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The History Channel - Encyclopedia Category: History and Culture > History Date & country: 02/12/2007, UK Words: 25833

Piran, St
(lived c. 500 AD) Christian missionary sent to Cornwall by St Patrick. There are remains of his oratory at Perranzabuloe, and he is the patron saint of Cornwall and its nationalist movement. Feast day 5 March. ...

Pirandello, Luigi
(1867-1936) Italian dramatist, novelist, and short-story writer. His plays, which often deal with the themes of illusion and reality, and the tragicomic absurdity of life, include Sei...

pirate radio
In the UK, illegal radio broadcasting set up to promote an alternative to the state-owned monopoly. The early pirate radio stations broadcast from offshore ships, outside territorial waters; the...

Pirckheimer, Willibald
(1470-1530) German book-collector and humanist. His own writings included translations from Greek into Latin, and from both classical languages into German. He also wrote Bellum Helveticum/The Swiss War (not...

Pire, Dominique
(1910-1969) French Dominican priest and professor. Father Dominique Pire reached a turning point in his life on a visit to Austria in 1949 where he found that 60,000 refugees were living in camps and asylums....

Pirenne, Henri
(1862-1935) Belgian historian, author of a seven-volume Histoire de Belgique/History of Belgium 1900-32. He also wrote numerous books and articles on the Middle Ages, including Belgian Democracy, Its Early...

Pirithous
In Greek mythology, a king of the Lapiths; son of Ixion; and friend of the hero Theseus. His marriage to Hippodamia was the occasion of a battle between the Lapiths and their guests, the Centaurs,...

Pirke Aboth
Treatise on Hebrew law, forming part of the Mishnah. The Pirke Aboth is a collection of sayings of ancient rabbis dealing with ethical and religious matters. ...

Piron, Alexis
(1689-1773) French poet and dramatist. His play La Métromanie 1738 is one of the most accomplished of the 18th century. ...

Pisa, Council of
General Council of the Church held in Pisa, Italy, in 1409 in an attempt to end the Great Schism. It failed, managing instead to add another line of claimants to the dispute. The Great Schism meant...

Pisacane, Carlo
(1818-1857) Officer in the Neapolitan army. He was one of the most colourful personalities of the Italian Risorgimento (a movement for Italian unity and independence). An affair with the wife of a local...

Pisanello
(c. 1395-c. 1455) Italian painter and medallist. He painted religious works and portraits in a style untouched by recent Florentine innovations, as in Madonna and Child with St George and St Anthony Abbot (c. 1445;...

Pisano, Andrea
(c. 1290-c. 1348) Italian sculptor. He made the earliest bronze doors for the Baptistery of Florence Cathedral, completed in 1336. He completed the campanile for the cathedral, designed by Giotto. ...

Piscator, Erwin
(1893-1966) German theatre director. He introduced the idea of epic theatre, using slide-projection, music, dance, and film to create a revolutionary social drama in the Red Revue 1921 and in Hoppla, That's...

Pisidia
Ancient inland district in Asia Minor (now part of Turkey), lying to the north of Lycia and Pamphylia. It was a mountainous region inhabited by a warlike people, who maintained their independence...

Pisistratids
Family name of the Athenian tyrantPisistratus, and his two sons Hippias and Hipparchus. ...

Pisistratus (or Peisistratos)
(c. 605-527 BC) Athenian tyrant. Although of noble family, he became the leader of the anti-aristocratic party, and seized power in 561 BC. He was twice expelled, but recovered power securely from 546 BC until...

Pissarro, Camille
(1830-1903) French painter. A leading member of the Impressionists, he experimented with various styles, including pointillism, in the 1880s. Though he is closely linked with pictures of the French countryside...

Pissarro, Lucien
(1863-1944) French artist, painter, and wood engraver. At the age of 20 he settled in London, where he set up the Eragny Press and produced finely printed volumes illustrated with his own woodcuts or...

