OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Medea

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​MEDEA (Gr. Μήδεια), in Greek legend, a famous sorceress, daughter of Aeetes, king of Colchis. Having been thrown into prison by her father, who was afraid of being injured by her witchcraft, she escaped by means of her art and fled to the temple of Helios the Sun-god, her reputed grandfather. She fell in love with Jason the Argonaut, who reached Colchis at this time, and exacted a terrible revenge for his faithlessness (see Argonauts and Jason). After the murder of Jason’s ​second wife and her own children, she fled from Corinth in her car drawn by dragons, the gift of Helios, to Athens, where she married king Aegeus, by whom she had a son, Medus. But the discovery of an attempt on the life of Theseus, the son of Aegeus, forced her to leave Athens (Apollodorus i. 9, 28; Pausanias ii. 3, 6–11; Diod. Sic. iv. 45, 46, 54–56). Accompanied by her son, she returned to Colchis, and restored her father to the throne, of which he had been deprived by his own brother Perses. Medus was regarded as the eponymous hero and progenitor of the Medes. Medea was honoured as a goddess at Corinth, and was said to have become the wife of Achilles in the Elysian fields. The chief seat of her cult, however, was Thessaly, which was always regarded as the home of magic. As time went on her character was less favourably described. In the case of Jason and the Argonauts, she plays the part of a kindly, good-natured fairy; Euripides, however, makes her a barbarous priestess of Hecate, while the Alexandrian writers depicted her in still darker colours. Some authorities regard Medea as a lunar divinity, but the ancient conception of her as a Thessalian sorceress is probably correct. The popularity of the story of Jason and Medea in antiquity is shown by the large amount of literature on the subject. The original story was probably contained in an old epic poem called Μινυᾲς ποίησις, the authorship of which was ascribed to Prodicus of Phocaea. It is given at some length in the fourth Pythian ode of Pindar, and forms the subject of the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius. There is a touching epistle (Medea to Jason) in the Heroides of Ovid. Medea is the heroine of extant tragedies of Euripides and Seneca; those of Aeschylus and Ennius (adapted from Euripides) are lost. Neophron of Sicyon and Melanthius wrote plays of the same name. Among modern writers on the same theme may be mentioned T. Corneille, F. Grillparzer and M. Cherubini (opera).
The death of Glauce and the murder of her children by Medea was frequently represented in ancient art. In the famous picture of Tomomachus of Byzantium Medea is deliberating whether or not she shall kill her children; there are copies of this painting in the mural decorations of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
See Léon Mallinger, Médée: étude sur la littérature comparée, an account of Medea in Greek, Roman, middle age and modern literature (1898); and the articles in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des antiquités and Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Medemblik

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​MEDEMBLIK, a seaport of Holland, on the Zuider Zee, the terminus of a branch railway from Hoorn, 10½ m. S. Pop. (1903), 3012. Once the capital of West Friesland and a prosperous town, many of its streets and quays are now deserted, though the docks and basins constructed at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries could still afford excellent accommodation for many ships. Close to the harbour entrance stands the castle built by Florens V., count of Holland, in 1285. It has been restored, and is used as a court of justice. The West church, formerly called after St Boniface, the apostle of Germany, was once the richest in Friesland, and belonged from an early date to the cathedral chapter at Utrecht, where, until the Reformation, the pastor of Medemblik had a seat in the cathedral. It contains the tomb of Lord George Murray (q.v.). Among the public buildings are the town-hall (17th century), weigh-house, orphanage, the old almshouse, the house (1613) of the Water Commissioners, and a large building formerly belonging to the admiralty and now used as a state lunatic asylum. There are many interesting brick houses, dating chiefly from the first half of the 17th century, with curious gables and picturesque ornamentation, carvings and inscriptions.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Medhankara

