ANCILLON, JOHANN PETER FRIEDRICH (1766–1837), Prussian historian and statesman, great-grandson of Charles Ancillon, was born at Berlin on the 30th of April 1766. He studied theology at Geneva, and after finishing his course was appointed minister to the French community at Berlin. At the same time his reputation as a historical scholar secured him the post of professor of history at the military academy. In 1793 he visited Switzerland, and in 1796 France, and published the impressions gathered during his travels in a series of articles which he afterwards collected under the title of Mélanges de littérature et de philosophie (1801). Ancillon took rank among the most famous historians of his day by his next work, Tableau des révolutions du système politique de l’Europe depuis le XVᵉ siècle (1803, 4 vols.; new ed., 1824), which gained him the eulogium of the Institute of France, and admission to the Academy of Berlin. It was the first attempt to recognize psychological factors in historical movements, but otherwise its importance was exaggerated. Its “sugary optimism, unctuous phraseology and pulpit logic” appealed, however, to the reviving pietism of the age succeeding the Revolution, and these qualities, as well as his eloquence as a preacher, early brought Ancillon into notice at court. In 1808 he was appointed tutor to the royal princes, in 1809 councillor of state in the department of religion, and in 1810 tutor of the crown prince (afterwards Frederick William IV.), on whose sensitive and dreamy nature he was to exercise a powerful but far from wholesome influence. In October 1814, when his pupil came of age, Ancillon was included by Prince Hardenberg in the ministry, as privy councillor of legation in the department of foreign affairs, with a view to utilizing his supposed gifts as a philosophical historian in the preparation of the projected Prussian constitution. But Ancillon’s reputed liberalism was of too invertebrate a type to survive the trial of actual contact with affairs. The practical difficulty of the constitutional problem gave the “court parson”—as Gneisenau had contemptuously called him—excuse enough for a change of front which, incidentally, would please his exalted patrons. He covered his defection from Hardenberg’s liberal constitutionalism by a series of “philosophical” treatises on the nature of the state and of man, and became the soul of the reactionary movement at the Berlin court, and the faithful henchman of Metternich in the general politics of Germany and of Europe.
In 1817 Ancillon became a councillor of state, and in 1818 director of the political section of the ministry for foreign affairs under Count Bernstorff. In his chief’s most important work, the establishment of the Prussian Zollverein, Ancillon had no share, while the entirely subordinate rôle played by Prussia in Europe during this period, together with the personal part taken by the sovereign in the various congresses, gave him little scope for the display of any diplomatic talents he may have possessed. During this time he found plentiful leisure to write a series of works on political philosophy, such as the Nouveaux essais de politique et de philosophie (Paris, 1824). In May 1831 he was made an active privy councillor, was appointed chief of the department for the principality of Neuchâtel, in July became secretary of state for foreign affairs, and in the spring of 1832, on Bernstorff’s retirement, succeeded him as head of the ministry.
By the German public, to whom Ancillon was known only through his earlier writings and some isolated protests against the “demagogue-hunting” in fashion at Berlin, his advent to power was hailed as a triumph of liberalism. They were soon undeceived. Ancillon had convinced himself that the rigid class distinctions of the Prussian system were the philosophically ideal basis of the state, and that representation “by estates” was the only sound constitutional principle; his last and indeed only act of importance as minister was his collaboration with Metternich in the Vienna Final Act of the 12th of June 1834, the object of which was to rivet this system upon Germany for ever. He died on the 19th of April 1837, the last of his family. His historical importance lies neither in his writings nor in his political activity, but in his personal influence at the Prussian court, and especially in its lasting effect on the character of Frederick William IV.
See C. A. L. P. Varnhagen von Ense, Blätter aus der preussischen Geschichte, 5 vols. (Leipzig, 1868–1869); ib. Tagebücher, vol. i. (Leipzig, 1861); H. O. Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte (Leipzig, 1879–1894), and essay on Ancillon in Preussische Jahrbücher for April 1872; Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, s.v. (Leipzig, 1875).
ANCÓN, a small village and bathing-place on the coast of Peru, 22 m. N. of Lima by rail. The bay is formed by two projecting headlands and is one of the best on the coast. It has a gently sloping beach of fine sand and has been a popular bathing-place since the time of President Balta, although the country behind it is arid and absolutely barren. At some time previous to the discovery of America, Ancón had a large aboriginal population. Traces of terraces on the southern headland can still be seen, and the sand-covered hills and slopes overlooking the bay contain extensive burial-grounds which were systematically explored in 1875 by Messrs W. Reiss and A. Stübel (see Reiss and Stübel’s The Necropolis of Ancón in Peru, translated by A. H. Keane, 3 vols., Berlin, 1880–1887). In modern times Ancón has been the scene of several important historical events. Its anchorage was used by Lord Cochrane in 1820 during his attacks on Callao; it was the landing-place of an invading Chilean army in 1838; it was bombarded by the Chileans in 1880; and in 1883 it was the meeting-place of the Chilean and Peruvian commissioners who drew up the treaty of Ancón, which ended the war between Chile and Peru.
ANCON (from the Gr. ἀγκών), the anatomical name for “elbow”; “ancones” in architecture are the projecting bosses left on stone blocks or on drums of columns, to allow of their being either hoisted aloft or rubbed backwards and forwards to obtain a fine joint; the term is also given by Vitruvius to the trusses or console brackets on each side of the doorway of a Greek or Roman building which support the cornice over the same. A particular sort of sheep, with short crooked forelegs, is called “ancon” sheep.
ANCONA, ALESSANDRO (1835–), Italian critic and man of letters, was born at Pisa on the 20th of February 1835, of a wealthy Jewish family, and educated in Florence; at the age of eighteen he published his essay on the life and work of the philosopher Tommaso Campanella. In 1855 Ancona went to Turin, nominally to study law, but in reality to act as intermediary between the Tuscan Liberals and Cavour; he was an intimate friend of Luigi Carlo Farini (q.v.) and represented Tuscany in the Società Nazionale. On the fall of the Austrian dynasty in Tuscany (April 27, 1859) he returned to Florence, where he edited the newly founded newspaper La Nazione. In 1861 he was appointed professor of Italian literature at the university of Pisa. Among his works the following may be mentioned: Opera di Tommaso Campanella, 2 vols. (Turin, 1854); Sacre Rappresentazioni dei secoli XIV., XV., e XVI. (3 vols., Florence, 1872); Origini del Teatro in Italia (2 vols., Florence, 1877); La Poesia popolare italiana (Livorno, 1878), besides several volumes of literary essays, editions of the works of Dante and other early Italian writers, &c.
ANCONA, a seaport and episcopal see of the Marches, Italy, capital of the province of Ancona, situated on the N.E. coast of Italy, 185 m. N.E. of Rome by rail and 132 m. direct, and 127 m. S.E. of Bologna. Pop. (1901) 56,835. The town is finely situated on and between the slopes of the two extremities of the promontory of Monte Conero, Monte Astagno to the S., occupied by the citadel, and Monte Guasco to the N., on which the cathedral stands (300 ft.). The latter, dedicated to S. Ciriaco, is said to occupy the site of a temple of Venus, who is mentioned by Catullus and Juvenal as the tutelary deity of the place. It was consecrated in 1128 and completed in 1189. Some writers suppose that the original church was in the form of a Latin cross and belonged to the 8th century. An early restoration was completed in 1234. It is a fine Romanesque building in grey stone, built in the form of a Greek cross, with a dodecagonal dome over the centre slightly altered by Margaritone d’Arezzo in 1270. The façade has a Gothic portal, ascribed to Giorgio da Como (1228), which was intended to have a lateral arch on each
