Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/617

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
GEL
581
GEL

of March 31, he lost the whole of his cannon and ammunition, and escaped with only a remnant of his troops. He retired from the service in 1839, and died at St. Petersburg in 1850.—F. M.

GELASIUS, the Elder, Bishop of Cæsarea in Palestine, to which see he was appointed in 367, by his uncle Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem. He wrote an ecclesiastical history no longer extant, an exposition of the Creed, and other treatises of minor note. Theodoret praises a passage in his homily on the Epiphany, which asserts and proves the distinction of the two natures in Christ. He died in 394.—W. B. B.

GELASIUS of Cyzicus (an island in the Propontis), Bishop of Cæsarea, was the son of a presbyter of Cyzicus. The persecution of the orthodox churches by the Arian emperor, Basilicus, in 475-477, led him to compile "The Acts of the First Council." Dupin states that this work "is nothing but a collection of treatises and pieces taken out of Eusebius, Ruffinus, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret;" and that "what is not taken out of these authors is either dubious or manifestly false." Cave agrees in this condemnatory judgment. It is, however, highly probable that the work of Gelasius has suffered not only from mutilation, but from interpolation at the hands of ignorant monks, and that the original work may have deserved the reputation it appears to have secured from contemporaries.—W. B. B.

GELASIUS I., a native of Africa, was raised to the papacy early in the year 492. The great Eutychian controversy—decided theologically, but not in practice, at the council of Chalcedon—was still agitating the East. Gelasius, upon his election, did not send letters of communion to the patriarch Euphemius, and upon his complaining of this, explained in a long letter, which is still extant, the grounds of his apparent harshness. This drew upon the pope much trouble and opposition during the whole of his pontificate. Finding soon afterwards that the Pelagian heresy was reviving in Dalmatia and Picenum, he condemned it in circular letters addressed to the bishops of those countries, which seem to have produced the desired effect. At a council held at Rome in 494, the canon of scripture was determined; the decrees of the four œcumenical and other orthodox councils, and the works of the principal fathers, were solemnly received; while the false councils and the writings of heretics were as solemnly reprobated. Gelasius abolished the ancient festival of the Lupercalia. He died in 496, the year of the conversion of Clovis. His holy and self-denying life is borne witness to by all his biographers. An ancient sacramentary, or missal, of the Roman church, containing the masses of the whole year and the liturgical forms of all the sacraments, bears the name of this pope, and is supposed to have been compiled by him.—T. A.

GELASIUS II. (John of Gaeta), a benedictine monk of Monte-Cassino, was elected pope after the death of Paschal in January, 1118. He had been his predecessor's chancellor, and was elected by the clergy and people as one who in the pending struggle between the church and the empire on the question of investitures, would be likely to tread in Paschal's footsteps. For the same reason the emperor and his Roman satellites were infuriated at the news of his election, and the Baron Cencio Frangipani breaking into the room where the pope was seated, on the forty-fourth day after his election, seized him by the throat, and dragging him by the hair with repeated kicks, cuffs, and spur-thrusts, imprisoned him in his castle. A rising of the populace before long led to his release, and Gelasius fled to Gaeta. The Emperor Henry V. had, in the meantime, come to Rome, and nominated an antipope in the person of Maurice Bourdin, or Burdinus, archbishop of Braga, who had been excommunicated by Paschal the year before. After holding a synod at Capua, in which Bourdin was anathematized, Gelasius passed to Salerno, where he embarked with the intention of going to France to invoke the support of Louis le Gros, and landed at Genoa. Thence he proceeded to Vienne, where he remained for a short time. He earnestly promoted the expedition which was organized in France about this time, for the purpose of aiding the Spaniards to eject the Saracens from Saragossa. Towards the end of the year 1118 he convened a synod at Vienne, soon after which he was seized with illness. Like a true monk he desired to die in the arms of his monastic brethren, and having been conveyed to the Benedictine monastery of Cluny, there ended his days on the 29th January, 1119.—T. A.

