against Antiochus III. of Syria, and played an important part in the battle of Thermopylae, which finally delivered Greece from the encroachments of the East. His reputation as a soldier was now established; henceforth he preferred to serve the state at home, scrutinizing the conduct of the candidates for public honours and of generals in the field. If he was not personally engaged in the prosecution of the Scipios (Africanus and Asiaticus) for corruption, it was his spirit that animated the attack upon them. Even Africanus, who refused to reply to the charge, saying only, “Romans, this is the day on which I conquered Hannibal,” and was absolved by acclamation, found it necessary to retire self-banished to his villa at Liternum. Cato’s enmity dated from the African campaign when he quarrelled with Scipio for his lavish distribution of the spoil amongst the troops, and his general luxury and extravagance.

Cato had, however, a more serious task to perform in opposing the spread of the new Hellenic culture which threatened to destroy the rugged simplicity of the conventional Roman type. He conceived it to be his special mission to resist this invasion. It was in the discharge of the censorship that this determination was most strongly exhibited, and hence that he derived the title (the Censor) by which he is most generally distinguished. He revised with unsparing severity the lists of senators and knights, ejecting from either order the men whom he judged unworthy of it, either on moral grounds or from their want of the prescribed means. The expulsion of L. Quinctius Flamininus for wanton cruelty was an example of his rigid justice. His regulations against luxury were very stringent. He imposed a heavy tax upon dress and personal adornment, especially of women, and upon young slaves purchased as favourites. In 181 he supported the lex Orchia (according to others, he first opposed its introduction, and subsequently its repeal), which prescribed a limit to the number of guests at an entertainment, and in 169 the lex Voconia, one of the provisions of which was intended to check the accumulation of an undue proportion of wealth in the hands of women. Amongst other things he repaired the aqueducts, cleansed the sewers, prevented private persons drawing off public water for their own use, ordered the demolition of houses which encroached on the public way, and built the first basilica in the forum near the curia. He raised the amount paid by the publican for the right of farming the taxes, and at the same time diminished the contract prices for the construction of public works.

From the date of his censorship (184) to his death in 149, Cato held no public office, but continued to distinguish himself in the senate as the persistent opponent of the new ideas. He was struck with horror, along with many other Romans of the graver stamp, at the licence of the Bacchanalian mysteries, which he attributed to the fatal influence of Greek manners; and he vehemently urged the dismissal of the philosophers (Carneades, Diogenes and Critolaus), who came as ambassadors from Athens, on account of the dangerous nature of the views expressed by them. He had a horror of physicians, who were chiefly Greeks. He procured the release of Polybius, the historian, and his fellow-prisoners, contemptuously asking whether the senate had nothing more important to do than discuss whether a few Greeks should die at Rome or in their own land. It was not till his eightieth year that he made his first acquaintance with Greek literature. Almost his last public act was to urge his countrymen to the Third Punic War and the destruction of Carthage. In 157 he was one of the deputies sent to Carthage to arbitrate between the Carthaginians and Massinissa, king of Numidia. The mission was unsuccessful and the commissioners returned home. But Cato was so struck by the evidences of Carthaginian prosperity that he was convinced that the security of Rome depended on the annihilation of Carthage. From this time, in season and out of season, he kept repeating the cry: “Delenda est Carthago.”

To Cato the individual life was a continual discipline, and public life was the discipline of the many. He regarded the individual householder as the germ of the family, the family as the germ of the state. By strict economy of time he accomplished an immense amount of work; he exacted similar application from his dependents, and proved himself a hard husband, a strict father, a severe and cruel master. There was little difference apparently, in the esteem in which he held his wife and his slaves; his pride alone induced him to take a warmer interest in his sons. To the Romans themselves there was little in this behaviour which seemed worthy of censure; it was respected rather as a traditional example of the old Roman manners. In the remarkable passage (xxxix. 40) in which Livy describes the character of Cato, there is no word of blame for the rigid discipline of his household.

Cato perhaps deserves even more notice as a literary man than as a statesman or a soldier. He was the first Latin prose writer of any importance, and the first author of a history of Rome in Latin. His treatise on agriculture (De Agricultura, or De Re Rustica) is the only work by him that has been preserved; it is not agreed whether the work we possess is the original or a later revision. It contains a miscellaneous collection of rules of good husbandry, conveying much curious information on the domestic habits of the Romans of his age. His most important work, Origines, in seven books, related the history of Rome from its earliest foundations to his own day. It was so called from the second and third books, which described the rise of the different Italian towns. His speeches, of which as many as 150 were collected, were principally directed against the young free-thinking and loose-principled nobles of the day. He also wrote a set of maxims for the use of his son (Praecepta ad Filium), and some rules for everyday life in verse (Carmen de Moribus). The collection of proverbs in hexameter verse, 536 extant under the name of Cato, probably belongs to the 4th century a.d. (See Cato, Dionysius.)

CATO, MARCUS PORCIUS (95-46 b.c.), Roman philosopher, called Uticensis to distinguish him from his great-grandfather, “the Censor.” On the death of his parents he was brought up in the house of his uncle, M. Livius Drusus. After fighting with distinction in the ranks against Spartacus (72 b.c.), he became a military tribune (67), and served a campaign in Macedonia, but he never had any enthusiasm for the military profession. On his return he became quaestor, and showed so much zeal and integrity in the management of the public accounts that he obtained a provincial appointment in Asia, where he strengthened his reputation. Though filled with disgust at the corruption of the public men with whom he came in contact, he saw much to admire in the discipline which Lucullus had enforced in his own eastern command, and he supported his claims to a triumph, while he opposed the inordinate pretensions of Pompey. When the favour of the nobles gained him the tribuneship, he exerted himself unsuccessfully to convict L. Licinius Murena (2), one of their chief men, of bribery. Cicero, who defended Murena, was glad to have Cato’s aid when he urged the execution of the Catilinarian conspirators. Cato’s vote on this matter drew upon him the bitter resentment of Julius Caesar, who did his utmost to save them.

Cato had now become a great power in the state. Though possessed of little wealth and no family influence, his unflinching resolution in the cause of the ancient free state rendered him a valuable instrument in the hands of the nobles. He vainly opposed Caesar’s candidature for the consulship in 59, and his attempt, in conjunction with Bibulus, to prevent the passing of Caesar’s proposed agrarian law for distributing lands amongst the Asiatic veterans, proved unsuccessful. Nevertheless, although his efforts were ineffectual, he was still an obstacle of sufficient importance for the triumvirs to desire to get rid of him. At the instigation of Caesar he was sent to Cyprus (58) with a mission to depose its king, Ptolemy (brother of Ptolemy Auletes), and annex the island. On his return two years later he continued to struggle against the combined powers of the triumvirs in the city, and became involved in scenes of violence and riot. He succeeded in obtaining the praetorship in 54, and strenuously exerted himself in the hopeless and thankless task of suppressing bribery, in which all parties were equally interested. He failed to attain the consulship, and had made up his mind to retire from the arena of civic ambition when the civil war broke out in 49. Feeling that the sole chance for the free state lay in conceding an actual supremacy to Pompey, whom he had formerly vigorously opposed, he did not scruple to support the unjust measures of the nobles against Caesar. At the outset of the war he was entrusted with the defence of Sicily, but finding it impossible to resist the superior forces of C. Scribonius Curio, who had landed on the island, he joined Pompey at Dyrrhachium. When his chief followed Caesar to Thessaly he was left behind in charge of the camp, and thus was not present at the battle of Pharsalus. After the battle, when Pompey abandoned his party, he separated himself from the main body of the republicans, and conducted a small remnant of their forces into Africa. After his famous march through the Libyan deserts, he shut himself up in Utica, and even after the decisive defeat at Thapsus (46), in spite of the wishes of his followers, he determined to keep the gates closed till he had sent off his adherents by sea. While the embarkation was in progress he continued calm and dignified; when the last of the transports had left the port he cheerfully dismissed his attendants, and soon afterwards stabbed himself.

He had been reading, we are told, in his last moments Plato’s dialogue on the immortality of the soul, but his own philosophy had taught him to act upon a narrow sense of immediate duty without regard to the future. He conceived that he was placed in the world to play an active part, and when disabled from carrying out his principles, to retire gravely from it. He had lived for the free state, and it now seemed his duty to perish with it. In politics he was a typical doctrinaire, abhorring compromise and obstinately blind to the fact that his national ideal was a hopeless anachronism. From the circumstances of his life and of his death, he has come to be regarded as one of the most distinguished of Roman philosophers, but he composed no works, and bequeathed to posterity no other instruction than that of his example. The only composition by him which we possess is a letter to Cicero (Ad Fam. xv. 5), a polite refusal of the orator’s request that he would endeavour to procure him the honour of a triumph. The school of the Stoics, which took a leading part in the history of Rome under the earlier emperors, looked to him as its saint and patron. It continued to wage war against the empire, hardly less openly than Cato himself had done, for two centuries, till at last it became actually seated on the imperial throne in the person of Marcus Aurelius. Immediately after his death Cato’s character became the subject of discussion; Cicero’s panegyric Cato was answered by Caesar in his Anticato. Brutus, dissatisfied with Cicero’s work, produced another on the same subject; in Lucan Cato is represented as a model of virtue and disinterestedness.

CATO, PUBLIUS VALERIUS, Roman poet and grammarian, was born about 100 b.c. He is of importance as the leader of the “new” school of poetry (poetae novi, νεώτεροι, as Cicero calls them). Its followers rejected the national epic and drama in favour of the artificial mythological epics and elegies of the Alexandrian school, and preferred Euphorion of Chalcis to Ennius. Learning, that is, a knowledge of Greek literature and myths, and strict adherence to metrical rules were regarded by them as indispensable to the poet. The νεώτεροι were also determined opponents of Pompey and Caesar. The great influence of Cato is attested by the lines:—

Our information regarding his life is derived from Suetonius (De Grammaticis, 11). He was a native of Cisalpine Gaul, and lost his property during the Sullan disturbances before he had attained his majority. He lived to a great age, and during the latter part of his life was in very reduced circumstances. He was at one time possessed of considerable wealth, and owned a villa at Tusculum which he was obliged to hand over to his creditors. In addition to grammatical treatises, Cato wrote a number of poems, the best-known of which were the Lydia and Diana. In the Indignatio (perhaps a short poem) he defended himself against the accusation that he was of servile birth. It is probable that he is the Cato mentioned as a critic of Lucilius in the lines by an unknown author prefixed to Horace, Satires, i. 10.

CATS, JACOB (1577-1660), Dutch poet and humorist, was born at Brouwershaven in Zeeland on the 10th of November 1577. Having lost his mother at an early age, and being adopted with his three brothers by an uncle, Cats was sent to school at Zierikzee. He then studied law at Leiden and at Orleans, and, returning to Holland, he settled at the Hague, where he began to practise as an advocate. His pleading in defence of a wretched creature accused of witchcraft brought him many clients and some reputation. He had a serious love affair about this time, which was broken off on the very eve of marriage by his catching a tertian fever which defied all attempts at cure for some two years. For medical advice and change of air Cats went to England, where he consulted the highest authorities in vain. He returned to Zeeland to die, but was cured mysteriously by a strolling quack. He married in 1602 a lady of some property, Elisabeth von Valkenburg, and thenceforward lived at Grypskerke in Zeeland, where he devoted himself to farming and poetry. His best works are: Emblemata or Minnebeelden with Maegdenplicht (1618); Spiegel van den ouden en nieuwen Tijt (1632); Houwelijck ... (1625); Selfstrijt (1620); Ouderdom, Buitem leven ... en Hofgedachten op Sorgvliet (1664); and Gedachten op slapelooze nachten (1661). In 1621, on the expiration of the twelve years’ truce with Spain, the breaking of the dykes drove him from his farm. He was made pensionary (stipendiary magistrate) of Middelburg; and two years afterwards of Dort. In 1627 Cats came to England on a mission to Charles I., who made him a knight. In 1636 he was made grand pensionary of Holland, and in 1648 keeper of the great seal; in 1651 he resigned his offices, but in 1657 he was sent a second time to England on what proved to be an unsuccessful mission to Cromwell. In the seclusion of his villa of Sorgvliet (Fly-from-Care), near the Hague, he lived from this time till his death, occupied in the composition of his autobiography (Eighty-two Years of My Life, first printed at Leiden in 1734) and of his poems. He died on the 12th of September 1660, and was buried by torchlight, and with great ceremony, in the Klooster-Kerk at the Hague. He is still spoken of as “Father Cats” by his countrymen.

