Page:EB1911 - Volume 05.djvu/621

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
596
CEHEGÍN—CELEBES
  

modern Porta Garibaldi on the south. It does not appear in history before 396 B.C., and seems to have owed its importance mainly to its naturally strong position. The only ancient remains on the mountain are those of a small building in good polygonal work (a style of construction very rare in Sicily), consisting of a passage on each side of which a chamber opens. The doorways are of finely-cut stone, and of Greek type, and the date, though uncertain, cannot, from the careful jointing of the blocks, be very early. On the summit of the promontory are extensive remains of a Saracenic castle. The new town was founded at the foot of the mountain, by the shore, by Roger II. in 1131, and the cathedral was begun in the same year. The exterior is well preserved, and is largely decorated with interlacing pointed arches; the windows also are pointed. On each side of the façade is a massive tower of four storeys. The round-headed Norman portal is worthy of note. The interior was restored in 1559, though the pointed arches of the nave, borne by ancient granite columns, are still visible: and the only mosaics preserved are those of the apse and the last bay of the choir: they are remarkably fine specimens of the art of the period (1148) and, though restored in 1859–1862, have suffered much less than those at Palermo and Monreale from the process. The figure of the Saviour is especially fine. The groined vaulting of the roof is visible in the choir and the right transept, while the rest of the church has a wooden roof. Fine cloisters, coeval with the cathedral, adjoin it. (See G. Hubbard in Journal of the R.I.B.A. xv. 333 sqq., 1908.) The harbour is comparatively small.  (T. As.) 


CEHEGÍN, a town of south-eastern Spain, in the province of Murcia, on the right bank of the river Caravaca, a small tributary of the Segura. Pop. (1900) 11,601. Cehegín has a thriving trade in farm produce, especially wine, olive oil and hemp; and various kinds of marble are obtained from quarries near the town. Some of the older houses, however, as well as the parish church and the convent of San Francisco, which still has well-defined Roman inscriptions on its walls, are built of stone from the ruins of Begastri, a Roman colony which stood on a small adjacent hill known as the Cabecico de Roenas. The name Cehegín is sometimes connected by Spanish antiquaries with that of the Zenaga, Senhaja or Senajeh, a North African tribe, which invaded Spain in the 11th century.


CEILING (from a verb “to ceil,” i.e. to line or cover; of disputed etymology, but apparently connected with Fr. ciel, Lat. caelum, sky), in architecture, the upper covering of a church, hall or room. Ceilings are now usually formed of plaster, but in former times they were commonly either boarded (of which St Albans cathedral is perhaps the earliest example), or showed the beams and joists, which in England were moulded and carved, and in France and Italy were richly painted and gilded. Sometimes the ceilings were horizontal, sometimes canted on two sides, and sometimes they take the form of a barrel-vault. Ribs are sometimes planted on the boarding to divide up the surface, and their intersections are enriched with bosses. About the middle of the 16th century the ceilings were formed in plaster with projecting ribs, interlaced ornament and pendants, and the characteristics of the Elizabethan style. At Bramall Hall, Broughton Castle, Hatfield, Knowle, Sizergh and Levens in Westmorland, and Dorfold in Cheshire, are numerous examples, some with pendants. In Italy, at the same period, the plaster ceilings were based on the forms taken by vaulting; they were of infinite variety and were richly decorated with sunk panels containing the Roman conventional foliage. Raphael, about 1520, reproduced in the Vatican some of the stucco-duro ornament which he had studied in the Golden House of Nero, excavated under his directions. Later, about the middle of the 16th century, great coves were formed round the room, which were decorated with cartouches and figures in relief, garlands and swags. The great halls of the Ducal Palace at Venice and the galleries of the Pitti Palace at Florence were ceiled in this way. These coved ceilings were introduced into England in the middle of the 17th century. In Holyrood Palace at Edinburgh there is a fine ceiling of 1671, with figures (probably executed by Italian craftsmen) and floral wreaths.

