Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/615

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MANRESA—MANSE
  

the most ancient examples is the manor-house built by Richard Cœur de Lion at Southampton as a rendezvous when he was about to cross into France. This consisted of a hall and chapel on the first floor, with cellars on the ground floor; the walls of this structure, with the chimney-piece, are still in existence. The distinction between the “manor-house” and “castle” is not always very clearly defined; in France such buildings as the castles of Aydon (Northumberland) and of Stokesay (Shropshire) would be regarded as manor-houses in that they were built as country houses and not as fortresses, like Coucy and Pierrefonds; some of the smaller castles in France were, in the 16th century, transformed into manor-houses by the introduction of windows on the second floors of their towers and the partial destruction of their curtain walls, as in the manor-houses of Sedières (Corrèze), Nantouillet and Compiègne; and in the same century, as at Chenonceaux, Blois and Chambord, though angle towers and machicolated parapets still formed part of the design, they were considered to be purely decorative features. The same is found in England; thus in Thornbury and Hurstmonceaux castles, and in Cowdray House, the fortifications were more for show than for use. There is an interesting example of a French manor-house near Dieppe, known as the Manoir-d’Ango, built in 1525, of which a great portion still exists, where the proprietor Ango received François I., so that it must have been of considerable size.

In England the principal examples of which remains exist are the manor-houses of Appleton, Berkshire, with a moat; King John’s house at Warnford (Hampshire); Boothby Ragnell, Lincolnshire, with traces of moat; Godmersham, Kent; Little Wenham Hall, Suffolk, built partly in brick and flint, and one of the earliest in which the bricks, probably imported from Flanders, are found; Charney Hall, Berkshire (T-shaped in plan in two storeys); Longthorpe House, near Peterborough; Stokesay, Shropshire, already referred to; Cottesford, Oxfordshire; Woodcraft, Northamptonshire; Acton Burnell, Shropshire; Old Soar, Plaxtol, Kent, in two storeys, the ground storey vaulted and used as cellar and storehouse, and the upper floor with hall, solar and chapel. The foundation of all these dates from the 13th century. Ightham Mote, Kent, portions of which, with the moat, date from the 14th century, is one of the best preserved manor-houses; then follow Norborough Hall, Northamptonshire; Creslow manor-house, Bucks, with moat; Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire; the Court Lodge, Great Chart, Kent; Stanton St Quentin, Great Chalfield, and South Wraxhall, all in Wilts; Meare manor-house, Somerset; Ockwell, Berks; Kingfield manor-house, Derbyshire; Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire; Stoke Albany, Northamptonshire; and, in the 16th century, Large Marney Hall, Essex (1520); Sutton Place, Surrey (1530); the Vyne, Hampshire, already influenced by the first Renaissance. In the 17th and 18th centuries the manor-house is generally rectangular in plan, and, though well and solidly built, would seem to have been erected more with a view to internal comfort than to exterior embellishments. There is one other type of manor-house, which partakes of the character of the castle in its design, and takes the form of a tower, rectangular or square, with angle turrets and in several storeys; in France it is represented by the manor-houses of St Medard near Bordeaux and Camarsae (Dordogne), and in England by Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire and Middleton Tower, Norfolk, both being in brick.  (R. P. S.) 


MANRESA, a town of north-eastern Spain, in the province of Barcelona, on the river Cardoner and the Barcelona-Lérida railway. Pop. (1900), 23,252. Manresa is the chief town of the highlands watered by the Cardoner and upper Llobregat, which meet below the town, and are also connected by a canal 18 m. long. Two bridges, one built of stone and dating from the Roman period, the other constructed of iron in 1804, unite the older and larger part of Manresa with the modern suburbs on the right bank of the river. The principal buildings are the collegiate church of Santa Maria de la Séo, the Dominican monastery, and the church of San Ignazio, built over the cavern (cueva santa) where Ignatius de Loyola spent most of the year 1522 in penitentiary exercises and the composition of his Exercitia spiritualia. Santa Maria is a fine example of Spanish Gothic, and consists, like many Catalan churches, of nave and chancel, aisles and ambulatory, without transepts. One of its chief treasures is an exquisite 15th-century Florentine altar-frontal, preserved in the sacristy. The Dominican monastery, adjoining the cueva santa, commands a magnificent view of the Montserrat (q.v.), and is used for the accommodation of the pilgrims who yearly visit the cavern in thousands. Manresa has important iron-foundries and manufactures of woollen, cotton and linen goods, ribbons, hats, paper, soap, chemicals, spirits and flour. Building-stone is quarried near the town.

