MECONIUM 



MEDAL 



111 



each grand-duchy stands a grand-duke ; hut both 

 grand-duchies are represented in one and the same 

 national assembly, which meets every autumn at 

 Sternberg and Malchin alternately. This body 

 embraces all landowners (about 680), who also re- 

 present the peasantry and agricultural labourers, and 

 representatives of forty-eight towns. The princi- 

 pality of Ratzeburg, and the towns of Wismar and 

 Neiistrelitz, have each an independent administra- 

 tion. A permanent college of nine members, repre- 

 senting tin' assembly, site all the year round at 

 Rostock. The executive is in the hands of four 

 ministers (external and home affairs, justice, and 

 finances) in Schwerin, and one minister in St relit z. 

 No financial statements are ever published in either 

 grand-duchy. In Schwerin, however, there are 

 three separate budgets, one controlled by the grand- 

 duke, one, very small, controlled by the estates, and 

 one by both parties in common. For the represen- 

 tation in the imperial assemblies, see GERMANY, 

 Vol. V. p. 179. Although the evils under which 

 the country workmen suffered fifty years ago, 

 of which Fritz Renter, the great Platt-Deutsch 

 writer, gives a painful description in his poem Kein 

 Hiisuny, have been greatly mitigated, .still the fact 

 that large numl>ers emigrate because they cannot 

 find houses to live in, and the relatively high pro- 

 portion of illegitimate children, owing to the 

 restraints imposed n|>on marriage by the land- 

 owners, prove that they have not lieen altogether 

 alx>lished yet. Fritz Renter's great novel Stnuntiil 

 ( Eng. trans. My Old Farming Days, 1878-80) and 

 other works give admirable pictures of the semi- 

 patriarchal, semi-feudal life of his native country. 



In the 6th century Slavic races settled in the 

 districts now called Mecklenburg, which had just 

 been left vacant by the Vandals. From the 9th to the 

 l-'i I] century the German emperors and the Saxon 

 dukes attempted at different times to convert the 

 inhabitants to Christianity. The country was only 

 definitely incorporated in the German empire in 

 1 170. It was divided over and over again, from 1229 

 onwards for more than five hundred years, amongst 

 different branches of the descendants of the original 

 Slavic princes. Of these dukes (dukes after 1348) 

 the only one deserving special mention is All>ert 

 III., who, called to ascend the throne of Sweden 

 in 1363, was kept a prisoner for many years 

 by Margaret, queen of Denmark, Norway, and 

 Sweden. The Thirty Years' War ruined the in- 

 dependent peasant proprietors. Wallenstein cast- 

 ing covetous eyes uiion the duchies, they were sold 

 (1628) to him by UM emjieror, but were restored 

 to their rightful rulers in 1635. The two lines of 

 Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz 

 date only from 17<M ; in 1755 they agreed that the 

 line which survived longest should inherit the terri- 

 tnri, of the other, anil when Iwth became extinct 

 Prussia should be heir. The title of grand-duke 

 was assumed by both reigning dukes in 1815. The 

 year 1848 brought disturbances and tumults in 

 Mecklenburg ; a representative assembly was called 

 together, and other reforms initiated ; but the re- 

 action of 1850 and following years restored things 

 to their original condition. The two states were 

 again agitated Ipy reform questions in 1871-78; but 

 nothing came of the agitation. 



See book* by < 'emit/, on the geology, soil, lakes, dtc. of 

 Mecklenburg ( 18H4-W. > ; Ii.,11, fjuchicht: Meeklenhuriis 

 (18oo-.Vi); and various works on tfie history and soci.il 

 condition of the people by Wiggers ( 1840 to 1866). 



Meconinm (Gr. mecon, 'a poppy'), the inspis- 

 sated juice of the poppy ; and .)/; Acid is an 

 acid present in opium to the extent of about 4 per 

 writ,, in combination with the alkaloids (see OPIUM). 

 Meeonfaun is also the name given to the matter 

 first discharged from the bowels of a uew-born 

 infant. 



Medal (the same word as metal, through a 

 Low Latin medulla ), a piece of metal in the 

 form of a coin, not issued or circulated as money, 

 but struck to preserve the portrait of some eminent 

 person or the memory of some illustrious action or 

 event. Large medals are termed medallions ; and 

 works rectangular in form are known as plaques or 

 plaquettes according to their size. The study of 

 medals, which forms a branch of the science of 

 numismatics, is interesting in a historical and anti- 

 quarian point of view, and important as illustrating 

 the contemporary state of art. Like coins, medals 

 are made in gold, silver, and copper, and some also 

 consist of lead and alloys of other base metals. As 

 they are generally produced in very limited num- 

 bers only as compared with coins, other methods 

 of preparing them than by striking are available; 

 and while all classical medals, and the bulk of 

 those of modern times, are made in the same way 

 as contemporary coinage, many of the most import- 

 ant and valuable of the medieval medals were cast 

 bv the rjre pet-due process. Important medals have 

 also lieen made by striking-vp or repousst work, 

 and highly esteemed works are also made simply 

 by engraving. The earliest medals are medallions 

 of ancient Rome, existing examples of which are 

 principally in bronze, though some are in silver 

 and in gold. They vary in size, being mostly aliout 

 1$ inch in diameter, out in weight they are so 

 diverse as to exclude the notion that they were 

 ever circulated as money. Medallions, prior to the 

 time of Hadrian, are rare and of great value, one 

 of the most beautiful and most famous l>eing a gold 

 medallion of Ca-sar Augustus; from Hadrian to 

 the close of the empire they are comparatively 

 numerous. In some of them a ring or rim of 

 lighter-coloured metal ( brass or orichalchuni { sur- 

 rounds the centre of bronze, and the inscription 

 extends over both metals. 



From the fall of the Roman empire till the end 

 of the 14th century there is a blank in the produc- 

 tion of medals. The revival of the medallic art 

 was one of the first fruits of the Renaissance move- 

 ment, and practically its earliest, as for all times 

 its greatest exponent was Vittore Pisano (c. 1380- 

 1456), the painter of Verona. His medallions, gener- 

 ally marked Opus Pisani Pictoris, and those of his 

 numerous followers, including Matteo de Pasti, 

 Guacialotti, Sperandio, Sangaflo, and many others, 

 are distinguished by their vividness of sculptur- 

 esque portraiture, and their singular breadth and 

 simplicity of treatment. Figures 1 and 2 show to 

 a scale of one-half the original size the obverse and 

 reverse of one of the most famous medals of Pisano. 

 It celebrates the visit of the Eastern emperor, John 

 VIII. Palseologus, to the Council of Florence in 

 1439 ; the legend on the obverse being in Greek, 

 ami the reverse inscription, Opus, Pisani, Pictoris, 

 l>eing also repeated in Greek. Generally speaking, 

 it may be said that all medieval medals, previous to 

 the 16th century, were made by casting in the cire 

 perdue process ; and it was not till the beginning 

 of the 16th century that medals struck from 

 engraved dies, like coins, were issued, the first so 

 produced being the medal of Pope Julius II., by 

 Francia, struck about 1506. The larger medals of 

 the 16th century, however, continued to be cast. 

 The most elaborate and beautiful of the struck 

 medals of the 16th century were the work of Ben- 

 venuto Cellini ; and it may be remarked that with 

 the introduction of dies for medal -striking the work 

 (Hissed into the hands of gem-engravers and 

 jewellers, whose methods and excellences lie in 

 quite a different direction from those of the 15th- 

 century artist-medallists. Next to Italy, Germany 

 was the country in which the medallic art flourished 

 in medieval times, Nuremberg having been a centre 

 from which many important works were issued. 



