[1] See _Notizie degli scavi_ (1898), 395 (A. d'Andrade), 464 (G.
Ghirardini).
GENOVESI, ANTONIO (1712-1769), Italian writer on philosophy and
political economy, was born at Castiglione, near Salerno, on the 1st of
November 1712. He was educated for the church, and, after some
hesitation, took orders in 1736 at Salerno, where he was appointed
professor of eloquence at the theological seminary. During this period
of his life he began the study of philosophy, being especially attracted
by Locke. Dissatisfied with ecclesiastical life, Genovesi resigned his
post, and qualified as an advocate at Rome. Finding law as distasteful
as theology, he devoted himself entirely to philosophy, of which he was
appointed extraordinary professor in the university of Naples. His first
works were _Elementa Metaphysicae_ (1743 et seq.) and _Logica_ (1745).
The former is divided into four parts, Ontosophy, Cosmosophy, Theosophy,
Psychosophy, supplemented by a treatise on ethics and a dissertation on
first causes. The _Logic_, an eminently practical work, written from the
point of view of Locke, is in five parts, dealing with (1) the nature of
the human mind, its faculties and operations; (2) ideas and their kinds;
(3) the true and the false, and the various degrees of knowledge; (4)
reasoning and argumentation; (5) method and the ordering of our
thoughts. If Genovesi does not take a high rank in philosophy, he
deserves the credit of having introduced the new order of ideas into
Italy, at the same time preserving a just mean between the two extremes
of sensualism and idealism. Although bitterly opposed by the partisans
of scholastic routine, Genovesi found influential patrons, amongst them
Bartolomeo Intieri, a Florentine, who in 1754 founded the first Italian
or European chair of political economy (commerce and mechanics), on
condition that Genovesi should be the first professor, and that it
should never be held by an ecclesiastic. The fruit of Genovesi's
professorial labours was the _Lezioni di Commercio_, the first complete
and systematic work in Italian on economics. On the whole he belongs to
the "Mercantile" school, though he does not regard money as the only
form of wealth. Specially noteworthy in the _Lezioni_ are the sections
on human wants as the foundation of economical theory, on labour as the
source of wealth, on personal services as economic factors, and on the
united working of the great industrial functions. He advocated freedom
of the corn trade, reduction of the number of religious communities, and
deprecated regulation of the interest on loans. In the spirit of his age
he denounced the relics of medieval institutions, such as entails and
tenures in mortmain. Gioja's more important treatise owes much to
Genovesi's lectures. Genovesi died on the 22nd of September 1769.
See C. Ugoni, _Della letteratura italiana nella seconda metà del
secolo XVIII_ (1820-1822); A. Fabroni, _Vitae Italorum doctrina
excellentium_ (1778-1799); R. Bobba, _Commemorazione di A. Genovesi_
(Benevento, 1867).
GENSONNÉ, ARMAND (1758-1793), French politician, the son of a military
surgeon, was born at Bordeaux on the 10th of August 1758. He studied
law, and at the outbreak of the Revolution was an advocate of the
parlement of Bordeaux. In 1790 he became _procureur_ of the Commune, and
in July 1791 was elected by the newly created department of the Gironde
a member of the court of appeal. In the same year he was elected deputy
for the department to the Legislative Assembly. As reporter of the
diplomatic committee, in which he supported the policy of Brissot, he
proposed two of the most revolutionary measures passed by the Assembly:
the decree of accusation against the king's brothers (January 1, 1792),
and the declaration of war against the king of Bohemia and Hungary
(April 20, 1792). He was vigorous in his denunciations of the intrigues
of the court and of the "Austrian committee"; but the violence of the
extreme democrats, culminating in the events of the 10th of August,
alarmed him; and when he was returned to the National Convention, he
attacked the Commune of Paris (October 24 and 25). At the trial of Louis
XVI. he supported an appeal to the people, but voted for the death
sentence. As a member of the Committee of General Defence, and as
president of the Convention (March 7-21, 1793), he shared in the bitter
attacks of the Girondists on the Mountain; and on the fatal day of the
2nd of June his name was among the first of those inscribed on the
prosecution list. He was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 24th
of October 1793, condemned to death and guillotined on the 31st of the
month, displaying on the scaffold a stoic fortitude. Gensonné was
accounted one of the most brilliant of the little band of brilliant
orators from the Gironde, though his eloquence was somewhat cold and he
always read his speeches.
GENTIAN, botanically _Gentiana_, a large genus of herbaceous plants
belonging to the natural order Gentianaceae. The genus comprises about
300 species,--most of them perennial plants with tufted growth, growing
in hilly or mountainous districts, chiefly in the northern hemisphere,
some of the blue-flowered species ascending to a height of 16,000 ft. in
the Himalaya Mountains. The leaves are opposite, entire and smooth, and
often strongly ribbed. The flowers have a persistent 4- to 5-lobed calyx
and a 4- to 5-lobed tubular corolla; the stamens are equal in number to
the lobes of the corolla. The ovary is one-celled, with two stigmas,
either separate and rolled back or contiguous and funnel-shaped. The
fruit when ripe separates into two valves, and contains numerous small
seeds. The majority of the genus are remarkable for the deep or
brilliant blue colour of their blossoms, comparatively few having
yellow, white, or more rarely red flowers; the last are almost
exclusively found in the Andes.
