delivered before the young king Louis XV. in 1718, his sermons on the Prodigal Son, on the small number of the elect, on death, for Christmas Day, and for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, may be perhaps cited as his masterpieces. His funeral oration on Louis XIV. is only noted now for the opening sentence: “Dieu seul est grand.” But in truth Massillon is singularly free from inequality. His great literary power, his reputation for benevolence, and his known toleration and dislike of doctrinal disputes caused him to be much more favourably regarded than most churchmen by the philosophes of the 18th century.
The first edition of Massillon’s complete works was published by his nephew, also an Oratorian (Paris, 1745–1748), and upon this, in the absence of MSS., succeeding reprints were based. The best modern edition is that of the Abbé Blampignon (Paris, 1865–1868, 4 vols.; new ed. 1886).
See Abbé Blampignon, Massillon, d’après des documents inédits (Paris, 1879); and L’Épiscopat de Massitlon d’après des documents inédits, suivi de sa correspondance (Paris, 1884); F. Brunetière “L’Éloquence de Massillon” in Études critiques (Paris, 1882); Père Ingold, L’Oratoire et le jansénisme au temps de Massitlon (Paris, 1880); and Louis Petit de Julleville’s Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française, v. 372–385 (Paris, 1898).
MASSILLON, a city of Stark county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the
Tuscarawas river and the Ohio canal, 8 m. W. of Canton, and
about 50 m. S. by E. of Cleveland. Pop. (1900), 11,944 (1693
foreign-born); (1910), 13,879. It is served by the Pennsylvania
(Pittsburg, Ft Wayne & Chicago Division), the Baltimore & Ohio
and the Wheeling & Lake Erie railways. Massillon is built
among hills in a part of the state noted for its large production
of coal and wheat and abounding in white sandstone, iron
ore and potter’s clay. The city has various manufactures,
including iron, engines, furnaces, reapers, threshers and bottles.
The total value of the factory products in 1905 was $3,707,013,
an increase of 34.8% over that of 1900. The first settlement
was made in 1825; in 1826 the town was laid out and named
in honour of Jean Baptiste Massillon; it was incorporated a
village in 1853, and became a city in 1868.
MASSIMO, or Massimi, a Roman princely family of great
antiquity, said to be descended from the ancient Maximi of
republican Rome. The name is first mentioned in 1012 in the
person of Leo de Maximis, and the family played a considerable
part in the history of the city in the middle ages. The brothers
Pietro and Francesco Massimi acquired fame by protecting and
encouraging the German printer Ulrich Hahn, who came to
Rome in 1467. In the 16th century the Massimi were the richest
of the Roman nobles. A marquisate was conferred on them in
1544, and the lordship of Arsoli in 1574. To-day there are two
branches of the Massimi, viz. the Principi Massimo, descended
from Camillo Massimiliano (1770–1840), and the dukes of
Rignano, descended from Francesco Massimo (1773–1844).
One of the sons of the present Prince Camillo Carlo Alberto, Don
Fabrizio, married Princess Beatrice, daughter of Don Carlos of
Bourbon (duke of Madrid), the pretender to the Spanish throne.
The Palazzo Massimo in Rome was built by Baldassare Peruzzi
by order of Pietro Massimo, on the ruins of an earlier palace
destroyed in the sack of Rome in 1527.
See F. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom (Stuttgart, 1880); A. von Reumont, Geschichte der Stadt Rom (Berlin, 1868); Almanach de Gotha; J. H. Douglas, The Principal Noble Families of Rome (Rome, 1905).
MASSINGER, PHILIP (1583–1640), English dramatist, son of
Arthur Massinger or Messanger, was baptized at St Thomas’s,
Salisbury, on the 24th of November 1583. He apparently
belonged to an old Salisbury family, for the name occurs in the
city records as early as 1415. He is described in his matriculation
entry at St Alban Hall, Oxford (1602), as the son of a
gentleman. His father, who had also been educated at St Alban
Hall, was a member of parliament, and was attached to the household
of Henry Herbert, 2nd earl of Pembroke, who recommended
him in 1587 for the office of examiner in the court of the marches.
