Versailles. For three years he worked indefatigably to procure justice, and made the Calas case famous throughout Europe (see Voltaire). Finally the king and council unanimously agreed to annul the proceeding of the parlement of Toulouse; Calas was declared to have been innocent, and every imputation of guilt was removed from the family.
See Causes célèbres, tome iv.; Raoul Allier, Voltaire et Calas, une erreur judiciaire au XVIII e siècle (Paris, 1898); and biographies of Voltaire.
CALASH (from Fr. calèche, derived from Polish kolaska, a wheeled carriage), a light carriage with a folding hood; the Canadian calash is two-wheeled and has a seat for the driver on the splash-board. The word is also used for a kind of hood made of silk stretched over hoops, formerly worn by women.
CALASIAO, a town of the province of Pangasinán, Luzon, Philippine Islands, on a branch of the Agno river, about 4 m. S. by E. of Dagupan, the N. terminal of the Manila & Dagupan railway. Pop. (1903) 16,539. In 1903, after the census had been taken, the neighbouring town of Santa Barbara (pop. 10,367) was annexed to Calasiao. It is in the midst of a fertile district and has manufactures of hats and various woven fabrics.
CALASIO, MARIO DI (1550–1620), Italian Minorite friar, was born at a small town in the Abruzzi whence he took his name. Joining the Franciscans at an early age, he devoted himself to Oriental languages and became an authority on Hebrew. Coming to Rome he was appointed by Paul V., whose confessor he was, to the chair of Scripture at Ara Coeli, where he died on the 1st of February 1620. Calasio is known by his Concordantiae sacrorum Bibliorum hebraicorum, published in 4 vols. (Rome, 1622), two years after his death, a work which is based on Nathan’s Hebrew Concordance (Venice, 1523). For forty years Calasio laboured on this work, and he secured the assistance of the greatest scholars of his age. The Concordance evinces great care and accuracy. All root-words are treated in alphabetical order and the whole Bible has been collated for every passage containing the word, so as to explain the original idea, which is illustrated from the cognate usages of the Chaldee, Syrian, Rabbinical Hebrew and Arabic. Calasio gives under each Hebrew word the literal Latin translation, and notes any existing differences from the Vulgate and Septuagint readings. An incomplete English translation of the work was published in London by Romaine in 1747. Calasio also wrote a Hebrew grammar, Canones generates linguae sanctatae (Rome, 1616), and the Dictionarium hebraicum (Rome, 1617).
CALATAFIMI, a town of the province of Trapani, Sicily, 30 m. W.S.W. of Palermo direct (5112 m. by rail). Pop. (1901) 11,426. The name of the town is derived from the Saracenic castle of Kalat-al-Fimi (castle of Euphemius), which stands above it. The principal church contains a fine Renaissance reredos in marble. Samuel Butler, the author of Erewhon, did much of his work here. The battlefield where Garibaldi won his first victory over the Neapolitans on the 15th of May 1860, lies 2 m. S.W.
CALATAYÚD, a town of central Spain, in the province of Saragossa, at the confluence of the rivers Jalón and Jiloca, and on the Madrid-Saragossa and Calatayúd-Sagunto railways. Pop. (1900) 11,526. Calatayúd consists of a lower town, built on the left bank of the Jalón, and an upper or Moorish town, which contains many dwellings hollowed out of the rock above and inhabited by the poorer classes. Among a number of ecclesiastical buildings, two collegiate churches are especially noteworthy. Santa Maria, originally a mosque, has a lofty octagonal tower and a fine Renaissance doorway, added in 1528; while Santo Sepulcro, built in 1141, and restored in 1613, was long the principal church of the Spanish Knights Templar. In commercial importance Calatayúd ranks second only to Saragossa among the Aragonese towns, for it is the central market of the exceptionally fertile expanse watered by the Jalón and Jiloca. About 2 m. E. are the ruins of the ancient Bilbilis, where the poet Martial was born c. A.D. 40. It was celebrated for its breed of horses, its armourers, its gold and its iron; but Martial also mentions its unhealthy climate, due to the icy winds which sweep down from the heights of Moncayo (7705 ft.) on the north. In the middle ages the ruins were almost destroyed to provide stone for the building of Calatayúd, which was founded by a Moorish amir named Ayub and named Kalat Ayub, “Castle of Ayub.” Calatayúd was captured by Alphonso I. of Aragon in 1119.
