CROWN CRUCIFIXION. 



547 



a reward given to him who delivered a besiegec 

 town, or a blockaded army. It was one of the 

 highest military honours, and very seldom obtained. 

 It was made of grass ; if possible of such as grew 

 on the delivered place. 



Corona triumphalis ; a wreath of laurel which was 

 given by the army, to the imperator. He wore it 

 on his head at the celebration of his triumph. An- 

 other crown of gold, the material of which (corona- 

 rium aurum) was furnished by the conquered cities, 

 was carried over the head of the general. The 

 wreaths, conferred at the great games of Greece, 

 were of different kinds ; at the Olympic games, of 

 wild olive ; at the Pythian games, of laurel ; at the 

 Nemean games, first of olive then of parsley ; at the 

 Isthmian games, a wreath of pine leaves, afterwards 

 of parsley ; subsequently pine leaves were resumed. 

 In the middle ages, crowns became exclusively 

 appropriated to the royal and imperial dignity; 

 the coronets of nobles were only borne in their 

 coats of arms. (See Coronet, also Tiara.) From 

 the Jewish king being called, in the scriptures, 

 the anointed of the Lord, a kind of religious mys- 

 tery and awe became attached to crowned heads, 

 which, in most countries, continues to the present 

 day, though history has shown us abundantly that 

 crowns often cover the heads of very weak or very 

 wicked individuals, and that there is no great mys- 

 tery about their origin ; some having been obtain- 

 ed by purchase, some by crime, some by grants 

 from a more powerful prince, some by contract, 

 some by choice, but, on the whole, comparatively 

 few in an honest way. The iron crown of Lombardy, 

 preserved at Monza, in the territory of Milan, is a 

 golden crown set with precious stones, with which 

 in former times the Lombard kings were crowned, 

 and, at a later period, the Roman-German emperors, 

 when they wished to manifest their claims as kings of 

 Lombardy. An iron circle, made, according to the 

 legend, out of a nail of Christ's cross, which is fixed 

 inside, gave rise to the name. Agilulf, king of 

 Lombardy, was the first person crowned with it (in 

 590). Cliarlemagne was crowned with it in 774. Na- 

 poleon put it on his head in 1805, and established the 

 order of the iron crown. In 1815, when Austria es- 

 tablished the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, the em- 

 peror admitted the order of the iron crown among 

 those of the Austrian empire. Crown is used figu- 

 ratively, for the royal power, in contradistinction 

 either to the person of the monarch or to the body of 

 the nation, with its representatives, interests, &c. 

 Thus, in modern times, the word crown is used on 

 tiie European continent, to express the rights and 

 prerogatives of the monarch considered as a part of' 

 the state, which includes all powers the legislative, 

 judicial, &c. Thus the crown domains are distinguish- 

 ed from the state or national domains. In France, 

 a difference is even made between the crown domains 

 and the private domains of the king ; the former are 

 inalienable, and belong to the reigning monarch, 

 whilst the second may be treated like any other pri- 

 vate property. The distinction between crown and 

 state, of course, does not exist in perfectly arbitrary 

 governments. 



Crown, in commerce ; a common name for coins of 

 several nations, which are about the value of a dol- 

 lar. See Coins, Table of. 



Crown, in an ecclesiastical sense, is used for the 

 tonsure, the shaven spot on the head of the Roman 

 Catholic priests where they received the ointment of 

 consecration. See Tonsure. 



CROWN GLASS, the best kind of window-glass, 

 the hardest and most colourless, is made almost en- 

 tirely of sand and alkali and a little lime, without lead 

 or any metallic oxide, except a very small quantity 



of manganese, and sometimes of cobalt. Crown 

 glass is used, in connexion with flint glass, for diop- 

 tric instruments, in order to destroy the disagreeable 

 effect of the aberration of colours. Both Kinds of 

 glass are now made, in the highest perfection, in 

 Benedictbeurn (q. v.), where Reichenbach's famous 

 manufactory of optical instruments is situated. 



CROWN OFFICE. The court of king's bench is 

 divided into the plea side and the crown side. In the 

 plea side, it takes cognizance of civil causes ; in the 

 crown side, it takes cognizance of criminal causes, 

 and is thereupon calleo the crown office. In the 

 crown office are exhibited informations in the name of 

 the king, of which there are two kinds: 1. those 

 which are truly the king's own suits, and filed, ex 

 officio, by his own immediate officer, the attorney- 

 general ; 2. those in which, though the king is the 

 nominal prosecutor, yet some private person, as a 

 common informer, is the real one : these are filed by 

 the king's coroner and attorney, usually called mas- 

 ter of the crown office. 



CROWN POINT ; a post-town in Essex county, 

 New York, on lake Champlain; twelve miles N. 

 Ticonderoga, ninety-six N. Albany; population, in 

 1820, 1522; lat. 44 3' N. ; Ion. 72 29' W. This 

 town received its name from a noted fortress, much 

 celebrated in the history of the American wars. The 

 fortress, which is now in ruins, is situated in the 

 north-east part of the township, on a point of land 

 projecting some distance into the lake, elevated 

 forty-seven feet above the surface, and fifteen miles 

 north of fort Ticonderoga. It was an expensive and 

 regular fortification, about 1500 yards square, sur- 

 rounded by a deep and broad ditch, cut in rock, with 

 immense labour. The walls were of wood and earth, 

 twenty-two feet thick and sixteen high, and are only 

 partially decayed. 



CROZAT, JOSEPH ANTONY, marquis du Chatel, 

 born in 1696, at Toulouse, a great lover and collec- 

 tor of works of art, inherited a large fortune from his 

 father (who was a financier during the last years of 

 the reign of Louis XIV.), was counsellor of the par- 

 liament of Toulouse, and subsequently reader to the 

 king. The whole of his life was dedicated to the 

 works of art which he had collected, and to th 

 artists who wished to profit by them. The sketches 

 in his collection exceeded 19,000, and he had ex- 

 pended above 450,000 livresin this particular branch. 

 During the sixty years which he employed in collect- 

 ing, no cabinet was sold in any part of Europe, of 

 which some part was not purchased by him. Crozat 

 went to Italy, hi 1714, for the purpose of increasing 

 his collection. Corn. Vermeulen came yearly from 

 Antwerp to Paris, to bring the works of the artist 

 of the Netherlands. He was vlso presented wiUi 

 several valuable collections. His cabinet of antiques 

 and sculpture, particularly of gems, was equally valu- 

 able, and contained about 1400 pieces. This treasure 

 became more famous from the description which 

 Mariette gave of it, when in the possession of the 

 duke of Orleans, in 1742. It is at present at St 

 Petersburg. On Crozat's death (1760), his collec- 

 tion came into the possession of his brother, the 

 marquis du Chatel. Mariette's Description sommaire 

 des Collections de M. Crozat, avec des Reflexions sur 

 la Maniere de Dessiner des principaux Mattret (Paris, 

 1741), is the only account we now have of this great 

 museum. 



CRUCIFIXION; a mode of inflicting capital 

 punishment, by affixing criminals to a wooden cross. 

 This was a frequent punishment among the ancients, 

 and practised by most of the nations whose history 

 ias reached our knowledge : it is now chiefly confin- 

 ed to the Mohammedans. There were different kinds 

 of crosses, though it cannot be affirmed which was iu 

 2 M 2 



