Sibyls
Classical prophetesses, originally associated with oracles of Apollo, but famous in post-classical times as the reputed authors of the Sibylline Oracles. This collection of prophecies had supposedly been obtained from the Sibyl of Cumae and was kept in the Capitol in ancient Rome and only consulted in national crises. The Capitoline collection was destroyed in 405 CE, but meanwhile purported texts of the prophecies had been put into circulation and overlaid with Jewish and Christian accretions, making them of great interest to the Middle Ages. The Sibyls therefore passed into medieval and Renaissance lore as true prophets, fit to associate in iconographical schemes with the biblical seers.
Most commonly, the number of Sibyls was computed at nine: Cumaean (alternatively known as the Erythraean), Tiburtine (or Albunean), Hellespontine, Samian, Eritrean, Delphic, Libyan, Persian, and Cimmerian. The list, however, can vary. The Tiburtine Sibyl was particularly famous, as among her supposed utterances was one foretelling the coming of Christ, and she is sometimes shown without her sisters, as in a fresco (1528) by PERUZZI over the altar of the Fontegiusta church, Siena, in which she announces the birth of Christ to the Roman emperor, Augustus. The Sibyls were portrayed as either young or very old women holding scrolls or books. They are depicted in inlaid marble slabs in the pavement of the aisles of Siena cathedral (mainly 15 th century), and in association with prophets in the TEMPIO MALATESTIANO, in Michelangelo’s ceiling in the SISTINE CHAPEL, and in scores of humbler decorative schemes, even in domestic surroundings, as at Chastleton House, Oxfordshire, England (early 17th century).
Sidney, Sir Philip
(1554-1586) English writer, courtier, and soldier
Born on his father’s estate at Penshurst, Kent, Sidney was brought up in court circles, went to Shrewsbury school (1564) and Christ Church, Oxford (1568-71), and then spent three years traveling on the Continent, where he made a profound impression on many eminent scholars and statesmen. On his return he was much favored by Queen ELIZABETH I. He wrote the entertainment The Lady of May (1578) for her, but in 1579 quarreled with the earl of Oxford and, rejecting the queen’s wish that he should apologize, he retired from court. He then incurred further displeasure by sending her, at the instigation of his uncle, the earl of LEICESTER, an outspoken memorandum (1580) against her proposed marriage with Duke FRANCIS of (Anjou-)Alencon.
While in retirement at Wilton, home of his sister Mary HERBERT, Countess of Pembroke, Sidney probably completed the first version of ARCADIA and with Mary composed metrical versions of the Psalms. In 1581 his prolonged courtship of Penelope Devereux (c. 15621607) was terminated by her marriage to Lord Rich; Sidney, who had been addressing sonnets to her under the name "Stella," expressed his continuing passion in some of the finest sonnets in the sequence Astrophel and Stella (1591). In the early 1580s he also wrote his famous Defence of Poesie (1595; also entitled Apologie for Poetrie), justifying the social utility of verse as "delightfull teaching." In 1583 he was knighted and married Frances Wals-ingham, daughter of the queen’s adviser, both events taking place with the queen’s reluctant consent, but two years later he made peace with the queen and was appointed governor of Flushing on Leicester’s expedition to the Netherlands. The following autumn he was mortally wounded while fighting the Spaniards at Zutphen and died at Arnhem.
Sidney’s lifelong friend Fulke GREVILLE wrote (c. 1610-14) a biography of Sidney (1652) which idealizes him as the embodiment of Elizabethan greatness and Christian chivalry. His integrity, charm, courage, and learning made him universally mourned. He was a considerable patron of writers (Greville calls him "a generall MAECENAS of learning"); among his proteges was SPENSER, who wrote the pastoral elegy "Astrophel" upon his death. The Countess of Pembroke published the revised Arcadia (1590), more moralistic in tone than the original "toyfull booke," and continued to encourage her brother’s literary dependants.
Siena
A city and city state in Tuscany, central Italy. Siena was subject to, in turn, Etruscans, Romans, and Lombards before attaining its independence in the 12th century. By the early 14th century Siena was a great banking and commercial center, but its economy and population then declined on account of foreign warfare, raids by mercenaries, the Black Death (1348-49), Florentine expansionism, divisive constitutional arrangements, and Florence’s commercial supremacy in Tuscany. Siena was briefly ruled by the VISCONTI of Milan (1399-1404), but then resumed its communal constitution until the signoria of the Petrucci family (1487-1524). From 1530 the city had to accept a Spanish garrison, but rebelled against CHARLES V’s plan to build a fort there (1552). Spanish and Florentine forces subdued Siena (1555) and Spain sold Siena to Florence two years later.
