Castellio, Sebastian (Sebastien Chateillon)
(15151563) Savoyard teacher and translator Born at St.-Martin de Fresne, near Nantua, Castellio was educated at Lyons and kept a school for young gentlemen there. After reading calvin’s Institutio he went to Strasbourg in 1540, met the author, and was converted to the reformed religion. He was appointed rector of the college at Geneva, but his humanism later brought him into conflict with Calvin. In 1552 he was appointed professor of Greek at Basle. He deplored Calvin’s execution of servetus for heresy (1553) and broke entirely with Calvin and beza after the publication of his tolerant tract concerning heretics in 1554. Castellio’s Latin Bible, a version noted for its classical elegance, appeared between 1546 and 1551, and a French version came out in 1555. He was also a translator of Greek and Latin classics. His work on predestination was not published until 1578 and his answer to Calvin’s criticisms only appeared in 1612.
Castelvetro, Lodovico
(1505-1571) Italian scholar and critic
Born in Modena, Castelvetro became one of the leading linguists of his day. His grasp of the historical evolution of Italian is demonstrated in his Giunta fatta al Ragionamento di Messer Pietro Bembo (1563) and in his commentaries on Petrarch’s Rime and on the first part of Dante’s Inferno. He also translated and wrote an influential commentary (1570) on Aristotle’s Poetics. From 1560 he spent some years in exile after the Inquisition had condemned him for doctrinal irregularities, and he died at Chiavenna, north of Lake Como.
Castiglione, Baldassare (1478-1529) Italian writer and courtier
Born at Casatico, near Mantua, to minor landed gentry traditionally serving the dukes of Mantua, Castiglione was sent to Milan, where he acquired a fundamental education in the skills of a courtier under Duke Lodovico Sforza, "il Moro." After a brief stay at Mantua (1500-04), he entered the service of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and his successor Francesco Maria della rovere.
Guidobaldo, a distinguished soldier and statesman, scholar, patron of humanists and artists, collector, and connoisseur, epitomized the ideal ruler, and Castiglione’s years at Urbino, the setting of his major work the courtier, were the happiest of his life. As Urbino’s representative in Rome, Castiglione met leading humanists and formed a friendship with Raphael. After the fall of Francesco della Rovere in 1515, Castiglione returned to Mantua. Following the death of his wife in 1520 he was ordained and in 1524 he was appointed papal nuncio to the court of Charles V in Spain. His final years were apparently lonely and especially troubled by the imperial sack of Rome (1527). He was made bishop of Avila in 1528, the year The Courtier was published, and died in Toledo.
Catalan Atlas
A set of manuscript charts created in 1375 in Majorca by Abraham Cresques for Charles V of France. The collection of beautifully decorated charts is in the portolan style and contains the first major portolan of an area outside Europe. The Catalan Atlas is distinguished by the first fairly accurate maps of China, India, and Africa, and contains a large quantity of information about inland Europe and its navigable waterways.
Cateau-Cambresis, Peace of
(April 3, 1559) A treaty principally between henry ii of France and philip ii of Spain, ending more than 60 years of conflict between France and Spain. France restored Savoy-Piedmont to Emanuel Philibert of Savoy and Corsica to Genoa. Henry II renounced his claim to Milan and accepted Spanish domination of Italy. France gained some fortresses and the bishoprics of Toul, Metz, and Verdun. England had to accept the French reconquest of Calais. The treaty marked the end of dynastic struggles and paved the way for religious wars.
Catena, Vincenzo di Biagio
(c. 1470-1531) Italian painter
Catena was born into a patrician Venetian family and was influenced by fellow-members of the venetian school, at first cima da conegliano and Giovanni bellini and later titian and giorgione. Many of Catena’s paintings are sacre conversazioni. He was a friend of Giorgione, whose influence can particularly be seen in the delightful Holy Family with a Kneeling Knight (National Gallery, London) and The Vision of St. Christina (1520; Sta. Maria Mater Domini, Venice). Among the eminent people who sat to him for a portrait was the poet Giangiorgio Trissino.
Catherine de’ Medici (Catherine de Medicis)
(1519-1589) Queen consort of France The daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici (died 1519), duke of Urbino, she married the future henry ii in 1533. Artistic and energetic, Catherine designed the tuileries in Paris and the Chateau de chenonceaux; she made a great impression on the French court, despite Henry’s attachment to diane de poitiers. After the death of her son Francis II (king 1559-60), she triumphed over the extremist guise faction, obtaining the regency of her next son, Charles IX (king 1560-74). The failure of initial attempts to reach a religious compromise increasingly involved Catherine in the Wars of religion. Alarmed at the Huguenot threat to Church and State, she approved the murder of leading Huguenots in the massacre of st. bartholomew (1572). The reign of her third son, henry iii (1574-89), brought increasing disorder to France, but Catherine’s efforts helped hold France together until the accession of henry iv (1589).
