and from that time till the death of Ferdinando Carbo in 1708 the Gonzagas were masters of Mantua (see Gonzaga). Under Gian Francesco II., the first marquis, Ludovico III., Gian Francesco III. (whose wife was Isabella d’Este), and Federico II., the first duke of Mantua, the city rose rapidly into importance as a seat of industry and culture. It was stormed and sacked by the Austrians in 1630, and never quite recovered. Claimed in 1708 as a fief of the empire by Joseph I., it was governed for the greater part of the century by the Austrians. In June 1796 it was besieged by Napoleon; but in spite of terrific bombardments it held out till February 1797. A three days’ bombardment in 1799 again placed Mantua in the hands of the Austrians; and, though restored to the French by the peace of Lunéville (1801), it became Austrian once more from 1814 till 1866. Between 1849 and 1859, when the whole of Lombardy except Mantua was, by the peace of Villafranca, ceded to Italy, the city was the scene of violent political persecution.
See Gaet. Susani, Nuovo prospetto delle pitture, &c., di Mantova (Mantua, 1830); Carlo d’Arco, Delle arti e degli artefici di Mantova (Mantua, 1857); and Storia di Mantova (Mantua, 1874).
MANU (Sanskrit, “man”), in Hindu mythology, the first man, ancestor of the world. In the Satapatha-Brahmana he is represented as a holy man, the chief figure in a flood-myth. Warned by a fish of the impending disaster he built a ship, and when the waters rose was dragged by the fish, which he harnessed to his craft, beyond the northern mountains. When the deluge ceased, a daughter was miraculously born to him and this pair became the ancestors of the human race. In the later scriptures the fish is declared an incarnation of Brahma. See Sanskrit Literature; Indian Law (Hindu).
MANUAL, i.e. belonging to the hand (Lat. manus), a word chiefly used to describe an occupation which employs the hands, as opposed to that which chiefly or entirely employs the mind. Particular uses of the word are: “sign-manual,” a signature or autograph, especially one affixed to a state document; “manual-exercise,” in military usage, drill in the handling of the rifle; “manual alphabet,” the formation of the letters of the alphabet by the fingers of one or both hands for communication with the deaf and dumb; and “manual acts,” the breaking of the bread, and the taking of the cup in the hands by the officiating priest in consecrating the elements during the celebration of the Eucharist. The use of the word for tools and implements to be used by the hand, as distinct from machinery, only survives in the “manual fire-engine.” From the late Latin use of manuale as a substantive, meaning “handbook,” comes the use of the word for a book treating a subject in a concise way, but more particularly of a book of offices, containing the forms to be used in the administration of the sacraments other than the Mass, but including communion out of the Mass, also the forms for churching, burials, &c. In the Roman Church such a book is usually called a rituale, “manual” being the name given to it in the English Church before the Reformation. The keyboard of an organ, as played by the hands, is called the “manual,” in distinction from the “pedal” keys played by the feet.
MANUCODE, from the French, an abbreviation of Manucodiata, and the Latinized form of the Malay Manukdewata, meaning, says Crawfurd (Malay and Engl. Dictionary, p. 97), the “bird of the gods,” and a name applied for more than two hundred years apparently to birds-of-paradise in general. In the original sense of its inventor, Montbeillard (Hist. nat. oiseaux, iii. 163), Manucode was restricted to the king bird-of-paradise and three allied species; but in English it has curiously been transferred[1] to a small group of species whose relationship to the Paradiseidae has been frequently doubted, and must be considered uncertain. These manucodes have a glossy steel-blue plumage of much beauty, but are distinguished from other birds of similar coloration by the outer and middle toes being united for some distance, and by the extraordinary convolution of the trachea, in the males at least, with which is correlated the loud and clear voice of the birds. The convoluted portion of the trachea lies on the breast, between the skin and the muscles, much as is found in the females of the painted snipes (Rostratula), in the males of the curassows (Cracidae), and in a few other birds, but wholly unknown elsewhere among the Passeres. The manucodes are peculiar to the Papuan sub-region (including therein the peninsula of Cape York), and comprehend, according to R. B. Sharpe (Cat. B. Brit. Museum, iii. 164), two genera, for the first of which, distinguished by the elongated tufts on the head, he adopts R. P. Lesson’s name Phonygama, and for the second, having no tufts, but the feathers of the head crisped, that of Manucodia; and W. A. Forbes (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1882, p. 349) observed that the validity of the separation was confirmed by their tracheal formation. Of Phonygama Sharpe recognizes three species, P. keraudreni (the type) and P. jamesi, both from New Guinea, and P. gouldi, the Australian representative species; but the first two are considered by D. G. Elliot (Ibis. 1878, p. 56) and Count Salvadori (Ornitol. della Papuasia, ii. 510) to be inseparable. There is a greater unanimity in regard to the species of the so-called genus Manucodia proper, of which four are admitted—M. chalybeata or chalybea from north-western New Guinea, M. comriei from the south-eastern part of the same country, M. atra of wide distribution within the Papuan area, and M. jobiensis peculiar to the island which gives it a name. Little is known of the habits of these birds, except that they are, as already mentioned, remarkable for their vocal powers, which, in P. keraudreni, Lesson describes (Voy. de la Coquille, “Zoologie,” i. 638) as enabling them to pass through every note of the gamut. (A. N.)
MANUEL I., COMNENUS (c. 1120–1180), Byzantine emperor (1143–1180), the fourth son of John II., was born about 1120. Having distinguished himself in his father’s Turkish war, he was nominated emperor in preference to his elder surviving brother. Endowed with a fine physique and great personal courage, he devoted himself whole-heartedly to a military career. He endeavoured to restore by force of arms the predominance of the Byzantine empire in the Mediterranean countries, and so was involved in conflict with his neighbours on all sides. In 1144 he brought back Raymond of Antioch to his allegiance, and in the following year drove the Turks out of Isauria. In 1147 he granted a passage through his dominions to two armies of crusaders under Conrad III. of Germany and Louis VII. of France; but the numerous outbreaks of overt or secret hostility between the Franks and the Greeks on their line of march, for which both sides were to blame, nearly precipitated a conflict between Manuel and his guests. In the same year the emperor made war upon Roger of Sicily, whose fleet captured Corfu and plundered the Greek towns, but in 1148 was defeated with the help of the Venetians. In 1149 Manuel recovered Corfu and prepared to take the offensive against the Normans. With an army mainly composed of mercenary Italians he invaded Sicily and Apulia, and although the progress of both these expeditions was arrested by defeats on land and sea, Manuel maintained a foothold in southern Italy, which was secured to him by a peace in 1155, and continued to interfere in Italian politics. In his endeavour to weaken the control of Venice over the trade of his empire he made treaties with Pisa and Genoa; to check the aspirations of Frederic I. of Germany he supported the free Italian cities with his gold and negotiated with pope Alexander III. In spite of his friendliness towards the Roman church Manuel was refused the title of “Augustus” by Alexander, and he nowhere succeeded in attaching the Italians permanently to his interests. None the less in a war with the Venetians (1172–74), he not only held his ground in Italy but
- ↑ Manucodiata was used by M. J. Brisson (Ornithologie, ii. 130) as a generic term equivalent to the Linnaean Paradisea. In 1783 Boddaert, when assigning scientific names to the birds figured by Daubenton, called the subject of one of them (Pl. enlum. 634) Manucodia chalybea, the first word being apparently an accidental curtailment of the name of Brisson’s genus to which he referred it. Nevertheless some writers have taken it as evidence of an intention to found a new genus by that name, and hence the importation of Manucodia into scientific nomenclature, and the English form to correspond.