Siena had a university (founded 1240) and a 16th-century literary society called the Intronati, but it is best known for its 14th-century school of artists (DUCCIO, Simone MARTINI, Ambrogio LORENZETTI). PINTURICCHIO lived in Siena in the early 16th century. The architects FRANCESCO DI GIORGIO MARTINI and Baldassare PERUZZI were Sienese-born, as was the sculptor Jacopo della QUER-CIA. Renaissance Siena boasted two saints: CATHERINE OF SIENA and BERNARDINO OF SIENA. Surviving landmarks include the Palazzo Pubblico (1297-1310), the Torre del Mangia (1338-48), and numerous handsome palaces such as the Palazzo Piccolomini "delle Papesse," begun in 1460 to designs by Bernardo ROSSELLINO.
Siglo de Oro
The "golden age" of Spanish literature, roughly the 16th and 17th centuries. The term, first applied by a minor 19th-century Romantic writer, is imprecise, there being no agreement on the exact boundaries of the period. The accession of FERDINAND (II) AND ISABELLA I (1474) or 1500 have been advanced as termini a quo, and as termini ad quem, the death of the last major writer, Calderon (1681) or 1700. In either case, most Spanish "classics" fall within the period. Literary developments do not parallel but lag behind those of Renaissance Italy; nevertheless, a new European orientation emerged during this era as writers responded to humanist ideals. Particularly notable, from this point of view, are (in poetry) the publication of the works of BOSCAn and GARCILASO DE LA VEGA (1543), and (in prose) Boscan’s translation (1534) of THE COURTIER and the Erasmian influence spread by the works of the brothers VALDES.
Signatures, theory of
A theory that seems to have originated with PARACELSUS, who stated: "By the outward shapes and qualities of things we may know their inward Vertues, which God hath put in them for the good of man." Thus, St. John’s wort was held by Paracelsus to be good for wounds because the leaves had a similar "porosi-tie" to that of the skin, and its flowers "when putrified are like blood." Paracelsus went on to derive the secondary principle that "what Climate soever is subject to any Particular disease, in the same place there grows a Cure." Consequently, it was pointless to search for foreign drugs. But what of the objection that not all plants clearly advertised their virtues? God, it was answered, has signed some plants to put man on the right track. Thereafter man must search more strenuously. The Paracelsian doctrine was picked up and publicized by Giambattista DELLA PORTA in his Phytognomonica (Plant Indicators; 1588), after which it remained current for many years although rejected by such botanists as John Ray (1627-1705).
Signorelli, Luca
(c. 1441-1523) Italian painter Signorelli was born in Cortona, the cathedral of which houses some of his major late works, including The Institution of the Eucharist (1512). His earliest known works, fragments in Citta di Castello (1474), show some influence of PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA, whose pupil he is thought to have been; this is evident in the sculptural style of his figures. He was greatly influenced however by the contemporary Florentine school of POLLAIUOLO and VERROC-CHIO, as is shown by his interest in the representation of movement and exaggerated muscular development. Between 1479 and 1481 he painted frescoes in the cupola of the sacristy of the Santuario della Sta. Casa at Loreto, and in the 1480s he worked on the Sistine Chapel frescoes with PERUGINO, BOTTICELLI, ROSSELLI, and others. In 1497 he was commissioned to paint scenes from the life of St. Benedict in the cloister of the monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, south of Siena, but abandoned his work there after only nine panels, leaving the remainder to be completed by SODOMA.
His masterpiece is the fresco cycle at Orvieto cathedral (1499-1503). Begun by Fra ANGELICO in 1477, it is a series of compositions entitled The End of the World and The Last Judgment. Signorelli uses the grotesque to convey his vision of the theme with brutal intensity, as in the packed, writhing figures in The Fall of the Damned (see Plate XV). The frescoes are also noted for their brilliant draftsmanship and the representation of nude figures in action, which influenced MICHELANGELO. The interest in the nude was also manifest in the overtly pagan Pan and other Gods (c. 1490), which was destroyed in Berlin during World War II.
Signoria (Italian, "lordship")
The characteristic form of government in Italian city states from the 13th to the 16th century. It replaced the older republican governments which were often torn apart by rival factions. The lord or despot of the signoria was ideally a strong ruler who ensured efficient government and peace for his people; he fostered civic pride through magnificent public works and lavish patronage of arts and letters. The signoria helped pave the way for the modern nation state. In Florence the ruling magistrates formed the signoria.
