Chapter 16

(L. V.*)

FILANGIERI, GAETANO(1752-1788), Italian publicist, was born at Naples on the 18th of August 1752. His father, Caesar, prince of Arianiello, intended him for a military career, which he commenced at the early age of seven, but soon abandoned for the study of the law. At the bar his knowledge and eloquence early secured his success, while his defence of a royal decree reforming abuses in the administration of justice gained him the favour of the king, Charles, afterwards Charles III. of Spain, and led to several honourable appointments at court. The first two books of his great work,La Scienza della legislazione, appeared in 1780. The first book contained an exposition of the rules on which legislation in general ought to proceed, while the second was devoted to economic questions. These two books showed him an ardent reformer, and vehement in denouncing the abuses of his time. He insisted on unlimited free trade, and the abolition of the medieval institutions which impeded production and national well-being. Its success was great and immediate not only in Italy, but throughout Europe at large. In 1783 he married, resigned his appointments at court, and retiring to Cava, devoted himself steadily to the completion of his work. In the same year appeared the third book, relating entirely to the principles of criminal jurisprudence. The suggestion which he made in it as to the need for reform in the Roman Catholic church brought upon him the censure of the ecclesiastical authorities, and it was condemned by the congregation of the Index in 1784. In 1785 he published three additional volumes, making the fourth book of the projected work, and dealing with education and morals. In 1787 he was appointed a member of the supreme treasury council by Ferdinand IV., but his health, impaired by close study and over-work in his new office, compelled his withdrawal to the country at Vico Equense. He died somewhat suddenly on the 21st of July 1788, having just completed the first part of the fifth book of hisScienza. He left an outline of the remainder of the work, which was to have been completed in six books.

La Scienza della legislazionehas gone through many editions, and has been translated into most of the languages of Europe. The best Italian edition is in 5 vols. 8vo. (1807). The Milan edition (1822) contains theOpusculi sceltiand a life by Donato Tommasi. A French translation appeared in Paris in 7 vols. 8vo. (1786-1798); it was republished in 1822-1824, with the addition of theOpusclesand notes by Benjamin Constant.The Science of Legislationwas translated into English by Sir R. Clayton (London, 1806).

FILARIASIS,the name of a disease due to the nematodeFilaria sanguinis hominis. A milky appearance of the urine, due to the presence of a substance like chyle, which forms a clot, had been observed from time to time, especially in tropical and subtropical countries; and it was proved by Dr Wucherer of Bahia, and by Dr Timothy Lewis, that this peculiar condition is uniformly associated with the presence in the blood of minute eel-like worms, visible only under the microscope, being the embryo forms of aFilaria(seeNematoda). Sometimes the discharge of lymph takes place at one or more points of the surface of the body, and there is in other cases a condition of naevoid elephantiasis of the scrotum, or lymph-scrotum. More or less of blood may occur along with the chylous fluid in the urine. Both the chyluria and the presence of filariae in the blood are curiously intermittent; it may happen that not a single filaria is to be seen during the daytime, while they swarm in the blood at night, and it has been ingeniously shown by Dr S. Mackenzie that they may be made to disappear if the patient sits up all night, reappearing while he sleeps through the day.

Sir P. Manson proved that mosquitoes imbibe the embryo filariae from the blood of man; and that many of these reach full development within the mosquito, acquiring their freedom when the latter resorts to water, where it dies after depositing its eggs. Mosquitoes would thus be the intermediate host of the filariae, and their introduction into the human body would be through the medium of water (seeParasitic Diseases).

FILDES, SIR LUKE(1844- ), English painter, was born at Liverpool, and trained in the South Kensington and Royal Academy schools. At first a highly successful illustrator, he took rank later among the ablest English painters, with “The Casual Ward” (1874), “The Widower” (1876), “The Village Wedding” (1883), “An Al-fresco Toilette” (1889); and “The Doctor” (1891), now in the National Gallery of British Art. He also painted a number of pictures of Venetian life and many notable portraits, among them the coronation portraits of King Edward VII. and Queen Alexandra. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1879, and academician in 1887; and was knighted in 1906.

See David Croal Thomson,The Life and Work of Luke Fildes, R.A.(1895).

