CASTILLO SOLÓRZANO, ALONSO DE (1584?-1647?), Spanish novelist and playwright, is stated to have been baptized at Tordesillas near Valladolid on 1st October 1584. Nothing is known of his youth, and he is next heard of at Madrid in 1619 as a man of literary tastes. While in the service of the marquis de Villar, he issued his first work, Donaires del Parnaso (1624-1625), two volumes of humorous poems; his Tardes entretenidas (1625) and Jornadas alegres (1626) proved that he was a novelist by vocation. Shortly afterwards he joined the household of the marquis de los Vélez, viceroy of Valencia, and published in quick succession three clever picaresque novels: La Niña de los embustes, Teresa de Manzanares (1634), Las Aventuras del Bachiller Trapaza (1637), and a continuation entitled La Garduña de Sevilla y Anzuelo de las bolsas (1642). To these shrewd cynical stories he owes his reputation. He followed the marquis de los Vélez in his disastrous campaign in Catalonia, and accompanied him to Rome, where the defeated general was sent as ambassador. Castillo Solórzano’s death occurred (probably at Palermo) before 1648, but the exact date is uncertain. His prolonged absence from Madrid prevented him from writing as copiously for the stage as he would otherwise have done; but he was popular as a playwright both at home and abroad. His Marqués del Cigarral and El Mayorazgo figurón are the sources respectively of Scarron’s Don Jophet d’Arménie and L’Héritier ridicule. Among his numerous remaining works may be mentioned Las Harpías en Madrid (1633), Fiestas del Jardín (1634), Los Alivios de Casandra (1640) and the posthumous Quinta de Laurel (1649); the witty observation of these books forms a singular contrast to the prim devotion of his Sagrario de Valencia (1635). His versatility and graceful style deserve the highest praise.
(J. F.-K.)
CASTLE (Lat. castellum, a fort, diminutive of castra, a camp; Fr. château and chátel), a small self-contained fortress, usually of the middle ages, though the term is sometimes used of prehistoric earthworks (e.g. Hollingbury Castle, Maiden Castle), and sometimes of citadels (e.g. the castles of Badajoz and Burgos) and small detached forts d’arrêt in modern times. It is also often applied to the principal mansion of a prince or nobleman, and in France (as château) to any country seat, this use being a relic of the feudal age. Under its twofold aspect of a fortress and a residence, the medieval castle is inseparably connected with the subjects of fortification (see [Fortification and Siegecraft]) and architecture (q.v.). An account of Roman and pre-Roman castella in Britain will be found under [Britain].
| From Clark’s Medieval Military Architecture, by
permission of Bernard Quaritch. Fig. 1.—Plan of Laughton en-le-Morthen. |
The word “castle” (castel) was introduced into English shortly before the Norman Conquest to denote a type of fortress, then new to the country, brought in by the Norman knights whom Edward the Confessor had sent for to defend Herefordshire against the inroads of the Welsh. Richard’s castle, of which the earthworks remain and which has given its name to a parish, was erected at this period on the border of Herefordshire and Shropshire by Richard Fitz Scrob. The essential feature of this type was a circular mound of earth surrounded by a dry ditch and flattened at the top. Around the crest of its summit was placed a timber palisade. This moated mound was styled in French motte (latinized mota), a word still common in French place-names. It is clearly depicted at the time of the Conquest in the Bayeux tapestry, and was then familiar on the mainland of western Europe. A description of this earlier castle is given in the life of John, bishop of Terouanne (Acta Sanctorum, quoted by G.T. Clark, Medieval Mil. Architecture):—“The rich and the noble of that region being much given to feuds and bloodshed, fortify themselves ... and by these strongholds subdue their equals and oppress their inferiors. They heap up a mound as high as they are able, and dig round it as broad a ditch as they can.... Round the summit of the mound they construct a palisade of timber to act as a wall.... Inside the palisade they erect a house, or rather a citadel, which looks down on the whole neighbourhood.” St John, bishop of Terouanne, died in 1130, and this castle of Merchem, built by “a lord of the town many years before” may be taken as typical of the practice of the 11th century. But in addition to the mound, the citadel of the fortress, there was usually appended to it a bailey or basecourt (and sometimes two) of semilunar or horseshoe shape, so that the mound stood à cheval on the line of the enceinte. The rapidity and ease with which it was possible to construct castles of this type made them characteristic of the Conquest period in England and of the Anglo-Norman settlements in Wales, Ireland and the Scottish lowlands. In later days a stone wall replaced the timber palisade and produced what is known as the shell-keep, the type met with in the extant castles of Berkeley, Alnwick and Windsor.
But the Normans introduced also two other types of castle. The one was adopted where they found a natural rock stronghold which only needed adaptation, as at Clifford, Ludlow, the Peak and Exeter, to produce a citadel; the other was a type wholly distinct, the high rectangular tower of masonry, of which the Tower of London is the best-known example, though that of Colchester was probably constructed in the 11th century also. But the latter type belongs rather to the more settled conditions of the 12th century when haste was not a necessity, and in the first half of which the fine extant keeps of Hedingham and Rochester were erected. These towers were originally surrounded by palisades, usually on earthen ramparts, which were replaced later by stone walls. The whole fortress thus formed was styled a castle, but sometimes more precisely “tower and castle,” the former being the citadel, and the latter the walled enclosure, which preserved more strictly the meaning of the Roman castellum.
Reliance was placed by the engineers of that time simply and solely on the inherent strength of the structure, the walls of which defied the battering-ram, and could only be undermined at the cost of much time and labour, while the narrow apertures were constructed to exclude arrows or flaming brands.
| Fig. 2.—Vertical section of rectangular Norman Keep (Tower of London). |