stone bridge and an iron railway bridge, are the suburbs, laid out after 1880 in broad and regular avenues of modern houses. The old cathedral, last used for public worship in 1707, is a very interesting late Romanesque building, with Gothic and Mauresque additions; but the interior was much defaced by its conversion into barracks after 1717. It was founded in 1203 by Pedro II. of Aragon, and consecrated in 1278. The fine octagonal belfry was built early in the 15th century. A second cathedral, with a Corinthian façade, was completed in 1781. The church of San Lorenzo (1270–1300) is noteworthy for the beautiful tracery of its Gothic windows; its nave is said to have been a Roman temple, converted by the Moors into a mosque and by Ramon Berenguer IV., last count of Barcelona, into a church. Other interesting buildings are the Romanesque town hall, founded in the 13th century but several times restored, the bishop’s palace and the military hospital, formerly a convent. The museum contains a good collection of Roman and Romanesque antiquities; and there are a school for teachers, a theological seminary and academies of literature and science. Leather, paper, glass, silk, linen and cloth are manufactured in the city, which has also some trade in agricultural produce.
Lérida is the Ilerda of the Romans, and was the capital of the people whom they called Ilerdenses (Pliny) or Ilergetes (Ptolemy). By situation the key of Catalonia and Aragon, it was from a very early period an important military station. In the Punic wars it sided with the Carthaginians and suffered much from the Roman arms. In its immediate neighbourhood Hanno was defeated by Scipio in 216 B.C., and it afterwards became famous as the scene of Caesar’s arduous struggle with Pompey’s generals Afranius and Petreius in the first year of the civil war (49 B.C.). It was already a municipium in the time of Augustus, and enjoyed great prosperity under later emperors. Under the Visigoths it became an episcopal see, and at least one ecclesiastical council is recorded to have met here (in 546). Under the Moors Lareda became one of the principal cities of the province of Saragossa; it became tributary to the Franks in 793, but was reconquered in 797. In 1149 it fell into the hands of Ramon Berenguer IV. In modern times it has come through numerous sieges, having been taken by the French in November 1707 during the War of Succession, and again in 1810. In 1300 James II. of Aragon founded a university at Lérida, which achieved some repute in its day, but was suppressed in 1717, when the university of Cervera was founded.
LERMA, FRANCISCO DE SANDOVAL Y ROJAS, Duke of (1552–1625), Spanish minister, was born in 1552. At the age of thirteen he entered the royal palace as a page. The family of Sandoval was ancient and powerful, but under Philip II. (1556–1598) the nobles, with the exception of a few who held viceroyalties or commanded armies abroad, had little share in the government. The future duke of Lerma, who was by descent marquis of Denia, passed his life as a courtier, and possessed
no political power till the accession of Philip III. in 1598. He had
already made himself a favourite with the prince, and was in fact
one of the incapable men who, as the dying king Philip II. foresaw,
were likely to mislead the new sovereign. The old king’s
fears were fully justified. No sooner was Philip III. king than he
entrusted all authority to his favourite, whom he created duke
of Lerma in 1599 and on whom he lavished an immense list of
offices and grants. The favour of Lerma lasted for twenty years,
till it was destroyed by a palace intrigue carried out by his own
son. Philip III. not only entrusted the entire direction of his
government to Lerma, but authorized him to affix the royal
signature to documents, and to take whatever presents were
made to him. No royal favourite was ever more amply trusted,
or made a worse use of power. At a time when the state was
practically bankrupt, he encouraged the king in extravagance,
and accumulated for himself a fortune estimated by contemporaries
at forty-four millions of ducats. Lerma was pious withal,
spending largely on religious houses, and he carried out the
ruinous measures for the expulsion of the Moriscoes in 1610—a
policy which secured him the admiration of the clergy and was
popular with the mass of the nation. He persisted in costly and
useless hostilities with England till, in 1604, Spain was forced
by exhaustion to make peace, and he used all his influence against
a recognition of the independence of the Low Countries. The
fleet was neglected, the army reduced to a remnant, and the
finances ruined beyond recovery. His only resources as a finance
minister were the debasing of the coinage, and foolish edicts
against luxury and the making of silver plate. Yet it is probable
that he would never have lost the confidence of Philip III., who
divided his life between festivals and prayers, but for the domestic
treachery of his son, the duke of Uceda, who combined with the
king’s confessor, Aliaga, whom Lerma had introduced to the
place, to turn him out. After a long intrigue in which the king
was all but entirely dumb and passive, Lerma was at last compelled
to leave the court, on the 4th of October 1618. As a
protection, and as a means of retaining some measure of power
in case he fell from favour, he had persuaded Pope Paul V. to
create him cardinal, in the year of his fall. He retired to the
town of Lerma in Old Castile, where he had built himself a
splendid palace, and then to Valladolid. Under the reign of
Philip IV., which began in 1621 he was despoiled of part of his
wealth, and he died in 1625.
