Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/828

Rh 798 M O N M O and converted into a Benedictine monastery. Philip II. built the present church. In 1835 the monastery was suppressed and despoiled of the vast treasures which had accumulated during the Middle Ages. But the buildings were allowed to remain, as well as a few of the fathers to take charge of the Virgin s shrine. At present they number 19 ; a hundred years ago there were 76 monks, 28 lay- brothers, 25 singing boys, together with surgeon, physician, and servants. The possessions then consisted of numerous hamlets, besides great quantities of plate and jewels, includ ing 85 silver lamps. Nuestra Senora de Montserrat, Patrona de Cataluna, is one of the most celebrated images in Spain, and her church is visited annually by more than 80,000 pilgrims. It is a small carved wooden image, &quot; regularly handsome, but the colour of a negro woman,&quot; and pos sesses magnificent robes and jewels. It has been visited by numbers of sovereigns and high ecclesiastics, and by millions of Catalonians. In September 1881 it was solemnly crowned by Leo XIII., who sent a crown from Rome for that purpose. Quantities of ex votos are offered at the shrine : wax models of injured or diseased limbs, models of ships, pictures and clothes, jewels and silver hearts. As the celebrity and sanctity of Montserrat increased, so did the number of devotees. Ignatius Loyola laid his sword upon the altar of the Virgin, and, placing himself under her protection, started from Montserrat to commence his new life. Many eminent Spaniards, weary of the world, have retired to this monastery to end their days. Some preferred solitary hermitages perched among the rocks. Of these there were fifteen, eleven of which once formed a via sacra, ending at the summit of San Geronimo. They were destroyed by the French, but the ruins of some of them still remain. From all the view is magnificent ; some are indeed placed on the edges of preci pices in almost inaccessible places. There are also caves in the moun tain, some of which were formerly occupied by monks. The most celebrated of these are the cave of the Virgin, in which the Santa Imagcn remained hidden until found by Gondemar, and the cave of Fray Juan Garin, a notorious sinner, who ended his days in the practice of revolting penances at Montserrat. At Collbato, on the south-east side of the mountain, near the base, there are also some very curious caves. MONTUCLA, JEAN-I*HENNE (1725-1799), a learned mathematician, was the son of a merchant, and was born at Lyons in 1725. He attended the college of the Jesuits in his native city, and was early distinguished for his tenacious memory and his aptitude for mathematics. At the age of sixteen he removed to Toulouse to prosecute the study of law ; and after taking the usual degrees he re paired to Paris. There his conversational powers, his solid information, and his acquirements as a linguist soon intro duced him to the notice of the learned. In the society of D Alembert and Lalande his taste for mathematical studies was confirmed and stimulated. After publishing two anony mous treatises on the Quadrature of the Circle and on the Duplication of the Cube, he gave to the world in 1758 the first part of his great work, The History of Mathematics. Not long after this his merits were recognized by the Government, and he was promoted to several important offices. He was appointed intendant-secretary at Grenoble in 1758, secretary to the expedition for colonizing Cayenne in 1764, and &quot; premier commis des batiments &quot; and censor- royal for mathematical books in 1765. During the next twenty-five years his time was divided between his official duties and the study of his favourite science. The Revolu tion then ensuing deprived him of his income, and left him in great destitution. The offer in 1795 of a mathematical chair in one of the schools of Paris was declined on account of his infirm health, and he was still in straitened circum stances in 1798 when he published a second edition of the first part of his History. He also enlarged Ozanam s Mathematical Recreations, afterwards published in English by Dr Hutton (4 vols., Lond., 1803). About four months before his death (December 1799) a pension of 2400 francs was conferred upon him. His }Iistory of Mathematics was completed by Lalande, and published at Paris in 1799-1802 (4 vols. 4to). Montucla s work was the first history of mathematics worthy of the name. It is characterized alike by elegance of style and by breadth of treatment. Montucla rarely fails in candour, and never in breadth of sympathy ; he lived at a time when it would have been pardon able to treat mathematics &quot;as a French science,&quot; yet he cannot with justice be accused of Chauvinism. The study of the history of mathematics has greatly revived of late years, especially in Germany, and numerous monographs on special departments have appeared, in which, as was to be expected, many defects and some positive errors in Montucla s work have been pointed out, but, taken as a whole, it stands as yet unsuperseded, unrivalled, fit, as to its admirable style and enduring quality, to be compared with Gibbon s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. MONZA (locally Monscia), a city of Italy in the pro vince of Milan, at the branching of the railway for Lecco and Como, lies on the Lambro, a tributary of the Po, mainly on the right bank, in a healthy and attractive situation. Of the mediaeval fortifications little remains save the Porta d Agrate. The cathedral of St John Baptist is the principal object of interest : Theodelinda s basilica was enlarged at the close of the 13th century by throwing the atrium into the main building, and the present marble fagade was erected about the middle of the 14th by Matteo da Campione. On the left-hand side of the front rises an incongruous brick-built tower, 278 feet high, erected by Peregrini. Within the church are the iron crown of Lombardy (removed by Austria in 1859, and since restored) and the relics of Theodelinda, comprising her crown, fan and comb of gold, and the golden hen and seven chickens, representing Lombardy and her seven provinces. Next to the cathedral in artistic importance come the church of Santa Maria in Istrada, and the broletto or old palace of the commune, usually styled the Arengario : the former (founded in 1357) has a rich Bramantesque facade, reckoned one of the best pieces of terra-cotta work in Lombardy, and the latter is raised on a system of pointed arches, and has a tall square tower terminating in machicolations surrounding a sharp central cone. San Michele was the scene of the coronation of Conrad III. in 1128, and San Gerardo (formerly Sant Ambrogio) is named after the patron saint of Monza, Gerardo de Tintori, who founded the first kcal hospital in 1174. The royal palace of Monza (1777), with its exten sive gardens and parks, lies not far from the town on the banks of the Lambro. Cotton goods and felt hats are the staple products of Monza industry ; then dyeing, organ- building, and a publishing trade. The population of the city was 15,450 in 1871, and that of the commune increased from 24,661 in 1861 to 28,012 in 1881. Local antiquaries claim for Monza (Modicia or Modaetia) the rank of a Roman colony, but it cannot have been a place of consequence till it attracted the discerning eye of Theodoric ; and, though it was a favourite residence with his immediate successors, its first im portant associations are with Theodelinda (see vol. xiv. p. 815). During the period of the republics Monza was sometimes inde pendent, sometimes subject to Milan. The Visconti, who ulti mately became masters of the city, built a castle in 1325 on the site now occupied by the Palazzo Durini. In the course of its history Monza has stood thirty-two sieges, and been repeatedly plun dered, notably by the forces of Charles V. The countship (1499- 1796) was purchased in 1546 by the wealthy banker Durini, and remained in his family till the Revolution. MOOLTAN. See MULTAN. MOON, THE. The subject of the moon divides itself into two separate branches, the one concerned vrith the con stitution of the lunar globe, the other with its motions. For the first subject the reader is referred to the article ASTRONOMY (vol. ii. p. 801 &amp;lt;/.) ; the present article is con fined to the second, which is commonly called the Lunar Theory. The lunar theory does not yet form a well-defined body of reasoning and doctrine, like other branches of mathematical science, but consists only of a series of researches, extending through twenty centuries or more, and incapable of being welded into a consistent whole.