Page:EB1911 - Volume 05.djvu/500

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CASTRENSIS—CASTRO, INEZ DE
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with the intention of entering the church; but his interest was soon excited by the language of his native country, and he even began before his course was completed to lay the foundations of a work on Finnish mythology. The necessity of personal explorations among the still unwritten languages of cognate tribes soon made itself evident; and in 1838 he joined a medical fellow-student, Dr. Ehrstrom, in a journey through Lapland. In the following year he travelled in Russian Karelia at the expense of the Literary Society of Finland; and in 1841 he undertook, in company with Dr Elias Lonnrot, the great Finnish philologist, a third journey, which ultimately extended beyond the Ural as far as Obdorsk, and occupied a period of three years. Before starting on this last expedition he had published a translation into Swedish of the Finnish epic of Kalevala; and on his return he gave to the world his Elementa grammatices Syrjaenae and Elementa grammatices Tscheremissae, 1844. No sooner had he recovered from the illness which his last journey had occasioned than he set out, under the auspices of the Academy of St Petersburg and the Helsingfors University, on an exploration of the whole government of Siberia, which resulted in a vast addition to previous knowledge, but seriously affected the health of the adventurous investigator. The first-fruits of his collections were published at St Petersburg in 1849 in the form of a Versuch einer ostjakischen Sprachlehre. In 1850 he published a treatise De affixis personalibus linguarum Altaicarum, and was appointed professor at Helsingfors of the new chair of Finnish language and literature. The following year saw him raised to the rank of chancellor of the university; and he was busily engaged in what he regarded as his principal work, a Samoyedic grammar, when he died on the 7th of May 1853.

Five volumes of his collected works appeared from 1852 to 1858, containing respectively—(1) Reseminnen från åren 1838–1844; (2) Reseberättelsar och bref åren 1845–1849; (3) Föreläsningar i Finsk mythologi; (4) Ethnologiska föreläsningar öfver Altaiska folken; and (5) Smärre afhandlingar och akademiska dissertationer. A German translation was published by Anton Schiefner, who was also entrusted by the St Petersburg Academy with the editing of his manuscripts, which had been left to the Helsingfors University and which were subsequently published.


CASTRENSIS, PAULUS, an Italian jurist of the 14th century. He studied under Baldus at Perugia, and was a fellow-pupil with Cardinal Zabarella. He was admitted to the degree of doctor of civil law in the university of Avignon, but it is uncertain when he first undertook the duties of a professor. A tradition, which has been handed down by Panzirolus, represents him as having taught law for a period of fifty-seven years. He was professor at Vienna in 1390, at Avignon in 1394, and at Padua in 1429; and, at different periods, at Florence, at Bologna and at Perugia. He was for some time the vicar-general of Cardinal Zabarella at Florence, and his eminence as a teacher of canon law may be inferred from the language of one of his pupils, who styles him “famosissimus juris utriusque monarca.” His most complete treatise is his readings on the Digest, and it appears from a passage in his readings on the Digestum Vetus that he delivered them at a time when he had been actively engaged for forty-five years as a teacher of civil law. His death is generally assigned to 1436, but it appears from an entry in a MS. of the Digestum Vetus, which is extant at Munich, made by the hand of one of his pupils who styles him “praeceptor meus,” that he died on the 20th of July 1441.


CASTRES, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Tarn, 29 m. S.S.E. of Albi on a branch line of the Southern railway. Pop. (1906) town, 19,864; commune, 28,272. Castres, the busiest and most populous town of its department, is intersected from north to south by the Agout; the river is fringed by old houses the upper stories of which project over its waters. Wide boulevards traverse the west of the town, which is also rendered attractive by numerous fountains fed by a fine aqueduct hewn in the rock. The church of St Benoît, once a cathedral, and the most important of the churches of Castres, dates only from the 17th and 18th centuries. The hôtel de ville, which contains a museum and the municipal library, occupies the former bishop’s palace, designed by Jules Mansart in the 17th century; the Romanesque tower beside it is the only survival of an old Benedictine abbey. The town possesses some old mansions of which the hôtel de Nayrac, of the Renaissance, is of most interest. Castres has a sub-prefecture, tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce, a branch of the bank of France and two hospitals. There are also communal colleges for boys and girls, a school of artillery and school of draughtsmanship. The industrial establishments include manufactories of earthenware and porcelain and metal-foundries, and tanning, leather-dressing, turnery, the making of wooden shoes and furniture, the weaving of woollen and other fabrics, dyeing, and the manufacture of machinery, paper and parchment are carried on.

Castres grew up round a Benedictine abbey, which is believed to have been founded in the 7th century. It was a place of considerable importance as early as the 12th century, and ranked as the second town of the Albigenses. During the Albigensian crusade it surrendered of its own accord to Simon de Montfort; and in 1356 it was raised to a countship by King John of France. On the confiscation of the possessions of the D’Armagnac family, to which it had passed, it was bestowed by Louis XI. on Boffilo del Giudice, but the appointment led to so much disagreement that the countship was united to the crown by Francis I. in 1519. In the wars of the latter part of the 16th century the inhabitants sided with the Protestant party, fortified the town, and established an independent republic. They were brought to terms, however, by Louis XIII., and forced to dismantle their fortifications; and the town was made the seat of the chambre de l’édit, or chamber for the investigation of the affairs of the Protestants, afterwards transferred to Castelnaudary (in 1679). The bishopric of Castres, which had been established by Pope John XXII. in 1317, was abolished at the Revolution.


CASTRO, INEZ DE (d. 1355), mistress, and perhaps wife, of Peter I. (Pedro), king of Portugal, called Collo de Garza, i.e. “Heron’s Neck,” was born in Spanish Galicia, in the earlier years of the 14th century. Tradition asserts that her father, Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, and her mother, Dona Aldonça Soares de Villadares, a noble Portuguese lady, were unmarried, and that Inez and her two brothers were consequently of bastard birth. Educated at the semi-Oriental provincial court of Juan Manuel, duke of Peñafiel, Inez grew up side by side with Costança, the duke’s daughter by a scion of the royal house of Aragon, and her own cousin. After refusing several crowned heads in marriage, Costança was at last persuaded to accept the hand of the infante Dom Pedro, son of Alphonso the Proud, king of Portugal. In 1341 the two girls left Peñafiel; Costança’s marriage was celebrated in the same year, and the young infanta and her cousin went to reside at Lisbon, or at Coimbra, where Dom Pedro conceived that luckless and furious passion for Inez which has immortalized them.

The morality of the age was lax, and more especially so in Spain and Portugal, where the looseness of the marriage tie and the example of the Moors encouraged polygamy. Pedro’s connexion par amours with Inez would of itself have aroused no opposition. He might even have married her, after the death of his wife in childbirth in 1345. According to his own assurance he did marry her in 1354. But by that time the rising power of the Castro family had created the most brutal hatred among their rivals, both in Spain and Portugal. Alvaro Gonzales, Pedro Coelho, and Diogo Lopes Pacheco persuaded the king, Alphonso, that his throne was in danger from an alliance between his son and the Castros, and with all the brutality of the age they urged the king to remove the danger by murdering the poor woman. The old king listened, refused, wavered and ended by yielding. He went in secret to the palace at Coimbra, where Inez and the infante resided, accompanied by his three familiars, and by others who agreed with them. The beauty and tears of Inez disarmed his resolution, and he turned to leave her; but the gentlemen about him had gone too far to recede. Inez was stabbed to death and was buried immediately in the church of Santa Clara.