Siguenza, Fray Jose de
(c. 1544-1606) Spanish historian
Named after his birthplace, Siguenza was librarian of the ESCORIAL and later became prior of the Jeronymite monastery there. He is known for one work of dull but authoritative scholarship, Historia de la Orden de San Jeron-imo (History of the Order of St. Jerome; three volumes, 1595, 1600, 1605), of which order he had been a friar since 1567. The third volume contains a full description of the Escorial that has never been superseded and the work offers fascinating glimpses of PHILIP II’s role in the building of the great complex and his relationships with artists who decorated it.
Siloe, Diego de
(c. 1495-1563) Spanish architect and sculptor
Born in the city of Burgos, Diego was the son of the sculptor Gil de SILOE and was trained largely in Italy. His earliest documented piece is the marble Caraccioli reredos (1514-15; San Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples), on which he collaborated with his fellow-Spaniard Bartolome ORDONEZ. In 1519 he returned to Burgos, where he executed a number of designs, including one for the tower of Sta. Maria del Campo. His major work in that city, however, was the Escalera Dorada (1519-26), a magnificent gilded staircase in the cathedral. Diego is best known for his design of Granada cathedral (1528-43), where he succeeded Enrique Egas as architect. On Egas’s Gothic foundations Diego erected a great domed church that combined elements of Italian, Gothic, and Spanish Muslim styles in the manner known as PLATERESQUE, also employing features of the design of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Later works included the church of El Salvador at Ubeda (1536), the cathedrals of Malaga and Guadix (1549), and San Gabriel at Loja.
Siloe, Gil de
(active 1486-1499) Spanish sculptor Possibly born in Orleans or Antwerp, Gil was one of the last great sculptors in the Gothic style in Spain. The few works by Gil that have survived include a number of elaborate tombs, including those of John II of Castile and his second wife Isabella of Portugal, Infante Alfonso, and Juan de Padilla (1489-93; all in La Catuja, Miraflores). Also for the monastery of Miraflores near Burgos, Gil executed a notable altarpiece (1496-99); other works include four reredoses for churches in Valladolid and Burgos. All his works show the influence of Spanish Muslim and Flemish styles but themselves had little artistic impact upon subsequent sculptors working in the Italian style, such as his son Diego de SILOE.
Singers
Before the later 16th century, the history of European singing is mainly a story of ecclesiastical musicians, who also acted as directors, composers, teachers, and theorists. The Church provided livings for clerics who were expected to sing multiple daily services, and it is in this context that the literate and educated musical world found its broadest support. Increasingly during the 14th and 15th centuries, endowments from private donors for chapels provided a vehicle for the introduction of regular polyphonic singing alongside the traditional (and much more commonly performed) plainchant. With the combination of the revenues from these endowments, from the late 14th century onward churches were able to provide permanent employment specifically for singers.
The ecclesiastical training provided to singers—men and choirboys—was of a thoroughly different character to that known today. For many, musical knowledge was limited to a proficiency in monophonic singing, allowing them to perform plainchant from memory and to read it as notated in chant books (without rhythm). In the ever-growing number of institutions that supported polyphonic music, however, instructors grounded their singers in numerous more advanced practices. Well-developed aural skills and a good working knowledge of improvisational styles were key elements in the education of such singers; other skills, such as organ-playing and reading polyphonic notation, were important but not as common. The singer’s role was very much a productive one, and the line between singer and composer only began to take on real definition in the late 15th century. Throughout the 16th century, the majority of successful composers were hired as singers and chapel directors.
Specific information on the use of different voice types in polyphony from this period is notoriously difficult to come by. The issue is complicated by the fact that the names of voice parts in the musical sources refer primarily to function, rather than range. Furthermore, the notational system in use did not presuppose a fixed pitch standard, so a single piece could be performed at different pitches to suit different performing ensembles. From the 14th to the 16th centuries, the array of voice parts used in composed pieces underwent a gradual expansion and refinement, arriving eventually at a common disposition very close to the modern choral ensemble of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Boy trebles were used for polyphonic singing in numerous institutions by the later 15th century, both in England and on the Continent. Chapels without boys would employ adult males singing in falsetto (head voice) for the top parts in polyphony, but the use of this voice type in other contexts is disputed. Particularly difficult for modern choral performance is the existence of parts that could be performed either by high tenors (singing in chest voice) or by male altos extending into lower ranges; a common hypothesis is that male singers in the 15th and 16th centuries developed the ability to switch readily between chest and head voice for such parts. It was in the second half of the 16th century that castrati (men who had been castrated before puberty, to retain a soprano range) began to appear, mainly at Italian centers; only in the 17th and 18th centuries, however, did these singers made a significant impact on musical culture. Women and girls had opportunities to learn to sing, both in convents and in secular contexts, and could achieve occasional success as professional singers even in the 15 th century.
