until 1877, when the excavation committee was granted an annual subsidy by the Austrian government. Many discoveries were made, including the ruins of a theatre, amphitheatre, city walls and gates, baths, aqueducts, pagan and Christian cemeteries, basilicas and many fragments of houses and arches. Professor F. Bulid, who had charge of the work and of the museum at Spalato, reported in 1894 that the collection of minor objects comprised “2034 inscriptions, 387 sculptures, 176 architectural pieces, 1548 fragments or objects of terra-cotta and vases, 1243 objects of glass, 3184 of metal, 929 of bone, 1229 gems, 128 objects from prehistoric times, and 15,000 coins” (Munro, p. 244). These are preserved in the museum. One vase, of Corinthian workmanship, dates from the 6th century B.C.; and many of the early Christian relics are of unusual interest. The so-called “cyclopean” walls, mortarless, but constructed of neatly squared and fitted blocks, are probably of Roman workmanship. Jackson suggests that perhaps, like the long walls at Athens, they were intended to unite the city with its port.
Salona under the early Roman emperors was one of the chief ports of the Adriatic, on one of the most central sites in the Roman world. Made a Roman colony after its second capture by the Romans (78 B.C.), it appears as Colonia Martia Julia and Colonia Claudia Augusta Pia Veteranorum, and bears at different periods the titles of respublica, conventus, metropolis, praefectura and praetorium. Diocletian died in 313; and before long the city became an episcopal see, with St Doimo as its first bishop. The palace was transformed into an imperial cloth factory, and, as most of the workers were women, it became known as the gynaecium. Salona was several times taken and retaken by the Goths and Huns before 639, when it was sacked and nearly destroyed by the Avars. Its inhabitants fled to the Dalmatian islands, but returned shortly afterwards to found a new city within the walls of the palace. Salona itself was not entirely deserted until the close of the 12th century. In 650 the papal legate, John of Ravenna, was created bishop of Spalato, as the new city was named. “Spalato,” or “Spalatro” (a very old spelling), was long regarded as a corruption of Salonae Palatium; but its true origin is doubtful. The most ancient form is Aspalathum, used in the 10th century by Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Spalathum, Spalathrum and Spalatrum are early variants. In a few years Spalato became an archbishopric, and its holders were metropolitans of all Dalmatia until 1033. In 1105 Spalato became a vassal state of Hungary; in 1327 it revolted to Venice; in 1357 it returned to its allegiance. It was ruled by the Bosnian king, Tvrtko, from 1390 to 1391; and in 1402 the famous and powerful Bosnian prince, Hrvoje or Harvoye, received the dukedom of Spalato from Ladislaus of Naples, the claimant to the Hungarian throne. In 1413, after the overthrow of Ladislaus by the emperor Sigismund, Hrvoje was banished; but a large octagonal tower, the Torre d'Harvoye, still bears his name. Spalato received a Venetian garrison in 1420, and ceased to have an independent history. The castle and city walls, erected by the Venetians between 1645 and 1670. were dismantled after 1807.
See T. G. Jackson, Dalmatia, the Quarnero and Istria (Oxford, 1887); and E. A. Freeman, Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice (London, 1881), for a general description of Spalato, its antiquities and history. A valuable account of the researches at Salona is given in R. Munro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia (London, 1900). There are two magnificently illustrated volumes which deal with Diocletian’s palace: R. Adam, Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro, in Dalmatia (London, 1764), engravings by Bartolozzi; and L. J. Cassas and J. Lavallée, Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Istrie (Paris, 1802). The Dalmatian chronicles, reproduced by G. Lucio in his De regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae (Amsterdam, 1666), include several which deal specially with Salona and Spalato. The most important is the Historia salonitanorum pontificum et spalatensium, by Thomas, archdeacon of Spalato (1200–1268).
