principal port, is a fortified town on the east coast, and occupies a rocky foreland almost surrounded by the sea. Besides the interesting church (formerly a cathedral), dating from the 12th or 13th century, the loggia or council chambers, and the palace of its former Venetian governors, it possesses the noble mansion of the Arnieri, and other specimens of the domestic architecture of the 15th and 16th centuries, together with the massive walls and towers, erected in 1420, and the 15th-century Franciscan monastery, with its beautiful Venetian Gothic cloister. The main resources of the islanders are boat-building (for which they are celebrated throughout the Adriatic), fishing and seafaring, the cultivation of the vine, corn and olives, and breeding of mules. Pop. (1900) of island, 17,377; of capital (town and commune), 6486. Prehistoric grave-mounds are common on the hills of the interior, and in later times Curzola may have been a Phoenician settlement. Its early history is very obscure, but it was certainly colonized by Greeks from Cnidus. The present name is a corruption of the Gr. Κέρκυρα Μέλαινα, or Lat. Corcyra Nigra, “Black Corcyra”; and is perhaps due to the dark pines which still partly cover the island. In 998 Curzola first came under Venetian suzerainty. During the 12th century it was ruled by Hungary and Genoa in turn, and enjoyed a brief period of independence; but after 1255 its hereditary counts again submitted to Venice. The Roman Catholic see of Curzola, created in 1301, was only suppressed in 1806. Curzola surrendered to the Hungarians in 1358, was purchased by Ragusa (1413–1417), and finally declared itself subject to Venice in 1420. In 1571 it defended itself so gallantly against the Turks that it obtained the designation fidelissima. From 1776 to 1797 it succeeded Lesina as the main Venetian arsenal in this region. During the Napoleonic wars it was ruled successively by Russians, French and British, ultimately passing to Austria in 1815.
CURZON OF KEDLESTON, GEORGE NATHANIEL, 1st
Baron (1859– ), English statesman, eldest son of the 4th baron Scarsdale, rector of Kedleston, Derbyshire, was born on the 11th of January 1859, and was educated at Eton and Balliol
College, Oxford. At Oxford he was president of the Union, and
after a brilliant university career was elected a fellow of All Souls
College in 1883. He became assistant private secretary to Lord
Salisbury in 1885, and in 1886 entered parliament as member
for the Southport division of S.W. Lancashire. He was appointed
under secretary for India in 1891–1892 and for foreign affairs
in 1895–1898. In the meantime he had travelled in Central Asia,
Persia, Afghanistan, the Pamirs, Siam, Indo-China and Korea,
and published several books describing central and eastern Asia
and the political problems connected with those regions. In 1895
he married Mary Victoria Leiter (d. 1906), daughter of a Chicago
millionaire. In January 1899 he was appointed governor-general
of India, where his extensive knowledge of Asiatic affairs
showed itself in the inception of a strong foreign policy, while he
took in hand the reform of every department of Indian administration.
He was created an Irish peer on his appointment,
the creation taking this form, it was understood, in order that
he might remain free during his father’s lifetime to re-enter the
House of Commons. Reaching India shortly after the suppression
of the frontier risings of 1897–98, he paid special
attention to the independent tribes of the north-west frontier,
inaugurated a new province called the North West Frontier
Province, and carried out a policy of conciliation mingled with
firmness of control. The only trouble on this frontier during
the period of his administration was the Mahsud Waziri campaign
of 1901. Being mistrustful of Russian methods he exerted
himself to encourage British trade in Persia, paying a visit to
the Persian Gulf in 1903; while on the north-east frontier he
anticipated a possible Russian advance by the Tibet Mission of
1903, which rendered necessary the employment of military force
for the protection of the British envoys. The mission, which had
the ostensible support of China as suzerain of Tibet, penetrated
to Lhasa, where a treaty was signed in September 1904. In
pursuance of his reforming policy Lord Curzon appointed a
number of commissions to inquire into Indian education, irrigation,
police and other branches of administration, on whose
reports legislation was based during his second term of office as
viceroy. With a view to improving British relations with the
native chiefs and raising the character of their rule, he established
the Imperial Cadet corps, settled the question of Berar with
the nizam of Hyderabad, reduced the salt tax, and gave relief
to the smaller income-tax payers. Lord Curzon exhibited much
interest in the art and antiquities of India, and during his
viceroyalty took steps for the preservation and restoration of
many important monuments and buildings of historic interest.
