The following are given for your reflection and ongoing education as a Catholic. The are from diverse sources and writers and are on a range of topics, it is hoped that you will find them helpful. Date Added Educational Item 18/01/2010 GENERAL NOTIONS AND DIVISIONS Canon law is the body of laws and regulations made by or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. The word adopted is here used to point out the fact that there are certain elements in canon law borrowed by the Church from civil law or from the writings of private individuals, who as such had no authority in ecclesiastical society. Canon is derived from the Greek kanon , i.e. a rule or practical direction (not to speak of the other meanings of the word, such as list or catalogue), a term which soon acquired an exclusively ecclesiastical signification. In the fourth century it was applied to the ordinances of the councils, and thus contrasted with the Greek word nomoi , the ordinances of the civil authorities ; the compound word "Nomocanon" was given to those collections of regulations in which the laws formulated by the two authorities on ecclesiastical matters were to be found side by side. At an early period we meet with expressions referring to the body of ecclesiastical legislation then in process of formation: canones, ordo canonicus, sanctio canonica ; but the expression "canon law" ( jus canonicum ) becomes current only about the beginning of the twelfth century, being used in contrast with the "civil law " ( jus civile ), and later we have the "Corpus juris canonici", as we have the "Corpus juris Civilis". Canon law is also called "ecclesiastical law" ( jus ecclesiasticum ); however, strictly speaking, there is a slight difference of meaning between the two expressions: canon law denotes in particular the law of the "Corpus Juris", including the regulations borrowed from Roman law ; whereas ecclesiastical law refers to all laws made by the ecclesiastical authorities as such, including those made after the compiling of the "Corpus Juris". Contrasted with the imperial or Caesarian law ( jus caesareum ), canon law is sometimes styled pontifical law ( jus pontificium ), often also it is termed sacred law ( jus sacrum ), and sometimes even Divine law ( jus divinum : c. 2, De privil.), as it concerns holy things, and has for its object the wellbeing of souls in the society divinely established by Jesus Christ. Canon law may be divided into various branches, according to the points of view from which it is considered: •If we consider its sources, it comprises Divine law, including natural law, based on the nature of things and on the constitution given by Jesus Christ to His Church ; and human or positive law, formulated by the legislator, in conformity with the Divine law. We shall return to this later, when treating of the sources of canon law. •If we consider the form in which it is found, we have the written law ( jus scriptum ) comprising the laws promulgated by the competent authorities, and the unwritten law ( jus non scripture ), or even customary law, resulting from practice and custom ; the latter however became less important as the written law developed. •If we consider the subject matter of the law, we have the public law ( jus publicum ) and private law ( jus privatum ). This division is explained in two different ways by the different schools of writers: for most of the adherents of the Roman school, e.g. Cavagnis (Instit. jur. publ. eccl., Rome, 1906, I, 8), public law is the law of the Church as a perfect society, and even as a perfect society such as it has been established by its Divine founder: private law would therefore embrace all the regulations of the ecclesiastical authorities concerning the internal organization of that society, the functions of its ministers, the rights and duties of its members. Thus understood, the public ecclesiastical law would be derived almost exclusively from Divine and natural law. On the other hand, most of the adherents of the German school, following the idea of the Roman law (Inst., I, i, 4; "Publicum jus est quad ad statuary rei Romanae spectat: privatum quad ad privatorum utilitatem"), define public law as the body of laws determining the rights and duties of those invested with ecclesiastical authority, whereas for them private law is that which sets forth the rights and duties of individuals as such. Public law would, therefore, directly intend the welfare of society as such, and indirectly that of its members; while private law would look primarily to the wellbeing of the individual and secondarily to that of the community. •Public law is divided into external law ( jus externum ) and internal law ( jus internum ). External law determines the relations of ecclesiastical society with other societies. either secular bodies (the relations therefore of the Church and the State ) or religious bodies, that is, interconfessional relations. Internal law is concerned with the constitution of the Church and the relations subsisting between the lawfully constituted authorities and their subjects. •Considered from the point of view of its expression, canon law may be divided into several branches, so closely allied, that the terms used to designate them are often employed almost indifferently: common law and special law ; universal law and particular law ; general law and singular law ( jus commune et speciale ; jus universale et particulare ; jus generale et singulare ). It is easy to point out the difference between them: the idea is that of a wider or a more limited scope; to be more precise, common law refers to things, universal law to territories, general law to persons ; so regulations affecting only certain things, certain territories, certain classes of persons, being a restriction or an addition, constitute special, particular, or singular law, and even local or individual law. This exceptional law is often referred to as a privilege ( privilegium, lex privata ), though the expression is applied more usually to concessions made to an individual. The common law, therefore, is that which is to be observed with regard to a certain matter, unless the legislator has foreseen or granted exceptions; for instance, the laws regulating benefices contain special provisions for benefices subject to the right of patronage. Universal law is that which is promulgated for the whole Church ; but different countries and different dioceses may have local laws limiting the application of the former and even derogating from it. Finally, different classes of persons, the clergy, religious orders, etc., have their own laws which are superadded to the general law. •We have to distinguish between the law of the Western or Latin Church, and the law of the Eastern Churches, and of each of them. Likewise, between the law of the Catholic Church and those of the non-Catholic Christian Churches or confessions, the Anglican Church and the various Eastern Orthodox Churches. •Finally, if we look to the history or chronological evolution of canon law, we find three epochs: from the beginning to the "Decretum" of Gratian exclusively; from Gratian to the Council of Trent ; from the Council of Trent to our day. The law of these three periods is referred to respectively as the ancient, the new, and the recent law ( jus antiquum, novum, novissimum ), though some writers prefer to speak of the ancient law, the law of the Middle Ages, and the modern law (Laurentius, "Instit.", n.4).   18/01/2010 Raphael Comments Email This Printer-Friendly The most famous name in the history of painting, b. at Urbino, 6 April (or 28 March), 1483; d. at Rome, 6 April, 1520. He belongs to the Umbrian School. Raphael is only a Christian name, the full name being Raphael (Raffaele) Santi (Sanzio is an absolutely incorrect form). His father, Giovanni Santi, held an important but indefinite post at the Court of Urbino. He was the artistic factotum of Duke Frederick, one of the most intellectual princes and most enlightened art-lovers of his age. The best painters, Piero della Francesca, Melozzo, and Justus of Ghent, were in his service and had made Urbino one of the most prominent art centres of the time. The ducal palace is still one of the wonders of Italy. Nor was the social and worldly life less advanced; at this Court was written the "Cortegiano" of Baldassare Castiglione , the complete handbook of the man of the world, according to the ideal of the Renaissance. The relations which Raphael formed in these early surroundings (especially about 1506), the serene and pure moral atmosphere which he breathed and which is characteristic of his genius, followed him throughout his life. Giovanni Santi died on 1 August, 1494. The orphan, placed under the guardianship of his maternal uncle, entered the studio of a charming painter, Timoteo Viti, a pupil of Francia, who had just returned to take up his residence in the country. Probably to the beginning of this apprenticeship, perhaps somewhat previous to it, belongs Raphael's famous sketch-book of the Academy of Venice. This book was discovered in 1803 by Bossi and purchased by Cicognara for the City of Venice. It is a small portfolio, now mutilated, consisting of a hundred pen-and-ink drawings; the author copied, in particular, the "Savants" and the "Philosophers" attributed to Justus of Ghent, which were then in the palace of Urbino (half of them are now at the Louvre and the other half at the Barberini Palace). Morelli (Lermolieff) thinks he recognizes in these drawings the hand of Pintoricchio, but the old opinion has prevailed over his criticism. These are rather the first studies and attempts of Raphael between his twelfth and fifteenth years. Though childish, they already reveal the masterly genius of the artist, his singular, divine sentiment of beauty. In Timoteo's studio and under his influence were painted the earliest pictures of his illustrious pupil which have reached us, four small exquisite pictures, of the shape and value of miniatures, the "Dream of the Knight" (National Gallery), "St. George and St. Michael" (Louvre), and the most charming of the four, the "Three Graces" of the Tribune of Chantilly. In June, 1499, Raphael had not yet left Urbino. In May, 1500, he must have been at Perugia, but could not have entered Perugino's studio prior to that date, for the latter, who had been away for twelve years, returned then to paint the Cambio frescoes. Therefore, Vasari's story of Raphael's education by Perugino is not to be believed, being pure fable. Perugino's influence was important to a young man of eighteen, and, in fact, with his wonderful faculty of assimilation, Raphael had soon succeeded in mastering the suggestions and methods of the older painter, his poetic sense of light and space, his harmoniously symmetrical system of composition. He shortly became a sort of foreman, or head of the studio, supervising the making of those countless Madonnas for which Perugino's "workshop" was the best patronized in Italy. This period of somewhat commercial production is the least interesting of Raphael's life. The "Virgin of the Book" at the Hermitage and the "Virgin between St. Jerome and St. Francis" (Berlin) are among his most insignificant works. The "Crucifixion" of 1502 (National Gallery) shows an archaic and "primitive" dryness. But his genius soon threw off its half slumber. The "Coronation of the Virgin", painted in 1503 for the Franciscans of Perugia (Pinacoteca of the Vatican ), shows qualities apparently borrowed from Perugino, but vivified by new imagination and youth, the three panels of the predella especially displaying great progress. A very important work, unfortunately lost since the Revolution, seems to have been the "Triumph of St. Nicholas of Tolentino ". But the pearl of this period is the "Espousal of the Virgin", preserved at Milan (1504). A similar picture in the Museum of Caen is not the model wrongly ascribed to Perugino, but a copy of Raphael's picture, the work of the mediocre Spagna. This masterpiece worthily ends the