Pitcairne, Archibald
(1652-1713) Scottish satirical poet and physician. He had strong Jacobite sympathies and ridiculed the prevalent Puritanism. The satire on Presbyterianism Babel 1692 is attributed to him; another work is the...

Pitcher, Molly
US Revolutionary heroine; see Mary McCauley. ...

Pitchlynn, Peter
(1806-1881) Chocktaw leader. A graduate of Nashville University, he was elected to the Chocktaw council where he worked to encourage education and to end polygamy and alcohol drinking. He was elected principal...

Pithecanthropus erectus
Hominid (early human) now regarded as a subgroup of Homo erectus (see human species, origins of). A fossil of pithecanthropus was first found in Java by Eugene Dubois in 1896. ...

Pitney, Mahlon
(1858-1924) Supreme Court justice. He served the US House of Representatives (Republican, New Jersey; 1895-99) and in the New Jersey legislature (1899-1901). He was a state supreme court judge (1901-08)...

Pitt-Rivers, Augustus
(1827-1900) English archaeologist. He made a series of model archaeological excavations on his estates at Rushworth in Dorset, England, and developed the concept of stratigraphy (identifying layers of soil...

Pitt, William, the Elder
(1708-1778) British Whig politician, `the Great Commoner`. As paymaster of the forces 1746-55, he broke with tradition by refusing to enrich himself; he was dismissed for attacking...

Pitt, William, the Younger
(1759-1806) British Tory prime minister 1783-1801 and 1804-06. He raised the importance of the House of Commons, clamped down on corruption, carried out fiscal reforms, and effected the union with Ireland....

pittance
In medieval monasteries, a small dish of food, distributed by a monk called the pittancer, either to sick monks or to celebrate a feast day. ...

Pitter, Ruth
(1897-1992) English poet. Her verse covers a wide range from the religious to the humorous and eccentric, and includes A Trophy of Arms 1936, The Ermine 1953, Poems 1922-66 1968, and...

Pitti Gallery
Art gallery in Florence, Italy. It houses paintings belonging largely to the period of the High Renaissance. Among its works are Raphael Sanzio's Madonna del granduca, Madonna della...

Pittman, Key
(1872-1940) US senator. He joined the Alaskan gold rush (1897-1901) and was a lawyer who specialized in mining law. He served in the US Senate (Democrat, Nevada; 1913-40). As chairman of the Senate Foreign...

Pittoni, Giovanni Battista
(1687-1767) Italian painter. He was active mainly in Venice, painting religious, historical, and mythological subjects in a sentimental rococo manner. Pittoni was president of the Venetian Academy 1765, and...

Pius IV
(1499-1565) Pope from 1559, of the Medici family. He reassembled the Council of Trent (see Counter-Reformation under Reformation) and completed its work in 1563. ...

Pius IX
(1792-1878) Pope from 1846. He never accepted the incorporation of the papal states and of Rome in the kingdom of Italy. He proclaimed the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin in 1854 and papal...

Pius V, Antonio Etrislieri
(1504-1572) Pope from 1566. His early career was in the Inquisition, a role which brought him the support of Paul IV who made him a cardinal in 1558. From the beginning of his own pontificate, he stressed his...

Pius VI
(1717-1799) Pope from 1775. He strongly opposed the French Revolution, and died a prisoner in French hands. ...

Pius VII
(1742-1823) Pope from 1800. He concluded a concordat (papal agreement) with France in 1801 and took part in Napoleon's coronation, but relations became strained. Napoleon annexed the papal states, and Pius was...

Pius X
(1835-1914) Pope from 1903, canonized in 1954. He condemned modernism in a manifesto in 1907. ...

Pius XI
(1857-1939) Pope from 1922. He signed the concordat (papal agreement) with Mussolini in 1929. ...

Pius XII
(1876-1958) Pope from 1939. He was conservative in doctrine and politics, and condemned modernism. In 1950 he proclaimed the dogma of the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary, and in 1951 restated the doctrine...

