Part 350 (2/2)

PHYLACTERIES, strips of vellum inscribed with certain texts of Scripture, enclosed in small cases of calf-skin, and attached to the forehead or the left arm; originally connected with acts of wors.h.i.+p, they were eventually turned to superst.i.tious uses, and employed sometimes as charms and sometimes by way of ostentatious display.

PHYSIOCRATIC SCHOOL, a school of economists founded by Quesney, who regarded the cultivation of the land as the chief sources of natural well-being, and argued for legislation in behalf of it.

PIACENZA (35), an old Italian city on the Po, 43 m. by rail SE. of Milan; has a cathedral, and among other churches the San Sisto, which contains the Sistine Madonna of Raphael, a theological seminary, and large library; it manufactures silks, cottons, and hats, and is a fortress of great strategical importance.

PIA-MATER, a membrane which invests the brain and the spinal cord; it is of a delicate vascular tissue.

PIARISTS, a purely religious order devoted to the education of the poor, founded in 1599 by a Spanish priest, and confirmed in 1617 by Paul V., and again in 1621 by Gregory XV.

PIAZZI, Italian astronomer; discovered in 1801 a planet between Mars and Jupiter, which he named Ceres, and the first of the planetoids recognised, as well as afterwards catalogued the stars (1746-1826).

PIBROCH, the Highland bagpipe; also the wild, martial music it discourses.

PICADOR, a man mounted on horseback armed with a spear to incite the bull in a bull-fight.

PICARDY, a province in the N. of France, the capital of which was Amiens; it now forms the department of Somme, and part of Aisne and Pas-de-Calais.

PICCOLOMINI, the name of an ill.u.s.trious family of science in Italy, of which aeneas Silvius (Pope Pius II.) was a member; also Octavio I., Duke of Amalfi, who distinguished himself, along with Wallenstein, in the Thirty Years' War at Lutzen in 1632, at Nordlinger in 1634, and at Thionville in 1639; was one of the most celebrated soldiers that had command of the imperial troops (1599-1656).

PICHEGRU, CHARLES, French general, born at Arbois, in Jura; served with distinguished success in the army of the Republic on the Rhine and in the Netherlands, but sold himself to the Bourbons, and being convicted of treason, was deported to Cayenne, but escaped to England, where in course of time he joined the conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal against the First Consul, and being betrayed, was imprisoned in the Temple, where one morning after he was found strangled (1761-1804).

PICKWICK, SAMUEL, the hero of d.i.c.kens's ”Pickwick Papers,” a character distinguished for his general goodness and his honest simplicity.

PICO, one of the Azores, consisting of a single volcanic mountain, still in action; produces excellent wine.

PICO DELLA MIRAN'DOLO, a notable Italian champion of the scholastic dogma, who challenged all the learned of Europe to enter the lists with him and controvert any one of 900 theses which he undertook to defend, a challenge which no one, under ban of the Pope, dared accept; he was the last of the schoolmen as well as a humanist in the bud, and was in his lifetime, with an astonis.h.i.+ng forecast of destiny, named the PHOENIX (q. v.) (1463-1494).

PICQUART, COLONEL, French military officer; was distinguished as a student at the military schools; served in Algiers; became a captain in 1880; was appointed to the War Office in 1885; served with distinction in Tonquin; became professor at the Military School; rejoined the War Office in 1893, and was made head of the Intelligence Department in 1896; moved by certain discoveries affecting Esterhazy, began to inquire into the Dreyfus case, which led to his removal out of the way to Tunis; returned and exposed the proceedings against Dreyfus, with the result that a revision was demanded, and the charge confirmed; _b_. 1854.

PICTON, SIR THOMAS, British general, born in Pembroke; served in the West Indies, and became governor of Trinidad, also in the Walcheren Expedition, and became governor of Flus.h.i.+ng, and in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, where he fell as he was leading his men to the charge (1758-1815).

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