period of Raphael's youth. The final word of Umbrian art of the fifteenth century was spoken in this page of youth and divine modesty. FLORENTINE PERIOD (1504-08) After a short visit in the summer at Urbino, Raphael went to live at Florence towards the end of 1504. The four years he spent there were a new and decisive stage in his career. At that date Florence was the most intense and active centre of the Renaissance (and the period was pregnant with artistic development). Leonardo da Vinci and the young Michelangelo, the two leaders of the movement, revealed (1506) in their rival "cartoons" (now lost) of the Signory perfect models of historical composition. In the stimulating atmosphere of a perpetual contest dominated by an impassioned love of beauty and fame Raphael found fresh incentive. The knowledge and skill of the least of the Florentine painters were calculated to amaze the young provincial and sharpen his ideas, which proved most profitable to his talent. At Florence he began his education over again; he resumed his studies and in a few years learned more about form than he had acquired from Timoteo and Perugino. His earnings were still modest. During his stay in Florence Raphael was a young, unknown artist with a good future. He had few acquaintances and not many commissions. He was only given small pictures to paint, portraits of middle-class people, such as Angelo and Maddalena Doni (Uffizi, 1506) and the "Donna Gravida" (pregnant woman ) of the Pitti Palace, and an especially large number of Madonnas which he executed for private oratories. But nothing could show more advantageously the progress he had made since his Umbrian period. He had found a model of a more regular type, a fuller oval and a richer form than was Perugino's usual model. His sense of life became more natural without losing any of its poetry. Raphael's Madonnas are all his own; they have not the melancholy affectation of those of Botticelli, nor the mysterious smile of those of Leonardo. They are all near to us, material and human. Their familiarity, of a thoroughly Franciscan grace, is expressed with the greatest tact. They retain the easy good-humour, sometimes excessive, indulged in by the painters of the North. They are not intended to be "edifying", properly speaking, but in these matters degree is a matter of taste. As Burckhardt has said, for the first time since Phidias, art reached those heights where human beauty by its nobility and perfection of form undertakes to call forth the divine. The Madonnas of the Florentine period may be divided into three groups according to the nature of the motif and the composition. The oldest and most simple are those which represent the Madonna with the features of a young Italian woman, standing and at half length, holding the Christ Child in her arms. The masterpiece of this class is the "Madonna of the Grand Duke" (Florence, Pitti Palace, 1505). Despite a trace of timidity in the arrangement the Virgin is so charming that one cannot prefer even the more perfect Madonnas of the next period. This simple composition has given rise to many variations, such as the little "Cowper Madonna" (Panshanger), so tenderly pensive, and the charmingly spirited, sweet, and impassioned "Madonna Casa Tempi" (Munich). The second group does little more than modify the first by the introduction of new elements, such as interior decoration or landscape, for example the "Virgin of Orléans" (Chantilly), the "Bridgewater Madonna", the "Colonna Madonna" (Berlin), and the great "Cowper Madonna" (Panshanger), the two last-named being contemporaries (1506 or 1507) and to a certain extent twins. The third group, however, shows a new stage, a superior type of composition and style. Raphael was then under the influence of the great Dominican painter, Fra Bartolommeo , one of those who did most in the sixteenth century to organize the truly Florentine pictorial tradition. This learned painter who was gifted to a high degree with a sense of balance and beautiful composition, greatly influenced the young Umbrian, the influence becoming apparent as early as 1505, when Raphael executed at San Severino, Perugia, a fresco of which he painted only the upper part (it was completed in 1521 by the aged Perugino ). This fresco, which was important inasmuch as it contained the germ of the "Disputa", merely reproduces the arrangement of Fra Bartolommeo's "Last Judgment". To him Raphael owes the methods by which he produced the Virgins of the third group, in which the Madonna appears at full length in a landscape with the Infant and the young St. John. The sublime trio in such compositions as "La Belle Jardinière" (Louvre, 1507), the "Madonna of the Meadow" (Vienna), or the "Madonna of the Goldfinch" (Uffizi, Florence) is an idea directly derived from the teachings of the artist-monk. Here Raphael detaches himself from the external symmetry of Perugino's art, attaining a harmony at once more complex, intimate, and living. From this period date several more important works in which the young man practised painting in the "noble" style. He began to receive orders and to gain a reputation. On setting out for Rome he left unfinished the "Madonna of the Baldacchino" (Pitti Palace, 1508), and it is not known when it was completed, but it is without originality and might pass for a picture by Fra Bartolommeo. Preferable to it is his "Madonna Ansidei" (National Gallery, 1507), less "modern" and more "Peruginesque", but one of the loveliest things conceivable in this traditional style. From 1508 dates the "Entombment" of the Casino Borghese. This work, ordered by Atalanta Baglioni for the chapel of her son Griffonetto at Perugia, is Raphael's first attempt in the historic manner. His client was important and he had an opportunity to gain distinction; it is evident that he spared no pains. Prepared for by an extraordinary number of drawings, the work is nevertheless one of the artist's least fortunate ventures. It is spoiled by excessive labour. Raphael wished to display all his knowledge and resources, uniting on the same canvas the qualities of the two masters of the "cartoons" of the Signory, the men whom he most admired and who tantalized him most, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Too many contradictory ambitions injured the result and the great attempt ended in failure. But his contemporaries judged otherwise, and the "Entombment" ranked Raphael among the foremost of the Florentine painters. Thenceforth all eyes were on him. The period of beginnings and attempts was over. In the summer of 1508 the young man went to Urbino. Julius II had just ascended the papal throne. Duke Guidobaldo recommended Raphael to the pope who was having the Vatican repainted and redecorated. In October, 1508, Raphael reached Rome. ROMAN PERIOD (1508-20) The twelve years of Raphael's life in Rome are unparalleled. In this short space of time the young master multiplied masterpieces and left behind him the most complete, serene, and harmonious expression of the Renaissance. The painter of the Madonnas and of the little pictures of the Florentine period underwent the most surprising transformation, becoming all at once a most productive decorative painter on a vast scale. His genius set itself to the most exalted as well as the most diverse tasks, his inexhaustible resources permitting him to conceive of and complete within a few years the Stanze or Chambers of the Vatican, the "Acts of the Apostles", the Farnesina, and the Loggie, not to mention other undertakings as architect, archeologist, and sculptor, and fifty pictures or portraits, nearly all of which are masterpieces. It is a metamorphosis without precedent or explanation. When we consider that his vast and immortal work was accomplished in less than twelve years by a young man who was twenty-six when he began and who died at thirty-seven, we must question whether the world has twice beheld the wonder of such a genius. Julius II, the reigning pope, was one to whom modern speech willingly accords the title "superman" or "hero". He was one of the first to conceive of and pursue the policy of Italian unity. Beyond doubt this warrior pontiff, who entered the citadel of Mirandola through the breach, had a somewhat temporal idea of his power, but through art he endowed the Church with an intellectual importance which it seemed to have lost since the Great Schism. In his powerful hands Rome became what it only recently ceased to be, the capital of the civilized world. Space does not permit adequate treatment of this point; but when face to face with the chief problems of the sixteenth century; when the question arose as to whether the Church would absorb or reject and condemn progress, whether or not it would associate itself with the humanistic spirit, Julius II deserves the credit for having taken sides with the Renaissance and prepared the stage for the moral triumph of the Church. The great creations of Julius II, Bramante's St. Peter's and Raphael's Vatican, are inseparable from the great ideas of humanity and culture represented by the Catholic Church. Here art surpasses itself, becoming the language of something higher, the symbol of one of the noblest harmonies ever realized by human nature. At the will of this extraordinary man Rome became at the end of the sixteenth century the meeting place and centre of all that was great in art and thought. With the infallible sense and discernment of great judges of men, the pope had immediately called to his service those who would do most honour to his reign. He did not make a mistake, and posterity can only ratify his choice. But his infallible divination is best shown in his selection of Raphael. There was nothing in the young man's work to presage the wholly new genius he was to display nor the unequalled powers of composition, nobility, and beauty which slumbered in that privileged soul. It is probable that Bramante who, like Raphael, was a native of Urbino, actively furthered his young townsman's interest with the pope, and caused him to be received among the inner circle of artists whom Julius II had engaged for the works in his palace. It must have been chiefly to the great architect, whose magnificent frescoes were at the Castle of Milan, to the conversations, the example, and familiar intercourse with this powerful genius, that Raphael owed the sudden broadening of his ideas and the unforeseen maturity of his style; the young Umbrian became worthy of the grandeur of Rome. But nothing completely explains this singular metamorphosis; it remains the miracle of Raphael's existence. The pope, weary of dwelling in the apartments of his predecessor (the famous Appartamento Borgia, decorated by Pinturicchio ), decided to remodel the lower chambers which had already been used by Nicholas V. A whole colony of painters, including the aged Signorelli and the aged Perugino, Sodoma and Bramantino, Peruzzi, Lotto and the Fleming Ruysch, in 1502 took up their residence in the Vatican and once more Raphael worked beside his former master. But his first attempts showed such mastery that the pope dismissed all the others and unhesitatingly confided to the youngest and the latest comer (1509) the vast task of decorating the Chambers. The first of these was called the Stanza della Segnatura, it being that of a tribunal of the Roman Curia. It is a somewhat irregularly vaulted hall with two windows on each side which are not on the same axis. These unfavourable conditions (which were repeated in the other chambers) the young artist turned to his advantage. This hall contains a plenitude of art and an intellectual harmony which will never be surpassed. On the four triangles of the ceiling he painted four large circular medallions representing, in the guise of young women crowned and surrounded by genii, Theology, Law, Science, and Poetry. In the spaces between these four circles he painted as many bas-reliefs representing a scene or "story" typical of the four disciplines: Original Sin (Theology), The Judgment of Solomon (Law), Apollo and Marsyas (Poetry). Unable to find a similar subject for Science, he gracefully depicted Astronomy in the form of a beautiful young woman leaning over the celestial sphere and by a gesture signifying the discovery of the stars. These figures on the ceiling sound the keynote of the paintings on the walls, which have always been regarded as the most perfect expression of the genius of the Renaissance, the harmonious agreement of all the human faculties, reason, and faith, justice and poetry, the balancing of all the forces and needs of our nature, and the joy resulting from the peaceful and happy exercise of all our activities. It is difficult to believe that Raphael himself conceived so extensive and complicated a design. The theme was certainly set by a cleric, a Humanist, or man of letters, such as Phædrus Inghirani or Sigismondo de' Conti (for whom Raphael painted the "Foligno Madonna" as a thank-offering). Furthermore, the ideas which he had to represent were not new in art. To go back no further than the fourteenth century painting had been endeavouring to express ideas. The frescoes at the Spanish Chapel of Andrew of Florence (c. 1355), that of Giusto at Padua, Traini's picture at St. Catherine's of Pisa, or the fresco of Filippino Lippi at the Minerva representing the "Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas " are well-known examples of what may be called philosophic painting. Raphael was largely inspired by these models. His work, novel in the style and spirit of its forms, merely takes up again on a larger scale, and with consummate art brings to perfection ideas which had been a national tradition in Italy since the Middle Ages. Lack of space forbids a detailed description of these celebrated frescoes, permitting only a general outline of the principal ones. One of their most remarkable characteristics is the incomparable clearness of the composition, the faculty of adapting it to one order of ideas and so placing the spectator, previous to any analysis on his part, in a mood appropriate to each scene represented. That is, a spectator standing before the "Disputa" or the "School of Athens ", even though he did not know the names of the persons and the meaning of the subject, would nevertheless immediately receive from the combination of forms and the general arrangement, an informing impression of the things represented. With its two and even three planes, its hierarchical aspect, its regular movement descending from the Father to the Holy Ghost, from the Son to the Host placed vertically below Him, to rebound in concentric waves through the two parallel hemicycles of the celestial and the terrestrial Church, the "Disputa" is stamped with theological majesty. In contrast to this presentment of august solemnity, in which everything follows an emphatically Scholastic method--the deduction from principles of a rigorous chain of reasoning like that of ontology --the "School of Athens " displays the most varied action, effervescence, scattered groups, and the agitation of a scientific congress. Ideas, methods, everything is changed; we pass from one world to another. No other painter could sensibly express the most delicate nuances by the pure language of forms. On the other hand, in such subjects it was allowable for the artist to make abundant use of allegory. There existed for the personification of abstract ideas a whole body of figures characterized by complicated attributes; often long inscriptions, streamers, phylacteries, completed the explanation. Pinturicchio proceeded in this manner in the Borgia apartments, as did also the author of the magnificent tapestries of Madrid. With better taste Raphael forbore this confusion of kinds, the mingling of fiction with reality, of personifications with persons. For the representation of ideas he made use only of real and historical persons, philosophy being represented by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Democritus. Thus this chamber of the Vatican became a sort of mirror of the tendencies of the human mind, a summary of all its ideal history, a sort of pantheon of spiritual grandeurs. Thereby the representation of ideas acquired a dramatic value, being no longer, as in the Middle Ages , the immovable exposition of an unchangeable truth, but the impassioned search for knowledge in all its branches, the moral life of humanity. Finally these historic figures conceived of as portraits for which the artist made use of all the documents possessed by the iconography of his time, blended in heroic familiarity with contemporary persons, the very circle of Julius II and Raphael. There are found Bramante, the Duke of Urbino, Raphael, Sodoma, and twenty others named by Vasari. Thus abstract ideas became animated, and we are afforded the magnificent spectacle of the world of the spirit, the society formed of the harmonious concert of the highest intelligences. Nevertheless these frescoes, which are so full of life, are perhaps the most highly decorative ever imagined. It is wonderful to see how the artist's thought adapts itself to the law of architecture, readily inventing simple and monumental motifs which endow his ideas with imperishable grandeur. Berenson is perhaps mistaken in reducing Raphael's genius to the incomparable mastery of the language of extent which he calls "composition in space ". This is to cheapen his unique and enchanting qualities as designer and painter, plastic gifts which no other mortal ever possessed in the same degree. It is none the less true that the ease with which Raphael moves about in space, the aerial, spacious qualities which characterize his frescoes, is one of the essential parts of his particular magic. He is the greatest decorator who ever lived. [It is worthy of note that the titles of these two famous frescoes are a later and incorrect invention of the eighteenth-century engravers. The "Disputa" is really a picture of the life of the Church and an affirmation of the dogma of the Real Presence. The title of the "School of Athens " is due to mistaking the figures of Aristotle and Plato, although they are designated, by the titles of their writings, for those of St. Paul and Dionysius the Areopagite. Moreover, the whole of this second scene is but a new illustration of the traditional theme of the seven liberal arts or the seven disciplines of the trivium and quadrivium]. The paintings on the other two walls were, as has been said, obstructed by a window. Raphael easily found a most ingenious solution of the difficulty. The painting of "Law" was divided into three parts: on the lintel he painted the three theological virtues (they are among his most exquisite creations), to left and right of the window he depicted in two symmetrical scenes "Civil Law" (Justinian bestowing the Pandects ; this scene is imitated in Mellozo's fresco in the Vatican Library ) and "Canon Law" ( Gregory IX, with the features of Julius II, publishing the Decretals ). These two frescoes are unfortunately much damaged. On the opposite wall Raphael painted Parnassus. This shows a mountain-top crowned with laurel where Apollo, surrounded by the Muses, his divine daughters, plays on the lyre; Homer sings, and about the inspired blind man is gathered his ideal family : Virgil leading Dante, Petrarch conversing below with Anacreon, Alcæus, and the wonderful Sappho. Thus on the poetic mount beside the source of Helicon the dream of Humanism is fulfilled in the joy of living and intellectual pleasures. The whole code of classic art is formulated in these unrivalled pictures. In them beauty, nobility of posture, purity and grace of form, the sense of rhythm and life--all combine to form one joyous whole. The serenity of Greek art is recovered without effort, and the noblest harmony is the result. It is the most complete expression of the magnificent ideal which for a time was believed realizable in the Church and which was called Humanism. The decoration of the second Chamber or Stanza of Heliodorus is quite different. The pope was not one to be satisfied for long with impersonal allegories. He was eager for glory and greatness and his own apotheosis or rather the papacy personified by Julius II, forms the subject of the new chamber. His portrait was to appear on all sides, and in fact it is found in two out of every four of these frescoes. They were begun in 1511 and completed in 1514 under Leo X , whose countenance appears in the last fresco, "St. Leo halting Attila". This picture, which was done by pupils, shows, despite the beauty of the picturesque idea, inferior execution. The "Deliverance of St. Peter", with its night effects, its various lights (the moon, torches, and the nimbus or radiance of the angel ) is one of the most famous but not the most beautiful or purest of the artist's works. But the frescoes of the other two walls, "The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple " and the "Mass of Bolsena" are among his finest creations. The "Heliodorus" (an obvious allusion to the despoilers of the Papal States and the war-cry of Julius II, Fuori i barbari!) is a splendid work of dramatic art wherein everything is simultaneously composed and expressed with startling clearness and energy. The "Mass of Bolsena" is perhaps still more beautiful. Raphael never produced a richer or more profound composition; never was he more picturesque and noble, more dramatic and strong. Furthermore, as regards colouring, it is impossible to imagine anything more beautiful than the portrait of the pope or the Swiss Guard grouped kneeling at his feet. In this instance the always-impressionable artist was influenced by the Venetian, Sebastiano del Piombo. With his usual genius and rapidity of assimilation he added the Venetian palette to his art. Julius II died on 21 Feb., 1513. His successor, Leo X, lost no time in restoring or assuring to Raphael all his commissions and duties. But the work in the Chambers was almost neglected. In the third in point of time Raphael painted only one fresco, the "Incendio del Borgo" (1514). The other three are all by his pupils and are very poor. The "Incendio" itself is one of his least happy and personal works. Michelangelo had just uncovered the ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel, and this masterpiece was obviously in Raphael's thoughts. He sought only to assemble nude bodies in sculptural attitudes. Though it displayed more skill and beauty in detail, it repeated the mistake made six years previous in the "Entombment". The entire fourth Chamber, that of Constantine, was painted after the death of Raphael, under the direction of Giulio Romano , and it is very difficult to state precisely what remains of the spirit and original ideas of Raphael. The frescoes of the Hall of Constantine were painted to convey the impression of immense tapestries. Tapestries were the fashion, after Raphael, by command of Leo X, had painted the cartoons for the "Acts of the Apostles" which were to be copied in the studio of Pieter van Aelst at Brussels. Ordered in 1514, the hanging, composed of ten pieces, was suspended on the walls of the Vatican in 1519. Stolen in 1527 during the sack of Rome, these tapestries were not restored to the Vatican till 1808, and then in a ruined condition. Seven of the original cartoons, discovered by Rubens at Brussels in 1630, are now preserved at the South Kensington Museum in London. This work de luxe, woven of threads of silk and gold, is the most robust and easily intelligible of all Raphael's productions. In it is found after an interval of a century the epic inspiration of Masaccio. Many of the details are textual reminiscences of the frescoes of the Carmine. At the same time Raphael's genius rarely manifested itself so freely or with such happiness in so beautiful a story. This happiness, the joy of creating, ease, and fertility are the beneficent characteristics of all the later works of Raphael's life. It is evident that the artist profoundly enjoyed the beauty of his inventions and the feeling is