FILE.1. A bar of steel having sharp teeth on its surface, and used for abrading or smoothing hard surfaces. (The O. Eng. word isféol, and cognate forms appear in Dutchvijl, Ger.Feile, &c.; the ultimate source is usually taken to be an Indo-European root meaning to mark or scratch, and seen in the Lat.pingere, to paint.) Some uncivilized tribes polish their weapons with such things as rough stones, pieces of shark skin or fishes’ teeth. The operation of filing is recorded in 1 Sam. xiii. 21; and, among other facts, the similarity of the name for the filing instrument among various European peoples points to an early practice of the art. A file differs from arasp(which is chiefly used for working wood, horn and the like) in having its teeth cut with a chisel whose straight edge extends across its surface, while the teeth of the rasp are formed by solitary indentations of a pointed chisel. According to the form of their teeth, files may besingle-cutordouble-cut; the former have only one set of parallel ridges(either at right angles or at some other angle with the length); the latter (and more common) have a second set cut at an angle with the first. The double-cut file presents sharp angles to the filed surface, and is better suited for hard metals. Files are classed according to the fineness of their teeth (seeTool), and their shapes present almost endless varieties. Common forms are—theflatfile, of parallelogram section, with uniform breadth and thickness, or tapering, or “bellied”; thefour-squarefile, of square section, sometimes with one side “safe,” or left smooth; and the so-calledthree-squarefile, having its cross section an equilateral triangle, thehalf-roundfile, a segment of a circle, theroundorrat-tailfile, a circle, which are generally tapered. Thefloatfile is like theflat, but single-cut. There are many others. Files vary in length from three-quarters of an inch (watchmakers’) to 2 or 3 ft. and upwards (engineers’). The length is reckoned exclusively of the spike or tang which enters the handle. Most files are tapered; thebluntare nearly parallel, with larger section near the middle; a few are parallel. Therifflersof sculptors and a few other files are curvilinear in their central line.

In manufacturing files, steel blanks are forged from bars which have been sheared or rolled as nearly as possible to the sections required, and after being carefully annealed are straightened, if necessary, and then rendered clean and accurate by grinding or filing. The process of cutting them used to be largely performed by hand, but machines are now widely employed. The hand-cutter, holding in his left hand a short chisel (the edge of which is wider than the width of the file), places it on the blank with an inclination from the perpendicular of 12° or 14°, and beginning near the farther end (the blank is placed with the tang or handle end towards him) strikes it sharply with a hammer. An indentation is thus made, and the steel, slightly thrown up on the side next the tang, forms a ridge. The chisel is then transferred to the uncut surface and slid away from the operator till it encounters the ridge just made; the position of the next cut being thus determined, the chisel is again struck, and so on. The workman seeks to strike the blows as uniformly as possible, and he will make 60 or 80 cuts a minute. If the file is to be single-cut, it is now ready to be hardened, but if it is to be double-cut he proceeds to make the second series or course of cuts, which are generally somewhat finer than the first. Thus the surface is covered with teeth inclined towards the point of the file. If the file is flat and is to be cut on the other side, it is turned over, and a thin plate of pewter placed below it to protect the teeth. Triangular and other files are supported in grooves in lead. In cutting round and half-round files, a straight chisel is applied as tangent to the curve. The round face of a half-round file requires eight, ten or more courses to complete it. Numerous attempts were made, even so far back as the 18th century, to invent machinery for cutting files, but little success was attained till the latter part of the 19th century. In most of the machines the idea was to arrange a metal arm and hand to hold the chisel with a hammer to strike the blow, and so to imitate the manual process as closely as possible. The general principle on which the successful forms are constructed is that the blanks, laid on a moving table, are slowly traversed forward under a rapidly reciprocating chisel or knife.

The filing of a flat surface perfectly true is the test of a good filer; and this is no easy matter to the beginner. The piece to be operated upon is generally fixed about the level of the elbow, the operator standing, and, except in the case of small files, grasping the file with both hands, the handle with the right, the farther end with the left. The great point is to be able to move the file forward with pressure in horizontal straight lines; from the tendency of the hands to move in arcs of circles, the heel and point of the file are apt to be alternately raised. This is partially compensated by the bellied form given to many files (which also counteracts the frequent warping effect of the hardening process, by which one side of a flat file may be rendered concave and useless). In bringing back the file for the next thrust it is nearly lifted off the work. Further, much delicacy and skill are required in adapting the pressure and velocity, ascertaining if foreign matters or filings remain interposed between the file and the work, &c. Files can be cleaned with a piece of the so-calledcotton-card(used in combing cotton wool) nailed to a piece of wood. Indraw-filing, which is sometimes resorted to to give a neat finish, the file is drawn sideways to and fro over the work. New files are generally used for a time on brass or cast-iron, and when partially worn they are still available for filing wrought iron and steel.

