CREMERA (mod. Fosso della Valchetta), a small stream in Etruria which falls into the Tiber about 6 m. N. of Rome. The identification with the Fosso della Valchetta is fixed as correct by the account in Livy ii. 49, which shows that the Saxa Rubra were not far off, and this we know to be the Roman name of the post station of Prima Porta, about 7 m. from Rome on the Via Flaminia. It is famous for the defeat of the three hundred Fabii, who had established a fortified post on its banks.
CRÉMIEUX, ISAAC MOÏSE [known as Adolphe] (1796-1880), French statesman, was born at Nîmes, of a rich Jewish family. He began life as an advocate in his native town. After the revolution of 1830 he came to Paris, formed connexions with numerous political personages, even with King Louis Philippe, and became a brilliant defender of Liberal ideas in the law courts and in the press,—witness his Éloge funèbre of the bishop Grégoire (1830), his Mémoire for the political rehabilitation of Marshal Ney (1833), and his plea for the accused of April (1835). Elected deputy in 1842, he was one of the leaders in the campaign against the Guizot ministry, and his eloquence contributed greatly to the success of his party. On the 24th of February 1848 he was chosen by the Republicans as a member of the provisional government, and as minister of justice he secured the decrees abolishing the death penalty for political offences, and making the office of judge immovable. When the conflict between the Republicans and Socialists broke out he resigned office, but continued to sit in the constituent assembly. At first he supported Louis Napoleon, but when he discovered the prince’s imperial ambitions he broke with him. Arrested and imprisoned on the 2nd of December 1851, he remained in private life until November 1869, when he was elected as a Republican deputy by Paris. On the 4th of September 1870 he was again chosen member of the government of national defence, and resumed the ministry of justice. He then formed part of the Delegation of Tours, but took no part in the completion of the organization of defence. He resigned with his colleagues on the 14th of February 1871. Eight months later he was elected deputy, then life senator in 1875. He died on the 10th of February 1880. Crémieux did much to better the condition of the Jews. He was president of the Universal Israelite Alliance, and while in the government of the national defence he secured the franchise for the Jews in Algeria. This famous Décret Crémieux was the origin of the anti-Semitic movement in Algiers. Crémieux published a Recueil of his political cases (1869), and the Actes de la délégation de Tours et de Bordeaux (2 vols., 1871).
CREMONA, LUIGI (1830-1903), Italian mathematician, was born at Pavia on the 7th of December 1830. In 1848, when Milan and Venice rose against Austria, Cremona, then only a lad of seventeen, joined the ranks of the Italian volunteers, and remained with them, fighting on behalf of his country’s freedom, till, in 1849, the capitulation of Venice put an end to the hopeless campaign. He then returned to Pavia, where he pursued his studies at the university under Francesco Brioschi, and determined to seek a career as teacher of mathematics. His first appointment was as elementary mathematical master at the gymnasium and lyceum of Cremona, and he afterwards obtained a similar post at Milan. In 1860 he was appointed to the professorship of higher geometry at the university of Bologna, and in 1866 to that of higher geometry and graphical statics at the higher technical college of Milan. In this same year he competed for the Steiner prize of the Berlin Academy, with a treatise entitled “Memoria sulle superficie de terzo ordine,” and shared the award with J. C. F. Sturm. Two years later the same prize was conferred on him without competition. In 1873 he was called to Rome to organize the college of engineering, and was also appointed professor of higher mathematics at the university. Cremona’s reputation had now become European, and in 1879 he was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Society. In the same year he was made a senator of the kingdom of Italy. He died on the 10th of June 1903.
As early as 1856 Cremona had begun to contribute to the Annali di scienze matematiche e fisiche, and to the Annali di matematica, of which he became afterwards joint editor. Papers by him have appeared in the mathematical journals of Italy, France, Germany and England, and he has published several important works, many of which have been translated into other languages. His manual on Graphical Statics and his Elements of Projective Geometry (translated by C. Leudesdorf), have been published in English by the Clarendon Press. His life was devoted to the study of higher geometry and reforming the more advanced mathematical teaching of Italy. His reputation mainly rests on his Introduzione ad una teoria geometrica delle curve piane, which proclaims him as a follower of the Steinerian or synthetical school of geometricians. He notably enriched our knowledge of curves and surfaces.
CREMONA, a city and episcopal see of Lombardy, Italy, the capital of the province of Cremona, situated on the N. bank of the Po, 155 ft. above sea-level, 60 m. by rail S.E. of Milan. Pop. (1901) town, 31,655; commune, 39,344. It is oval in shape, and retains its medieval fortifications. The line of the streets is as a rule irregular, but the town as a whole is not very picturesque.
