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Rh modernized; it possesses interesting reliquaries, and contains the tomb of Petrus Chrysologus, archbishop of Ravenna (d. 451), a native of Imola. S. Domenico has a fine Gothic portal and S. Maria in Regola an old campanile. The town also contains some fine palaces. The communal library has some MSS., including a psalter with miniatures, that once belonged to Sir Thomas More. The citadel is square with round towers at the angles; it dates from 1304, and is now used as a prison. Imola has a large lunatic asylum with over 1200 inmates. Innocenzo Francucci (Innocenzo da Imola), a painter of the Bolognese school (1494–1549), was a native of Imola, and two of his works are preserved in the Palazzo del Comune. The Madonna del Piratello, 2 m. outside the town to the N.W., is in the early Renaissance style (1488); the campanile was probably built from Bramante’s plans in 1506.

The ancient Forum Cornelii, a station on the Via Aemilia, is said by Prudentius, writing in the 5th century, to have been founded by Sulla; but the fact that it belonged to the Tribus Pollia shows that it already possessed Roman citizenship before the Social war. In later times we hear little of it; Martial published his third book of epigrams while he was there. In the Lombard period the name Imolas begins to appear. In 1480, after a chequered history, the town came into the possession of Girolamo Riario, lord of Forli, as the dowry of his wife Caterina Sforza, and was incorporated with the States of the Church by Caesar Borgia in 1500.

 IMP (O. Eng. impa, a graft, shoot; the verb impian is cognate with Ger. impfen, to graft, inoculate, and the Fr. enter; the ultimate origin is probably the Gr. , to implant, cf.  , engrafted), originally a slip or shoot of a plant or tree used for grafting. This use is seen in Chaucer (Prologue to the Monk’s Tale, 68) “Of fieble trees ther comen wrecched ympes.” The verb “to imp” in the sense of “to graft” was especially used of the grafting of feathers on to the wing of a falcon or hawk to replace broken or damaged plumage, and is frequently used metaphorically. Like “scion,” “imp” was till the 17th century used of a member of a family, especially of high rank, hence often used as equivalent to “child.” The New English Dictionary quotes an epitaph (1584) in the Beauchamp chapel at Warwick, “Heere resteth the body of the noble Impe Robert of Dudley sonne of Robert Erle of Leycester.” The current use of the word for a small devil or mischievous sprite is due to the expressions “imp of Satan, or of the devil or of hell,” in the sense of “child of evil.” It was thus particularly applied to the demons supposed to be the “familiar” spirits of witches.

 IMPATIENS, in botany, a genus of annual or biennial herbs, sometimes becoming shrubby, chiefly natives of the mountains of tropical Asia and Africa, but also found widely distributed in the north temperate zone and in South Africa. The flowers, which are purple, yellow, pink or white and often showy, are spurred and irregular in form and borne in the leaf-axils. The name is derived from the fact that the seed-pod when ripe discharges the seeds by the elastic separation and coiling of the valves. Impatiens Noli-me-tangere, touch-me-not, an annual succulent herb with yellow flowers, is probably wild in moist mountainous districts in north Wales, Lancashire and Westmorland. I. Roylei, a tall hardy succulent annual with rose-purple flowers, a Himalayan species, is common in England as a self-sown garden plant or garden escape. I. Balsamina, the common balsam of gardens, a well-known annual, is a native of India; it is one of the showiest of summer and autumn flowers and of comparatively easy cultivation. I. Sultani, a handsome plant, with scarlet flowers, a native of Zanzibar, is easily grown in a greenhouse throughout the summer, but requires warmth in winter.

 IMPEACHMENT (O. Fr. empechement, empeschement, from empecher or empescher, to hinder, Late Lat. impedicare, to entangle, pedica, fetter, pes, foot), the English form of judicial parliamentary procedure against criminals, in which the House of Commons are the prosecutors and the House of Lords the judges. It differs from bills of (q.v.) in being strictly judicial. When the House of Commons has accepted a motion for impeachment, the mover is ordered to proceed to the bar of the House of Lords, and there impeach the accused “in the name of the House of Commons, and of all the Commons of the United Kingdom.” The charges are formulated in articles, to each of which the accused may deliver a written answer. The prosecution must confine itself to the charges contained in the articles, though further articles may be adhibited from time to time. The Commons appoint managers to conduct the prosecution, but the whole House in committee attends the trial. The defendant may appear by counsel. The president of the House of Lords is the lord high steward, in the case of peers impeached for high treason; in other cases the lord chancellor. The hearing takes place as in an ordinary trial, the defence being allowed to call witnesses if necessary, and the prosecution having a right of reply. At the end of the case the president “puts to each peer, beginning with the junior baron, the questions upon the first article, whether the accused be guilty of the crimes charged therein. Each peer in succession rises in his place when the question is put, and standing uncovered, and laying his right hand upon his breast, answers, ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not guilty,’ as the case may be, ‘upon my honour.’ Each article is proceeded with separately in the same manner, the lord high steward giving his own opinion the last” (May’s Parliamentary Practice, c. xxiii.). Should the accused be found guilty, judgment follows if the Commons move for it, but not otherwise. The Commons thus retain the power of pardon in their own hands, and this right they have in several cases expressly claimed by resolution, declaring that it is not parliamentary for their lordships to give judgment “until the same be first demanded by this House.” Spiritual peers occupy an anomalous position in the trial of peers, as not being themselves ennobled in blood; on the impeachment of Danby it was declared by the Lords that Spiritual peers have the right to stay and sit during proceedings for impeachment, but it is customary for them to withdraw before judgment is given, entering a protest “saving to themselves and their successors all such rights in judicature as they have by law, and by right ought to have.” An impeachment, unlike other parliamentary proceedings, is not interrupted by prorogation, nor even by dissolution. Proceedings in the House of Commons preliminary to an impeachment are subject to the ordinary rules, and in the Warren Hastings case an act was passed to prevent the preliminary proceedings from discontinuance by prorogation and dissolution. A royal pardon cannot be pleaded in bar of an impeachment, though it is within the royal prerogative to pardon after the lords have pronounced judgment. The point was raised in the case of the earl of Danby in 1679, and the rule was finally settled by the Act of Settlement. Persons found guilty on impeachment may be reprieved or pardoned like other convicts. Impeachment will lie against all kinds of crimes and misdemeanours, and against offenders of all ranks. In the case of Simon de Beresford, tried before the House of Lords in 1330, the House declared “that the judgment be not drawn into example or consequence in time to come, whereby the said peers may be charged hereafter to judge others than their peers,” from which Blackstone and others have inferred that “a commoner cannot be impeached before the Lords for any capital offence, but only for high misdemeanours.” In the case of Edward Fitzharris in 1681, the House of Commons in answer to a resolution of the Lords suspending the impeachment, declared it to be their undoubted right “to impeach any peer or commoner for treason or any other crime or misdemeanour.” And the House of Lords has in practice recognized the right of the Commons to impeach whomsoever they will. The procedure has, however, been reserved for great political offenders whom the ordinary powers of the law might fail to reach. It has now fallen into desuetude. The last impeachments were those of Warren Hastings (1788–1795) and Lord Melville (1806), but an unsuccessful attempt was made by Thomas C. Anstey to impeach Lord Palmerston in 1848. The earliest recorded instances of impeachment are those of Lord Latimer in 1376 and of Pole, earl of Suffolk, in 1386. From the time of Edward IV. to Elizabeth it fell into disuse, “partly,” says Hallam, “from the loss 