2. A string or thread (through the Fr.filandfile, from Lat.filum, a thread); hence used of a device, originally a cord, wire or spike on which letters, receipts, papers, &c., may be strung for convenient reference. The term has been extended to embrace various methods for the preservation of papers in a particular order, such as expanding books, cabinets, and ingenious improvements on the simple wire file which enable any single document to be readily found and withdrawn without removing the whole series. From the devices used for filing the word is transferred to the documents filed, and thus is used of a catalogue, list, or collection of papers, &c. File is also employed to denote a row of persons or objects arranged one behind the other. In military usage a “file” is the opposite of a “rank,” that is, it is composed of a (variable) number of men aligned from front to rear one behind the other, while a rank contains a number of men aligned from right to left abreast. Thus a British infantry company, in line two deep, one hundred strong, has two ranks of fifty men each, and fifty “files” of two men each. Up to about 1600 infantry companies or battalions were often sixteen deep, one front rank man and the fifteen “coverers” forming a file. The number of ranks and, therefore, of men in the file diminished first to ten (1600), then to six (1630), then to three (1700), and finally to two (about 1808 in the British army, 1888 in the German). Denser formations when employed have been formed, not by altering the order of men within the unit, but by placing several units, one closely behind the other (“doubling” and “trebling” the line of battle, as it used to be called). In the 17th century a file formed a small command under the “file leader,” the whole of the front rank consisting therefore of old soldiers or non-commissioned officers. This use of the word to express a unit of command gave rise to the old-fashioned term “file firing,” to imply a species of fire (equivalent to the modern “independent”) in which each man in the file fired in succession after the file leader, and to-day a corporal or sergeant is still ordered to take one or more files under his charge for independent work. In the above it is to be understood that the men are facing to the front or rear. If they are turned to the right or left so that the company now stands two men broad and fifty deep, it is spoken of as being “in file.” From this come such phrases as “single file” or “Indian file” (one man leading and the rest following singly behind him).1The use of verbs “to file” and “to defile,” implying the passage from fighting to marching formation, is to be derived from this rather than from the resemblance of a marching column to a long flexible thread, for in the days when the word was first used the infantry company whether in battle or on the march was a solid rectangle of men, a file often containing even more men than a rank.

1This may also be understood as meaning simply “a single file,” but the explanation given above is more probable, as it is essentially a marching and not a fighting formation that is expressed by the phrase.

FILE-FISH,orTrigger-Fish, the names given to fishes of the genusBalistes(andMonacanthus) inhabiting all tropical and subtropical seas. Their body is compressed and not covered with ordinary scales, but with small juxtaposed scutes. Their other principal characteristics consist in the structure of their first dorsal fin (which consists of three spines) and in their peculiar dentition. The first of the three dorsal spines is very strong, roughened in front like a file, and hollowed out behind to receive the second much smaller spine, which, besides, has a projection in front, at its base, fitting into a notch of the first. Thus these two spines can only be raised or depressed simultaneously, in such a manner that the first cannot be forced down unless the second has been previously depressed. The latter has been compared to a trigger, hence the name of Trigger-fish. Also thegeneric nameBalistesand the Italian name of “Pesce balistra” refer to this structure. Both jaws are armed with eight strong incisor-like and sometimes pointed teeth, by which these fishes are enabled, not only to break off pieces of madrepores and other corals on which they feed, but also to chisel a hole into the hard shells of Mollusca, in order to extract the soft parts. In this way they destroy an immense number of molluscs, and become most injurious to the pearl-fisheries. The gradual failure of those fisheries in Ceylon has been ascribed to this cause, although evidently other agencies must have been at work at the same time. TheMonacanthiare distinguished from theBalistesin having only one dorsal spine and a velvety covering of the skin. Some 30 different species are known ofBalistesand about 50 ofMonacanthus. Two species (B. maculatusandcapriscus), common in the Atlantic, sometimes wander to the British coasts.

FILELFO, FRANCESCO(1398-1481), Italian humanist, was born in 1398 at Tolentino, in the March of Ancona. When he appeared upon the scene of human life, Petrarch and the students of Florence had already brought the first act in the recovery of classic culture to conclusion. They had created an eager appetite for the antique, had disinterred many important Roman authors, and had freed Latin scholarship to some extent from the barbarism of the middle ages. Filelfo was destined to carry on their work in the field of Latin literature, and to be an important agent in the still unaccomplished recovery of Greek culture. His earliest studies in grammar, rhetoric and the Latin language were conducted at Padua, where he acquired so great a reputation for learning that in 1417 he was invited to teach eloquence and moral philosophy at Venice. According to the custom of that age in Italy, it now became his duty to explain the language, and to illustrate the beauties of the principal Latin authors, Cicero and Virgil being considered the chief masters of moral science and of elegant diction. Filelfo made his mark at once in Venice. He was admitted to the society of the first scholars and the most eminent nobles of that city; and in 1419 he received an appointment from the state, which enabled him to reside as secretary to the consul-general (baylo) of the Venetians in Constantinople. This appointment was not only honourable to Filelfo as a man of trust and general ability, but it also gave him the opportunity of acquiring the most coveted of all possessions at that moment for a scholar—a knowledge of the Greek language. Immediately after his arrival in Constantinople, Filelfo placed himself under the tuition of John Chrysoloras, whose name was already well known in Italy as relative of Manuel, the first Greek to profess the literature of his ancestors in Florence. At the recommendation of Chrysoloras he was employed in several diplomatic missions by the emperor John Palaeologus. Before very long the friendship between Filelfo and his tutor was cemented by the marriage of the former to Theodora, the daughter of John Chrysoloras. He had now acquired a thorough knowledge of the Greek language, and had formed a large collection of Greek manuscripts. There was no reason why he should not return to his native country. Accordingly, in 1427 he accepted an invitation from the republic of Venice, and set sail for Italy, intending to resume his professorial career. From this time forward until the date of his death, Filelfo’s history consists of a record of the various towns in which he lectured, the masters whom he served, the books he wrote, the authors he illustrated, the friendships he contracted, and the wars he waged with rival scholars. He was a man of vast physical energy, of inexhaustible mental activity, of quick passions and violent appetites; vain, restless, greedy of gold and pleasure and fame; unable to stay quiet in one place, and perpetually engaged in quarrels with his compeers.