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​MEDHANKARA, the name of several distinguished members, in medieval times, of the Buddhist order. The oldest flourished about A.D. 1200, and was the author of the Vinaya Artha Samuccaya, a work in the Sinhalese language on Buddhist canon law. Next to him came Araññaka Medhankara, who presided over the Buddhist council held at Polonnaruwa, then the capital of Ceylon, in 1250. The third Vanaratana Medhankara, flourished in 1280, and wrote a poem in Pali, Jina Carita, on the life of the Buddha. He also wrote the Payoga Siddhi. The fourth was the celebrated scholar to whom King Parākrama Bāhu IV. of Ceylon entrusted in 1307 the translation from Pali into Sinhalese of the Jātaka book, the most voluminous extant work in Sinhalese. The fifth, a Burmese, was called the Sangharāja Nava Medhankara, and wrote in Pali a work entitled the Loka Padīpa Sāra, on cosmogony and allied subjects.
See the Journal of the Pali Text Society, 1882, p. 126; 1886, pp. 62, 67, 72; 1890, p. 43; Mahāvaṃsa, ch. xl., verse 85.  (T. W. R. D.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Medhurst, Walter Henry

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​MEDHURST, WALTER HENRY (1796–1857), English Congregationalist missionary to China, was born in London and educated at St Paul’s school. He learned the business of a printer, and having become interested in Christian missions he sailed in 1816 for the London Missionary Society’s station at Malacca, which was intended to be a great printing-centre. He became proficient in Malay, in a knowledge of the written characters of Chinese, and in the colloquial use of more than one of its dialects. He was ordained at Malacca in 1819, and engaged in missionary labours, first at Penang, then at Batavia, and finally, when peace was concluded with China in 1842, at Shanghai. There he continued till 1856, laying the foundations of a successful mission. His principal labour for several years, as one of a committee of delegates, was in the revision of existing Chinese versions of the Bible. The result was a version (in High Wen-li) marvellously correct and faithful to the original. With John Stronach he also translated the New Testament into the Mandarin dialect of Nanking. His Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionaries (each in 2 vols.) are still valuable, and to him the British public owed its understanding of the teaching of Hung-Sew-Tseuen, the leader of the Tai-ping rising (1851-64). The university of New York conferred upon him in 1843 the degree of D.D. Medhurst left Shanghai in 1856 in failing health, and died two days after reaching London, on the 24th of January 1857. His son, Sir Walter Henry Medhurst (1822–1885), was British consul at Hankow and afterwards at Shanghai.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Inouye, Kaoru, Marquess

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​INOUYE, KAORU, Marquess (1835– ), Japanese statesman, was born in 1835, a samurai of the Chōshū fief. He was a bosom friend of his fellow-clansman Prince Ito, and the two youths visited England in 1863, serving as common sailors during the voyage. At that time all travel abroad was forbidden on pain of death, but the veto did not prove deterrent in the face of a rapidly growing conviction that, as a matter of self-protection, Japan must assimilate the essentials of Western civilization. Shortly after the departure of Inouye and Ito, the Chōshū fief, having fired upon foreign vessels passing the strait of Shimonoseki, was menaced by war with the Yedo government or with the insulted powers, and Inouye and Ito, on receipt of this news, hastened home hoping to avert the catastrophe. They repaired to the British legation in Yedo and begged that the allied squadron, then about to sail for Shimonoseki to call Chōshū to account, should be delayed that they might have an opportunity of advising the fief to make timely submission. Not only was this request complied with, but a British frigate was detailed to carry the two men to Shimonoseki, and, pending her departure, the British legation assisted them to lie perdu. Their mission proved futile, however, and Inouye was subsequently waylaid by a party of conservative samurai, who left him covered with wounds. This experience did not modify his liberal views, and, by the time of the Restoration in 1867, he had earned a high reputation as a leader of progress and an able statesman. Finance and foreign affairs were supposed to be the spheres specially suited to his genius, but his name is not associated with any signal practical success in either, though his counsels were always highly valued by his sovereign and his country alike. As minister of foreign affairs he conducted the long and abortive negotiations for treaty revision between 1883 and 1886, and in 1885 he was raised to the peerage with the title of count, being one of the first group of Meiji statesmen whose services were thus rewarded. Prior to his permanent retirement from office in 1898, he held the portfolios of foreign affairs, finance, home affairs, and agriculture and commerce, and throughout the war with Russia he attended all important state councils, by order of the emperor, being also specially designated adviser to the minister of finance. In 1907 he was raised to the rank of marquess. His name will go down in his country’s history as one of the five Meiji statesmen, namely, Princes Ito and Yamagata, Marquesses Inouye and Matsukata and Count Okuma.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Inowrazlaw

