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was recognized in cult and myth as the chief or typical river-god in the Peloponnesus, as was Achelous in northern Greece. His waters were said to pass beneath the sea and rise again in the fountain Arethusa at Syracuse; such is the earlier version from which later mythologists and poets evolved the familiar myth of the loves of Alpheus and Arethusa.

ALPHONSE I., COUNT OF TOULOUSE (1103-1148), son of Count Raymond IV. by his third wife, Elvira of Castile, was born in 1103, in the castle of Mont-Pèlerin, Tripoli. He was surnamed Jourdain on account of his being baptized in the river Jordan. His father died when he was two years old and he remained under the guardianship of his cousin, Guillaume Jourdain, count of Cerdagne (d. 1109), until he was five. He was then taken to Europe and his brother Bertrand gave him the countship of Rouergue; in his tenth year, upon Bertrand's death (1112), he succeeded to the countship of Toulouse and marquisate of Provence, but Toulouse was taken from him by William IX., count of Poitiers, in 1114. He recovered a part in 1119, but continued to fight for his possessions until about 1123. When at last successful, he was excommunicated by Pope Calixtus II. for having expelled the monks of Saint-Gilles, who had aided his enemies. He next fought for the sovereignty of Provence against Raymond Berenger I., and not till September 1125 did the war end in an amicable agreement. Under it Jourdain became absolute master of the regions lying between the Pyrenees and the Alps, Auvergne and the sea. His ascendancy was an unmixed good to the country, for during a period of fourteen years art and industry flourished. About 1134 he seized the countship of Narbonne, only restoring it to the Viscountess Ermengarde (d. 1197) in 1143. Louis VII., for some reason which has not appeared, besieged Toulouse in 1141, but without result. Next year Jourdain again incurred the displeasure of the church by siding with the rebels of Montpellier against their lord. A second time he was excommunicated; but in 1146 he took the cross at the meeting of Vézelay called by Louis VII., and in August 1147 embarked for the East. He lingered on the way in Italy and probably in Constantinople; but in 1148 he had arrived at Acre. Among his companions he had made enemies and he was destined to take no share in the crusade he had joined. He was poisoned at Caesarea, either the wife of Louis or the mother of the king of Jerusalem suggesting the draught.

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ALPHONSO, the common English spelling of Affonso, Alonso and Alfonso, which are respectively the Galician, the Leonese and the Castilian forms of Ildefonso (Ildefonsus), the name of a saint and archbishop of Toledo in the 7th century. The name has been borne by a number of Portuguese and Spanish kings, who are distinguished collectively below.

Kings of Portugal.

Portuguese Kings.-ALPHONSo I. (Affonso Henriques), son of Henry of Burgundy, count of Portugal, and Teresa of Castile, was born at Guimaraes in 1094. He succeeded his father in 1112, and was placed under the tutelage of his mother. When he came of age, he was obliged to wrest from her by force that power which her vices and incapacity had rendered disastrous to the state. Being proclaimed sole ruler of Portugal in 1128, he defeated his mother's troops near Guimaraes, making her at the same time his prisoner. He also vanquished Alphonso Raymond of Castile, his mother's ally, and thus freed Portugal from dependence on the crown of Leon. Next turning his arms against the Moors, he obtained, on the 26th July 1139, the famous victory of Ourique, and immediately after was proclaimed king by his soldiers. He assembled the Cortes of the kingdom at Lamego, where he received the crown from the archbishop of Braganza; the assembly also declaring that Portugal was no longer a dependency of Leon. Alphonso continued to distinguish himself by his exploits against the Moors, from whom he wrested Santarem in 1146 and Lisbon in 1147. Some years later he became involved in a war that had broken out among the kings of Spain; and in 1167, being disabled during an engagement near Badajoz by a fall from his horse, he was made prisoner by the soldiers of the king of Leon, and was obliged to surrender as his ransom almost all the conquests he had made in Galicia. In 1184, in spite of his great age, he had still sufficient energy to relieve his son Sancho, who was besieged in Santarem by the Moors. He died shortly after, in 1185. Alphonso was a man of gigantic stature, being 7 ft. high according to some authors. He is revered as a saint by the Portuguese, both on account of his personal character and as the founder of their kingdom.

ALPHONSO II., "the Fat," was born in 1185, and succeeded his father, Sancho I., in 1211. He was engaged in war with the Moors and gained a victory over them at Alcácer do Sal in 1217. He also endeavoured to weaken the power of the clergy and to apply a portion of their enormous revenues to purposes of national

See the documentary Histoire générale de Languedoc by De Vie utility. Having been excommunicated for this by the pope and Vaissette, vol. iii. (Toulouse, 1872).