Only a few species occur in Britain. _G. amarella_ (felwort) and _G.
campestris_ are small annual species growing on chalky or calcareous
hills, and bear in autumn somewhat tubular pale purple flowers; the
latter is most easily distinguished by having two of the lobes of the
calyx larger than the other two, while the former has the parts of the
calyx in fives, and equal in size. Some intermediate forms between these
two species occur, although rarely, in England; one of these, _G.
germanica_, has larger flowers of a bluer tint, spreading branches, and
a stouter stem. Some of these forms flower in spring. _G. pneumonanthe_,
the Calathian violet, is a rather rare perennial species, growing in
moist heathy places from Cumberland to Dorsetshire. Its average height
is from 6 to 9 in. It has linear leaves, and a bright blue corolla 1½
in. long, marked externally with five greenish bands, is without hairs
in its throat, and is found in perfection about the end of August. It is
the handsomest of the British species; two varieties of it are known in
cultivation, one with spotted and the other with white flowers. _G.
verna_ and _G. nivalis_ are small species with brilliant blue flowers
and small leaves. The former is a rare and local perennial, occurring,
however, in Teesdale and the county of Clare in Ireland in tolerable
abundance. It has a tufted habit of growth, and each stem bears only one
flower. It is sometimes cultivated as an edging for flower borders. _G.
nivalis_ in Britain occurs only on a few of the loftiest Scottish
mountains. It differs from the last in being an annual, and having a
more isolated habit of growth, and in the stem bearing several flowers.
On the Swiss mountains these beautiful little plants are very abundant;
and the splendid blue colour of masses of gentian in flower is a sight
which, when once seen, can never be forgotten. For ornamental purposes
several species are cultivated. The great difficulty of growing them
successfully renders them, however, less common than would otherwise be
the case; although very hardy when once established, they are very
impatient of removal, and rarely flower well until the third year after
planting. Of the ornamental species found in British gardens some of the
prettiest are _G. acaulis_, _G. verna_, _G. pyrenaica_, _G. bavarica_,
_G. septemfida_ and _G. gelida_. Perhaps the handsomest and most easily
grown is the first named, often called _Gentianella_, which produces its
large intensely blue flowers early in the spring.
All the species of the genus are remarkable for possessing an intense
but pure bitter taste and tonic properties. About forty species are used
in medicine in different parts of the world. The name of felwort given
to _G. amarella_, but occasionally applied to the whole genus, is stated
by Dr Prior to be given in allusion to these properties--_fel_ meaning
gall, and _wort_ a plant. In the same way the Chinese call _G.
asclepiadea_, and the Japanese _G. Buergeri_, "dragon's gall plants," in
common with several other very bitter plants whose roots they use in
medicine. _G. campestris_ is sometimes used in Sweden and other northern
countries as a substitute for hops.
By far the most important of the species used in medicine is _G. lutea_,
a large handsome plant 3 or 4 ft. high, growing in open grassy places on
the Alps, Apennines and Pyrenees, as well as on some of the mountainous
ranges of France and Germany, extending as far east as Bosnia and the
Danubian principalities. It has large oval strongly-ribbed leaves and
dense whorls of conspicuous yellow flowers. Its use in medicine is of
very ancient date. Pliny and Dioscorides mention that the plant was
noticed by Gentius, a king of the Illyrians, living 180-167 B.C., from
whom the name _Gentiana_ is supposed to be derived. During the middle
ages it was much employed in the cure of disease, and as an ingredient
in counter-poisons. In 1552 Hieronymus Bock (Tragus) (1498-1554), a
German priest, physician and botanist, mentions the use of the root as a
means of dilating wounds.
The root, which is the part used in medicine, is tough and flexible,
scarcely branched, and of a brownish colour and spongy texture. It has a
pure bitter taste and faint distinctive odour. The bitter principle,
known as _gentianin_, is a glucoside, soluble in water and alcohol. It
can be decomposed into glucose and gentiopicrin by the action of dilute
mineral acids. It is not precipitated by tannin or subacetate of lead. A
solution of caustic potash or soda forms with gentianin a yellow
solution, and the tincture of the root to which either of these alkalis
has been added loses its bitterness in a few days. Gentian root also
contains _gentianic acid_ (C14H10O5), which is inert and tasteless. It
forms pale yellow silky crystals, very slightly soluble in water or
ether, but soluble in hot strong alcohol and in aqueous alkaline
solutions. This substance is also called _gentianin_, _gentisin_ and
_gentisic acid_.
The root also contains 12 to 15% of an uncrystallizable sugar called
gentianose, of which fact advantage has long been taken in Switzerland
and Bavaria for the production of a bitter cordial spirit called
_Enzianbranntwein_. The use of this spirit, especially in Switzerland,
has sometimes been followed by poisonous symptoms, which have been
doubtfully attributed to inherent narcotic properties possessed by some
species of gentian, the roots of which may have been indiscriminately
collected with it; but it is quite possible that it may be due to the
contamination of the root with that of _Veratrum album_, a poisonous
plant growing at the same altitude, and having leaves extremely similar
in appearance and size to those of _G. lutea_.
Gentian is one of the most efficient of the class of substances which
act upon the stomach so as to invigorate digestion and thereby increase
the general nutrition, without exerting any direct influence upon any
other portion of the body than the alimentary canal. Having a pleasant
taste and being non-astringent (owing to the absence of tannic acid), it
is the most widely used of all bitter tonics. The British Pharmacopoeia
contains an aqueous extract (dose, 2-8 grains), a compound infusion with
orange and lemon peel (dose, ½-1 ounce), and a compound tincture with
orange peel and cardamoms (dose ½-1 drachm). It is used in dyspepsia,
chlorosis, anaemia and various other diseases, in which the tone of the
stomach and alimentary canal is deficient, and is sometimes added to
purgative medicines to increase and improve their action. In veterinary
medicine it is also used as a tonic, and enters into a well-known
compound called _diapente_ as a chief ingredient.
