Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Cerargyrite" to "Charing Cross"

Chapter VIII: Part 8

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CHAGRES, a village of the Republic of Panama, on the Atlantic coast of the Isthmus, at the mouth of the Chagres river, and about 8 m. W. of Colon. It has a harbour from 10 to 12 ft. deep, which is difficult to enter, however, on account of bars at its mouth. The port was discovered by Columbus in 1502, and was opened for traffic with Panama, on the Pacific coast, by way of the Chagres river, in the 16th century. With the decline of Porto Bello in the 18th century Chagres became the chief Atlantic port of the Isthmus, and was at the height of its importance during the great rush of gold-hunters across the Isthmus to California in 1849 and the years immediately following. With the completion of the Panama railway in 1855, however, travel was diverted to Colon, and Chagres soon became a village of miserable huts, with no evidence of its former importance. On a high rock at the mouth of the river stands the castle of Lorenzo, which was destroyed by Sir Henry Morgan when he captured the town in 1671, but was rebuilt soon afterwards by the Spaniards. Chagres was again captured in 1740 by British forces under Admiral Edward Vernon.

CHAIN (through the O. Fr. _choeine_, _choene_, &c., from Lat. _catena_), a series of links of metal or other material so connected together that the whole forms a flexible band or cord. Chains are used for a variety of purposes, such as fastening, securing, or connecting together two or more objects, supporting or lifting weights, transmitting mechanical power, &c.; or as an ornament to serve as a collar, as a symbol of office or state, or as part of the insignia of an order of knighthood; or as a device from which to hang a jewelled or other pendant, a watch, &c. (see COLLAR). Ornamental chains are made with a great variety of links, but those intended for utilitarian purposes are mostly of two types. In stud chains a stud or brace is inserted across each link to prevent its sides from collapsing inwards under strain, whereas in open link chains the links have no studs. The addition of studs is reckoned to increase the load which the chain can safely bear by 50%. Small chains of the open-link type are to a great extent made by machinery. For larger sizes the smith cuts off a length of iron rod of suitable diameter, forms it while hot to the shape of the link by repeated blows of his hammer, and welds together the two ends of the link, previously slipped inside its fellow, by the aid of the same tool; in some cases the bending is done in a mechanical press and the welding under a power hammer (see also CABLE). Weldless chains are also made; in A.G. Strathern's process, for instance, cruciform steel bars are pressed, while hot, into links, each without join and engaging with its neighbours. Chains used for transmitting power are known as pitch-chains; the chain of a bicycle (q.v.) is an example.

From the use of the chain as employed to bind or fetter a prisoner or slave, comes the figurative application to anything which serves as a constraining or restraining force; and from its series of connected links, to any series of objects, events, arguments, &c., connected by succession, logical sequence or reasoning. Specific uses are for a measuring line in land-surveying, consisting of 100 links, i.e. iron rods, 7.92 in. in length, making 22 yds. in all, hence a lineal measure of that length; and, as a nautical term, for the contrivance by which the lower shrouds of a mast are extended and secured to the ship's sides, consisting of dead-eyes, chain-plates, and chain-wale or "channel."

CHAIR (in. Mid. Eng. _choere_, through O. Fr. _chaere_ or _chaiere_, from Lat. _cathedra_, later _caledra_, Gr. [Greek: kathedra], seat, cf. "cathedral"; the modern Fr. form _chaise_, a chair, has been adopted in English with a particular meaning as a form of carriage; _chaire_ in French is still used of a professorial or ecclesiastical "chair," or _cathedra_), a movable seat, usually with four legs, for a single person, the most varied and familiar article of domestic furniture. The chair is of extreme antiquity, although for many centuries and indeed for thousands of years it was an appanage of state and dignity rather than an article of ordinary use. "The chair" is still extensively used as the emblem of authority in the House of Commons and in public meetings. It was not, in fact, until the 16th century that it became common anywhere. The chest, the bench and the stool were until then the ordinary seats of everyday life, and the number of chairs which have survived from an earlier date is exceedingly limited; most of such examples are of ecclesiastical or seigneurial origin. Our knowledge of the chairs of remote antiquity is derived almost entirely from monuments, sculpture and paintings. A few actual examples exist in the British Museum, in the Egyptian museum at Cairo, and elsewhere. In ancient Egypt they appear to have been of great richness and splendour. Fashioned of ebony and ivory, or of carved and gilded wood, they were covered with costly stuffs and supported upon representations of the legs of beasts of the chase or the figures of captives. An arm-chair in fine preservation found in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings is astonishingly similar, even in small details, to that "Empire" style which followed Napoleon's campaign in Egypt. The earliest monuments of Nineveh represent a chair without a back but with tastefully carved legs ending in lions' claws or bulls' hoofs; others are supported by figures in the nature of caryatides or by animals. The earliest known form of Greek chair, going back to five or six centuries before Christ, had a back but stood straight up, front and back. On the frieze of the Parthenon Zeus occupies a square seat with a bar-back and thick turned legs; it is ornamented with winged sphinxes and the feet of beasts. The characteristic Roman chairs were of marble, also adorned with sphinxes; the curule chair was originally very similar in form to the modern folding chair, but eventually received a good deal of ornament.