Cats was contemporary with Hooft and Vondel and other distinguished Dutch writers in the golden age of Dutch literature, but his Orangist and Calvinistic opinions separated him from the liberal school of Amsterdam poets. He was, however, intimate with Constantin Huygens, whose political opinions were more nearly in agreement with his own. For an estimate of his poetry see Dutch Literature. Hardly known outside of Holland, among his own people for nearly two centuries he enjoyed an enormous popularity. His diffuseness and the antiquated character of his matter and diction, have, however, come to be regarded as difficulties in the way of study, and he is more renowned than read. A statue to him was erected at Brouwershaven in 1829.

CAT’S-EYE, a name given to several distinct minerals, their common characteristic being that when cut with a convex surface they display a luminous band, like that seen by reflection in the eye of a cat. (1) Precious cat’s-eye, oriental cat’s-eye or chrysoberyl cat’s-eye. This, the rarest of all, is a chatoyant variety of chrysoberyl (q.v.), showing in the finest stones a very sharply defined line of light. One of the grandest known specimens was in the Hope collection of precious stones, exhibited for many years at the Victoria and Albert Museum. (2) Quartz cat’s-eye. This is the common form of cat’s-eye, in which the effect is due to the inclusion of parallel fibres of asbestos. Like the chrysoberyl, it is obtained chiefly from Ceylon, but though coming from the East it is often called “occidental cat’s-eye”—a term intended simply to distinguish it from the finer or “oriental” stone. It is readily distinguished by its inferior density, its specific gravity being only 2.65, whilst that of oriental cat’s-eye is as high as 3.7. A greenish fibrous quartz, cut as cat’s-eye, occurs at Hof and some other localities irr Bavaria. (3) Crocidolite cat’s-eye, a beautiful golden brown mineral, with silky fibres, found in Griqualand West, and much used in recent years as an ornamental stone, sometimes under the name of “South African cat’s-eye.” It consists of fibrous quartz, coloured with oxide of iron, and results from the alteration of crocidolite (q.v.). It is often distinguished as “tiger’s-eye” (or more commonly “tiger-eye”), whilst a blue variety, less altered, is known as “hawk’s-eye.” By the action of hydrochloric acid the colour of tiger’s-eye may to a large extent be removed, and a greyish cat’s-eye obtained. (4) Corundum cat’s-eye. In some asteriated corundum (see ASTERIA) the star is imperfect and may be reduced to a luminous zone, producing an indistinct cat’s-eye effect. According to the colour of the corundum the stone is known as sapphire cat’s-eye, ruby cat’s-eye, topaz cat’s-eye, &c.

CATSKILL, a village and the county-seat of Greene county, New York, U.S.A., on the W. bank of the Hudson river, 33 m. S. of Albany. Pop. (1890) 4920; (1900) 5484; of whom 657 were foreign-born; (1910) 5206. It is served by the West Shore railway, by several lines of river steamboats, and by the Catskill Mountain railway, connecting it with the popular summer resorts in the Catskill mountains. A ferry connects with Catskill station (Greendale) on the east side of the Hudson. The village is in a farming country, and manufactures woollen goods and bricks, but it is best known as a summer resort, and as the principal gateway to the beautiful Catskill Mountain region. The Recorder, a weekly newspaper, was established here in 1792 as the Packet. The first settler on the present site of Catskill was Derrick Teunis van Vechten, who built a house here in 1680. The village was not incorporated until 1806.

CATSKILL (formerly Kaatskil) MOUNTAINS, a group of moderate elevation pertaining to the Alleghany Plateau, and not properly included in the Appalachian system of North America because they lack the internal structures and the general parallelism of topographic features which characterize the Appalachian ranges. The group contains many summits above 3000 ft. elevation and half a dozen approaching 4000, Slide Mountain (4205 ft.), and Hunter Mountain (4025 ft.), being the only ones exceeding that figure. The bottom lands along the creeks which drain the mountains, together with rolling uplands rising to elevations of from 1500 to 2000 ft., are under cultivation, the mountain slopes being forested or devoted to grazing. The pure and cool atmosphere attracts summer visitors, for whose accommodation many hotels have been built, some of which have become celebrated. Stoney Clove and Kaaterskill Clove are picturesque gorges, the former being traversed by a rail way, and the latter containing three cascades having a total fall of about 300 ft. The growing need of New York City for an increased water-supply has driven her engineers to the Catskills, where several great reservoirs have been projected to supplement those of the Croton watershed.

CATTANEO, CARLO (1801-1869), Italian philosopher and patriot. A republican in his convictions, during his youth he had taken part in the Carbonarist movement in Lombardy. He devoted himself to the study of philosophy, hoping to regenerate the Italian people by withdrawing them from romanticism and rhetoric, and turning their attention to the positive sciences. He expounded his ideas in a review founded by him at Milan in 1837, called Il Politecnico. But when the revolution of 1848 broke out he threw himself heart and soul into the fray, and became one of the leading spirits of the insurrection against the Austrians, known as the Five Days of Milan (March 18-22, 1848). Together with Terzaghi, Cernuschi and Clerici he formed a 538 council of war which, having its headquarters at Casa Taverna, directed the operations of the insurgents. He was second to none in self-sacrificing energy and heroic resolution. When on the 18th of March Field Marshal Radetzky, feeling that the position of the Austrian garrison was untenable, sounded the rebels as to their terms, some of the leaders were inclined to agree to an armistice which would give time for the Piedmontese troops to arrive (Piedmont had just declared war), but Cattaneo insisted on the complete evacuation of Lombardy. Again on the 21st, Radetzky tried to obtain an armistice, and Durini and Borromeo were ready to grant it, for it would have enabled them to reorganize the defences and replenish the supplies of food and ammunition, which could only last another day. But Cattaneo replied: “The enemy having furnished us with munitions thus far, will continue to furnish them. Twenty-four hours of victuals and twenty-four hours of hunger will be many more hours than we shall need. This evening, if the plans we have just arranged should succeed, the line of the bastions will be broken. At any rate, even though we should lack bread, it is better to die of hunger than on the gallows.” On the expulsion of the Austrians the question arose as to the future government of Milan and Italy. Cattaneo was an uncompromising republican and a federalist; so violent was his dislike of the Piedmontese monarchy that when he heard that King Charles Albert had been defeated by the Austrians, and that Radetzky was marching back to reoccupy Milan, he exclaimed: “Good news, the Piedmontese have been beaten. Now we shall be our own masters; we shall fight a people’s war, we shall chase the Austrians out of Italy, and set up a Federal Republic.” When the Austrians returned Cattaneo had to flee, and took refuge at Lugano, where he gave lessons, wrote his Storia della Rivoluzione del 1848, the Archivio triennale delle cose d’ Italia (3 vols., 1850-1855), and then early in 1860 he started the Politecnico once more. He bitterly attacked Cavour for his unitarian views, and for the cession of Nice and Savoy. In 1860 Garibaldi summoned him to Naples to take part in the government of the Neapolitan provinces, but he would not agree to the union with Piedmont without local autonomy. After the union of Italy he was frequently asked to stand for parliament, but always refused because he could not conscientiously take the oath of allegiance to the monarchy. In 1868 the pressure of friends overcame his resistance, and he agreed to stand, but at the last moment he drew back, still unable to take the oath, and returned to Lugano, where he died in 1869. As a writer Cattaneo was learned and brilliant, but far too bitter a partisan to be judicious, owing to his narrowly republican views; his ideas on local autonomy were perhaps wise, but, at a moment when unity was the first essential, inopportune.

CATTARO (Serbo-Croatian Kotor), the chief town of an administrative district in Dalmatia, Austria. Pop. (1900) of town, 3021; of commune, 5418. Cattaro occupies a narrow ledge between the Montenegrin Mountains and the Bocche di Cattaro, a winding and beautiful inlet of the Adriatic Sea. This inlet expands into five broad gulfs, united by narrower channels, and forms one of the finest natural harbours in Europe. Teodo, on the outermost gulf, is a small naval port. Cattaro is strongly fortified, and about 3000 troops are stationed in its neighbourhood. On the seaward side, the defensive works include Castelnuovo (Erceg Novi), which guards the main entrance to the Bocche. On the landward side, the long walls running from the town to the castle of San Giovanni, far above, form a striking feature in the landscape; and the heights of the Krivoscie or Crevoscia (Krivošije), a group of barren mountains between Montenegro, Herzegovina and the sea, are crowned by small forts. Cattaro is divided almost equally between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox creeds. It is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop, with a small cathedral, a collegiate church and several convents. The transit trade with Montenegro is impeded by high tariffs on both sides of the frontier. Foreign visitors to Montenegro usually land at Cattaro, which is connected by steamer with Trieste and by road with Cettigne. The railway from Ragusa terminates at Zelenika, near Castelnuovo.

There are many interesting places on the shores of the Bocche. Castelnuovo is a picturesque town, with a dismantled 14th-century citadel, which has, at various times, been occupied by Bosnians, Turks, Venetians, Spaniards, Russians, French, English and Austrians. The orthodox convent of St Sava, standing amid beautiful gardens, was founded in the 16th century, and contains many fine specimens of 17th-century silversmiths’ work. There is a Benedictine monastery on a small island opposite to Perasto (Perast), 8 m. east of Castelnuovo. Perasto itself was for a time an independent state in the 14th century. Rhizon, the modern hamlet of Risano, close by, was a thriving “Illyrian” city as early as 229 b.c., and gave its name to the Bocche, then known as Rhizonicus Sinus. Rhizon submitted to Rome in 168 b.c., and about the same time Ascrivium, or Ascruvium, the modern Cattaro, is first mentioned as a neighbouring city. Justinian built a fortress above Ascrivium in a.d. 535, after expelling the Goths, and a second town probably grew up on the heights round it, for Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in the 10th century, alludes to “Lower Cattaro” τὸ κάτω Δεκάτερα. The city was plundered by the Saracens in 840, and by the Bulgarians in 1102. In the next year it was ceded to Servia by the Bulgarian tsar Samuel, but revolted, in alliance with Ragusa, and only submitted in 1184, as a protected state, preserving intact its republican institutions, and its right to conclude treaties and engage in war. It was already an episcopal see, and, in the 13th century, Dominican and Franciscan monasteries were established to check the spread of Bogomilism. In the 14th century the commerce of Cattaro rivalled that of Ragusa, and provoked the jealousy of Venice. The downfall of Servia in 1389 left the city without a guardian, and, after being seized and abandoned by Venice and Hungary in turn, it passed under Venetian rule in 1420. It was besieged by the Turks in 1538 and 1657, visited by plague in 1572, and nearly destroyed by earthquakes in 1563 and 1667. By the treaty of Campo-Formio in 1797 it passed to Austria; but in 1805, by the treaty of Pressburg, it was assigned to Italy, and was united in 1810 with the French empire. In 1814 it was restored to Austria by the congress of Vienna. The attempt to enforce compulsory military service, made and abandoned in 1869, but finally successful in 1881, led to two short-lived revolts among the Krivoscians, during which Cattaro was the Austrian headquarters.

CATTEGAT, or Kattegat (Scand. “cat’s-throat”), a strait forming part of the connexion between the Baltic and the North Seas. It lies north and south between Sweden and Denmark, and connects north with the Skagerrack and south through the Sound, the Great Belt and the Little Belt with the Baltic Sea. Its length is about 150 m. and its extreme breadth about 90 m.

CATTERMOLE, GEORGE (1800-1868), English painter, chiefly in water-colours, was born at Dickleburgh, near Diss, Norfolk, in August 1800. At the age of sixteen he began working as an architectural and topographical draughtsman; afterwards he contributed designs to be engraved in the annuals then so popular; thence he progressed into water-colour painting, becoming an associate of the Water-Colour Society in 1822, and a full member in 1833. In 1850 he withdrew from active connexion with this society, and took to painting in oil. His most fertile period was between 1833 and 1850. At the Paris exhibition of 1855 he received one of the five first-class gold medals awarded to British painters. He also enjoyed professional honours in Amsterdam and in Belgium. He died on the 24th of July 1868. Among his leading works are “The Murder of the Bishop of Liége” (15th century), “The Armourer relating the Story of the Sword,” “The Assassination of the Regent Murray by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh,” and (in oil) “A Terrible Secret.” 539 He was largely employed by publishers, illustrating the Waverley Novels and the Historical Annual of his brother the Rev. Richard Cattermole (his scenes from the wars of Cavaliers and Roundheads in this series are among his best engraved works), and many other volumes besides. Cattermole was a painter of no inconsiderable gifts, and of great facility in picturesque resource; he was defective in solidity of form and texture, and in realism or richness of colour. He excelled in rendering scenes of chivalry, of medievalism, and generally of the romantic aspects of the past.