GENTIANACEAE (the gentian family), in botany, an order of Dicotyledons
belonging to the sub-class Sympetalae or Gamopetalae, and containing
about 750 species in 64 genera. It has a world-wide distribution, and
representatives adapted to very various conditions, including, for
instance, alpine plants, like the true gentians (_Gentiana_), meadow
plants such as the British _Chlora perfoliata_ (yellow-wort) or
_Erythraea Centaurium_ (centaury), marsh plants such as _Menyanthes
trifoliata_ (bog-bean), floating water plants such as _Limnanthemum_, or
steppe and sea-coast plants such as _Cicendia_. They are annual or
perennial herbs, rarely becoming shrubby, and generally growing erect,
with a characteristic forked manner of branching; the Asiatic genus
_Crawfurdia_ has a climbing stem; they are often low-growing and
caespitose, as in the alpine gentians.
The leaves are in decussating pairs (that is, each pair is in a plane
at right angles to the previous or succeeding pair), except in
_Menyanthes_ and a few allied aquatic or marsh genera, where they are
alternate or radical. Several genera, chiefly American, are
saprophytes, forming slender low-growing herbs, containing little or
no chlorophyll and with leaves reduced to scales; such are _Voyria_
and _Leiphaimos_, mainly tropical American. The inflorescence is
generally cymose, often dichasial, recalling that of Caryophyllaceae,
the lateral branches often becoming monochasial; it is sometimes
reduced to a few flowers or one only, as in some gentians. The flowers
are hermaphrodite, and regular with parts in 4's and 5's, with
reduction to 2 in the pistil; in _Chlora_ there are 6 to 8 members in
each whorl. The calyx generally forms a tube with teeth or segments
which usually overlap in the bud. The corolla shows great variety in
form; thus among the British genera it is rotate in _Chlora_,
funnel-shaped in _Erythraea_, and cylindrical, bell-shaped,
funnel-shaped or salver-shaped in _Gentiana_; the segments are
generally twisted to the right in the bud; the throat is often
fimbriate or bears scales. The stamens, as many as, and alternating
with, the corolla-segments, are inserted at very different heights on
the corolla-tube; the filaments are slender, the anthers are usually
attached dorsally, are versatile, and dehisce by two longitudinal
slits; after escape of the pollen they sometimes become spirally
twisted as in _Erythraea_. Dimorphic flowers are frequent, as in the
bog-bean (_Menyanthes_). There is considerable variation in the size,
shape and external markings of the pollen grains, and a division of
the order into tribes and subtribes based primarily on pollen
characters has been proposed. The form of the honey-secreting
developments of the disk at the base of the ovary also shows
considerable variety. The superior ovary is generally one-chambered,
with two variously developed parietal placentas, which occasionally
meet, forming two chambers; the ovules are generally very numerous and
anatropous or half-anatropous in form. The style, which varies much in
length, is simple, with an undivided or bilobed or bipartite stigma.
The fruit is generally a membranous or leathery capsule, splitting
septicidally into two valves; the seeds are small and numerous, and
contain a small embryo in a copious endosperm.
[Illustration: Central figure and figs. 1-4 after Curtis, _Flora
Londinensis_.
_Gentiana Amarella._
1, A small form, natural size.
2, Calyx and protruding style.
3, Corolla, laid open.
4, Capsule, bursting into two valves, and showing the seeds attached
to their margins.
5, Floral diagram.]
The brilliant colour of the flowers, often occurring in large numbers
(as in the alpine gentians), the presence of honey-glands and the
frequency of dimorphy and dichogamy, are adaptations for pollination
by insect visitors. In the true gentians (_Gentiana_) the flowers of
different species are adapted for widely differing types of insect
visitors. Thus _Gentiana lutea_, with a rotate yellow corolla and
freely exposed honey, is adapted to short-tongued insect visitors; _G.
Pneumonanthe_, with a long-tubed, bright blue corolla, is visited by
bumble bees; and _G. verna_, with a still longer narrower tube, is
visited by Lepidoptera.
_Gentiana_, the largest genus, contains nearly three hundred species,
distributed over Europe (including arctic), five being British, the
mountains of Asia, south-east Australia and New Zealand, the whole of
North America and along the Andes to Cape Horn; it does not occur in
Africa. Bitter principles are general in the vegetative parts,
especially in the rhizomes and roots, and have given a medicinal value
to many species, e.g. _Gentiana lutea_ and others.
GENTILE, in the English Bible, the term generally applied to those who
were not of the Jewish race. It is an adaptation of the Lat. _gentilis_,
of or belonging to the same _gens_, the clan or family; as defined in
Paulus ex Festo "gentilis dicitur et ex eodem genere ortus et is qui
simili nomine; ut ait Cincius, gentiles mihi sunt, qui meo nomine
appellantur." In post-Augustan Latin _gentilis_ became wider in meaning,
following the usage of _gens_, in the sense of race, nation, and meant
"national," belonging to the same race. Later still the word came to
mean "foreign," i.e. other than Roman, and was so used in the Vulgate,
with _gentes_, to translate the Hebrew _goyyim_, nations, LXX. [Greek:
ethnê], the non-Israelitish peoples (see further JEWS).
