Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/821

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MARTOS—MARTYR
  

of 1868. Throughout the revolutionary period he represented in cabinets with Prim, Serrano and Ruiz Zorilla, and lastly under King Amadeus, the advanced Radical tendencies of the men who wanted to give Spain a democratic monarchy. After the abdication of Amadeus of Savoy, Martos played a prominent part in the proclamation of the federal republic, in the struggle between the executive of that republic and the permanent committee of the Cortes, backed by the generals and militia, who nearly put an end to the executive and republic in April 1873. When the republicans triumphed Martos retired into exile, and soon afterwards into private life. He reappeared for a few months after General Pavia’s coup d’état in January 1874, to join a coalition cabinet formed by Marshal Serrano, with Sagasta and Ulloa. Martos returned to the Bar in May 1874, and quietly looked on when the restoration took place at the end of that year. He stuck to his democratic ideals for some years, even going to Biarritz in 1881 to be present at a republican congress presided over by Ruiz Zorilla. Shortly afterwards Martos joined the dynastic Left organized by Marshal Serrano, General Lopez Dominguez, and Moret, Becerra, Balaguer, and other quondam revolutionaries. He sat in several parliaments of the reign of Alphonso XII. and of the regency of Queen Christina, joined the dynastic Liberals under Sagasta, and gave Sagasta not a little trouble when the latter allowed him to preside over the House of Deputies. Having failed to form a rival party against Sagasta, Martos subsided into political insignificance, despite his great talent as an orator and debater, and died in Madrid on the 16th of January 1893.


MARTOS, a town of southern Spain, in the province of Jaen, 16 m. W.S.W. of Jaen, by the Jaen-Lucena railway. Pop. (1900), 17,078. Martos is situated on an outlying western peak of the Jabalcuz mountains, which is surmounted by a ruined castle and overlooks the plain of Andalusia. In the neighbourhood are two sulphurous springs with bathing establishments. The local trade is almost exclusively agricultural.

Martos perhaps stands on or near the site of the Tucci of Ptolemy, which was fortified and renamed Colonia Augusta Gemella by the Romans. By Ferdinand III. it was taken from the Moors in 1225, and given to the knights of Calatrava; it was here that the brothers Carvajal, commanders of the order, were in 1312 executed by command of Ferdinand IV. Before their death they summoned Ferdinand to meet them within thirty days at the judgment-seat of God. Ferdinand died a month later and thus received the popular name of el Emplazado—“the Summoned.”