CATTLE (Norman Fr. catel, from Late Lat. capitate, wealth or property, a word applied in the feudal system to movable property and particularly to live stock, and surviving in its wider meaning as “chattel” or “chattle”), a general term for the cows and oxen of agricultural use. For the zoological account, see Bovidae, and the subordinate articles there referred to; for details concerning dairy-farming, see Dairy.

Oxen appear to have been among the earliest of domesticated animals, as they undoubtedly were among the most important agents in the growth of early civilization. They are mentioned in the oldest written records of the Hebrew and Hindu peoples, and are figured on Egyptian monuments raised over 3000 years b.c.; while remains of domesticated specimens have been found in Swiss lake-dwellings along with the stone implements and other relics of Neolithic man. In infant communities a man’s wealth was measured by the number and size of his herds—Abraham, it is said, was rich in cattle—and oxen for a long period formed, as they still do among many savage or semi-savage tribes, the favourite medium of exchange between individuals and communities. After the introduction of a metal coinage into ancient Greece, this method of exchange was commemorated by stamping the image of an ox on the new money; while the connexion between cattle and coin as symbols of wealth has left its mark on the languages of Europe, as is seen in the Latin word pecunia and the English “pecuniary,” derived from pecus, cattle. The value attached to cattle in ancient times is further shown by the Bull figuring among the signs of the zodiac; in its worship by the ancient Egyptians under the title of Apis; in the veneration which has always been paid to it by the Hindus, according to whose sacred legends it was the first animal created by the three divinities directed by the supreme Deity to furnish the earth with animated beings; and in the important part it played in Greek and Roman mythology. The Hindus were not allowed to shed the blood of the ox, and the Egyptians could only do so in sacrificing to their gods. Both Hindus and Jews were forbidden to muzzle it when treading out the corn; to destroy it wantonly was a crime among the Romans, punishable with exile.

Breeds.—There exist in Britain four interesting remnants of what were at one time numerous enclosed herds of ancient forest cattle,1 with black or red points, in parks at Chillingham, Cadzow, Vaynol (near Bangor, North Wales) and Chartley. A few of the last have been removed to Woburn. Other representatives of old stock are a resuscitated white Welsh breed with black points, derived from white specimens born of black Welsh cows; several herds of a white polled breed with black points; a herd of the ancient Polled Suffolk Dun, an excellent milking breed; a White Belted Galloway and a White Belted Welsh breed; the old Gloucester breed at Badminton, with a white rump, tail and underline, related to the now extinct Glamorgan breed; the Shetland breed; and a few herds of Dutch cattle preserved for their superior milking powers.

The prominent breeds of cattle in the British Isles2 comprise the Shorthorn, Lincolnshire Red Shorthorn, Hereford, Devon, South Devon, Sussex, Welsh, Longhorn, Red Polled, Aberdeen-Angus, Galloway, West Highland, Ayrshire, Jersey, Guernsey, Kerry and Dexter.

The Shorthorn, Lincolnshire Red Shorthorn, Hereford, Devon, South Devon, Sussex, Longhorn and Red Polled breeds are native to England; the Aberdeen-Angus, Galloway, Highland and Ayrshire breeds to Scotland; and the Kerry and Dexter breeds to Ireland. The Jersey and Guernsey breeds—often spoken of as Channel Islands cattle—belong to the respective islands whose names they bear, and great care is taken to keep them isolated from each other. The term Alderney is obsolete, the cattle of Alderney being mainly a type of the Guernsey breed.

Among breeds well known in the United States2 and not mentioned above, the more important are the Holsteins, large black and white cattle highly valued for their abundant milk production, and the Dutch Belted breed, black with a broad white band round the body, also good milkers.

The Shorthorn3 is the most widely distributed of all the breeds of cattle both at home and abroad. No census of breeds has ever been taken in the United Kingdom, but such an enumeration would show the Shorthorn far to exceed in numbers any other breed, whilst the great majority of cross-bred cattle contain Shorthorn blood. During the last quarter of the 18th century the brothers Charles Colling (1751-1836) and Robert Colling (1749-1820), by careful selection and breeding, improved the cattle of the Teeswater district in the county of Durham. If the Shorthorn did not originate thus, it is indisputable that the efforts of the Collings4 had a profound influence upon the fortunes of the breed. It is still termed the Durham breed in most parts of the world except the land of its birth, and the geographical name is far preferable, for the term “shorthorn” is applicable to a number of other breeds. Other skilled breeders turned their attention to the Shorthorns and established famous strains, the descendants of which can still be traced. By Thomas Booth, of Killerby and Warlaby in Yorkshire (1777), the “Booth” strains of Shorthorns were originated; by Thomas Bates, of Kirklevington in Yorkshire, the “Bates” families5 (1800).

The Shorthorn is sometimes spoken of as the ubiquitous breed, its striking characteristic being the ease with which it adapts itself to varying conditions of soil, climate and management. It is also called the “red, white and roan.” The roan colour is very popular, and dark red has its supporters, as in the case of the Lincolnshire Red Shorthorns; white is not in favour, especially abroad. The Shorthorn breed is more noted for its beef-making than for its milk-yielding properties, although the non-pedigree milking Shorthorn of the north of England is an excellent cow with dual-purpose qualifications of the first order. An effort is being made to restore milking qualities to certain strains of pedigree blood.

The culmination of what may be termed the Booth and Bates period was in the year 1875, when the sales took place of Lord Dunmore’s and William Torr’s herds, which realized extraordinary prices. In that black year of farming, 1879, prices were declining, and they continued to do so till within the last few years of the close of the 19th century, when there set in a gradual revival, stimulated largely by the commercial prosperity of the country. The result of extremely high prices when line-bred animals were in fashion was a tendency to breed from all kinds of animals that were of the same tribe, without selection. A deterioration set in, which was aggravated by the overlooking of the milking properties. Shorthorn breeders came to see that change of blood was necessary. Meanwhile, for many years breeders in Aberdeenshire had been holding annual sales of young bulls and heifers from their herds. The late Amos Cruickshank began his annual sales in the ’forties, and the late W.T. Talbot-Crosbie had annual sales from his Shorthorn herd in the south-west of Ireland for a number of years. Many Aberdeen farmers emigrated to Canada, and bought Shorthorn calves in their native county to take with them. The Cruickshanks held their bull sales at that time, and many of their animals were bought by the small breeders in Canada. This continued until 1875, when the Cruickshanks had so much private demand that they discontinued their public sales. Subsequently, when Cruickshank sold his herd privately 540 to James Nelson & Sons for exportation, the animals could not all be shipped, and W. Duthie, of Collynie, Aberdeenshire, bought some of the older cows, whilst J. Deane Willis, of Bapton Monar, Wilts, bought the yearling heifers. Duthie thereupon resumed the sales that the Cruickshanks had relinquished, his averages being £30 in 1892, about £50 in 1893-1894, and £80 in 1895. These prices advanced through English breeders requiring a little change of blood, and also through the increasing tendency to exhibit animals of great substance, or rather to feed animals for show. The success of this movement strengthened the demand, whilst an inquiry for his line of blood arose in the United States and Canada. A faithful contemporary history of the Shorthorn breed is to be found in Thornton’s Circular, published quarterly since 1868; see also J. Sinclair, History of Shorthorn Cattle (1907); R. Bruce, Fifty Years among Shorthorns (1907); A.H. Sanders, Shorthorn Cattle (Chicago, 1901).

The Lincolnshire Red Shorthorns are the best dual-purpose cattle—for milk and meat—that possess a pedigree record, in the United Kingdom, and their uniform cherry red colour has brought them into high favour in tropical countries for crossing with the native breeds.

The Hereford breed is maintained chiefly in Herefordshire and the adjoining counties. Whilst a full red is the general colour of the body, the Herefords are distinguished by their white face, white chest and abdomen, and white mane. The legs up to the knee or hock are also often white. As a protection against the sun in a hot climate dark spots on the eyelids or round the orbits are valuable. The horns are moderately long. Herefords, though they rear their own calves, have acquired but little fame as dairy cattle. They are very hardy, and produce beef of excellent quality. Being docile, they fatten easily and readily, and as graziers’ beasts they are in high favour.

When the Bates’ Shorthorn bubble burst in America about 1877, the Hereford gradually replaced the Shorthorn of the western ranches, and it is now the most numerous ranch animal in the United States and Canada. The bulls beat the bulls of all other breeds in “rustling” capacity.

In America the ranch-bred Herefords have got too small in the bone in recent years, and Shorthorns, chiefly of the Scottish type, are being introduced to increase their size by crossing. In the “feed lot” a well-bred Hereford steer feeds more quickly than either a Shorthorn or an Aberdeen-Angus.

In Queensland, Hereford cattle bred from the “Lord Wilton” strain by Robert Christison of Lammermoor have for years been triumphant as beef-producers in competition with the Shorthorn. When these are quartered in the ordinary butchers’ fashion, the hind-quarters outweigh the fore-quarters, which is a reversal of the prevailing rule.

North Devons.—The “Rubies of the West,” as they are termed from their hue, are reared chiefly in Devon and Somerset. The colour is a whole red, its depth or richness varying with the individual, and in summer becoming mottled with darker spots. The Devons stand somewhat low; they are neat and compact, and possess admirable symmetry. Although a smaller breed than the Shorthorn or the Hereford, they weigh better than either. The horns of the female are somewhat slender, and often curve neatly upwards. Being fine-limbed, active animals, they are well adapted for grazing the poor pastures of their native hills, and they turn their food to the best account, yielding excellent beef. They have not yet attained much celebrity as milch kine, for, though their milk is of first-class quality, with a few notable exceptions, its quantity is small. Latterly, however, the milking qualities have received more attention from breeders, whose object is to qualify the Devon as a dual-purpose breed.

The South Devon or South Hams cattle are almost restricted to that southern part of the county of Devon known as the Hams, whence they are also called “Hammers.” With a somewhat ungainly head, lemon-yellow hair, yellow skin, and large but hardly handsome udder, the South Devon breed more resembles the Guernsey, with which it is supposed to be connected, than the trim-built cattle of the hills of North Devon. The cows are large, heavy milkers, and produce excellent butter. They are rarely seen outside their locality except when they appear in the showyards.

The Sussex breed resembles the North Devon in many respects, but it is bigger, less refined in appearance, less graceful in outline, and of a deeper brown-chestnut colour than the “dainty Devon,” as the latter may well be called when compared with them. As a hardy race, capable of thriving on poor rough pastures, the Sussex are highly valued in their native districts, where they were rapidly improved before the end of the 19th century. They are essentially a beef-producing breed, the cows having little reputation as milkers. By stall-feeding they can be ripened for the butcher at an early age. Sussex cattle are said to “die well,” that is, to yield a large proportion of meat in the best parts of the carcase.

In the Welsh breed of cattle black is the prevailing colour, and the horns are fairly long. They do not mature very rapidly, but some of them grow eventually into great ponderous beasts, and their beef is of prime quality. The cows often possess considerable reputation as milkers. As graziers’ beasts Welsh cattle are well known in the midland counties of England, where, under the name of “Welsh runts,” large herds of bullocks are fattened on the pastures or “topped up” in the yards in winter.

All the remaining strains of Welsh cattle were recognized as one breed in 1904, when the Welsh Black Cattle Society united into one register the Herd Books of North and South Wales.

The Longhorn or “Dishley” breed of cattle is one of the most interesting historically. It was with Longhorns that Robert Bakewell, of Dishley, Leicestershire (1726-1795), showed his remarkable skill as an improver of cattle in the middle of the 18th century.6 At one period Longhorns spread widely over England and Ireland, but, as the Shorthorns extended their domain, the Longhorns made way for them. They are big, rather clumsy animals, with long drooping horns, which are very objectionable in these days of cattle transport by rail and sea. They are slow in coming to maturity, but are very hardy. The bullocks feed up to heavy weights, and the cows are fair milkers. No lover of cattle can view these quaint creatures without a feeling of satisfaction that the efforts made to resuscitate a breed which has many useful qualities to commend it have been successful, and that the extinction which threatened it in the ’eighties of last century is no longer imminent. In 1907 there were twenty-two Longhorn herds containing about four hundred registered cattle located mainly in the English midlands and Man.

The Red Poll breed, though old, has only come into prominence within recent years. They were known as the East Anglian Polls, and later as the Norfolk and Suffolk Polled cattle, being confined chiefly to these two counties. They are symmetrically built, of medium size, and of uniformly red colour. They have a tuft of hair on the poll. As dairy cattle, they are noted for the length of the period during which they continue in milk. Not less are they valued as beef-producers, and, as they are hardy and docile, they fatten readily and mature fairly early. Hence, like the Lincolnshire Red Shorthorn, they may claim to be a dual-purpose breed. As beef cattle they are always seen to advantage at the Norwich Christmas cattle show, held annually in November.

