ances differ from halos and coronae inasmuch as their centres are at the anti-solar point; they thus resemble the rainbow. The anthelia (from the Greek ἀντί, opposite, and ἥλιος, the sun) are coloured red on the inside, the outside being generally colourless owing to the continued overlapping of many spectra. The diameter increases with the size of the globules making up the mist. The chromatic rings seen encircling the “spectre of the Brocken” are similarly explained.
The blue colour of the sky (q.v.), supernumerary rainbows, and the gorgeous sunsets observed after intense volcanic disturbances, when the atmosphere is charged with large quantities of extremely minute dust particles (e.g. Krakatoa), are also explicable by the diffraction of light. (See Dust.)
See E. Mascart, Traité d’optique (1899–1903); J. Pernter, Meteorologische Optik (1902–1905).
In architecture, the term “corona” is used of that part of a cornice which projects over the bed mould and constitutes the chief protection to the wall from rain; it is always throated, and its soffit rises towards the wall. The term is also given to the apse or semicircular termination of the choir; as at Canterbury in the part called “Becket’s crown.” The large circular chandelier suspended in churches, of which the finest example is that given by Barbarossa to Aix-la-Chapelle, is often called a corona. The term is also used in botany of the crown-like appendage at the top of compound flowers, the diminutive being coronule.
CORONACH (a Gaelic word, from comh, with, and ranach, wailing), the lamentation or dirge for the dead which accompanied funerals in the Highlands of Scotland and in Ireland. The more usual term in Ireland is “keen” or “keening.”
CORONADO, FRANCISCO VASQUEZ DE (c. 1500–c. 1545), Spanish explorer of the south-western part of the United States of America. He accompanied Antonio de Mendoza to New Spain in 1535; by a brilliant marriage, became a leading grandee, and in 1539 was appointed governor of the province of New Galicia. The report presented by Fray Marcos de Niza concerning the “Seven cities of Cibola” (now identified almost certainly with the Zuñi pueblos of New Mexico) aroused great interest in
Mexico; Melchior Diaz was sent late in 1539 to retrace Fray
Marcos’s route and report on his story; and an expedition under
Coronado left Compostela for the “Seven Cities” in February
1540. This expedition consisted of a provision train and droves
of live-stock; several hundred friendly Indians, Spanish footmen,
and more than 250 horsemen. Coronado, with a part of this
force, captured the “Seven Cities.” The fabled wealth, however,
was not there. In the autumn (1540) Coronado was joined by the
rest of his army. Meanwhile exploring parties were sent out:
Tusayan, the Hopi or Moki (Moqui) country of north-eastern
Arizona, was visited; Garcia Lopez de Cardenas discovered and
described the Grand Canyon of the Colorado; and expeditions
were sent along the Rio Grande (Tuguez), where the army
wintered. The Indians revolted but were put down. The army,
reinspirited by the tales of a plains-Indian slave[1] about vast
herds of cows (bison) on the plains, and about an Eldorado called
“Quivira” far to the N.E., started thither in April 1541, and,
with a few horsemen, penetrated at least to what is now central
Kansas. Here Coronado found a few permanent settlements of
Indians; in October he was again on the Rio Grande; and in the
spring of 1542 he led his followers home. Thereafter he practically
disappears from history. The first description of the bison
and the prairie plains, the first trustworthy account of the Zuñi
pueblos, the discovery of the Grand Canyon, a vast increase of
the nominal dominion of Spain and Christianity (the priests did
not return from Cibola), and a notable addition to geographical
knowledge, which, however, was long forgotten, were the results
of this expedition; which is, besides, for its duration and the vast
distance covered, over mountains, desert and plains, one of the
most remarkable expeditions in the history of American discovery.
In connexion with it, in 1540, Hernando de Alarcon
ascended the Gulf of California to its head and the Colorado river
for a long distance above its mouth.
All the essential sources with a critical narrative are available in G. P. Winship’s The Coronado Expedition (in the 14th Report of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, for 1892–1893, Washington, 1896), except the Tratado del descubrimiento de las Yndias y su conquesta of Juan Suarez de Peralta (written in the last third of the 16th century, republished at Madrid, 1878). See also especially Justo Zaragoza, Noticias historicas de la Nueva España (Madrid, 1878), the various writings of A. F. A. Bandelier (q.v.); General J. H. Simpson in Smithsonian Institution Report (Washington, 1869), with an excellent map; and Winship for a full bibliography. H. H. Bancroft’s account in his Pacific States (vols. 5, 10, 12) is less authoritative.
CORONATION (Lat. corona, crown), a solemnity whereby sovereigns are inaugurated in office. In pre-Christian times in Europe the king or ruler, upon his election, was raised on a shield, and, standing upon it, was borne on the shoulders of certain of the chief men of the tribe, or nation, round the assembled people. This was called the gyratio, and it was usually performed three times. At its conclusion a spear was placed in the king’s hand, and the diadem, a richly wrought band of silk or linen, which must not be confused with the crown (see Crown and Coronet), was bound round his forehead, as a token of regal authority. When Europe became Christian, a religious service of benediction was added to the older form, which, however, was not abandoned. Derived from the Teutons, the Franks continued the gyratio, and Clovis, Sigebert, Pippin and others were thus elevated to the royal estate. From a combination of the old custom with the religious service, the later coronation ceremonies were gradually developed. In the ceremonial procession of the English king from the Tower to Westminster (first abandoned at the coronation of James II.), in the subsequent elevation of the king into what was known as the marble chair in Westminster Hall, and in the showing of the king of France to the people, as also in the universal practice of delivering a sceptre to the new ruler, traces, it is thought, may be detected of the influence of the original function.
The added religious service was naturally derived from the Bible, where mention is frequently made, in the Old Testament, of the anointing and crowning of kings. The anointing of the king soon came to be regarded as the most important, if not essential, feature of the service. By virtue of the unction which he received, the sovereign was regarded, in the middle ages, as a mixta persona, in part a priest, and in part a layman. It was a strange theory, and Lyndwode, the great English canonist, is cautious as to it, and was content to say that it was the opinion of some people. It gained very wide acceptance, and the anointed sovereign was generally regarded as, in some degree, possessed of the priestly character. By virtue of the unction he had received, the emperor was made a canon of St John Lateran and of St Peter at Rome, and also of the collegiate church of Aachen, while the king of France was premier chanoine of the primatial church of Lyons, and held canonries at Embrun, Le Mans, Montpellier, St Pol-de-Léon, Lodève, and other cathedral churches in France. There are, moreover, trustworthy records that, on more than one occasion, a king of France, habited in a surplice and choir robes, took part with the clergy in the services of some of those churches. Martène quotes an order, which directs that at the imperial coronation at Rome, the pope ought to sing the mass, the emperor read the gospel, and the king of Sicily, or if present the king of France, the epistle. Nothing like this was known in England, and a theory, which has prevailed of late, that the English sovereign is, in a personal sense, canon of St David’s, is based on a misconception. The canonry in question was attached to St Mary’s College at St David’s before the Reformation, and, at the dissolution of the college, became crown property, which it has remained ever since; but the king of England is not, and never was personally, a canon of St David’s, nor did he ever perform any quasi-clerical function.
At first a single anointing on the head was the practice, but afterwards other parts of the body, as the breast, arms, shoulders and hands received the unction. From a very early period in the West three kinds of oil have been blessed each year on Maundy Thursday, the oil of the catechumens, the oil of the sick, and the chrism. The last, a compound of olive oil and
- ↑ He was later killed for deception, and confessed that the Pecos Indians induced him to lure Coronado to destruction.