GENTILE DA FABRIANO (c. 1370-c. 1450), Italian painter, was born at
Fabriano about 1370. He is said to have been a pupil of Allegretto di
Nuzio, and has been supposed to have received most of his early
instruction from Fra Angelico, to whose manner his bears in some
respects a close similarity. About 1411 he went to Venice, where by
order of the doge and senate he was engaged to adorn the great hall of
the ducal palace with frescoes from the life of Barbarossa. He executed
this work so entirely to the satisfaction of his employers that they
granted him a pension for life, and accorded him the privilege of
wearing the habit of a Venetian noble. About 1422 he went to Florence,
where in 1423 he painted an "Adoration of the Magi" for the church of
Santa Trinita, which is preserved in the Florence Accademia; this
painting is considered his best work now extant. To the same period
belongs a "Madonna and Child," which is now in the Berlin Museum. He had
by this time attained a wide reputation, and was engaged to paint
pictures for various churches, more particularly Siena, Perugia, Gubbio
and Fabriano. About 1426 he was called to Rome by Martin V. to adorn the
church of St John Lateran with frescoes from the life of John the
Baptist. He also executed a portrait of the pope attended by ten
cardinals, and in the church of St Francesco Romano a painting of the
"Virgin and Child attended by St Benedict and St Joseph," which was much
esteemed by Michelangelo, but is no longer in existence. Gentile da
Fabriano died about 1450. Michelangelo said of him that his works
resembled his name, meaning noble or refined. They are full of a quiet
and serene joyousness, and he has a naïve and innocent delight in
splendour and in gold ornaments, with which, however, his pictures are
not overloaded.
GENTILESCHI, ARTEMISIA and ORAZIO DE', Italian painters.
ORAZIO (c. 1565-1646) is generally named Orazio Lomi de' Gentileschi; it
appears that De' Gentileschi was his correct surname, Lomi being the
surname which his mother had borne during her first marriage. He was
born at Pisa, and studied under his half-brother Aurelio Lomi, whom in
course of time he surpassed. He afterwards went to Rome, and was
associated with the landscape-painter Agostino Tasi, executing the
figures for the landscape backgrounds of this artist in the Palazzo
Rospigliosi, and it is said in the great hall of the Quirinal Palace,
although by some authorities the figures in the last-named building are
ascribed to Lanfranco. His best works are "Saints Cecilia and Valerian,"
in the Palazzo Borghese, Rome; "David after the death of Goliath," in
the Palazzo Doria, Genoa; and some works in the royal palace, Turin,
noticeable for vivid and uncommon colouring. At an advanced age
Gentileschi went to England at the invitation of Charles I., and he was
employed in the palace at Greenwich. Vandyck included him in his
portraits of a hundred illustrious men. His works generally are strong
in shadow and positive in colour. He died in England in 1646.
ARTEMISIA (1590-1642), Orazio's daughter, studied first under Guido,
acquired much renown for portrait-painting, and considerably excelled
her father's fame. She was a beautiful and elegant woman; her likeness,
limned by her own hand, is to be seen in Hampton Court. Her most
celebrated composition is "Judith and Holofernes," in the Uffizi
Gallery; certainly a work of singular energy, and giving ample proof of
executive faculty, but repulsive and unwomanly in its physical horror.
She accompanied her father to England, but did not remain there long;
the best picture which she produced for Charles I. was "David with the
head of Goliath." Artemisia refused an offer of marriage from Agostino
Tasi, and bestowed her hand on Pier Antonio Schiattesi, continuing,
however, to use her own surname. She settled in Naples, whither she
returned after her English sojourn; she lived there in no little
splendour, and there she died in 1642. She had a daughter and perhaps
other children.
GENTILI, ALBERICO (1552-1608), Italian jurist, who has great claims to
be considered the founder of the science of international law, second
son of Matteo Gentili, a physician of noble family and scientific
eminence, was born on the 14th of January 1552 at Sanginesio, a small
town of the march of Ancona which looks down from the slopes of the
Apennines upon the distant Adriatic. After taking the degree of doctor
of civil law at the university of Perugia, and holding a judicial office
at Ascoli, he returned to his native city, and was entrusted with the
task of recasting its statutes, but, sharing the Protestant opinions of
his father, shared also, together with a brother, Scipio, afterwards a
famous professor at Altdorf, his flight to Carniola, where in 1579
Matteo was appointed physician to the duchy. The Inquisition condemned
the fugitives as contumacious, and they soon received orders to quit the
dominions of Austria.
Alberico set out for England, travelling by way of Tübingen and
Heidelberg, and everywhere meeting with the reception to which his
already high reputation entitled him. He arrived at Oxford in the autumn
of 1580, with a commendatory letter from the earl of Leicester, at that
time chancellor of the university, and was shortly afterwards qualified
to teach by being admitted to the same degree which he had taken at
Perugia. His lectures on Roman law soon became famous, and the
dialogues, disputations and commentaries, which he published henceforth
in rapid succession, established his position as an accomplished
civilian, of the older and severer type, and secured his appointment in
1587 to the regius professorship of civil law. It was, however, rather
by an application of the old learning to the new questions suggested by
the modern relations of states that his labours have produced their most
lasting result. In 1584 he was consulted by government as to the proper
course to be pursued with Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, who had been
detected in plotting against Elizabeth. He chose the topic to which his
attention had thus been directed as a subject for a disputation when
Leicester and Sir Philip Sidney visited the schools at Oxford in the
same year; and this was six months later expanded into a book, the _De
legationibus libri tres_. In 1588 Alberico selected the law of war as
the subject of the law disputations at the annual "Act" which took place
in July; and in the autumn published in London the _De Jure Belli
commentatio prima_. A second and a third _Commentatio_ followed, and the
whole matter, with large additions and improvements, appeared at Hanau,
in 1598, as the _De Jure Belli libri tres_. It was doubtless in
consequence of the reputation gained by these works that Gentili became
henceforth more and more engaged in forensic practice, and resided
chiefly in London, leaving his Oxford work to be partly discharged by a
deputy. In 1600 he was admitted to be a member of Gray's Inn, and in
1605 was appointed standing counsel to the king of Spain. He died on the
19th of June 1608, and was buried, by the side of Dr Matteo Gentili, who
had followed his son to England, in the churchyard of St Helen's,
Bishopsgate. By his wife, Hester de Peigni, he left two sons, Robert and
Matthew, and a daughter, Anna, who married Sir John Colt. His notes of
the cases in which he was engaged for the Spaniards were posthumously
published in 1613 at Hanau, as _Hispanicae advocationis libri duo_. This
was in accordance with his last wishes; but his direction that the
remainder of his MSS. should be burnt was not complied with, since
fifteen volumes of them found their way, at the beginning of the 19th
century, from Amsterdam to the Bodleian library.
