CASALE MONFERRATO, a town and episcopal see of Piedmont, Italy, in the province of Alessandria, 21 m. N.N.W. by rail from the town of Alessandria. Pop. (1901) 18,874 (town); 31,370 (commune). It lies in the plain on the right bank of the Po, 377 ft. above sea-level, and is a junction for Mortara, Vercelli. Chivasso and Asti; it is also connected by steam tramways with Alessandria, Vercelli and Montemagno. The fine Lombard Romanesque cathedral, originally founded in 742, was rebuilt in the early 12th century and consecrated in 1106; it suffered from restoration in 1706, but has been brought back to its original form. It contains some good pictures. The church of S. Domenico is a good Renaissance edifice, and there are some fine palaces. The church of S. Ilario is said to occupy the site of a pagan temple, but the name of the ancient town (if any) which occupied this site is not known. About 10 m. distant is the Sacro Monte di Crea, with eighteen chapels on its slopes containing terra-cotta groups of statues, resembling those at Varallo. Casale Monferrato was given by Charlemagne to the church of Vercelli, but obtained its liberty from Frederick I. (Barbarossa). It was sacked by the troops of Vercelli, Alessandria and Milan in 1215, but rebuilt and fortified in 1220. It fell under the power of its marquises in 1292, and became the chief town of a small state. In 1536 it passed to the Gonzagas of Mantua, who fortified it very strongly. It has since been of considerable importance as a fortress: it successfully resisted the Austrians in 1849, and was strengthened in 1852. There is a large Portland cement factory here.
CASAMARI, a Cistercian abbey in the province of Rome, 6 m. E.S.E. of Veroli. It marks the site of Cereatae, the birthplace of Marius, afterwards known, as inscriptions attest, as Cereatae Marianae, having been separated perhaps by the triumvirs, from the territory of Arpinum. We find it under the early empire as an independent community. The abbey is a fine example of Burgundian early-Gothic (1203-1217), paralleled in Italy by Fossanuova alone (which is almost contemporary with it), and is very well preserved.
See C. Enlart, “Origines françaises de l’architecture gothique en Italie” (Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, fasc. 66), (Paris, 1894).
CASANOVA DE SEINGALT, GIOVANNI JACOPO (1725-1798), Italian adventurer, was born at Venice in 1725. His father belonged to an ancient and even noble family, but alienated his friends by embracing the dramatic profession early in life. He made a runaway marriage with Zanetta Farusi, the beautiful daughter of a Venetian shoemaker; and Giovanni was their eldest child. When he was but a year old, his parents, taking a journey to London, left him in charge of his grandmother, who, perceiving his precocious and lively intellect, had him educated far above her means. At sixteen he passed his examination and entered the seminary of St Cyprian in Venice, from which he was expelled a short time afterwards for some scandalous and immoral conduct, which would have cost him his liberty, had not his mother managed somehow to procure him a situation in the household of the Cardinal Acquaviva. He made but a short stay, however, in that prelate’s establishment, all restraint being irksome to his wayward disposition, and took to travelling. Then began that existence of adventure and intrigue which only ended with his death. He visited Rome, Naples, Corfu and Constantinople. By turns journalist, preacher, abbé, diplomatist, he was nothing very long, except homme à bonnes fortunes, which profession he cultivated till the end of his days. In 1755, having returned to Venice, he was denounced as a spy and imprisoned. On the 1st of November 1756 he succeeded in escaping, and made his way to Paris. Here he was made director of the state lotteries, gained much financial reputation and a considerable fortune, and frequented the society of the most notable French men and women of the day. In 1759 he set out again on his travels. He visited in turn the Netherlands, South Germany, Switzerland—where he made the acquaintance of Voltaire,—Savoy, southern France, Florence—-whence he was expelled,—and Rome, where the pope gave him the order of the Golden Spur. In 1761 he returned to Paris, and for the next four or five years lived partly here, partly in England, South Germany and Italy. In 1764 he was in Berlin, where he refused the offer of a post made him by Frederick II. He then travelled by way of Riga and St Petersburg to Warsaw, where he was favourably received by King Stanislaus Poniatowski. A scandal, followed by a duel, forced him to flee, and he returned by a devious route to Paris, only to find a lettre de cachet awaiting him, which drove him to seek refuge in Spain. Expelled from Madrid in 1769, he went by way of Aix—where he met Cagliostro—to Italy once more. From 1774, with which year his memoirs close, he was a police spy in the service of the Venetian inquisitors of state; but in 1782, in consequence of a satirical libel on one of his patrician patrons, he had once more to go into exile. In 1785 he was appointed by Count Waldstein, an old Paris acquaintance, his librarian at the château of Dux in Bohemia. Here he lived until his death, which probably occurred on the 4th of June 1798.
The main authority for Casanova’s life is his Mémoires (12 vols., Leipzig, 1826-1838; later ed. in 8 vols., Paris, 1885), which were written at Dux. They are clever, well written and, above all, cynical, and interesting as a trustworthy picture of the morals and manners of the times. Among Casanova’s other works may be mentioned Confutazione della storia del governo Veneto d’Amelot de la Houssaye (Amsterdam, 1769), an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Venetian government; and the Histoire of his escape from prison (Leipzig, 1788; reprinted Bordeaux, 1884; Eng. trans, by P. Villars, 1892). Ottmann’s Jacob Casanova (Stuttgart, 1900) contains a bibliography.
CASAS GRANDES (“Great Houses”), a small village of Mexico, in the state of Chihuahua, situated on the Casas Grandes or San Miguel river, about 35 m. S. of Llanos and 150 m. N.W. of the city of Chihuahua. The railway from Ciudad Juarez to Terrazas passes through the town. It is celebrated for the ruins of early aboriginal buildings still extant, about half a mile from its present site. They are built of “sun-dried blocks of mud and gravel, about 22 in. thick, and of irregular length, generally about 3 ft., probably formed and dried in situ.” The walls are in some places about 5 ft. thick, and they seem to have been plastered both inside and outside. The principal edifice extends 800 ft. from north to south, and 250 ft. east to west; its general outline is rectangular, and it appears to have consisted of three separate piles united by galleries or lines of lower buildings. The exact plan of the whole is obscure, but the apartments evidently varied in size from mere closets to extensive courts. The walls still stand at many of the angles with a height of from 40 to 50 ft., and indicate an original elevation of several storeys, perhaps six or seven. At a distance of about 450 ft. from the main building are the substructions of a smaller edifice, consisting of a series of rooms ranged round a square court, so that there are seven to each side besides a larger apartment at each corner. The age of these buildings is unknown, as they were already in ruins at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The whole district of Casas Grandes is further studded with artificial mounds, from which are excavated from time to time large numbers of stone axes, metates or corn-grinders, and earthern vessels of various kinds. These last have a white or reddish ground, with ornamentation in blue, red, brown or black, and are of much better manufacture than the modern pottery of the country. Similar ruins to those of Casas Grandes exist near the Gila, the Salinas, and the Colorado and it is probable that they are all the erections of one people. Bancroft is disposed to assign them to the Moquis.
See vol. iv. of H.H. Bancroft’s The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, of which the principal authorities are the Noticias del Estado de Chihuahua of Escudero, who visited the ruins in 1819; an article in the first volume of the Album Mexicano, the author of which was at Casas Grandes in 1842; and the Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora and Chihuahua (1854), by John Russell Bartlett, who explored the locality in 1851.