The Aberdeen-Angus, a polled, black breed, the cows of which are often termed “Doddies,” belongs to Aberdeenshire and adjacent parts of Scotland, but many herds are maintained in England and some in Ireland. The steers and heifers fed for the butcher attain great weight, make first-class show beasts, and yield beef of excellent quality. The cross between the Shorthorn and the Aberdeen-Angus is a favourite in the meat markets and at fat-stock competitions.

The Galloways are named from the district, Kirkcudbright and Wigtonshire, in the south-west of Scotland, to which they are native. Like the Aberdeen-Angus cattle, they are hornless, and normally of a black colour. But, with a thicker hide and shaggy hair, suited to a wet climate, they have a coarser appearance than the Aberdeen-Angus, the product of a less humid region, though 541 it approaches the latter in size. Galloways yield superior beef, but mature less rapidly than the Aberdeen-Angus. They make admirable beasts for the grazier, and the cross between the Galloway and the white Shorthorn bull, known as a “Blue Grey,” is much sought after by the grazier and the butcher.

Plate I.

BREEDS OF ENGLISH CATTLE.

Plate II.

BREEDS OF ENGLISH AND WELSH CATTLE.
(From photographs by F. Babbage.)

Plate III.

BREEDS OF SCOTCH CATTLE.

Plate IV.

BREEDS OF IRISH AND CHANNEL ISLANDS CATTLE.
(From photographs by F. Babbage.)
The comparative sizes of the animals are indicated by the scale of reproduction of the photographs.

The West Highland or Kyloe breed are perhaps the most hardy and picturesque of British cattle. Their home is amidst the wild romantic scenery of the Highlands and the Western Isles of Scotland, though Highland bullocks with long, spreading curved horns may be seen in English parks. They have not made much progress towards early maturity, but their slowly ripened beef is of the choicest quality. The colour of their thick shaggy hair varies from white and light dun to tawny yellow of many shades, and black.

The Ayrshires are the dairy breed of Scotland, where they have considerably overstepped the limits of the humid western county whence they take their name. They are usually of a white and brown colour, the patches being well defined. The neat, shapely, upstanding horns are characteristic. The Ayrshires are under medium size and move gracefully, and the females display the wedge-shape typical of dairy cows. They are a hardy breed, and, even from poor pastures, give good yields of milk, especially useful for cheese-making purposes. The milking powers of the breed are being improved under a system of milk-testing and records supported by the Highland and Agricultural Society.

The Jerseys are graceful, deer-like cattle, whose home is in the island of Jersey, where, by means of stringent regulations against the importation of cattle, the breed has been kept pure for many generations. As its milk is especially rich in fat (so rich that it requires to be diluted with a little water before it can be safely fed to calves), the Jersey has attained a wide reputation as a butter-producing breed. It is a great favourite in England, where many pure-bred herds exist. The colours most preferred are “whole” fawns of many shades. The light silver-grey, which was in high repute in England in the early ’seventies of the 19th century, is out of favour. Browns and brindles are rarely seen. The grey zone surrounding the black muzzle gives the appearance designated “mealy-mouthed.” The horns are short, and generally artificially curved inwards; the bones are fine. The best milch cows have a yellowish circle round the eye, and the skin at the extremity of the tail is of a deep yellow, almost orange colour. The cows are gentle and docile when reared in close contact with human beings, but the bulls, despite their small size, are often fierce.

Guernsey cattle are native to the islands of Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm. They are kept pure by importation restrictions. Herds of pure-bred Guernseys also exist in the Isle of Wight and in various counties of England and Scotland. They have not the refined and elegant appearance of the Jerseys, which, however, they exceed in size. They are usually of a rich yellowish-brown colour, patched with white, in some cases their colour almost meriting the appellation of “orange and lemon.” The yellow colour inside the ears is a point always looked for by judges. The cows, large-bellied and narrow in front, are truly wedge-shaped, the greatly developed udder adding to the expanse of the hinder part of the body. They yield an abundance of milk, rich in fat, and are excellent butter-producers. The horns are yellow at the base, curved, and not coarse. The nose is flesh-coloured and free from black markings.

The Canadian breed, black with a narrow brown stripe down the back and a light ring round the muzzle, are descended from old Brittany cattle imported into Canada by French settlers three hundred years ago, and are in consequence related to the Channel Islands cattle. They are remarkably hardy and good milkers, and it is claimed they produce butter fat at 2 c. a ℔ less cost than any other breed.

The Kerry is a breed of small black cattle belonging to the south-west of Ireland, whence they have spread into many parts, not only of their native land, but of England as well. Although they are able to subsist on the roughest and scantiest of fare, and are exceedingly hardy, the cows are, nevertheless, excellent milkers, and have acquired celebrity as a dairy breed. The colour is black, but the cows sometimes have a little white on the udder. The horns are white, with black tips, and are turned upwards. The Kerry is active and graceful, long and lithe in body, and light-limbed. On the rich pastures of England it has increased considerably in size.

The Dexter breed is reputed to take its name from one Dexter, agent of Maude, Lord Hawarden, who is credited with having established it by selection and breeding from the best mountain types of the Kerry. Until recently it was called the Dexter-Kerry. It is smaller and more compact than the Kerry, shorter in the leg, and intoed before and behind. Whilst valuable as a beef-making animal, it is equally noted for its milk-producing capacity. Black is the usual colour, but red is also recognized, with, in either case, a little white. When of a red colour, the appearance of the animal has been aptly compared to that of a grand Shorthorn viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. The Kerry and the Dexter are readily distinguishable. The Kerry has a gay, light, deer-like head and horn, light limbs and thin skin. The Dexter has coarser limbs, a square body, flat back, thick shoulder, short neck, and head and horn set on low.

A herd of Dexter-Shorthorns was founded by Major Barton at Straffan, Ireland, in 1860, in which prominent characteristics of the two breeds have been permanently blended so that they breed true to type.

As milk-producers, and therefore as dairy cattle, certain strains of the Shorthorn (registered as well as non-pedigree), the Lincolnshire Red Shorthorn, South Devon, Longhorn, Red Polled, Ayrshire, Jersey, Guernsey, Kerry and Dexter breeds have acquired eminence. Such breeds as the Shorthorn, Lincolnshire Red Shorthorn, South Devon, Welsh, Red Polled and Dexter are claimed as useful beef-makers as well as milk-producers, and are classified as dual-purpose animals. The others belong to the beef-producers. As regards colour, red is characteristic of the Lincolnshire Shorthorn, the Hereford, Devon, Sussex and Red Polled. Black is the dominating colour of the Welsh, Aberdeen-Angus, Galloway, Kerry and Dexter. A yellowish hue is seen in the West Highland, Guernsey and South Devon breeds. Various shades of fawn colour are usual in Jersey cattle and also appear among Highlanders. The Herefords, though with red bodies, have white faces, manes, and dewlaps, whilst white prevails to a greater or less extent in the Shorthorn, Longhorn and Ayrshire breeds. The Shorthorn breed is exceedingly variable in colour; pure-bred specimens may be red, or white, or roan, or may be marked with two or more of these colours, the roan resulting from a blending of the white and red. Black is not seen in a pure-bred Shorthorn. The biggest and heaviest cattle come from the beef-making breeds, and are often cross-bred. Very large or heavy beasts, if pure-bred, usually belong to one or other of the Shorthorn, Hereford, Sussex, Welsh, West Highland, Aberdeen-Angus and Galloway breeds. The Devon, Red Polled and Guernsey are medium-sized cattle; the Ayrshires are smaller, although relatively the bullocks grow larger than bulls or cows. The Jerseys are small, graceful cattle, but the smaller type of Kerries, the Dexters and the Shetlanders furnish the smallest cattle of the British Isles.

Rearing and Feeding.7—A calf at birth scales from one-twelfth to one-fourteenth the weight of the dam. A sucking calf of one of the large breeds should gain 3 ℔ per day for the first month, 2.5 ℔ for the second, and 2 ℔ during the later calf period. Colostrum, or first-day milk after calving, contains more than five times the albuminoid compounds found in average cows’ milk. In the course of three or four days it gradually becomes normal in composition, although the peculiar flavour remains a few days longer. Nature has specially prepared it for the young 542 calf with extremely nourishing and also laxative properties, and it is of practically no value for any other purpose. Normal cows’ milk has an albuminoid ratio slightly narrower than 1 : 4—colostrum 1 : .71. [The ratio is arrived at by adding to the percentage of milk-sugar, possessing about the food equivalent of starch, the fat multiplied by 2.268, and dividing by the total albuminoids—all digestible.]

There are three common methods of rearing calves, (1) The calf sucks its mother or foster-mother. This is the natural method and the best for the show-yard and for early fattening purposes; but it is the most expensive, and the calves, if not handled, grow up wild and dangerous. Store stock may be also raised by putting two calves to one cow and weaning at three months old; a second pair in turn yielding place to a single calf. (2) Full milk from the cow at about 90° F. is given alone until the latter part of the milk period; then the calf is trained to eat supplementary foods to preserve the calf-fat after weaning. A large calf at first receives daily three quarts of milk at three meals. The amount is increased to 2 gallons by the end of the fourth week, and to 2½ gallons at 3 months, when gradual weaning begins. Linseed cake meal is specially suitable for such calves. (3) The calf receives full milk from the mother for one to two weeks, or better, for three to four weeks; then it is slowly transferred to fortified separated milk or milk substitutes. Cod-liver oil, 2 oz. daily, is a good substitute for butter fat. In America cotton-seed oil, ½ oz. to the quart of milk, or an equivalent of oleomargarine heated to 110° F. and churned with separated milk, has produced a live-weight-increase of 2 ℔ daily. Linseed simmered to a jelly and added to separated milk gives good results. Moderate amounts are easily digested. Oatmeal or maize meal containing 10% of linseed meal does well, later, at less cost. Milk substitutes and calf meals require close attention in preparation, and would not fetch the prices they do if feeders possessed the technical knowledge necessary to select and mix common foods. Ground cake or linseed meal is, after a time, better given dry than cooked, being then better masticated and not so liable to produce indigestion.

Grass or fine hay in racks is provided when the calf can chew the cud. As cattle get older, live-weight-increase grows less. Smithfield weights8 show that a good bullock up to a year old will increase 2 ℔ daily, a two-year-old 1¾ ℔, and a three-year-old a little over 1½ ℔

Cattle feeding on a farm consume crude produce that is inconvenient to market, and make farmyard manure; but there is frequently no profit left. To secure the balance on the right side the inlaid price per live cwt. requires to be 5s. less than the sale price—say 32s. per cwt. for lean cattle, and 37s. per cwt. for the animal when sold fat and capable of producing 60% of dressed beef. The ordinary animal yields only about 57%. A well-bred fattening bullock begins with 2 ℔ of cake and meal per day, increasing to 8 ℔ at the end of five months (6 ℔ on an average), and receives ¾ cwt. of roots and 12 ℔ of straw; at an average cost of about 4s. 3d. per imperial stone or 50s. per cwt. of dressed carcase. Heifers feed faster than bullocks, and age tells on the rate at which an animal will mature: a three-year-old will develop into prime beef more quickly and easily than a two-year-old. It is difficult to produce “baby beef” at a profit, and it can only be done with picked animals of the best flesh-producing breeds, which cannot be bought at a price per cwt. below the finished sale price, for animals producing baby beef must from start to finish (under two years old) be at all times fit to go to the fat market. It is true that a very young animal can give a better account of food than an older one, but this advantage is counterbalanced by the tendency to grow rather than to fatten. (See also Agriculture.)

In cold and stormy districts cattle thrive best in covered courts, but in a mild climate they do equally well in open yards with shelter-sheds. The more air they get the less liable they are to tuberculosis—example Lincolnshire and the drier south-eastern counties. The ideal method of house-feeding cattle is singly in boxes 10 ft. square, where they are undisturbed, and where the best manure is made because it is not washed by rain.

On the finest British grazing lands two lots of cattle are fed in one season. The first is finished early in July, having, without artificial feeding, laid on eight to nine stones of beef. The second lot requires three or four pounds of undecorticated cotton cake each towards the end of September and in October when grass begins to fail.

CATULLUS, GAIUS VALERIUS (?84-54 b.c.), the greatest lyric poet of Rome. As regards his names and the dates of his birth and death, the most important external witness is that of Jerome, in the continuation of the Eusebian Chronicle, under the year 87 b.c., “Gaius Valerius Catullus, scriptor lyricus Veronae nascitur,” and under 57 b.c., “Catullus xxx. aetatis anno Romae moritur.” There is no controversy as to the gentile name, Valerius. Suetonius, in his Life of Julius Caesar (ch. 73), mentions the poet by the names “Valerium Catullum.” Other persons who had the cognomen Catullus belonged to the Valerian gens, e.g. M. Valerius Catullus Messalinus, a delator in the reign of Domitian, mentioned in the fourth satire of Juvenal (l. 113):—

“Et cum mortifero prudens Veiento Catullo.”

