Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/981

CAS but an overstress on commentary alone preserved literature in times when mind was generally undervalued in comparison with the sword. Casaubon published an edition of Aristotle in Greek and Latin, and a similar edition of Polybius—the latter being the more excellent of the two—with commentaries on Diogenes Laertius, Theophrastus, Theocritus, Persius, Suetonius, Pliny the younger, and many others. His commentary on the Deipnos Sophistæ of Athenæus is probably the most notable of all. He remained a protestant throughout life, although his modest and kindly spirit, and his anxiety to be fair and just, exposed him to constant proselytizing efforts on the one hand, and to suspicions among his fellow-believers on the other. One of the most honourable facts of his life exposed him to the greatest annoyance. At the conference of Fontainebleau, the protestant champion, Duplessis was convicted of misquoting the Fathers; and Casaubon, who had been nominated one of the judges on the protestant side, not being able to resist the evidence, honourably decided against his own party. One of his friends concluded from this conscientious fairness that he must be a catholic in disguise, and was thus indignantly rebuked—"I conjure you by the immortal God do not soil my life with this stain, that like a masker my countenance belies my heart. Such a one I am not, I never have been, and I never will be." His conversion to Catholicism being found impossible he was accused of atheism. To this charge he pointedly answered—"Had I been an atheist, I should have been at Rome, where I have frequently been invited." Upon the assassination of Henry IV. he went to England, where he was favourably received by James I., and becoming that monarch's chief theological adviser, so pursued the even tenor of his way that the puritans were even scandalized at the moderation of his polemics, and the jesuits thought him deserving of every imaginable reproach. At James' request he prepared an examination of the Annals of Baronius, but his ecclesiastical was not equal to his classical learning. Casaubon died July 6, 1614, and was buried in Westminster abbey. Some time previous to his death he had been offered various Oxford degrees, and had replied with mingled modesty and pride, that as long as he lived his name should be his only title.—L. L. P.  CASAUBON,, son of the more famous Isaac Casaubon, was born at Geneva in 1599. He came to England with his father in 1610, and was entered at Christ church, Oxford, where he took his master's degree in 1621, and in the same year published a defence of his father, named "Pietas contra maledicos patrii nominis et religionis hostes," which brought him into notice, and secured for him the favour of the king, at whose command he published a second defence in 1624. He received various preferments in the church, which he held till about 1644, when the violence of the civil wars deprived him of his livings. He was, however, honoured by a request from Cromwell to write the history of the war, which he declined, as well as the offer of a pension. He also refused a flattering offer from Christiana of Sweden, who wished him to undertake the inspection of her universities. At the Restoration he received his ecclesiastical preferments once more, and enjoyed them till his death in 1671. His works were very numerous. Sir William Temple praises his work on Enthusiasm; and his treatise "Of Credulity and Incredulity in things natural, civil, and divine," is remarkable as avowing his belief in "spirits, witches, and supernatural operations."—J. B.  CASE,, M.D., a learned physician of the sixteenth century, and the author of an interesting little work, entitled "The Praise of Musick; wherein, besides the antiquity and dignity, &c., is declared the sober and lawful use of the same in the congregation and church of God;" printed at Oxford, 12mo, 1586, with a dedicatory epistle to Sir Walter Raleigh. He was born at Woodstock about the year 1550, and died in 1599. A list of his works, which, with the above exception, possess little interest at the present day, may be seen in Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses (ed. Bliss, i. 686).—E. F. R.  CASE,, M.D., a noted astrologer of Queen Anne's time. He was a native of Lyme-Regis in Dorsetshire, and succeeded to the magical apparatus of Lilly and Salford. A work entitled "Compendium Anatomicum, nova arte institutum," is with much probability ascribed to Case. It is a defence of De Graaf's opinion as to the generation of all animals ab ovo.—J. B.  CASEARIUS,, a Dutch botanist, lived during the second half of the seventeenth century. He resided as a missionary at Cochin, and assisted Rheede in his Hortus Malabaricus. He arranged the plan of that great work, and described the plants in the first two volumes. An American genus of plants is called Casearia in honour of him.—J. H. B.  CASES. See.  CASES,, a French painter, born at Paris in 1676. He obtained the grand prize for painting in 1699, and was received into the academy in 1704. He painted a great number of works, but towards the end of his life he stooped to become a mere art-machine for the rapid production of pictures, which were, of course, of small value. He was the instructor of Le Moine. He died in 1754 at Paris.  CASIMIR, the name of five kings of Poland:—

I., surnamed, and also , son of Miccislaus II., and of Rikscha, niece of the emperor, Otho III., died in 1058. At the death of his father, which occurred in 1034, when Casimir was still a minor, his mother undertook the government with the title of regent; but her administration proving unpopular she fled with the young prince to France. Becoming a member of the Benedictine order of Cluni, he remained in France till recalled by his subjects in 1041. He was a just and liberal monarch, and did much to foster the civilization of the kingdom by his patronage of letters, and by repressing idolatry.

II., called, younger son of Boleslas III., born in 1017, succeeded his brother, Miccislaus III., in 1177, and reigned till his death in 1194. He defeated the heathen tribes of Prussia, and compelled them to adopt the christian faith, and at home protected the common people from the tyranny of the nobles.

III., styled, born in 1309; died in 1370. He succeeded his father, Wladislas, in 1333, commencing a reign of singular lustre and beneficence with the character, only too well deserved, of a reckless libertine. His first public acts augured little for the prosperity of the kingdom under his rule. Absorbed in pleasure he allowed several provinces to be wrested from the crown, purchased peace with his enemies at the price of dishonour, and connived at the most shameful abuses of the administration and the courts of justice. The memory of these delinquencies, however, he gradually effaced by successful wars with the Tartars, Cossacks, Livonians, and Bohemians, and at length completely obliterated, by the introduction of reforms into every branch of the public service, which only the talents of a great legislator, and the wisdom and beneficence of a great sovereign, could have been effectual in inaugurating. A higher title than that by which he is commonly distinguished in history, was that by which the nobles of the kingdom sought to point the finger of scorn at his administration, calling him "the peasants' king," with a contempt which it was his glory to have earned, not by the vulgar acts of display and condescension, but by earnest, although not always successful exertions to relieve the great body of his subjects from the oppression of feudal institutions. He abolished the arbitrary powers of the judges by the introduction of a double code of laws (for the Greater and the Lesser Poland), established a supreme court of appeal at Cracovia, projected and endowed schools and hospitals for the poor, and on the model of the university of Paris founded that of Cracovia (1347). In contrast to all this beneficence, however, was his absurd submission to a Jewish mistress, who had the art to obtain from him for her countrymen commercial monopolies, which throughout the reign of Casimir continued to weigh heavily on the enterprise of other classes of his subjects. Casimir III. was twice married, to Anne, daughter of Gedemin, grand duke of Lithuania, and to Adelaide of Hesse, but left no children by either of his wives. At his death in 1370, the two kingdoms of Hungary and Poland were united, under the rule of his nephew and successor, Louis of Anjou.

IV., second son of Jagello, grand duke of Lithuania, who married a daughter of King Lewis, and afterwards became king of Poland, under the title of Wladislas III. Casimir succeeded to the crowns of Poland and Lithuania at the death of his brother, Wladislas IV., who fell gloriously at the battle of Varna in 1444. Personally little entitled to distinction, his character being that of an indolent although not incompetent sovereign, Casimir gave his name to a period in the history of Prussia, which was illustrated by the subjection of the Teutonic knights, and by the introduction of deputies from provinces into the diet of the kingdom. He died in 1492.

, son of Sigismund III., king of Poland, <section end="981Zcontin" />