ALPHONSE, COUNT OF TOULOUSE AND OF POITIERS (1220 1271), the son of Louis VIII., king of France, and brother of St Louis, was born on the 11th of November 1220. He joined the county of Toulouse to his appanage of Poitou and Auvergne, on the death, in September 1249, of Raymond VII., whose daughter Jeanne he had married in 1237. He took the cross with his brother, St Louis, in 1248 and in 1270. In 1252, on the death of his mother, Blanche of Castile, he was joint regent with Charles of Anjou until the return of Louis IX., and took a great part in the negotiations which led to the treaties of Abbeville and of Paris (1258-1259). His main work was on his own estates. There he repaired the evils of the Albigensian war and made a first attempt at administrative centralization, thus preparing the way for union with the crown. The charter known as Alphonsine," granted to the town of Riom, became the code of public law for Auvergne. Honest and moderate, protecting the middle classes against exactions of the nobles, he exercised a happy influence upon the south, in spite of his naturally despotic character and his continual and pressing need of money. died without heirs on his return from the 8th crusade, in Italy, probably at Savona, on the 21st of August 1271. See B. Ledain, Histoire d'Alphonse, frère de S. Louis et du comté son administration (1241-1271) (Poitou, 1869); E. Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alphonse de Poitiers (Paris, 1870); A. Molinier, Étude sur l'administration de S. Louis et d'Alphonse de Poitiers (Toulouse, 1880); and also his edition of the Correspondance administrative d'Alphonse de Poitiers in the Collection de documents inédits pour servir à l'histoire de France (Paris, 1894 and 1895).

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(Honorius III.), he promised to make amends to the church; but he died in 1223 before doing anything to fulfil his engagement. He framed a code which introduced several beneficial changes into the laws of his kingdom.

ALPHONSO III., son of Alphonso II., was born in 1210, and succeeded his brother, Sancho II., in 1248. Besides making war upon the Moors, he was, like his father, frequently embroiled with the church. In his reign Algarve became part of Portugal. He died in 1279.

ALPHONSO IV. was born in 1290, and in 1325 succeeded his father, Dionis, whose death he had hastened by his intrigues and rebellions. Hostilities with the Castilians and with the Moors occupied many years of his reign, during which he gained some successes; but by consenting to the barbarous murder of Iñez de Castro, who was secretly espoused to his son Peter, he has fixed an indelible stain on his character. Enraged at this barbarous act, Peter put himself at the head of an army and devastated the whole of the country between the Douro and the Minho before he was reconciled to his father. Alphonso died almost immediately after, on the 12th of May 1357.

ALPHONSO V., "Africano," was born in 1432, and succeeded his father Edward in 1438. During his minority he was placed under the regency, first of his mother and latterly of his uncle, Dom Pedro. In 1448 he assumed the reins of government and at the same time married Isabella, Dom Pedro's daughter. In the following year, being led by what he afterwards discovered to be false representations, he declared Dom Pedro a rebel and defeated his army in a battle at Alfarrobeira, in which his uncle was slain. In 1458, and with more numerous forces in 1471,

he invaded the territories of the Moors in Africa and by his successes there acquired his surname of " the African." On his return to Portugal in 1475 his ambition led him into Castile, where two princesses were disputing his succession to the throne. Having been affianced to the Princess Juana, Alphonso caused himself to be proclaimed king of Castile and Leon; but in the following year he was defeated at Toro by Ferdinand, the husband of Isabella of Castile. He went to France to obtain the assistance of Louis XI., but finding himself deceived by the French monarch, he abdicated in favour of his son John. When he returned to Portugal, however, he was compelled by his son to resume the sceptre, which he continued to wield for two years longer. After that he fell into a deep melancholy and retired into a monastery at Cintra, where he died in 1481.

ALPHONSO VI., the second king of the house of Braganza, was born in 1643 and succeeded his father in 1656. In 1667 he was compelled by his wife and brother to abdicate the throne and was banished to the island of Terceira. These acts, which the vices of Alphonso had rendered necessary, were sanctioned by the Cortes in 1668. He died at Cintra in 1675.

medieval

Spanish Kings. From Alphonso I. (739-757) to Alphonso V. (999-1028) the personal history of the Spanish kings of this Kings of name is unknown and their very dates are disputed. ALPHONSO I. is said to have married Ormesinda, and mod- daughter of Pelayo, who was raised on the shield in ern Spain. Asturias as king of the Goths after the Arab conquest. He is also said to have been the son of Peter, duke of Cantabria. It is not improbable that he was in fact an hereditary chief of the Basques, but no contemporary records exist. His title of the Catholic" itself may very well have been the invention of later chronicles. ALPHONSO II. (789-842), his reputed grandson, bears the name of " the Chaste." The Arab writers who speak of the Spanish kings of the north-west as the Beni-Alfons, appear to recognize them as a royal stock derived from Alphonso I. The events of his reign are in reality unknown. Poets of a later generation invented the story of the secret❘ marriage of his sister Ximena with Sancho, count of Saldaña, and the feats of their son Bernardo del Carpio. Bernardo is the hero of a cantar de gesta (chanson de geste) written to please the anarchical spirit of the nobles.

