and was also like her father an imitator of Guido Reni's second manner. Many of Elisabetta's works are completely in the style of that master. Her works are very numerous, considering her short career, which was prematurely terminated by a painful disease of the stomach—so rare that the people were persuaded that she had died of poison, and a very interesting investigation into the circumstances is recorded by Malvasia. Elisabetta Sirani died at Bologna on the 28th of August, 1665, aged only twenty-seven. From lists published by Malvasia, from her own notes or pocket-books, she painted altogether upwards of one hundred and sixty pictures and portraits, during the space of ten years only, from 1655 to 1665; she also etched a few plates. She was buried in the church of San Domenico, in the same tomb as Guido. Though so short-lived, Elisabetta educated a numerous school of female painters, of whom were well known—besides her own sisters, Barbara and Anna Maria—Veronica Franchi, Vincenzia Fabri, Lucrezia Scarfaglia, and Genevra Cantofoli. Several of Elisabetta Sirani's works are preserved in the gallery of the Bolognese academy, comprising the altarpiece of "St. Anthony adoring the Infant Christ," formerly in the church of San Leonardo in Bologna; many of her works are also in the Zampieri, Caprara, and Zambeccari palaces at Bologna, and in the Corsini and Bolognetti palaces at Rome.—Her father, Giovanni A. Sirani, was a painter of great consideration in his time, and was employed to complete most of the public works left unfinished by Guido at his death. The large picture by Guido of St. Bruno, in the Certosa at Bologna, was finished by Sirani.—R. N. W.
SIRICIUS, a native of Rome, was elected bishop of Rome in 384. He was very active and energetic in his efforts to maintain the unity of the church, and preserve the purity of the clergy. Without ambition or display, he conducted himself with great moderation and wisdom. He endeavoured to suppress the heresy of the Priscillianists and the usurpation of Flavianus of Antioch. His death took place in 398. Six letters or decretal epistles, which he wrote relative to doctrine and discipline, are still extant; they are in the Bibliotheca Patrum of Galland, vol. vii. In the letter to Himerius, bishop of Tarracona, he writes about the celibacy of the clergy, a subject which had begun to attract the attention of the Romish bishops.—S. D.
SIRMOND, James, a learned French ecclesiastic, was born at Riom, October 22, 1559, and was the son of a magistrate of that city. He received his education at the college of Billom, which then ranked first amongst those which the jesuits possessed in France; and he became a member of that society in 1576. He studied the ancient classics with such assiduity and success that he was esteemed one of the most finished writers of the learned languages, and was sent to Paris to give instruction in a college founded there by the religious order to which he belonged. Among his pupils were Charles de Valois, Duc d'Angoulème, and St. Francis de Sales. In 1590 he was summoned by P. Aquaviva, general of his order, to Rome, and appointed his secretary. Sirmond is chiefly remembered from his careful editions of numerous books, the productions of writers in the middle ages, the MSS. of which he discovered in old libraries at Rome and other places. His works amount to fifteen volumes folio—five of which, containing his original productions, were published at Paris in 1696, under the title of Jacobi Sirmondi Opera Varia, &c. Sirmond died in 1651.—F.
SISINNIUS, a native of Syria, was appointed to succeed John VII. as bishop of Rome in 707, but survived his election only for twenty days.—D. W. R.