Inscriptions show, further, that Valerius was a common name in the native province of Catullus, and belonged to other inhabitants of Verona besides the poet and his family (Schwabe, Quaestiones Catullianae, p. 27). Scholars have been divided in opinion as to whether his praenomen was Gaius or Quintus, and in the best MSS. the volume is called simply Catulli Veronensis liber. For Gaius we have the undoubted testimony, not only of Jerome, which rests on the much earlier authority of Suetonius, but also that of Apuleius. In support of Quintus a passage was quoted from the Natural History of Pliny (xxxvii. 6, 81). But the praenomen Q. is omitted in the best MSS., and in other passages of the same author the poet is spoken of as “Catullus Veronensis.” The mistake may have arisen from confusion with Q. Catulus, the colleague of Marius in the Cimbric War, himself also the author of lyrical poems. Allusions in the poems show that the date of his death given by Jerome (57 b.c.) is wrong, and that Catullus survived the second consulship of Pompey (55 b.c.) (cf. lv. 6, cxiii. 2), and was present in August of the 543 following year at the prosecution of Vatinius by Licinius Calvus (cf. liii.). The allusion in lii. 3—

“Per consulatum peierat Vatinius,”

does not prove that Catullus must have lived to see the consulship bestowed on Vatinius in the end of 47 b.c. but only that Vatinius, after being praetor in 55 b.c., was in the habit of boasting of the certainty of his attaining the consulship, as Cleopatra was in the habit of confirming her most solemn declarations by appealing to her hope of one day administering justice in the Capitol (cf. Haupt, “Quaestiones Catullianae,” Opuscula, vol. i. 1875). There is then nothing to prove that Catullus lived beyond the month of August 54 b.c. Some of the poems (as xxxvii. and lii.) may have been written during his last illness. If he died in 54 b.c. or early in 53 b.c., Catullus must either have been born later than 87 b.c., or have lived to a greater age than thirty. Catullus is described by Ovid as “hedera iuvenalia cinctus Tempora” (Amor. iii. 9. 61),—a description somewhat more suitable to a man who dies in his thirtieth year than to one who dies three or four years later. Further, the age at which a man dies is more likely to be accurately remembered than the particular date either of his death or of his birth, and the common practice of recording the age of the deceased in sepulchral inscriptions must have rendered a mistake about this less likely to occur. It seems, therefore, on the whole, most likely that Jerome’s words “xxx. aetatis anno” are correct, and that Catullus was born in 84 b.c.

The statement that he was born at Verona is confirmed by passages in Ovid and Martial. Pliny the elder, who was born at Como, speaks of Catullus in the preface to his Natural History, as his “countryman” (conterraneus), and the poet speaks of Verona as his home, or at least his temporary residence, in more than one place. His occasional residence in his native place is further attested by the statement of Suetonius (Julius Caesar, 73), that “Julius Caesar accepted the poet’s apology for his scurrilous verses upon him, invited him to dine with him on the same day, and continued his intimacy with his father as before.” As this incident could only have happened during the time that Julius Caesar was pro-consul, the scene of it must have been in the Cisalpine province, and at the house of the poet’s father, in or near Verona. The verses apologized for were those contained in poems xxix. and lvii., the former of which must have been written after Caesar’s invasion of Britain, so that this interview probably took place in the winter of 55-54 b.c. The fact that his father was the host of the great pro-consul, and lived on terms of intimacy with him, justifies the inference, that he was, in wealth and rank, one of the principal men of the province. The only other important statement concerning the poet’s life which rests on external authority is that of Apuleius, that the real name of the Lesbia of the poems was Clodia. Another, which concerns the reputation which he enjoyed after his death, is given in the Life of Atticus by Cornelius Nepos (12. 4). It is to the effect that he regarded Lucretius and Catullus as the two greatest poets of his own time.

The poems of Catullus consist of 116 pieces, varying in length from 2 to 408 lines, the great mass of them being, however, short pieces, written in lyric, iambic or elegiac metre. The arrangement cannot be the poet’s; it is neither chronological nor in accordance with the character of the topics. The shorter poems, lyric or iambic, are placed first, next the longer epithalamia, (most being written in hexameters) amongst which the Attis is inserted and then those written in the elegiac metre. But, though no chronological order is observed, yet internal evidence enables us to determine the occasions on which many of the poems were written, and the order in which they followed one another. They give a very vivid image of various phases of the poet’s life, and of the strong feelings with which persons and things affected him. They throw much light also on the social life of Rome and of the provincial towns of Italy in the years preceding the outbreak of the second civil war. In this respect they may be compared with the letters of Cicero.

The poems extend over a period of seven or eight years, from 61 or 62 till 54 b.c. Among the earliest are those which record the various stages of the author’s passion for Lesbia. It is in connexion with this passion that he is generally mentioned, or alluded to, by the later Roman poets, such as Propertius, Ovid, Juvenal and Martial. Her real name, as we learn from Apuleius, was Clodia. The admiration of Catullus for Sappho, the Lesbian poetess, which is clearly indicated by the imitation of her language in his fifty-first and sixty-second poems, affords an obvious explanation of the Greek name which he gave to his Roman mistress. Clodia was the notorious sister of Publius Clodius Pulcher, and in the year 56 she charged M. Caelius Rufus, after tiring of him, as she had of Catullus, with an attempt to poison her. It was in defence of Rufus that Cicero described the spell she exercised over young men, in language which might have been applied to her previous relations with the youthful poet, as well as those with the youthful orator and politician.

Poems concerning Lesbia occur among both the earliest and the latest of those contained in the series. They record the various stages of passion through which Catullus passed, from absolute devotion and a secure sense of returned affection, through the various conditions of distrust and jealousy, attempts at renunciation, and short-lived “amoris integrationes,” through the “odi et amo” state, and the later state of savage indignation against both Lesbia and his rivals, and especially against Caelius Rufus, till he finally attains, not without much suffering and loss, the last state of scornful indifference. Among the earliest of the poems connected with Lesbia, and among those written in the happiest vein, are ii. and iii., and v. and vii. The 8th, “Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,” perhaps the most beautiful of them all, expresses the first awakening of the poet to a sense of her unworthiness, before the gentler have given place to the fiercer feelings of his nature. His final renunciation is sent in a poem written after his return from the East, with a union of imaginative and scornful power, to his two butts, Furius and Aurelius (xi., “Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli”), who, to judge by the way Catullus writes of them, appear to have been hangers-on upon him, who repaid the pecuniary and other favours they received by giving him grounds for jealousy, and making imputations on his character (cf. xv., xvi., xviii., xxiii.).

The intrigue of Caelius Rufus with Lesbia began in 59 or 58 b.c. It was probably in the earlier stages of this liaison that the 68th poem was written, from which it appears that Catullus, at the time living at Verona, and grieving for the recent death of his brother in the Troad, had heard of Lesbia’s infidelity, and, in consideration of her previous faithlessness in his favour, was not inclined to resent it very warmly. Two other poems in the series express the grief which Catullus felt for the death of his brother,—one, the 65th, addressed to the orator Hortensius, who is there, as in some of Cicero’s letters, called Hortalus or Ortalus, and sent to him along with the Coma Berenices (lxvi.), a translation of a famous elegy of Callimachus. The other poem referring to this event (ci.) must have been composed some years later, probably in 56 b.c., when Catullus visited his brother’s tomb in the Troad, on his return from Bithynia. Between 59 and 57 b.c. most of the lampoons on Lesbia and her numerous lovers must have been written (e.g. xxxvii., xxxix., &c.). Some, too, of the poems expressive of his more tender feelings to her, such as viii. and lxxvi. belong also to these years; and among the poems written either during this period or perhaps in the early and happier years of his liaison, some of the most charming of his shorter pieces, expressing the affection for his young friends Verannius and Fabullus (ix., xii., xiii.), may be included.

In the year 57 the routine of his life was for a short time broken by his accompanying the propraetor C. Memmius, the friend to whom Lucretius dedicates his great poem, as one of his staff, to the province of Bithynia. His object was probably to better his fortunes by this absence from Rome, as humorous complaints of poverty and debt (xiii., xxvi.) show that his ordinary means were insufficient for his mode of life. He frankly acknowledges the disappointment of these hopes, and still more frankly his disgust with his chief (x., xxviii.). Some of the most charming and perfect among the shorter poems express the delight with which the poet changed the dulness and sultry climate of the 544 province for the freedom and keen enjoyment of his voyage home in his yacht, built for him at Amastris on the Euxine, and for the beauty and peace of his villa on the shores of Lake Benacus, which welcomed him home “wearied with foreign travel.” To this period and to his first return to Rome after his visit to his native district belong the poems xlvi., ci., iv., xxxi. and x., all showing by their freshness of feeling and vivid truth of expression the gain which the poet’s nature derived from his temporary escape from the passions, distractions and animosities of Roman society. Two poems, written in a very genial and joyous spirit, and addressed to his younger friend Licinius Calvus (xiv. and l.), who is ranked as second only to himself among the lyrical poets of the age, and whose youthful promise pointed him out as likely to become one of the greatest of Roman orators, may, indeed, with most probability be assigned to these later years (xiv.). From the expression “Odissem te odio Vatiniano,” in the third line of xiv., it may be inferred that the poem was written not earlier than December (the “Saturnalia”) of the year 56 b.c., as it was early in that year, as we learn from a letter of Cicero to his brother Quintus (ii. 4. 1), that Calvus first announced his intention of prosecuting Vatinius. The short poem numbered liii. would be written in August 54 b.c. The poems which have left the greatest stain on the fame of Catullus—those “referta contumeliis Caesaris,” the licentious abuse of Mamurra, and probably some of those personal scurrilities addressed to women as well as men, or too frank confessions, which posterity would willingly have let die, may well have been written in the last years of his life, under the influence of the bitterness and recklessness induced by his experience. It cannot be determined with certainty whether the longer and more artistic pieces, which occupy the middle of the volume—the Epithalamium in celebration of the marriage of Manlius Torquatus, the 62nd poem, written in imitation of the Epithalamia of Sappho, “Vesper adest: iuvenes, consurgite”; the Attis, and the Epic Idyll representing the marriage festival of Peleus and Thetis—belong to the earlier or the later period of the poet’s career. If the person addressed in the first part of the 68th is the Manlius of the Epithalamium, and the lines from 3 to 8—

“Naufragum ut eiectum ... pervigilat,”

refer to the death of Vinia, it would follow that the first Epithalamium was written some time before that poem, and thus belongs to the earlier time. While the translations of Sappho,—

“Ille mi par esse deo videtur,”

and of Callimachus (lxvi.),—

“Omnia qui magni dispexit lumina mundi,”

belong to the earlier period, the Attis and the Peleus and Thetis; although perhaps suggested by the treatment of the same or similar subjects in Greek authors, are executed with such power and originality as declare them to be products of the most vigorous stage in the development of the poet’s genius. That his genius came soon to maturity is a reason for hesitation in assigning any particular time between 62 and 54 b.c. for the composition of the Attis and of that part of the Epithalamium (“Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus”) which deals with the main subject of the poem. But the criticism of Munro in his edition of Lucretius, which shows similarities of expression that cannot be mere casual coincidences, between the Ariadne-episode in the Epithalamium of Catullus (from line 52 to 266) and the poem of Lucretius, leaves little doubt that that portion at least of the poem was written after the publication of the De rerum natura, in the winter of 55-54 b.c.

