Page:EB1911 - Volume 05.djvu/92

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
80
CAMARGO—CAMBACÉRÈS

of his monks started on a missionary expedition to Hungary, but he was unable to accomplish the journey. He died in 1027. After his death mitigations were gradually introduced into the rule and manner of life; and in the monastery of St Michael in Murano, Venice, the life became cenobitical. From that time to the present day there have always been both eremitical and cenobitical Camaldolese, the latter approximating to ordinary Benedictine life. The Camaldolese spread all over Italy, and into Germany, Poland and France. Camaldoli itself exists as a “desert,” the primitive observance of the institute being strictly maintained. There are a few other “deserts,” all in Italy, except one in Poland; and there are about 90 hermits. The chief monastery of the cenobitical Camaldolese is S. Gregorio on the Caelian Hill in Rome; they number less than forty. Since the 11th century there have been Camaldolese nuns; at present there are five nunneries with 150 nuns, all belonging to the cenobitical branch of the order. The habit of the Camaldulians is white.

See Helyot, Hist. des ordres religieux (1792) v. cc. 21-25; Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen (1896) i. § 29; and the art. “Camaldulenser” in Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexikon (2nd ed.), and Herzog, Realencyklopädie (3rd ed.).  (E. C. B.) 


CAMARGO, MARIE ANNE DE CUPIS DE (1710–1770), French dancer, of Spanish descent, was born in Brussels on the 15th of April 1710. Her father, Ferdinand Joseph de Cupis, earned a scanty living as violinist and dancing-master, and from childhood she was trained for the stage. At ten years of age she was given lessons by Mlle Françoise Prévost (1680–1741), then the first dancer at the Paris Opéra, and at once obtained an engagement as première danseuse, first at Brussels and then at Rouen. Under her grandmother’s family name of Camargo she made her Paris début in 1726, and at once became the rage. Every new fashion bore her name; her manner of doing her hair was copied by all at court; her shoemaker—she had a tiny foot—made his fortune. She had many titled adorers whom she nearly ruined by her extravagances, among others Louis de Bourbon, comte de Clermont. At his wish she retired from the stage from 1736 to 1741. In her time she appeared in seventy-eight ballets or operas, always to the delight of the public. She was the first ballet-dancer to shorten the skirt to what afterwards became the regulation length. There is a charming portrait of her by Nicolas Lancret in the Wallace collection, London.


CAMARGUE (Insula Camaria), a thinly-populated region of southern France contained wholly in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, and comprising the delta of the Rhone. The Camargue is a marshy plain of alluvial formation enclosed between the two branches of the river, the Grand Rhône to the east and the Petit Rhône to the west. Its average elevation is from 61/2 to 8 ft. The Camargue has a coast-line some 30 m. in length and an area of 290 sq. m., of which about a quarter consists of cultivated and fertile land. This is in the north and on the banks of the rivers. The rest consists of rough pasture grazed by the black bulls and white horses of the region and by large flocks of sheep, or of marsh, stagnant water and waste land impregnated with salt. The region is inhabited by flocks of flamingoes, bustards, partridge, and by sea-birds of various kinds. The Étang de Vaccarès, the largest of the numerous lagoons and pools, covers about 23 sq. m.; it receives three main canals constructed to drain off the minor lagoons. The Camargue is protected by dikes from the inundations both of the sea and of the rivers. Inlets in the sea-dike let in water for the purposes of the lagoon fisheries and the salt-pans; and the river-water is used for irrigation and for the submersion of vines. The climate is characterized by hard winters and scorching summers. Rain falls in torrents, but at considerable intervals. The mistral, blowing from the north and north-west, is the prevailing wind. The south-eastern portion of the Camargue is known as the Ile du Plan du Bourg. A secondary delta to the west of the Petit Rhône goes by the name of Petite Camargue.