communicated to the spectator, lifting him above himself. Once more antiquity and Christianity, the profane and the sacred, were mingled but in a new and properly "historic" form. To revive the Temple with its twisted columns (two of which are preserved at St. Peter's and which Bernini imitated in the baldacchino in the following century), to reproduce according to a bas-relief a scene of sacrifice (Sacrifice of Lystra ) to imagine an agora, a sort of Athenian forum, surrounded by porticoes and temples in which all antiquity lived again, and to set in this scene the "Preaching of St. Paul " was to Raphael an uninterrupted pleasure. Such works have remained the unsurpassable models of historic composition, each of them begetting for more than two centuries a lengthy posterity and stirring many echoes in art. The "Death of Ananias" inaugurated the series of lurid miracles. Without such examples as the "Sacrifice of Lystra " and the "Preaching of St. Paul " Poussin's art would hardly be understood. The "Conversion of St. Paul " is a marvel of noble and luminous composition in a subject which seventeenth-century art often treated with vulgarity. But the finest examples of this splendid series are the first two scenes which form the evangelical prelude or prologue to the "Acts"; the "Calling of the Apostles " and the "Pasce Oves" are works in which the Umbrian soul, the serene and poetic sensibility of Raphael could not be surpassed. Here the artist has given us the true colour of things, the pastoral charm and original atmosphere of the preaching of Christ. The idyllic and confident sense of life as it is expressed in the catacombs or on the tomb of Galla Placidia, in the type of the Good Shepherd, the moral perfume so long vanished or evaporated were successfully revived by the wonderful divination and tact of a great artist. Raphael's genius would seem to have been bestowed by xxyyyk.htm">Providence to restore lost feelings to Christianity. This same poetry as of a higher kind of eclogue characterizes the second of the great works undertaken by Raphael at the command of Leo X, the decoration of the Loggie, known as the Loggie of the Vatican. This was a story added by Raphael to the two stories of the façade built by Bramante. It comprised three arcades and as many little cupolas, each of which received four small pictures. In the decoration of this gallery RaphaelÕs idea was to rival the Therm&alie;g of Titus, the recent discovery of which had stirred artistic and literary Rome. The walls were covered with charming stuccoes by John of Udine ; trellises painted so as to deceive the eye framed the pictures on the vaulted ceilings. Nothing equals the gaiety and grace of this aerial portico, flooded with sunlight and completed by the horizon of the Roman Campagna. The ceiling was painted from 1513 to 1519, but Raphael had not time to make it his own handiwork, executing only the designs, and those of the last three cupolas are not at all worthy of him. Here he delineates sacred history from the Creation to the Last Supper. The first "scenes" illustrate the same subject from Genesis which Michelangelo had just painted on the ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel. But Raphael does not outshine his rival, being only spirituel and charming where the latter is magnificent. In the succeeding compositions often occurs a reflection of the lovely pictures which Pietro Cavallini had painted about 1280 in the basilica of S. Lorenzo, reproduced in a manuscript of the Vatican still extant. But the pastoral scenes are wholly original with Raphael, especially those in which landscape figures largely. Nothing could be more nobly graceful than the "Angels received by Abraham ", the "Meeting of Jacob and Rachel", or "Moses saved from the waters". "Raphael's Bible", as it is often called, is a series of epic miniatures, the clearness of interpretation of which rivals their simplicity, perfect equilibrium of arrangement, charm of motifs, and grace of style. But the service of Leo X did not stop here. The artist had to respond to the most unforeseen whims; now it was the decoration of the theatre which he had to plan, again his holiness desired the life-size portrait or an elephant and again there were the baths of Cardinal Bibbiena to be decorated. But neither these nor many other tasks exhausted the activity of Raphael. In 1512 the desire to compete with Michelangelo caused him to consent to paint at S. Agostino for the Luxemburger John Göritz a figure of Isaias which is almost a plagiarism, and in 1514 for the Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi, the four celebrated "Sibyls" of S. Maria della Pace. By their divine elegance the latter recall the sublime qualities of the Camera della Segnatura. For Chigi were also painted in 1516 the cartoons for the mosaics which were to adorn Santa Maria della Popolo, his funeral chapel, but only the figures of God the Father and the planets were finished. Finally this Mæcenas conceived the ostentatious idea of having the pope's favourite painter decorate the villa which he was building in the Trastevere and which in the seventeenth century was called the Farnesina. This delightful summer palace, one of Peruzzi's most charming creations, is a perfect type of country house, a patrician dwelling of the Renaissance period, and was decorated by the most popular masters of the age. Sodoma decorated the first story with subjects from the "Marriage of Alexander" which form an heroic and voluptuous epithalamium. Raphael had to decorate the large gallery on the ground floor. The first fresco was the "Triumph of Galatea". Raphael took as his theme the celebrated verses from Politian's "Giostra" which had already inspired Botticelli. But what is the mythology of this charming artist beside the resurrection of an immortal and chaste paganism ? Zeuxis and Apelles did not do otherwise. It is curious that Raphael made the purest profession of faith in idealism with regard to this figure of a woman which arouses all the veneres cupidinesque of painting. "With regard to the "Galatea" he writes to his friend Castiglione, "I should consider myself a great master if it had only half the merits of which you write. I know that to paint a beautiful woman I should see several and should have you also to assist me in my choice. But as I have few good judges or good models I work according to a certain idea which presents itself to my mind. If this idea possesses any perfection I do not know it, though this is what I endeavour to attain." Plato might recognize himself in these exquisite lines, or they might be a recovered fragment of the "Ion" or "Phædrus". The "History of Psyche" on the ceiling of the large gallery was painted in 1518 when Raphael, overburdened with work, had no leisure and confided to his pupils, chiefly to Giulio Romano, the task of executing his sketches and designs. His original sketches are marvels, and the composition of the frescoes, despite their rather heavy and vulgar colouring, is calculated to charm an artist's eye. With his spiritually inclined imagination Raphael feigns that the loggia opening on the garden is a large trellis, an arched and vine-covered pergola through which appear in mid-heaven the winged whiteness of the goddesses. Two or three figures fill these azure triangles. These ideal and floating figures are a very festival. But the middle of the pergola is covered with a velum formed by a double tapestry which depicts in two scenes the "Entrance of Psyche to Olympus " and the "Marriage of Psyche". Giulio Romano's coarse execution and the still more regrettable retouching of Maratta could not wholly dishonour these incomparable works. Pictures and portraits of the Roman period Together with these vast decorative works Raphael continued to produce as though for pastime works of small size but great importance, for they are the sole means whereby his art could be known outside of Italy, and Raphael become more than a name to the great European public. Moreover, there are many masterpieces among these works of small compass. The Madonnas of the beginning of the Roman period still retain somewhat of the relative timidity of the preceding period. The lovely little "Virgin of the Casa Alba" (St. Petersburg, 1510), the Leonardo-like "Madonna Aldobrandini" (National Gallery), the charming "Madonna of the Veil" of the Louvre (1510), still preserve a remnant of the Florentine grace and simplicity. The "Foligno Madonna", painted in 1511 for Sigismundo Conti after the Camera della Segnatura, marks the transition to a new manner. The graceful figure of the Virgin seated amid clouds on a sunlit throne with her Child in her arms recalls the celestial figures of the "Disputa"; the three saints and the donor kneeling below on the earth before the beautiful landscape, the Child with a cartel on which was formerly written the ex-voto, show brilliant and scholarly painting, but perhaps too evident symmetry. The "Virgin of the Fish" (Madrid, 1513), the "Virgin of the Candlesticks" (London, 1514), the "Virgin of the Curtain" (Madonna della Impannata, Pitti, 1514) are unfortunately among his pupils' works. There is a coldness, a lack of the artist's personal qualities and peculiar sensibility, which chills works otherwise charming in conception. Execution is a part of art which seems material but which is in reality quite spiritual; through it the artist betrays his emotion, gives us his confidence, and communicates his impressions. The work of another hand always lacks the most valuable qualities of style. Raphael was therefore not sufficiently careful of his reputation when he confided his most original inspirations to his pupils, for they lost in being expressed by others. The division of labour which has but few inconveniences in decorative works becomes fatal in works of a "lyric" or familiar nature, and which are only valuable in so far as the artist endows them with his personality. It is this which injures or spoils irreparably some of his most famous works, such as the "Spasimo" of Madrid, the "Madonna of the Rose" (or "La Perla") of the same museum, the "St. Michael" of the Louvre, and the "Holy Family" known as that of Francis I (all these belong to the years 1516-18). A thought of Raphael's translated even by such a master as Giulio Romano or Francesco Penni has nevertheless only the value of a shadow or a copy. Translation in such a case too often means betrayal. Some works of this period are nevertheless by the artist himself and are rightly numbered among his most popular works. The "Madonna of the Chair" (Pitti Palace) is perhaps the best liked by women. No other links so happily the familiar charm of the Florentine period with the maturity of the Roman period. She is only a peasant in the costume of a contadina with the national kerchief on her hair, but Raphael never found in such simple materials a more profound and natural combination of forms, such curving lines, such an expressive, enfolding arabesque. The whole of maternal love seems to be enclosed within the perfect circle of this picture. It is the perfection of genre pictures, wherein the most ordinary human life reaches its noblest expression, a universal beauty. Art has lived for four centuries on this sublime idea. Though from Giulio Romano to Ingres it has been imitated a thousand times, no one has discovered the secret of its perfection. Among tableaux de grace must be mentioned together with the little "Vision of Ezechiel" of the Pitti Palace, the splendid picture of St. Cecilia of Bologna (1515). This canvas, as well as its contemporaries the "Madonna of the Chair" and the "Sistine Madonna", coincides with the appearance of a new model whose portrait we have in the famous "Donna Velata" of the Pitti Palace. It was she who posed for the St. Cecilia as for the Dresden picture. These two pictures, especially the second, occupy a place apart in Raphael's works. Here the artist directly attempts the expression of the supernatural. The Dresden picture is the most