Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/107

 to the converted London Jew (col. 1106) that the whole incident refers to London or Westminster.

Crispin is the author of two works still preserved. His ‘Vita Herluini’ is our principal authority for the early days of Bec. His account of Herluin's death is so minute that there can be little doubt he was in the monastery when it occurred. It is referred to as the standard authority on this subject by William of Jumièges (vii. c. 22), and Milo Crispin in the preface to his ‘Vita Lanfranci’ (ap., clix. col. 30). Crispin's second great work is entitled ‘Disputatio Judæi cum Christiano,’ and is an account of a dialogue on the christian faith held between the Mayence Jew mentioned above and the author. This Jew, who was well versed both in ‘his own law and in our letters,’ used to visit the abbot on business. The conversation would frequently turn to more serious matters, and at last it was agreed that the two disputants should hold a sort of dialectical tournament, each appearing as the champion of his own faith. It was at the request of his audience that Crispin reduced his argument to writing. He dedicated it, at all events primarily, to Anselm, whom he begged to criticise it fearlessly. A second dedication at the very end of the treatise is addressed, as has been before noticed, to Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. It is to these two paragraphs that we owe our knowledge of the circumstances under which the work was written.

Other works have been assigned to this author by Pits and others: Homilies on the Canticles; treatises on Isaiah (dedicated to Anselm) and Jeremiah; on the fall of the devil, on the soul, and on the state of the church; a work against sins of thought, word, and act; a commentary on Lamentations (preserved in manuscript in the monastery of St. Aubin at Angers); and another on the Epistles of St. Paul (preserved in the abbey of St. Remi at Rheims) (Hist. Litt. x. 196–7). According to the writer of Crispin's life in the work last quoted, the Abbot of Westminster is not the author of the ‘Altercatio Synagogæ et Ecclesiæ,’ published under his name by Moetjens (Cologne, 1537), nor of the similar work published by Martene and Durand (in their Anecdota, v. 1497, &c.). The same writer adds to Crispin's genuine treatises a Cotton MS. on the procession of the Holy Spirit.

According to William of Jumièges, Crispin was as distinguished in secular and divine knowledge as he was by nobility of birth (vii. 22). The treatise ‘De nobili Crispinorum genere’ praises his attainments in philosophy, divinity, and the liberal arts in which he was a perfect adept: ‘sic in (eis) profecit … ut omnes artes quas liberales vocantur ad unguem addisceret.’

[William of Jumièges; Chronicon Beccense, Vita Herluini and Miracula vel Appendix de nobili Crispinorum genere; Epistolæ Anselmi and Disputatio Judæi cum Christiano, in Migne's Cursus Patrologiæ, vols. cxlix. cl. clviii. clix.; Histoire Littéraire de France (Benedictins of St. Maur), x.; Mabillon's Annales Benedictini, iv. 565–6; Dugdale's Monasticon (ed. 1817), i.; Florence of Worcester, ed. Hog for Engl. Hist. Soc.; Eadmer, ed. Martin Rule (Rolls Series); Crispin's Vita Herluini is published in Migne (Lanfranc volume), cl.; the Disputatio Judæi in vol. clix.; Gallia Christiana.] 

CRISTALL, JOSHUA (1767–1847), painter, both in oil and water colours, was born at Camborne, Cornwall, in 1767. His father, Joseph Alexander Cristall, an Arbroath man, is believed to have been the captain and owner of a trading vessel, and also a ship-breaker, having yards at Rotherhithe, Penzance, and Fowey. His mother, Ann Batten, born in 1745, was daughter of a Mr. John Batten of Penzance, and a woman of talent and education. His eldest sister, Ann Batten Cristall, was the authoress of a volume of ‘Poetical Sketches,’ published in 1795. Elizabeth, a younger sister, engraved; and both sisters were most of their lives engaged in tuition. Dr. Monro was one of his early friends. He was always very fond of art and of classical music. He began life with a china dealer at Rotherhithe, and then became a china-painter in the potteries district under Turner of Burslem, living in great hardship. He became a student at the Royal Academy, and was in 1805 a foundation member of the Water-colour Society, of which body, on its reconstitution in 1821, he was also the first president; an office which he continued to hold until 1832, when Copley Fielding became his successor. His portrait in oils, a vigorous sketch painted by himself, adorns the staircase of the society's gallery. Cristall was associated in his art career with Gilpin Hills, Pyne, Nattes, Nicholson, Pocock, Wells, Shelley, Barrett, Howell, Hassell, the Varleys, David Cox, Finch, and others, in starting the water-colour exhibition at Tresham's rooms, Lower Brook Street, in the spring of 1805. The exhibition was in 1813 transferred to the great room in Spring Gardens, and afterwards to the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. Turner, William Hunt, and Dewint, among others, about this time became members of the society. Some of Cristall's favourite sketching-grounds were in North Wales and in Cumberland. Many 