in the Benedictine church at Polirone, whence her remains were taken to Rome by order of Urban VIII. in 1635 and interred in St Peter’s.
The contemporary record of Matilda’s life in rude Latin verse, by her chaplain Domnizone (Donizo or Domenico), is preserved in the Vatican Library. The best edition is that of Bethmann in the Monumenta germ. hist. scriptores, xii. 348–409. The text, with an Italian translation, was published by F. Davoli under the title Vita della granda contessa Matilda di Canossa (Reggio nell’ Emilia 1888 seq.).
See A. Overmann, Gräfin Mathilde von Tuscien; ihre Besitzungen . . . u. ihre Regesten (Innsbruck, 1895); A. Colombo, Una Nuova vita delta contessa Matilda in R. accad. d. sci. Atti, vol. 39 (Turin, 1904); L. Tosti, La Contessa Matilda ed i romani pontefici (Florence, 1859); A. Pannenborg, Studien zur Geschichte der Herzogin Matilde von Canossa (Göttingen, 1872); F. M. Fiorentini, Memorie della Matilda (Lucca, 1756); and Nora Duff, Matilda of Tuscany (1910). (C. H. Ha.)
MATINS (Fr. matines, med. Lat. matutinae, sc. possibly vigiliae, morning watches; from matutinus, “belonging to the morning”), a word now only used in an ecclesiastical sense for one of the canonical hours in the Roman Breviary, originally intended to be said at midnight, but sometimes said at dawn, after which “lauds” were recited or sung. In the modern Roman Catholic Church, outside monastic services, the office is usually said on the preceding afternoon or evening. The word is also used in the Roman Catholic Church for the public service held on Sunday mornings before the mass (see Breviary; and Hours, Canonical). In the Church of England since the Reformation matins is used for the order of public morning prayer.
MATLOCK, a market town in the western parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England, on the river Derwent, 17 m. N. by W. of Derby on the Midland railway. Pop. (1901), of urban district of Matlock, 5979; of Matlock Bath and Scarthin Nick, 1819. The entire township includes the old village of Matlock, the commercial and manufacturing district of Matlock Bridge, and the fashionable health resorts of Matlock Bath and Matlock Bank. The town possesses cotton, corn and paper mills, while in the vicinity there are stone-quarries and lead mines. A peculiar local industry is the manufacture of so-called “petrified” birds’ nests, plants, and other objects. These are steeped in water from the mineral springs until they become encrusted with a calcareous deposit which gives them the appearance of fossils. Ornaments fashioned out of spar and stalactites have also a considerable sale.
Matlock Bath, one and a half miles south of Matlock, having a separate railway station, overlooks the narrow and precipitous gorge of the Derwent, and stands in the midst of woods and cliffs, deriving its name from three medicinal springs, which first became celebrated towards the close of the 17th century. They were not known to the Romans, although lead-mining was carried on extensively in the district in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. The mean temperature of the springs is 68° F. Extensive grounds have been laid out for public use; and in the neighbourhood there are several fine stalactite caverns.
Sheltered under the high moorlands of Darley, Matlock Bank has grown up about a mile north-east of the old village, and has become celebrated for the number and excellence of its hydropathic establishments. A tramway, worked by a single cable, over a gradient said to be the steepest in the world, affords easy communication with Matlock Bridge.
MATOS FRAGOSO, JUAN DE (1614?–1689), Spanish dramatist, of Portuguese descent, was born about 1614 at Alsito (Alemtejo). After taking his degree in law at the university of Evora, he proceeded to Madrid, where he made acquaintance with Perez de Montalbán, and thus obtained an introduction to the stage. He quickly displayed great cleverness in hitting the public taste, and many contemporaries of superior talent eagerly sought his aid as a collaborator. The earliest of his printed plays is La Defensa de la fé y principe prodigioso (1651), and twelve more pieces were published in 1658. But though his popularity continued long after his death (January 4, 1689), Matos Fragoso’s dramas do not stand the test of reading. His emphatic preciosity and sophistical insistence on the “point of honour” are tedious and unconvincing; in La Venganza en el despeño, in Á lo que obliga un agravio, and in other plays, he merely recasts, very adroitly, works by Lope de Vega.
MATRASS (mod. Lat. matracium), a glass vessel with a round or oval body and a long narrow neck, used in chemistry, &c., as a digester or distiller. The Florence flask of commerce is frequently used for this purpose. The word is possibly identical with an old name “matrass” (Fr. materas, matelas) for the bolt or quarrel of a cross-bow. If so, some identity of shape is the reason for the application of the word; “bolt-head” is also used as a name for the vessel. Another connexion is suggested with the Arabic matra, a leather bottle.
MATRIARCHATE (“rule of the mother”), a term used to express a supposed earliest and lowest form of family life, typical of primitive societies, in which the promiscuous relations of the sexes result in the child’s father being unknown (see Family). In such communities the mother took precedence of the father in certain important respects, especially in line of descent and inheritance. Matriarchate is assumed on this theory to have been universal in prehistoric times. The prominent position then naturally assigned women did not, however, imply any personal power, since they were in the position of mere chattels: it simply constituted them the sole relatives of their children and the only centre of any such family life as existed. The custom of tracing descent through the female is still observed among certain savage tribes. In Fiji father and son are not regarded as relatives. Among the Bechuanas the chieftainship passes to a brother, not to a son. In Senegal, Loango, Congo and Guinea, relationship is traced through the female. Among the Tuareg Berbers a child takes rank, freeman’s or slave’s, from its mother.
Bibliography.—J. F. McLennan, Patriarchal Theory (London, 1885); T. T. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht (Stuttgart, 1861); E. Westermarck, History of Human Marriage (1894); A. Giraud-Teulon, La Mère chez certains peuples de l’antiquité (Paris, 1867); Les Origines du mariage et de la famille (Geneva and Paris, 1884); C. S. Wake, The Development of Marriage and Kinship (London, 1889); Ch. Letourneau, L’Évolution du mariage et de la famille (Paris, 1888); L. H. Morgan, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of Human Family, “Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,” vol. xvii. (Washington, 1871); C. N. Starcke, The Primitive Family (London, 1889).
MATRIMONY (Lat. matrimonium, marriage, which is the ordinary English sense), a game at cards played with a full whist pack upon a table divided into three compartments labelled “Matrimony,” “Intrigue” and “Confederacy,” and two smaller spaces, “Pair” and “Best.” These names indicate combinations of two cards, any king and queen being “Matrimony,” any queen and knave “Intrigue,” any king and knave “Confederacy”; while any two cards of the same denomination form a “Pair” and the diamond ace is “Best.” The dealer distributes a number of counters, to which an agreed value has been given, upon the compartments, and the other players do likewise. The dealer then gives one card to each player, face down, and a second, face up. If any turned-up card is the diamond ace, the player holding it takes everything on the space and the deal passes. If not turned, the diamond ace has only the value of the other three aces. If it is not turned, the players, beginning with the eldest hand, expose their second cards, and the resulting combinations, if among the five successful ones, win the counters of the corresponding spaces. If the counters on a space are not won, they remain until the next deal.
MATRIX, a word of somewhat wide application, chiefly used in the sense of a bed or enclosing mass in which something is shaped or formed (Late Lat. matrix, womb; in classical Latin matrix was only applied to an animal kept for breeding). Matrix is thus used of a mould of metal or other substance in which a design or pattern is made in intaglio, and from which an impression in relief is taken. In die-sinking and coining, the matrix is the hardened steel mould from which
