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Rh to its proximity to mines and rich grazing and grain-producing districts. Hosius, its bishop, presided over the first council of Nicaea in 345; and its importance was maintained by the Visigothic kings, whose rule lasted from the 5th to the beginning of the 8th century. Under the Moors, Cordova was at first an appanage of the caliphate of Damascus; but after 756 Abd-ar-Rahman I. made it the capital of Moorish Spain, and the centre of an independent caliphate (see ). It reached its zenith of prosperity in the middle of the 10th century, under Abd-ar-Rahman III. At his death, it is recorded by native chroniclers, probably with Arabic exaggeration, that Cordova contained within its walls 200,000 houses, 600 mosques, 900 baths, a university, and numerous public libraries; whilst on the bank of the Guadalquivir, under the power of its monarch, there were eight cities, 300 towns and 12,000 populous villages. A period of decadence began in 1016, owing to the claims of the rival dynasties which aimed at succeeding to the line of Abd-ar-Rahman; the caliphate never won back its position, and in 1236 Cordova was easily captured by Ferdinand III. of Castile. The substitution of Spanish for Moorish supremacy rather accelerated than arrested the decline of art, industry and population; and in the 19th century Cordova never recovered from the disaster of 1808, when it was stormed and sacked by the French. Few cities of Spain, however, can boast of so long a list of illustrious natives in the Moorish and Roman periods, and even, to a less extent, in modern times. It was the birthplace of the rhetorician Marcus Annaeus Seneca, and his more famous son Lucius (c. 3 – 65); of the poet Lucan ( 39–65); of the philosophers Averroes (1126–1198) and Maimonides (1135–1204); of the Spanish men of letters Juan de Mena (c. 1411–1456), Lorenzo de Sepúlveda (d. 1574) and Luis de Gongora y Argote (1561–1627); and the painters Pablo de Céspedes (1538–1608) and Juan de Valdés Leal (1630–1691). The celebrated captain (q.v.), the conqueror of Naples (1495–1498), was born in the neighbouring town of Montilla.

See Estudio descriptivo de los monumentos árabes de Granada y Córdoba, by R. Contreras (Madrid, 1885); Córdoba, a large illustrated volume of the series España, by P. de Madrazo (Barcelona, 1884); Inscripciones árabes de Córdoba, by R. Amador de los Ríos y Villalta (Madrid, 1886).

CORDUROY, a cotton cloth of the fustian kind, made like a ribbed velvet. It is generally a coarse heavy material and is used largely for workmen’s clothes, but some finer kinds are used for ladies’ dresses, &c. According to the New English Dictionary the word is understood to be of English invention, “either originally intended, or soon after assumed, to represent a supposed French corde du roi.” It is said that a coarse woollen fabric called duroy, made in Somerset during the 18th century, has no apparent connexion with it. From the ribbed appearance of the cloth the name corduroy is applied, particularly in America , to a rough road of logs laid transversely side by side, usually across swampy ground.

 CORDUS, AULUS CREMUTIUS, Roman historian of the later Augustan age. He was the author of a history (perhaps called Annales) of the events of the civil wars and the reign of Augustus, embracing the period from at least 43–18 In  25 he was brought to trial for having eulogized Brutus and spoken of Cassius as the last of the Romans. His real offence was a witticism at the expense of Sejanus, who put up two of his creatures to accuse him in the senate. Seeing that nothing could save him, Cordus starved himself to death. A decree of the senate ordered that his works should be confiscated and burned by the aediles. Some copies, however, were saved by the efforts of Cordus’s daughter Marcia, and after the death of Tiberius the work was published at the express wish of Caligula. It is impossible to form an opinion of it from the scanty fragments (H. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Fragmenta, 1883). According to ancient authorities, the writer was very outspoken in his denunciations, and his relatives considered it necessary to strike out the most offensive passages of the work before it was widely circulated (Quintilian, Instit. x. 1, 104). Two passages in Pliny (Nat. Hist. x. 74 [37], xvi. 108 [45]) seem to refer to a work of a different nature from the history—perhaps a treatise on Admiranda or remarkable things.