CALATIA, an ancient town of Campania, Italy, 6 m. S.E. of Capua, on the Via Appia, near the point where the Via Popillia branches off from it. It is represented by the church of St. Giacomo alle Galazze. The Via Appia here, as at Capua, abandons its former S.E. direction for a length of 2000 Oscan ft. (180412 English ft.), for which it runs due E. and then resumes its course S.E. There are no ruins, but a considerable quantity of débris; and the pre-Roman necropolis was partially excavated in 1882. Ten shafts lined with slabs of tufa which were there found may have been the approaches to tombs or may have served as wells. The history of Calatia is practically that of its more powerful neighbour Capua, but as it lay near the point where the Via Appia turns east and enters the mountains, it had some strategic importance. In 313 B.C. it was taken by the Samnites and recaptured by the dictator Q. Fabius; the Samnites captured it again in 311, but it must have been retaken at an unknown date. In the 3rd century we find it issuing coins with an Oscan legend, but in 211 B.C. it shared the fate of Capua. In 174 we hear of its walls being repaired by the censors. In 59 B.C. a colony was established here by Caesar.
See Ch. Hülsen in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, iii. 1334 (Stuttgart, 1899).
CALAVERAS SKULL, a famous fossil cranium, reported by Professor J. D. Whitney as found (1886) in the undisturbed auriferous gravels of Calaveras county, California. The discovery at once raised the still discussed question of “tertiary man” in the New World. Doubt has been thrown on the genuineness of the find, as the age of the gravels is disputed and the skull is of a type corresponding exactly with that of the present Indian inhabitants of the district. Whitney assigns the fossil to late Tertiary (Pliocene) times, and concludes that “man existed in California previous to the cessation of volcanic activity in the Sierra Nevada, to the epoch of the greatest extension of the glaciers in that region and to the erosion of the present river cañons and valleys, at a time when the animal and vegetable creation differed entirely from what they now are. . . .” The specimen is preserved in the Peabody museum, Cambridge, Mass.
CALBÁYOG, a town of the province of Sámar, Philippine Islands, on the W. coast at the mouth of the Calbáyog river, about 30 m. N.W. of Catbalogan, the capital, in lat. 12° 3′ N. Pop. (1903) 15,895. Calbáyog has an important export trade in hemp, which is shipped to Manila. Copra is also produced in considerable quantity, and there is fine timber in the vicinity. There are hot springs near the town. The neighbouring valleys of the Gándara and Hippatan rivers are exceedingly fertile, but in 1908 were uncultivated. The climate is very warm, but healthy. The language is Visayan.
CALBE, or Kalbe, a town of Germany, on the Saale, in Prussian Saxony. It is known as Calbe-an-der-Saale, to distinguish it from the smaller town of Calbe on the Milde in the same province. Pop. (1905) 12,281. It is a railway junction, and among its industries are wool-weaving and the manufacture of cloth, paper, stoves, sugar and bricks. Cucumbers and onions are cultivated, and soft coal is mined in the neighbourhood.
CALCAR (or Kalcker), JOHN DE (1499–1546), Italian painter, was born at Calcar, in the duchy of Cleves. He was a disciple of Titian at Venice, and perfected himself by studying Raphael. He imitated those masters so closely as to deceive the most skilful critics. Among his various pieces is a Nativity, representing the angels around the infant Christ, which he arranged so that the light emanated wholly from the child. He died at Naples.
CALCEOLARIA, in botany, a genus belonging to the natural order Scrophulariaceae, containing about 150 species of herbaceous or shrubby plants, chiefly natives of the South American Andes of Peru and Chile. The calceolaria of the present day has