GELDENHAUER, Gerard, a Dutch writer, born at Nimeguen in 1480. He studied under Hegius, who was also the instructor of Erasmus, with whom Geldenhauer maintained an intimate friendship till the Reformation, when he adopted the tenets of Luther. he was an excellent classical scholar, and his skill in Latin versification caused him to be crowned poet-laureate by the Emperor Maximilian I. At the outset of his career he had adopted a monkish life, but leaving the cloister, he attached himself to the court of Charles of Austria, afterwards emperor, whose biography he wrote. He next became secretary to Philip of Burgundy, bishop of Utrecht. He is the author of eight satires, published at Louvain, and of the life of Philip; he also wrote a history of Lower Germany, and "Historia Batavica." He died at Wittemberg in 1542.—R. D. B.

GELÉE, Claude, commonly called Claude Lorrain, was born in Lorraine, at Chateau de Chamagne, near Charmes, in the Vosges, France, in 1600; his parents were poor, and young Claude was placed with a baker and pastrycook. The cooks of Lorraine were at that time celebrated, and Claude travelled in company with a party of these to Rome, where he found a situation as domestic servant with Agostino Tassi, the landscape painter, who had been a pupil of Paul Bril. Claude seems to have been Tassi's servant of all work; for he not only cooked his dinner, but took charge of his palette and brushes, and this latter occupation, very fortunately for the young Frenchman, gave him an opportunity of which he took the utmost advantage, not only keeping them in order for his master, but learning also to make very good use of them himself. Such is Claude's origin as related by himself to his friend Sandrart, though some false French vanity of later times has endeavoured to set it aside, and to prove that Claude was always a very respectable young gentleman, quite above any menial occupation, and brought up originally to art. This pretence of respectability, however, rests upon a ludicrous misprint in the Latin translation of Sandrart's Accademia Todesca, where, in the account of Claude, the translator had written Pîstor Artocreatum for pastrycook, but the compositor knowing he was setting up the life of a painter, not unnaturally substituted the word pictor for pistor, and thus made Claude's master a painter of pies instead of a baker of them, and upon this the French converted the pastrycook into a sign painter, and proved that Claude was originally educated for the arts. Claude adopted an original style; Sandrart taught him to paint from nature, but he never learnt to paint figures or animals. His figures were commonly inserted by others, as Bourguignon, Filippo Lauri, or Andrew Both; his cattle he painted himself, and they are always indifferent, and often bad. Claude's great excellence was in air and foliage. His subjects were generally chosen from the banks of the Tiber, from the Campagna, and the neighbouring hills and woodlands of Rome; mountain-scenery he appears to have had no taste for, though it abounded in his neighbourhood; he was also successful in architecture and in water. His architecture does not consist of views of actual buildings, but apparently of compositions of his own, in the taste of the Italian renaissance. Sometimes we see ruins, sometimes perfect buildings of great pretensions and some splendour, often enhanced by his skilful management of light. His colouring shows no great excellence; his greens are often cold, blue, and excessive; his foregrounds also, and his seas, are frequently too hard and cutting, even wooden in their effect. He was very slow and careful in his execution. Sandrart says he would sometimes work a fortnight at a picture, without showing any progress. The Doria and Sciarra palaces in Rome contain some of his finest works, and there are several in our own National Gallery. England is richer than any other country in Claude's landscapes; he has been long a favourite here. Indeed, admiration for his works has been carried to an affectation. One of his greatest admirers was Sir George Beaumont, who presented four of the Claudes at the National Gallery. Turner was very indignant at this laudation of Claude at the expense of English painters; and to vindicate his own rank as a landscape painter, he selected two of his own works which he bequeathed to the trustees of the National Gallery on condition that they should always be placed between the two celebrated Augerstein Claudes known as the "Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca," and the "Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba." Claude's best works were painted about 1645. Notwithstanding his great age and success, Baldinucci informs us that his property at his death did not exceed in value ten thousand scudi or about two thousand guineas. He died at Rome on the 23rd of November, 1682, having paid only