The history of Lerma’s tenure of office is in vol. xv. of the Historia General de España of Modesto Lafuente (Madrid, 1855)—with references to contemporary authorities.
LERMONTOV, MIKHAIL YUREVICH (1814–1841), Russian
poet and novelist, often styled the poet of the Caucasus, was born in Moscow, of Scottish descent, but belonged to a respectable
family of the Tula government, and was brought up in the village
of Tarkhanui (in the Penzensk government), which now preserves
his dust. By his grandmother—on whom the whole care of his
childhood was devolved by his mother’s early death and his
father’s military service—no cost nor pains was spared to give
him the best education she could think of. The intellectual atmosphere
which he breathed in his youth differed little from that
in which Pushkin had grown up, though the domination of French
had begun to give way before the fancy for English, and Lamartine
shared his popularity with Byron. From the academic gymnasium
in Moscow Lermontov passed in 1830 to the university, but
there his career came to an untimely close through the part
he took in some acts of insubordination to an obnoxious teacher.
From 1830 to 1834 he attended the school of cadets at St Petersburg,
and in due course he became an officer in the guards.
To his own and the nation’s anger at the loss of Pushkin (1837)
the young soldier gave vent in a passionate poem addressed
to the tsar, and the very voice which proclaimed that, if Russia
took no vengeance on the assassin of her poet, no second poet
would be given her, was itself an intimation that a poet had come
already. The tsar, however, seems to have found more impertinence
than inspiration in the address, for Lermontov was
forthwith sent off to the Caucasus as an officer of dragoons.
He had been in the Caucasus with his grandmother as a boy of
ten, and he found himself at home by yet deeper sympathies
than those of childish recollection. The stern and rocky virtues
of the mountaineers against whom he had to fight, no less than
the scenery of the rocks and mountains themselves, proved
akin to his heart; the emperor had exiled him to his native land.
He was in St Petersburg in 1838 and 1839, and in the latter
year wrote the novel, A Hero of Our Time, which is said to have
been the occasion of the duel in which he lost his life in July 1841.
In this contest he had purposely selected the edge of a precipice,
so that if either combatant was wounded so as to fall his fate
should be sealed.
Lermontov published only one small collection of poems in 1840. Three volumes, much mutilated by the censorship, were issued in 1842 by Glazounov; and there have been full editions of his works in 1860 and 1863. To Bodenstedt’s German translation of his poems (Michail Lermontov’s poetischer Nachlass, Berlin, 1842, 2 vols.), which indeed was the first satisfactory collection, he is indebted for a wide reputation outside of Russia. His novel has found several translators (August Boltz, Berlin, 1852, &c.). Among his best-known pieces are “Ismail-Bey,” “Hadji Abrek,” “Walerik,” “The Novice,” and, remarkable as an imitation of the old Russian ballad, “The song of the tsar Ivan Vasilivitch, his young bodyguard, and the bold merchant Kalashnikov.”
See Taillandier, “Le Poète du Caucase,” in Revue des deux mondes