When Filelfo arrived at Venice with his family in 1427, he found that the city had almost been emptied by the plague, and that his scholars would be few. He therefore removed to Bologna; but here also he was met with drawbacks. The city was too much disturbed with political dissensions to attend to him; so Filelfo crossed the Apennines and settled in Florence. At Florence began one of the most brilliant and eventful periods of his life. During the week he lectured to large audiences of young and old on the principal Greek and Latin authors, and on Sundays he explained Dante to the people in the Duomo. In addition to these labours of the chair, he found time to translate portions of Aristotle, Plutarch, Xenophon and Lysias from the Greek. Nor was he dead to the claims of society. At first he seems to have lived with the Florentine scholars on tolerably good terms; but his temper was so arrogant that Cosimo de’ Medici’s friends were not long able to put up with him. Filelfo hereupon broke out into open and violent animosity; and when Cosimo was exiled by the Albizzi party in 1433, he urged the signoria of Florence to pronounce upon him the sentence of death. On the return of Cosimo to Florence, Filelfo’s position in that city was no longer tenable. His life, he asserted, had been already once attempted by a cut-throat in the pay of the Medici; and now he readily accepted an invitation from the state of Siena. In Siena, however, he was not destined to remain more than four years. His fame as a professor had grown great in Italy, and he daily received tempting offers from princes and republics. The most alluring of these, made him by the duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, he decided on accepting; and in 1440 he was received with honour by his new master in the capital of Lombardy.

Filelfo’s life at Milan curiously illustrates the multifarious importance of the scholars of that age in Italy. It was his duty to celebrate his princely patrons in panegyrics and epics, to abuse their enemies in libels and invectives, to salute them with encomiastic odes on their birthdays, and to compose poems on their favourite themes. For their courtiers he wrote epithalamial and funeral orations; ambassadors and visitors from foreign states he greeted with the rhetorical lucubrations then so much in vogue. The students of the university he taught in daily lectures, passing in review the weightiest and lightest authors of antiquity, and pouring forth a flood of miscellaneous erudition.Notsatisfied with these outlets for his mental energy, Filelfo went on translating from the Greek, and prosecuted a paper warfare with his enemies in Florence. He wrote, moreover, political pamphlets on the great events of Italian history; and when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, he procured the liberation of his wife’s mother by a message addressed in his own name to the sultan. In addition to a fixed stipend of some 700 golden florins yearly, he was continually in receipt of special payments for the orations and poems he produced; so that, had he been a man of frugal habits or of moderate economy, he might have amassed a considerable fortune. As it was, he spent his money as fast as he received it, living in a style of splendour ill befitting a simple scholar, and indulging his taste for pleasure in more than questionable amusements. In consequence of this prodigality, he was always poor. His letters and his poems abound in impudent demands for money from patrons, some of them couched in language of the lowest adulation, and others savouring of literary brigandage.

During the second year of his Milanese residence Filelfo lost his first wife, Theodora. He soon married again; and this time he chose for his bride a young lady of good Lombard family, called Orsina Osnaga. When she died he took in wedlock forthe third time a woman of Lombard birth, Laura Magiolini. To all his three wives, in spite of numerous infidelities, he seems to have been warmly attached; and this is perhaps the best trait in a character otherwise more remarkable for arrogance and heat than for any amiable qualities.