Manresa is probably the Munorisa of the Romans, which was the capital of the Jacetani or Jaccetani, an important tribe of the south-eastern Pyrenees. A large portion of the town was burned by the French in 1811.


MANRIQUE, GÓMEZ (1412?–1490?), Spanish poet, soldier, politician and dramatist, was born at Amusco. The fifth son of Pedro Manrique, adelantado mayor of León, and nephew of Santillana (q.v.), Gómez Manrique was introduced into public life at an early age, took a prominent part against the constable Álvaro de Luna during the reign of John II., went into opposition against Miguel Lucas de Iranzo in the reign of Henry IV., and declared in favour of the infanta Isabel, whose marriage with Ferdinand he promoted. Besides being a distinguished soldier, he acted as a moderating political influence and, when appointed corregidor of Toledo, was active in protecting the converted Jews from popular resentment. His will was signed on the 31st of May 1490, and he is known to have died before the 16th of February 1491. He inherited the literary taste of his uncle Santillana, and was greatly esteemed in his own age; but his reputation was afterwards eclipsed by that of his nephew Jorge Manrique (q.v.), whose Coplas were continually reproduced. Gómez Manrique’s poems were not printed till 1885, when they were edited by Antonio Paz y Melia. They at once revealed him to be a poet of eminent merit, and it seems certain that his Consejos, addressed to Diego Arias de Avila, inspired the more famous Coplas of his nephew. His didactic verses are modelled upon those of Santillana, and his satires are somewhat coarse in thought and expression; but his place in the history of Spanish literature is secure as the earliest Spanish dramatist whose name has reached posterity. He wrote the Representación del nascimiento de Nuestro Señor, a play on the Passion, and two momos, or interludes, played at court.


MANRIQUE, JORGE (1440?–1478), Spanish poet and soldier, was born probably at Paredes de Nava. The fourth son of Rodrigo Manrique, count de Paredes, he became like the rest of his family a fervent partisan of Queen Isabel, served with great distinction in many engagements, and was made comendador of Montizón in the order of Santiago. He was killed in a skirmish near the fortress of Garci-Muñoz in 1478, and was buried in the church attached to the convent of Uclés. His love-songs, satires, and acrostic verses are merely ingenious compositions in the taste of his age; he owes his imperishable renown to a single poem, the Coplas por la muerte de su padre, an elegy of forty stanzas on the death of his father, which was apparently first printed in the Cancionero llamado de Fray Inigo de Mendoza about the year 1482. There is no foundation for the theory that Manrique drew his inspiration from an Arabic poem by Abu ʽl-Bakā Sālih ar-Rundi; the form of the Coplas is influenced by the Consejos of his uncle, Gómez Manrique, and the matter derives from the Bible, from Boethius and from other sources readily accessible. The great sonorous commonplaces on death are vitalized by the intensely personal grief of the poet, who lent a new solemnity and significance to thoughts which had been for centuries the common property of mankind. It was given to Jorge Manrique to have one single moment of sublime expression, and this isolated achievement has won him a fame undimmed by any change of taste during four centuries.

The best edition of the Coplas is that issued by R. Foulché-Delbosc in the Bibliotheca hispanica; the poem has been admirably translated by Longfellow. Manrique’s other verses were mostly printed in Hernando del Castillo’s Cancionero general (1511).

MANSE (Med. Lat. mansa, mansus or mansum, from manere, to dwell, remain), originally a dwelling-house together with a portion of land sufficient for the support of a family. It is defined by Du Cange (Glossarium, s.v. Mansus) as . . . certam agri portionem quae coleretur et in qua coloni aedes esset. The term was particularly applied, in ecclesiastical law, to the house and glebe to which every church was entitled by common right,