SISMONDI, John Charles Leonard Simonde de, historian and publicist, was descended from a noble family of that name, which flourished for a long time at Pisa, while that city was conspicuous among the Italian republics. Being expelled as Ghibellines some time in the fourteenth century, the family settled at the Cote de St. André in Dauphiné, where in the course of generations their name was Gallicized into Simonde, which the historian, the last of his race, restored to Sismondi. Having embraced the doctrines of the reformers, the family was once more driven from home by the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and took refuge in Geneva, where they were admitted as citizens, and enrolled among the high aristocracy. In a country house called Chatelaine, near this city, John Charles Leonard was born, on the 9th of May, 1773. Educated first by his mother, who to the end of her life exercised a powerful influence over him, at the age of ten he was sent to the high school or college of Geneva, and afterwards he attended lectures at the auditoire. In his boyish days he exhibited a taste for politics, and with other young legislators founded a republic in which all were to be virtuous and happy. The easy current of his life was interrupted by the losses which his father sustained through the bankruptcy of France. Sismondi was then placed in the counting-house of Eynard & Company, an eminent firm at Lyons. Practical familiarity with accounts, and habits of methodical industry acquired in the counting-house, proved useful subsequently in the prosecution of his historical and economical studies. The revolutionary outburst at Lyons in 1792 compelled him to return to Geneva, where he and his father were cast into prison. On their release they went to England, and lodged for a time with the rector of Bearmarsh in Sussex, whence they went to Tenterden in Kent. Sismondi applied himself to the study of the English language, institutions, manners, and industry, especially agriculture, laying up materials for future use. The family returned to Geneva in 1794, whence they were again driven by the horror they experienced at the judicial murder of their friend M. Carla, a proscribed syndic of the republic, who was hiding in the garden at Chatelaine when seized by the gens d'armes and marched away to be shot. Chatelaine was sold, and with the proceeds the Sismondi, migrating to Tuscany the country of their ancestors, settled on a farm in the Val Chiusa, near Pescia. Here they remained from 1795 to 1800, during which Sismondi published a volume on the agriculture of Tuscany. Quietly as he lived he did not escape persecution from the two parties, Austrian and French, which alternately ruled in Tuscany. By one and the other he was imprisoned no less than four times during his residence in Italy. Spite of trouble and ill treatment he pursued his studies, and in 1798 began his inquiries into the constitutions of the Italian republics. Returning to Geneva with his parents in 1800, he was appointed secretary to the chamber of commerce, and in 1803 published a treatise, "Sur la Richesse Commerciale," in which he appears as a follower of Adam Smith. The reputation acquired by this book procured him the offer of the professorship of political economy at Wilna, which he declined. Balancing the respective advantages of procuring some office under the first consul, or writing history, he was persuaded by his mother to make choice of the latter, and at once applied himself with ardour to the task of writing his "History of the Italian Republics," of which the first two volumes were published at Zurich in 1807. The remainder of the work appeared at intervals of various length until brought to a conclusion in 1818. The articles he had contributed to the Biographie Universelle, he worked up in another form for his history of the republics. Notwithstanding his aversion to the profession of teacher, Sismondi gladly consented in 1811 to deliver a course of lectures on the literature of the south of Europe. To arrange the publication of these lectures he went to Paris for the first time in 1813, a year of great excitement. He was well received in the best Parisian society, and made the acquaintance of M. Guizot, who afterwards in 1819 offered Sismondi a professorship of history at Paris worth eighteen thousand francs a year, and again in 1824 another at Liege of nearly equal value, both of which were declined. In both the able works already mentioned, Sismondi had the benefit of the criticism of Madame de Stäel, with whom, and with M. Neeker, her father, he long enjoyed a close intimacy, having been her fellow-traveller in 1805, during that journey to Italy which furnished materials for her celebrated novel, Corinne. In 1819 Sismondi published his last, longest, and best work, the "Histoire des Français," in which the writer displays not only the wisdom of age, but greater clearness and vivacity than can be discerned in his earlier works. The volumes appeared at successive intervals, commencing in 1821 and terminating with the twenty-ninth, which was published in 1843, after the author had been laid in the grave. After the abdication of Napoleon in 1814, Geneva, which had been annexed to France, recovered her independence, and Sismondi, being chosen a member of the supreme council, assisted in reorganizing the republic. The events of the Hundred Days gave rise to a curious incident in Sismondi's history. He was too much the friend of Madame de Stäel ever to have been a Bonapartist. But the government of the restored Bourbons was a disappointment to him as to many others, and the return of Napoleon from Elba excited hopes in Sismondi that the emperor would really prove a good constitutional monarch, and he published in the Moniteur a remarkable series of letters upon the