On the death of Filippo Maria Visconti, Filelfo, after a short hesitation, transferred his allegiance to Francesco Sforza, the new duke of Milan; and in order to curry favour with this parvenu, he began his ponderous epic, theSforziad, of which 12,800 lines were written, but which was never published. When Francesco Sforza died, Filelfo turned his thoughts towards Rome. He was now an old man of seventy-seven years, honoured with the friendship of princes, recognized as the most distinguished of Italian humanists, courted by pontiffs, and decorated with the laurel wreath and the order of knighthood by kings. Crossing the Apennines and passing through Florence, he reached Rome in the second week of 1475. The terrible Sixtus IV. now ruled in the Vatican; and from this pope Filelfo had received an invitation to occupy the chair of rhetoric with good emoluments. At first he was vastly pleased with the city and court of Rome; but his satisfaction ere long turned to discontent, and he gave vent to his ill-humour in a venomous satire on the pope’s treasurer, Milliardo Cicala. Sixtus himself soon fell under the ban of his displeasure; and when a year had passed he left Rome never to return. Filelfo reached Milan to find that his wife had died of the plague in his absence, and was already buried. His own death followed speedily. For some time past he had been desirous of displaying his abilities and adding to his fame in Florence. Years had healed the breach between him and the Medicean family; and on the occasion of the Pazzi conspiracy against the life of Lorenzo de’ Medici, he had sent violent letters of abuse to his papal patron Sixtus, denouncing his participation in a plot so dangerous to the security of Italy. Lorenzo now invited him to profess Greek at Florence, and thither Filelfo journeyed in 1481. But two weeks after his arrival he succumbed to dysentery, and was buried at the age of eighty-three in the church of the Annunziata.

Filelfo deserves commemoration among the greatest humanists of the Italian Renaissance, not for the beauty of his style, not for the elevation of his genius, not for the accuracy of his learning, but for his energy, and for his complete adaptation to the times in which he lived. His erudition was large but ill-digested; his knowledge of the ancient authors, if extensive, was superficial; his style was vulgar; he had no brilliancy of imagination, no pungency of epigram, no grandeur of rhetoric. Therefore he has left nothing to posterity which the world would not very willingly let die. But in his own days he did excellent service to learning by his untiring activity, and by the facility with which he used his stores of knowledge. It was an age of accumulation and preparation, when the world was still amassing and cataloguing the fragments rescued from the wrecks of Greece and Rome. Men had to receive the very rudiments of culture before they could appreciate its niceties. And in this work of collection and instruction Filelfo excelled, passing rapidly from place to place, stirring up the zeal for learning by the passion of his own enthusiastic temperament, and acting as a pioneer for men like Poliziano and Erasmus.

All that is worth knowing about Filelfo is contained in Carlo de’ Rosmini’s admirableVita di Filelfo(Milan, 1808); see also W. Roscoe’sLife of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Vespasiano’sVite di uomini illustri, and J.A. Symonds’sRenaissance in Italy(1877).

(J. A. S.)

A complete edition of Filelfo’s Greek letters (based on the Codex Trevulzianus) was published for the first time, with French translation, notes and commentaries, by E. Legrand in 1892 at Paris (C. xii. ofPublications de l’école des lang. orient.). For further references, especially to monographs, &c., on Filelfo’s life and work, see Ulysse Chevalier,Répertoire des sources hist., bio-bibliographie(Paris, 1905), s.v.Philelphe, François.

FILEY,a seaside resort in the Buckrose parliamentary division of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, 9-1/2 m. S.E. of Scarborough by a branch of the North Eastern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3003. It stands upon the slope and summit of the cliffs above Filey Bay, which is fringed by a fine sandy beach. The northern horn of the bay is formed by Filey Brigg, a narrow and abrupt promontory, continued seaward by dangerous reefs. The coast-line sweeps hence south-eastward to the finer promontory of Flamborough Head, beyond which is the watering-place of Bridlington. The church of St Oswald at Filey is a fine cruciform building with central tower, Transitional Norman and Early English in date. There are pleasant promenades and good golf links, also a small spa which has fallen into disuse. Filey is in favour with visitors who desire a quiet resort without the accompaniment of entertainment common to the larger watering-places. Roman remains have been discovered on the cliff north of the town; the site was probably important, but nothing is certainly known about it.

FILIBUSTER,a name originally given to the buccaneers (q.v.). The term is derived most probably from the Dutchvry buiter, Ger.Freibeuter, Eng.freebooter, the word changing first intofribustier, and then into Fr.flibustier, Span.filibustero.Flibustierhas passed into the French language, andfilibusterointo the Spanish language, as a general name for a pirate. The term “filibuster” was revived in America to designate those adventurers who, after the termination of the war between Mexico and the United States, organized expeditions within the United States to take part in West Indian and Central American revolutions. From this has sprung the modern use of the word to imply one who engages in private, unauthorized and irregular warfare against any state. In the United States it is colloquially applied to legislators who practise obstruction.

FILICAJA, VINCENZO DA(1642-1707), Italian poet, sprung from an ancient and noble family of Florence, was born in that city on the 30th of December 1642. From an incidental notice in one of his letters, stating the amount of house rent paid during his childhood, his parents must have been in easy circumstances, and the supposition is confirmed by the fact that he enjoyed all the advantages of a liberal education, first under the Jesuits of Florence, and then in the university of Pisa.