Catherine of Aragon
(1485-1536) First wife of Henry VIII of England, patron of the arts and scholarship
As the daughter of ferdinand ii and isabella i of Spain she received an exceptional education, studying Latin and also being tutored by erasmus. In 1501 she came to England as the bride of Henry’s elder brother, Arthur, but he died of consumption a year later. When he became king (1509), Henry married Catherine by papal dispensation. During the first, happy years of her marriage, Catherine was a notable patron of the arts at court. Her first six babies, including two sons, all died soon after birth; it was not until 1516 that she gave birth to the future Queen mary. Henry viewed Catherine’s failure to produce a son as divine vengeance for marrying his brother’s widow, and cast her aside in 1527 for Anne boleyn, seeking an annulment from the pope. After his final separation from Catherine in 1531, she was forced to live out the rest of her life in poverty and seclusion and denied access to her daughter.
Catherine of Bologna, St. (Caterina de’ Vigri)
(1413-1463) Italian nun
As a child Catherine received a humanistic education at the Este court at Ferrara. She then joined the Franciscan tertiaries (later Poor Clare nuns), becoming abbess of their convent in her native Bologna (1456), where she was famed for her visionary experiences and, after her death, for her uncorrupted corpse. A breviary copied out by her attests her skills in calligraphy and miniature painting. She also wrote a devotional treatise and other compositions in prose and verse.
Catherine of Genoa, St. (Caterina Fieschi)
(14471510) Italian mystic
Born in Genoa, at 16 she was married to Giuliano Adorno, who was rich, dissipated, and unfaithful. She found no consolation in a frivolous social life, and in 1473 experienced a religious conversion; some years later, she influenced her husband to change his way of life. They devoted themselves to nursing, and she became matron of a hospital in Genoa. Her prayer life was intense, she fasted rigorously, and received communion daily; the quality of her spiritual experiences can be gauged from the compilation Vita e dottrina (1551).
Catherine of Siena, St. (Caterina Benincasa)
(13471380) Italian mystic
The daughter of a prosperous Sienese dyer, Catherine rejected proposals of marriage to become a Dominican tertiary (1363). She traveled widely in Italy, accompanied by a band of disciples, including priests and nobles. Her spiritual experiences were remarkable, including receiving the stigmata (1375). Drawn into a public role by her fame, she attempted to mediate in an armed conflict between the papacy and some of the Italian cities led by Florence, and to unite the Christian powers in a crusade against the Turks. She also went to Avignon and helped to persuade Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome (1377). From 1378 she supported Urban VI against the antipope Clement (VII) and attempted to win Queen Joanna I of Naples over to Urban’s side.
Catholic Majesties
The title accorded to ferdinand ii and isabella i of Castile, and subsequently to other kings and queens of Spain. It is said to have been bestowed upon Ferdinand by Pope Alexander VI in recognition of his having completed the reconquest of Spain from the Moors by the taking of Granada in 1492.
Caus, Salomon de (Salomon de Caux)
(1576-1626) French hydraulic engineer and garden designer
Born into a Huguenot family in Normandy, de Caus visited Italy in the mid-1590s, observing the great Italian gardens such as those of the Villa d’Este and the Medici villa at Pratolino. He was in England in 1598 but later worked for the Archdukes in Brussels (c. 1603-05) before returning to England around 1607 to work for James I’s queen, Anne of Denmark, and to tutor their son Henry, Prince of Wales, in perspective. In 1610 he was appointed Henry’s architect and advised on a never-completed garden project at Richmond Palace. De Caus’s La Perspective, avec les raisons des ombres et miroirs (1612) is dedicated to Henry. After the prince’s untimely death he accompanied Henry’s sister Elizabeth to Heidelberg in 1613 where he designed a garden for her and her husband, Elector Palatine Frederick V (see winter king); a bird’s-eye view of this complex garden appears in an engraving by Matthaus Merian for de Caus’s Hortus Palatinus (1620), published by Johann Theodor de bry. Grottoes and hydraulic devices featured in this garden are illustrated in De Caus’s Les raisons des forces mouvantes (1615; enlarged second edition, 1624), dedicated to Elizabeth. De Caus was also an authority on organs and published his theory of music in Institution harmonique (1615). He later worked for Louis XIII and died in Paris.