The true history of Gentili and of his principal writings has only been
ascertained in recent years, in consequence of a revived appreciation of
the services which he rendered to international law. The movement to do
him honour originated in 1875 in England, as the result of the inaugural
lecture of Prof. T.E. Holland, and was warmly taken up in Italy. In
spreading through Europe it encountered two curious cross-currents of
opinion,--one the ultra-Catholic, which three centuries before had
ordered his name to be erased from all public documents and placed his
works in the _Index_; another the narrowly-Dutch, which is, it seems,
needlessly careful of the supremacy of Grotius. These two currents
resulted respectively in a bust of Garcia Moreno being placed in the
Vatican, and in the unveiling in 1886, with much international oratory,
of a fine statue of Grotius at Delft. The English committee, under the
honorary presidency of Prince Leopold, in 1877 erected a monument to the
memory of Gentili in St Helen's church, and saw to the publication of a
new edition of the _De Jure Belli_. The Italian committee, of which
Prince (afterwards King) Humbert was honorary president, was less
successful. It was only in 1908, the tercentenary of the death of
Alberico, that the statue of the great heretic was at length unveiled in
his native city by the minister of public instruction, in the presence
of numerous deputations from Italian cities and universities. Preceding
writers had dealt with various international questions, but they dealt
with them singly, and with a servile submission to the decisions of the
church. It was left to Gentili to grasp as a whole the relations of
states one to another, to distinguish international questions from
questions with which they are more or less intimately connected, and to
attempt their solution by principles entirely independent of the
authority of Rome. He uses the reasonings of the civil and even the
canon law, but he proclaims as his real guide the _Jus Naturae_, the
highest common sense of mankind, by which historical precedents are to
be criticized and, if necessary, set aside.
His faults are not few. His style is prolix, obscure, and to the modern
reader pedantic enough; but a comparison of his greatest work with what
had been written upon the same subject by, for instance, Belli, or Soto,
or even Ayala, will show that he greatly improved upon his predecessors,
not only by the fulness with which he has worked out points of detail,
but also by clearly separating the law of war from martial law, and by
placing the subject once for all upon a non-theological basis. If, on
the other hand, the same work be compared with the _De Jure Belli et
Pacis_ of Grotius, it is at once evident that the later writer is
indebted to the earlier, not only for a large portion of his
illustrative erudition, but also for all that is commendable in the
method and arrangement of the treatise.
The following is probably a complete list of the writings of Gentili,
with the places and dates of their first publication: _De juris
interpretibus dialogi sex_ (London, 1582); _Lectionum et epist. quae
ad jus civile pertinent libri tres_ (London, 1583-1584); _De
legationibus libri tres_ (London, 1585); _Legal. comitiorum Oxon.
actio_ (London, 1585-1586); _De divers. temp. appellationibus_ (Hanau,
1586); _De nascendi tempore disputatio_ (Witteb., 1586);
_Disputationum decas prima_ (London, 1587); _Conditionum liber
singularis_ (London, 1587); _De jure belli comm. prima_ (London,
1588); _secunda, ib._ (1588-1589); _tertia_ (1589); _De injustitia
bellica Romanorum_ (Oxon, 1590); _Ad tit. de Malef, et Math, de Prof.
et Med._ (Hanau, 1593); _De jure belli libri tres_ (Hanau, 1598); _De
armis Romanis, &c._ (Hanau, 1599); _De actoribus et de abusu mendacii_
(Hanau, 1599); _De ludis scenicis epist. duae_ (Middleburg, 1600); _Ad
I. Maccabaeorum et de linguarum mistura disp._ (Frankfurt, 1600);
_Lectiones Virgilianae_ (Hanau, 1600); _De nuptiis libri septem_
(1601); _In tit. si quis principi, et ad leg. Jul. maiest._ (Hanau,
1604); _De latin, vet. Bibl._ (Hanau, 1604); _De libro Pyano_ (Oxon,
1604); _Laudes Acad. Perus. et Oxon._ (Hanau, 1605); _De unione
Angliae et Scotiae_ (London, 1605); _Disputationes tres, de libris
jur. can., de libris jur. civ., de latinitate vet. vers._ (Hanau,
1605); _Regales disput. tres, de pot. regis absoluta, de unione
regnorum, de vi civium_ (London, 1605); _Hispanicae advocationis libri
duo_ (Hanau, 1613); _In tit. de verb. signif._ (Hanau, 1614); _De
legatis in test._ (Amsterdam, 1661). An edition of the _Opera omnia_,
commenced at Naples in 1770, was cut short by the death of the
publisher, Gravier, after the second volume. Of his numerous
unpublished writings, Gentili complained that four volumes were lost
"pessimo pontificiorum facinore," meaning probably that they were left
behind in his flight to Carniola.