SPALDING, WILLIAM (1809–1859), British author, was born in Aberdeen on the 22nd of May 1809. He was educated at the grammar school there and at Marischal College, and he went in 1830 to Edinburgh, where he was called to the bar in 1833. In that year he published a Letter on Shakespeare’s Authorship of the two Noble Kinsmen (reprinted for the New Shakspere Society in 1876), which attracted the notice of Jeffrey, who invited Spalding to contribute to the Edinburgh Review. He also spent some time in Italy, and in 1841 published Italy and the Italian Islands from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time. He occupied the chair of rhetoric in Edinburgh University from 1840 to 1845, when he was appointed professor of logic in the university of St Andrews, a post which he held till his death.
Besides contributions to the Edinburgh Review, Blackwood’s Magazine and the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, he was the author of a concise History of English Literature (1853).
SPALDING, a market town in the Holland or Spalding parliamentary division of Lincolnshire, England, on the river Welland,
and on the Great Northern and Great Eastern railways, 93 m.
N. from London. Pop. of urban district (1901), 9385. The town
is the centre of a rich agricultural district. The parish church of St Mary and St Nicholas was built in 1284 and is of peculiar construction, having four aisles to the nave. It is mainly Decorated in style. The adjoining lady chapel (St Mary and St Thomas à Becket) was built in 1315; in 1588 it was appropriated for the grammar school endowed in 1568 by John Blanke and again
in 1588 by John Gamlyn. A new grammar school was erected
in 1881. There are several modern churches and chapels, a corn
exchange, a Christian association and literary institute, and the
Johnson hospital (1881, endowed). The existing high bridge
over the Welland, constructed in 1838, took the place of a
wooden erection dating from the end of the 17th century; this
last was built on the site of a Roman bridge of two arches,
the foundations of the centre pier of which were disclosed when
the wooden bridge was constructed. Trade is principally agricultural,
and there is considerable water-traffic on the Welland.
Although there are no traces of settlement at Spalding (Spaltnige) before late Saxon times there was probably a village here before Thorold the sheriff founded his cell of Crowland Abbey in 1051. In Domesday Book the manor is said to belong to Ivo de Taillebois, who possessed a market there worth 40s., six fisheries and rent from salt-pans. The manor was afterwards granted to Angers, and later belonged to Spalding Priory, which retained it until at the suppression it passed to the Crown. Stephen made Spalding Priory free of toll, while John gave the monks forest rights. The town was governed by the prior’s manorial court, and never became a parliamentary or municipal borough. The prior obtained the grant of the Friday market in 1242, and in the reign of Edward I. claimed from of old fairs on the feast of St Nicholas and fifteen days following, and on the vigil and octave of St Cross. In more modern times Spalding was well known for the club known as the “Gentleman’s Society,” founded in 1710 by Maurice Johnson, which met once a week at a coffee-house in the town for the discussion of literary and antiquarian subjects, and numbered among its members Newton, Bentley, Addison, Pope and Gay.
SPALLANZANI, LAZARO (1729–1799), Italian man of science, was born at Scandiano in Modena on the 10th of January 1729, and was at first educated by his father, who was an advocate. At the age of fifteen he was sent to the Jesuit college at Reggio di Modena, and was pressed to enter that body. He went, however, to the university of Bologna, where his famous kinswoman, Laura Bassi, was professor of physics, and it is to her influence that his scientific impulse has been usually attributed. With her he studied natural philosophy and mathematics, and gave also great attention to languages, both ancient and modern, but soon abandoned the study of law, and afterwards took orders. His reputation soon widened, and in 1754 he became professor of logic, metaphysics and Greek in the university of Reggio, and in 1760 was translated to Modena, where he continued to teach with great assiduity and success, but devoted his whole leisure to natural science. He declined many offers from other Italian universities and from St Petersburg until 1768, when he accepted the invitation of Maria Theresa to the chair of natural history in the university of Pavia, which was then being reorganized. He also became director of the museum, which he greatly
