and then at Munich, and in 1876 was appointed minister at Lisbon. From 1881 to 1884 he was minister at Madrid. In December 1884 he became ambassador at St Petersburg, and almost immediately had to face the alarming situation created by the Russian advance to Penjdeh. Thanks to his efforts, a war that at one moment seemed inevitable was averted. His great popularity at the Russian court contributed towards a marked improvement in the relations between the two countries. Bismarck took alarm at the lessening influence of Germany over Russia, and tried to procure Morier’s downfall. The Kölnische Zeitung declared in December 1888 that Morier had made use of his position at Darmstadt during the Franco-German War to betray the movements of the German troops to Marshal Bazaine. The authority for this charge was an alleged declaration made by Bazaine to the German military attaché at Madrid. Bazaine had died in September, but Morier had heard rumours in July of the charge brought against him, and had procured from Bazaine a written denial, which he now published in The Times. Apart from this, it was clearly shown that Morier could not have transmitted the information by the alleged date, and that Bazaine, according to the testimony of his own books and of other officers, received the information in question by reports from the front. As a matter of fact, Morier was an ardent champion of the German cause. His correspondence with Jowett shows the latter vainly endeavouring to convince his friend that the French were in the right. Public opinion everywhere, except in the German Conservative press, attributed the charge to political motives. Morier’s failing health caused him, at his own request, to be appointed Lord Dufferin’s successor at Rome in 1891; but it was felt that he could not be spared from St Petersburg, and there he remained till forced to find a milder climate. It was then too late, and he died at Montreux in Switzerland on the 16th of November 1893.
MÖRIKE, EDUARD FRIEDRICH (1804–1875), German poet, was born at Ludwigsburg on the 8th of September 1804. In 1834 he was appointed pastor of Kleversulzbach near Weinsberg, and in 1851 became professor of literature at the Katharinenstift in Stuttgart. This office he held until his retirement in 1866; but he continued to live at Stuttgart until his death on the 4th of June 1875. Mörike is the most lyrically gifted of all the poets belonging to the so-called Swabian school which gathered round Uhland. His poems, Gedichte (1838; 22nd ed., 1905), are mostly lyrics, graceful in style, original in conception, often humorous, but expressed in simple and natural language. He also wrote a somewhat fantastic Idylle vom Bodensee, oder Fischer Martin und die Glockendiebe (1846; 2nd ed., 1856), and published a collection of hymns, odes, elegies and idylls of the Greeks and Romans, entitled Klassische Blumenlese (1840), and several novels and narratives, among the former Maler Nolten (1832; 6th ed., 1901), which enjoyed great popularity.
Mörike’s Gesammelte Schriften were first published in 4 vols. (in 1878); the most recent editions are those edited by R. Krauss (6 vols., 1905), and the Volksausgabe, published by Göschen (4 vols., 1905). Selections from his literary remains were published by R. Krauss in Eduard Mörike als Gelegenheitsdichter (1895), and his correspondence with Hermann Kurz, Moritz von Schwind, and Theodor Storm, by J. Bachtold (1885–1891); an edition of Mörike’s Ausgewählte Briefe, in 2 vols., appeared 1903–1904. See F. Notter, Eduard Mörike (1875); and H. Fischer, Eduard Mörike (1881); K. Fischer, E. Mörike (1901); H. Maync, E. Mörike (1902); K. Fischer, Mörikes künstlerisches Schaffen und dichterische Schöpfungen (1903).
MORILLON, a name commonly given by fowlers to the
female or immature male of the Golden-Eye (q.v.), the Clangula
glaucion of modern ornithology, under the belief—which still very
generally obtains among them, as it once did among naturalists—that
they formed a distinct species of duck. The mistake no
doubt originated in, and is partly excused by, the facts that the
birds called Morillons were often of opposite sexes, and differed
greatly from the adult male Golden-Eye, whose full and beautiful
plumage is not assumed until the second year. The word is used
in French in precisely the same form, but it is in that language
applied to the Tufted Duck, Fuligula cristata, and is derived,
according to Littré, from more, signifying black. (A. N.)
