which was the meeting-place for dramatic poets and actors, whose organization into gilds under her patronage dated from the time of Livius Andronicus (q.v.). The dedication day of the temple was the 19th of March, the great festival of Minerva, called quinquatrus, because it fell on the fifth day after the ides. All the schools had holidays at this time, and the pupils on reassembling brought a fee (minerval) to the teachers. In every house also the quinquatrus was a holiday, for Minerva (like Athena Erganē) was patron of the women’s weaving and spinning and the workmen’s craft. At a later time the festival extended over five days, the last four being chiefly occupied with gladiatorial shows—because Minverva was goddess of war (Ovid, Fasti, iii. 809–834; Juvenal x. 115, with Mayor’s note). The erection of a temple to her by Pompey out of the spoils of his eastern conquests shows that she was the bestower of victory, like Athena Nikē, and the dedication of a vestibule in the senate house by Augustus recalls Athena the goddess of counsel (βουλαία). Under Domitian, who claimed her special protection, the worship of Minerva attained its greatest vogue in Rome. The emperor Hadrian founded an educational institution, named after her the Athenaeum. The 23rd of March had always been the day of the tubilustrium, or purification of the trumpets used in the sacred rites, so that the ceremony came to be on the last day of Minerva’s festival, but it is very doubtful whether it was really connected with her. There was another temple of Minerva on the Caelian Hill, where she was worshipped under the name of Capta, the “captive,” the origin of which is unknown. Here a festival called the lesser quinquatrus was celebrated on the 13th–14th of June, chiefly by the flute-players (Livy ix. 30; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 651). As the Romans learnt the use of the flute from the Etruscans, the fact of Minerva being the patron goddess of flute-players is in favour of her Etruscan origin, although it may merely be a reminiscence of the Greek story which attributed the invention of the flute to Athena. A carved image of the goddess called the Palladium, said to have been brought from Troy to Lavinium, and thence to Rome by the family of the Nautii, was kept in the temple of Vesta and carefully guarded as necessary to the prosperity of the city. The older form of the name Minerva is Menerva (＝Menes-va, Gr. μένος); it probably means “thinker.”
MINGHETTI, MARCO (1818–1886), Italian economist and
statesman, was born at Bologna on the 18th of November
1818. In 1846 he signed the petition to the Conclave for the
election of a Liberal pope, and was appointed member of the
state council summoned to prepare the constitution for the papal
states. With Antonio Montanari and Rodolfo Audinot he
founded at Bologna a paper, Il Felsineo. In the first constitutional
cabinet, presided over by Cardinal Antonelli, Minghetti
held the portfolio of public works, but after the allocution by Pius IX.
against the Italian war of independence he resigned, and
joined the Piedmontese army as captain on the general staff.
Returning to Rome in September 1848, he refused to form a
cabinet after the assassination of Pellegrino Rossi, and spent
the next eight years in study and travel. Summoned to Paris
by Cavour in 1856 to prepare the memorandum on the Romagna
provinces for the Paris congress, he was in 1859 appointed by
Cavour secretary-general of the Piedmontese Foreign Office.
In the same year he was elected president of the assembly of
the Romagna after the rejection of pontifical rule by those provinces,
and prepared their annexation to Piedmont. Appointed
Piedmontese minister of the interior, he resigned office shortly
after Cavour’s death, but was subsequently chosen to be minister
of finance by Farini, whom he succeeded as premier in 1863.
With the help of Visconti-Venosta he concluded (Sept. 15,
1864) the “September Convention” with France, whereby
Napoleon agreed to evacuate Rome, and Italy to transfer her
capital from Turin to Florence. The convention excited violent
opposition at Turin, in consequence of which Minghetti was
obliged to resign office. He took little part in public life until
1869, when he accepted the portfolio of agriculture in the
Menabrea Cabinet. Both in and out of office he exercised his
influence against an Italo-French alliance and for an immediate
advance upon Rome, and in 1870 was sent to London and Vienna
by the Lanza-Sella Cabinet to organize a league of neutral
powers on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. In 1873
he overthrew the Lanza-Sella Cabinet and regained the premiership,
which, with the portfolio of finance, he held until the fall
of the Right from power on the 18th of March 1876. During
his premiership he inaugurated the rapprochement between
Italy, Austria and Germany, and reformed the naval and military
administration; and before his fall he was able, as finance minister,
to announce the restoration of equilibrium between expenditure
and revenue for the first time since 1860. After the advent of the
Left, Minghetti remained for some years in Opposition, but
towards 1884 joined Depretis in creating the “Trasformismo,”
which consisted in bringing Conservative support to Liberal
cabinets. Minghetti, however, drew from it no personal advantage,
and died at Rome on the 10th of December 1886 without
having returned to power.
His writings include: Della economia pubblica e delle sue attinenze con la morale e col diritto (Bologna, 1859), and La Chiesa e lo Stato (Milan, 1878).
MINGRELIA, a former principality of Transcaucasia, which
became subject to Russia in 1804, and since 1867 has belonged
to the government of Kutais. The country corresponds to the
ancient Colchis; and Sukhum Kaleh on the Black Sea coast,
which was the capital under the Dadian dynasty (1323–1694),
is to be identified with the ancient Dioscurias, a colony of Miletus.
The Mingrelians, who are closely akin to the Georgians, numbered
241,000 in 1902, and belong to the Orthodox Greek Church
(see further Kutais and Caucasia).
MINIATURE. The word “miniature,” derived from the
Latin minium, red lead, has been technically employed, in
the first instance, to describe a picture in an ancient or medieval
manuscript; the simple decoration of the early codices
having been “miniated” or delineated with that pigment. The
generally small scale of the medieval pictures has led secondly
to a pseudo-etymological confusion of the term with “minuteness” and to its application to “paintings in little”; it is now
used mainly in this sense, and is ordinarily applied to a painting
on a very small scale, usually a portrait, and by analogy to
anything on a very small scale.
1. Miniatures in Ancient and Medieval MSS.—The part played by the miniature in the scheme of the ornamentation of MSS., in the early centuries of the Christian era and in the middle ages, is dealt with in the article on Illuminated MSS. In the present article will be discussed the development and changes which it underwent, in different ages and in different countries, both in its technical treatment and in its leading characteristics. The subject divides itself into two distinct portions, the classical and the medieval, between which there lies the great separating space of the early middle ages, which affords but scanty material to connect them. When, however, we have advanced into the middle ages, we are no longer at a loss; and we can follow the later development of the miniature through all its changes in the various schools of western Europe down to its transition into the modern picture.
The importance of the study of the miniature has perhaps hardly received in the past the recognition which it merits. The history of painting cannot be perfectly understood without a knowledge of the rise and progress of the art of miniature-painting in MSS; and examples of the art still survive in an abundance which frescoes and paintings in the large cannot rival. Modern methods of photography have brought within the reach of the student material which in earlier generations was not accessible; and consequently a juster conception can be formed of the position which the miniature holds in the history of art than was possible before.
The earliest examples that have descended to us are closely connected in style and treatment with the pictorial art of the later Roman classical period. In fact they are separated from that period by only two or three centuries, and they still follow its traditions. The oldest specimens of all are the series of coloured drawings or miniatures cut from an illustrated MS.