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The first faint glimmerings of medieval Spanish history begin with ALPHONSO III. (866-914) surnamed "the Great." Of him also nothing is really known except the bare facts of his reign and of his comparative success in consolidating the kingdom known as of Galicia" or "of Oviedo " during the weakness of the Omayyad princes of Cordova. ALPHONSO IV. (924-931) has a faint personality. He resigned the crown to his brother Ramiro and went into a religious house. A certain instability of character is revealed by the fact that he took up arms against Ramiro, having repented of his renunciation of the world. He was defeated, blinded and sent back to die in the cloister of Sahagun. It fell to ALPHONSO V. (999-1028) to begin the work of reorganizing the Christian kingdom of the north-west after a most disastrous period of civil war and Arab inroads. Enough is known of him to justify the belief that he had some of the qualities of a soldier and a statesman. His name, and that of his wife Geloria (Elvira), are associated with the grant of the first franchises of Leon. He was killed by an arrow while besieging the town of Viseu in northern Portugal, then held by the Mahommedans. (For all these kings see the article SPAIN: History.)

With ALPHONSO VI. (1065-1109) we come to a sovereign of strong personal character. Much romance has gathered round his name. In the cantar de gesta of the Cid he plays the part attributed by medieval poets to the greatest kings, to Charlemagne himself. He is alternately the oppressor and the victim of heroic and self-willed nobles-the idealized types of the patrons for whom the jongleurs and troubadours sang. (For the events of his reign see the article SPAIN: History.) He is the hero of a cantar de gesta which, like all but a very few of the early Spanish songs, like the cantar of Bernardo del Carpio and the Infantes of Lara, exists now only in the fragments incorporated in the

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chronicle of Alphonso the Wise or in ballad form. His flight from the monastery of Sahagun, where his brother Sancho endeavoured to imprison him, his chivalrous friendship for his host Almamun of Toledo, caballero aunque mon, a gentleman although a Moor, the passionate loyalty of his vassal Peranzules and his brotherly love for his sister Urraca of Zamora, may owe something to the poet who took him for hero. They are the answer to the poet of the nobles who represented the king as having submitted to take a degrading oath at the hands of Ruy Diaz of Bivar (the Cid), in the church of Santa Gadea at Burgos, and as having then persecuted the brave man who defied him. When every allowance is made, Alphonso VI. stands out as a strong man fighting for his own hand, which in his case was the hand of the king whose interest was law and order and who was the leader of the nation in the reconquest. On the Arabs he impressed himself as an enemy very fierce and astute, but as a keeper of his word. A story of Mahommedan origin, which is probably no more historical than the oath of Santa Gadea, tells of how he allowed himself to be tricked by Ibn Ammar, the favourite of Al Motamid, the king of Seville. They played chess for an extremely beautiful table and set of men, belonging to Ibn Ammar. Table and men were to go to the king if he won. If Ibn Ammar gained he was to name the stake. The latter did win and demanded that the Christian king should spare Seville. Alphonso kept his word. Whatever truth may lie behind the romantic tales of Christian and Mahommedan, we know that Alphonso represented in a remarkable way the two great influences then shaping the character and civilization of Spain. At the instigation, it is said, of his second wife, Constance of Burgundy, he brought the Cistercians into Spain, established them in Sahagun, chose a French Cistercian, Bernard, as the first archbishop of Toledo after the reconquest in 1085, married his daughters, legitimate and illegitimate, to French princes, and in every way forwarded the spread of French influence-then the greatest civilizing force in Europe. He also drew Spain nearer to the papacy, and it was his decision which established the Roman ritual in place of the old missal of Saint Isidore the so-called Mozarabic. On the other hand he was very open to Arabic influence. He protected the Mahommedans among his subjects and struck coins with inscriptions in Arabic letters. After the death of Constance he perhaps married and he certainly lived with Zaida, said to have been a daughter of "Benabet" (Al Motamid), Mahommedan king of Seville. Zaida, who became a Christian under the name of Maria or Isabel, bore him the only son among his many children, Sancho, whom Alphonso designed to be his successor, but who was slain at the battle of Uclés in 1108. Women play a great part in Alphonso's life.