The most famous of the very few chairs which have come down from a remote antiquity is the reputed chair of St Peter in St Peter's at Rome. The wooden portions are much decayed, but it would appear to be Byzantine work of the 6th century, and to be really an ancient _sedia gestatoria_. It has ivory carvings representing the labours of Hercules. A few pieces of an earlier oaken chair have been let in; the existing one, Gregorovius says, is of acacia wood. The legend that this was the curule chair of the senator Pudens is necessarily apocryphal. It is not, as is popularly supposed, enclosed in Bernini's bronze chair, but is kept under triple lock and exhibited only once in a century. Byzantium, like Greece and Rome, affected the curule form of chair, and in addition to lions' heads and winged figures of Victory and dolphin-shaped arms used also the lyre-back which has been made familiar by the pseudo-classical revival of the end of the 18th century. The chair of Maximian in the cathedral of Ravenna is believed to date from the middle of the 6th century. It is of marble, round, with a high back, and is carved in high relief with figures of saints and scenes from the Gospels--the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the flight into Egypt and the baptism of Christ. The smaller spaces are filled with carvings of animals, birds, flowers and foliated ornament. Another very ancient seat is the so-called "Chair of Dagobert" in the Louvre. It is of cast bronze, sharpened with the chisel and partially gilt; it is of the curule or faldstool type and supported upon legs terminating in the heads and feet of animals. The seat, which was probably of leather, has disappeared. Its attribution depends entirely upon the statement of Suger, abbot of St Denis in the 12th century, who added a back and arms. Its age has been much discussed, but Viollet-le-Duc dated it to early Merovingian times, and it may in any case be taken as the oldest faldstool in existence. To the same generic type belongs the famous abbots' chair of Glastonbury; such chairs might readily be taken to pieces when their owners travelled. The _faldisterium_ in time acquired arms and a back, while retaining its folding shape. The most famous, as well as the most ancient, English chair is that made at the end of the 13th century for Edward I., in which most subsequent monarchs have been crowned. It is of an architectural type and of oak, and was covered with gilded _gesso_ which long since disappeared.

Passing from these historic examples we find the chair monopolized by the ruler, lay or ecclesiastical, to a comparatively late date. As the seat of authority it stood at the head of the lord's table, on his dais, by the side of his bed. The seigneurial chair, commoner in France and the Netherlands than in England, is a very interesting type, approximating in many respects to the episcopal or abbatial throne or stall. It early acquired a very high back and sometimes had a canopy. Arms were invariable, and the lower part was closed in with panelled or carved front and sides--the seat, indeed, was often hinged and sometimes closed with a key. That we are still said to sit "in" an arm-chair and "on" other kinds of chairs is a reminiscence of the time when the lord or seigneur sat "in his chair." These throne-like seats were always architectural in character, and as Gothic feeling waned took the distinctive characteristics of Renaissance work. It was owing in great measure to the Renaissance that the chair ceased to be an appanage of state, and became the customary companion of whomsoever could afford to buy it. Once the idea of privilege faded the chair speedily came into general use, and almost at once began to reflect the fashions of the hour. No piece of furniture has ever been so close an index to sumptuary changes. It has varied in size, shape and sturdiness with the fashion not only of women's dress but of men's also. Thus the chair which was not, even with its arms purposely suppressed, too ample during the several reigns of some form or other of hoops and farthingale, became monstrous when these protuberances disappeared. Again, the costly laced coats of the dandy of the 18th and early 19th centuries were so threatened by the ordinary form of seat that a "conversation chair" was devised, which enabled the buck and the ruffler to sit with his face to the back, his valuable tails hanging unimpeded over the front. The early chair almost invariably had arms, and it was not until towards the close of the 16th century that the smaller form grew common.

The majority of the chairs of all countries until the middle of the 17th century were of oak without upholstery, and when it became customary to cushion them, leather was sometimes employed; subsequently velvet and silk were extensively used, and at a later period cheaper and often more durable materials. Leather was not infrequently used even for the costly and elaborate chairs of the faldstool form--occasionally sheathed in thin plates of silver--which Venice sent all over Europe. To this day, indeed, leather is one of the most frequently employed materials for chair covering. The outstanding characteristic of most chairs until the middle of the 17th century was massiveness and solidity. Being usually made of oak, they were of considerable weight, and it was not until the introduction of the handsome Louis XIII. chairs with cane backs and seats that either weight or solidity was reduced. Although English furniture derives so extensively from foreign and especially French and Italian models, the earlier forms of English chairs owed but little to exotic influences. This was especially the case down to the end of the Tudor period, after which France began to set her mark upon the British chair. The squat variety, with heavy and sombre back, carved like a piece of panelling, gave place to a taller, more slender, and more elegant form, in which the framework only was carved, and attempts were made at ornament in new directions. The stretcher especially offered opportunities which were not lost upon the cabinet-makers of the Restoration. From a mere uncompromising cross-bar intended to strengthen the construction it blossomed, almost suddenly, into an elaborate scroll-work or an exceedingly graceful semicircular ornament connecting all four legs, with a vase-shaped knob in the centre. The arms and legs of chairs of this period were scrolled, the splats of the back often showing a rich arrangement of spirals and scrolls. This most decorative of all types appears to have been popularized in England by the cavaliers who had been in exile with Charles II. and had become familiar with it in the north-western parts of the European continent. During he reign of William and Mary these charming forms degenerated into something much stiffer and more rectangular, with a solid, more or less fiddle-shaped splat and a cabriole leg with pad feet. The more ornamental examples had cane seats and ill-proportioned cane backs. From these forms was gradually developed the Chippendale chair, with its elaborately interlaced back, its graceful arms and square or cabriole legs, the latter terminating in the claw and ball or the pad foot. Hepplewhite, Sheraton and Adam all aimed at lightening the chair, which, even in the master hands of Chippendale, remained comparatively heavy. The endeavour succeeded, and the modern chair is everywhere comparatively slight. Chippendale and Hepplewhite between them determined what appears to be the final form of the chair, for since their time practically no new type has lasted, and in its main characteristics the chair of the 20th century is the direct derivative of that of the later 18th.

