[Minotaur], in the Greek mythology a monster, half-man half-bull with a bull's head, confined in the Labyrinth of Crete, fed by the annual tribute of seven youths and seven maidens of Athenian birth, till he was slain by Theseus with the help of [Ariadne] (q. v.).
[Minstrels], a body of men who during the Middle Ages wandered from place to place, especially from court to court, singing their own compositions to the harp for accompaniment.
[Minto, Earl of], Governor-General of India; was bred to the bar, served in Parliament and as ambassador, went out to India in 1806, consolidated the British power, captured Java, and opened diplomatic relations with powers around (17501814).
[Mirabeau, Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, Comte de], son of the succeeding, born at the mansion-house of Bignon; was a man of massive intellect and strong physical frame, who came to the front in the French Revolution; being expelled from his order by the noblesse of Provence, he ingratiated himself with the Third Estate, and was elected commons-deputy of Aix to the States-General in 1789, where he became, as the incarnation of the whole movement, the ruling spirit of the hour, and gave proof, if he had lived, of being able to change the whole course of the Revolution, for he was already in communication with the court and in hopes of gaining it over to accept the inevitable, when he sickened and died, to the consternation of the entire people, whose affection and confidence he had won (1749-1791). See [Carlyle's "French Revolution"] and his Essay in his ["Miscellanies."]
[Mirabeau, Victor Riquetti, Marquis de], "crabbed old friend of men," born at Pertuis, in Provence, claimed to be of Florentine descent; "could never make the world go to his mind," and set about reforming it by coercing a family as self-willed as himself, to the driving of his celebrated son to desperate courses and reckless excesses; advocated the doctrines of the French economists in a series of writings instinct with a certain theoretical philanthropy (1716-1783).
[Miracle Plays] were strictly speaking dramas founded on legends of the saints, as distinct from mysteries founded on scriptural subjects, but the name came to cover all those religious representations for the instruction of the people fostered by the Church of the Middle Ages, performed first in churches, afterwards in public places; they were common in England from the 12th century, but latterly became corrupt through the introduction of grotesque indecorous comicalities; the rise of the drama led to their abandonment; on the Continent ecclesiastical action was taken against them, not by the Reformers, but by the Church itself in the 18th century, and everywhere they have all but disappeared; the Passion Play acted every 10 years at Oberammergau, Bavaria, is the only important survival.
[Miranda], the beautiful daughter of the magician Prospero in Shakespeare's "Tempest."
[Miranda, Francesco de], a Portuguese poet; wrote sonnets and epistles in verse; was predecessor of Camoëns (1495-1558).
[Miserere], a carved bracket on the under side of the stall seats in mediæval churches, which, when the seat was turned up during the standing portion of the service, afforded support to the older clergy. Miserere, the Catholic name for the 51st Psalm.