Cavalcanti, Guido
(c. 1250-1300) Italian poet Born in Florence some time prior to 1257, Cavalcanti belonged to a prominent Guelph family. In 1267 he was betrothed to the daughter of a Ghibelline in one of several such engagements arranged to end the continual strife between the guelph and ghibelline parties. He represented the Guelphs in 1280 as a guarantor of peace and later served on the general council of the commune. Accused of being a leader of the Guelph faction, on June 24, 1300 he was condemned to exile. Although the ban was soon lifted, Cavalcanti died in Sarzana on August 29. dante dedicated the Vita nuova to him and they exchanged sonnets, but the friendship may not have lasted; in the Divine Comedy Dante only refers briefly to his "disdain" (Inferno X 63). The principal Florentine contributor to the dolce stil nuovo, Cavalcanti wrote sonnets, ballads, and can-zoni, 52 of which are extant.
Cavendish, Thomas
(1560-1592) English navigator Cavendish, son of a wealthy Suffolk family, took part in raleigh’s first Virginian expedition (1585). In 1586 he set sail in the Desire to circumnavigate the globe, the first person to set out with this express intention. He returned triumphant in 1588, hugely enriched by the capture of a Spanish treasure ship. In 1591 he embarked on a more ambitious expedition, aiming to establish trading relations with Japan and China, but after failing to pass the Straits of Magellan, he turned back and died in mid-Atlantic. Cavendish’s journal of this disastrous voyage was published by hakluyt.
Caxton, William
(c. 1420-1492) English merchant and printer
Caxton was born in Kent and after a career as a cloth merchant in Bruges, he learned to print in Cologne, probably with Johann Veldener. In partnership with Colard Mansion he then set up a printing press in Bruges, where the first book printed in English, his own translation of Raoul le Fevre’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, was finished in 1474 or early 1475. In 1476, leaving Mansion to go on printing in Bruges, he brought the first English press to a shop by the chapterhouse of Westminster Abbey, where he printed about 100 books, 73 in English. The first dated publication was Earl Rivers’s translation of Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres (1477), the first illustrated one Myrrour of the Worlde (1481). About 1478 he printed Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, with an illustrated edition five years later, followed by Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur in 1485. As well as printing, Caxton imported and exported books and manuscripts. His successor, Wynkyn de Worde, had been his foreman from 1479.
William Caxton A manuscript illustration showing Earl Rivers presenting Edward IV of England with a copy of his Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres (1477)
Celestial spheres (celestial globes)
The representation of constellations and planets on the surface of a globe. The concept goes back at least to Eudoxus (fourth century bce), but the earliest surviving globe is the Farnese marble (c. 200 bce) in the Naples museum. The tradition persisted among Islamic astronomers and returned to the West in the 13th century through the Sicilian court of Frederick II. Islamic examples were generally made of engraved brass, but by the late 15th century printed paper gores were produced, which when cut out could be pasted onto a papier mdche or lath and plaster sphere. Elaborate and highly decorated globes were made during the Renaissance by such figures as apian, mercator, and blaeu. One with a diameter of five feet and on which 1000 stars were plotted was to be found at the Uraniborg observatory of Tycho brahe.
Celestina, La
A novel in dramatic form by Fernando de rojas, first published anonymously in a 16-act version (1499) and later in a 21-act version. Originally entitled La (tragi)comedia de Calisto y Melibea, the story concerns a noble youth, Calisto, who falls in love with Melibea, the daughter of the Jew Pleberio. Calisto is persuaded to seek the help of the procuress or gobetween Celestina, who succeeds in overcoming Melibea’s resistance by appealing to her compassion. Celestina is killed in a quarrel over money with Calisto’s corrupt servants. Calisto seduces Melibea but falls to his death when leaving her; Melibea commits suicide. The expanded version introduces Cen-turio, a braggart soldier, in the final acts, but the ending is the same. The book was enormously popular, with 60 reprints in the 16th century. Despite its sexual subject and outspoken language, the characters pay dearly for their sins and so the novel never attracted the censure of the Inquisition.
Cellini, Benvenuto
(1500-1571) Italian goldsmith, die-engraver, sculptor, and writer
From two books written toward the end of Cellini’s life, his Autobiography (1558-62) and Treatises on Gold-smithing and Sculpture (1565), we are better informed about his career and attitude to his patrons than about any other Renaissance artist. Born in Florence and originally trained as a goldsmith, Cellini moved from city to city to make his fortune and to escape punishment for his misdemeanors: from 1519 until 1540 he worked in and around the papal court and mint in Rome; from 1540 until 1545 he served Francis I of France at Paris and Fontainebleau, alongside rosso fiorentino and primaticcio; back again in Florence, he turned his hand to major sculpture in bronze and marble for Duke cosimo i de’ medici. By 1560 his popularity as a court artist had declined and he resorted to writing.