The 18th century was, indeed, the golden age of the chair, especially in France and England, between which there was considerable give and take of ideas. Even Diderot could not refrain from writing of them in his _Encyclopedie_. The typical Louis Seize chair, oval-backed and ample of seat, with descending arms and round-reeded legs, covered in Beauvais or some such gay tapestry woven with Boucher or Watteau-like scenes, is a very gracious object, in which the period reached its high-water mark. The Empire brought in squat and squabby shapes, comfortable enough no doubt, but entirely destitute of inspiration. English Empire chairs were often heavier and more sombre than those of French design. Thenceforward the chair in all countries ceased to attract the artist. The _art nouveau_ school has occasionally produced something of not unpleasing simplicity; but more often its efforts have been frankly ugly or even grotesque. There have been practically no novelties, with the exception perhaps of the basket-chair and such like, which have been made possible by modern command over material. So much, indeed, is the present indebted to the past in this matter that even the revolving chair, now so familiar in offices, has a pedigree of something like four centuries (see also SEDAN-CHAIR). (J. P.-B.)

CHAISE (the French for "chair," through a transference from a "sedan-chair" to a wheeled vehicle), a light two- or four-wheeled carriage with a movable hood or "calash"; the "post-chaise" was the fast-travelling carriage of the 18th and early 19th centuries. It was closed and four-wheeled for two or four horses and with the driver riding postillion.

CHAKRATA, a mountain cantonment in the Dehra Dun district of the United Provinces of India, on the range of hills overlooking the valleys of the Jumna and the Tons, at an elevation of 7000 ft. It was founded in 1866 and first occupied in April 1869.

CHALCEDON, more correctly CALCHEDON (mod. _Kadikeui_), an ancient maritime town of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, almost directly opposite Byzantium, south of Scutari. It was a Megarian colony founded on a site so obviously inferior to that which was within view on the opposite shore, that it received from the oracle the name of "the City of the Blind." In its early history it shared the fortunes of Byzantium, was taken by the satrap Otanes, vacillated long between the Lacedaemonian and the Athenian interests, and was at last bequeathed to the Romans by Attalus III. of Pergamum (133 B.C.). It was partly destroyed by Mithradates, but recovered during the Empire, and in A.D. 451 was the seat of the Fourth General Council. It fell under the repeated attacks of the barbarian hordes who crossed over after having ravaged Byzantium, and furnished an encampment to the Persians under Chosroes, c. 616-626. The Turks used it as a quarry for building materials for Constantinople. The site is now occupied by the village of Kadikeui ("Village of the Judge"), which forms the tenth "cercle" of the municipality of Constantinople. Pop. about 33,000, of whom 8000 are Moslems. There is a large British colony with a church, and also Greek and Armenian churches and schools, and a training college for Roman Catholic Armenians. To the S. are the ruins of Panteichion (mod. _Pendik_), where Belisarius is said to have lived in retirement.

See J. von Hammer, _Constantinopolis_ (Pesth, 1822); Murray's
_Handbook for Constantinople_ (London, 1900).

CHALCEDON, COUNCIL OF, the fourth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, was held in 451, its occasion being the Eutychian heresy and the notorious "Robber Synod" (see EUTYCHES and EPHESUS, COUNCIL OF), which called forth vigorous protests both in the East and in the West, and a loud demand for a new general council, a demand that was ignored by the Eutychian Theodosius II., but speedily granted by his successor, Marcian, a "Flavianist." In response to the imperial summons, five to six hundred bishops, all Eastern, except the Roman legates and two Africans, assembled in Chalcedon on the 8th of October 451. The bishop of Rome claimed for his legates the right to preside, and insisted that any act that failed to receive their approval would be invalid. The first session was tumultuous; party feeling ran high, and scurrilous and vulgar epithets were bandied to and fro. The acts of the Robber Synod were examined; fraud, violence and coercion were charged against it; its entire proceedings were annulled, and, at the third session, its leader, Dioscurus, was deposed and degraded. The emperor requested a declaration of the true faith; but the sentiment of the council was opposed to a new symbol. It contented itself with reaffirming the Nicene and Constantinopolitan creeds and the Ephesine formula of 431, and accepting, only after examination, the Christological statement contained in the _Epistola Dogmatica_ of Leo I. (q.v.) to Flavianus. Thus the council rejected both Nestorianism and Eutychianism, and stood upon the doctrine that Christ had two natures, each perfect in itself and each distinct from the other, yet perfectly united in one person, who was at once both God and man. With this statement, which was formally subscribed in the presence of the emperor, the development of the Christological doctrine was completed, but not in a manner to obviate further controversy (see MONOPHYSITES and MONOTHELITES).

The remaining sessions, vii.-xvi., were occupied with matters of discipline, complaints, claims, controversies and the like. Canons were adopted, thirty according to the generally received tradition, although the most ancient texts contain but twenty-eight, and, as Hefele points out, the so-called twenty-ninth and thirtieth are properly not canons, but repetitions of proposals made in a previous session.

The most important enactments of the council of Chalcedon were the following: (1) the approval of the canons of the first three ecumenical councils and of the synods of Ancyra, Neo-Caesarea, Changra, Antioch and Laodicea; (2) forbidding trade, secular pursuits and war to the clergy, bishops not even being allowed to administer the property of their dioceses; (3) forbidding monks and nuns to marry or to return to the world; likewise forbidding the establishment of a monastery in any diocese without the consent of the bishop, or the disestablishment of a monastery once consecrated; (4) punishing with deposition an ordination or clerical appointment made for money; forbidding "absolute ordination" (i.e. without assignment to a particular charge), the translation of clerics except for good cause, the enrolment of a cleric in two churches at once, and the performance of sacerdotal functions outside of one's diocese without letters of commendation from one's bishop; (5) confirming the jurisdiction of bishops over all clerics, regular and secular alike, and punishing with deposition any conspiracy against episcopal authority; (6) establishing a gradation of ecclesiastical tribunals, viz. bishop, provincial synod, exarch of the diocese, patriarch of Constantinople (obviously the council could not here have been legislating for the entire church); forbidding clerics to be running to Constantinople with complaints, without the consent of their respective bishops; (7) confirming the possession of rural parishes to those who had actually administered them for thirty years, providing for the adjudication of conflicting claims, and guaranteeing the integrity of metropolitan provinces; (8) confirming the third canon of the second ecumenical council, which accorded to Constantinople equal privileges ([Greek: isa presbeia]) with Rome, and the second rank among the patriarchates, and, in addition, granting to Constantinople patriarchal jurisdiction over Pontus, Asia and Thrace.