See Tacitus, Annals, iv. 34, 35; Suetonius, Tiberius, 61, Caligula, 16; Seneca, Suasoriae, vii., esp. the Consolatio to Cordus’s daughter Marcia; Dio Cassius lvii. 24. There are monographs by J. Held (1841) and C. Rathlef (1860). Also H. Peter, Die geschichtliche Literatur über die römische Kaiserzeit (1897); Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Lit., Eng. trans., 277, 1.

 CORELLI, ARCANGELO (1653–1713), Italian violin-player and composer, was born on the 12th or 13th of February 1653, at Fusignano near Imola, and died in 1713. Of his life little is known. His master on the violin was Bassani. Matteo Simonelli, the well-known singer of the pope’s chapel, taught him composition. His first decided success was gained in Paris at the age of nineteen. To this he owed his European reputation. From Paris Corelli went to Germany. In 1681 he was in the service of the electoral prince of Bavaria; between 1680 and 1685 he spent a considerable time in the house of his friend Farinelli. In 1685 he was certainly in Rome, where he led the festival performances of music for Queen Christine of Sweden and was also a favourite of Cardinal Ottoboni. From 1689 to 1690 he was in Modena, the duke of which city made him handsome presents. In 1708 he went once more to Rome, living in the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni. His visit to Naples, at the invitation of the king, took place in the same year. The style of execution introduced by Corelli and preserved by his pupils, such as Geminiani, Locatelli, and many others, has been of vital importance for the development of violin-playing, but he employed only a limited portion of his instrument’s compass, as may be seen by his writings, wherein the parts for the violin never proceed above D on the first string, the highest note in the third position; it is even said that he refused to play, as impossible, a passage which extended to A in altissimo in the overture to Handel’s Trionfo del Tempo, and took serious offence when the composer played the note in evidence of its practicability. His compositions for the instrument mark an epoch in the history of chamber music; for his influence was not confined to his own country. Even Sebastian Bach submitted to it. Musical society in Rome owed much to Corelli. He was received in the highest circles of the aristocracy, and arranged and for a long time presided at the celebrated Monday concerts in the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni. Corelli died possessed of a sum of 120,000 marks and a valuable collection of pictures, the only luxury in which he had indulged. He left both to his benefactor and friend, who, however, generously made over the money to Corelli’s relations. Corelli’s compositions are distinguished by a beautiful flow of melody and by a masterly treatment of the accompanying parts, which he is justly said to have liberated from the strict rules of counterpoint. Six collections of concerti, sonatas and minor pieces for violin, with accompaniment of other instruments, besides several concerted pieces for strings, are authentically ascribed to this composer. The most important of these is the XII. Suonati a violino e violone o cimbalo (Rome, 1700).

 CORELLI, MARIE (1864–&emsp;&emsp;), English novelist, was the daughter of an Italian father and a Scottish mother, but in infancy was adopted by (q.v.), the song-writer and journalist, whose son Eric, at his death, became her guardian. She was sent to be educated in a French convent with the object of training her for the musical profession, and while still a girl composed various pieces of music. But her journalistic connexion proved a stronger stimulus to expression, and editors who were friends of her adopted father printed some of her early poetry. Then she produced what was at least a clever, if not a remarkably well written, romantic story, on the theme of a self-revelation connecting the Christian Deity with a world force in the form of electricity, which was published in 1886 under the title of A Romance of Two Worlds. It had an immediate and large sale, which resulted, naturally, in her devoting her inventive faculty to satisfy the public demand for similar work. Thus she wrote in succession a series of melodramatic romantic novels, original in some aspects of their treatment, daring in others, but all combining a readable plot with enough au fond of what the majority demanded in ethical and religious