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​INOWRAZLAW, the Polish form of the German Jung-Breslau, by which the place was formerly known, a town in the Prussian province of Posen, situated on an eminence in the most fertile part of the province, 21 m. S.W. of Thorn. Pop. (1900) 26,141. Iron-founding, the manufacture of machinery and chemicals, and an active trade in cattle and country produce are carried on. In the vicinity are important salt works and a sulphur mine, and since 1876 a brine bath has been within the town. Inowrazlaw is mentioned as early as 1185, and in 1772 it passed to Prussia.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Innocents' Day

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​INNOCENTS’ DAY, or Childermas, a festival celebrated in the Latin church on the 28th of December, and in the Greek church on the 29th (O.S.) in memory of the massacre of the children by Herod. The Church early regarded these little ones as the first martyrs. It is uncertain when the day was first kept as a saint’s day. At first it seems to have been absorbed into the celebration of the Epiphany, but by the 5th century it was kept as a separate festival. In Rome it was a day of fasting and mourning. In the middle ages the festival was the occasion for much indulgence to the children. The boy-bishop (q.v.), whose tenure of office lasted till Childermas, had his last exercise of authority then, the day being one of the series of days which were known as the Feast of Fools. Parents temporarily abdicated authority, and in nunneries and monasteries the youngest nun and monk were for the twenty-four hours allowed to masquerade as abbess and abbot. These mockeries of religion were condemned by the Council of Basel (1431); but though shorn of its extravagances the day is still observed as a feast day and merry-making for children in Catholic countries, and particularly as an occasion for practical joking like an April Fool’s Day. In Spanish-America when such a joke has been played, the phrase equivalent to “You April fool!” is Que la inocencia le valga! May your innocence protect you! The society of Lincoln’s Inn specially celebrated Childermas, annually electing a “king of the Cockneys.” Innocents’ Day was ever accounted unlucky. Nothing was begun and no marriages took place then. Louis XI. prohibited all state business. The coronation of Edward IV., fixed for a Sunday, was postponed till the Monday when it was found the Sunday fell on the 28th of December. In rural England it was deemed unlucky to do housework, put on new clothes or pare the nails. At various places in Gloucestershire, Somerset and Worcestershire muffled peals were rung (Notes and Queries, 1st series, vol. viii. p. 617). In Northampton the festival was called “Dyzemas Day” (possibly from Gr. δυσ- “ill” and “mass”), and there is a proverb “What is begun on Dyzemas will never be finished.” The Irish call the day La Croasta na bliana, “the cross day of the year,” or Diar dasin darg, “blood Thursday,” and many legends attach to it (Notes and Queries, 4th series, vol. xii. p. 185). In medieval England the children were reminded of the mournfulness of the day by being whipped in bed on Innocents’ morning. This custom survived to the 17th century.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Innuendo

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​INNUENDO (Latin for “by nodding,” from innuere, to indicate by nodding), an insinuation, suggestion, in prima facie innocent words, of something defamatory or disparaging of a person. The word appears in legal documents in Medieval Latin, to explain, in parenthesis, that to which a preceding word refers; thus, “he, innuendo, the plaintiff, is a thief.” The word is still found in pleadings in actions for libel and slander. The innuendo, in the plaintiff’s statement of claim, is an averment that words written or spoken by the defendant, though prima facie not actionable, have, in fact, a defamatory meaning, which is specifically set out (see Libel and Slander).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Inquest