The Roman legates, who were absent (designedly?) when this famous twenty-eighth canon was adopted, protested against it, but in vain, the imperial commissioners deciding in favour of its regularity and validity. Leo I., although he recognized the council as ecumenical and confirmed its doctrinal decrees, rejected canon xxviii. on the ground that it contravened the sixth canon of Nicaea and infringed the rights of Alexandria and Antioch. In what proportion zeal for the ancient canons and the rights of others, and jealous fear of encroachment upon his own jurisdiction, were mixed in the motives of Leo, it would be interesting to know. The canon was universally received in the East, and was expressly confirmed by the Quinisext Council, 692 (see CONSTANTINOPLE, COUNCILS OF).

The emperor Marcian approved the doctrinal decrees of the council and enjoined silence in regard to theological questions. Eutyches and Dioscurus and their followers were deposed and banished. But harmony was not thus to be restored; hardly had the council dissolved when the church was plunged into the Monophysite controversy.

See Mansi vi. pp. 529-1102, vii. pp. 1-868; Hardouin ii. pp. 1-772;
Hefele (2nd ed.) ii. pp. 394-578 (English translation, iii. pp.
268-464); also extended bibliographies in Herzog-Hauck,
_Realencyklopadie_, 3rd ed., s.v. "Eutyches" (by Loofs) and s.v.
"Nestorianer" (by Kessler). (T. F. C.)

CHALCEDONY, or CALCEDONY (sometimes called by old writers cassidoine), a variety of native silica, often used as an ornamental stone. The present application of the term is comparatively modern. The "chalcedonius" of Pliny was quite a different mineral, being a green stone from the copper-mines of Chalcedon, in Asia Minor, whence the name. There has been some confusion between chalcedony and the ancient "carcedonia," a stone which seems to have been a carbuncle from Africa, brought by way of Carthage ([Greek: Karchedon]). Our chalcedony was probably included by the ancients among the various kinds of jasper and agate, especially the varieties termed "leucachates" and "cerachates."

By modern mineralogists the name chalcedony is restricted to those kinds of silica which occur not in distinct crystals like ordinary quartz, but in concretionary, mammillated or stalactitic forms, which break with a fine splintery fracture, and display a delicate fibrous structure. Chalcedony may be regarded as a micro-crystalline form of quartz. It is rather softer and less dense than crystallized quartz, its hardness being about 6.5 and its specific gravity 2.6, the difference being probably due to the presence of a small amount of opaline silica between the fibres. Chalcedony is a translucent substance of rather waxy lustre, presenting great variety of colours, though usually white, grey, yellow or brown. A rare blue chalcedony is sometimes polished under the name of "sapphirine"--a term applied also to a distinct mineral (an aluminium-magnesium silicate) from Greenland.

Chalcedony occurs as a secondary mineral in volcanic rocks, representing usually the silica set free by the decomposition of various silicates, and deposited in cracks, forming veins, or in vesicular hollows, forming amygdales. Its occurrence gives the name to Chalcedony Park, Arizona. It is found in the basalts of N. Ireland, the Faroe Isles and Iceland: it is common in the traps of the Deccan in India, and in volcanic rocks in Uruguay and Brazil. Certain flat oval nodules from a decomposed lava (augite-andesite) in Uruguay present a cavity lined with quartz crystals and enclosing liquid (a weak saline solution), with a movable air-bubble, whence they are called "enhydros" or water-stones. Very fine examples of stalactitic chalcedony, in whimsical forms, have been yielded by some of the Cornish copper-mines. The surface of chalcedony is occasionally coated with a delicate bluish bloom. A chalcedonic deposit in the form of concentric rings, on fossils and fragments of limestone in S. Devon, is known as "orbicular silica" or "beekite," having been named after Dr Henry Beeke, dean of Bristol, who first directed attention to such deposits. Certain pseudomorphs of chalcedony after datolite, from Haytor in Devonshire, have received the name of "haytorite." Optical examination of many chalcedonic minerals by French mineralogists has shown that they are aggregates of various fibrous crystalline bodies differing from each other in certain optical characters, whence they are distinguished as separate minerals under such names as calcedonite, pseudocalcedonite, quartzine, lutecite and lussatite. Many coloured and variegated chalcedonies are cut and polished as ornamental stones, and are described under special headings. Chalcedony has been in all ages the commonest of the stones used by the gem-engraver.

See AGATE, BLOODSTONE, CARNELIAN, CHRYSOPRASE, HELIOTROPE, MOCHA
STONE, ONYX, SARD and SARDONYX. (F. W. R.*)

CHALCIDICUM, in Roman architecture, the vestibule or portico of a public building opening on to the forum; as in the basilica of Eumactria at Pompeii, and the basilica of Constantine at Rome, where it was placed at one end.

