Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/607

 ESDRAS

535

ESDRAS

architect Juan Bautista de Toledo, assisted by Lucas de Escalante and Pedro de Tolosa, and was intended to commemorate the .Spanish victory over the French at the battle of St-Quentin in 1557. Probably another reason was that Philip II was obliged by the will of Charles V to erect a royal mausoleum.

Bautista 's plan was ambitious and eccentric; he was influenced by Renaissance ideals and used the Doric style in its severest forms. He died in 1567 and was succeeiled by .Juan de Herrera and Juan de Minjores. The plan of the building is somewhat in the shape of a gridiron, and is thought thus to commemorate the fate of its patron saint, St. Laurence, upon whose feast day, 10 .\ugust, the battle of St-Quentin was fought. The church was consecrated in 158(i, and the pantheon was completed in 1654. Charles III built some addi- tions and the building generally was restored under Ferdinand VII. The Escorial has twice been devas- tated by fire, and in 1807 it was looted by the French troops. It is built of a light-coloured stone resembling granite, for the most part highly polished. The gen- eral plan is a parallelogram with a perimeter of 3000 feet; its area is about 500,000 square feet. There are four faijades, the finest external aspect being on the southern side. The western or principal front is 744 feet long and 72 feet high, while the towers at each end rise about 200 feet. The main entrance is in the centre of this facade. Monegro's figure of Saint Lau- rence stands above the door. The vestibule is about eighty feet wide and leads into the Court of the Kings. To the right are the library, refectory, and convent; the college is on the left. The church is the finest of the several buildings contained within the walls of the Escorial. Its tall towers on either side, the immen.se dome, with its superimposed massi\e lantern and cross, and the portals of the vestibule, at once attract atten- tion. The church is of stone throughout, huge in plan, and severe in its Doric simplicity. Pompeo Leoni de- signed and cast the metal statues that ornament the splendid screen. A hall behind the ante-choir is known as the library. On the south side of the church is the Court of the Evangelists, a square of 166 feet with two- storied cloisters in the Grecian style. Adjoining it is the monastery of Saint Laurence. Both the monastery and the church were served by Hieronymite monks until 18.35; in 1S85 Augustinians took charge. The Augustinian monks also conduct the college, the build- ing of which formed an important part of the great structure. On 10 Feb., 1909, it was slightly damaged by fire. The small room which Philip II occupied during the latter part of his life and in which he died adjoins the choir of the church. Through an opening in the wall he could see the celebration of the Mass when ill. The corridor of the Hall of the Caryatides is supposed to represent the handle of the gridiron.

The Escorial is a treasure-house of art and learning. The civilized world was searched to stock the library with great books and fine manuscripts. Greece, Arabia, and Palestine contributed, and the collection was at one time the finest in Europe, the Arabic documents being among the most remarkable of the manuscripts. From the Imjuisition the library received aliout one hundred and forty works. It contains 7000 engrav- ings and .35,006 volumes, including 4027 manuscripts; among the last named are 1886 Arabic, 582 Greek, and 73 Hebrew manuscripts, besides 2086 in Latin and other languages (cf. Casiri, Bibliotheca arab.-hisp. Escur., M,-idrid, 1760-1770, 2 vols.). Among its manu- script treasures are a copy of the Gospels illuminated in gold on vellum, and the Apocalyp.se of Saint John richly illustrated. It also contains a large collection of church music, included in which are compositions of the monks, del Valle, Torrijos, and ( 'orduba, besides many of the musical works of Antonio Soler. The most important tapestries of the Mscorial are in the palace; many of them were designed by Goya and Maella. The

weaving was done chiefly in Madrid, but those de- signed by Teniers were made in Holland. Since 1837 the finest pictures of the large collection of paintings have been placed in the museum at Madrid. Among the famous artists whose works were or still are in the Escorial are: Carducci, Giordano, Goya, Holbein, Pan- toja, Reni, Ribera, Teniers, Tibaldo, Tintoretto, Ti- tian, Velazquez, Zuccaro, Zurbanin.

Calvert, The Escorial (London and New York, 1907); Hamlin, History of Architecture (London and New York. 1904), 351; B. AND B. F. Banister, .4 History of Architecture (London and New York. 1905). 537. 539; Smith, Architecture, Gothic and Renaissance (London), 232.

Thomas H. Poole.

Esdras. — I. \ famous priest and scribe connected with Israel's restoration after the Exile. The chief sources of information touching his life are the canoni- cal books of Esdras and Xehemias. A group of apocry- phal writings is also much concerned with him, but they can hardly be relied upon, as they relate rather the legendary tales of a later age. Esdras was of priestly descent and belonged to the line of Sadoc (I Esd., vii, 1-5). He styles himself "son of Saraias" (vii, 1), an expression which is by many understood in a broad sense, as purporting that Saraias, the chief-priest, spoken of in IV K., xxv, 18-21, was one of Esdras's ancestors. Nevertheless he is known rather as "the scribe" than as "priest": he was "a ready scribe [a scribe skilled] in the law of Moses", and therefore especially qualified for the task to which he was des- tined among his people.

The chronological relation of Esdras's w-ork with that of Nehemias is, among the questions connected with the history of the Jewish Restoration, one of the niost mooted. Many Biblical scholars still cling to the view suggested by the traditional order of the sacred te.xt (due allowance being made for the break in the narrative — I Esd., iv, 6-23), and place the mission of Esdras before that of Nehemias. Others, among whom we may mention Professor Van Hoonacker of Louvain, Dr. T. K. Cheyne in England, and Professor C. F. Kent in America, to do away with the number- less difficulties arising from the interpretation of the main sources of this history, maintain that Nehemias's mission preceded that of Esdras. The former view holds that Esdras came to Jerusalem about 458 B.C., and Nehemias first in 444 and the second time about 430 B.C.; whereas, according to the opposite opinion, Esdras's mission might have taken place as late as 397 B.C. However this may be, since we are here con- cerned only with Esdras. we will limit ourselves to summarizing the principal features of his life and work, without regard to the problems involved, which it suf- fices to have mentioned.

_ Many years had elapsed after permission had been given to the Jews to return to Palestine; amidst diffi- culties and obstacles the restored community had set- tled down again in their ancient home and built a new temple; but their condition, both from the political and the religious point of view, was most precarious: they chafed under the oppression of the Persian sa- traps and had grown inditTerent and unobservant of the Law. From Babylon, where this state of affairs was well known, Esdras longed to go to Jerusalem and use his authority as a priest and interpreter of the Law to restore things to a better condition. He was in favour at the court of the Persian king; he not only obtained permission to visit Judea, but a royal edict clothing hiin with ample authority to carry out his purpose, and ample support from the royal treasury. The rescript, moreover, ordered the satr.ips "beyond the river" to assist Esdras liberally and enacted that all Jewi.sh temple officials should be exempt from toll, tribute, or cu.stom. "And thou, Esdras, appoint judges and magistrates, that they may judge all the people, that is beyond the river" (I E.sd., vii, 25). Fi- nally, the Law of God and the law of the king were