CAMARINA, an ancient city of Sicily, situated on the south coast, about 17 m. S.E. of Gela (Terranova). It was founded by Syracuse in 599 B.C., but destroyed by the mother city in 552 for attempting to assert its independence. Hippocrates of Gela received its territory from Syracuse and restored the town in 492, but it was destroyed by Gelon in 484; the Geloans, however, founded it anew in 461. It seems to have been in general hostile to Syracuse, but, though an ally of Athens in 427, it gave some slight help to Syracuse in 415–413. It was destroyed by the Carthaginians in 405, restored by Timoleon in 339 after its abandonment by Dionysius’s order, but in 258 fell into the hands of the Romans. Its complete destruction dates from A.D. 853. The site of the ancient city is among rapidly shifting sandhills, and the lack of stone in the neighbourhood has led to its buildings being used as a quarry even by the inhabitants of Terranova, so that nothing is now visible above ground but a small part of the wall of the temple of Athena and a few foundations of houses; portions of the city wall have been traced by excavation, and the necropolis has been carefully explored (see J. Schubring in Philologus, xxxii. 490; P. Orsi in Monumenti dei Lincei, ix. 201, 1899; xiv. 756, 1904). To the north lay the lake to which the answer of the Delphic oracle referred, μὴ κίνει Καμάριναν, when the citizens inquired as to the advisability of draining it.


CAMBACÉRÈS, JEAN JACQUES RÉGIS DE, duke of Parma (1753–1824), French statesman, was born at Montpellier on the 18th of October 1753. He was descended from a well-known family of the legal nobility (noblesse de la robe). He was designed for the magistracy of his province; and in 1771, when for a time the provincial parlement was suppressed, with the others, by the chancellor Maupeou, he refused to sit in the royal tribunal substituted for it. He continued, however, to study law with ardour, and in 1774 succeeded his father as councillor in the court of accounts and finances of his native town. Espousing the principles of the Revolution in 1789, he was commissioned by the noblesse of the province to draw up the cahier (statement of principles and grievances); and the sénéchaussée of Montpellier elected him deputy to the states-general of Versailles; but the election was annulled on a technical point. Nevertheless in 1792 the new department of Hérault, in which Montpellier is situated, sent him as one of its deputies to the Convention which assembled and proclaimed the Republic in September 1792. In the strife which soon broke out between the Girondins and the Jacobins he took no decided part, but occupied himself mainly with the legal and legislative work which went on almost without intermission even during the Terror. The action of Cambacérès at the time of the trial of Louis XVI. (December 25, 1792–January 20, 1793) was characteristic of his habits of thought. At first he protested against the erection of the Convention into a tribunal in these words: “The people has chosen you to be legislators; it has not appointed you as judges.” He also demanded that the king should have due facilities for his defence. Nevertheless, when the trial proceeded, he voted with the majority which declared Louis to be guilty, but recommended that the penalty should be postponed until the cessation of hostilities, and that the sentence should then be ratified by the Convention or by some other legislative body. It is therefore inexact to count him among the regicides, as was done by the royalists after 1815. Early in 1793 he became a member of the Committee of General Defence, but he did not take part in the work of its more famous successor, the Committee of Public Safety, until the close of the year 1794. In the meantime he had done much useful work, especially that of laying down, conjointly with Merlin of Douai, the principles on which the legislation of the revolutionary epoch should be codified. At the close of 1794 he also used his tact and eloquence on behalf of the restoration of the surviving Girondins to the Convention, from which they had been driven by the coup d’état of the 31st of May 1793. In the course of the year 1795, as president of the Committee of Public Safety, and as responsible especially for foreign affairs, he was largely instrumental in bringing about peace with Spain. Nevertheless, not being a regicide, he was not appointed to be one of the five Directors to whom the control of public affairs was entrusted after the coup d’état of Vendémiaire 1795; but, as before, his powers of judgment and of tactful debating soon carried him to the front in the council of Five Hundred. The