CHALCIS, the chief town of the island of Euboea in Greece, situated on the strait of the Euripus at its narrowest point. The name is preserved from antiquity and is derived from the Greek [Greek: chalkos] (copper, bronze), though there is no trace of any mines in the neighbourhood. Chalcis was peopled by an Ionic stock which early developed great industrial and colonizing activity. In the 8th and 7th centuries it founded thirty town-ships on the peninsula of Chalcidice, and several important cities in Sicily (q.v.). Its mineral produce, metal-work, purple and pottery not only found markets among these settlements, but were distributed over the Mediterranean in the ships of Corinth and Samos. With the help of these allies Chalcis engaged the rival league of its neighbour Eretria (q.v.) in the so-called Lelantine War, by which it acquired the best agricultural district of Euboea and became the chief city of the island. Early in the 6th century its prosperity was broken by a disastrous war with the Athenians, who expelled the ruling aristocracy and settled a cleruchy on the site. Chalcis subsequently became a member of both the Delian Leagues. In the Hellenistic period it gained importance as a fortress by which the Macedonian rulers controlled central Greece. It was used by kings Antiochus III. of Syria (192) and Mithradates VI. of Pontus (88) as a base for invading Greece. Under Roman rule Chalcis retained a measure of commercial prosperity; since the 6th century A.D. it again served as a fortress for the protection of central Greece against northern invaders. From 1209 it stood under Venetian control; in 1470 it passed to the Ottomans, who made it the seat of a pasha. In 1688 it was successfully held against a strong Venetian attack. The modern town has about 10,000 inhabitants, and maintains a considerable export trade which received an impetus from the establishment of railway connexion with Athens and Peiraeus (1904). It is composed of two parts--the old walled town towards the Euripus, called the Castro, where the Jewish and Turkish families who have remained there mostly dwell; and the more modern suburb that lies outside it, which is chiefly occupied by the Greeks. A part of the walls of the Castro and many of the houses within it were shaken down by the earthquake of 1894; part has been demolished in the widening of the Euripus. The most interesting object is the church of St Paraskeve, which was once the chief church of the Venetians; it dates from the Byzantine period, though many of its architectural features are Western. There is also a Turkish mosque, which is now used as a guard-house.

AUTHORITIES.--Strabo vii. fr. 11, x. p. 447; Herodotus v. 77;
Thucydides i. 15; _Corpus Inscr. Atticarum_, iv. (1) 27a, iv. (2) 10,
iv. (2) p. 22; W.M. Leake, _Travels in Northern Greece_ (London,
1835), ii. 254-270; E. Curtius in _Hermes_, x. (1876), p. 220 sqq.; A.
Holm, _Lange Fehde_ (Berlin, 1884); H. Dondorff, _De Rebus
Chalcidensium_ (Gottingen, 1869); for coinage, B.V. Head, _Historia
Numorum_ (Oxford, 1887), pp. 303-5; and art. NUMISMATICS: _Greek_ S
Euboea.

CHALCONDYLES[1] (or CHALCOCONDYLAS), LAONICUS, the only Athenian Byzantine writer. Hardly anything is known of his life. He wrote a history, in ten books, of the period from 1298-1463, describing the fall of the Greek empire and the rise of the Ottoman Turks, which forms the centre of the narrative, down to the conquest of the Venetians and Mathias, king of Hungary, by Mahommed II. The capture of Constantinople he rightly regarded as an historical event of far-reaching importance, although the comparison of it to the fall of Troy is hardly appropriate. The work incidentally gives a quaint and interesting sketch of the manners and civilization of England, France and Germany, whose assistance the Greeks sought to obtain against the Turks. Like that of other Byzantine writers, Chalcondyles' chronology is defective, and his adherence to the old Greek geographical nomenclature is a source of confusion. For his account of earlier events he was able to obtain information from his father, who was one of the most prominent men in Athens during the struggles between the Greek and Frankish nobles. His model is Thucydides (according to Bekker, Herodotus); his language is tolerably pure and correct, his style simple and clear. The text, however, is in a very corrupt state.

_Editio princeps_, ed. J.B. Baumbach (1615); in Bonn _Corpus
Scriptorum Hist. Byz._ ed. I. Bekker (1843); Migne, _Patrologia
Graeca_, clix. There is a French translation by Blaise de Vigenere
(1577, later ed. by Artus Thomas with valuable illustrations on
Turkish matters); see also F. Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Athen
im Mittelalter_, ii. (1889); Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, ch. 66; C.
Krumbacher, _Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur_ (1897). There
is a biographical sketch of Laonicus and his brother in Greek by
Antonius Calosynas, a physician of Toledo, who lived in the latter
part of the 16th century (see C. Hopf, _Chroniques greco-romanes_,
1873).

His brother, DEMETRIUS CHALCONDYLES (1424-1511), was born in Athens. In 1447 he migrated to Italy, where Cardinal Bessarion gave him his patronage. He became famous as a teacher of Greek letters and the Platonic philosophy; in 1463 he was made professor at Padua, and in 1479 he was summoned by Lorenzo de' Medici to Florence to fill the professorship vacated by John Argyropoulos. In 1492 he removed to Milan, where he died in 1511. He was associated with Marsilius Ficinus, Angelus Politianus, and Theodorus Gaza, in the revival of letters in the western world. One of his pupils at Florence was the famous John Reuchlin. Demetrius Chalcondyles published the editio princeps of Homer, Isocrates, and Suidas, and a Greek grammar (_Erotemata_) in the form of question and answer.

See H. Hody, _De Graecis illustribus_ (1742); C. Hopf, _Chroniques
greco-romanes_ (1873); E. Legrand, _Bibliographic hellenique_, i.
(1885).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A shortened form of Chalcocondyles, from [Greek: chalkos],
copper, and [Greek: kondylos], knuckle.

CHALDAEA. The expressions "Chaldaea" and "Chaldaeans" are frequently used in the Old Testament as equivalents for "Babylonia" and "Babylonians." Chaldaea was really the name of a country, used in two senses. It was first applied to the extreme southern district, whose ancient capital was the city of _Bit Yakin_, the chief seat of the renowned Chaldaean rebel Merodach-baladan, who harassed the Assyrian kings Sargon and Sennacherib. It is not as yet possible to fix the exact boundaries of the original home of the Chaldaeans, but it may be regarded as having been the long stretch of alluvial land situated at the then separate mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates, which rivers now combine to flow into the Persian Gulf in the waters of the majestic _Shatt el 'Arab_.