[ALPHONSO I., king of Aragon, "the Battler," who married Urraca, daughter of Alphonso VI. (1104-1134), is sometimes counted the VIIth in the line of the kings of Leon and Castile. A passionate fighting-man (he fought twenty-nine battles against Christian or Moor), he was married to Urraca, widow of Raymond of Burgundy, a very dissolute and passionate woman. The marriage had been arranged by Alphonso VI. in 1106 to unite the two chief Christian states against the Almoravides, and to supply them with a capable military leader. But Urraca was tenacious of her right as proprietary queen and had not learnt chastity in the polygamous household of her father. Husband and wife quarrelled with the brutality of the age and came to open war. Alphonso had the support of one section of the nobles who found their account in the confusion. Being a much better soldier than any of his opponents he gained victories at Sepúlveda and Fuente de la Culebra, but his only trustworthy supporters were his Aragonese, who were not numerous enough to keep down Castile and Leon. The marriage of Alphonso and Urraca was declared null by the pope, as they were third cousins. The king quarrelled with the church, and particularly the Cistercians, almost as violently as with his wife. As he beat her, so he drove Archbishop Bernard into exile and expelled the monks of Sahagun. He was finally compelled to give way in Castile and Leon to his stepson Alphonso, son of Urraca and her

wife. It cannot have been his conscience which constrained him to leave Teresa, for his next step was to marry Berengaria of Castile, who was his second cousin. For this act of contumacy

first husband. The intervention of Pope Calixtus II. brought | Alphonso paid no attention till he was presumably tired of his about an arrangement between the old man and the young. Alphonso the Battler won his great successes in the middle Ebro, where he expelled the Moors from Saragossa; in the great raid of 1125, when he carried away a large part of the subjectChristians from Granada, and in the south-west of France, where he had rights as king of Navarre. Three years before his death he made a will leaving his kingdom to the Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Knights of the Sepulchre, which his subjects refused to carry out. He was a fierce, violent man, a soldier and nothing else, whose piety was wholly militant. Though he died in 1134 after an unsuccessful battle with the Moors at Braga, he has a great place in the reconquest.]

ALPHONSO VII., "the Emperor " (1126-1157), is a dignified and somewhat enigmatical figure. A vague tradition had always .assigned the title of emperor to the sovereign who held Leon as the most direct representative of the Visigoth kings, who were themselves the representatives of the Roman empire. But though given in charters, and claimed by Alphonso VI. and the Battler, the title had been little more than a flourish of rhetoric. Alphonso VII. was crowned emperor in 1135 after the death of the Battler. The weakness of Aragon enabled him to make his superiority effective. He appears to have striven for the formation of a national unity, which Spain had never possessed since the fall of the Visigoth kingdom. The elements he had to deal with could not be welded together. Alphonso was at once a patron of the church, and a protector if not a favourer of the Mahommedans, who formed a large part of his subjects. His reign ended in an unsuccessful campaign against the rising power of the Almohades. Though he was not actually defeated, his death in the pass of Muradel in the Sierra Morena, while on his way back to Toledo, occurred in circumstances which showed that no man could be what he claimed to be-" king of the men of the two religions." His personal character does not stand out with the emphasis of those of Alphonso VI. or the Battler. Yet he was a great king, the type and to some extent the victim of the confusions of his age-Christian in creed and ambition, but more than half oriental in his household.

ALPHONSO VIII. (1158–1214), king of Castile only, and grandson of Alphonso VII., is a great name in Spanish history, for he led the coalition of Christian princes and foreign crusaders who broke the power of the Almohades at the battle of the Navas de Tolosa in 1212. The events of his reign are dealt with | under SPAIN. His personal history is that of many medieval kings. He succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, Sancho, at the age of a year and a half. Though proclaimed king, he was regarded as a mere name by the unruly nobles to whom a minority was convenient. The devotion of a squire of his household, who carried him on the pommel of his saddle to the stronghold of San Esteban de Gormaz, saved him from falling into the hands of the contending factions of Castro and Lara, or of his uncle Ferdinand of Leon, who claimed the regency. The loyalty of the town of Avila protected his youth. He was barely fifteen when he came forth to do a man's work by restoring his kingdom to order. It was only by a surprise that he recovered his capital Toledo from the hands of the Laras. His marriage with Leonora of Aquitaine, daughter of Henry II. of England, brought him under the influence of the greatest governing intellect of his time. Alphonso VIII. was the founder of the first Spanish university, the studium generale of Palencia, which, however, did not survive him.