At Pisa his mind became stored, not only with the results of patient study in various branches of letters, but with the great historical associations linked with the former glory of the Pisan republic, and with one remarkable institution of which Pisa was the seat. To the tourist who now visits Pisa the banners and emblems of the order of St Stephen are mere matter of curiosity, but they had a serious significance two hundred years ago to the young Tuscan, who knew that these naval crusaders formed the main defence of his country and commerce against the Turkish, Algerine and Tunisian corsairs. After a five years’ residence in Pisa he returned to Florence, where he married Anna, daughter of the senator and marquis Scipione Capponi, and withdrew to a small villa at Figline, not far from the city. Abjuring the thought of writing amatory poetry in consequence of the premature death of a young lady to whom he had been attached, he occupied himself chiefly with literary pursuits, above all the composition of Italian and Latin poetry. His own literary eminence, the opportunities enjoyed by him as a member of the celebrated Academy Della Crusca for making known his critical taste and classical knowledge, and the social relations within the reach of a noble Florentine so closely allied with the great house of Capponi, sufficiently explain the intimate terms on which he stood with such eminent men of letters as Magalotti, Menzini, Gori and Redi. The last-named, the author ofBacchus in Tuscany, was not only one of the most brilliant poets of his time, and a safe literary adviser; he was the court physician, and his court influence was employed with zeal and effect in his friend’s favour. Filicaja’s rural seclusion was owing even more to his straitened means than to his rural tastes. If he ceased at length to pine in obscurity, the change was owing not merely to the fact that his poetical genius, fired by the deliverance of Vienna from the Turks in 1683, poured forth the right strains at the right time, but also to the influence of Redi, who not only laid Filicaja’s verses before his own sovereign, but had them transmitted with the least possible delay to the foreign princes whose noble deeds they sung. The first recompense came, however, not from those princes, but from Christina, the ex-queen of Sweden, who, from her circle of savants andcourtiers at Rome, spontaneously and generously announced to Filicaja her wish to bear the expense of educating his two sons, enhancing her kindness by the delicate request that it should remain a secret.

The tide of Filicaja’s fortunes now turned. The grand-duke of Tuscany, Cosmo III., conferred on him an important office, the commissionership of official balloting. He was named governor of Volterra in 1696, where he strenuously exerted himself to raise the tone of public morality. Both there and at Pisa, where he was subsequently governor in 1700, his popularity was so great that on his removal the inhabitants of both cities petitioned for his recall. He passed the close of his life at Florence; the grand-duke raised him to the rank of senator, and he died in that city on the 24th of September 1707. He was buried in the family vault in the church of St Peter, and a monument was erected to his memory by his sole surviving son Scipione Filicaja. In the six celebrated odes inspired by the great victory of Sobieski, Filicaja took a lyrical flight which has placed him at moments on a level with the greatest Italian poets. They are, however, unequal, like all his poetry, reflecting in some passages the native vigour of his genius and purest inspirations of his tastes, whilst in others they are deformed by the affectations of theSeicentisti. When thoroughly natural and spontaneous—as in the two sonnets “Italia, Italia, o tu cui feo la sorte” and “Dov’ è, Italia, il tuo braccio? e a che ti serve;” in the verses “Alla beata Vergine,” “Al divino amore;” in the sonnet “Sulla fede nelle disgrazie”—the truth and beauty of thought and language recall the verse of Petrarch.

Besides the poems published in the complete Venice edition of 1762, several other pieces appeared for the first time in the small Florence edition brought out by Barbera in 1864.

FILIGREE(formerly writtenfiligrainorfiligrane; the Ital.filigrana, Fr.filigrane, Span,filigrana, Ger.Drahtgeflecht), jewel work of a delicate kind made with twisted threads usually of gold and silver. The word, which is usually derived from the Lat.filum, thread, andgranum, grain, is not found in Ducange, and is indeed of modern origin. According to Prof. Skeat it is derived from the Span.filigrana, from “filar, to spin, andgrano, the grain or principal fibre of the material.” Though filigree has become a special branch of jewel work in modern times it was anciently part of the ordinary work of the jeweller. Signor A. Castellani states, in hisMemoir on the Jewellery of the Ancients(1861), that all the jewelry of the Etruscans and Greeks (other than that intended for the grave, and therefore of an unsubstantial character) was made by soldering together and so building up the gold rather than by chiselling or engraving the material.