Indeed, female singers were associated with a number of important developments in late 16th-century musical style, in connection with the rise of solo virtuoso performance. Highly elaborate ornamentation had been practiced regularly by singers as well as instrumentalists at earlier periods, and examples in embellishment manuals offer a glimpse of these practices; likewise, solo singing and amateur singing by noblewomen were known in the middle of the 16th century. However, the formation of a group of three to four professional singing ladies at the court of Ferrara in 1580-1581 (the famous concerto delle donne) impacted on later musical practice in significant ways. The works that the leading composers of the day wrote for the Ferrarese ladies made use of their considerable capabilities, and theorists looking for new modes of musical expression were affected by their performance style. The characteristic elements of this style—highly dramatic delivery of the text, speechlike recitation, and skillful ornamentation, for example—were cornerstones of the music in early opera and oratorio, the new forms born during these years.
Sistine Chapel
The papal chapel in the Vatican Palace, Rome. Commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV, the chapel was built (1473-81) under the supervision of Giovanni de Dolci and is famous as the meeting place of the Sacred College of Cardinals. The chapel is also celebrated for its series of 14 frescoes, commissioned between 1481 and 1483 and painted by leading artists of the day. The south wall is decorated with frescoes by PINTURICCHIO, BOTTICELLI, ROSSELLI, PIERO DI COSIMO, Luca SIGNORELLI, and Bartolommeo della Gatta (1448-c. 1502). The north wall has frescoes by PERUGINO, Pinturicchio, Botticelli, GHIRLANDAIO, Rosselli, and Piero di Cosimo. Most remarkable of all the paintings in the chapel, however, are those by MICHELANGELO. The west wall is covered by Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment (1533-41), while the barrel-vaulted ceiling was also decorated by him with scenes from Genesis (see Plate IX). On ceremonial occasions parts of the side walls are covered by tapestries depicting biblical scenes, designed by RAPHAEL and woven in Brussels (1515-19). The chapel also contains a marble screen and cantoria probably made in the Roman workshop of Andrea BREGNO.
Six Articles, Act of (1539)
Act of Parliament by which HENRY VIII reaffirmed traditional Catholic doctrines after his break with Rome. The Articles upheld TRANSUBSTANTI-ATION and communion in one kind, clerical celibacy and the permanence of monastic vows, and the use of private Masses and auricular CONFESSION. Denial of any of these became punishable by imprisonment for a first offense and death for a second.
Drawn up by Henry himself, the Articles had two main purposes: to stop the religious ferment of the immediate past and to deflect threats from the European Catholic powers. English reformers, who referred bitterly to the "whip with six strings," reacted with deep anger and dismay. Two bishops resigned in protest and the bill was opposed in the Lords by Archbishop CRANMER, who was obliged to send his own wife abroad when it passed. In practice, however, it proved much less draconian than its opponents had feared.
Sixtus IV
(1414-1484) Pope (1471-84) Born Francesco della Rovere of a poor family near Savona, he became a Franciscan friar and teacher. He was made minister-general of the Franciscans (1464) and cardinal (1467). As pope, Sixtus initially campaigned unsuccessfully for a crusade against the Turks, but later concentrated more on Italian politics and the aggrandizement of the DELLA ROVERE FAMILY. Like other Italian princes he ruled his domains firmly and became involved in Italian quarrels, notably wars against Florence (1478-79) and Venice (1482-84).
In foreign affairs, relations with France were strained over the Pragmatic Sanction of BOURGES, in which the French Church claimed the right to regulate its own affairs; somewhat inconsistently, he allowed FERDINAND (II) AND ISABELLA I of Spain to establish the SPANISH INQUISITION (1478) and to make ecclesiastical appointments in Spain and the New World. Although a great nepotist who made five nephews and one grand-nephew cardinals (one of them was later Pope JULIUS II), Sixtus IV administered the church and its domains well. He was personally devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary and instituted (1476) the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. As a patron of letters and the arts, Sixtus IV repaired Roman churches, had the SISTINE CHAPEL built, established the Sistine choir, commissioned BOTTICELLI and POLLAIUOLO, and opened the Vatican Library to scholars.