AUTHORITIES.--Several tracts by the Abate Benigni in Colucci,
_Antichità Picene_ (1790); a dissertation by W. Reiger annexed to the
_Program of the Groningen Gymnasium_ for 1867; an inaugural lecture
delivered in 1874 by T.E. Holland, translated into Italian, with
additions by the author, by A. Saffi (1884); the preface to a new
edition of the _De jure belli_ (1877) and _Studies in International
Law_ (1898) (which see, for details as to the family and MSS. of
Gentili), by the same; works by Valdarnini and Foglietti (1875),
Speranza and De Giorgi (1876), Fiorini (a translation of the _De jure
belli_, with essay, 1877), A. Saffi (1878), L. Marson (1885), M. Thamm
(1896), B. Brugi (1898), T.A. Walker (an analysis of the principal
works of Gentili) in his _History of the Law of Nations_, vol.
i.(1899); H. Nézarel, in Pillet's _Fondateurs de droit international_
(1904); E. Agabiti (1908). See also E. Comba, in the _Rivista
Christiana_ (1876-1877); Sir T. Twiss, in the _Law Review_ (1878);
articles in the _Revue de droit international_ (1875-1878, 1883, 1886,
1908); O. Scalvanti, in the _Annali dell' Univ. di Perugia_, N.S.,
vol. viii. (1898). (T. E. H.)
GENTLE (through the Fr. _gentil_, from Lat. _gentilis_, belonging to the
same _gens_, or family), properly an epithet of one born of a "good
family"; the Latin _generosus_, "well born" (see GENTLEMAN), contrasted
with "noble" on the one side and "simple" on the other. The word
followed the wider application of the word "gentleman"; implying the
manners, character and breeding proper to one to whom that name could be
applied, courteous, polite; hence, with no reference to its original
meaning, free from violence or roughness, mild, soft, kind or tender.
With a physical meaning of soft to the touch, the word is used
substantively of the maggot of the bluebottle fly, used as a bait by
fishermen. At the end of the 16th century the French _gentil_ was again
adapted into English in the form "gentile," later changed to "genteel."
The word was common in the 17th and 18th centuries as applied to
behaviour, manner of living, dress, &c., suitable or proper to persons
living in a position in society above the ordinary, hence polite,
elegant. From the early part of the 19th century it has also been used
in an ironical sense, and applied chiefly to those who pay an excessive
and absurd importance to the outward marks of respectability as evidence
of being in a higher rank in society than that to which they properly
belong.
GENTLEMAN (from Lat. _gentilis_, "belonging to a race or _gens_," and
"man"; Fr. _gentilhomme_, Span, _gentil hombre_, Ital. _gentil huomo_),
in its original and strict signification, a term denoting a man of good
family, the Lat. _generosus_ (its invariable translation in
English-Latin documents). In this sense it is the equivalent of the Fr.
_gentilhomme_, "nobleman," which latter term has in Great Britain been
long confined to the peerage (see NOBILITY); and the term "gentry"
("gentrice" from O. Fr. _genterise_ for _gentelise_) has much of the
significance of the Fr. _noblesse_ or the Ger. _Adel_. This was what was
meant by the rebels under John Ball in the 14th century when they
repeated:
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
Selden (_Titles of Honor_, 1672), discussing the title "gentleman,"
speaks of "our English use of it" as "convertible with _nobilis_," and
describes in connexion with it the forms of ennobling in various
European countries. William Harrison, writing a century earlier, says
"gentlemen be those whom their race and blood, or at the least their
virtues, do make noble and known." But for the complete gentleman the
possession of a coat of arms was in his time considered necessary; and
Harrison gives the following account of how gentlemen were made in
Shakespeare's day:
"... gentlemen whose ancestors are not known to come in with William
duke of Normandy (for of the Saxon races yet remaining we now make
none accompt, much less of the British issue) do take their beginning
in England after this manner in our times. Who soever studieth the
laws of the realm, who so abideth in the university, giving his mind
to his book, or professeth physic and the liberal sciences, or beside
his service in the room of a captain in the wars, or good counsel
given at home, whereby his commonwealth is benefited, can live without
manual labour, and thereto is able and will bear the port, charge and
countenance of a gentleman, he shall for money have a coat and arms
bestowed upon him by heralds (who in the charter of the same do of
custom pretend antiquity and service, and many gay things) and
thereunto being made so good cheap be called master, which is the
title that men give to esquires and gentlemen, and reputed for a
gentleman ever after. Which is so much the less to be disallowed of,
for that the prince doth lose nothing by it, the gentleman being so
much subject to taxes and public payments as is the yeoman or
husbandman, which he likewise doth bear the gladlier for the saving of
his reputation. Being called also to the wars (for with the government
of the commonwealth he medleth little) what soever it cost him, he
will both array and arm himself accordingly, and show the more manly
courage, and all the tokens of the person which he representeth. No
man hath hurt by it but himself, who peradventure will go in wider
buskins than his legs will bear, or as our proverb saith, now and then
bear a bigger sail than his boat is able to sustain."[1]
In this way Shakespeare himself was turned, by the grant of his coat of
arms, from a "vagabond" into a gentleman.
