the title: Les Français pour la première fois dans l’histoire de France, ou poétique de l’histoire des divers états). Monteil did not invent the history of civilization, but he was one of the first in France, and perhaps in Europe, to point out its extreme importance. He revised the third edition of his history himself (5 vols., 1848); a fourth appeared after his death with a preface by Jules Janin (5 vols., 1853).
MONTEITH, the name given to a large bowl, often made of silver, with a movable rim and scalloped edges, from which wine glasses, punch ladle, &c., could be hung, so that they might be cooled in the water with which it was filled. According to Anthony Wood (Life and Times, iii. 84, quoted in the New English Dictionary) the name was given to the bowl from a “fantastical Scot . . . Monsieur Monteigh who . . . wore the bottome of his cloake or coate so notched,” i.e. scalloped.
MONTELEONE CALABRO, a city of Calabria, Italy, in the province of Catanzaro, beautifully situated on an eminence gently sloping towards the Gulf of Sta Eufemia, 1575 ft. above sea-level, 70 m. N.N.E. of Reggio di Calabria by rail. Pop. (1901), 10,066 (town); 13,481 (commune). It was almost totally destroyed by earthquake in 1783, but under the French occupation it was rebuilt and made the capital of a province. It suffered, however, considerably in the earthquake of 1905. The castle was built by Frederick II. The principal church contains some sculptures by the Gagini of Palermo.
Monteleone is identical with the ancient Hipponium, said to be a Locrian colony and first mentioned in 388 B.C., when its inhabitants were removed to Syracuse by Dionysius. Restored by the Carthaginians (379), occupied by the Bruttii (356), held for a time by Agathocles of Syracuse (294), and afterwards again occupied by the Bruttii, Hipponium ultimately became as Vibo Valentia a flourishing Roman colony, founded in 239 or 192 B.C. It was important as the point where a branch from Scolacium (Squillace) on the east coast road joined the Via Popillia. The harbour established by Agathocles proved of great service as a naval station to Caesar and Octavian in their wars with Pompeius Magnus and Sextus Pompeius, and remains of its massive masonry still exist at the village of Bivona on the coast, while the fort occupies the site of a temple. Its tunny-fish were famous. In the town itself there are remains of a theatre, of Roman baths (?), a mosaic pavement in the church of St Leoluca (patron saint of Monteleone), and some Latin inscriptions. The town walls too of the Greek city can be traced for their whole extent, about 4 m. They are well constructed of regular parallelograms of a sandy tufa, laid in headers and stretchers. The Roman town occupied only a part of the Greek site, the portion occupied by the modern town, the streets of which still preserve the Roman arrangement. It was supplied with water by an aqueduct, the reservoir of which is situated at the village of Papaglionti. The Capialbi and Cordopatri families have private collections of antiquities.
See V. Capialbi in Mem. Inst. (Rome, 1832), pp. 159 sqq.; F. Lenormant, La Grande-Gréce (Paris, 1882), iii. 155 sqq. (T. As.)
MONTÉLIMAR, a town of south-eastern France, capital of
an arrondissement in the department of Drôme, near the left
bank of the Rhone, 93 m. S. of Lyons on the railway to Marseilles.
Pop. (1906), town, 9162; commune, 13,554. The ancient castle
is now used as a prison. Remains of the ramparts and four old
gates are also preserved. The chief public institutions are the
sub-prefecture, the tribunal of first instance and the communal
college. The industries include flour-milling, silk-throwing and
spinning, and the manufacture of hats, lime, farming implements,
preserved foods and nougat.
Montélimar was called by the Romans Acunum. At a later period it belonged to the family of Adhémar and received the name Monteil d’Adhémar, whence the present name. Towards the middle of the 14th century it was sold by them partly to the dauphins of Viennois and partly to the pope, and in the next century it came into the possession of the Crown. During the religious wars it valiantly resisted Gaspard de Coligny in 1570, but was taken by the Huguenots in 1587.
