RINUCCINI
61
RIOBAMBA
leaden "bulls" attached (see Bulls and Briefs).
From the fifteenth century, however, the Fisher-
man's ring has been used to seal the class of papal
official documents known as Briefs. The Fisherman's
ring is placed by the cardinal carnerlengo on the
finger of a newly elected pope. It is made of gold,
with a representation of St. Peter in a boat, fishing,
and the name of the reigning pope around it.
Babington in Diet. Christ. Antiq., s. v., 3.
Maurice M. Hassett.
Rinuccini, Giovanni Battista, b. at Rome, 1592; d. at Fermo, 1653, was the son of a Florentine patri- cian, his mother being a sister of Cardinal Ottavo. Educated at Rome and at the Universities of Bologna, Perugia and Pisa, in due course he was ordained priest, having at the age of twenty-two obtained his doctor's degree from the University of Pisa. Return- ing to Rome he won distinction as an advocate in the ecclesiastical courts, and in 1625 became Archbishop of Fermo. For the twenty years following, his life was the uneventful one of a hard-working chief pastor, and then, in 1645, he was sent as papal nuncio to Ire- land. Maddened by oppression, the Irish Catholics had taken up arms, had set up a legislative assembly with an executive government, and had bound them- selves by oath not to cease fighting until they had secured undisturbed possession of their lands and reli- gious liberty. But the difficulties were great. The Anglo-Irish and old Irish disagreed, their generals were incompetent or quarrelled with each other, sup- plies were hard to get, and the Marquis of Ormond managed to sow dissension among the members of the Supreme Council at Kilkenny. In these circum- stances the Catholics sought for foreign aid from Spain and the pope; and the latter sent them Rinuccini with a good supply of arms, ammunition, and money. He arrived in Ireland, in the end of 1645, after having narrowly escaped capture at sea by an English vessel. Acting on his instructions from the pope, he encour- aged the Irish Catholics not to strive for national independence, but rather to aid the king against the revolted Puritans, provided there was a repeal of the penal laws in existence. Finding, however, that Or- mond, acting for the king, would grant no toleration to the Catholics, Rinuccini wished to fight both the Royalists and the Puritans. The Anglo-Irish, satis- fied with even the barest toleration, desired negotia- tions with Ormond and peace at any price, while the Old Irish were for continuing the war until the Planta- tion of Ulster was undone, and complete toleration secured. Failing to cfTect a union between such discordant elements, Rinuccini lost courage; and when Ormond surrendered Dublin to the Puritans, and the Catholics becam(> utterly helpless from dis- sension, he left Ireland, in 1649, and retired to his diocese, where he died.
Rinuccini, The Embassy to Ireland (tr. Hutton. Dublin, 1873); Gilbert, History of Irish Affairs {1641-62) (Dublin, 1880); Meehan, Confederation of Kilkenny (Dublin, 184G); D'Alton, History of Ireland (London, 1910).
E. A. D'Alton.
Rio, Alexis-Francois, French writer on art, b. on the Island of Arz, Department of Morbihan, 20 May, 1797; d. 17 June, 1874. He was educated at the college of Vannes, where he received his first appointment as instructor, which occupation how- ever proved to be distasteful. He proceeded to Paris, but was temporarily disappointed in his hope of ob- taining there a chair of history. His enthusiastic championsliip of the liberty of the Greeks attracted the attention of the Government, which appointed him censor of the public; press. His refusal of this appointment won him great popularity and the life- long friendship of Montalembert. In 1828 he pub- lished his first work, "Essai sur I'histoire de I'esprit humain dans I'antiquite", which brought him the
favour of the minister de La' Ferronays and a secreta-
riate in the Ministry of Poreign AiTairs. This position
allowed him (as Montalembert later wrote to him) to
become for Christian, what Winckelmann had been
for ancient, art. He spent the greater portion of the
period 1830-60 in travels through Italy, Germany,
and England. In Munich he became acquainted with
the spokesmen of contemporary Catholicism —
Boisserde, Baader, Dollinger, Gorres, and Rumohr —
and also with Schelling. Schelling gave him an in-
sight into the aesthetic ideal; Rumohr directed him to
Italy, where the realization of this ideal in art could
be seen. In 1835 the first volume of his "Art chrd-
tien" appeared under the misleading title, "De la
poesie chretienne — ^Forme de I'art". This work,
which was received with enthusiasm in Germany and
Italy, was a complete failure in France. Discouraged,
he renounced art study and wrote a history of the
persecutions of the English Catholics, a work which
was never printed. As the result of his intercourse
with the Pre-Raphaelites of England, where he lived for
three years and married, and especially of Montalem-
bert's encouragement, he visited again, in company
with his wife, all the important galleries of Europe,
although he had meanwhile become lame and had to
drag himself through the museums on crutches.
Prominent men like Gladstone, Manzoni, and Thiers
became interested in his studies, which he published
in four volumes under the title "L'art chr6tien"
(1861-7). This work is not a history of all Christian
art, but of Italian painting from Cimabue to the death
of Raphael. Without any strict method or criticism,
he expresses preference for the art of the fifteenth cen-
tury, not without many an inexact and even unjust
judgment on the art of later ages; but, in spite, or
rather on account of this partiality, he has contributed
greatly towards restoring to honour the forgotten and
despised art of the Middle Ages. Rio describes the
more notable incidents of his life in the two works,
"Histoire d'un college breton sous I'Empire, la petite
chouannerie" (1842) and "Epilogue h l'art chrdtien"
(2 vols., Paris, 1872). He also published the following
works: "Shakespeare" (1864), in which he claims
the great dramatist as a Catholic; "Michel-Ange
et Raphael" (1867); "L'id6al antique et I'iddal Chre-
tien" (1873).
Lef^bure, Portraits de croyants (2nd ed., Paris, 190.5), 157- 284. B. KlEINSCHMIDT.
Riobamba, Diocese of (Bolivarensis), suffragan of Quito, Ecuador, erected by Pius IX, 5 Jan., 1863. The city, which has a population of 18,000, is situated 9039 feet above sea-level, 85 miles E.N.E. of Guaya- quil. Its streets are wide and its adobe houses gen- erally but one story high on account of the frequent earthquakes. Formerly the city was situated about 18 miles further west near the village of Cajabamba and contained 40,000 inhabitants, but it was com- pletely destroyed on 4 Feb., 1797, by an earthquake. Old Riobamba was the capital of the Kingdom of Puruha before the conquest of the Incas; it was de- stroyed by Ruminahui during his retreat in 1533 after his defeat by Benalcdzar. The cathedral and the Redemptorist church in the new city are very beauti- ful. Velasco the historian and the poets Larrea and Orozco were natives of Riobamba. It was here too that the first national Ecuadorian convention was held in 1830. The diocese, comprising tlu; civil Prov- inces of Chimborazo and Bolivar (ha\'ing an area of 4250 square miles), has 63 priests, 48 churches and chapels, and about 200,000 inhabitants. The pres- ent bishop, Mgr Andres Machado, S.J., was born at Cuenca, Ecuador, 16 Oct., 1850, and appointed, 12 Nov., 1907, in succession to Mgr Arsenio Andrade (b. at Uyumbicho, in the Archdiocese of (Juito, 8 Sept., 1825, appointed on 13 Nov., 1884, d. 1907).
Mera, Geog. de la republica del Ecuador.
A. A. MacErlean.