MORIN, JEAN (latinized Joannes Morinus) (1591–1659),
French theologian, was born in 1591 at Blois, of Protestant
parents. He learned Latin and Greek at Rochelle, and
continued his studies at Leiden, subsequently removing to Paris.
His conversion to the Roman Church is ascribed to Cardinal du
Perron. In 1618 he joined the congregation of the Oratory, and
in due course took priest’s orders. In 1625 he visited England
in the train of Henrietta Maria; in 1640 he was at Rome, on the
invitation of Cardinal Barberini, and was received with special
favour by Pope Urban VIII. He was, however, soon recalled
to Paris by Richelieu, and the rest of his life was spent in incessant
literary labour. The Histoire de la délivrance de l’église
chrétienne par l’emp. Constantin, et de la grandeur et souveraineté-temporelle
donnée à l’église romaine par les rois de France
(1630) gave great offence at Rome, and a Déclaration (1654),
directed against faults in the administration of the Oratory, was
strictly suppressed. So, too, his great work on penance gave
equal offence to the Jesuits and to Port-Royal, and even after
his death, in 1659, the polemical vehemence of his Exercitationes
biblicae, and the exaggeration of his assertion “apud
neotericos Haereticos verba Scripturarum non esse integra, non
superficiem, non folia, nedum sensum, medullam et radicem
rationis” long led Protestants to treat his valuable contributions
to the history of the Hebrew text as a mere utterance of
Popish prejudice.
Morin was a voluminous and prolix writer on ecclesiastical antiquities. His principal works in this field are Commentarius historicus de disciplina in administratione sacramenti poenitentiae XIII. primis seculis in eccl. occid. et hucusque in orient. observata (1651), and Comm. de sacris ecclesiae ordinationibus secundum antiquos et recentiores latinos, graecos, syros et babylonios (1655), which expresses those irenical views on the subject of ordination which recommended Morin to Urban VIII. The literary correspondence of Morin appeared in 1682 under the title of Antiquitates ecclesiae orientalis (edited by R. Simon).
Morin’s chief fame, however, rests on his biblical and critical work. By his editio princeps of the Samaritan Pentateuch and Targum, in the Paris Polyglott, he gave the first impulse in Europe to the study of this dialect, which he acquired without a teacher (framing a grammar for himself) by the study of MSS. then newly brought to Europe. Not unnaturally he formed a very exaggerated view of the value of the Samaritan tradition of the text (Exercitationes in utrumque Samaritanorum Pentateuchum, 1631). A similar tone of exaggerated depreciation of the Massoretic Hebrew text, coloured by polemical bias against Protestantism, mars his greatest work, the posthumous Exercitationes biblicae de hebraeici graecique textus sinceritate (1660), in which, following in the footsteps of Cappellus, but with incomparably greater learning, he brings irrefragable arguments against the then current theory of the absolute integrity of the Hebrew text and the antiquity of the vowel points.
MORION (the French form of a word occurring in Spanish as
morrion, Ital. morione, usually connected with the Span. morra,
top or crown of the head), a light round-shaped head-piece or
helmet (q.v.). The chief characteristics are a brim, an upright
comb running along the crown from back to front, and the
absence of guards for the face, ears or neck. The brim was bent
sharply upwards at the front and back, and the piece was
generally worn tilted backward so as to cover the neck. The
morion and the cabasset, a pear-shaped headpiece with a flatter
brim and no comb, were the typical infantry helmets of the 16th
and early 17th centuries. It was sometimes worn unaccompanied
by any body armour.
MORISCOS (i.e. little Moors), the name given to the Spanish Mahommedans who accepted baptism and their descendants. Many, if not most, of them were in reality of the same race as the Christians, and were descended from converts to Islam. Those Mahommedans who retained their religion under Christian rulers were known as Mudéjars, a word of Arabic origin which has been interpreted as meaning “those who remained” or “were left.” Until the 15th century they were numerous, and enjoyed free exercise of their religion, which was secured to them by capitulations and treaties. Their number had been considerably diminished by the time of the conquest of Granada in 1492. By the terms of the capitulation of the city freedom of worship was secured to the Mahommedans. But the policy of the Catholic sovereigns, who desired to establish unity of faith