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​INQUEST (O. Fr. enqueste, modern enquête, from Lat. inquisitum, inquirere, to inquire), an inquiry, particularly a formal legal inquiry into facts. The word is now chiefly confined to the inquiry held by a coroner and jury into the causes of certain deaths, in matters of treasure trove, and, in the city of London, in cases of fires (see Coroner). Formerly the term was applied to many formal and official inquiries for fixing prices, &c.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Menzel, Wolfgang

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​MENZEL, WOLFGANG (1798–1873), German poet, critic and literary historian, was born on the 21st of June 1798, at Waldenburg in Silesia, studied at Breslau, Jena and Bonn, and after living for some time in Aarau and Heidelberg finally settled in Stuttgart, where, from 1830 to 1838, he had a seat in the Württemberg Diet. His first work, a clever and original volume of poems, entitled Streckverse (Heidelberg, 1823), was followed in 1824–1825 by a popular Geschichte der Deutschen in three volumes and in 1829 and 1830 by Rübezahl and Narcissus, the dramatized fairy-stories upon which his reputation as a poet chiefly rests. In 1851 he published the romance of Furore, a lively picture of the period of the Thirty Years’ War; his other writings include Geschichte Europas, 1789–1815 (2 vols. Stuttgart, 1853), and histories of the German War of 1866 and of the Franco-German War of 1870–71. From 1826 to 1848 Menzel edited a “Literaturblatt " in connexion with the Morgenblatt; in the latter year he transferred his allegiance from the Liberal to the Conservative party, and in 1852 his “Literaturblatt” was revived in that interest. In 1866 his political sympathies again changed, and he opposed the “particularism” of the Prussian “junkers” and the anti-unionism of south Germany. He died on the 23rd of April 1873 at Stuttgart. His library of 18,000 volumes was afterwards acquired for the university of Strassburg.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Menzelinsk

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​MENZELINSK, a town of eastern Russia, in the government of Ufa, 142 m. N.W. of the town of Ufa, and 10 m. from the left bank of the Kama. Pop. (1897), 7542. Its fair is one of the most important in the southern Ural region for cattle, hides, furs, grain, tea, manufactured articles, crockery, &c., which are sold to the annual value of £500,000. The town was founded in 1584.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Merbeck, John

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​MERBECK (or Marbeck), JOHN (d. c. 1585), English theological writer and musician, was organist of St George’s, Windsor, about 1540. Four years later he was convicted of heresy and sentenced to the stake, but received a pardon owing to the intervention of Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, though Gardiner had himself censured Merbeck for compiling an English Concordance of the Bible. This work, the first of its kind in English, was published in 1550 with a dedication to Edward VI. In the same year Merbeck published his annotated Book of Common Prayer, intended to provide for musical uniformity in the use of the First Prayer Book of Edward VI., which was several times reprinted in the 19th century. Merbeck wrote several devotional and controversial works of a strongly Calvinistic character, and a number of his musical compositions are preserved in manuscript in the British Museum, and at Oxford and Cambridge. He died, probably while still organist at Windsor, about 1585, His son, Roger Merbeck (1536–1605), a noted classical scholar, was appointed public orator in the university of Oxford in 1564, and in 1565 became a canon of Christ Church and was elected provost of Oriel; he left Oxford on account of an unfortunate marriage, and took to medicine as a profession, becoming the first registrar of the College of Physicians in London, and chief physician to Queen Elizabeth.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mentor of Rhodes