ALPHONSO IX. (1188-1230) of Leon, first cousin of Alphonso VIII. of Castile, and numbered next to him as being a junior member of the family (see the article SPAIN for the division of the kingdom and the relationship), is said by Ibn Khaldun to have been called the " Baboso" or Slobberer, because he was subject to fits of rage during which he foamed at the mouth. Though he took a part in the work of the reconquest, this king is chiefly remembered by the difficulties into which his successive marriages led him with the pope. He was first married to his cousin Teresa of Portugal, who bore him two daughters, and a son who died young. The marriage was declared null by the pope, to whom

the king and kingdom were placed under interdict. The pope was, however, compelled to modify his measures by the threat that if the people could not obtain the services of religion they would not support the clergy, and that heresy would spread. The king was left under interdict personally, but to that he showed himself indifferent, and he had the support of his clergy. Berengaria left him after the birth of five children, and the king then returned to Teresa, to whose daughters he left his kingdom by will.

ALPHONSO X., El Sabio, or the learned (1252-1284), is perhaps the most interesting, though he was far from being the most capable, of the Spanish kings of the middle ages. (His merits as a writer are dealt with in the article SPAIN: Literature). His scientific fame is based mainly on his encouragement of astronomy. It may be pointed out, however, that the story which represents him as boasting of his ability to make a better world than this is of late authority. If he said so, he was speaking of the Ptolemaic cosmogony as known to him through the Arabs, and his vaunt was a humorous proof of his scientific instinct. As a ruler he showed legislative capacity, and a very commendable wish to provide his kingdoms with a code of laws and a consistent judicial system. The Fuero Real was undoubtedly his work, and he began the code called the Siete Partidas, which, however, was only promulgated by his great-grandson. Unhappily for himself and for Spain, he wanted the singleness of purpose required by a ruler who would devote himself to organization, and also the combination of firmness with temper needed for dealing with his nobles. His descent from the Hohenstaufen through his mother, a daughter of the emperor Philip, gave him claims to represent the Swabian line. The choice of the German electors, after the death of Conrad IV. in 1254, misled him into wild schemes which never took effect but caused immense expense. To obtain money he debased the coinage, and then endeavoured to prevent a rise in prices by an arbitrary tariff. The little trade of his dominions was ruined, and the burghers and peasants were deeply offended. His nobles, whom he tried to cow by sporadic acts of violence, rebelled against him. His second son, Sancho, enforced his claim to be heir, in preference to the children of Ferdinand de la Cerda, the elder brother who died in Alphonso's life. Son and nobles alike supported the Moors, when he tried to unite the nation in a crusade; and when he allied himself with the rulers of Morocco they denounced him as an enemy of the faith. A reaction in his favour was beginning in his later days, but he died defeated and deserted at Seville, leaving a will by which he endeavoured to exclude Sancho and a heritage of civil war.

ALPHONSO XI. (1312–1350) is variously known among Spanish kings as the Avenger or the Implacable, and as "he of the Rio Salado." The first two names he earned by the ferocity with which he repressed the disorder of the nobles after a long minority; the third by his victory over the last formidable African invasion of Spain in 1340. The chronicler who records his death prays that "God may be merciful to him, for he was a very great king." The mercy was needed. Alphonso XI. never went to the insane lengths of his son Peter the Cruel, but he could be abundantly sultanesque in his methods. He killed for reasons of state without form of trial, while his open neglect of his wife, Maria of Portugal, and his ostentatious passion for Leonora de Guzman, who bore him a large family of sons, set Peter an example which he did not fail to better. It may be that his early death, during the great plague of 1350, at the siege of Gibraltar, only averted a desperate struggle with his legitimate son, though it was a misfortune in that it removed a ruler of eminent capacity, who understood his subjects well enough not to go too far.

[Four other kings of Aragon, besides the Battler, bore the name of Alphonso. All these princes held territory in the southeast of France, and had a close connexion with Italy. ALPHONSO II. of Aragon (1162-1196) was the son of Raymond Berenger,