No ancient author has left a more vivid impression of himself on his writings than Catullus. Coming to Rome in early youth from a distant province, not at that time included within the limits of Italy, he lived as an equal with the men of his time of most intellectual activity and refinement, as well as of highest social and political eminence. Among those to whom his poems are addressed, or who are mentioned in them, we find the names of Hortensius, Cicero, Cornelius Nepos, Licinius Calvus, Helvius Cinna and Asinius Pollio, then only a youth (xii. 8). Catullus brought into this circle the genius of a great poet, the social vivacity of a vigorous nature, the simplicity and sincerity of an unambitious, and the warmth of an affectionate disposition. He betrays all the sensitiveness of the poetic temperament, but it is never the sensitiveness of vanity, for he is characterized by the modesty rather than the self-confidence which accompanies genius, but the sensitiveness of a heart which gives and expects more sympathy and loyalty in friendship than the world either wants or cares to give in return. He shows also in some of his lighter pieces the fastidiousness of a refined taste, intolerant of all boorishness, pedantry, affectation and sordid ways of life. The passionate intensity of his temperament displays itself with similar strength in the outpourings of his animosity as of his love and affection. It was, unfortunately, the fashion of the time to employ in the expression of these animosities a licence of speech and of imputation which it is difficult for men living under different social conditions to understand, still more difficult to tolerate. Munro has examined the 29th poem—

“Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati,”

the longest and most important of the lampoons on Caesar and Mamurra, and shown with much learning and acuteness the motives and intention of Catullus in writing them. Had Julius Caesar really believed, as Suetonius, writing two hundred years afterwards, says he did, that “an eternal stigma had been cast upon him by the verses concerning Mamurra,” we should scarcely apply the word magnanimity to his condonation of the offence. But these verses survive as a memorial not of any scandal affecting Julius Caesar which could possibly have been believed by his contemporaries, but of the licence of speech which was then indulged in, of the jealousy with which the younger members of the Roman aristocracy, who a little later fought on the side of Pompey, at that time regarded the ascendancy both of the “father-in-law and the son-in-law,” and the social elevation of some of their instruments, and also, to a certain extent, of the deterioration which the frank and generous nature of Catullus underwent from the passions which wasted, and the faithlessness which marred his life.

The great age of Latin poetry extends from about the year 60 b.c. till the death of Ovid in 17 a.d. There are three marked divisions in this period, each with a distinct character of its own: the first represented by Lucretius and Catullus, the second by Virgil and Horace, the last by Ovid. Force and sincerity are the great characteristics of the first period, maturity of art of the second, facility of the last. The educating influence of Greek art on the Roman mind was first fully experienced in the Ciceronian age, and none of his contemporaries was so susceptible of that influence as Catullus. With the susceptibility to art he combined a large share of the vigorous and genial qualities of the Italian race. Like most of his younger contemporaries, he studied in the school of the Alexandrine poets, with whom the favourite subjects of art were the passion of love, and stories from the Greek mythology, which admitted of being treated in a spirit similar to that in which they celebrated their own experiences. It was under this influence that Catullus wrote the Coma Berenices, the 68th poem, which, after the manner of the Alexandrines, interweaves the old tale of Protesilaus and Laodamia with the personal experiences of the poet himself, and the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, which combines two pictures from the Greek mythology, one of the secure happiness of marriage, the other of the passionate despair of love betrayed. In this last poem Catullus displays a power of creative pictorial imagination far transcending that displayed in any of the extant poetry of Alexandria. We have no means of determining what suggested the subject of the Attis to Catullus, whether the previous treatment of the subject by some Greek writer, some survival of the myth which he found still existing during his residence among the “Phrygii Campi,” or the growth of various forms of Eastern superstition and fanaticism, at Rome, in the last age of the Republic. Whatever may have been its origin, it is the finest specimen we possess, in either Greek or Latin literature, of that kind of short poem more common in modern than ancient times, in which some situation or passion entirely alien to the writer, and to his own age, is realized with dramatic intensity. 545 But the genius of Catullus is, perhaps, even happier in the direct expression of personal feeling than in artistic creation, or the reproduction of tales and situations from mythology. The warmth, intensity and sincerity of his own nature are the sources of the inspiration in these poems. The most elaborate and one of the finest of them is the Epithalamium in honour of the marriage of a member of the old house of Manlius Torquatus with Vinia Aurunculeia, written in the glyconic in combination with the pherecratean metre. To this metre Catullus imparts a peculiar lightness and grace by making the trochee, instead of the spondee as in Horace’s glyconics and pherecrateans, the first foot in the line. His elegiac metre is constructed with less smoothness and regularity than that of Ovid and Tibullus or even of Propertius, but as employed by him it gives a true echo to the serious and plaintive feelings of some of his poems, while it adapts itself, as it did later in the hands of Martial, to the epigrammatic terseness of his invective. But the perfection of the art of Catullus is seen in his employment of those metres which he adapted to the Latin tongue from the earlier poets of Greece, the pure iambic trimeter, as in iv.—

“Phaselus ille quem videtis hospites,”

the scazon iambic, employed in viii. and xxxi.—

“Paeninsularum, Sirmio, insularumque,”

and the phalecian hendecasyllabic, a slight modification of the Sapphic line, which is his favourite metre for the expression of his more joyful moods, and of his lighter satiric vein. The Latin language never flowed with such ease, freshness and purity as in these poems. Their perfection consists in the entire absence of all appearance of effort or reflection, and in the fulness of life and feeling, which gives a lasting interest and charm to the most trivial incident of the passing hour. In reference to these poems Munro has said with truth and force: “A generation had yet to pass before the heroic attained to its perfection; while he (Catullus) had already produced glyconics, phalecians and iambics, each ‘one entire and perfect chrysolite,’ ‘cunningest patterns’ of excellence, such as Latium never saw before or after,—Alcaeus, Sappho, and the rest then and only then having met their match.”

CATULUS, the name of a distinguished family of ancient Rome of the gens Lutatia. The following are its most important members.

1. Gaius Lutatius Catulus, Roman commander during the First Punic War, consul 242 b.c. He was sent with a fleet of 200 ships to Sicilian waters, and almost without opposition occupied the harbours of Lilybaeum and Drepanum. A hurriedly equipped fleet sent out from Carthage under Hanno was intercepted by the praetor Publius Valerius Falto and totally defeated (battle of the Aegates Islands, March 10, 241). Catulus, who had been wounded at Drepanum, took no part in the operations, but on his return to Rome was accorded the honour of a triumph, which against his will he shared with Valerius. (See Punic Wars: First, ad fin.).

2. Quintus Lutatius Catulus, Roman general and consul with Marius in 102 b.c. In the war against the Cimbri and Teutones he was sent to defend the passage of the Alps but found himself compelled to retreat over the Po, his troops having been reduced to a state of panic (see Marius, Gaius). In 101 the Cimbri were defeated on the Raudine plain, near Vercellae, by the united armies of Catulus and Marius. The chief honour being ascribed to Marius, Catulus became his bitter opponent. He sided with Sulla in the civil war, was included in the proscription list of 87, and when Marius declined to pardon him, committed suicide. He was distinguished as an orator, poet and prose writer, and was well versed in Greek literature. He is said to have written the history of his consulship and the Cimbrian War after the manner of Xenophon; two epigrams by him have been preserved, one on Roscius the celebrated actor (Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, i. 28), the other of an erotic character, imitated from Callimachus (Gellius xix. 9). He was a man of great wealth, which he spent in beautifying Rome. Two buildings were known as “Monumenta Catuli”: the temple of Fortuna hujusce diei, to commemorate the day of Vercellae, and the Porticus Catuli, built from the sale of the Cimbrian spoils.

3. Quintus Lutatius Catulus (c. 120-61 b.c.), sometimes called Capitolinus, son of the above, consul in 102. He inherited his father’s hatred of Marius, and was a consistent though moderate supporter of the aristocracy. In 78 he was consul with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who after the death of Sulla proposed the overthrow of his constitution, the re-establishment of the distribution of grain, the recall of the banished, and other democratic measures. Catulus vigorously opposed this, and a temporary compromise was effected. But Lepidus, having levied troops in his province of Transalpine Gaul, returned to Rome at the head of an army. Catulus defeated him at the Mulvian bridge and near Cosa in Etruria, and Lepidus made his escape to Sardinia, where he died soon afterwards. In 67 and 66 Catulus unsuccessfully opposed, as prejudicial to constitutional freedom, the Gabinian and Manilian laws, which conferred special powers upon Pompey (q.v.). He consistently opposed Caesar, whom he endeavoured to implicate in the Catilinarian conspiracy. Caesar, in return, accused him of embezzling public money during the reconstruction of the temple on the Capitol, and proposed to obliterate his name from the inscription and deprive him of the office of commissioner for its restoration. Catulus’s supporters rallied round him, and Caesar dropped the charge. Catulus was the last princeps senatus of republican times; he held the office of censor also, but soon resigned, being unable to agree with his colleague Licinius Crassus. Although not a man of great abilities, Catulus exercised considerable influence through his political consistency and his undoubted solicitude for the welfare of the state.

CAUB, or Kaub, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, on the right bank of the Rhine, 28 m. N.W. from Wiesbaden, on the railway from Frankfort-on-Main to Cologne. Pop. 2200. It has a Roman Catholic and an Evangelical church, and a statue of Blücher. The trade mainly consists of the wines of the district. On a crag above the town stands the 546 imposing ruin of Gutenfels, and facing it, on a rock in the middle of the Rhine, the small castle Pfalz, or Pfalzgrafenstein, where, according to legend, the Palatine countesses awaited their confinement, but which in reality served as a toll-gate for merchandise on the Rhine.

Caub, first mentioned in the year 983, originally belonged to the lords of Falkenstein, passed in 1277 to the Rhenish Palatinate, and attained civic rights in 1324. Here Blücher crossed the Rhine with the Prussian and Russian armies, on New Year’s night 1813-1814, in pursuit of the French.

CAUCA, a large coast department of Colombia, South America, lying between the departments of Bolivar, Antioquia, Caldas and Tolima on the E., and the Pacific Ocean and Panama on the W., and extending from the Caribbean Sea S. to the department of Nariño. Pop. (1905, estimate) 400,000; area 26,930 sq. m. Although Cauca was deprived of extensive territories on the upper Caquetá and Putumayo, and of a large area bordering on Ecuador in the territorial redistribution of 1905, it remained the largest department of the republic. The Western Cordillera, traversing nearly its whole length from south to north, and the Central Cordillera, forming a part of its eastern frontier, give a very mountainous character to the region. It includes, besides, the fertile and healthful valley of the upper Cauca, the hot, low valley of the Atrato, and a long coastal plain on the Pacific. The region is rich in mines and valuable forests, but its inhabitants have made very little progress in agriculture because there are not adequate transportation facilities. The capital of the department is Popayán at its southern extremity, with an estimated population in 1905 of 10,000, other important towns are Cali (16,000), Buga, Cartago and Buenaventura.

CAUCASIA, or Caucasus, a governor-generalship of Russia, occupying the isthmus between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov on the west and the Caspian Sea on the east, as well as portions of the Armenian highlands. Its northern boundary is the Kuma-Manych depression, a succession of narrow, half-desiccated lakes and river-beds, only temporarily filled with water and connecting the Manych, a tributary of the Don, with the Kuma, which flows into the Caspian. This depression is supposed to be a relic of the former post-Pliocene connexion between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and is accepted by most geographers as the natural frontier between Europe and Asia, while others make the dividing-line coincide with the principal water-parting of the Caucasus mountain system. The southern boundary of Caucasia is in part coincident with the river Aras (Araxes), in part purely conventional and political. It was shifted several times during the 19th century, but now runs from a point on the Black Sea, some 20 m. south of Batum, in a south-easterly and easterly direction to Mt. Ararat, and thence along the Aras to within 30 m. of its confluence with the Kura, where it once more turns south-east, and eventually strikes the Caspian at Astara (30° 35′ N.). This large territory, covering an area of 180,843 sq. m., and having in 1897 9,248,695 inhabitants (51 per sq. m.), may be divided into four natural zones or sections:—(i.) the plains north of the Caucasus mountains, comprising the administrative division of Northern Caucasia; (ii.) the Caucasus range and the highlands of Daghestan; (iii.) the valleys of the Rion and the Kura, between the Caucasus range and the highlands of Armenia; and (iv.) the highlands of Armenia.

Climate.—Owing in part to the great differences in altitude in different regions of Caucasia and in part to the directions in which the mountain ranges run, and consequently the quarters towards which their slopes face, the climate varies very greatly according to locality. Generally speaking, it may be characterized as a climate of extremes on the Armenian highlands, in the Kura valley and in northern Caucasia, and as maritime and genial in Lenkoran, on the Black Sea coastlands, and in the valley of the Rion. The greatest recorded range of temperature is at Erivan (altitude 3230 ft.), namely, of 64° between a January average of 14.9° and an August average of 78.8° F. At Sukhum-kaleh, on the Black Sea, the corresponding range is only 27.3°, between a January average of 48.8° and an August average of 76.1°. The highest mean temperatures for the whole year are those of Lenkoran (60.3°) and of Sukhum-kaleh and Poti (about 58°), and the lowest at Ardahan (5840 ft.), in the province of Kars, namely, 37.9°, and at Gudaur (7245 ft.), a few miles south of Kasbek, namely, 38.6°. The following table gives particulars of temperature averages at a few typical places:—

In respect of precipitation the entire region of Caucasia may be divided into two strikingly contrasted regions, a wet and a dry. To the former belong the Black Sea littoral, where the rainfall averages 59 to 93 in. annually, and the valleys that open upon it or are exposed to winds blowing off it, in which the rainfall varies, however, from 20 in. (Abbas-tuman, Borzhom) to 60 (Kutais). In Lenkoran also the rainfall averages 40 to 50 in. in the year. Between 16 and 40 in. fall as a rule at the northern foot of the Caucasus (Mozdok, Pyatigorsk) and in the Kura valley (Tiflis, Novo-bayazet). On the Armenian highlands and on the steppes north of Pyatigorsk the rainfall is less than 12 in. annually, and even in some places less than 8 in., e.g. at the foot of Ararat. Most rain falls at Batum and at Lenkoran in the autumn, in northern Caucasia and in Transcaucasia in spring and summer, but in the vicinity of the Sea of Azov in winter.