At Coleshill, Berkshire, a ceiling by Inigo Jones (1650) shows a type which became more or less universal for a century, viz. deeply sunk panels with modillions round, and bands enriched with foliage, fruit, &c., in bold relief. Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor, James Gibbs, John Webb and other architects continued on the same lines, and in 1760 Robert Adam introduced his type of ceiling, sometimes horizontal, and sometimes segmental, in which panels are suggested only, with slight projecting lines and rings of leaves, swags and arabesque work, which, like Raphael’s, was found on the ceilings of the Roman tombs and baths in Rome and Pompeii. George Richardson followed with similar work, and Sir W. Chambers, in the rooms originally occupied by the Royal Academy and the learned societies in Somerset House, designed many admirable ceilings. The moulds of all the ornamental devices of Robert Adam are preserved and are still utilized for many modern ceilings.  (R. P. S.) 


CEILLIER, REMY (1688–1761), Benedictine monk of the Lorraine congregation of St Vannes. He was the compiler of an immense Patrology, Histoire générale des auteurs sacrés et ecclésiastiques (23 vols., Paris, 1720–1763), being a history and analysis of the writings of all the ecclesiastical writers of the first thirteen centuries. He put infinite trouble and time into the work, and many portions of it are exceedingly well done. A later and improved edition was produced in Paris, 1858, in 14 vols. Ceillier’s other work, Apologie de la morale des pères de l’église (Paris, 1718), also won some celebrity.


CELAENAE, an ancient city of Phrygia, situated on the great trade route to the East. Its acropolis long held out against Alexander in 333 and surrendered to him at last by arrangement. His successor, Eumenes, made it for some time his headquarters, as did Antigonus until 301. From Lysimachus it passed to Seleucus, whose son Antiochus, seeing its geographical importance, refounded it on a more open site as Apamea (q.v.). West of the acropolis were the palace of Xerxes and the Agora, in or near which is the cavern whence the Marsyas, one of the sources of the Maeander, issues. According to Xenophon, Cyrus had a palace and large park full of wild animals at Celaenae.

See G. Weber, Dineir-Celènes (1892).


CELANDINE, Chelidonium majus, a member of the poppy family, an erect branched herb from 1 to 2 ft. high with a yellow juice, much divided leaves, and yellow flowers nearly an inch across, succeeded by a narrow thin pod opening by a pair of thin valves, separating upwards. The plant grows in waste places and hedgerows, and is probably an escape from cultivation. The lesser celandine is a species of Ranunculus (R. Ficaria), a small low-growing herb with smooth heart-shaped leaves and bright yellow flowers about an inch across, borne each on a stout stalk springing from a leaf-axil. It flowers in early spring, in pastures and waste-places.


CELANO, a town of the Abruzzi, Italy, in the province of Aquila, 73 m. E. of Rome by rail. Pop. (1901) 9725. It is finely situated on a hill above the Lago Fucino, and is dominated by a square castle, with round towers at the angles, erected in its present form in 1450. It contains three churches with 13th century façades in the style of those of Aquila. The origin of the town goes back to Lombard times. A count of Celano is first mentioned in 1178. It was the birthplace of Thomas of Celano, the author of the Dies Irae.


CELEBES,[1] one of the four Great Sunda Islands in the Dutch East Indies. Its general outline is extremely irregular, and has been compared to that of a starfish with the rays torn off from one side, corresponding to the west side of the island. It consists of four great peninsulas, extending from a comparatively small nucleus towards the north-east, east, south-east and south, and separated by the three large gulfs of Tomini or Gorontalo, Tolo or Tomaiki, and Boni. Of these gulfs the first is by far the largest, the other two having much wider entrances and not extending so far inwards. Most important among the smaller inlets are the bays of Amurang, Kwandang and Tontoli on the

  1. The second syllable is accented.