modernized; it possesses interesting reliquaries, and contains the tomb of Petrus Chrysologus, archbishop of Ravenna (d. 451), a native of Imola. S. Domenico has a fine Gothic portal and S. Maria in Regola an old campanile. The town also contains some fine palaces. The communal library has some MSS., including a psalter with miniatures, that once belonged to Sir Thomas More. The citadel is square with round towers at the angles; it dates from 1304, and is now used as a prison. Imola has a large lunatic asylum with over 1200 inmates. Innocenzo Francucci (Innocenzo da Imola), a painter of the Bolognese school (1494–1549), was a native of Imola, and two of his works are preserved in the Palazzo del Comune. The Madonna del Piratello, 2 m. outside the town to the N.W., is in the early Renaissance style (1488); the campanile was probably built from Bramante’s plans in 1506.
The ancient Forum Cornelii, a station on the Via Aemilia, is said by Prudentius, writing in the 5th century A.D., to have been founded by Sulla; but the fact that it belonged to the Tribus Pollia shows that it already possessed Roman citizenship before the Social war. In later times we hear little of it; Martial published his third book of epigrams while he was there. In the Lombard period the name Imolas begins to appear. In 1480, after a chequered history, the town came into the possession of Girolamo Riario, lord of Forli, as the dowry of his wife Caterina Sforza, and was incorporated with the States of the Church by Caesar Borgia in 1500.
IMP (O. Eng. impa, a graft, shoot; the verb impian is cognate
with Ger. impfen, to graft, inoculate, and the Fr. enter; the
ultimate origin is probably the Gr. ἐμφύειν, to implant, cf.
ἔμφυτος, engrafted), originally a slip or shoot of a plant or tree
used for grafting. This use is seen in Chaucer (Prologue to the
Monk’s Tale, 68) “Of fieble trees ther comen wrecched ympes.”
The verb “to imp” in the sense of “to graft” was especially
used of the grafting of feathers on to the wing of a falcon or hawk
to replace broken or damaged plumage, and is frequently used
metaphorically. Like “scion,” “imp” was till the 17th century
used of a member of a family, especially of high rank, hence
often used as equivalent to “child.” The New English Dictionary
quotes an epitaph (1584) in the Beauchamp chapel at Warwick,
“Heere resteth the body of the noble Impe Robert of Dudley
. . . sonne of Robert Erle of Leycester.” The current use of
the word for a small devil or mischievous sprite is due to the
expressions “imp of Satan, or of the devil or of hell,” in the
sense of “child of evil.” It was thus particularly applied to the
demons supposed to be the “familiar” spirits of witches.
IMPATIENS, in botany, a genus of annual or biennial herbs,
sometimes becoming shrubby, chiefly natives of the mountains
of tropical Asia and Africa, but also found widely distributed
in the north temperate zone and in South Africa. The flowers,
which are purple, yellow, pink or white and often showy, are
spurred and irregular in form and borne in the leaf-axils. The
name is derived from the fact that the seed-pod when ripe
discharges the seeds by the elastic separation and coiling of the
valves. Impatiens Noli-me-tangere, touch-me-not, an annual
succulent herb with yellow flowers, is probably wild in moist
mountainous districts in north Wales, Lancashire and Westmorland.
I. Roylei, a tall hardy succulent annual with rose-purple
flowers, a Himalayan species, is common in England as a
self-sown garden plant or garden escape. I. Balsamina, the
common balsam of gardens, a well-known annual, is a native
of India; it is one of the showiest of summer and autumn flowers
and of comparatively easy cultivation. I. Sultani, a handsome
plant, with scarlet flowers, a native of Zanzibar, is easily grown
in a greenhouse throughout the summer, but requires warmth
in winter.
IMPEACHMENT (O. Fr. empechement, empeschement, from
empecher or empescher, to hinder, Late Lat. impedicare, to entangle,
pedica, fetter, pes, foot), the English form of judicial parliamentary
procedure against criminals, in which the House of Commons
are the prosecutors and the House of Lords the judges. It
differs from bills of attainder (q.v.) in being strictly judicial.
