Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/144

132 Baltasar Peruzzi of Siena. The researches of Huber and Breitkopf have proved, however, that this art was known and practised in Germany by Jan Ulrich Pilguin and Mair, at least as early as 1499, while the date of the oldest of Da Carpi s prints is 1518. Printing in chiaroscuro is performed by using several blocks. Da Carpi usually employed three, one for the outline and darker shadows, another for the lighter shadows, and a third for the half- tint. By means of them he printed engravings after several pictures and after some of the cartoons of Raphael. Of these a Sybil, a Descent from the Cross, and a History of Simon the Sorcerer are the most remarkable.  CARPINI,, author of a remarkable mediaeval work on Northern Asia. He appears to have been a native of Umbria, where a place formerly called Pian del Carpine, but now Piano della Magione, stands near Perugia, on the road to Cortona. He was one of the companions and disciples of his countryman St Francis of Assisi, and from sundry indications can hardly have been younger than the latter, born in 1182. John bore a high repute in the order, and took a foremost part in the pro pagation of its teaching in Northern Europe, holding suc cessively the offices of warden (custos) in Saxony, and of provincial (minister] of Germany, and afterwards of Spain, perhaps of Barbary, and of Cologne. He was in the last post at the time of the great Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe and of the disastrous battle of Liegnitz (April 12, 1241), which threatened to cast European Christendom beneath the feet of barbarous hordes. The dread of the Tartars was, however, still on men s mind four years later, when Pope Innocent IV. determined (1245) on sending a mission to the Tartar and other Asiatic princes, the real object of which apparently was to gain trustworthy informa tion regarding the hordes and their purposes. At the head of this mission the Pope placed Friar John, at this time certainly not far from 65 years of age, and to his discretion nearly everything in the accomplishment of the mission seems to have been left. The legate started from Lyons, where the Pope then resided, on Easter Day (16th April 1245), accompanied by another friar, who speedily broke down and was left behind. After seeking the counsel of an old friend, &quot;Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia, he was joined at Breslau by another minorite, F. Bennet the Pole, appointed to act as interpreter. The onward journey lay by Kiev ; the Tartar posts were entered at Kaniev, and thence the route ran across the Dnieper (Neper) and the Don to the Elhil or Volga, on which stood the Ordu or camp of Batu, at this time the senior of the Chinghizid family. Here the envoys with their presents had to pass between two fires before being presented to the prince. Batu ordered them to proceed onward to the court of the supreme Kaan in Mongolia, and on Easter Day once more (April 8, 1246) they started on the second and most formidable part of their journey &quot; so ill,&quot; writes the legate, &quot; that we could scarcely sit a horse ; and throughout all that Lent our food had been nought but millet with salt and water, and with only snow melted in a kettle for drink.&quot; Their bodies were tightly bandaged to enable them to endure the exces sive fatigue of this enormous ride, which led them across the Jaic (now called River Ural), and then north of the Caspian and the Aral to the Jaxartes (quidam fluvius magnus cujus nomen ignoramus), and the Mahometan cities which then stood on its banks ; then along the shores of the Dzungarian lakes and so forward, till, on the Feast of St Mary Magdalene (22d July), at last they reached the imperial camp called Sira Ordu (Yellow Pavilion), near the Orkhon River, this stout-hearted old man having thus ridden something like 3000 miles in 106 days. Since the death of Okkodai the imperial authority had been in interregnum. Kuyuk, his eldest son, had now been designated to the throne ; his formal election in a great Kurultai, or diet of the tribes, took place while the friars were at Sira Ordu, numbered among 3000 to 4000 envoys and deputies from all parts of Asia and Eastern Europe, bearing homage, tribute, and presents. They afterwards, on the 24th of August, witnessed the formal enthronement at another camp in the vicinity called the Golden Ordu, after which they were presented to the emperor. It was not till November that they got their dismissal, bearing a letter to the Pope in Mongol, Arabic, and Latin, which was little else than a brief imperious assertion of the Kaan s office as the scourge of God. Then commenced their long winter journey homeward ; often they had to lie on the bare snow, or on the ground scraped bare of snow with the traveller s foot. They reached Kiev on the 9th of June 1247. There, and on their further journey, the Slavonic Christians welcomed them as risen from the dead, with festive hospitality. Crossing the Rhine at Cologne, they found the Pope still at Lyons, and there delivered their report and the Kaan s letter. Not long afterwards Friar John was rewarded with the archbishopric of Antivari in Dalmatia, aiid was sent as legate to St Louis. We do not know the year of his death, but it would seem that his successor in the see died before April 1253 ; hence it is probable that John did not long survive the hardships of his journey.

1em 1em 1em 1em (Author:Henry Yule)  CARPOCRATES, a Gnostic of the 2d century, about whose life and opinions comparatively little is known. He is said to have been a native of Alexandria and by birth a Jew. His family, however, seem to have been converted to Christianity. His Gnostic theory was for the most part 