beautiful devotional picture in existence. The impression is obtained not only by the idealism of its form, but by the vision-like representation of space, by the scheme of clouds on which the Virgin is upheld, and the solemnity of the drapery. An almost forbidding mystery fills this majestic canvas, truly unequalled in Raphael's work. It would perhaps have had a companion had not death interrupted the "Transfiguration" (Vatican Gallery, 1520). The upper part, which is all Raphael had time to complete, is one of his highest inspirations. In uniting this "glory" with the earthly and agitated scene below, he was confronted with a problem which it required all his genius to solve. The devotion of his pupils, who assumed the task of completing this well-nigh unrealizable task, produced only a cold and confused work. This is why we often prefer Raphael's portraits, which the taste of those days neglected, to his most talked-of works, his most famous Virgins. It is now the fashion to praise the portrait painter at the expense of the painter of the Madonnas and even of the decorator. It is truly said that in the first two Chambers the beauty of the portraits adds much to the life of the whole. Later, starting with the Chamber of the Incendio, Raphael, doubtless following Michelangelo's example, ceased to introduce portraits into his historical works; he no longer represented individuals, but only the general species. Nevertheless he continued to paint portraits and even here, though he has equals, no one excels him. The half-dozen portraits he has left, the Julius II of the Uffizi, the Leo X of the Pitti Palace, the portrait of Phædrus Inghirami ( Boston, Fenway Court), and that of Castiglione (Louvre) are rivals of the most perfect work of Titian, Velasquez, and Rembrandt. There is no doubt that the original of the splendid "Donna Velata" of the Pitti Palace, who so often inspired him, played a part in his life, but she keeps her secret and no one has ever succeeded in piercing her incognito. It is only certain that she was not the Fornarina, who seems to be an invention of a romance dating only from the end of the eighteenth century. The rather indecent portrait of a woman in the Barberini Palace, which bears on a bracelet the name of Raphael, is the work of Giulio Romano, and the signature is a forgery of the seventeenth century. Raphael's fame, after three centuries of unclouded splendour, has been violently attacked during the last century. The progress of historical criticism and the discovery of the "Primitives" were the beginning of a reaction as violent as it was unjust. It was asserted that the Renaissance, instead of furthering the progress of art, was a source of decadence. A school was founded bearing the standard of the Pre-Raphaelites. This school, whose herald was John Ruskin, did much good, but without denying it its due, it is time to reject some of its narrow and prejudiced judgments. There is no doubt that Raphael, like other men of genius, had no pupils worthy of him. It would be strange to reproach him with the fact that his art was quite personal to himself. It may be that compared wi   18/01/2010 Giotto di Bondone Comments Email This Printer-Friendly A Florentine painter, and founder of the Italian school of painting, b. most probably, in 1266 (not 1276), in the village of Vespignano near Florence, in the valley of the Mugello; d. at Milan, 8 Jan., 1337. Very little is known of his early history. Vasari relates that Cimabue, rambling one day in the neighborhood of Colle, saw a young shepherd lad drawing one of his sheep on a piece of smooth slate with a pointed stone, and that Cimabue thereupon took the lad with him and instructed him. The story is a pretty bit of fancy. There is no reason for believing that Giotto was ever a shepherd. It is possible that his father was a peasant; if so, he was in easy circumstances and certainly a freeholder. A document dated 1320 styles him vir præclarus; such an epithet would not be applied to a man in straitened circumstances. As a matter of fact nothing is known of Giotto until he was thirty years old. This unfortunate gap in his personal history robs us of a story which would be of intense interest as showing the growth of his genius, and reduces us to the merest conjectures. However, without in any way detracting from Giotto's pre-eminence in Italian art, it is impossible to accord him that quasi-miraculous, providential importance that Florentine nationalism soon raised to a kind of dogma in the history of art. According to Vasari he arose in a barbarous age and straightway revealed a fully developed art to a wondering world. This is not credible. The thirteenth century, the century of the great cathedrals and of the French school of carving whose numerous pupils were met with in all parts of Christendom, cannot be called a barbarous age. In Italy itself a widespread renaissance was taking place. At Naples and at Rome the admirable school of the marmorarii of which the Cosmati are the most illustrious, recalled to life much antique beauty of form. The mosaic-workers, with Jacopo Torriti and the artists who created the marvels of the Baptistery of Florence, likewise the painters, with Pietro Cavallini whose fresco cycles in Santa Maria in Trastevere (Rome) exhibit all Giotto's breadth of form, are satisfactory proof of an earlier renewal of artistic spirit and power. The "Rucellai Madonna" by Duccio dates from 1285. Twenty years earlier, perhaps the very year of Giotto's birth, Nicolò Pisano had completed the pulpit in the Baptistery of Pisa. That of Siena followed in 1272. The lovely fountain at Perugia dates from 1278. Then came the works of Giovanni Pisano, whose sympathetic genius is in more than one way akin to that of Giotto. Amid this rich and wondrous development of art the young master grew up. Though he was by no means its creator, it certainly reached in him its highest expression. As an artist Giotto is a true son of St. Francis. It is at Assisi that he is first found, in that very basilica which was the cradle of Italian painting, and which still enshrines the most perfect records of its early history. There every master of note in the peninsula might have been seen at work. Giunta of Pisa was decorating the lower church, while Cavallini or one of his pupils was painting scenes from the Old Testament in the upper church. Cimabue was at the same time ornamenting the choir and the transept. It was doubtless in the train ( brigata ) of Cimabue that Giotto came to Assisi in 1294, and that he became acquainted with the works of the marmorarii , whose style so influenced his own. In 1296 Cimabue set out for Rome, whereupon Giovanni da Muro, General of the Franciscans (1296-1304), entrusted to Giotto the execution of the wonderful story of St. Francis which the painter accomplished in the famous twenty-eight scenes of the upper church. This is at once the source of Giotto's glory and the earliest example of the Italian School. In these scenes Giotto followed St. Bonaventure's life of St. Francis officially approved by the chapter of 1263 as the only official text. The first twenty-one frescoes are entirely by Giotto's hand; the remaining seven were finished from his designs by his pupils. All have suffered greatly from the humidity and from restorations. They are, nevertheless, incomparable monuments of art, and in many ways the very greatest for the history of modern painting. The intense impression created by St. Francis, the historical nearness of his truly evangelical personality, and his likeness to Jesus Christ borne out by the miracle of the stigmata , thenceforth influenced art to an incalculable degree. For the first time in centuries painters, until then limited to the repetition of consecrated themes, to an unvarying reproduction of hieratic patterns, were free to improvise and create. Painting was no longer an echo of tradition, but rose at once to all the dignity of invention. In the portrayal of the wonderful life-story of St. Francis, to his own age a real image of Jesus Christ, current events and the everyday life of the period were seized on and appropriated. Art no longer worked on conventional models, abstract and ideal; its models were to be the realities of nature, which the humblest intelligence is capable of appreciating. Representation of real life was to become the object of all painting. Henceforth there must always be a likeness between the painting and the object painted. The true portrait of St. Francis had to be given to the public, which must see his actions and the place where he lived, must also grasp all local peculiarities of topography, people, dress, and architecture. This principle of actuality and reality underlay the artistic revolution initiated by Giotto. Since the days of the catacombs nothing so important had occurred in the history of painting. The germ of all this was to be found in the very earliest portrait of St. Francis, e.g. that of the "Sagro Speco" at Subiaco and in those of the lower church at Assisi and the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where the figure of the saint is inset between two rows of small panel-pictures descriptive of events in his life. To enlarge these vignettes into frescoes and thereby tell the story of Francis in heroic outlines was equivalent to equating the power of artistic expression and the new vastness of the pictorial framework; this prompted, in consequence, a background overflowing, so to speak, with contemporary life. This much Giotto undertook to do, and his success was marvellous. One is astounded at the multitude of things he suddenly brings within the domain of painting. Such an invasion of realism is not met with again till the seventeenth century, when Rubens gives us its counterpart in his life of Marie de' Medici. All Italy is there; cities and their environs, the walls of Arezzo, the temple of Minerva and the church of San Damiano at Assisi, the façade of the Lateran, the graceful interior of the Greccio church, the landscapes of Alvernia and Subasio, rural scenes like St. Francis's sermon to the birds, domestic interiors as in the "Death of the Lord of Celano", scenes from ecclesiastical life, e.g. chapter meetings and choir services. Every type of existence is laid under tribute: monks, peasants, townfolk, burghers, popes, bishops, singers by the roadside, men at drink, at feasts, and funerals. No peculiarity of place, condition, costume, or person, escapes the far-sweeping eye of the painter. He has put into his paintings every phase of life, and it is all so genuine and accurate, so true to reality that in his work, after five centuries, the Italian trecento still lives for us, despite the deplorable state of the frescoes, the defects of his perspective, and the childlike archaism of certain technical formulæ. No painter has ever surpassed Giotto in his power of gathering details from real life, and of surrounding the commonplace with an artistic halo. Herein also lies the power of all literary creators of life, from Dante in his "Divina Commedia" to Balzac in the "Comédie Humaine". The genius of Giotto was brought into further prominence by the works he executed at Rome, whither he was called in 1298 by Cardinal Stefaneschi . It may be noted at once that the "Navicella", i.e. the famous mosaic that adorns the vestibule of St. Peter's, was done in collaboration with Cavallini; moreover, the original has long since disappeared beneath successive restorations. A fourteenth-century copy may be seen in the Spanish Chapel at Florence. The frescoes from the life of Christ, which Giotto executed for St. Peter's, were destroyed in the time of Nicholas V, when the choir of the old St. Peter's was being remodelled. His Roman masterpieces, however, were the three frescoes ordered by Boniface VIII for the loggia or balcony of the Lateran to commemorate the famous jubilee of 1300. They represented the baptism of Constantine, the erection of the Lateran Basilica, and the proclamation of the jubilee. The first