The name "Chaldaea," however, soon came to have a more extensive application. In the days of the Assyrian king Ramman-nirari III. (812-783 B.C.), the term _mat Kaldu_ covered practically all Babylonia. Furthermore, Merodach-baladan was called by Sargon II. (722-705 B.C.) "king of the land of the Chaldaeans" and "king of the land of Bit Yakin" after the old capital city, but there is no satisfactory evidence that Merodach-baladan had the right to the title "Babylonian." The racial distinction between the Chaldaeans and the Babylonians proper seems to have existed until a much later date, although it is almost certain that the former were originally a Semitic people. That they differed from the Arabs and Aramaeans is also seen from the distinction made by Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) between the Chaldaeans and these races. Later, during the period covering the fall of Assyria and the rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire, the term _mat Kaldu_ was not only applied to all Babylonia, but also embraced the territory of certain foreign nations who were later included by Ezekiel (xxiii. 23) under the expression "Chaldaeans."

As already indicated, the Chaldaeans were most probably a Semitic people. It is likely that they first came from Arabia, the supposed original home of the Semitic races, at a very early date along the coast of the Persian Gulf and settled in the neighbourhood of Ur ("Ur of the Chaldees," Gen. xi. 28), whence they began a series of encroachments, partly by warfare and partly by immigration, against the other Semitic Babylonians. These aggressions after many centuries ended in the Chaldaean supremacy of Nabopolassar and his successors (c. 626 ff.), although there is no positive proof that Nabopolassar was purely Chaldaean in blood. The sudden rise of the later Babylonian empire under Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabopolassar, must have tended to produce so thorough an amalgamation of the Chaldaeans and Babylonians, who had theretofore been considered as two kindred branches of the same original Semite stock, that in the course of time no perceptible differences existed between them. A similar amalgamation, although in this case of two peoples originally racially distinct, has taken place in modern times between the Manchu Tatars and the Chinese. It is quite evident, for example, from the Semitic character of the Chaldaean king-names, that the language of these Chaldaeans differed in no way from the ordinary Semitic Babylonian idiom which was practically identical with that of Assyria. Consequently, the term "Chaldaean" came quite naturally to be used in later days as synonymous with "Babylonian." When subsequently the Babylonian language went out of use and Aramaic took its place, the latter tongue was wrongly termed "Chaldee" by Jerome, because it was the only language known to him used in Babylonia. This error was followed until a very recent date by many scholars.

The derivation of the name "Chaldaean" is extremely uncertain. Peter Jensen has conjectured with slight probability that the Chaldaeans were Semitized Sumerians, i.e. a non-Semitic tribe which by contact with Semitic influences had lost its original character. There seems to be little or no evidence to support such a view. Friedrich Delitzsch derived the name "Chaldaean" =_Kasdim_ from the non-Semitic Kassites who held the supremacy over practically all Babylonia during an extended period (c. 1783-1200 B.C.). This theory seems also to be extremely improbable. It is much more likely that the name "Chaldaean" is connected with the Semitic stem _kasadu_ (conquer), in which case _Kaldi-Kasdi_, with the well-known interchange of l and _s_, would mean "conquerors." It is also possible that _Kasdu-Kaldu_ is connected with the proper name Chesed, who is represented as having been the nephew of Abraham (Gen. xxii. 22). There is no connexion whatever between the Black Sea peoples called "Chaldaeans" by Xenophon (_Anab_. vii. 25) and the Chaldaeans of Babylonia.

In Daniel, the term "Chaldaeans" is very commonly employed with the meaning "astrologers, astronomers," which sense also appears in the classical authors, notably in Herodotus, Strabo and Diodorus. In Daniel i. 4, by the expression "tongue of the Chaldaeans," the writer evidently meant the language in which the celebrated Babylonian works on astrology and divination were composed. It is now known that the literary idiom of the Babylonian wise men was the non-Semitic Sumerian; but it is not probable that the late author of Daniel (c. 168 B.C.) was aware of this fact.

The word "Chaldaean" is used in Daniel in two senses. It is applied as elsewhere in the Old Testament as a race-name to the Babylonians (Dan. iii. 8, v. 30, ix. 1); but the expression is used oftener, either as a name for some special class of magicians, or as a term for magicians in general (ix. 1). The transfer of the name of the people to a special class is perhaps to be explained in the following manner. As just shown, "Chaldaean" and "Babylonian" had become in later times practically synonymous, but the term "Chaldaean" had lived on in the secondary restricted sense of "wise men." The early _Kaldi_ had seized and held from very ancient times the region of old Sumer, which was the centre of the primitive non-Semitic culture. It seems extremely probable that these Chaldaean Semites were so strongly influenced by the foreign civilization as to adopt it eventually as their own. Then, as the Chaldaeans soon became the dominant people, the priestly caste of that region developed into a Chaldaean institution. It is reasonable to conjecture that southern Babylonia, the home of the old culture, supplied Babylon and other important cities with priests, who from their descent were correctly called "Chaldaeans." This name in later times, owing to the racial amalgamation of the Chaldaeans and Babylonians, lost its former national force, and became, as it occurs in Daniel, a distinctive appellation of the Babylonian priestly class. It is possible, though not certain, that the occurrence of the word _kalu_ (priest) in Babylonian, which has no etymological connexion with _Kaldu_, may have contributed paronomastically towards the popular use of the term "Chaldaeans" for the Babylonian Magi. (See also ASTROLOGY.)

LITERATURE.--Delattre, _Les Chaldeens jusqu'a la fond. de l'emp. de
Nebuch._ (1889); Winckler, _Untersuchungen zur altor. Gesch._ (1889),
pp. 49 ff.; _Gesch. Bab. u. Assyr._ (1892), pp. 111 ff.; Prince,
_Commentary on Daniel_ (1899), pp. 59-61; see also BABYLONIA AND
ASSYRIA and SUMER AND SUMERIAN. (J. D. Pr.)

