Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/359

Rh and partly paraphrases. The paraphrase shows how easy it is to invent a discreditable character and doctrine for a heretic. He says that Cerinthus believed &quot; that the kingdom of Christ would be on earth, and that being fond of the body and altogether carnal, he dreamt that he would revel in these delights for which he longed the satisfaction of the stomach and the parts below it, that is. in foods, and drinks, and marriages, and the means by which he thought that he could more decently procure these, namely, feasts and sacrifices and the slaying of victims.&quot; It is barely possible that Dionysius may have had access to other sources of information than the state ment of Caius, but the probability is all on the other side. He was a determined antagonist of millenarianism, and was prepared to see gross sensuality in the adherents of the doctrine ; but there is no good evidence that Cerinthus was sensual. We cannot even affirm that he was a millenarian, for Caius evidently formed his opinion on this matter in consequence of his belief that Cerinthus wrote the Revelation ascribed to St John a belief which others seem to have shared with him (Epiph. Hcer. li., 3). Our third source is not extant in its original form, but is to be traced in Epiphanius (Hcer. xxviii.), and in almost all the Latin writers on heresy contained in Oehler s first volume of his Corp-us Hceresiologicum, but most markedly in Philastrius (c. 36) and Pseudo-Augustinus (c. 8). According to Irenavas, Cerinthus carefully distinguished between the historical man Jesus and the sson Christ. This source evidently represented Jesus and Christ as the same, and it was the descent of the Holy Ghost after his baptism that rendered Jesus Christ capable of performing miracles. Jesus Christ was the son of Joseph and Mary, and was for the short time of his ministry miraculously endowed through the descent of the Holy Ghost, but the Holy Ghost left him before he suffered, and he died and did not rise again, but will rise again when the general resurrection takes place. Cerinthus, according to these authorities, affirmed that the world was made by angels, and that the law and the prophets were given by one of the angels who made the world. Philastrius thus sums up the other features of the heresy. &quot; He taught circumcision and the observance of the Sabbath. . . He does not receive the apostle Paul, he honours Judas the traitor, he receives the gospel accord ing to Matthew, he despises three gospels, he rejects the Acts of the Apostles, he blasphemes the blessed martyrs.&quot; Epiphaniua makes him accept only a portion of the gospel of St Matthew. He thinks that he was one of those Judaic Christians referred to in Acts xv. 24, that he also found fault with the apostle Peter for going to Cornelius (Acts xi. 3) and created a commotion against Paul in connection with Titus (Acts xxi. 28), and that St Paul alludes to a practice of Cerinthians in noticing baptism for the dead. Most of these statements are probably incorrect, and some of them are to be rejected without hesitation for chronological reasons. Some of the writers mention a Merinthus, who was either the same as Cerinthus or was confounded with him. It is likely that this is not the only confusion in these accounts, and we may well doubt whether either Justin or Hippolytus could be the source from which they were drawn, or that the account contained in it was more accurate than that of Irenasus.

1em  CERRETO, a town of Italy, in the Neapolitan pro vince of Benevento, on the Cusano. It is well-built, is agreeably situated on the slope of Monte Matese, and has a fine cathedral, collegiate church, and seminary. With Telese it forms the see of a bishop. There are several cloth manufactories, and excellent wine is produced in tho neighbourhood. The town suffered greatly from the plague in 1656, and from an earthquake in 1688. Population, 7000.  CERRO DE PASCO, a town of Peru, in the department of Junin, on the table-land of Bombon, 14,280 feet above sea-level. The houses are ill-built, and there are no public buildings of importance. Living is dear, the neighbourhood is unfertile, and the climate is cold and stormy. The silver mines, discovered in 1630, are numerous, but not so pro ductive as in past times. Population, consisting chiefly of Indians and a mongrel race, about 13,000.  CERTALDO, a market-town of Tuscany, on the right bank of the Elsa, in the province of Florence, and 15 miles south-west of that city. It was the birthplace of Boccaccio, whose house, repaired in 1823 by the Marchesa Lenzoni Medici, is still to be seen. One of the rooms contains, besides some of the ancient furniture, the remnants of the poet s tomb, his autograph, and his picture. Not far from the house stands the Church of St Michael and St James, from which Boccaccio s remains were removed in 1783. In December 1875 a monument to his memory was erected by the authorities of the town. The older part of Certaldo is on the summit of a steep and conical hill, and contains the building which was once the strong hold of the Counts Alberti, the lords of the place before it became subject to Florence. There also dwelt the vicars. of Certaldo, who ruled the town and district for Florence, till the reign of the reformer Peter Leopold. The new burgh is situated along the course of a road that skirts the foot of the hill. Population about 2000.  CERVANTES-SAAVEDRA, (1547-1616), the author of Don Quixote, was born at Alcala de Henares, the ancient Complutum, a small town in the province of New Castile, in 1547. The day of his birth is not known, but as he was baptized on the 9th of October it is conjectured from his Christian name that he was born on St Michaelmas day preceding. The place of his nativity also remained in doubt until the year 1748, when Don Juan de Yriarte found in the Royal Library of Madrid a manuscript entitled La Verdadera Patria de Miguel de Cervantes, written by the learned Benedictine Martin Sarmiento. Till then seven cities, Madrid, Seville, Lucena, Toledo, Esquivias, Alcazar de San Juan, and Consuegra, had contended for the honour of being his birthplace, although in the Topography of Algiers, by Father Haedo, published in 1612, mention was made of Cervantes as a native of Alcabj, de Henares, and the Birth at genealogist Mendez de Silva, in his tract on Nuiio Alfonso, Alcala de published in 1648, had also spoken of him as a noble Henares, Castilian gentleman of the same town. All doubts on the subject, their long ignorance as to which is one of the many proofs of the carelessness with which the Spaniards have treasured what belongs to the memory of their illustrious countryman, were finally resolved by the discovery of the petition for an inquiry into his conduct at Algiers addressed by Cervantes to the Government in 1580. The family of Cervantes, which had for some generations attached to their patronymic the name of Saavedra, was of respectable if not noble origin. The patriotic zeal of some later biographers has even claimed for it affinity to the royal blood of Castile. The cradle of the race was Galicia, from which province the ancestors of Cervantes emigrated at an early date. Members of the family accompanied Ferdinand III. on his expedition against the Moorish kingdom of Seville and obtained a share of the conquered territory. The grand- 