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count of Barcelona, and of Petronilla, niece of Alphonso the himself the sole representative of the Spanish monarchy. At Battler, and daughter of Ramiro surnamed the Monk. He the end of the year, when Marshal Serrano left Madrid to take succeeded to the county of Barcelona in 1162 on the death of his command of the northern army, General Martinez Campos, who father, at the age of eleven, and in 1164 his mother renounced had long been working more or less openly for the king, carried her rights in Aragon in his favour. Though christened Ramon off some battalions of the central army to Sagunto, rallied to his (Raymond), the favourite name of his line, he reigned as Alphonso own flag the troops sent against him, and entered Valencia in out of a wish to please his Aragonese subjects, to whom the memory the king's name. Thereupon the president of the council of the Battler was dear. As king of Aragon he took a share in resigned, and the power was transferred to the king's plenithe work of the reconquest, by helping his cousin Alphonso VIII. potentiary and adviser, Canovas del Castillo. In the course of a of Castile to conquer Cuenca, and to suppress one Pero Ruiz de few days the king arrived at Madrid, passing through Barcelona Azagra, who was endeavouring to carve out a kingdom for himself and Valencia, and was received everywhere with acclamation in the debatable land between Christian and Mahommedan. (1875). In 1876 a vigorous campaign against the Carlists, in But his double position as ruler both north and south of the which the young king took part, resulted in the defeat of Don eastern Pyrenees distracted his policy. In character and interests Carlos and his abandonment of the struggle. Early in 1878 he was rather Provençal than Spanish, a favourer of the trouba- Alphonso married his cousin, Princess Maria de las Mercedes, dours, no enemy of the Albigensian heretics, and himself a poet daughter of the duc de Montpensier, but she died within six. in the southern French dialect. ALPHONSO III. of Aragon (1285- months of her marriage. Towards the end of the same year a 1291), the insignificant son of the notable Peter III., succeeded young workman of Tarragona, Oliva Marcousi, fired at the king in to the Spanish and Provençal possessions of his father, but his Madrid. On the 29th of November 1879 he married a princess short reign did not give him time even to marry. His inability of Austria, Maria Christina, daughter of the Archduke Charles to resist the demands of his nobles left a heritage of trouble in Ferdinand. During the honeymoon a pastrycook named Otero Aragon. By recognising their right to rebel in the articles called fired at the young sovereigns as they were driving in Madrid. the Union he helped to make anarchy permanent. ALPHONSO IV. The children of this marriage were Maria de las Mercedes, titular of Aragon (1327-1336) was a weak man whose reign was in- queen from the death of her father until the birth of her brother, significant. ALPHONSO V. of Aragon (1416–1458), surnamed the born on the 11th of September 1880, married on the 14th of Magnanimous, who represented the old line of the counts of February 1901 to Prince Carlos of Bourbon, died on the 17th of Barcelona only through women, and was on his father's side October 1904; Maria Teresa, born on the 12th of November descended from the Castilian house of Trastamara, is one of the 1882, married to Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria on the 12th of most conspicuous figures of the early Renaissance. No man of January 1906; and Alphonso (see below). In 1881 the king his time had a larger share of the quality called by the Italians refused to sanction the law by which the ministers were to remain of the day "virtue." By hereditary right king of Sicily, by the in office for a fixed term of eighteen months, and upon the conwill of Joanna II. and his own sword king of Naples, he fought sequent resignation of Canovas del Castillo, he summoned and triumphed amid the exuberant development of individuality Sagasta, the Liberal leader, to form a cabinet. Alphonso died which accompanied the revival of learning and the birth of the of phthisis on the 24th of November 1885. Coming to the throne modern world. When a prisoner in the hands of Filipo Maria at such an early age, he had served no apprenticeship in the art Visconti, duke of Milan, in 1435, Alphonso persuaded his ferocious of ruling, but he possessed great natural tact and a sound and crafty captor to let him go by making it plain that it was the judgment ripened by the trials of exile. Benevolent and syminterest of Milan not to prevent the victory of the Aragonese pathetic in disposition, he won the affection of his people by party in Naples. Like a true prince of the Renaissance he fearlessly visiting the districts ravaged by cholera or devastated favoured men of letters whom he trusted to preserve his reputa- by earthquake in 1885. His capacity for dealing with men was tion to posterity. His devotion to the classics was exceptional considerable, and he never allowed himself to become the instrueven in that time. He halted his army in pious respect before ment of any particular party. In his short reign peace was the birthplace of a Latin writer, carried Livy or Caesar on his established both at home and abroad, the finances were well campaigns with him, and his panegyrist Panormita did not think regulated, and the various administrative services were placed it an incredible lie to say that the king was cured of an illness on a basis that afterwards enabled Spain to pass through the by having a few pages of Quintus Curtius read to him. The disastrous war with the United States without even the threat classics had not refined his taste, for he was amused by setting of a revolution. the wandering scholars, who swarmed to his court, to abuse one another in the indescribably filthy Latin scolding matches which were then the fashion. Alphonso founded nothing, and after his conquest of Naples in 1442 ruled by his mercenary soldiers, and no less mercenary men of letters. His Spanish possessions were ruled for him by his brother John. He left his conquest of Naples to his bastard son Ferdinand; his inherited lands, Sicily and Sardinia, going to his brother John who survived him.]