The fundamental idea of "gentry," symbolized in this grant of
coat-armour, had come to be that of the essential superiority of the
fighting man; and, as Selden points out (p. 707), the fiction was
usually maintained in the granting of arms "to an ennobled person though
of the long Robe wherein he hath little use of them as they mean a
shield." At the last the wearing of a sword on all occasions was the
outward and visible sign of a "gentleman"; and the custom survives in
the sword worn with "court dress." This idea that a gentleman must have
a coat of arms, and that no one is a "gentleman" without one is,
however, of comparatively late growth, the outcome of the natural desire
of the heralds to magnify their office and collect fees for registering
coats; and the same is true of the conception of "gentlemen" as a
separate class. That a distinct order of "gentry" existed in England
very early has, indeed, been often assumed, and is supported by weighty
authorities. Thus, the late Professor Freeman (_Ency. Brit._ xvii. p.
540 b, 9th ed.) said: "Early in the 11th century the order of
'gentlemen' as a separate class seems to be forming as something new. By
the time of the conquest of England the distinction seems to have been
fully established." Stubbs (_Const. Hist._, ed. 1878, iii. 544, 548)
takes the same view. Sir George Sitwell, however, has conclusively
proved that this opinion is based on a wrong conception of the
conditions of medieval society, and that it is wholly opposed to the
documentary evidence. The fundamental social cleavage in the middle ages
was between the _nobiles_, i.e. the tenants in chivalry, whether earls,
barons, knights, esquires or franklins, and the _ignobiles_, i.e. the
villeins, citizens and burgesses;[2] and between the most powerful noble
and the humblest franklin there was, until the 15th century, no
"separate class of gentlemen." Even so late as 1400 the word "gentleman"
still only had the sense of _generosus_, and could not be used as a
personal description denoting rank or quality, or as the title of a
class. Yet after 1413 we find it increasingly so used; and the list of
landowners in 1431, printed in _Feudal Aids_, contains, besides knights,
esquires, yeomen and husbandmen (i.e. householders), a fair number who
are classed as "gentilman."
Sir George Sitwell gives a lucid explanation of this development, the
incidents of which are instructive and occasionally amusing. The
immediate cause was the statute I Henry V. cap. v. of 1413, which laid
down that in all original writs of action, personal appeals and
indictments, in which process of outlawry lies, the "estate degree or
mystery" of the defendant must be stated, as well as his present or
former domicile. Now the Black Death (1349) had put the traditional
social organization out of gear. Before that the younger sons of the
_nobiles_ had received their share of the farm stock, bought or hired
land, and settled down as agriculturists in their native villages. Under
the new conditions this became increasingly impossible, and they were
forced to seek their fortunes abroad in the French wars, or at home as
hangers-on of the great nobles. These men, under the old system, had no
definite status; but they were _generosi_, men of birth, and, being now
forced to describe themselves, they disdained to be classed with
franklins (now sinking in the social scale), still more with yeomen or
husbandmen; they chose, therefore, to be described as "gentlemen." On
the character of these earliest "gentlemen" the records throw a lurid
light. According to Sir George Sitwell (p. 76), "the premier gentleman
of England, as the matter now stands, is 'Robert Erdeswyke of Stafford,
gentilman,'" who had served among the men-at-arms of Lord Talbot at
Agincourt (ib. note). He is typical of his class. "Fortunately--for the
gentle reader will no doubt be anxious to follow in his footsteps--some
particulars of his life may be gleaned from the public records. He was
charged at the Staffordshire Assizes with housebreaking, wounding with
intent to kill, and procuring the murder of one Thomas Page, who was cut
to pieces while on his knees begging for his life." If any earlier
claimant to the title of "gentleman" be discovered, Sir George Sitwell
predicts that it will be within the same year (1414) and in connexion
with some similar disreputable proceedings.[3]
From these unpromising beginnings the separate order of "gentlemen" was
very slowly evolved. The first "gentleman" commemorated on an existing
monument was John Daundelyon of Margate (d. c. 1445); the first
gentleman to enter the House of Commons, hitherto composed mainly of
"valets," was "William Weston, gentylman"; but even in the latter half
of the 15th century the order was not clearly established. As to the
connexion of "gentilesse" with the official grant or recognition of
coat-armour, that is a profitable fiction invented and upheld by the
heralds; for coat-armour was but the badge assumed by gentlemen to
distinguish them in battle, and many gentlemen of long descent never had
occasion to assume it, and never did. This fiction, however, had its
effect; and by the 16th century, as has been already pointed out, the
official view had become clearly established that "gentlemen"
constituted a distinct order, and that the badge of this distinction was
the heralds' recognition of the right to bear arms. It is unfortunate
that this view, which is quite unhistorical and contradicted by the
present practice of many undoubtedly "gentle" families of long descent,
has of late years been given a wide currency in popular manuals of
heraldry.
In this narrow sense, however, the word "gentleman" has long since
become obsolete. The idea of "gentry" in the continental sense of
_noblesse_ is extinct in England, and is likely to remain so, in spite
of the efforts of certain enthusiasts to revive it (see A.C. Fox-Davies,
_Armorial Families_, Edinburgh, 1895). That it once existed has been
sufficiently shown; but the whole spirit and tendency of English
constitutional and social development tended to its early destruction.
