theories,—popular or monarchical,—and such have flourished even more vigorously than purely legal fictions.
FIDDES, RICHARD (1671–1725), English divine and historian,
was born at Hunmanby and educated at Oxford. He took
orders, and obtained the living of Halsham in Holderness in
1696. Owing to ill-health he applied for leave to reside at
Wickham, and in 1712 he removed to London on the plea of
poverty, intending to pursue a literary career. In London he
met Swift, who procured him a chaplaincy at Hull. He also
became chaplain to the earl of Oxford. After losing the Hull
chaplaincy through a change of ministry in 1714, he devoted
himself to writing. His best book is a Life of Cardinal Wolsey
(London, 1724), containing documents which are still valuable
for reference; of his other writings the Prefatory Epistle containing
some remarks to be published on Homer’s Iliad (London, 1714),
was occasioned by Pope’s proposed translation of the Iliad,
and his Theologia speculativa (London, 1718), earned him the
degree of D.D. at Oxford. In his own day he had a considerable
reputation as an author and man of learning.
FIDDLE (O. Eng. fithele, fidel, &c., Fr. vièle, viole, violon;
M. H. Ger. videle, mod. Ger. Fiedel), a popular term for the violin,
derived from the names of certain of its ancestors. The word
fiddle antedates the appearance of the violin by several centuries,
and in England did not always represent an instrument of the same
type. The word has first been traced in 1205 in Layamon’s Brut
(7002), “of harpe, of salteriun, of fithele and of coriun.” In
Chaucer’s time the fiddle was evidently a well-known instrument:
“For him was lever have at his beddes hed |
The origin of the fiddle is of the greatest interest; it will be found inseparable from that of the violin both as regards the instruments and the etymology of the words; the remote common ancestor is the ketharah of the Assyrians, the parent of the Greek cithara. The Romans are responsible for the word fiddle, having bestowed upon a kind of cithara—probably then in its first transition—the name of fidiculae (more rarely fidicula), a diminutive form of fides. In Alain de Lille’s De planctu naturae against the word lira stands as equivalent vioel, with the definition “Lira est quoddam genuē citharae vel fitola alioquin de reot. Hoc instrumentum est multum vulgare.” This is a marginal note in writing of the 13th century.[1]
Some of the transitions from fidicula to fiddle are made evident in the accompanying table:
| Latin | fidiculae |
| Medieval Latin | vitula, fitola. |
| French | vièle, vielle, viole. |
| Provençal | viula. |
| Spanish | viguela, vihuela, vigolo. |
| Old High German | fidula. |
| Middle High German | videle. |
| German | fiedel, violine. |
| Italian | viola, violino. |
| Dutch | vedel. |
| Danish | fiddel. |
| Anglo-Saxon | fithele. |
| Old English | fithele, fythal, fithel, fythylle, |
| fidel, fidylle, (south) vithele. |
 |
| From Julius Rühlmann’s Geschichte der Bogeninstrumente. |
| Minnesinger Fiddle. Germany, 13th Century, from the Manesse MSS. |
For the descent of the guitar-fiddle, the first bowed ancestor of the violin, through many transitions from the cithara, see Cithara, Guitar and Guitar-Fiddle.
In the minnesinger and troubadour fiddles, of which evidences abound during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, are to be observed the structural characteristics of the violin and its ancestors in the course of evolution. The principal of these are first of all the shallow sound-chest, composed of belly and back, almost flat, connected by ribs (also present in the cithara), with incurvations more or less pronounced, an arched bridge, a finger-board and strings (varying in number), vibrated by means of a bow. The central rose sound-holes of stringed instruments whose strings are plucked by fingers, or plectrum have given place to smaller lateral sound-holes placed on each side of the strings. It is in Germany,[2] where contemporary drawings of fiddles of the 13th and 14th centuries furnish an authoritative clue, and in France, that the development may best be followed. The German minnesinger fiddle with sloping shoulders was the prototype of the viols, whereas the guitar-fiddle produced the violin through the intermediary of the Italian bowed Lyra.
The fiddle of the Carolingian epoch,—such, for instance, as that mentioned by Otfrid of Weissenburg[3] in his Harmony of the Gospels (c. 868),
| “Sih thar ouch al ruarit |
was in all probability still an instrument whose strings were plucked by the fingers, a cithara in transition. (K. S.)
FIDENAE, an ancient town of Latium, situated about 5 m.
N. of Rome on the Via Salaria, which ran between it and the
Tiber. It was for some while the frontier of the Roman territory
and was often in the hands of Veii. It appears to have fallen
under the Roman sway after the capture of this town, and is
spoken of by classical authors as a place almost deserted in their
time. It seems, however, to have had some importance as a post
station. The site of the arx of the ancient town is probably to be
sought on the hill on which lies the Villa Spada, though no traces
of early buildings or defences are to be seen: pre-Roman tombs
are to be found in the cliffs to the north. The later village lay at
the foot of the hill on the eastern edge of the high-road, and
its curia, with a dedicatory inscription to M. Aurelius by the
Senatus Fidenatium, was excavated in 1889. Remains of other
buildings may also be seen.
See T. Ashby in Papers of the British School at Rome, iii. 17.
FIDUCIARY (Lat. fiduciaries, one in whom trust, fiducia, is
reposed), of or belonging to a position of trust, especially of one
who stands in a particular relationship of confidence to another.
Such relationships are, in law, those of parent and child, guardian
and ward, trustee and cestui que trust, legal adviser and client,
spiritual adviser, doctor and patient, &c. In many of these the
law has attached special obligations in the case of gifts made to the
“fiduciary,” on whom is laid the onus of proving that no “undue
influence” has been exercised. (See Contract; Children, Law Relating to;
Infant; Trust.)
FIEF, a feudal estate in land, land held from a superior (see
Feudalism). The word is the French form, which is represented
in Medieval Latin as feudum or feodum, and in English as “fee”
or “feu” (see Fee). The A. Fr. feoffer, to invest with a fief or fee,
has given the English law terms “feoffee” and “feoffment” (q.v.).
FIELD, CYRUS WEST (1819–1892), American capitalist,
projector of the first Atlantic cable, was born at Stockbridge,
Massachusetts, on the 30th of November 1819. He was a brother
of David Dudley Field. At fifteen he became a clerk in the store
of A. T. Stewart & Co., of New York, and stayed there three
years; then worked for two years with his brother, Matthew
Dickinson Field, in a paper-mill at Lee, Massachusetts; and in
1840 went into the paper business for himself at Westfield,
Massachusetts, but almost immediately became a partner in
E. Root & Co., wholesale paper dealers in New York City, who
failed in the following year. Field soon afterwards formed with a
- ↑ See C. E. H. de Coussemaker, Mémoire sur Hucbald (Paris, 1841).
- ↑ See the Manesse MSS. reproduced in part by F. H. von der Hagen, Heldenbilder (Leipzig and Berlin, 1855) and Bildersaal. The fiddles are reproduced in J. Rühlmann’s Geschichte der Bogeninstrumente (Brunswick, 1882), plates.
- ↑ See Schiller’s Thesaurus antiq. Teut. vol. i. p. 379.