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​MENTOR OF RHODES, brother of Memnon (q.v.), a Greek condottiere who appears first in the service of the rebellious satrap Artabazus of Phrygia in 363. When Artabazus had rebelled a second time and was in 353 forced to flee with Memnon into Macedonia, Mentor entered the service of the Egyptian king Nectanebus, and was sent by him with a body of Greek mercenaries to support the rebellious king Tennes (Tabnit) of Sidon against Artaxerxes III. But Tennes and Mentor betrayed the besieged town to the Persians (344 B.C.). Tennes was killed after his treason, but Mentor gained the favour of the king. It was due largely to him that Egypt was conquered in 343 (Diod. xvi. 45 sqq.). He now closely allied himself with the eunuch Bagoas (q.v.), the all-powerful vizier of Artaxerxes III. He was appointed general in Asia Minor, and with the help of Artabazus and Memnon, whose pardon and recall he obtained from the king, subdued the rebels and local dynasts. The most famous among them was Hermias of Atarneus, the protector of Aristotle, who had become master of some towns of Aeolis and Troas. By treachery he made him prisoner and occupied his towns (342 B.C.); Hermias was executed by order of the king (Diod. xvi. 52; Polyaen. vi. 48; pseudo-Arist. Oecon. ii. 27; Strabo xiii. 610; Didymus’ commentary on Demosthenes Phil. 4, p. 6; cf. Diog. Laërt. vi. 9). Shortly afterwards Mentor died, and was succeeded by his brother Memnon. His son Thymondas commanded in the naval war against Alexander and at Issus (Arrian ii. 2, 1; 13, 2). (Ed. M.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Menéndez y Pelayo, Marcelino

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​MENÉNDEZ Y PELAYO, MARCELINO (1856 – ), Spanish scholar and critic, was born at Santander on the 3rd of November 1856. In 1871–1872 he studied under Mila y Fontanals at the university of Barcelona, whence he proceeded to the central university of Madrid. His academic successes had never been surpassed; a special law was passed by the Cortes to enable him to become a professor at the age of twenty-two, and three years later he was elected a member of the Spanish Academy. But before this date (1882) he was well known throughout Spain. His first volume, Estudios críticos sobre escritores montañeses (1876), had attracted little notice, and his scholarly Horacio en España (1877) appealed only to students. He became famous through his Ciencia española (1878), a collection of polemical essays defending the national tradition against the attacks of political and religious reformers. The unbending orthodoxy of this work is, if possible, still more pronounced in the Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (1880–1886), and the writer was hailed as the champion of the ultramontane party. His lectures (1881) on Calderón established his reputation as a literary critic; and his work as an historian of Spanish literature was continued in his Historia de las ideas estéticas en España (1881–1891), his edition (1890–1903) of Lope de Vega, his Antología de poetas líricos castellanos (1890–1906), and his Orígenes de la novela (1905).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Meran

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​MERAN, the chief town of the administrative district of the same name in the Austrian province of the Tirol, 20 m. by rail N.W. of Botzen on the Brenner line, while the Vintschgau railway connects it with Mals, 37 m. N.W. It is the chief town in the upper Adige valley, a region which bears the special name of the Vintschgau, and is on the high road either to Landeck and the Lower Engadine by the Reschen Scheideck Pass (4902 ft.), or more directly to the Lower Engadine by the Munster valley and the Ofen Pass (7071 ft.). In 1900 Meran had 9284 inhabitants (or, with the neighbouring villages of Untermais and Obermais, 13,201), mainly German-speaking and Romanist. The town is picturesquely situated, at a height of 1001 ft., at the foot of the vine-clad Küchelberg, and on the right bank of the Passer River, just above its junction with the Adige or Etsch. Meran proper consists mainly of one long narrow street, the Laubengasse, flanked by covered arcades, but the name is often used to include several adjacent villages, Untermais and Obermais being on the left bank of the Passer, while Gratsch is on its right bank and north-west of the main town. The most noteworthy buildings are the parish church (14th to 15th centuries) and the old residence (15th century) of the counts of the Tirol. Meran is best known as a much-frequented resort for consumptive patients, for whom it is well suited by reason of the purity of the air and the comparative immunity of the place from wind and rain in the winter. It is also visited in spring for the whey cure and in autumn for the grape cure.
To the north-west, on the Küchelberg, is the half-ruined castle of Tirol (2096 ft.), the original seat of the family which gave its name to the county. Meran may have been built on the site of a Roman settlement, but is first mentioned in 857. From the 12th century to about 1420 it was the capital of the ever-extending land named after it Tirol, but then had to give way to Innsbruck, while the building of the Brenner railway (1864–1867) and the rise of Botzen have decreased its commercial importance.  (W. A. B. C.)