Sixtus V
(1521-1590) Pope (1585-90) Born in Ancona of a poor family, Felice Peretti joined the Franciscans at age 12. He became known as a harsh reformer, especially when inquisitor-general in Venice (1557-60). He was vicar-general of the Franciscans (1566-72) and was created cardinal in 1570.
As pope he was concerned with the lawlessness and the financial problems of the Papal States, dealing ruthlessly with the bandits and making the papacy rich by introducing heavy new taxes. He embarked on an expensive building program, including the completion of St. Peter’s dome and work on the Lateran Palace and the Vatican Library. Sixtus V reorganized the Curia, limiting the number of cardinals to 70 and establishing 15 congregations (or departments) to perform the work of the papacy. He also inaugurated (1589) a revision of the Vulgate Bible, the edi-tio Sistina.
Skarga, Piotr
(1536-1612) Polish theologian and writer Skarga was born into a bourgeois family at Grojec and joined the Jesuits in 1569. His appointment in 1579 as head of the academy at Vilna gave him scope for the Counter-Reformation teachings for which he became famous. His book on the lives of the saints, published the same year, became a classic. In 1588 he became a preacher at the court of King Sigismund III, where his influence exacerbated the religious intolerance then beginning to afflict Poland. Nonetheless he gained a unique eminence as a Polish patriot on account of his Kasania Sejmowe (Parliamentary sermons; 1597); these combine moral and political exhortation, prophecies of the downfall of the Polish state, and patriotic sentiment, expressed in powerful and compelling prose that won many admirers.
Slavery
Slavery had been practiced in various forms in Europe since classical antiquity. It was sanctioned by Aristotle’s opinion that "barbarians," that is those who lived beyond the bounds of the "civilized" Mediterranean world, were natural slaves. Wars, piracy, and raids into barbarian territory all yielded chattel slaves who could be bought and sold as any other livestock. High prices were paid for slaves with particular talents or skills. Such slaves should be differentiated from unfree members of their own societies, most of whom owed their slavery to some form of severe misfortune: among these were children who had been sold into slavery in time of famine and penal slaves who were enslaved as punishment for a crime. The Church accepted the practice of slavery, although with some unease, and it was considered a virtuous act for a Christian to manumit slaves (restore their freedom).
Piracy was a great source of slaves throughout the Mediterranean world from antiquity onward, and both Christian and Muslim pirates sold off the crews and passengers of captured ships. Able-bodied men often ended up as galley slaves, rowing the ships of their captors. Large numbers of galley slaves provided motive power at the battle of LEPANTO in 1571, and the victorious Christians claimed to have freed over 12,000 of their coreligionists from the Ottoman fleet. Seventeen years later over 2000 galley slaves were on the complement of the SPANISH ARMADA.
The trade in Black African slaves had long been a feature of Muslim North and East Africa, and from around 1380 Aragonese merchants were buying slaves from both the North African littoral and the Black Sea shores. During the latter half of the 14th century, after the Black Death had wiped out much of the population of western Europe, causing a severe labor shortage, Genoese and Venetian merchants trading to Constantinople imported Russian, Tartar, and Circassian slaves. In Spain the final stages of the Reconquista under FERDINAND (II) AND ISABELLA I saw the enslavement of many Jews and Moors; at the fall of Malaga in 1487, for example, a third of the population was enslaved, a further third was exchanged for Christians held captive in Muslim North Africa, and a massive ransom was demanded for 450 Malagan Jews to save them from being sold into slavery. The Portuguese began building up an organized slave trade in Africa in the mid-1400s as a result of their raids into northern Mauritania. As their ships ventured further south, into the Gulf of Guinea, in the early 1460s the acquisition of Black slaves became a major objective. By the mid-1550s slaves from the Portuguese colonies accounted for around 10% of Lisbon’s population.
In the New World, the Spanish operated a system known as encomienda, under which royal grants of land included the native inhabitants as forced laborers. This in practice reduced the status of native Americans to that of slaves, and the humanitarian Spanish priest LAS CASAS devoted most of his life to inveighing against it. However, even he was not initially opposed to slavery as such, since his early writings recommend the importation of Africans to be used as slaves in place of the native Americans; later he regretted this, and published a treatise condemning the African slave trade (1546).
