COCHLAEUS, JOHANN (1479-1552), German humanist and controversialist, whose family name was Dobneck, was born of poor parents in 1479 at Wendelstein (near Nuremberg), whence his friends gave him the punning surname Cochlaeus (spiral), for which he occasionally substituted Wendelstinus. Having received some education at Nuremberg from the humanist Heinrich Grieninger, he entered (1504) the university of Cologne. In 1507 he graduated, and published under the name of Wendelstein his first piece, In musicam exhortatorium. He left Cologne (May 1510) to become schoolmaster at Nuremberg, where he brought out several school manuals. In 1515 he was at Bologna, hearing (with disgust) Eck’s famous disputation against usury, and associating with Ulrich von Hutten and humanists. He took his doctor’s degree at Ferrara (1517), and spent some time in Rome, where he was ordained priest. In 1520 he became dean of the Liebfrauenkirche at Frankfort, where he first entered the lists as a controversialist against the party of Luther, developing that bitter hatred to the Reformation which animated his forceful but shallow ascription of the movement to the meanest motives, due to a quarrel between the Dominicans and Augustinians. Luther would not meet him in discussion at Mainz in 1521. He was present at the diets of Worms, Regensburg, Spires and Augsburg. The peasants’ war drove him from Frankfort; he obtained (1526) a canonry at Mainz; in 1529 he became secretary to Duke George of Saxony, at Dresden and Meissen. The death of his patron (1539) compelled him to take flight. He became canon (September 1539) at Breslau, where he died on the 10th of January 1552. He was a prolific writer, largely of overgrown pamphlets, harsh and furious. His more serious efforts retain no permanent value. With humanist convictions, he had little of the humanist spirit. We owe to him one of the few contemporary notices of the young Servetus.
See C. Otto, Johannes Cochlaeus, der Humanist (1874); Haas, in I. Goschler’s Dict. encydopéd. de la théol. cath. (1858); Brecher, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (1876); T. Kolde, in A. Hauck’s Realencyklopädie für prot. Theol. u. Kirche (1898).
(A. Go.*)
COCK, EDWARD (1805-1802), British surgeon, was born in 1805. He was a nephew of Sir Astley Cooper, and through him became at an early age a member of the staff of the Borough hospital in London, where he worked in the dissecting room for thirteen years. Afterwards he became in 1838 assistant surgeon at Guy’s, where from 1849 to 1871 he was surgeon, and from 1871 to 1892 consulting surgeon. He rose to be president of the College of Surgeons in 1869. He was an excellent anatomist, a bold operator, and a clear and incisive writer, and though in lecturing he was afflicted with a stutter, he frequently utilized it with humorous effect and emphasis. From 1843 to 1849 he was editor of Guy’s Hospital Reports, which contain many of his papers, particularly on stricture of the urethra, puncture of the bladder, injuries to the head, and hernia. He was the first English surgeon to perform pharyngotomy with success, and also one of the first to succeed in trephining for middle meningeal haemorrhage; but the operation by which his name is known is that of opening the urethra through the perinaeum (see Guy’s Hospital Reports, 1866). He died at Kingston in 1892.
COCKADE (Fr. cocarde, in 16th century coquarde, from coq, in allusion probably to the cock’s comb), a knot of ribbons or a rosette worn as a badge, particularly now as part of the livery of servants. The cockade was at first the button and loop or clasp which “cocked” up the side of an ordinary slouch hat. The word first appears in this sense in Rabelais in the phrase “bonnet à la coquarde,” which is explained by Cotgrave (1611) as a “Spanish cap or fashion of bonnet used by substantial men of yore ... worne proudly or peartly on th’ one side.” The bunch of ribbons as a party badge developed from this entirely utilitarian button and loop. The Stuarts’ badge was a white rose, and the resulting white cockade figured in Jacobite songs after the downfall of the dynasty. William III.’s cockade was of yellow, and the House of Hanover introduced theirs of black, which in its present spiked or circular form of leather is worn in England to-day by the royal coachmen and grooms, and the servants of all officials or members of the services. At the battle of Sheriffmuir in the reign of George I. the English soldiers wore a black rosette in their hats, and in a contemporary song are called “the red-coat lads wi’ black cockades.” At the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1789, cockades of green ribbon were adopted. These afterwards gave place to the tricolour cockade, which is said to have been a mixture of the traditional colours of Paris (red and blue) with the white of the Bourbons, the early Revolutionists being still Royalists. The French army wore the tricolour cockade until the Restoration. To-day each foreign nation has its special coloured cockade. Thus the Austrian is black and yellow, the Bavarian light blue and white, the Belgian black, yellow and red, French the tricolour, Prussian black and white, Russian green and white, and so on, following usually the national colours. Originally the wearing of a cockade, as soon as it had developed into a badge, was restricted to soldiers, as “to mount a cockade” was “to become a soldier.” There is still a trace of the cockade as a badge in certain military headgears in England and elsewhere. Otherwise it has become entirely the mark of domestic service. The military cocked hat, the lineal descendant of the bonnet à la coquarde, became the fashion in France during the reign of Louis XV.
See Genealogical Magazine, vols. i.-iii. (London, 1897-1899); Racinet, La Costume historique (6 vols., Paris, 1888).