The art may be said to consist in curling, twisting and plaiting fine pliable threads of metal, and uniting them at their points of contact with each other, and with the ground, by means of gold or silver solder and borax, by the help of the blowpipe. Small grains or beads of the same metals are often set in the eyes of volutes, on the junctions, or at intervals at which they will set off the wire-work effectively. The more delicate work is generally protected by framework of stouter wire. Brooches, crosses, earrings and other personal ornaments of modern filigree are generally surrounded and subdivided by bands of square or flat metal, giving consistency to the filling up, which would not otherwise keep its proper shape. Some writers of repute have laid equal stress on thefilumand thegranum, and have extended the use of the term filigree to include the granulated work of the ancients, even where the twisted wire-work is entirely wanting. Such a wide application of the term is not approved by current usage, according to which the presence of the twisted threads is the predominant fact.

The Egyptian jewellers employed wire, both to lay down on a background and to plait or otherwise arrangeà jour. But, with the exception of chains, it cannot be said that filigree work was much practised by them. Their strength lay rather in their cloisonné work and their moulded ornaments. Many examples, however, remain of round plaited gold chains of fine wire, such as are still made by the filigree workers of India, and known as Trichinopoly chains. From some of these are hung smaller chains of finer wire with minute fishes and other pendants fastened to them. In ornaments derived from Phoenician sites, such as Cyprus and Sardinia, patterns of gold wire are laid down with great delicacy on a gold ground, but the art was advanced to its highest perfection in the Greek and Etruscan filigree of the 6th to the 3rd centuriesB.C.A number of earrings and other personal ornaments found in central Italy are preserved in the Louvre and in the British Museum. Almost all of them are made of filigree work. Some earrings are in the form of flowers of geometric design, bordered by one or more rims each made up of minute volutes of gold wire, and this kind of ornament is varied by slight differences in the way of disposing the number or arrangement of the volutes. But the feathers and petals of modern Italian filigree are not seen in these ancient designs. Instances occur, but only rarely, in which filigree devices in wire are self-supporting and not applied to metal plates. The museum of the Hermitage at St Petersburg contains an amazingly rich collection of jewelry from the tombs of the Crimea. Many bracelets and necklaces in that collection are made of twisted wire, some in as many as seven rows of plaiting, with clasps in the shape of heads of animals of beaten work. Others are strings of large beads of gold, decorated with volutes, knots and other patterns of wire soldered over the surfaces. (See theAntiquités du Bosphore Cimmérien, by Gille, 1854; reissued by S. Reinach, 1892, in which will be found careful engravings of these objects.) In the British Museum a sceptre, probably that of a Greek priestess, is covered with plaited and netted gold wire, finished with a sort of Corinthian capital and a boss of green glass.

It is probable that in India and various parts of central Asia filigree has been worked from the most remote period without any change in the designs. Whether the Asiatic jewellers were influenced by the Greeks settled on that continent, or merely trained under traditions held in common with them, it is certain that the Indian filigree workers retain the same patterns as those of the ancient Greeks, and work them in the same way, down to the present day. Wandering workmen are given so much gold, coined or rough, which is weighed, heated in a pan of charcoal, beaten into wire, and then worked in the courtyard or verandah of the employer’s house according to the designs of the artist, who weighs the complete work on restoring it and is paid at a specified rate for his labour. Very fine grains or beads and spines of gold, scarcely thicker than coarse hair, projecting from plates of gold are methods of ornamentation still used.

Passing to later times we may notice in many collections of medieval jewel work (such as that in the South Kensington Museum) reliquaries, covers for the gospels, &c., made either in Constantinople from the 6th to the 12th centuries, or in monasteries in Europe, in which Byzantine goldsmiths’ work was studied and imitated. These objects, besides being enriched with precious stones, polished, but not cut into facets, and with enamel, are often decorated with filigree. Large surfaces of gold are sometimes covered with scrolls of filigree soldered on; and corner pieces of the borders of book covers, or the panels of reliquaries, are not unfrequently made up of complicated pieces of plaited work alternating with spaces encrusted with enamel. Byzantine filigree work occasionally has small stones set amongst the curves or knots. Examples of such decoration can be seen in the South Kensington and British Museums.

In the north of Europe the Saxons, Britons and Celts were from an early period skilful in several kinds of goldsmiths’ work. Admirable examples of filigree patterns laid down in wire on gold, from Anglo-Saxon tombs, may be seen in the British Museum—notably a brooch from Dover, and a sword-hilt from Cumberland.

The Irish filigree work is more thoughtful in design and more varied in pattern than that of any period or country that could be named. Its highest perfection must be placed in the 10th and 11th centuries. The Royal Irish Academy in Dublin contains a number of reliquaries and personal jewels, of which filigree is the general and most remarkable ornament. The “Tara” brooch has been copied and imitated, and the shape anddecoration of it are well known. Instead of fine curls or volutes of gold thread, the Irish filigree is varied by numerous designs in which one thread can be traced through curious knots and complications, which, disposed over large surfaces, balance one another, but always with special varieties and arrangements difficult to trace with the eye. The long thread appears and disappears without breach of continuity, the two ends generally worked into the head and the tail of a serpent or a monster. The reliquary containing the “Bell of St Patrick” is covered with knotted work in many varieties. A two-handled chalice, called the “Ardagh cup,” found near Limerick in 1868, is ornamented with work of this kind of extraordinary fineness. Twelve plaques on a band round the body of the vase, plaques on each handle and round the foot of the vase have a series of different designs of characteristic patterns, in fine filigree wire work wrought on the front of the repoussé ground. (See a paper by the 3rd earl of Dunraven inTransactions of Royal Irish Academy, xxiv. pt. iii. 1873.)