ALPHONSO XII. (1857-1885), king of modern Spain, son of Isabella II. and Maria Fernando Francisco de Assisi, eldest son of the duke of Cadiz, was born on the 28th of November 1857. When Queen Isabella and her husband were forced to leave Spain by the revolution of 1868 he accompanied them to Paris, and from thence he was sent to the Theresianum at Vienna to

continue his studies. On the 25th of June 1870 he was recalled
to Paris, where his mother abdicated in his favour, in the presence
of a number of Spanish nobles who had followed the fortunes of
the exiled queen.
He assumed the title of Alphonso XII.; for
although no king of united Spain had previously borne the name,
the Spanish monarchy was regarded as continuous with the
more ancient monarchy, represented by the eleven kings of
Leon and Castile already referred to. Shortly afterwards he
proceeded to Sandhurst to continue his military studies, and
while there he issued, on the 1st of December 1874, in reply to a
birthday greeting from his followers, a manifesto proclaiming

ALPHONSO XIII. (1886- ), king of Spain, son of Alphonso XII., was born, after his father's death, on the 17th of May 1886. His mother, Queen Maria Christina, was appointed regent during his minority (see SPAIN: History). In 1902, on attaining his 16th year, the king assumed control of the government. On the 31st of May 1906 he married Princess Victoria Eugénie Julia Ena Maria Christina of Battenberg, niece of Edward VII. of England. As the king and queen were returning from the wedding they narrowly escaped assassination in a bomb explosion, which killed and injured many bystanders and members of the royal procession. An heir to the throne was born on the 10th of May 1907, and received the name of Alphonso.

AUTHORITIES.-The lives of all the early kings of Spain will be found in the general histories (see the article SPAIN: Authorities), of which the most trustworthy is the Anales de la Corona de Aragon, by Geronimo Zurita (Saragossa, 1610). See also the Chronicles of the Kings of Castile in the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles de Riva deneyra (Madrid, 1846-1880, vols. 66, 68, 70). (D. H.)

ALPHONSUS A SANCTA MARIA, or ALPHONSO DE CARTAGENA (1396-1456), Spanish historian, was born at Carthagena, and succeeded his father, Paulus, as bishop of Burgos. In 1431 he was deputed by John II., king of Castile, to attend the council of Basel, in which he made himself conspicuous by his learning. He was the author of several works, the principal of which is entitled Rerum Hispanorum Romanorum imperatorum, summorum pontificum, nec non regum Francorum anacephaleosis.

This is a history of Spain from the earliest times down to 1456, and was printed at Granada in 1545, and also in the Rerum Hispanicarum Scriptores aliquot, by R. Bel (Frankfort, 1579). Alphonsus died on the 12th of July 1456.

ALPINI, PROSPERO (Prosper ALPINUS), 1553-1617, Italian physician and botanist, was born at Marostica, in the republic of Venice, on the 23rd of November 1553. In his youth he served for a time in the Milanese army, but in 1574 he went to study medicine at Padua. After taking his doctor's degree in 1578, he settled as a physician in Campo San Pietro, a small town in the Paduan territory. But his tastes were botanical, and to extend his knowledge of exotic plants he travelled to Egypt in 1580 as physician to George Emo or Hemi, the Venetian consul in Cairo. In Egypt he spent three years, and from a practice in the management of date-trees, which he observed in that country, he seems to have deduced the doctrine of the sexual difference of plants, which was adopted as the foundation of the Linnaean system. He says that "the female date-trees or palms do not bear fruit unless the branches of the male and female plants are mixed together; or, as is generally done, unless the dust found in the male sheath or male flowers is sprinkled over the female flowers." On his return, he resided for some time at Genoa as physician to Andrea Doria, and in 1593 he was appointed professor of botany at Padua, where he died on the 6th of February 1617. He was succeeded in the botanical chair by his son Alpino Alpini (d. 1637). His best-known work is De Plantis Aegypti liber (Venice, 1592). His De Medicina | Egyptiorum (Venice, 1591) is said to contain the first account of the coffee plant published in Europe. The genus Alpinia, belonging to the order Zingiberaceae, was named after him by Linnaeus.

best limits are on the west (strictly speaking south), the Col d'Altare or di Cadibona (1624 ft.), leading from Turin to Savona and Genoa, and on the east the line of the railway over the Semmering Pass (3215 ft.) from Vienna to Marburg in the Mur valley, and on by Laibach to Trieste. But if we confine the meaning of the term Alps to those parts of the chain that are what is commonly called "Alpine," where the height is sufficient to support a considerable mass of perpetual snow, our boundaries to the west and to the east must be placed at spots other than those mentioned above. To the west the limit will then be the Col de Tenda (6145 ft.), leading from Cuneo (Coni) to Ventimiglia, while on the east our line will be the route over the Radstädter Tauern (5702 ft.) and the Katschberg (5384 ft.) from Salzburg to Villach in Carinthia, and thence by Klagenfurt to Marburg and so past Laibach in Carniola on to Trieste; from Villach the direct route to Trieste would be over the Predil Pass (3813 ft.) or the Pontebba or Saifnitz Pass (2615 ft.), more to the west, but in either case this would exclude the Terglou (9400 ft.), the highest summit of the entire South-Eastern Alps, as well as its lower neighbours.