In January 1903 he presided at the durbar held at Delhi in honour
of the coronation of King Edward VII. It was attended by all
the leading native princes and by large numbers of visitors from
Europe and America; and the magnificence of the spectacle
surpassed anything that had previously been witnessed even in
the gorgeous ceremonial of the East. On the expiration of his
first term of office, Lord Curzon was reappointed governor-general.
His second term of office was marked by the passing
of several acts founded on the recommendations of his previous
commissions, and by the partition of Bengal (1905), which roused
bitter opposition amongst the natives of that province. A difference
of opinion with the commander-in-chief, Lord Kitchener,
regarding the position of the military member of council in
India, led to a controversy in which Lord Curzon failed to obtain
support from the home government. He resigned (1904) and
returned to England. In 1904 he was appointed lord warden
of the Cinque Ports; in the same year he was given the honorary
degree of D.C.L. by Oxford University, and in 1908 he was
elected chancellor of the university. In the latter year he was
elected a representative peer for Ireland, and thus relinquished
any idea of returning to the House of Commons. In 1909–1910
he took an active part in defending the House of Lords against
the Liberals. Lord Curzon’s publications include Russia in
Central Asia (1889); Persia and the Persian Question (1892);
Problems of the Far East (1894; new ed., 1896).
See Caldwell Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, 1898–1903 (1906); and C. J. O’Donnell, The Failure of Lord Curzon (1903).
CUSANUS, NICOLAUS (Nicholas of Cusa) (1401–1464), cardinal, theologian and scholar, was the son of a poor fisherman named Krypffs or Krebs, and derived the name by which he is known from the place of his birth, Kues or Cusa, on the Moselle, in the archbishopric of Trier (Treves). In his youth he was employed in the service of Count Ulrich of Manderscheid, who, seeing in him evidence of exceptional ability, sent him to study at the school of the Brothers of the Common Life at Deventer, and afterwards at the university of Padua, where he took his doctor’s degree in law in his twenty-third year. Failing in his first case he abandoned the legal profession, and resolved to take holy orders. After filling several subordinate offices he became archdeacon of Liége. He was a member of the council of Basel, and dedicated to the assembled fathers a work entitled De concordantia Catholica, in which he maintained the superiority of councils over popes, and assailed the genuineness of the False Decretals and the Donation of Constantine. A few years later, however, he had reversed his position, and zealously defended the supremacy of the pope. He was entrusted with various missions in the interests of Catholic unity, the most important being to Constantinople, to endeavour to bring about a union of the Eastern and Western churches. From 1440 to 1447 he was in Germany, acting as papal legate at the diets of 1441, 1442, 1445 and 1446. In 1448, in recognition of his services, Nicholas V. raised him to the cardinalate; and in 1450 he was appointed bishop of Brixen against the wish of Sigismund, archduke of Austria, who opposed the reforms the new bishop sought to introduce into the diocese. In 1451 he was sent to Germany and the Netherlands to check ecclesiastical abuses and bring back the monastic life to the original rule of poverty, chastity and obedience—a mission which he discharged with well-tempered firmness. Soon afterwards his dispute with the archduke Sigismund in his own diocese was brought to a point by his claiming certain dues of the bishopric, which the temporal prince had appropriated. Upon this the bishop was imprisoned by the archduke, who, in his turn, was excommunicated by the pope.
