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Jabir
Jabir or Geber , fl. 8th cent., Arab alchemist and physician, originally named Jabir ibn Hayyan. He is believed to have lived at Kufa and at Baghdad. A great number of works on alchemy, many of them unpublished, have been attributed to him, but scholars disagree as to their authenticity. Recent ...
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manueline
manueline , sumptuous, composite Portuguese style of architectural ornamentation of the early 16th cent. It combined contemporary Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Flemish elements and was named for King Manuel I of Portugal (reigned 1495-1521). The Chapter House of the Convent of Christ at Tomar, P...
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plateresque
plateresque [Span.,=silversmith], earliest phase of Spanish Renaissance architecture and decoration, in the early 16th cent. Its richness of effect was primarily based upon the work of the Italian Renaissance, mingled, however, with surviving Moorish and late Gothic design. In characteristic Spanis...
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Nennius
Nennius , fl. 796, Welsh writer, to whom is ascribed the Historia Britonum. He lived on the borders of Mercia and probably was a pupil of Elbod, bishop of Bangor. The Historia is a compilation containing much on the early history of Britain and the Anglo-Saxon invasions. Although some scholars t...
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Ranulf Higden
Ranulf Higden d. c.1364, English chronicler. He wrote the Polychronicon, a universal history, interesting chiefly for its display of the geographical, scientific, and historical knowledge of its time. It was translated from Latin into English by John of Trevisa in 1387 and again by an anonymous t...
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Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen , 1828-1906, Norwegian dramatist and poet. His early years were lonely and miserable. Distressed by the consequences of his family's financial ruin and on his own at sixteen, he first was apprenticed to an apothecary. Not long after this he began writing poetry, and in 1850 he published...
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John of Trevisa
John of Trevisa , c.1326-c.1402, English writer. He was the vicar of Berkeley. In 1387 he translated into English Ranulph Higden's Polychronicon, a history of the world, and in 1398, Bartholomew de Glanville's De proprietatibus rerum, an encyclopedia of natural science. Both translations became ...
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Spanish Main
Spanish Main mainland of Spanish America, particularly the coast of South America from the isthmus of Panama to the mouth of the Orinoco River. Spanish treasure fleets, sailing home from the New World, passed through the Caribbean N of the Main and were attacked by English buccaneers raiding from t...
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Junia
Junia , in the New Testament, man or woman early converted to Christianity.
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Anna Letitia (Aikin) Barbauld
Anna Letitia (Aikin) Barbauld , 1743-1825, English poet and editor. In 1774 she married Rochemont Barbauld and with him opened a boarding school. Her Hymns in Prose for children, widely read and translated into several languages, was followed by Early Lessons (both 1781). She edited works of Col...
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