Massinger’s best characters are the hypocritical “Luke” and the heroic “Marullo.”—W. Spalding.
Luke, patriarch’s nuncio, and bishop of the Druses. He terms the Druses,
... the docile crew
My bezants went to make me bishop of.
Robert Browning, The Return of the Druses, v.
Luke (Sir) or Sir Luke Limp, a tuft-hunter, a devotee to the bottle, and a hanger-on of great men for no other reason than mere snobbism. Sir Luke will “cling to Sir John till the baronet is superseded by my lord; quitting the puny peer for an earl, and sacrificing all three to a duke.”—S. Foote, The Lame Lover.
Luke’s Bird (St.), the ox.
Luke’s Iron Crown. George and Luke Dosa headed an unsuccessful revolt against the Hungarian nobles in the sixteenth century. Luke was put to death by a red-hot iron crown, in mockery of his having been proclaimed king.
This was not an unusual punishment for those who sought regal honors in the Middle Ages. Thus, when Tancred usurped the crown of Sicily, Kaiser Heinrich VI. of Germany, set him on a red-hot iron throne, and crowned him with a red-hot iron crown (twelfth century).
⁂ The “iron crown of Lombardy” must not be mistaken for an iron crown of punishment. The former is one of the nails used in the Crucifixion, beaten out into a thin rim of iron, magnificently set in gold, and adorned with jewels. Charlemagne and Napoleon I. were both crowned with it.