and second have perished, and only a fragment of the third remains, inset in the eighteenth century in one of the great pillars of the basilica, where it is yet visible. The pope stands between two acolytes, in the act of giving his blessing. The loss of this fresco is somewhat compensated for the by a seventeenth-century sketch (in the Ambrosian Library at Milan ) which restores the ensemble of the original scene. It was a magnificent representation of an actual spectacle, a vast historical panorama of which the painter must have been an eyewitness, an immense portrait gallery showing the pope, the cardinals, the army, and the Roman people; all this on the occasion of a momentous event in the history of Christendom. From Rome Giotto returned to Florence, perhaps in 1301, and painted the "Last Judgment" in the chapel of the Podestˆ. This fresco is in a way a political manifesto, being a kind of idealized grouping of all classes of Florentine society, somewhat after the manner of Dante's great poem. Therein can be recognized Dante himself, Brunetto Latini, Corso Donati, Cardinal d'Acquasparta, and Charles of Valois. The "Life of Mary Magdalen", which completed the chapel decorations, is now so faded and discoloured as to be beyond recognition. In 1306, Giotto was called to Padua to paint the Capella dell' Arena, built by Enrico Scrovegni in expiation of the crimes of his father, the famous usurer Reginaldo. On the lateral walls the artist treated in thirty-six frescoes scenes from the life of Christ and of the Blessed Virgin. Beneath these scenes he placed fourteen small cameo figures, allegories of the vices and virtues ; on the end wall above the scene of the Annunciation, he painted a "Last Judgment". With this work a new epoch opens in the career of Giotto. It is the first of those vast complete series, or great decorative poems, conceived by him with systematic thoroughness, and meant to develop fully a single great idea. It is truly a living organism, at once once pictorial and theological, such as is met with later in the Spanish Chapel, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in the Camera della Segnatura. This introduction of allegory, on an elevated and magnificent scale, is his new master-concept. His work is henceforth dominated by an attempt to to bring out the moral meaning and by unity of purpose. The historical element, of course, still held the place of honour ; it had not varied for centuries, had been the same since the mosaics of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna and Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome. Giotto, indeed, continued to use the earlier conceptions, but could not fail to imbue with his own wonderful realism the traditional treatment of these sacred scenes. There is, perhaps, no pictorial type more striking than Giotto's Judas in the scene of the kiss. Circumstances here forced the artist's genius into a new path. Since his imagination had not in these sacred scenes the freest play, he turned to the perfection of artistic style: consequently the Padua frescoes are a new phase in his realization of the beautiful. In the mind of Giotto life now appears conditioned by art. This preoccupation with the artistic presentation of things is striking at Padua from the earlier scenes, those depicting the story of St. Joachim and the marriage of the Blessed Virgin, where there are charming pastorals rarely equalled, such as "Joachim among the shepherds", the "Meeting at the Golden Gate". One scene in particular, the marriage cortège of the Blessed Virgin, is introduced merely that the artist may develop a beautiful plastic theme, a frieze of white-veiled girls, quite like the procession of Greek maidens in the Panathenæan festivals. Ghiberti mentions other paintings made by Giotto for the Friars Minor at Padua. However, the most perfect examples of the master's maturer skill are his frescoes at Assisi, between 1310 and 1320, in the lower church of the famous basilica of St, Francis. He began in the right transept with the addition of two miracles of the saint as a kind of appendix or supplement to the "Life" which he had painted twenty years earlier in the upper church. Facing these he painted nine frescoes of the Holy Childhood, a replica of the Padua frescoes but superior for delicacy and charm. In his quality of historian Giotto never rose above this work, the most exquisite of all his narrative frescoes. His crowning work, however, in this period, was the decoration of the roof-groining over the altar. In it he sets forth the "Triumph of St. Francis", together with the triumphs of the virtues which were the foundation of the order: poverty, chastity, obedience. This is the earliest example of those trionfi which from the Campo Santo at Pisa to Mantegna and Titian are a favourite theme of Italian art. It is moreover the earliest masterpiece of monumental art. The earlier "Psychomachia" of the poet Prudentius, so often treated by French sculptors and outlined by Giotto himself in the aforesaid tiny allegories of the Capella dell' Arena, takes on here a larger development. We seem to hear, as it were, an orchestration of incomparably greater variety and significance. The intimate meaning of life and thought, the power of plastic art, and the genius of beautiful symbols; the majesty of harmonious order, the beauty of the types, personifications and persons ; the wondrous blending of fact and fancy; the perfect preservation of the original colours, all combine to make this magnificently planned ensemble one of the immortal works of painting. It seems to breathe the puissant moral ideas of the Middle Ages, while one of its lovely figures, the well-known Lady Poverty, suggests from afar all the mystic and quaintly modern poetry of Botticelli's "Primavera". The closing years of Giotto's life (1320-27) were spent at Florence. His work at this period in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine and the palace of the Podestˆ, where he painted an allegory of Good Government (a theme of Ambrogio Lorenzetti at Siena in 1337), has almost entirely perished. Of all his work in the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels in the Franciscan church of Santa Croce there survive but some remnants. The Bardi chapel contains in six scenes a new life of St. Francis, besides four figures of the greater Franciscan saints : St. Clare, St. Elizabeth, St. Louis IX, King of France, and St. Louis of Toulouse. ( St. Louis of Toulouse was canonized in 1317; the decoration of the chapel must, therefore, be of later date.) The Peruzzi chapel contains six scenes from the lives of St. Paul and St. John the Evangelist. These frescoes were whitewashed over in the eighteenth century, were discovered in 1840, and have suffered much in the course of restoration. In this final evolution of his art, Giotto, now a master and sure of his own powers, seems to lean towards the abstract in the treatment of his subjects. He appears to subordinate all to the rhythm of the composition. An almost excessive desire for balance and symmetry gives to these later works an aspect of stiffness, somewhat the impression of bas-reliefs. They seem somewhat cold and academic. And yet they reveal incomparable beauty and figures of genuine sculpturesque perfection. In the "Resurrection of St. Paul" the group of the Disciples leaning over the empty sepulchre, though two centuries earlier than Raphael, is almost the same as the group of young geometricians in the latter's "School of Athens ". There is no evidence that Giotto ever visited Ferrara, Ravenna, or any of the other places where frescoes are attributed to him. King Robert of Anjou induced him to visit Naples in 1330, and he remained there three years, but left no trace of his influence on the local school. As for the pretended journey to Avignon and his death there, it is well known to be a fiction. Simone di Martino is the true author of the admirable frescoes in the papal palace at Avignon. In his later years Giotto, recognized as chief among Italian artists, was more or less capomaestro or Master of the Works for all public constructions in Florence. We are told that he aided in designing the Porta San Giovanni of the Baptistery, the work of Andrea Pisano (1330). It is certain that he drew the plans for the Campanile in 1334. Perhaps the designs for the fifty-eight bas-reliefs by Andrea are partly his, recalling as they do in more than one particular the "Virtues and Vices" at Padua. There are very few of Giotto's panels, properly so-called. One large "Madonna di Maestˆ" in the Accademia at Florence is interesting when compared with that of Duccio. A triptych of the "Life of St. Peter" painted in 1298 for Cardinal Stefaneschi is preserved in the sacristy of the canons at St. Peter's. Finally, his "St. Francis receiving the Stigmata", at the Louvre, is a youthful résumé of the noble frescoes at Assisi. No painter ever made such an impression on his age as Giotto. All fourteenth-century art betrays his influence. No school was ever so numerous nor so homogeneous as the Giotteschi . Taddeo and Agnolo Gaddi, Orcagna, Spinello, and others, it is true, are weak imitators of their master. Indeed, outside of Florence there is no originality save at Siena where Simone di Martino and the Lorenzetti worked, and later at Padua in the days of Jacopo Avanzo and Altichieri. The triumph of Giotto, and the thorough manner in which his successors imitated him, proved how fully he embodied the national genius. In painting he invented that dolce stil nuovo , that vulgare eloquium which Dante created in the realm of poetry. He is truly the founder of the art of painting in Italy. He was not handsome, says Petrarch, who was his friend, as was also Dante, whose portrait he so often painted. Nor must it be imagined that this great painter of St. Francis was either a mystic or an ascetic. He loved life too well for that. He has left us in a canzone, mediocre enough as poetry, a satire on "Holy Poverty" and the excesses of the "Fraticelli", the radicals among the Franciscans of that time. Moreover, the Florentine novelists, Boccaccio and Sacchetti, tell many anecdotes of him in which he figures as a bon-vivant, jovial, good-natured, with a sense of humour and a pardonable eccentricity. He may have been wealthy, as he worked diligently and charged good prices for his work. He married Cinta di Lapo del Pela by whom he had eight children. The eldest, Francesco, registered in 1341 as a member of the guild of painters at Florence.   