de Toro (1619), and when Castro’s Comedias were published in 1618–1621 he dedicated the first volume to Lope de Vega’s daughter. The drama that has made Castro’s reputation is Las Mocedades del Cid (1599?), to the first part of which Corneille was largely indebted for the materials of his tragedy. The two parts of this play, like all those by Castro, have the genuine ring of the old romances; and, from their intense nationality, no less than for their primitive poetry and flowing versification, were among the most popular pieces of their day. Castro’s Fuerza de la costumbre is the source of Love’s Care, a play ascribed to Fletcher. He is also the reputed author of El Prodigio de los Montes, from which Calderón derived El Mágico prodigioso.
Las Mocedades del Cid (Toulouse, 1890) and Ingratitud de amor (Philadelphia, 1899) have been well edited by E. Mérimée and H. A. Rennert respectively.
CASTRUCCIO CASTRACANI DEGLI ANTELMINELLI (1281–1328), duke of Lucca, was by birth a Lucchese, and by descent and training a Ghibelline. Being exiled at an early age with his parents and others of their faction by the Guelphs, then in the ascendant, and orphaned at nineteen, he served as a condottiere under Philip IV. of France in Flanders, later with the Visconti in Lombardy, and in 1313 under the Ghibelline chief, Uguccione della Faggiuola, lord of Pisa, in central Italy. He assisted Uguccione in many enterprises, including the capture of Lucca (1314) and the victory over the Florentines at Montecatini (1315). An insurrection of the Lucchese having led to the expulsion of Uguccione and his party, Castruccio regained his freedom and his position, and the Ghibelline triumph was presently assured. Elected lord of Lucca in 1316, he warred incessantly against the Florentines, and was at first the faithful adviser and stanch supporter of Frederick of Austria, who made him imperial vicar of Lucca in 1320. After the battle of Mühlbach he went over to the emperor Louis the Bavarian, whom he served for many years. In 1325 he defeated the Florentines at Altopascio, and was appointed by the emperor duke of Lucca, Pistoja, Volterra and Luni, and two years later he captured Pisa, of which he was made imperial vicar. But, subsequently, his relations with Louis seem to have grown less friendly and he was afterwards excommunicated by the papal legate in the interests of the Guelphs. At his death in 1328 the fortunes of his young children were wrecked in the Guelphic triumph.
Niccolò Machiavelli’s Life of Castruccio is a mere romance; it was translated into French, with notes, by Dreux de Radier in 1753. See Niccolò Negrini, Vita di Castruccio (Modena, 1496); Winkler’s Castruccio, Herzog von Lucca (Berlin, 1897); also Gino Capponi’s Storia di Firenze, and G. Sforza, Castruccio Castracani degli Antelminelli in Lunigiana (Modena, 1891); S. de Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes (Brussels, 1838).
CASTRUM MINERVAE (mod. Castro), an ancient town of the Sallentini in Calabria, 10 m. south of Hydruntum, with an ancient temple of Minerva, said to have been founded by Idomeneus, who formed the tribe of the Sallentini from a mixture of Cretans, Illyrians and Italian Locrians. It is also said to have been the place where Aeneas first landed in Italy, the port of which he named Portus Veneris. The temple had lost some of its importance in Strabo’s day.
CASUARINA, a genus of trees containing about 30 species, chiefly Australian, but a few Indo-Malayan. The long whip-like green branches are longitudinally grooved, and bear at the nodes whorls of small scale-leaves, the shoots resembling those of Equisetum (horse-tail). The flowers are unisexual; the staminate are borne in spikes, each flower consisting of a central stamen which is surrounded by two scale-like perianth-leaves. The pistillate are borne in dense spherical heads; each flower stands in the axil of a bract and consists of two united carpels flanked by a pair of bracteoles; the long styles hang out beyond the bracts, and the one-chambered ovary contains two ovules. In the fruit the bracteoles form two woody valves between which is a nut; the aggregate of fruits resemble small cones. Pollen is transferred by the wind to the long styles. The pollen-tube does not penetrate the ovule through the micropyle but enters at the opposite end—the chalaza. This anomaly was discovered by Dr M. Treub (see Annal. Jardin Botan. Buitenzorg, x. 1891), and is associated with a peculiar development of the ovule, and an increased number and peculiar form of the embryo-sacs (nacrospores). Treub proposed to separate Casuarina as a distinct group of Angiosperms, and suggested the following arrangement:—
| Angiospermae | Porogamae | Dicotyledons. |
| Monocotyledons. | ||
| Chalazogamae (Casuarina). | ||
The names of the two subdivisions recall the manner of entrance of the pollen-tube. More recent investigations, chiefly by Nawaschin and Miss Benson, on members of the orders Betulaceae, Fagaceae, Juglans and Ulmus, showed a recurrence in a greater or less degree of the various anomalies previously observed in Casuarina, and suggest that the affinity of Casuarina is with these orders of Dicotyledons.
The wood is very hard, and several species are valuable timber trees. From a fancied resemblance of the wood to that of the oak these trees are known as “oaks,” and the same species has different names in different parts such as “she-oak,” “swamp-oak,” “shingle-oak,” “river-oak,” “iron-wood,” “beef-wood,” &c.
See J. H. Maiden, Useful Native Plants of Australia (London and Sydney, 1889).
CASUISTRY (from the Lat. casus, a point of law), the art of bringing general moral principles to bear on particular actions. It is, in short, applied morality; anybody is a casuist who reflects about his duties and tries to bring them into line with some intelligible moral standard. But morality at different times has worn very different dresses. It has sometimes been thought of as an outward law, sometimes as an inward disposition; and each of these rival conceptions has developed a casuistical method of its own. Believers in law have put their trust in authority or logic; while believers in disposition chiefly look to our instinctive faculties—conscience, common-sense or sentiment. The legal is the older group, and to it the name of casuist is often exclusively reserved, generally with the implication that its methods are too purely technical to commend themselves to mankind at large. But common-sense and conscience are quite as definite guides as logic or authority; and there seems no good reason for refusing to give the name of casuistry to their operations.
The casuistry of primitive man is uncompromisingly legal. His morality is not yet separated from his religion; and religion for him means the cult of some superior being—the king or priest of his tribe—whose person is charged with a kind of sacred electricity. “His divinity is a fire, which, under proper restraints, confers endless blessings; but if rashly touched, or allowed to break bounds, it burns or destroys what it touches. Hence the disastrous effects supposed to follow a breach of taboo; the offender has thrust his hand into the divine fire, which shrivels up and consumes him on the spot” (Frazer, The Golden Bough, i. 169). Elaborate rules are accordingly drawn up to secure the maximum of benefit, and the minimum of inconvenience, from this sacred fire; and in the application of these rules does savage casuistry consist. At a higher stage of civilization the god is no longer present in person but issues to his worshippers categorical commands. These logic must seize upon and develop as far as they will go; for the breach of some trifling consequence of a rule might mean the loss of the deity’s favour. Hence the rise of sacred books among most Eastern peoples. On the Jewish Decalogue, for instance, follows the law, and on the law the rabbinical schools. Some of these will be stricter, and some laxer; but on the whole all tend to “aggravate” the law—down to the point of forbidding the faithful to wear a girdle, or to kill a noxious insect on the Sabbath. Though indeed we might look nearer home than the Talmud for similar absurdities; most Puritan communities could furnish strange freaks of Sabbatarian casuistry. Nor have the Catholics been one whit behind them. Their scholastic doctors gravely discuss whether—since water is the “matter” of baptism—a soul can be made regenerate by milk, or rose-water or wine.
At the opposite pole stood ancient Greece. Here ceremonial