CHALDEE, a term sometimes applied to the Aramaic portions of the biblical books of Ezra and Daniel or to the vernacular paraphrases of the Old Testament (see TARGUM). The explanation formerly adopted and embodied in the name Chaldee is that the change took place in Babylon. That the so-called Biblical Chaldee, in which considerable portions of the books of Ezra and Daniel are written, was really the language of Babylon was supposed to be clear from Dan. ii. 4, where the Chaldaeans are said to have spoken to the king in Aramaic. But the cuneiform inscriptions show that the language of the Chaldaeans was Assyrian; and an examination of the very large part of the Hebrew Old Testament written later than the exile proves conclusively that the substitution of Aramaic for Hebrew as the vernacular of Palestine took place very gradually. Hence scholars are now agreed that the term "Chaldee" is a misnomer, and that the dialect so called is really the language of the South-Western Arameans, who were the immediate neighbours of the Jews (W. Wright, _Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages_, p. 16). (See SEMITIC LANGUAGES.)

CHALICE (through a central O. Fr. form of the Lat. _calix_, _calicis_, cup), a drinking-vessel of the cup or goblet form, now only used of the cup used in the celebration of the Eucharist (q.v.). For the various forms which the "chalice" so used has taken, see DRINKING-VESSELS and PLATE. When, in the eucharistic service, water is mixed with the wine, the "chalice" is known as the "mixed chalice." This has been customary both in the Eastern and Western Churches from early times. The Armenian Church does not use the "mixed chalice." It was used in the English Church before the Reformation. According to the present law of the English Church, the mixing of the water with wine is lawful, if this is not done as part of or during the services, i.e. if it is not done ceremonially (_Martin_ v. _Mackonochie_, 1868, L.R. 2 P.C. 365; _Read_ v. _Bp. of Lincoln_, 1892, A.C. 664).

CHALIER, JOSEPH (1747-1793), French Revolutionist. He was destined by his family for the church, but entered business, and became a partner in a firm at Lyons for which he travelled in the Levant, in Italy, Spain and Portugal. He was in Paris in 1789, and entered into relations with Marat, Camille Desmoulins and Robespierre. On his return to Lyons, Chalier was the first to be named member of the municipal bureau. He organized the national guard, applied the civil constitution of the clergy, and regulated the finances of the city so as to tax the rich heavily and spare the poor. Denounced to the Legislative Assembly by the directory of the department of Rhone-et-Loire for having made a nocturnal domiciliary perquisition, he was sent to the bar of the Assembly, which approved of his conduct. In the election for mayor of Lyons, in November 1792, he was defeated by a Royalist. Then Chalier became the orator and leader of the Jacobins of Lyons, and induced the other revolutionary clubs and the commune of his city to arrest a great number of Royalists in the night of the 5th and 6th of February 1793. The mayor, supported by the national guard, opposed this project. Chalier demanded of the Convention the establishment of a revolutionary tribunal and the levy of a revolutionary army at Lyons. The Convention refused, and the anti-revolutionary party, encouraged by this refusal, took action. On the 29th and 30th of May 1793 the sections rose; the Jacobins were dispossessed of the municipality and Chalier arrested. On the 15th of July, in spite of the order of the Convention, he was brought before the criminal tribunal of the Rhone-et-Loire, condemned to death, and guillotined the next day. The Terrorists paid a veritable worship to his memory, as to a martyr of Liberty.

See N. Wahl, "Etude sur Chalier," in _Revue historique_, t. xxxiv.;
and _Les Premieres Annees de la Revolution a Lyon_ (Paris, 1894).

CHALK, the name given to any soft, pulverulent, pure white limestone. The word is an old one, having its origin in the Saxon _cealc_, and the hard form "kalk" is still in use amongst the country folk of Lincolnshire. The German _Kalk_ comprehends all forms of limestone; therefore a special term, _Kreide_, is employed for chalk--French _craie_. From being used as a common name, denoting a particular material, the word was subsequently utilized by geologists as an appellation for the _Chalk formation_; and so prominent was this formation in the eyes of the earlier workers that it imposed its name upon a whole system of rocks, the Cretaceous (Lat. _creta_, chalk), although this rock itself is by no means generally characteristic of the system as a whole.

The Chalk formation, in addition to the typical chalk material--_creta scriptoria_--comprises several variations; argillaceous kinds--_creta marga_ of Linnaeus--known locally as malm, marl, clunch, &c.; and harder, more stony kinds, called rag, freestone, rock, hurlock or harrock in different districts. In certain parts of the formation layers of nodular flints (q.v.) abound; in parts, it is inclined to be sandy, or to contain grains of glauconite which was originally confounded with another green mineral, chlorite, hence the name "chloritic marl" applied to one of the subdivisions of the chalk. In its purest form chalk consists of from 95 to 99% of calcium carbonate (carbonate of lime); in this condition it is composed of a mass of fine granular particles held together by a somewhat feeble calcareous cement. The particles are mostly the broken tests of foraminifera, along with the debris of echinoderm and molluscan shells, and many minute bodies, like coccoliths, of somewhat obscure nature.

The earliest attempts at subdivision of the Chalk formation initiated
by Wm. Phillips were based upon lithological characters, and such a
classification as "Upper Chalk with Flints," "Lower Chalk without
Flints," "Chalk marl or Grey chalk," was generally in use in England
until W. Whitaker established the following order in 1865:--

Upper Chalk, with flints

/ chalk rock
Lower Chalk < chalk with few flints
\ chalk without flints

Chalk Marl / Totternhoe stone
\ " marl

In France, a similar system of classification was in vogue, the
subdivisions being _craie blanche_, _craie tufan_, _craie chloritee_,
until 1843 when d'Orbigny proposed the term _Senonien_ for the Upper
Chalk and _Turonien_ for the Lower; later he divided the _Turonien_,
giving the name _Cenomanien_ to the lower portion. The subdivisions of
d'Orbigny were based upon the fossil contents and not upon the
lithological characters of the rocks. In 1876 Prof. Ch. Barrois showed
how d'Orbigny's classification might be applied to the British chalk
rocks; and this scheme has been generally adopted by geologists,
although there is some divergence of opinion as to the exact position
of the base line of the Cenomanian.

The accompanying table shows the classification now adopted in
England, with the zonal fossils and the continental names of the substages:--

Since Prof. Barrois introduced the zonal system of subdivision (C. Evans had used a similar scheme six years earlier), our knowledge of the English chalk has been greatly increased by the work of Jukes-Browne and William Hill, and particularly by the laborious studies of Dr A.W. Rowe. Instead of employing the mixed assemblage of animals indicated as zone fossils in the table, A. de Grossouvre proposed a scheme for the north of France based upon ammonite faunas alone, which he contended would be of more general applicability (_Recherches sur la Craie Superieure_, Paris, 1901).

The Upper Chalk has a maximum thickness in England of about 1000 ft., but post-cretaceous erosion has removed much of it in many districts. It is more constant in character, and more typically chalky than the lower stages; flints are abundant, and harder nodular beds are limited to the lower portions, where some of the compact limestones are known as "chalk rock." The thickness of the Middle Chalk varies from about 100 to 240 ft.; flints become scarcer in descending from the upper to the lower portions. The whole is more compact than the upper stage, and nodular layers are more frequent--the "chalk rock" of Dorset and the Isle of Wight belong to this stage. At the base is the hard "Melbourne rock." The thickness of the Lower Chalk in England varies from 60 to 240 ft. This stage includes part of the "white chalk without flints," the "chalk marl," and the "grey chalk." The Totternhoe stone is a hard freestone found locally in this stage. The basement bed in Norfolk is a pure limestone, but very frequently it is marly with grains of sand and glauconite, and often contains phosphatic nodules; this facies is equivalent to the "Cambridge Greensand" of some districts and the "chloritic marl" of others. In Devonshire the Lower Chalk has become thin sandy calcareous series.

The chalk can be traced in England from Flamborough Head in Yorkshire, in a south-westerly direction, to the coast of Dorset; and it not only underlies the whole of the S.E. corner, where it is often obscured by Tertiary deposits, but it can be followed across the Channel into northern France. Rocks of the same age as the chalk are widespread (see CRETACEOUS SYSTEM); but the variety of limestone properly called by this name is almost confined to the Anglo-Parisian basin. Some chalk occurs in the great Cretaceous deposits of Russia, and in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and S. Dakota in the United States. Hard white chalk occurs in Ireland in Antrim, and on the opposite shore of Scotland in Mull and Morven.

_Economic Products of the Chalk._--Common chalk has been frequently used for rough building purposes, but the more important building stones are "Beer stone," from Beer Head in Devonshire, "Sutton stone" from a little north of Beer, and the "Totternhoe stone." It is burned for lime, and when mixed with some form of clay is used for the manufacture of cement; chalk marl has been used alone for this purpose. As a manure, it has been much used as a dressing for clayey land. Flints from the chalk are used for road metal and concrete, and have been employed in building as a facing for walls. Phosphatic nodules for manure have been worked from the chloritic marl and Cambridge Greensand, and to some extent from the Middle Chalk. The same material is worked at Ciply in Belgium and Picardy in France. Chalk is employed in the manufacture of carbonate of soda, in the preparation of carbon dioxide, and in many other chemical processes; also for making paints, crayons and tooth-powder. _Whiting_ or _Spanish white_, used to polish glass and metal, is purified chalk prepared by triturating common chalk with a large quantity of water, which is then decanted and allowed to deposit the finely-divided particles it holds in suspension.

_Chalk Scenery._--Where exposed at the surface, chalk produces rounded, smooth, grass-covered hills as in the Downs of southern England and the Wolds of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The hills are often intersected by clean-cut dry valleys. It forms fine cliffs on the coast of Kent, Yorkshire and Devonshire.

Chalk is employed medicinally as a very mild astringent either alone or more usually with other astringents. It is more often used, however, for a purely mechanical action, as in the preparation hydrargyrum cum creta. As an antacid its use has been replaced by other drugs.

_Black chalk_ or _drawing slate_ is a soft carbonaceous schist, which gives a black streak, so that it can be used for drawing or writing. _Brown chalk_ is a kind of umber. _Red chalk_ or _reddle_ is an impure earthy variety of haematite. _French chalk_ is a soft variety of steatite, a hydrated magnesium silicate.

The most comprehensive account of the British chalk is contained in
the _Memoirs of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom_, "The
Cretaceous Rocks of Britain," vol. ii. 1903, vol. iii. 1904 (with
bibliography), by Jukes-Browne and Hill. See also "The White Chalk of
the English Coast," several papers in the _Proceedings of the
Geologists' Association_, London, (1) Kent and Sussex, xvi. 1900, (2)
Dorset, xvii., 1901, (3) Devon, xviii., 1903, (4) Yorkshire, xviii.,
1904. (J. A. H.)

CHALKHILL, JOHN (fl. 1600?), English poet. Two songs by him are included in Izaak Walton's _Compleat Angler_, and in 1683 appeared "Thealma and Clearchus. A Pastoral History in smooth and easie Verse. Written long since by John Chalkhill, Esq., an Acquaintant and Friend of Edmund Spencer" (1683), with a preface written five years earlier by Walton. Another poem, "Alcilia, Philoparthens Loving Follie" (1595, reprinted in vol. x. of the _Jahrbuch des deutschen Shakespeare-Vereins_), was at one time attributed to him. Nothing further is known of the poet, but a person of his name occurs as one of the coroners for Middlesex in the later years of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Professor Saintsbury, who included _Thealma and Clearchus_ in vol. ii. of his _Minor Poets of the Caroline Period_ (Oxford, 1906), points out a marked resemblance between his work and that of William Chamberlayne.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Cerargyrite" to "Charing Cross"Chapter VIII: Part 8

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