Flora and Fauna.—Plant-life, in such a mountainous country as Caucasia, being intimately dependent upon aspect and altitude, is treated under Caucasus. The wild animals of Caucasia are for the most part the same as those which frequent the mountainous parts of central Europe, though there is also an irruption of Asiatic forms, e.g. the tiger (in Lenkoran only), panther, hyaena and jackal. The more important of the carnivores which haunt the forests, valleys and mountain slopes are the bear (Ursus arctos), wolf, lynx, wild cat and fox (Vulpes melanotus). The wild boar occurs around Borzhom. The aurochs (Bos urus) appears to exist still in the forests of the western Caucasus. Of interest for sportsmen, as well as serving as prey for the carnivores, are red deer, goats (Capra pallasit and C. aegagrus), chamois, roebuck, moufflon (Ovis musimon), argali or Asiatic wild sheep (O. Amman), another species of sheep in O. gmelini, and fallow deer (Capreolus pigargns) in northern Caucasus only. Rodents are numerous, the mouse (Mus sylvaticus) is very destructive, and beavers are met with in places. The birds of prey are the same as these of central Europe, and include the sea eagle, alpine vulture (Gyps fulvus), buzzard, kites (Gypaëtus barbatus and Milvus ater), hawks (e.g. Astur nisus), goshawk (A. palumbarius), fish-hawk (Pandion haliaëtus) and owls. Among the smaller birds may be enumerated finches, the siskin, bullfinch, pipit, titmouse, wagtail, lark, fine-crested wren, hedge-sparrow, corn-wren, nut-hatch, starling, swallow, martin, swift, thrush, butcher bird, shrike, dipper, yellow-hammer, ortolan and a warbler (Accentor alpinus). The game birds consist of grouse, blackcock, moorhen, quail and partridge. The pheasant derives its name from the ancient name (Phasis) of the Rion.

In the seas and rivers about 190 species of fishes have been enumerated. Of these, 115 species are Mediterranean, 30 are common to the Caspian Sea, and the remaining species are peculiar to the Black Sea. The most useful economically are several species of sturgeon and of herring, trout, barbel, chubb, bream, ray, sea-dace, 548 carp, anchovy. Insects abound, especially Coleoptera. Flies, lice, gadflies and mosquitoes are the worst of the insect plagues. There are several snakes, including the viper (Pelias berus).

Ethnology.—The population of Caucasia is increasing rapidly. In 1897 it numbered 9,291,090, of whom 4,886,230 were males and 4,404,867 were females. The most densely-peopled provinces were Kutais and Tiflis, each with 80 inhabitants to the square mile; the thinnest the Black Sea government (20½ per sq. m.), Terek (31), and Kars (39). Of the total population 3,725,543 lived in northern Caucasia and 5,564,547 in Transcaucasia (including Daghestan). In the latter territorial division there exists a great disproportion between the sexes, namely, to every 100 males only 86 females; indeed in the Black Sea government there are only 65.5 females to every 100 males. Ethnologically the population belongs to a great variety of races. The older authorities asserted that these numbered as many as 150, or even 300; the more recent researches of Baron P.V. Uslar, F. Anton, von Schiefner, Zagursky, and others have greatly reduced this number; but even then there are not less than fifty represented.

According to the languages spoken the populations of Caucasia admit of being classified as follows,1 according to Senator N. Trointsky, president of the Russian Census Committee for 1897.

Religion.—Most of the Russians and the Georgians belong to the Orthodox Greek Church (over 4,000,000 in all); but considerable numbers (estimated at nearly 122,000, though in reality probably a good many more) are Nonconformists of different denominations. The Georgian Lazes are, however, Mussulmans. The Armenians are Christians, mostly of the national Gregorian Church (979,566), though 34,000 are Roman Catholics. The Caucasian races (except the Gregorians), together with the Turks and Tatars, are Mussulmans of the Sunnite sect (2,021,300), and the Iranian races mostly Mussulmans of the Shiite sect (884,100). The Kalmucks and other Mongolic tribes are Lamaists (20,300), and some of the Kurds profess the peculiar tenets of the Yezids.

Industries.—The principal occupation of the settled inhabitants is agriculture and of the nomadic the breeding of live stock, including camels. The cultivation of the soil is, however, attended in many parts with great difficulties owing to the scanty rainfall and the very primitive implements still in use, and in the valley of the Kura heavy losses are frequently incurred from depredations by locusts. But where irrigation is employed the yield of crops is excellent. Rye and wheat are the most important crops harvested in northern Caucasia, but oats, barley and maize are also cultivated, whereas in Transcaucasia the principal crops are maize, rice, tobacco and cotton. The rice is grown chiefly in the valley of the Kura and in Lenkoran; the tobacco in the Rion valley and on the Black Sea coastlands, also to some extent in Kubañ; and the cotton in the eastern provinces. Various kinds of fodder crops are grown in Transcaucasia, such as hay, rye-grass and lucerne. It is estimated that nearly 54,000 acres are under vineyards in northern Caucasia and some 278,000 acres in Transcaucasia, the aggregate yield of wine being 30 million gallons annually. The best wine grows in Kakhetia, a district lying north-east and east of Tiflis; this district alone yields nearly 8 million gallons annually. Large numbers of mulberry trees are planted for rearing silkworms, especially in Kutais, Erivan, Elisavetpol (Nukha) and Baku (Shemakha); the groves occupy nearly 150,000 acres, and the winding of the silk gives employment to large numbers of the population. Melons and water-melons are also important objects of cultivation. Sunflowers are very extensively grown for oil in the government of Kubañ and elsewhere, and also some flax. Liquorice is an article of export. Many varieties of fruit are grown, especially good being the apricots, peaches, walnuts and hazel nuts. A limited area (not more than 1150 acres) of the Black Sea coast between Sukhum-kaleh and Batum is planted with the tea-shrub, which succeeds very well. In the same district bamboos, ramie-fibre and attar (otto) of roses are cultivated.

The mining industry is growing rapidly in importance in spite of costly and deficient means of communication, want of capital, and lack of general initiative. So far the principal developments of the industry have been in the governments of Kutais, Batum, Elisavetpol and Kubañ. Copper ore is extracted above the Murgul river (some 30 m. south of Batum), at Akhtala south of Tiflis, and at Kedabek in Elisavetpol; manganese to a considerably greater extent (over 400,000 tons annually) at Chiaturi in the Kvirila valley in Kutais. Steam coal of good quality is reported to exist about 30 m. inland from the open roadstead of Ochemchiri in Kutais, but it is not mined. About 50,000 tons of coal of very poor quality are, however, extracted annually, and the same quantity of salt in the Armenian highlands and in Kubañ. Small quantities of quicksilver, sulphur and iron are obtained. But all these are insignificant in comparison with the mineral oil industry of Baku, which in normal times yields annually between ten and eleven million tons of crude oil (naphtha). A good deal of this is transported by gravitation from Baku to Batum on the Black Sea by means of a pipe laid overland. The refined oil is exported as kerosene or petroleum, the heavier refuse (mazut) is used as fuel. Naphtha is also obtained, though in much smaller quantities, in Terek and Kubañ, in Tiflis and Daghestan. Numerous mineral springs (chalybeate and sulphurous) exist both north and south of the Caucasus ranges, e.g. at Pyatigorsk, 549 Zhelesnovodsk, Essentuki, and Kislovodsk in Terek, and at Tiflis, Abbas-tuman and Borzhom in the government of Tiflis.

Manufacturing industry is confined to a few articles and commodities, such as cement, tea, tin cans (for oil), cotton goods, oil refineries, tobacco factories, flour-mills, silk-winding mills (especially at Shusha and Jebrail in the south of Elisavetpol), distilleries and breweries. On the other hand, the domestic industries are extensively carried on and exhibit a high degree of technical skill and artistic taste. Carpets (especially at Shusha), silk, cotton and woollen goods, felts and fur cloaks are made, and small arms in Daghestan and at Tiflis, Nukha and Sukhum-kaleh; silversmiths’ work at Tiflis, Akhaltsikh and Kutais; pottery at Elisavetpol and Shusha; leather shoe-making at Alexandropol, Nukha, Elisavetpol, Shusha and Tiflis; saddlery at Sukhum-kaleh and Ochemchiri on the Black Sea and at Temirkhan-shura in Daghestan; and copper work at Derbent and Alexandropol. But industries of every description were most seriously crippled by the spirit of turbulence and disorder which manifested itself throughout Transcaucasia in the years 1904-1906, accentuated as they were further by the outbreak of the long-rooted racial enmities between the Armenians and the Tatars, especially at Baku in 1905.

Commerce.—The exports through the Black Sea ports of Batum, Poti and Novo-rossiysk average in value a little over £10,000,000 annually, though showing a tendency to increase slightly. By far the most important commodity is petroleum, fully one-half of the total value. In addition large quantities are shipped at Baku direct for the Volga and the Transcaspian port of Krasnovodsk. The export that comes next in value is silk, and after it may be named wheat, barley, manganese ore, maize, wool, oilcake, carpets, rye, oats, liquorice and timber. The import trade reaches nothing like the same value, and what there is is confined almost entirely to Batum. The annual average vahie may be put at not quite £2,000,000, machinery and tin-plate being a long way the most important items. There is further a small transit trade through Transcaucasia from Persia to the value of less than half a million sterling annually, and chiefly in carpets, cocoons and silk, wool, rice and boxwood; and further a sea-borne trade between Persia and Caucasian ports (Baku and Petrovsk) to the value of over 1½ millions sterling in all. The very extensive internal trade with Russia can only be mentioned.

Railways.—The principal approach to Caucasia from Russia by rail is the line that runs from Rostov-on-Don to Vladikavkaz at the foot of the central Caucasus range. Thence, or rather from the junction of Beslan, 14 m. north of Vladikavkaz, the main line proceeds east of Petrovsk on the Caspian, and from Petrovsk skirts the shore southwards as far as Baku, the distance from Vladikavkaz to Baku being 414 m. This railway, together with the driving roads over the Caucasus mountains via the Mamison pass (the Ossetic military road) and the Darial pass (the Georgian military road), and the route across the Black Sea to Poti or Batum are the chief means of communication between southern Russia and Transcaucasia. Baku and Batum (also Poti) are connected by another main line, 560 m. long, which traverses the valleys of the Kura and the Rion, south of the Caucasus. From Tiflis, nearly midway on this last line, a railway proceeds south as far as Erivan (234 m.), with a branch to Kars (48 m.). The Erivan line is being continued into Persia, namely, to Tabriz via Julfa on the Aras.

History.—To the ancient Greeks Caucasia, and the mighty range which dominates it, were a region of mystery and romance. It was there that they placed the scene of the sufferings of Prometheus (vide Aeschylus, Prometheus Vinctus), and there, in the land of Colchis, which corresponds to the valley of the Rion, that they sent the Argonauts to fetch the golden fleece. Outside the domain of myth, the earliest connexion of the Greeks with that part of the world would appear to have been through the maritime colonies, such as Dioscurias, which the Milesians founded on the Black Sea coast in the 7th century b.c. For more than two thousand years the most powerful state in Caucasia was that of Georgia (q.v.), the authentic history of which begins with its submission to Alexander the Great in 323 b.c. The southern portion of Transcaucasia fell during the 1st century b.c. under the sway of Armenia, and with that country passed under the dominion of Rome, and so eventually of the Eastern empire. During the 3rd century a.d. Georgia and Armenia were invaded and in great part occupied by the Khazars, and then for more than a thousand years the mountain fastnesses of this borderland between Europe and Asia were the refuge, or the resting-place, of successive waves of migration, as people after people and tribe after tribe was compelled to give way to the pressure of stronger races harassing them in the rear. The Huns, for instance, and the Avars appeared in the 6th century, and the Mongols in the 13th. In the 10th century bands of Varangians or Russified Scandinavians sailed out of the Volga and coasted along the Caspian until they had doubled the Apsheron peninsula, when they landed and captured Barda, the chief town of Caucasian Albania.

