for seven years by the pasha as a slave. Having been redeemed by his order in 1596, he spent some years in mission work on the west coast of India, and it was not until 1603 that he again set out for Abyssinia, and landed at the port of Massawa. At the headquarters of his order, in Fremona, he soon acquired the two chief dialects of the country, translated a catechism, and set about the education of some Abyssinian children. He also established a reputation as a preacher, and having been summoned to court, succeeded in vanquishing the native priests and in converting Za-Denghel, the negus, who wrote to the pope and the king of Spain for more missionaries, an act of zeal which involved him in civil war with the Abyssinian priests (who dreaded the influence of Paez) and ultimately cost him his life (Oct. 1604). Paez, who is said to have been the first European to visit the source of the Blue Nile, died of lever in 1622.
In addition to the translation of the Catechism, Paez is supposed to be the author of a treatise De Abyssinorum erroribus and a history of Ethiopia (ed. C. Beccari in Rerum aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti a saeculo XVI. ad XIX. (1905).
See A. de Backer, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus (ed. C. Sommervogel) vi. (1895); W. D. Cooley in Bulletin de la société de géographie (1872), 6th series, vol. iii.
PAGAN, a town and former capital, in Myingyan district,
Upper Burma, 92 m. S.W. of Mandalay. It was founded by
King Pyinbya in 847, and remained the capital until the extinction
of the dynasty in 1298. Pagan itself is now a mere village,
but hundreds of pagodas in various stages of decay meet the
eye in every direction. The majority of them were built by King
Anawra-hta, who overcame the Peguan king, Manuha of Thaton.
It was Anawra-hta who introduced the Buddhist religion in
Upper Burma, and who carried off nearly the whole Thaton
population to build the pagodas at Pagan on the model of the
Thaton originals. Many of these are of the highest architectural
interest, besides being in themselves most imposing structures.
Pagan is still a popular place of Buddhist pilgrimage, and a
museum has been built for the exhibition of antiquities found
in the neighbourhood. The population in 1901 was 6254.
PAGAN (Lat. paganus, of or belonging to a pagus, a canton,
county district, village, commune), a heathen, one who worships
a false god or false gods, or one who belongs to a race or nation
which practises idolatrous rites and professes polytheism. In
its early application paganus was applied by the Christian Church
to those who refused to believe in the one true God, and still
followed the Greek, Roman and other ancient faiths. It thus
of course excluded Jews. In the middle ages, at the time of
the crusades and later, “pagan” and “paynim” (O. Fr.
paenime, Late Lat. paganismus, heathenism or heathen lands)
were particularly applied to Mahommedans, and sometimes to
Jews. A special significance attaches to the word when applied
to one who adopts that attitude of cultured indifference to, or
negation of, the various theistic systems of religion which was
taken by so many of the educated and aristocratic classes in
the ancient Hellenic and Roman world.
It has long been accepted that the application of the name paganus, villager, to non-Christians was due to the fact that it was in the rural districts that the old faiths lingered. This explanation assumes that the use of paganus in this sense arose after the establishment of Christianity as the religion generally accepted in the urban as opposed to the rural districts, and it is usually stated that an edict of the emperor Valentinian of 368 dealing with the religio paganorum (Cod. Theod. xvi. 2) contains the first documentary use of the word in this secondary sense. It has now been shown that the use can be traced much earlier. Tertullian (c. 202; De corona militis, xi.), says “Apud hunc (Christum) tam miles est paganus fidels quam paganus est miles infidelis.” This gives the clue to the true explanation. In classical Latin paganus is frequently found in contradistinction to miles or armatus (cf. especially Tac. Hist. i. 53; ii. 14, 88; iii. 24, 43, 77), where the opposition is between a regular enrolled soldier and the raw half-armed rustics who sometimes formed a rude militia in Roman wars, or, more widely, between a soldier and a civilian. Thus the Christians who prided themselves on being “soldiers of Christ” (milites) could rightly term the non-Christians pagani. See also Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. Bury, 1896), ch. xxi. note ad fin.
PAGANINI, NICOLO (1784–1840), Italian virtuoso on the violin, was born at Genoa on the 18th of February 1784. His father Antonio, a clever amateur, who was in the shipping business, taught him the violin at a very early age, and he had further lessons from the maestro di cappella of the cathedral of San Lorenzo. He first appeared in public at Genoa in 1793, with triumphant success. In 1795 he visited Parma for the purpose of taking lessons from Alessandro Rolla, who, however, said that he had nothing to teach him. On returning home, he studied more diligently than ever, practising single passages for ten hours at a time, and publishing compositions so difficult that he alone could play them. His first professional tour, through the cities of Lombardy, was made with his father in 1797. For some years he led a chequered career; he gambled at cards, and had to pawn his violin; and between 1801 and 1804 he lived in retirement, in Tuscany, with a noble lady who was in love with him. In 1805 however he started on a tour through Europe, astonishing the world with his matchless performances, and especially with his unprecedented playing on the fourth string alone. The princess of Lucca and Piombo, Napoleon’s sister, made him her musical director, and he became a prominent figure at the court where his caprices and audacities were a byword. He abandoned this in 1813, and visited Bologna, Milan, and other cities, gaining further fame by his extraordinary virtuosity. In Venice, in 1815, he began a liaison with Antonia Bianchi, a dancer, which lasted till 1828; and by her he had a son Achillino, born in 1826. Meanwhile the world rang with his praises. In 1827 the pope honoured him with the Order of the Golden Spur; and, in the following year, he extended his travels to Germany, beginning with Vienna, where he created a profound sensation. He first appeared in Paris in 1831; and on the 3rd of June in that year he played in London at the King’s Theatre. His visit to England was preluded by the most romantic stories. He was described as a political victim who had been immured for twenty years in a dungeon, where he played all day long upon an old broken violin with one string, and thus gained his wonderful mechanical dexterity. The result of this and other foolish reports was that he could not walk the streets without being mobbed. He charged what for that time were enormous fees; and his net profits in England alone, during his six years of absence from his own country, amounted to some £17,000. In 1832 he returned to Italy, and bought a villa near Parma. In 1833 he spent the winter in Paris, and in 1834 Berlioz composed for him his beautiful symphony, Harold en Italie. He was than at the zenith of his fame; but his health, long since ruined by excessive study, declined rapidly. In 1838 he suffered serious losses in Paris through the failure of the “Casino Paganini,” a gambling-house which was refused a licence. The disasters of this year increased his malady—laryngeal phthisis—and, after much suffering, he died at Nice on the 17th of May 1840. His will left a fortune of £80,000 to his son Achillino; and he bequeathed one of his violins, a fine Joseph Guarnerius, given him in early life by a kind French merchant, to the municipality of Genoa, who preserve it as one of their treasures. Paganini’s style was impressive and passionate to the last degree. His cantabile passages moved his audience to tears, while his tours de force were so astonishing that a Viennese amateur publicly declared that he had seen the devil assisting him. His name stands in history as that of the most extraordinary executant ever known on the violin; and in spite of greater artists or no less remarkable later virtuosi, this reputation will remain with Paganini as the inaugurator of an epoch. He was the first to show what could be done by brilhance of technique, and his compositions were directed to that end. He was an undeniable genius, and it may be added that he behaved and looked like one, with his tall, emaciated figure and long black hair.
There are numerous lives of Paganini; see the article and bibliography in Grove’s Dictionary of Music.