18/01/2010 GENERAL NOTIONS AND DIVISIONS Canon law is the body of laws and regulations made by or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. The word adopted is here used to point out the fact that there are certain elements in canon law borrowed by the Church from civil law or from the writings of private individuals, who as such had no authority in ecclesiastical society. Canon is derived from the Greek kanon , i.e. a rule or practical direction (not to speak of the other meanings of the word, such as list or catalogue), a term which soon acquired an exclusively ecclesiastical signification. In the fourth century it was applied to the ordinances of the councils, and thus contrasted with the Greek word nomoi , the ordinances of the civil authorities ; the compound word "Nomocanon" was given to those collections of regulations in which the laws formulated by the two authorities on ecclesiastical matters were to be found side by side. At an early period we meet with expressions referring to the body of ecclesiastical legislation then in process of formation: canones, ordo canonicus, sanctio canonica ; but the expression "canon law" ( jus canonicum ) becomes current only about the beginning of the twelfth century, being used in contrast with the "civil law " ( jus civile ), and later we have the "Corpus juris canonici", as we have the "Corpus juris Civilis". Canon law is also called "ecclesiastical law" ( jus ecclesiasticum ); however, strictly speaking, there is a slight difference of meaning between the two expressions: canon law denotes in particular the law of the "Corpus Juris", including the regulations borrowed from Roman law ; whereas ecclesiastical law refers to all laws made by the ecclesiastical authorities as such, including those made after the compiling of the "Corpus Juris". Contrasted with the imperial or Caesarian law ( jus caesareum ), canon law is sometimes styled pontifical law ( jus pontificium ), often also it is termed sacred law ( jus sacrum ), and sometimes even Divine law ( jus divinum : c. 2, De privil.), as it concerns holy things, and has for its object the wellbeing of souls in the society divinely established by Jesus Christ. Canon law may be divided into various branches, according to the points of view from which it is considered: •If we consider its sources, it comprises Divine law, including natural law, based on the nature of things and on the constitution given by Jesus Christ to His Church ; and human or positive law, formulated by the legislator, in conformity with the Divine law. We shall return to this later, when treating of the sources of canon law. •If we consider the form in which it is found, we have the written law ( jus scriptum ) comprising the laws promulgated by the competent authorities, and the unwritten law ( jus non scripture ), or even customary law, resulting from practice and custom ; the latter however became less important as the written law developed. •If we consider the subject matter of the law, we have the public law ( jus publicum ) and private law ( jus privatum ). This division is explained in two different ways by the different schools of writers: for most of the adherents of the Roman school, e.g. Cavagnis (Instit. jur. publ. eccl., Rome, 1906, I, 8), public law is the law of the Church as a perfect society, and even as a perfect society such as it has been established by its Divine founder: private law would therefore embrace all the regulations of the ecclesiastical authorities concerning the internal organization of that society, the functions of its ministers, the rights and duties of its members. Thus understood, the public ecclesiastical law would be derived almost exclusively from Divine and natural law. On the other hand, most of the adherents of the German school, following the idea of the Roman law (Inst., I, i, 4; "Publicum jus est quad ad statuary rei Romanae spectat: privatum quad ad privatorum utilitatem"), define public law as the body of laws determining the rights and duties of those invested with ecclesiastical authority, whereas for them private law is that which sets forth the rights and duties of individuals as such. Public law would, therefore, directly intend the welfare of society as such, and indirectly that of its members; while private law would look primarily to the wellbeing of the individual and secondarily to that of the community. •Public law is divided into external law ( jus externum ) and internal law ( jus internum ). External law determines the relations of ecclesiastical society with other societies. either secular bodies (the relations therefore of the Church and the State ) or religious bodies, that is, interconfessional relations. Internal law is concerned with the constitution of the Church and the relations subsisting between the lawfully constituted authorities and their subjects. •Considered from the point of view of its expression, canon law may be divided into several branches, so closely allied, that the terms used to designate them are often employed almost indifferently: common law and special law ; universal law and particular law ; general law and singular law ( jus commune et speciale ; jus universale et particulare ; jus generale et singulare ). It is easy to point out the difference between them: the idea is that of a wider or a more limited scope; to be more precise, common law refers to things, universal law to territories, general law to persons ; so regulations affecting only certain things, certain territories, certain classes of persons, being a restriction or an addition, constitute special, particular, or singular law, and even local or individual law. This exceptional law is often referred to as a privilege ( privilegium, lex privata ), though the expression is applied more usually to concessions made to an individual. The common law, therefore, is that which is to be observed with regard to a certain matter, unless the legislator has foreseen or granted exceptions; for instance, the laws regulating benefices contain special provisions for benefices subject to the right of patronage. Universal law is that which is promulgated for the whole Church ; but different countries and different dioceses may have local laws limiting the application of the former and even derogating from it. Finally, different classes of persons, the clergy, religious orders, etc., have their own laws which are superadded to the general law. •We have to distinguish between the law of the Western or Latin Church, and the law of the Eastern Churches, and of each of them. Likewise, between the law of the Catholic Church and those of the non-Catholic Christian Churches or confessions, the Anglican Church and the various Eastern Orthodox Churches. •Finally, if we look to the history or chronological evolution of canon law, we find three epochs: from the beginning to the "Decretum" of Gratian exclusively; from Gratian to the Council of Trent ; from the Council of Trent to our day. The law of these three periods is referred to respectively as the ancient, the new, and the recent law ( jus antiquum, novum, novissimum ), though some writers prefer to speak of the ancient law, the law of the Middle Ages, and the modern law (Laurentius, "Instit.", n.4).   16/11/2009 Herod was the name of many rulers mentioned in the N.T. and in history. It was known long before the time of the biblical Herods. (See Schürer, "Hist. of the Jewish People", etc., Div. I, v. I, p. 416, note.) The Herods connected with the early history of Christianity are the following: Herod the great Herod, surnamed the Great, called by Grätz "the evil genius of the Judean nation" (Hist., v. II, p. 77), was a son of Antipater, an Idumæan (Jos., "Bel. Jud.", I, vi, 2). The Idumæans were brought under subjection by John Hyrcanus towards the end of the second century B.C., and obliged to live as Jews, so that they were considered Jews (Jos., "Ant.", XIII, ix, 4). Yet Antigonus called Herod a half-Jew (Jos., "Ant.", XIV, xv, 2, and note in Whiston), while the Jews, when it furthered their interests, spoke of Herod their king as by birth a Jew (Jos., "Ant." XX, viii, 7). Antipater, the father of Herod, had helped the Romans in the Orient, and the favour of Rome brought the Herodian family into great prominence and power. Herod was born 73 B.C., and he is first mentioned as governor of Galilee (Jos., "Ant.", XIV, ix, 2). Here the text says he was only fifteen years old, evidently an error for twenty-five, since about forty-four years later he died, "almost seventy years of age" (Jos., "Bel. Jud.", I, xxxiii, 1). His career was more wonderful than that of many heroes of fiction. Among the rapidly changing scenes of Roman history he never failed to win the goodwill of fortune's favourites. In 40 B.C. the young Octavian and Antony obtained for him from the Roman senate the crown of Judea, and between these two powerful friends he went up to the temple of Jupiter to thank the gods of Rome. Antigonus was beheaded in 37 B.C., and from this date Herod became king in fact as well as in name. He married Mariamne in 38 B.C., and thereby strengthened his title to the throne by entering into matrimonial alliance with the Hasmoneans, who were always very popular among the Jews (Jos., "Bel. Jud.", I, xii, 3). The reign of Herod is naturally divided into three periods: 37-25 B.C., years of development; 25-13, royal splendour; 13-4, domestic troubles and tragedies. During the first period he secured himself on the throne by removing rivals of the Hasmonean line. He put to death Hyrcanus, grandfather of Mariamne, and Aristobulus her brother, whom though but seventeen years old he had appointed high-priest. Their only offence was that they were very popular (Jos., "Ant.", XV, vi, 1, iii, 3). Mariamne also was executed in 29 B.C.; and her mother Alexandra, 28 B.C. (Jos., "Ant", XV, vii; "Bel. Jud.", I, xxii). As Herod was a friend to Antony, whom Octavian defeated at Actium 31 B.C., he was in great fear, and set out for Rhodes like a criminal with a halter around his neck to plead with the conqueror; but Cæsar confirmed him in the kingdom, with a grant of additional territory (Jos., "Bel. Jud.", I, xx). Herod and his children were builders. Having the reins of government well in hand, and having wreaked vengeance upon his enemies, he adorned his kingdom by building cities and temples in honour of the emperor and of the gods. Samaria was built and called Sebaste, from the Greek name for Augustus. Cæsarea with its fine harbour was also built; and, being a Greek in his tastes, Herod erected theatres, amphitheatres, and hippodromes for games, which were celebrated at stated times even at Jerusalem (Jos., "Ant." XV, viii, 1, XVI, v, 1; "Bel. Jud.", I, xxi, 1, 5). As he builds temples to the false gods — one at Rhodes, for instance, to Apollo (Jos., "Ant.", XVI, v, 3) — we may judge that vanity rather than piety suggested the greatest work of his reign, the temple of Jerusalem. It was begun in his eighteenth year as king (Jos., "Ant." XV, xi, 1), i.e. about 22 B.C. (Grätz, "Gesch. d. Jud." V, iii, 187). In Josephus (Bel. Jud., I, xxi, 1) the text has the fifteenth year, but here the historian counts from the death of Antigonus, 37 B.C., which gives the same date as above. The speech of Herod on the occasion, though full of piety, may be interpreted by what he said to the wise men: "that I also may come and adore him" (Matt., ii, 8; Jos., "Ant.", XV, xi, 1). The temple is described by Josephus ("Ant.", XV, xi; cf. Edersheim, "The Temple its Ministry and Services", i and ii), and the solidity of its architecture referred to in the New Testament (Matthew 24:1; Mark 13:1). In John 2:20, forty-six years are mentioned since the building was undertaken, but it requires some juggling with figures to make this number square with the history of either the second temple, or the one built by Herod (see Maldonatus, who thinks the text refers to the second temple, and MacRory, "The Gospel of St. John", for the other view). The horrors of Herod's home were in strong contrast with the splendour of his reign. As he had married ten wives (Jos., "Bel. Jud.", I, xxviii, 4 — note in Whiston) by whom he had many children, the demon of discord made domestic tragedies quite frequent. He put to death even his own sons, Aristobulus and Alexander (6 B.C.), whom Antipater, his son by Doris, had accused of plotting against their father's life (Jos., "Ant.", XVI, xi). This same Antipater, who in cruelty was a true son of Herod, and who had caused the death of so many was himself accused and convicted of having prepared poison for his father, and put to death (Jos., "Bel. Jud.", I, xxxiii, 7). The last joy of the dying king was afforded by the letter from Rome authorizing him to kill his son; five days later, like another Antiochus under a curse, he died. The account of his death and of the circumstances accompanying it is so graphically given by Josephus ("Ant.", XVII, vi, vii, viii; "Bel. Jud.", I, xxxiii), who follows Nicholas of Damascus, Herod's friend and biographer, that only an eye-witness could have furnished the details. In the hot springs of Callirrhoe, east of the Dead Sea, the king sought relief from the sickness that was to bring him to the grave. When his end drew near, he gave orders to have the principal men of the country shut up in the hippodrome at Jericho and slaughtered as soon as he had passed away, that his grave might not be without the tribute of tears. This barbarous command was not carried into effect; but the Jews