conclusions are set aside by the abbé E. Vacandard in his contribution to the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (vol. ii. art. “Célibat ecclésiastique”). (G. G. Co.)
CELL (from Lat. cella, probably from an Indo-European kal—seen in Lat. celare, to hide; another suggestion connects the word with Lat. cera, wax, taking the original meaning to refer to the honeycomb), in its earliest application a small detached room in a building, particularly a small monastic house (see
Abbey), generally in the country, belonging to large conventual buildings, and intended for change of air for the monks, as well as places to reside in to look after the lands, vassals, &c. Thus Tynemouth was a cell to St Albans; Ashwell, Herts, to Westminster Abbey. The term was also used of the small sleeping apartments of the monks, or a small apartment used by the anchorite or hermit. This use still survives in the application to the small separate chambers in a prison (q.v.) in which prisoners are confined. The word is applied to various small compartments which build up a compound structure such as a honeycomb, to the minute compartments in a tissue, &c. More particularly the word is used, in electrical science, of the single constituent compartments of a voltaic battery (q.v.), and in biology of the living units of protoplasm of which plants and animals are composed (see Cytology).
CELLA, in architecture, the Latin name for the sanctuary of a Roman temple, corresponding with the naos of the Greek temple. In the Etruscan temples, according to Vitruvius, there were three cellas, side by side; and in the temple of Venus built by Hadrian at Rome there were two cellas, both enclosed, however, in a single peristyle.
CELLARET (i.e. little cellar), strictly that portion of a sideboard which is used for holding bottles and decanters, so called from a cellar (which in general may be any underground unlighted apartment) being commonly used for keeping wine. Sometimes it is a drawer, divided into compartments lined with zinc, and sometimes a cupboard, but still an integral part of the sideboard. In the latter part of the 18th century, when the sideboard was in process of evolution from a side-table with drawers into the large and important piece of furniture which it eventually became, the cellaret was a detached receptacle. It was most commonly of mahogany or rosewood, many-sided or even octagonal, and occasionally oval, bound with broad bands of brass and lined with zinc partitions to hold the ice for cooling wine. Sometimes a tap was fixed in the lower part for drawing off the water from the melted ice. Cellarets were usually placed under the sideboard, and were, as a rule, handsome and well-proportioned; but as the artistic impulse which created the great 18th-century English school of furniture died away, their form grew debased, and under the influence of the English Empire fashion, which drew its inspiration from a bastard classicism, they assumed the shape of sarcophagi incongruously mounted with lions’ heads and claw-feet. Hepplewhite called them “gardes du vin”; they are now nearly always known as “wine-coolers.”
CELLE, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, on the left bank of the navigable Aller, near its junction with the Fuse and the Lachte, 23 m. N.E. of Hanover, on the main Lehrte-Hamburg railway. Pop. (1905) 21,400. The town has a Roman Catholic and five Protestant churches, among the latter the town-church with the burial vault of the dukes of Lüneburg-Celle. Here rest the remains of Sophia Dorothea, wife of the elector George of Hanover, afterwards George I. of England, and those of Caroline Matilda, the divorced wife of Christian VII. of Denmark and sister of George III. of England, who resided here from 1772 until her death in 1775. The most interesting building in Celle is the former ducal palace, begun in 1485 in Late Gothic style, but with extensive Renaissance additions of the close of the 17th century. The building of the court of appeal (Oberlandesgericht), with a valuable library of 60,000 volumes and many MSS., including a priceless copy of the Sachsenspiegel, the museum and the hall of the estates (Landschaftshaus) are also worthy of notice. There are manufactures of woollen yarn, tobacco, biscuits, umbrellas and printers’ ink, and a lively trade is carried on in wax, honey, wool and timber. Celle is the seat of the court of appeal from the superior courts of Aurich, Detmold, Göttingen, Hanover, Hildesheim, Lüneburg, Osnabrück, Stade and Verden. Founded in 1292, the town was the residence of the dukes of Lüneburg-Celle, a cadet branch of the ducal house of Brunswick, from the 14th century until 1705.
See Dehning, Geschichte der Stadt Celle (Celle, 1891).
CELLIER, ALFRED (1844–1891), English musical composer, was born at Hackney on the 1st of December 1844. From 1855 to 1860 he was a chorister at the Chapel Royal, St James’s, under the Rev. Thomas Helmore, where Arthur Sullivan was one of his youthful colleagues. His first appointment was that of organist at All Saints’ church, Blackheath (1862). In 1866 he succeeded Dr Chipp as director of the Ulster Hall concerts, Belfast, at the same time acting as conductor of the Belfast Philharmonic Society. In 1868 he returned to London as organist of St Alban’s, Holborn. From 1871 to 1875 he was conductor at the Prince’s theatre, Manchester; and from 1877 to 1879 at various London theatres. During this period he composed many comic operas and operettas, of which the most successful was The Sultan of Mocha, which was produced at Manchester in 1874, in London at the St James’s theatre in 1876, and revived at the Strand theatre in 1887. In 1880 Cellier visited America, producing a musical version of Longfellow’s Masque of Pandora at Boston (1881). In 1883 his setting of Gray’s Elegy in the form of a cantata was produced at the Leeds Festival. In 1886 he won the great success of his life in Dorothy, a comic opera written to a libretto by B. C. Stephenson, which was produced at the Gaiety theatre on the 25th of September 1886, and, transferred first to the Prince of Wales theatre and subsequently to the Lyric theatre, ran until April 1889. Doris (1889), and The Mountebanks, which was produced in January 1892, a few days after the composer’s death, were less successful. Cellier owed much to the influence of Sir Arthur Sullivan. He had little of the latter’s humour and vivacity, but he was a fertile melodist, and his writing is invariably distinguished by elegance and refinement. He died in London on the 28th of December 1891.
CELLINI, BENVENUTO (1500–1571), Italian artist, metal worker and sculptor, was born in Florence, where his family, originally landowners in the Val d’Ambra, had for three generations been settled. His father, Giovanni Cellini, was a musician and artificer of musical instruments; he married Maria Lisabetta Granacci, and eighteen years elapsed before they had any progeny. Benvenuto (meaning “Welcome”) was the third child. The father destined him for the same profession as himself, and endeavoured to thwart his inclination for design and metal work. When he had reached the age of fifteen his youthful predilection had become too strong to be resisted, and his father reluctantly gave consent to his being apprenticed to a goldsmith, Antonio di Sandro, named Marcone. He had already attracted some notice in his native place, when, being implicated in a fray with some of his companions, he was banished for six months to Siena, where he worked for Francesco Castoro, a goldsmith; from thence he removed to Bologna, where he became a more accomplished flute-player and made progress in the goldsmith’s art. After visiting Pisa, and after twice resettling for a while in Florence (where he was visited by the sculptor Torrigiano, who unsuccessfully suggested his accompanying him to England), he decamped to Rome, aged nineteen. His first attempt at his craft here was a silver casket, followed by some silver candlesticks, and later by a vase for the bishop of Salamanca, which introduced him to the favourable notice of Pope Clement VII.; likewise at a later date one of his celebrated works, the gold medallion of “Leda and the Swan,”—the head and torso of Leda cut in hard stone—executed for Gonfaloniere Gabbriello Cesarino, which is now in the Vienna museum; he also reverted to music, practised flute-playing, and was appointed one of the pope’s court-musicians. In the attack upon Rome by the constable de Bourbon, which occurred immediately after, in 1527, the bravery and address of Cellini proved of signal service