The majority of Cellini’s goldsmith work and jewelry, described with loving detail in both Autobiography and Treatises, has been lost; his activities on a small scale may be judged only from seals, coins, and medals, of which several examples survive. Some drawings by him, or of lost works (e.g. the fabulous cope-clasp for Pope Clement VII), also exist, and he influenced most of the jewelry and precious metalwork of Italy, France, and Germany during the second half of the 16th century. Fortunately, Cellini’s masterpiece of miniature sculpture does survive, in Vienna: the salt-cellar in gold and enamel which he had begun in Italy and finished for Francis I. It is a typically mannerist artefact—intellectual, ingenious, colorful, and a technical tour de force. Anatomical forms are distorted for grace of line, as in a modern fashion plate. Cellini’s most ambitious project for the French king, a series of 12 over-life-size statues of classical deities in silver, was never completed, though his designs are probably reflected on a reduced scale in some of his later bronze statuettes. However, a great bronze lunette for a portal at Fontainebleau, showing the nymph of the fountain surrounded by the animals of the hunt, survives in the Louvre, Paris, and there is a drawing of one of the satyrs that flanked the portal as caryatids.
In 1545 Cellini, suspected of embezzling precious metal and gemstones, fled from France back to Florence. There he persuaded Cosimo I to commission a group of two over-life-size bronze figures—Perseus and Medusa (1545-54)—to match Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes of a century earlier under the arches of the Loggia dei Lanzi. Cellini’s original wax and bronze models are in the Bargello; they are much more elongated than the finished work. A bronze study for the head of Medusa is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The Perseus and Medusa is the most obviously mannerist sculpture in Florence (see mannerism). Its decorative marble pedestal comprises a repertory of mannerist motifs and contains four bronze statuettes of the ancestors of Perseus, as well as a narrative relief in bronze of Perseus rescuing Andromeda. Challenged by bandinelli to prove his worth as a sculptor by carving marble, Cellini produced several statues on classical themes, but his masterpiece in the medium is the Crucifixion, now in the Escorial.
Cellini’s Vita was first published in Naples in 1728. The original manuscript then vanished for many years before being rediscovered in the early 19th century; it is now housed in the Laurenziana library in Florence. English versions have been variously titled Life, Memoirs, or Autobiography. The first English translation, made by Thomas Nugent (1771), has often been reprinted, as has the later version by John Addington Symonds (2 vols, 1888); an abridgment of the latter by Charles Hope and Alessandro Nova appeared in 1983. The version of the Autobiography for the Penguin Classics series (1956, rev. ed. 1999) was made by George Bull. A more recent translation is that by Julia Conaway Bondanella (Oxford World’s Classics: 2002).
Celtis, Konrad
(1459-1508) German humanist and poet Born a peasant near Wurzburg, Celtis ran away at age 18 to study. He spent the next 20 years studying and teaching at a succession of universities—Cologne, Heidelberg, Erfurt, Rostock, Leipzig, Cracow, Nuremberg, Ingolstadt— before settling at Vienna university to teach poetry and rhetoric (1497). His travels included two years in Italy (1487-89), where he met many Italian humanists. Although generally disillusioned by Italy, he was inspired by leto’s academy in Rome to start similar societies in Germany where humanists could meet and work together— most notably the "Sodalitas danubiana" in Vienna. peutinger and pirckheimer were among his friends and correspondents.
Celtis’s own studies of Greek and Hebrew, his editions of Latin authors, and his Latin dramas were important in the humanist movement, as were his introduction of literary studies to various universities and his ideas on education. Resenting Italian cultural domination, he passionately wanted to revive German culture; significant here was his discovery (1492/93) at Regensburg of six Latin dramas by Hrosvitha von Gandersheim, a 10th-century nun, and his edition (1500) of the Germania of the Roman historian Tacitus. His great ambition was to write the first comprehensive geographical and historical survey of Germany, although only a few preparatory studies were completed. The first German to be crowned poet laureate by the emperor (1487), he was a gifted poet, as seen especially from his Quattuor libri amorum (1502). This is a semiautobiographical verse narrative of four love affairs, highly entertaining, with an amoral sensuality. Celtis died in Vienna of syphilis.