celebrated as a festival the day of his death, by which they were delivered from his tyrannical rule (Grätz, "Gesch. d. Jud.", III, 195 — "Hist." (in Eng.), II, 117). Archelaus, whom he had made his heir on discovering the perfidy of Antipater, buried him with great pomp at Herodium — now called Frank Mountain — S. E. of Bethlehem, in the tomb the king had prepared for himself (Jos., "Ant.", XVII, viii, 2, 3; "Bel. Jud.", I, xxxiii, 8, 9). The death of Herod is important in its relation to the birth of Christ. The eclipse mentioned by Josephus (Ant., XVII, vi, 4), who also gives the length of Herod's reign — thirty-seven years from the time he was appointed by the Romans, 40 B.C.; or thirty-four from the death of Antigonus, 37 B.C. (Ant., XVII, viii, 1)-- fixes the death of Herod in the spring of 750 A. U. C., or 4 B.C. Christ was born before Herod's death (Matthew 2:1), but how long before is uncertain: the possible dates lie between 746 and 750 A. U. C. (see a summary of opinions and reasons in Gigot, "Outlines of N. T. Hist.", 42, 43). Herod's gifts of mind and body were many. "He was such a warrior as could not be withstood . . . . fortune was also very favourable to him" (Jos., "Bel. Jud.", I, xxi, 13), yet "a man of great barbarity towards all men equally and a slave to his passions; but above the consideration of what was right" (Jos., "Ant.", XVII, viii, 1). His ruling passions were jealousy and ambition, which urged him to sacrifice even those that were nearest and dearest to him: murder and munificence were equally good as means to an end. The slaughter of the Innocents squares perfectly with what history relates of him, and St. Matthew's positive statement is not contradicted by the mere silence of Josephus; for the latter follows Nicholas of Damascus, to whom, as a courtier, Herod was a hero. Hence Armstrong (in Hastings, "Dict. of Christ and the Gospels", s.v. "Herod") justly blames those who, like Grätz (Gesch. d. Jud., III, 194 — Hist. (Eng.), II, 116), for subjective reasons, call the evangelist's account a later legend. Macrobius, who wrote in the beginning of the fifth century, narrates that Augustus, having heard that among the children whom Herod had ordered to be slain in Syria was the king's own son, remarked: "It is better to be Herod's swine than his son" (Saturn., II, 4). In the Greek text there is a bon mot and a relationship between the words used that etymologists may recognize even in English. The law among the Jews against eating pork is hinted at, and the anecdote seems to contain extra-biblical elements. "Cruel as the slaughter may appear to us, it disappears among the cruelties of Herod. It cannot, then, surprise us that history does not speak of it" [Maas, "Life of Christ" (1897), 38 (note); the author shows, as others have done, that the number of children slain may not have been very great]. Archelaus Archelaus, son of Herod the Great, was, with Antipas his brother, educated at Rome (Jos., "Ant.", XVII, i, 3), and he became heir in his father's last will (Jos., "Ant.", XVII, viii, 1). After the death of his father he received the acclamations of the people, to whom he made a speech, in which he stated that his title and authority depended upon the good will of Cæsar (Jos., "Ant.", XVII, viii, 4). The death of Herod having delivered the Jews from his tyrannical rule, they petitioned Cæsar to put them under the jurisdiction of the presidents of Syria. He, however, not willing to set aside Herod's will, gave to Archelaus the half of his father's kingdom, with the title of ethnarch, the royal title to follow should he rule "virtuously". The N. T. says that he reigned (Matthew 2:22), and in Josephus (Ant., XVII, viii, 2, ix, 2) he is called king, by courtesy, for the Romans never so styled him. His territory included Judea, Samaria, and Idumæa with the cities of Jerusalem, Cæsarea, Sebaste, and Joppa (Jos., "Ant.", XVII, xi, 2, 4, 5). He soon aroused opposition by marrying his brother's wife — a crime like that of Antipas later — and having been accused of cruelty by his subjects, "not able to bear his barbarous and tyrannical usage of them", he was banished to Vienne, Gaul, A.D. 7 in the tenth year of his government (Jos., "Ant.", XVII, ix, xiii, 1, 2). The N . T. tells us that Joseph, fearing Archelaus, went to live at Nazareth (Matthew 2:22, 23); and some interpreters think that in the parable (Luke 19:12-27) our Lord refers to Archelaus, whom the Jews did not wish to rule over them, and who, having been placed in power by Cæsar, took vengeance upon his enemies. "Whether our Lord had Archelaus in view, or only spoke generally, the circumstances admirably suit his case" (MacEvilly, "Exp. of the Gosp. of St. Luke"). Antipas Antipas was a son of Herod the Great, after whose death he became ruler of Galilee. He married the daughter of Aretas, King of Arabia, but later lived with Herodias, the wife of his own half-brother Philip. This union with Herodias is mentioned and blamed by Josephus (Ant., XVIII, v) as well as in the New Testament, and brought Antipas to ruin. It involved him in a war with Aretas in which he lost his army, a calamity that Josephus regarded "as a punishment for what he did against John that was called the Baptist; for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism" (Ant., XVIII, v, 2). The N. T. gives the reason why Herodias sought John's head. As she had married Herod Philip — not the tetrarch of the same name — who lived as a private citizen at Rome, by whom she had a daughter, Salome, she acted against the law in leaving him to marry Antipas. John rebuked Antipas for the adulterous union, and Herodias took vengeance (Matthew 14:3-12; Mark 6:17-29). Josephus does not say that John's death was caused by the hatred of Herodias, but rather by the jealousy of Herod on account of John's great influence over the people. He was sent to the frowning fortress of Machærus on the mountains east of the Dead Sea, and there put to death (Jos., "Ant.", XVIII, v, 2). Grätz (Gesch. d. Jud., III, xi, 221 — Hist. (Eng.), II, 147) as in other instances thinks the gospel story a legend; but Schürer admits that both Josephus and the evangelists may be right, since there is no contradiction in the accounts (Hist. of the Jewish People, etc., Div. I, V, ii, 25). The most celebrated city built by Antipas was Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. He named it after his friend the Emperor Tiberius, and made it the capital of the tetrarchy. The city gave its name to the sea, and yet stands; it was for a long time a great school and centre of Jewish learning. It was before this Herod that Our Lord appeared and was mocked (Luke 23:7-13). Antipas had come to Jerusalem for the Pasch, and he is named with Pilate as a persecutor of Christ (Acts 4:27). The enmities that existed between him and Pilate were caused by Pilate's having put to death some Galileans, who belonged to Herod's jurisdiction (Luke 13:1); a reconciliation was effected as related in Luke 23:12. When Herodias saw how well her brother Agrippa had fared at Rome, whence he returned a king, she urged Antipas to go to Cæsar and obtain the royal title, for he was not king, but only tetrarch of Galilee — the New Testament however sometimes calls him king (Matthew 14:9; Mark 6:14), and Josephus likewise so styles Archelaus (Ant., XVIII, iv, 3), though he was never king, but only ethnarch. Contrary to his better judgment he went, and soon learned that Agrippa by messengers had accused him before Caligula of conspiracy against the Romans. The emperor banished him to Lyons, Gaul (France), A.D. 39, and Herodias accompanied him (Jos., "Ant.", XVIII, vii, 2). Josephus (Bel. Jud., II, ix, 6) says: "So Herod died in Spain whither his wife had followed him". The year of his death is not known. To reconcile the two statements of Josephus about the place of exile and death, see Smith, "Dict. of the Bible", s.v. "Herodias" (note). Agrippa I Agrippa I, also called the Great, was a grandson of Herod the Great and Mariamne, son of Aristobulus, and brother of Herodias. The history of his life and varying fortunes is stranger than romance. He was deeply in debt and a prisoner in Rome under Tiberius; but Caius, having come to the throne in A.D. 37, made him king over the territories formerly ruled by Philip and Lysanias, to which the tetrarchy of Antipas was added when the latter had been banished in A.D. 39 (Jos., "Ant.", XVIII, vi, vii). In A.D. 41 Judea and Samaria were given to him by the Emperor Claudius, whom he had helped to the throne (Jos., "Ant.", XIX, iv, 1), so that the whole kingdom which he then governed was greater than that of Herod his grandfather (Jos., "Ant.", XIX, v, 1). He was, like many other Herods, a builder, and, according to Josephus, he so strengthened the walls of Jerusalem that the emperor became alarmed and ordered him "to leave off the building of those walls presently" ("Ant.", XIX, vii, 2). He seems to have inherited from his Hasmonean ancestors a great love and zeal for the law (Jos., "Ant.", XIX, vii, 3). This characteristic, with his ambition to please the people (ibid.), explains why he imprisoned Peter and beheaded James (Acts 12:1-3). His death is described in "Acts", xii, 21-23; "eaten up by worms, he gave up the ghost." He died at Cæsarea during a grand public festival; when the people having heard him speak cried out, "It is the voice of a god and not of a man", his heart was elated, and "an angel of the Lord struck him, because he had not given the honour to God". Josephus gives substantially the same account, but states that an owl appeared to the king to announce his death, as it had appeared many years before to predict his good fortune (Jos., "Ant.", XIX, viii, 2). His death occurred in A.D. 44, the fifty-fourth year of his age, the seventh of his reign (ibid.). Grätz considers him one of the best of the Herods (Gesch. d. Jud., III, xii — Hist. (Eng.), II, vii); but Christians may not be willing to subscribe fully to this estimate. Agrippa II Agrippa II was the son of Agrippa I and in A.D. 44, the year of his father's death, the emperor Claudius wished to give him the kingdom of his father, but he was dissuaded from his purpose because a youth of seventeen was hardly capable of assuming responsibilities so great (Jos., "Ant.", XIX, ix). About A.D. 50 he was made King of Chalcis (Jos., "Bel. Jud.", II, xii, 1), and afterwards ruler of a much larger territory including the lands formerly governed by Philip and Lysanias (Jos., "Bel. Jud.", II, xii, 8). He was also titular king of Judea, and in twenty years appointed seven high-priests (Grätz, "Gesch. d. Jud.", III, xiv — "Hist." (Eng.), II, ix). When the Jews wished to free themselves from the dominion of Rome in the time of Florus, Agrippa showed them the folly of violent measures, and gave them a detailed account of the vast resources of the Roman empire (Jos., "Bel. Jud.", II, xvi, 4). St. Paul pleaded before this king, to whom Festus, the governor, referred the case (Acts 26). The Apostle praises the king's knowledge of the "customs and questions that are among the Jews" (v. 3); Josephus likewise appeals to his judgment and calls him a most admirable man — thaumasiotatos (Cont. Ap., I, ix). It was, therefore, not out of mere compliment that Festus invited him to hear what St. Paul had to say. His answer to the Apostle's appeal has been variously interpreted: it may mean that St. Paul had not quite convinced him, which sense seems to suit the context better than the irony that some see in the king's words. The indifference, however, which he manifested was in harmony with the "great pomp" with which he and his sister Berenice had entered the hall of audience (Acts 25:23). After the fall of Jerusalem he lived at Rome, where he is said to have died in the third year of Trajan, A.D. 100. Grätz (Gesch. d. Jud., III, xvii, 410) gives A.D. 71-72 as the date of his death, a date based upon a more correct reading of a Greek text as authority.   [1/10]

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