MONTEMAYOR (or Montemôr), JORGE (1520?–1561), Spanish novelist and poet, of Portuguese descent, was born about 1520 at Montemôr o Velho (near Coimbra), whence he derived his name, the Spanish form of which is Montemayor. He seems to have studied music in his youth, and to have gone to Spain in 1543 as chorister in the suite of the Portuguese Infanta Maria, first wife of Philip II. In 1552 he went back to Portugal in the suite of the Infanta Juana, wife of D. João, and on the death of this prince in 1554 returned to Spain. He is said to have served in the army, to have accompanied Philip II. to England in 1555, and to have travelled in Italy and the Low Countries; but it is certain that his poetical works were published at Antwerp in 1554, and again in 1558. His reputation is based on a prose work, the Diana, a pastoral romance published about 1559. Shortly afterwards Montemayor was killed in Piedmont, apparently in a love affair; a late edition of the Diana gives the exact date of his death as the 26th of February 1561. The Diana is generally stated to have been printed at Valencia in 1542; but, as the Canto de Orfeo refers to the widowhood of the Infanta Juana in 1554, the book must be of later date. It is important as the first pastoral novel published in Spain; as the starting-point of a universal literary fashion; and as the indirect source, through the translation included in Googe’s Eglogs, epytaphes and sonnets (1563), of an episode in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. Though Portuguese was Montemayor’s native language, he only used it for two songs and a short prose passage in the sixth book of the Diana. His mastery of Spanish is amazing, and even Cervantes, who judges the verses in the Diana with unaccustomed severity, recognizes the remarkable merit of Montemayor’s prose style. That he pleased his own generation is proved by the seventeen editions and two continuations of the Diana published in the 16th century, by parodies, imitations and renderings in French and English.
Bibliography.—G. Schönherr, Jorge de Montemayor, sein Leben und sein Schäfroman (Halle, 1886); D. García Peres, Catalogo razonado biográfico y bibliográfico de los autores portugueses que escribieron en castellano (Madrid, 1890); Hugo A. Rennert, The Spanish Pastoral Novel (Baltimore, 1892); J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, “The Bibliography of the Diana” in the Revue hispanique (1895); R. Tobler, “Shakespeare’s Sommernachtstraum und Montemayor’s Diana" in the Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft (1898); M. Menéndez y Pelayo, Orígenes de la novela (Madrid, 1905).
MONTENEGRO, a country of south-eastern Europe, forming an independent kingdom situated upon the western side of the Balkan Peninsula, and possessing a small coast-line on the Adriatic Sea. The name is the Venetian variant of the Italian Monte Nero, and together with the Albanian Mal Esiya, the Turkish Kara-dagh, and the Greek Mavro Vouno, reproduces the native, or Serb, Tzrnágora, “the Black Mountain”; it is derived from the dark appearance of Mount Lovchen, the culminating summit of Montenegro' proper, of which the northern and eastern declivities, those which are viewed from the country itself, are in shadow for the greater part of the day.[1] The dusky pine forests, which once clothed the mountain and of which remnants exist on its northern slope, contributed to its sombre aspect. Up to the end of the 15th century, when its territory became restricted to the mountainous districts immediately north and east of Mount Lovchen, the kingdom was known as the Zenta or Zeta, but the name Tzrnagora was probably used locally in this region from the time of the earliest Slavonic settlements.
Montenegro extends between 41° 55′ and 43° 21′ N., and between 18° 30′ and 20° E.; its greatest length from north to south is about 100 m.; its greatest breadth from east to west about 80 m. It is bounded by the Adriatic on the S., the seaboard extending for 28 m.; by the Primore, a strip of the Dalmatian littoral, on the S.W. Area and Boundaries. and W.; by the Austrian (formerly Turkish) provinces
- ↑ Cf. the similarly-named Tzrna Planina in eastern Montenegro, Tcherni Vrkh, the culminating summit of Mount Vitosh in Bulgaria, and Mavro Vouno in the island of Salamis. Various other explanations of the name Montenegro, mostly of a fanciful character, have been put forward: see Kurt Hassert, “Der Name Montenegro” in Globus, No. 67, pp. 111-113 (Leipzig, 1895).