MARTYN, HENRY (1781–1812), English missionary to India, was born on the 18th of February 1781, at Truro, Cornwall. His father, John Martyn, was a “captain” or mine-agent at Gwennap. The lad was educated at Truro grammar school under Dr Cardew, entered St John’s College, Cambridge, in the autumn of 1797, and was senior wrangler and first Smith’s prizeman in 1801. In 1802 he was chosen a fellow of his college. He had intended to go to the bar, but in the October term of 1802 he chanced to hear Charles Simeon speaking of the good done in India by a single missionary, William Carey, and some time afterwards he read the life of David Brainerd, the apostle of the Indians of North America. He resolved, accordingly, to become a Christian missionary. On the 22nd of October, 1803, he was ordained deacon at Ely, and afterwards priest, and served as Simeon’s curate at the church of Holy Trinity, taking charge of the neighbouring parish of Lolworth. He was about to offer his services to the Church Missionary Society, when a disaster in Cornwall deprived him and his unmarried sister of the provision their father had made for them, and rendered it necessary that he should obtain a salary that would support her as well as himself. He accordingly obtained a chaplaincy under the East India Company and left for India on the 5th of July 1805. For some months he was stationed at Aldeen, near Serampur; in October 1806 he proceeded to Dinapur, where he was soon able to conduct worship among the natives in the vernacular, and established schools. In April 1809 he was transferred to Cawnpore, where he preached in his own compound, in spite of interruptions and threats. He occupied himself in linguistic study, and had already, during his residence at Dinapur, been engaged in revising the sheets of his Hindostani version of the New Testament. He now translated the whole of the New Testament into Hindi also, and into Persian twice. He translated the Psalms into Persian, the Gospels into Judaeo-Persic, and the Prayer-book into Hindostani, in spite of ill-health and “the pride, pedantry and fury of his chief munshi Sabat.” Ordered by the doctors to take a sea voyage, he obtained leave to go to Persia and correct his Persian New Testament, whence he wished to go to Arabia, and there compose an Arabic version. Accordingly, on the 1st of October 1810, having seen his work at Cawnpore crowned on the previous day by the opening of a church, he left for Calcutta, whence he sailed on the 7th of January 1811, for Bombay, which he reached on his thirtieth birthday. From Bombay he set out for Bushire, bearing letters from Sir John Malcolm to men of position there, as also at Shiraz and Isfahan. After an exhausting journey from the coast he reached Shiraz, and was soon plunged into discussion with the disputants of all classes, “Sufi, Mahommedan, Jew, and Jewish-Mahommedan, even Armenian, all anxious to test their powers of argument with the first English priest who had visited them.” Having made an unsuccessful journey to Tabriz to present the shah with his translation of the New Testament, he was seized with fever, and after a temporary recovery, had to seek a change of climate. On the 12th of September 1812, he started with two Armenian servants, crossed the Araxes, rode from Tabriz to Erivan, from Erivan to Kars, from Kars to Erzerum, from Erzerum to Chiflik, urged on from place to place by a thoughtless Tatar guide, and, though the plague was raging at Tokat (near Eski-Shehr in Asia Minor), he was compelled by prostration to stop there. On the 6th of October he died. Macaulay’s youthful lines, written early in 1813, testify to the impression made by his career.

His Journals and Letters were published by Samuel Wilberforce in 1837. See also Lives by John Sargent (1819; new ed. 1885), and G. Smith (1892); and The Church Quarterly Review (Oct. 1881).


MARTYN, JOHN (1699–1768), English botanist, was born in London on the 12th of September 1699. Originally intended for a business career, he abandoned it in favour of medical and botanical studies. He was one of the founders (with J. J. Dillen and others) and the secretary of a botanical society which met for a few years in the Rainbow Coffee-house, Watling Street; he also started the Grub Street Journal, a weekly satirical review, which lasted from 1730 to 1737. In 1732 he was appointed professor of botany in Cambridge University, but, finding little encouragement and hampered by lack of appliances, he soon discontinued lecturing. He retained his professorship, however, till 1762, when he resigned in favour of his son Thomas (1735–1825), author of Flora rustica (1792–1794). Although he had not taken a medical degree, he long practised as a physician at Chelsea, where he died on the 29th of January 1768. His reputation chiefly rests upon his Historia plantarum rariorum (1728–1737), and his translation, with valuable agricultural and botanical notes, of the Eclogues (1749) and Georgics (1741) of Virgil. On resigning the botanical chair at Cambridge he presented the university with a number of his botanical specimens and books.

See memoir by Thomas Martyn in Memoirs of John Martyn and Thomas Martyn, by G. C. Gorham (1830).


MARTYR (Gr. μάρτυρ or μάρτυς), a word meaning literally “witness” and often used in that sense in the New Testament e.g. Matt, xviii. 16; Mark xiv. 63. During the conflict between Paganism and Christianity when many Christians “testified” to the truth of their convictions by sacrificing their lives, the word assumed its modern technical sense. The beginnings of this use are to be seen in such passages as Acts xxii. 20; Rev. ii. 13, xiii. 6. During the first three centuries the fortitude of these “witnesses” won the admiration of their brethren. Ardent spirits craved the martyr’s crown, and to confess Christ in persecution was to attain a glory inferior only to that won by those who actually died. Confessors were visited in prison, martyrs’ graves were scenes of pilgrimage, and the day on which