Much of the medieval jewel work all over Europe down to the 15th century, on reliquaries, crosses, croziers and other ecclesiastical goldsmiths’ work, is set off with bosses and borders of filigree. Filigree work in silver was practised by the Moors of Spain during the middle ages with great skill, and was introduced by them and established all over the Peninsula, whence it was carried to the Spanish colonies in America. The Spanish filigree work of the 17th and 18th centuries is of extraordinary complexity (examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum), and silver filigree jewelry of delicate and artistic design is still made in considerable quantities throughout the country. The manufacture spread over the Balearic Islands, and among the populations that border the Mediterranean. It is still made all over Italy, and in Malta, Albania, the Ionian Islands and many other parts of Greece. That of the Greeks is sometimes on a large scale, with several thicknesses of wires alternating with larger and smaller bosses and beads, sometimes set with turquoises, &c., and mounted on convex plates, making rich ornamental headpieces, belts and breast ornaments. Filigree silver buttons of wire-work and small bosses are worn by the peasants in most of the countries that produce this kind of jewelry. Silver filigree brooches and buttons are also made in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Little chains and pendants are added to much of this northern work.

Some very curious filigree work was brought from Abyssinia after the capture of Magdala—arm-guards, slippers, cups, &c., some of which are now in the South Kensington Museum. They are made of thin plates of silver, over which the wire-work is soldered. The filigree is subdivided by narrow borders of simple pattern, and the intervening spaces are made up of many patterns, some with grains set at intervals.

A few words must be added as to the granulated work which, as stated above, some writers have classed under the term of filigree, although the twisted wires may be altogether wanting. Such decoration consists of minute globules of gold, soldered to form patterns on a metal surface. Its use is rare in Egypt. (See J. de Morgan,Fouilles à Dahchour, 1894-1895, pl. xii.) It occurs in Cyprus at an early period, as for instance on a gold pendant in the British Museum from Enkomi in Cyprus (10th centuryB.C.). The pendant is in the form of a pomegranate, and has upon it a pattern of triangles, formed by more than 3000 minute globules separately soldered on. It also occurs on ornaments of the 7th centuryB.C.from Camirus in Rhodes. But these globules are large, compared with those which are found on Etruscan jewelry. Signor Castellani, who had made the antique jewelry of the Etruscans and Greeks his special study, with the intention of reproducing the ancient models, found it for a long time impossible to revive this particular process of delicate soldering. He overcame the difficulty at last, by the discovery of a traditional school of craftsmen at St Angelo in Vado, by whose help his well-known reproductions were executed.

For examples of antique work the student should examine the gold ornament rooms of the British Museum, the Louvre and the collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The last contains a large and very varied assortment of modern Italian, Spanish, Greek and other jewelry made for the peasants of various countries. It also possesses interesting examples of the modern work in granulated gold by Castellani and Giuliano. The Celtic work is well represented in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin.

FILLAN, SAINT,orFaelan, the name of the two Scottish saints, of Irish origin, whose lives are of a purely legendary character. The St Fillan whose feast is kept on the 20th of June had churches dedicated to his honour at Ballyheyland, Queen’s county, Ireland, and at Loch Earn, Perthshire. The other, who is commemorated on the 9th of January, was specially venerated at Cluain Mavscua, Co. Westmeath, Ireland, and so early as the 8th or 9th century at Strathfillan, Perthshire, Scotland, where there was an ancient monastery dedicated to him, which, like most of the religious houses of early times, was afterwards secularized. The lay-abbot, who was its superior in the reign of William the Lion, held high rank in the Scottish kingdom. This monastery was restored in the reign of Robert Bruce, and became a cell of the abbey of canons regular at Inchaffray. The new foundation received a grant from King Robert, in gratitude for the aid which he was supposed to have obtained from a relic of the saint on the eve of the great victory of Bannockburn. Another relic was the saint’s staff or crozier, which became known as the coygerach or quigrich, and was long in the possession of a family of the name of Jore or Dewar, who were its hereditary guardians. They certainly had it in their custody in the year 1428, and their right was formally recognized by King James III. in 1487. The head of the crozier, which is of silver-gilt with a smaller crozier of bronze inclosed within it, is now deposited in the National Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

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