Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/292

 CANATHA

244

CANDIA

inscriptions on the rocks of Gran Canaria and Hierro are similar to those discovered in Africa. An Arago- nese fleet explored the islands in 1.330. Another Cas- tilian coasting expedition, sent forth by merchants of Seville and Biscay, disembarked, in 1385, in Lanzarote and vanquished the aborigines, but did not found any lasting settlement. This was not accomplished until the expedition of Jean de Bethencourt, a French nobleman, who in virtue of a mission confided to him by the King of Castile, Henry III, conquered, from 1402 to 140.5, the islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gomera, and Hierro. The conquest of Gran Canaria, Palma, and Tenerife was effected during the reign of the < 'atholic sovereigns, from 1478 to 1495, by Diego Garcia de Herrera, Pedro de Vera, and Alonso Fer- nandez de Lugo, but not without heroic resistance on the part of the Guanches.

Combined action on the part of Church and State helped to Christianize and civilize the Guanches, and gave excellent results. The people abandoned their heathen practices and willingly embraced Christianity. The Catholic priest was always a brave protector of the natives against the vexations to which, in the early days of the conquest, they were occasionally ex- posed at the hands of their conquerors. Among the most deserving ecclesiastics in this respect is Don Juan de Frias, Bishop of Gran Canaria at the close of the fifteenth century. The Catholic sovereigns dic- tated wise provisional measures in order to protect the lives and farms of the aborigines, and after the con- clusion of the war gave them the right to participate in the government of the islands. Owing to frequent marriages between Spaniards and Guanches, the fu- sion of both races was finally accomplished, and this community of affection and interest became a power- ful factor in the economic prosperity of the islands.

The Canarian, or Book of the Conquest and Conversion of the Canarians in the year 1A02, by Messire Jean de Bethencourt, composed by Pierre Bonder, Monk, and Jean he Verrier, Priest, tr. and ed. with notes and introduction, Richard Henry Major (London, 1872); Viera y Clavijo, Notieias de la historia general de las Islas Canarias (Madrid. 1772-1773); Berthelot Antiquiles canariennes (Paris, 1879); Chil y Naranjo, Kstudios historieos, climatologicos y paloltiqicos de las Islas Canarias (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1879-1891); Millares, Historia general de las Islas Canarias (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1S93); Verneau, Rapport sur une mission scientifique duns V Archipel Canarien (Paris, 1887); Idem, Cinq annees de sejour aux lies Canaries (Paris, 1899); Torres Cam- pos, Cardcter de la conquista it colouizuci«n de his Islas I 'anurias (Madrid, 1901).

Eduabdo DE Hinojosa.

Canatha, a titular see of Arabia. According to inscriptions on coins and geographical documents, its name was Kanatha, Kanotha, or even Kenetha. The city had its own era and inscriptions found in Algeria have made known the existence of a cohors prima Flavia Canathcnornm (Renier, Inscript. Alger., 1534. 1535). It is surely distinct from Kanata, another city that struck coins and is now the little village of Kerak, north-east of Edrai or Derat, also in Arabia. Moreover, it is not Maximianopolis, because Severus, bishop of that see, and Theodosius, Bishop of Remit ha. were together present at Chalce- don in 451. Finally, it is not certain that it can be identified with Canath (Num., xxxii, 42; I Par., ii. 23), which stood, probably, farther south. The city is first mentioned by Josephus (Bel. jud., I, xix, 2: Anl. jud., XV, v. 1) apropos of a defeat of Herod by tin- Arabs. Pliny and Ptolemy rank it among the towns of Decapolis; Eusebius of Ctcsarea and Steph- anus By /..-nil ius say it was near Bostra. It figures in older " Notitia; episcopatuum" as a suffragan of Bostra; one bishop is known, Theodosius, 449-458 (Lequien, II, S67). Canatha is to-day El-Qanawat; this village, north-east of Bostra, in the vilayet of Syria, stands at a height of about 4100 feet, near a river and surrounded by woods. The magnificent ruins are 4800 feel in length and 2400 in breadth. Among them arc a Roman bridge and a rock-hewn

theatre, with nine tiers of seats and an orchestra fifty-seven feet in diameter, also a nymphaeum, an aqueduct, a large prostyle temple with portico and colonnades, and a peripteral temple preceded by a double colonnade. The monument known as Es- Seral dates from the fourth century and was originall}- a temple, afterwards a Christian basilica. It is seventy- two feet long, and was preceded by an outside portico and an atrium with eighteen columns.