The comparative good order of England was not favourable to the
continuance of a class, developed during the foreign and civil wars of
the 14th and 15th centuries, for whom fighting was the sole honourable
occupation. The younger sons of noble families became apprentices in the
cities, and there grew up a new aristocracy of trade. Merchants are
still "citizens" to William Harrison; but he adds "they often change
estate with gentlemen, as gentlemen do with them, by a mutual conversion
of the one into the other." A frontier line between classes so
indefinite could not be maintained, especially as in England there was
never a "nobiliary prefix" to stamp a person as a gentleman by his
surname, as in France or Germany.[4] The process was hastened, moreover,
by the corruption of the Heralds' College and by the ease with which
coats of arms could be assumed without a shadow of claim; which tended
to bring the "science of armory" into contempt. The word "gentleman" as
an index of rank had already become of doubtful value before the great
political and social changes of the 19th century gave to it a wider and
essentially higher significance. The change is well illustrated in the
definitions given in the successive editions of the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_. In the 5th edition (1815) "a gentleman is one, who without
any title, bears a coat of arms, or whose ancestors have been freemen."
In the 7th edition (1845) it still implies a definite social status:
"All above the rank of yeomen." In the 8th edition (1856) this is still
its "most extended sense"; "in a more limited sense" it is defined in
the same words as those quoted above from the 5th edition; but the
writer adds, "By courtesy this title is generally accorded to all
persons above the rank of common tradesmen when their manners are
indicative of a certain amount of refinement and intelligence." The
Reform Bill of 1832 has done its work; the "middle classes" have come
into their own; and the word "gentleman" has come in common use to
signify not a distinction of blood, but a distinction of position,
education and manners. The test is no longer good birth, or the right to
bear arms, but the capacity to mingle on equal terms in good society. In
its best use, moreover, "gentleman" involves a certain superior standard
of conduct, due, to quote the 8th edition once more, to "that
self-respect and intellectual refinement which manifest themselves in
unrestrained yet delicate manners." The word "gentle," originally
implying a certain social status, had very early come to be associated
with the standard of manners expected from that status. Thus by a sort
of punning process the "gentleman" becomes a "gentle-man." Chaucer in
the _Meliboeus_ (c. 1386) says: "Certes he sholde not be called a gentil
man, that ... ne dooth his diligence and bisynesse, to kepen his good
name"; and in the _Wife of Bath's Tale_:
"Loke who that is most vertuous alway
Prive and apert, and most entendeth ay
To do the gentil dedes that he can
And take him for the gretest gentilman,"
and In the _Romance of the Rose_ (c. 1400) we find "he is gentil bycause
he doth as longeth to a gentilman." This use develops through the
centuries, until in 1714 we have Steele, in the _Tatler_ (No. 207),
laying down that "the appellation of Gentleman is never to be affixed to
a man's circumstances, but to his Behaviour in them," a limitation
over-narrow even for the present day. In this connexion, too, may be
quoted the old story, told by some--very improbably--of James II., of
the monarch who replied to a lady petitioning him to make her son a
gentleman, "I could make him a nobleman, but God Almighty could not make
him a gentleman." Selden, however, in referring to similar stories "that
no Charter can make a Gentleman, which is cited as out of the mouth of
some great Princes that have said it," adds that "they without question
understood Gentleman for _Generosus_ in the antient sense, or as if it
came from _Gentilis_ in that sense, as _Gentilis_ denotes one of a noble
Family, or indeed for a Gentleman by birth." For "no creation could make
a man of another blood than he is." The word "gentleman," used in the
wide sense with which birth and circumstances have nothing to do, is
necessarily incapable of strict definition. For "to behave like a
gentleman" may mean little or much, according to the person by whom the
phrase is used; "to spend money like a gentleman" may even be no great
praise; but "to conduct a business like a gentleman" implies a standard
at least as high as that involved in the phrase "noblesse oblige." In
this sense of a person of culture, character and good manners the word
"gentleman" has supplied a gap in more than one foreign language.
The evolution of this meaning of "gentleman" reflects very accurately
that of English society; and there are not wanting signs that the
process of evolution, in the one as in the other, is not complete. The
indefinableness of the word mirrors the indefinite character of
"society" in England; and the use by "the masses" of "gentleman" as a
mere synonym for "man" has spread _pari passu_ with the growth of
democracy. It is a protest against implied inferiority, and is cherished
as the modern French _bourgeois_ cherishes his right of duelling with
swords, under the _ancien régime_ a prerogative of the _noblesse_. Nor
is there much justification for the denunciation by purists of the
"vulgarization" and "abuse" of the "grand old name of gentleman." Its
strict meaning has now fallen completely obsolete. Its current meaning
varies with every class of society that uses it. But it always implies
some sort of excellency of manners or morals. It may by courtesy be
over-loosely applied by one common man to another; but the common man
would understand the reproach conveyed in "You're no gentleman."
AUTHORITIES.--Selden, _Titles of Honor_ (London, 1672); William
Harrison, _Description of England_, ed. G.F.J. Furnivall for the New
Shakspere Soc. (London, 1877-1878); Sir George Sitwell, "The English
Gentleman," in the _Ancestor_, No. 1 (Westminster, April 1902);
_Peacham's Compleat Gentleman_ (1634), with an introduction by G.S.
Gordon (Oxford, 1906); A. Smythe-Palmer, D.D., _The Ideal of a
Gentleman, or a Mirror for Gentlefolk: A Portrayal in Literature from
the Earliest Times_ (London, 1908), a very exhaustive collection of
extracts from authors so wide apart as Ptah-hotep (3300 B.C.) and
William Watson, arranged under headings: "The Historical Idea of a
Gentleman," "The Herald's Gentleman," "The Poet's Gentleman," &c.
(W. A. P.)