The 3rd earl of Pembroke, the William Herbert whose name has
been connected with Shakespeare’s sonnets, succeeded to the
title in 1601. It has been suggested that he supported the poet
at Oxford, but the significant omission of any reference to him
in any of Massinger’s prefaces points to the contrary. Massinger
left Oxford without a degree in 1606. His father had died in
1603, and he was perhaps dependent on his own exertions. The
lack of a degree and the want of patronage from Lord Pembroke
may both be explained on the supposition that he had become
a Roman Catholic. On leaving the university he went to London
to make his living as a dramatist, but his name cannot be definitely
affixed to any play until fifteen years later, when The Virgin
Martyr (ent. at Stationers’ Hall, Dec. 7, 1621) appeared as the
work of Massinger and Dekker. During these years he worked
in collaboration with other dramatists. A joint letter, from
Nathaniel Field, Robert Daborne and Philip Massinger, to
Philip Henslowe, begs for an immediate loan of five pounds to
release them from their “unfortunate extremitie,” the money
to be taken from the balance due for the “play of Mr Fletcher’s
and ours.” A second document shows that Massinger and Daborne
owed Henslowe £3 on the 4th of July 1615. The earlier note probably
dates from 1613, and from this time Massinger apparently
worked regularly with John Fletcher, although in editions of
Beaumont and Fletcher’s works his co-operation is usually
unrecognized. Sir Aston Cokayne, Massinger’s constant friend
and patron, refers in explicit terms to this collaboration in a
sonnet addressed to Humphrey Moseley on the publication of his
folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (Small Poems of Divers
Sorts, 1658), and in an epitaph on the two poets he says:—
"Plays they did write together, were great friends,
And now one grave includes them in their ends."
After Philip Henslowe’s death in 1616 Massinger and Fletcher began to write for the King’s Men. Between 1623 and 1626 Massinger produced unaided for the Lady Elizabeth’s Men then playing at the Cockpit three pieces, The Parliament of Love, The Bondman and The Renegado. With the exception of these plays and The Great Duke of Florence, produced in 1627 by the Queen’s servants, Massinger continued to write regularly for the King’s Men until his death. The tone of the dedications of his later plays affords evidence of his continued poverty. Thus in the preface to The Maid of Honour (1632) he wrote, addressing Sir Francis Foljambe and Sir Thomas Bland: “I had not to this time subsisted, but that I was supported by your frequent courtesies and favours.” The prologue to The Guardian (licensed 1633) refers to two unsuccessful plays and two years of silence, when the author feared he had lost the popular favour. S. R. Gardiner, in an essay on “The Political Element in Massinger” (Contemp. Review, Aug. 1876), maintained that Massinger’s dramas are before all else political, that the events of his day were as openly criticized in his plays as current politics are in the cartoons of Punch. It is probable that this break in his production was owing to his free handling of public matters. In 1631 Sir Henry Herbert, the master of the revels, refused to license an unnamed play by Massinger because of “dangerous matter as the deposing of Sebastian, King of Portugal,” calculated presumably to endanger good relations between England and Spain. There is little doubt that this was the same piece as Believe as You List, in which time and place are changed, Antiochus being substituted for Sebastian, and Rome for Spain. In the prologue Massinger ironically apologizes for his ignorance of history, and professes that his accuracy is at fault if his picture comes near “a late and sad example.” The obvious “late and sad example” of a wandering prince could be no other than Charles I.’s brother-in-law, the elector palatine. An allusion to the same subject may be traced in The Maid of Honour. In another play by Massinger, not extant, Charles I. is reported to have himself struck out a passage put into the mouth of Don Pedro, king of Spain, as “too insolent.” The poet seems to have adhered closely to the politics of his patron, Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery, and afterwards 4th earl of Pembroke, who had leanings to democracy and was a personal enemy of the duke of Buckingham. In The Bondman, dealing with the history of Timoleon, Buckingham is satirized as Gisco. The servility towards the Crown displayed in Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays reflected the temper of the court of James I. The attitude of Massinger’s heroes and heroines towards kings