But, apart from Georgia, historical interest in Caucasia centres in the long and persistent attempts which the Russians made to conquer it, and the heroic, though unavailing, resistance offered by the mountain races, more especially the Circassian and Lesghian tribes. Russian aggression began somewhat early in the 18th century, when Peter the Great, establishing his base at Astrakhan on the Volga, and using the Caspian for bringing up supplies and munitions of war, captured Derbent from the Persians in 1722, and Baku in the following year. But these conquests, with others made at the expense of Persia, were restored to the latter power after Peter’s death, a dozen years later. At that period the Georgians were divided into various petty principalities, the chief of which were Imeretia and Georgia (Kharthlia), owing at times a more or less shadowy allegiance to the sultan of the Ottoman Turks at Constantinople. In 1770, during the course of a war between Russia and Turkey, the Russians crossed over the Caucasus and assisted the Imeretians to resist the Turks, and from the time of the ensuing peace of Kuchuk-kainarji the Georgian principalities looked to their powerful northern neighbour as their protector against the southern aggressors the Turks. In 1783 George XIII., prince of Georgia and Mingrelia, formally put himself under the suzerainty of Russia, and after his death Georgia was converted (1801) into a Russian province. The same fate overtook Imeretia, nine years later. Meanwhile the Russians had also subdued the Ossetes (1802) and the Lesghian tribes (1803) of the middle Caucasus. By the peace of Gulistan in 1813 Persia ceded to Russia several districts in eastern Caucasia, from Lenkoran northwards to Derbent. Nevertheless the mountain tribes who inhabited the higher parts of the Caucasus were still independent, and their subjugation cost Russia a sustained effort of thirty years, during the course of which her military commanders were more than once brought almost to the point of despair by the tenacity, the devotion and the adroitness and daring which the mountaineers displayed in a harassing guerilla warfare. The animating spirit of their resistance was Shamyl (Samuel), a chief and priest of the Lesghians, who, a Mahommedan, proclaimed a “holy war” against the “infidel” aggressors. At first the Russians were able to continue their policy of conquest and annexation without serious check. After acquiring the northern edge of the Armenian plateau, partly from Persia in 1828 and partly from Turkey in 1829, Russia crushed a rising which had broken out in the Caspian coast districts of Daghestan on the north of the Caucasus. This took place during the years 1831-1832. The next seven years were occupied with the subjugation of the Abkhasians along the Black Sea coast, and of other Circassian tribes in the west. Meanwhile Shamyl had roused the Lesghian tribes farther east and begun his twenty years’ struggle for freedom, a struggle which called forth the sympathy and admiration of nearly the whole of Europe. More than once he escaped, in a manner that seemed little short of marvellous, out of the hands of the Russians when they held him closely invested in some mountain fastness, as at Himry in 1831, at Akhulgo in 1839, and again at the same stronghold in 1849. 550 The general who at last broke the back of the long opposition of the prophet-chief of the Lesghians was Prince Baryatinsky, who after three years of strenuous warfare succeeded in capturing Shamyl’s stronghold of Weden, and then in surrounding that chieftain himself on the inaccessible rocky platform of Gunib in the heart of Daghestan. There the hitherto indomitable champion of Caucasian independence was forced to surrender to the Russians on the 6th of September 1859. Nevertheless the spirit of resistance in these stubborn mountaineers was not finally broken until 1864, when the Russians eventually stifled all opposition in the difficult valleys and glens of the western Caucasus. But this was followed, during the next fourteen years, by the wholesale emigration of thousands upon thousands of Circassians, who sought an asylum in Turkish territory, leaving their native region almost uninhabited and desolate, a condition from which it has not recovered even at the present day. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 the self-exiled Circassians and other Caucasian mountaineers, supported by a force of 14,000 Turks, made a determined attempt to wrest their native glens from the power of Russia; but, after suffering a severe defeat at the hands of General Alkhazov, the Turks withdrew, and were accompanied by some 30,000 Abkhasians, who settled in Asia Minor. A few months later the Lesghians in Daghestan, who had risen in revolt, were defeated and their country once more reduced to obedience. By the ensuing peace of Adrianople, Russia still further enlarged her Transcaucasian territories by the acquisition of the districts of Kars, Batum and Ardahan. After a peaceful period of a quarter of a century the Armenian subjects of Russia in Transcaucasia were filled with bitterness and discontent by the confiscation of the properties of their national (Gregorian) church by the Russian treasury. Nor were their feelings more than half allayed by the arrangement which made their ecclesiastics salaried officers of the Russian state. This ferment of unrest, which was provoked in the years 1903-1904, was exacerbated in the winters that followed by the renewed outbreak of the century-long racial feud between the Tatars and the Armenians at Baku and other places. In fact, nearly the whole of the region between the Caucasus and the Perso-Turkish frontier on the south, from the Caspian Sea on the one side to the Black Sea on the other, was embroiled in a civil war of the most sanguinary and ruthless character, the inveterate racial animosities of the combatants being in both cases inflamed by religious fanaticism. Complete anarchy prevailed at the worst centres of disorder, as Baku and Batum, the imperial authorities being more powerless to preserve even the semblance of order than they were in the interior of Russia. Many of the oil wells at Baku were burned, and massacres took place at that town, at Shusha, at Erivan, at Tiflis, at Batum, at Jebrail and at other places. An end was put to these disorders only by the mutual agreement of the two contestants, alike horrified and exhausted by the fierce outburst of passion, in September 1905.

CAUCASUS, a mountain range of Asia, wholly within the Russian empire, stretching north-west to south-east from the Strait of Kerch (between the Black Sea and Sea of Azov) to the Caspian Sea, over a length of 900 m., with a breadth varying from 30 to 140 m. In its general character and conformation the Caucasus presents a closer analogy with the Pyrenees than with the Alps. Its general uniformity of direction, its comparatively narrow width, and its well-defined limits towards both south and north are all features which it has in common with the former. The range of the Caucasus, like that of the Pyrenees, maintains for considerable distances a high average elevation, and is not cleft by deep trenches, forming natural passes across the range, such as are common in the Alps. In both ranges, too, some of the highest summits stand on spurs of the main range, not on the main range itself; as Mont Perdu and Maladetta lie south of the main backbone of the Pyrenees, so Mount Elbruz and Kasbek, Dykh-tau, Koshtan-tau, Janga-tau and Shkara—all amongst the loftiest peaks of the Caucasus—stand on a subsidiary range north of the principal range or on spurs connecting the two. On the other hand, it is interesting to compare the arrangement of the drainage waters of the Caucasus with those of the Alps. In both orographical systems the principal rivers start nearly all together from a central nucleus, and in both cases they radiate to opposite quarters of the compass; but whereas in the Alps the Rhone and the Rhine, flowing south-west and north-east respectively, follow longitudinal valleys, and the Aar and the Ticino, flowing north-west and south-east respectively, follow transverse valleys, in the Caucasus the streams which flow south-west and north-east, namely, the headwaters of the Rion and the Terek, travel along transverse valleys, and those of the Kura and the Kubaň, flowing south-east and north-west respectively, traverse longitudinal valleys. For purposes of description it is convenient to consider the range in four sections, a western, a middle with two subsections, and an eastern.

1. Western Caucasus. This section, extending from the Strait of Kerch to Mount Elbruz in 42° 40′ E., is over 420 m. long, and runs parallel to the north-east coast of the Black Sea and at only a short distance from it. Between the main range and the sea there intervene at least two parallel ranges separated by deep glens, and behind it a third subsidiary parallel range, likewise separated by a deep trough-like valley, and known as the Bokovoi Khrebet. All these ranges are shorn through transversely by numerous glens and gorges, and, the rainfall being heavy and the exposure favourable, they are densely clothed with vegetation. Many of the spurs or broken segments of ranges thus formed abut steeply upon the Black Sea, so that this littoral region is on the whole very rugged and not readily accessible, especially as the general elevations are considerable. The seaward flanking ranges run up to 4000 ft. and more, and in many places shoot out cliffs which overhang the coast some 2000-3000 ft. sheer, while the main range gradually ascends to 10,000-12,000 ft. as it advances eastwards, the principal peaks being Fisht (8040 ft.), Oshten (9210 ft.), Shuguz (10,640 ft.), and Psysh (12,425 ft.). And whereas the main range is built up of hard eruptive or crystalline rocks, the subsidiary chains are composed of softer (Cretaceous and Tertiary) laminated formations, which easily become disintegrated and dislocated. The snow-line runs here at about 9000 ft. on the loftiest summits, and east of Oshten the crest of the main range is capped with perpetual snow and carries many hanging glaciers, while larger glaciers creep down the principal valleys. The passes lie at relatively great altitudes and are few in number, so that although the northern versants of the various ranges all have a tolerably gentle slope, communication between the Black Sea and the valley of the Kubaň, and the low steppe country beyond, is the reverse of easy. The more important passes, proceeding from west to east, are Pshekh (5435 ft.) west of Oshten, and Shetlib (6060 ft.) east of Oshten, Pscashka (6880 ft.) east of Shuguz, Sanchar (7990 ft.) west of Psysh; and between the last-named mountain and Elbruz, facilitating communication between Sukhum-Kaleh (and the coast as far as Potī) and the upper valley of the Kubaň, are the passes of Marukh (11,500 ft.), Klukhor (9450 ft.) and Nakhar (9615 ft.).

Flora.—The southern exposure of this littoral region, the shelter afforded against the bitter winds of the north by the lofty Caucasus range, and the copious rainfall all combine to foster a luxuriant and abundant vegetation. The most distinguishing feature of the flora of this region is the predominance of arborescent growths; forests cover in fact 56% of the area, and are not only dense but laced together with climbing and twining plants. The commonest species of trees are such as grow in central Europe, namely, ash, fir, pine, beech, acacia, maple, birch, box, chestnut, laurel, holm-oak, poplar, elm, lime, yew, elder, willow, oak. The common box is especially prevalent, but the preponderating species are Coniferae, including the Caucasian species Pinus halepensis and P. insignis. The commonest firs are Abies nordmannia and A. orientalis. There are two native oaks, Quercus ponticus and Q. sessiliflora. A great variety of shrubs grow on these slopes of the western Caucasus, chiefly the following species, several of which are indigenous—Rhododendron ponticum, Azalea pontica, Aristotelia maqui, Agave 551 americana, Cephalaria tatarica, Coloneaster pyracantha, Citrus aurantium, Diospyros ebenum, Ficus carica, Illicium anisatum, Ligustrum caucasicum, Punica granatum, Philadelphus coronarius, Pyrus salicifolia, Rhus cotinus and six species of Viburnum. Aquatic plants thrive excellently and occur in great variety. The following purely Caucasian species also grow on the coast—five species of spearwort, three of saxifrage, Aster caucasica, Dioscorea caucasica, Echinops raddeanus, Hedera colchica, Helleborus caucasica and Peucedanum caucasicum. Here too are found many of the more beautiful open-air flowering plants of a shrubby character, e.g. magnolia, azalea, camellia, begonia and paulownia. Among the cultivated trees and shrubs the most valuable economically are the vine, peach, pomegranate, fig, olive (up to 1500 ft. above sea-level), chestnut, apricot, apple, pear, plum, cherry, melon, tea (on the coast between Sukhum-Kaleh and Batum), maize (yielding the staple food of the inhabitants), wheat (up to 6000 ft.), potatoes, peas, currants, cotton, rice, colza and tobacco. Before the Russian conquest the native inhabitants of this region were Kabardians, Circassians (Adigheh) and Abkhasians, also a Circassian race. But half a million of these people being Mahommedans, and refusing to submit to the yoke of Christian Russia, emigrated into Turkish territory between 1864 and 1878, and the country where they had lived remained for the most part unoccupied until after the beginning of the 20th century. Then, however, the Russian government held out inducements to settlers, and these have been responded to by Russians, Greeks, Armenians and Rumanians, but the process of repeopling the long deserted territory is slow and difficult. The coast-line is remarkably regular, there being no deep bays and few seaports. The best accommodation that these latter afford consists of more or less open roadsteads, e.g. Novo-rossiysk, Gelenjik, Anapa, Sukhum-Kaleh, Poti and Batum. Along the coast a string of summer bathing resorts is springing up similar to those that dot the south-east coast of the Crimea. The most promising of these little seaside places are Anapa, Gelenjik and Gagry.

2. Middle Caucasus: (a) Western Half.—This sub-section, with a length of 200 m., reaches from Mount Elbruz to Kasbek and the Pass of Darial. It contains the loftiest summits of the entire range, fully a dozen exceeding Mont Blanc in altitude (see table below).

List of Peaks in the west central Caucasus, with their altitudes, names and dates of mountaineers who have climbed them.