Burckhardt, Travels in Syria and the Holy Land ''London, 1S22>, 83-srt; Pouter. Five Years in Damascus, II, 90-115; 77,, (,',„„'(■,/., ■ ,,/ lloshan l Louden, 1S71), 39—16; Rey, Voyage dans le Haouran, L2S—151, pi. V-VIII; Waddingtox, Inscript. greeqmi ,t latims, 533-540; he YogCe, Syrie centrale, 59. pi. 19sqq.; Dkku.CI,,; les ennemis d'Israil (Paris, 1906). 109-131.

S. Vailhe.

Cancer de Barbastro, Luis, one oi the first Dominicans who followed Las Casas to Guatemala, b. in Aragon, Spain, date uncertain; d. at Tampa Bay, Florida, U. S. A., c. 1549. He worked as a missionary among the Indians of Vera Paz with great zeal and fortitude and composed in the Zapotecan idiom the " Varias Canciones en verso za- poteco sobre los Misterios de la Religion para uso de los Ne6fitos de -la Vera Paz", a manuscript not now accessible. He was an ardent adherent of Las Casas and sided with him at the gathering of prelates and theologians convoked by the visitor Tello de Sandoval at Mexico in 1546. Anxious to prove the efficacy of the methods proposed by Las Casas, he went to Spain and obtained there the direction of the conversion of the Indians of Florida. Upon his return to Mexico he sailed for Florida from Vera Cruz in 1549 with two other Dominicans. Their interpreter was an Indian woman called Magdalen who had embraced Christianity. Upon reaching the shores of Florida, however, this woman betrayed them, and the three priests were killed by the Indians.

Beristain deSouza, Bibliotheca hispano-americana (Mexico, 1816-1818 and 18831; Squier. Monograph of Authors Who Have Writtenon the Languages of Central America (NewYork, 1861): he merely translates Brnstam and almost literally; Davila Papii.i a, Historia de la Fundacion y Discurso <£ ca (Madrid, 1597, Brussels, 1625); Lowkry. The Spanish Settlements within the United States (NewYork, 1901); .Shea, Cath. Ch. in Colonial Days (New York, 18S6), 123-26; I;>em in Am. Eccl. Rev.. xxvii, 1902.

Ad. F. Bandelier.

Candace, name of the Ethiopian queen whose eunuch was baptized by St. Philip (Acts, viii, 27 sqq.). The name occurs in a ruined pyramid near an- cient Meroe (Lipsius, Denkmaler. V. 47). Another queen of the same name is mentioned by Strabo (XVII, i, 54), and after him by Dion Cassius (Hist. Rom., LIV, v); she revolted and waged war against the Romans and was overpowered by Petronius in her capital of Napata, 22 B. c. Pliny (Hist. Nat., VI, 35) informs us that at the time when Nero's ex- plorers passed through Nubia, a Queen Candace was reigning over the island of Meroe, and adds that this name was a title common to all the queens of that country. ". . . quod nomen multis jam annis ad reginas transiit ". The Ethiopia over which Candace reigned, according to Hebrew usage and our authori- ties, was not the present Abyssinia, as is often claimed, but is to be looked for in the region called by the ancients the island of Meroe. at the confluence of the Nile and the Taccasi. The Queen Candace of the Acts may lie, and probably is, the same as the one mentioned by Pliny, but we have no direct evidence to assert it as a lad. (See ETHIOPIA.)

Mechineau in \'ic. , Diet, de la Bible, s. v., ami commentaries on Acts, viii, 27 sqq.

K. Brriv.

C. uuiia, Diocese of. — On the north shore of

Crete was an ancient city called Heracleion. LequieTJ (II. 2(i!l i mentions among those present at the Seventh General Council (Nicsea, 7S7) Theodoras,