The finest building is the cathedral, in the Lombard Romanesque style, begun in 1107 and consecrated in 1190. The wheel window of the main façade dates from 1274. The transepts, added in the 13th and 14th centuries (before 1370), have picturesque brick façades, with fine terra-cotta ornamentation. The great Torrazzo, a tower 397 ft. high, which stands by the cathedral, and is connected with it by a series of galleries, dates from 1267-1291. It is square below, with an octagonal summit of a slightly later period. The main façade of the cathedral was largely altered in 1491, to which date the statues upon it belong; the portico in front was added in 1497. The building would be much improved by isolation, which it is hoped may be effected. The interior is fine, and is covered with frescoes by Cremonese masters of the 16th century (Boccaccio Boccaccino, Romanino, Pordenone, the Campi, &c.), which are not of first-rate importance. The choir has fine stalls of 1489-1490, upon one of which there is a view of the façade of the cathedral before its alteration in 1491. The treasury contains a richly worked silver crucifix 9 ft. high, of 1478, the base of which was added in 1774-1775. It contains 408 statues and busts altogether, the central three of which belong to an earlier cross of 1231. Adjacent to the cathedral is the octagonal baptistery of 1167, 92 ft. in height and 75 ft. in external diameter, also in the Lombard Romanesque style. The so-called Campo Santo, close to the baptistery, contains a mosaic pavement with emblematic figures belonging probably to the 8th and 9th centuries, and running under the cathedral. Of the other churches, S. Michele has a simple and good Lombard Romanesque 13th-century façade, and a plain interior of the 10th century; and S. Agata a good campanile in the former style. Many of them contain paintings by the later Cremonese masters, especially Galeazzo Campi (d. 1536) and his sons Giulio and Antonio. The latter are especially well represented in S. Sigismondo, 1½ m. outside the town to the E. On the side of the Piazza del Comune opposite to the cathedral are two 13th-century Gothic palaces in brick, the Palazzo Comunale and the former Palazzo dei Giureconsulti, now the seat of the commissioners for the water regulation of the district. Another palace of the same period is now occupied by the Archivio Notarile. The modern Palazzo Ponzoni contains a museum and a technical institute. In front of it is a statue of the composer Amilcare Ponchielli, who was a native of Cremona. The Palazzo Fodri, now the Monte di Pietà, has a beautiful 15th-century frieze of terra-cotta bas-reliefs, as have some other palaces in private hands.
Cremona was founded by the Romans in 218 B.C. (the same year as Placentia) as an outpost against the Gallic tribes. It was strengthened in 190 B.C. by the sending of 6000 new settlers and soon became one of the most flourishing towns of upper Italy. It probably acquired municipal rights in 90 B.C., but Augustus, owing to the fact that it did not support him, assigned a part of its territory to his veterans in 41 B.C., and henceforth it is once more called colonia. It remained prosperous (we may note that Virgil came here to school from Mantua) until it was taken and destroyed by the troops of Vespasian after the second battle of Betriacum (Bedriacum) in A.D. 69; the temple of Mefitis alone being left standing (see Tacitus, Hist. iii. 15 seq.). One of the bronze plates which decorated the exterior of the war-chest of the legio III. Macedonica, one of the legions which had been defeated at Betriacum, has been found near Cremona itself (F. Barnabei in Notiz. scavi, 1887, p. 210). Vespasian ordered its immediate reconstruction, but it never recovered its former prosperity, though its position on the N. bank of the Po, at the meeting-point of roads from Placentia, Mantua (the Via Postumia in both cases), Brixellum (where the roads from Cremona and Mantua to Parma met and crossed the river), Laus Pompeia and Brixia, still gave it considerable importance. It was destroyed once more by the Lombards under Agilulf in A.D. 605, and rebuilt in 615, and was ruled by dukes; but in the 9th century the bishops of Cremona began to acquire considerable temporal power. Landulf, a German to whom the see was granted by Henry II., was driven out in 1022, and his palace destroyed, but other Germans were invested with the see afterwards. The commune of Cremona is first mentioned in a document of 1098, recording its investiture by the countess Matilda with the territory known as Isola Fulcheria. It had to sustain many wars with its neighbours in order to maintain itself in its new possessions. In the war of the Lombard League against Barbarossa, Cremona, after having shared in the destruction of Crema in 1160 and Milan in 1162, finally joined the league, but took no part in the battle of Legnano, and thus procured itself the odium of both sides. In the Guelph and Ghibelline struggles Cremona took the latter side, and defeated Parma decisively in 1250. It was during this period that Cremona erected its finest buildings. There was, however, a Guelph reaction in 1264; the city was taken and sacked by Henry VII. in 1311, and was a prey to struggles between the two parties, until Galeazzo Visconti took possession of it in 1322. In 1406 it fell under the sway of Cabrino Fondulo, who received with great festivities both the emperor Sigismund and Pope John XXIII., the latter on his way to the council at Constance; he, however, handed it over to Filippo Maria Visconti in 1419. In 1499 it was occupied by Venetians, but in 1512 it came under Massimiliano Sforza. In 1535, like the rest of Lombardy, it fell under Spanish domination, and was compelled to furnish large money contributions. The population fell to 10,000 in 1668. The surprise of the French garrison on the 2nd of February 1702, by the Imperialists under Prince Eugene, was a celebrated incident of the War of the Spanish Succession. The Imperialists were driven from Cremona after a sharp struggle, but captured Marshal Villeroi, the French commander. Hence the celebrated verse: