Manresa is probably the Munorisa of the Romans, which was the capital of the Jacetani or Jaccetani, an important tribe of the south-eastern Pyrenees. A large portion of the town was burned by the French in 1811.
MANRIQUE, GÓMEZ (1412?-1490?), Spanish poet, soldier, politician and dramatist, was born at Amusco. The fifth son of Pedro Manrique, adelantado mayor of León, and nephew of Santillana (q.v.), Gómez Manrique was introduced into public life at an early age, took a prominent part against the constable Álvaro de Luna during the reign of John II., went into opposition against Miguel Lucas de Iranzo in the reign of Henry IV., and declared in favour of the infanta Isabel, whose marriage with Ferdinand he promoted. Besides being a distinguished soldier, he acted as a moderating political influence and, when appointed corregidor of Toledo, was active in protecting the converted Jews from popular resentment. His will was signed on the 31st of May 1490, and he is known to have died before the 16th of February 1491. He inherited the literary taste of his uncle Santillana, and was greatly esteemed in his own age; but his reputation was afterwards eclipsed by that of his nephew Jorge Manrique (q.v.), whose Coplas were continually reproduced. Gómez Manrique’s poems were not printed till 1885, when they were edited by Antonio Paz y Melia. They at once revealed him to be a poet of eminent merit, and it seems certain that his Consejos, addressed to Diego Arias de Avila, inspired the more famous Coplas of his nephew. His didactic verses are modelled upon those of Santillana, and his satires are somewhat coarse in thought and expression; but his place in the history of Spanish literature is secure as the earliest Spanish dramatist whose name has reached posterity. He wrote the Representación del nascimiento de Nuestro Señor, a play on the Passion, and two momos, or interludes, played at court.
MANRIQUE, JORGE (1440?-1478), Spanish poet and soldier, was born probably at Paredes de Nava. The fourth son of Rodrigo Manrique, count de Paredes, he became like the rest of his family a fervent partisan of Queen Isabel, served with great distinction in many engagements, and was made comendador of Montizón in the order of Santiago. He was killed in a skirmish near the fortress of Garci-Muñoz in 1478, and was buried in the church attached to the convent of Uclés. His love-songs, satires, and acrostic verses are merely ingenious compositions in the taste of his age; he owes his imperishable renown to a single poem, the Coplas por la muerte de su padre, an elegy of forty stanzas on the death of his father, which was apparently first printed in the Cancionero llamado de Fray Inigo de Mendoza about the year 1482. There is no foundation for the theory that Manrique drew his inspiration from an Arabic poem by Abu ‘l-Bakā Sālih ar-Rundi; the form of the Coplas is influenced by the Consejos of his uncle, Gómez Manrique, and the matter derives from the Bible, from Boethius and from other sources readily accessible. The great sonorous commonplaces on death are vitalized by the intensely personal grief of the poet, who lent a new solemnity and significance to thoughts which had been for centuries the common property of mankind. It was given to Jorge Manrique to have one single moment of sublime expression, and this isolated achievement has won him a fame undimmed by any change of taste during four centuries.
The best edition of the Coplas is that issued by R. Foulché-Delbosc in the Bibliotheca hispanica; the poem has been admirably translated by Longfellow. Manrique’s other verses were mostly printed in Hernando del Castillo’s Cancionero general (1511).
MANSE (Med. Lat. mansa, mansus or mansum, from manere, to dwell, remain), originally a dwelling-house together with a portion of land sufficient for the support of a family. It is defined by Du Cange (Glossarium, s.v. Mansus) as ... certam agri portionem quae coleretur et in qua coloni aedes esset. The term was particularly applied, in ecclesiastical law, to the house and glebe to which every church was entitled by common right, the rule of canon law being sancitum est ut unicuique ecclesiae unus mansus integer absque ullo servitio tribuatur (Phillimore, Eccles. Law, 1895, ii. 1125). The word is now chiefly used for the residence of a minister of the Established Church of Scotland; to this every minister of a rural parish is entitled, and the landed proprietors must build and keep it up. “Manse” is also loosely used for the residence of a minister of various Free Church denominations (see [Glebe]).
MANSEL, HENRY LONGUEVILLE (1820-1871), English philosopher, was born at Cosgrove, Northamptonshire (where his father, also Henry Longueville Mansel, fourth son of General John Mansel, was rector), on the 6th of October 1820. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School and St John’s College, Oxford. He took a double first in 1843, and became tutor of his college. He was appointed reader in moral and metaphysical philosophy at Magdalen College in 1855, and Waynflete professor in 1859. He was a great opponent of university reform and of the Hegelianism which was then beginning to take root in Oxford. In 1867 he succeeded A. P. Stanley as professor of ecclesiastical history, and in 1868 he was appointed dean of St Paul’s. He died on the 31st of July 1871.