On the northern side the Alps (in whichever sense we take this term) are definitely bounded by the course of the Rhine from Basel to the Lake of Constance, the plain of Bavaria, and the low region of foot-hills that extend from Salzburg to the neighbourhood of Vienna. One result of this limit, marked out by Nature herself, is that the waters which flow down the northern slope of the Alps find their way either into the North Sea through the Rhine, or into the Black Sea by means of the Danube, not a drop reaching the Baltic Sea. On the southern side the mountains extending from near Turin to near Trieste subside into the great plain of Piedmont, Lombardy and

ALPS, the collective name for one of the great mountain Venetia. But what properly forms the western bit of the Alps systems of Europe.

1. Position and Name.-The continent of Europe is no more than a great peninsula extending westwards from the much vaster continent of Asia, while it is itself broken up by two inland seas into several smaller peninsulas-the Mediterranean forming the Iberian, the Italian and the Greek peninsulas, while the Baltic forms that of Scandinavia and the much smaller one of Denmark. Save the last-named, all these peninsulas of Europe are essentially mountain ranges. But in height and importance the ranges that rise therein are much surpassed by a great mountain-chain, stretching from south-eastern France to the borders of Hungary, as well as between the plains of northern Italy and of southern Germany. This chain is collectively known as the Alps, and is the most important physical feature of the European continent. The Alps, however, do not present so continuous a barrier as the Himalayas, the Andes or even the Pyrenees. They are formed of numerous ranges, divided by comparatively deep valleys, which, with many local exceptions, tend towards parallelism with the general direction of the whole This, between the Dauphiné and the borders of Hungary, forms a broad band convex towards the north, while most of the valleys lie between the directions west to east and south-west to north-east. But in many parts deep transverse valleys intersect the prevailing direction of the ridges, and facilitate the passage of man, plants and animals, as well as of currents of air which mitigate the contrast that would otherwise be found between the climates of the opposite slopes.

mass.

The derivation of the name Alps is still very uncertain, some writers connecting it with a Celtic root alb, said to mean height, while others suggest the Latin adjective albus (white), referring to the colour of the snowy peaks. But in all parts of the great chain itself, the term Alp (or Alm in the Eastern Alps) is exclusively applied to the high mountain pastures (see ALP), and not to the peaks and ridges of the chain.

2. Limits. These will depend on the meaning we attach to the word Alps as referring to the great mountain-chain of central Europe. If we merely desire to distinguish it from certain minor ranges (e.g. the Cévennes, the Jura, the hills of central Germany, the Carpathians, the Apennines), which are really independent ranges rather than offshoots of the main chain, the

runs, from near Turin to the Col de Tenda, in a southerly direction, then bending eastwards to the Col d'Altare that divides it from the Apennines.

It should be borne in mind that the limits adopted above refer purely to the topographical aspect of the Alps as they exist at the present day. Naturalists will of course prefer other limits according as they are geologists, botanists or zoologists.

3. Climate. It is well known that as we rise from the sealevel into the upper regions of the atmosphere the temperature decreases. The effect of mountain-chains or prevailing winds is to carry warm air belonging to the lower region into an upper zone, where it expands in volume at the cost of a proportionate loss of heat, often accompanied by the precipitation of moisture in the form of snow or rain. The position of the Alps about the centre of the European continent has profoundly modified the climate of all the surrounding regions. The accumulation of vast masses of snow, which have gradually been converted into permanent glaciers, maintains a gradation of very different climates within the narrow space that intervenes between the foot of the mountains and their upper ridges; it cools the breezes that are wafted to the plains on either side, but its most important function is to regulate the water-supply of that large region which is traversed by the streams of the Alps. Nearly all the moisture that is precipitated during six or seven months is stored up in the form of snow, and is gradually diffused in the course of the succeeding summer; even in the hottest and driest seasons the reserves accumulated during a long preceding period of years in the form of glaciers are available to maintain the regular flow of the greater streams. Nor is this all; the lakes that fill several of the main valleys on the southern side of the Alps are somewhat above the level of the plains of Lombardy and Venetia, and afford an inexhaustible supply of water, which, from a remote period, has been used for that system of irrigation to which they owe their proverbial fertility. Six regions or zones, which are best distinguished by their characteristic vegetation, are found in the Alps. It is an error to suppose that these are indicated by absolute height above the sea-level. Local conditions of exposure to the sun, protection from cold winds, or the reverse, are of primary importance in determining the climate and the corresponding vegetation.

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