When the House of Commons has accepted a motion for impeachment,
the mover is ordered to proceed to the bar of the House
of Lords, and there impeach the accused “in the name of the
House of Commons, and of all the Commons of the United
Kingdom.” The charges are formulated in articles, to each of
which the accused may deliver a written answer. The prosecution
must confine itself to the charges contained in the articles, though
further articles may be adhibited from time to time. The
Commons appoint managers to conduct the prosecution, but
the whole House in committee attends the trial. The defendant
may appear by counsel. The president of the House of Lords
is the lord high steward, in the case of peers impeached for high
treason; in other cases the lord chancellor. The hearing takes
place as in an ordinary trial, the defence being allowed to call
witnesses if necessary, and the prosecution having a right of
reply. At the end of the case the president “puts to each peer,
beginning with the junior baron, the questions upon the first
article, whether the accused be guilty of the crimes charged
therein. Each peer in succession rises in his place when the
question is put, and standing uncovered, and laying his right
hand upon his breast, answers, ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not guilty,’ as the
case may be, ‘upon my honour.’ Each article is proceeded
with separately in the same manner, the lord high steward
giving his own opinion the last” (May’s Parliamentary Practice,
c. xxiii.). Should the accused be found guilty, judgment follows
if the Commons move for it, but not otherwise. The Commons
thus retain the power of pardon in their own hands, and this
right they have in several cases expressly claimed by resolution,
declaring that it is not parliamentary for their lordships to give
judgment “until the same be first demanded by this House.”
Spiritual peers occupy an anomalous position in the trial of
peers, as not being themselves ennobled in blood; on the impeachment
of Danby it was declared by the Lords that Spiritual
peers have the right to stay and sit during proceedings for
impeachment, but it is customary for them to withdraw before
judgment is given, entering a protest “saving to themselves
and their successors all such rights in judicature as they have
by law, and by right ought to have.” An impeachment, unlike
other parliamentary proceedings, is not interrupted by prorogation,
nor even by dissolution. Proceedings in the House of
Commons preliminary to an impeachment are subject to the
ordinary rules, and in the Warren Hastings case an act was passed
to prevent the preliminary proceedings from discontinuance by
prorogation and dissolution. A royal pardon cannot be pleaded
in bar of an impeachment, though it is within the royal prerogative
to pardon after the lords have pronounced judgment. The point
was raised in the case of the earl of Danby in 1679, and the rule
was finally settled by the Act of Settlement. Persons found
guilty on impeachment may be reprieved or pardoned like other
convicts. Impeachment will lie against all kinds of crimes and
misdemeanours, and against offenders of all ranks. In the case
of Simon de Beresford, tried before the House of Lords in 1330,
the House declared “that the judgment be not drawn into
example or consequence in time to come, whereby the said peers
may be charged hereafter to judge others than their peers,”
from which Blackstone and others have inferred that “a commoner
cannot be impeached before the Lords for any capital offence,
but only for high misdemeanours.” In the case of Edward
Fitzharris in 1681, the House of Commons in answer to a resolution
of the Lords suspending the impeachment, declared it to
be their undoubted right “to impeach any peer or commoner
for treason or any other crime or misdemeanour.” And the
House of Lords has in practice recognized the right of the
Commons to impeach whomsoever they will. The procedure
has, however, been reserved for great political offenders whom
the ordinary powers of the law might fail to reach. It has now
fallen into desuetude. The last impeachments were those of
Warren Hastings (1788–1795) and Lord Melville (1806), but an
unsuccessful attempt was made by Thomas C. Anstey to impeach
Lord Palmerston in 1848. The earliest recorded instances of
impeachment are those of Lord Latimer in 1376 and of Pole,
earl of Suffolk, in 1386. From the time of Edward IV. to
Elizabeth it fell into disuse, “partly,” says Hallam, “from the loss
