GERVASE OF TILBURY (fl. 1211)

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GERVASE OF TILBURY (fl. 1211) , Anglo-Latin writer of the

late

LATE

12th and early 13th centuries, was a kinsman and schoolfellow of Patrick,

earl

EARL

of Salisbury, but lived the life of a scholarly
adventurer, wandering from land to land in search of patrons. Before 1177 he was a student and teacher of law at Bologna; in that year he witnessed the meeting of the emperor Frederic I. and Pope Alexander III. at Venice. He may have hoped to win the favour of Frederic, who in the past had found useful instruments among the civilians of Bologna. But Frederic ignored him; his first employer of royal rank was Henry fitz Henry, the young king of England (d. 1183), for whom Gervase wrote a jest-book which is no longer extant. Subsequently we hear of Gervase as a clerk in the household of William of Champagne, cardinal archbishop of Reims (d. 1202). Here, as he himself confesses, he basely accused of heretical opinions a young girl, who had rejected his advances, with the result that she was burned to death. He cannot have remained many years at Reims; before 1189 he attracted the favour of William II. of Sicily, who had married

Joanna

JOANNA (1479-1555)

, the sister of Henry fitz Henry. William took Gervase into his service and gave him a country-

house

at Nola. After William's death the kingdom of Sicily offered no attractions to an Englishman. The fortunes of Gervase suffered an eclipse until, some time after 1198, he found employment under the emperor Otto IV., who by descent and political

interest

INTEREST

was intimately connected with the Plantagenets. Though a clerk in orders Gervase became marshal of the kingdom of Arles, and married an heiress of good family. For the delectation of the emperor he wrote, about 1211, his Otia Imperialia in three parts. It is a farrago of history, geography, folklore and political theoryone of those books of table-talk in which the literature of the age abounded. Evidently Gervase coveted but ill deserved a reputation for encyclopaedic learning. The most interesting of his dissertations are contained in the second part of the Otia, where he discusses, among other topics, the theory of the Empire and the geography and history of England. We do not know what became of Gervase after the downfall of Otto IV. But he became a canon; and may perhaps be identified with Gervase, provost of Ebbekesdorf, who died in 1235.
See the Otia Imperialia in G. Leibnitz's Scriptores rerum Brunsvicensium, vols. i. and ii. (Hanover, 1707) ; extracts in J. Stevenson's edition of Coggeshall (Rolls

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

, 1875). Of modern accounts the best are those by W. Stubbs in his edition of Gervase of Canterbury, vol. i. introd. (Rolls

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

. 1879), and by R. Pauli in Nachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen (1882). In the older biographers the Dialogus de scaccario of Richard Fitz Neal (q.v.) is
wrongly attributed to Gervase. (H. W. C. D.)
GERVEX, HENRI (1852 ), French painter, was born in Paris on the loth of December 1852, and studied painting under Cabanel, Brisset and Fromentin. His early

work

WORK

belonged almost exclusively to the mythological genre which served as an excuse for the painting of the nudenot always in the best of taste; indeed, his " Rolla " of 1878 was rejected by the jury of the Salon pour immoralite. He afterwards devoted himself to representations of modern life and achieved signal success with his " Dr Pean at the Salpetriere," a modernized paraphrase, as it were, of Rembrandt's " Anatomy Lesson." He was en-trusted with several important official paintings and the decoration of public buildings. Among the first are " The Distribution of Awards (1889) at the Palais de 1'Industrie " (now in the

Versailles

VERSAILLES

Museum), " The Coronation of Nicolas II." (Moscow, May 14, 1896), " The Mayors' Banquet " (1900), and the portrait group " La Republique Francaise "; and among the second, the ceiling for the Salle des Fetes at the had. de ville, Paris, and the decorative panels painted in conjunction with Blanchon for the mairie of the 19th arrondissement, Paris. He also painted, with Alfred Stevens, a panorama, " The History of the Century " (1889). At the Luxembourg is his painting " Satyrs playing with a Bacchante," as well as the large " Members of the Jury of the Salon " (1885). Other pictures of importance, besides numerous portraits in oils and pastel, are " Communion at Trinity Church," " Return from the Ball," " Diana and Endymion," " Job," " Civil

Marriage

MARRIAGE

," " At the Ambassadeurs," " Yachting in the Archipelago," " Nana " and " Maternity."

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