Cenci, Beatrice
(1577-1599) Roman noblewoman Her controversial execution under Pope clement viii aroused great public interest and became the subject of numerous poems, dramas, and novels, notably Shelley’s The Cenci (1819) and Alberto Moravia’s Beatrice Cenci (1958). Treated with extraordinary cruelty by her father Francesco Cenci, Beatrice finally murdered him with the help of servants and other members of her family. They were all brought to trial, tortured, and sentenced to death, despite pleas for leniency on their behalf. The subsequent confiscation of the Cenci property was rumored to have been the pope’s real object in the prosecution.
Censorship
The invention of printing was quickly perceived by both secular and religious authorities in the Renaissance to be a massive threat to their ability to control the spread of subversive ideas. The idea of censorship was not new, but the laborious production of manuscripts by scribes could relatively easily be dealt with by seizure and destruction of the finished product—as authorized, for instance, in the case of lollard texts in England by the Merciless Parliament of 1388. The rapid multiplication of copies by printing made it expedient to introduce mechanisms of control at an earlier stage of production. One widely employed method was to require printers to submit material they proposed to publish to be licensed by an official censor or other competent body before it could legally be printed.
As European exploration in pursuit of trade routes gathered pace, there is evidence that some polities endeavored to suppress the dissemination of commercially sensitive information. For instance, a chart of Vasco da gama’s voyage to India had to be smuggled out of Lisbon in 1502 by the agent of the duke of Ferrara, and peter martyr d’Anghiera caused some consternation to the Spanish authorities with the extent and accuracy of his disclosures about Spain’s exploration of the New World in his Decades de orbe novo (1511-30). Fear on the part of English merchants involved in the Baltic trade that the Russians would take offense at Giles fletcher the Elder’s observations in The Russe Commonwealth (1591) led to them to persuade Elizabeth I’s chief minister, Lord Burgh-ley, to suppress the book. However, by far the largest area of concern for the censors was writings suspected of posing a threat to religious orthodoxy, public order, or private morality—or often all three together.
The writings of the religious reformers were an obvious target for censorship (see counter-reformation). The Milanese senate issued an index of banned books in 1538 and other Italian cities soon followed suit. The index librorum prohibitorum issued in 1557 and 1559 under Pope paul iv was the forerunner of all subsequent lists of publications forbidden to Roman Catholics by reason either of heterodoxy or immorality. It became usual for printers to cite on their title-pages their authority to print, a practice ridiculed by John Milton in his great attack on licensing for the press, Areopagitica (1644): "Sometimes 5 Imprimaturs are seen together dialoguewise in the Piatza of one Title page, complementing and ducking each to other with their shav’n reverences." Secular works also suffered the attentions of censor and expurgator; for instance, the writings of aretino and machiavelli were banned, Cinthio Fabrizi’s collection of obscene proverbs, Libro della origine delli volgari proverbi (1526) provoked the initiation of censorship in Venice in 1527, and Boccaccio’s decameron suffered the indignity of expurgated editions in 1573 and 1582.
In England licensing for the press by the privy council was introduced in 1538. From 1557 the Stationers’ Company was held responsible for the regulation of the book trade, and later decrees nominated various dignitaries as licensers. In 1586 the number of presses allowed per printer was strictly curtailed and their whereabouts limited to London, apart from one press each for the university cities of Oxford and Cambridge; unauthorized presses, such as those used to print the pamphlets in the marprelate controversy were rigorously pursued, and if found were destroyed. Furthermore, authors were liable to penalties of imprisonment, mutilation, or death for producing obnoxious material, and books themselves could be seized and burnt, as befell the satirical works of Thomas nashe and Gabriel harvey under an edict of 1599.
As the Counter-Reformation advanced in Europe, censorship of the visual arts was also attempted. The most notorious incidence of this is probably the employment of a number of artists, among them El Greco, to paint draperies over the naked figures in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. A similar trend was manifested in music when Philip II of Spain insisted that plain-song only was to be used for the religious services in the Escorial, as the polyphonic church music hitherto popular in Spain had secular tunes worked into it.
Centuriators of Magdeburg
The collective name for the authors of Historia ecclesiae Christi, a history of the Church century by century until 1400, published at Basle from 1559 to 1574. Among the Centuriators were Matthias Flacius (Vlacic), Nicolaus von Amsdorf, Johann Wigand, Nicolaus Gallus (Hahn), and Matthaus Judex (Richter). The work was begun about 1550 at Magdeburg and continued from 1562 at Regensburg (Ratisbon). It is broad in conception, but often inaccurate in detail, and was cogently attacked by the Catholic historian baronius.