Pius, Miroslav
(1942) Slovak poet. His first collection, Pyromania (1966), is a sensitive depiction of a young man's insecurity in love. Journey to the End of Death (1970) is contemplative verse with a strong erotic and...

pixie
In the folklore of Devon and Cornwall, England, a kind of fairy. Pixies were believed to kidnap children and to lead travellers astray. ...

Pizarro, Francisco
(1475-1541) Spanish conquistador. He took part in the expeditions of Vasco Núñez de Balboa and others. He began exploring the northwest coast of South America in 1524, and, with the permission of the king of...

PKK
Abbreviation for Workers' Party of Kurdistan, a Kurdish guerrilla organization. ...

Plaatje, Sol(omon) T(shekisho)
(1876-1932) South African novelist, journalist, and political campaigner. Plaatje is best known for Mhudi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago (1930; written c. 1920-21), the first novel...

Place, Francis
(1771-1854) English Radical. He showed great powers as a political organizer, and made Westminster a centre of pro-labour union Radicalism. His campaign to secure the repeal...

placemen
In Britain, members of parliament who also held royal office, often sinecures, or were granted royal pensions in return for supporting the crown. Placemen were a feature of parliamentary life from...

Placzek, Adolph K(urt)
(1913-2000) Austrian-born architectural librarian and historian. As the director of the foremost US architectural library, he shared his vast knowledge of architectural history with several generations of...

plague
Term applied to any epidemic disease with a high mortality rate, but it usually refers to bubonic plague. This is a disease transmitted by fleas (carried by the black rat), which infect the sufferer...

Plaidy, Jean
(c. 1910-1993) English historical novelist. A prolific writer, she produced popular historical novels under three different pseudonyms: Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt, and Philippa Carr. Jean Plaidy Hibbert never...

Plains Indian
Member of any of the American Indian peoples of the Great Plains, a region of North America extending over 3,000 km/2,000 mi from Alberta, Canada, to Texas, USA. The Plains Indians were drawn from...

Plains Wars
Series of conflicts between the Plains Indians and the US Army 1850-90, during the era of US westward expansion. The Great Plains had been promised to the American Indians forever under the...

plaintiff
In law, a person who brings a civil action in a court of law seeking relief (for example, damages). ...

plan
In architectural drawing, a horizontal plane cut through a building, showing walls, doors, windows, and other features. ...

Planché, James Robinson
(1796-1880) English dramatist, librettist, and critic. He was popular in his own day for his burlesques, such as The Island of Jewels 1849. He introduced historically accurate costume and accessories to the...

planchette
Piece of wood, heart-shaped and mounted on two castors, with a pencil fixed point downwards in place of a third castor. When a hand is placed on the wood, the pencil moves, and is alleged to write...

Planchon, Roger
(1931) French theatre director, actor, and dramatist. After early productions of the plays of Adamov and Brecht, he established a theatre company in Villeurbanne, outside Lyon, France, in 1957; it...

plane
In art, an imaginary surface for determining points in a drawing. The illusion of three-dimensional objects on a two dimensional surface can be created by using linear perspective. Firstly, a...

planned economy
Another term for command economy. ...

Plantagenet
English royal house, which reigned from 1154 to1399, and whose name comes from the nickname of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou (1113-1151), father of Henry II, who often wore in his hat a sprig of broom,...

Plantation of Ireland
Colonization and conquest of Ireland by English and Scottish settlers from 1556 to 1660. There were several rebellions against the plantation by the Irish and the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. Major...

Plaskow, Judith
(1946) US writer and educator. Cofounder and coeditor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (1983), she was appointed professor of religious studies at Manhattan College in 1990. She wrote...

Plassey, Battle of
British victory under Robert Clive over the Nawab of Bengal, Suraja Dowla, on 23 June 1757, which brought Bengal under the effective control of the East India Company and hence under British rule....

plastic
General name for a large family of materials used widely in product manufacturing from the 20th century. Examples from before 1939 include the familiar celluloid and Bakelite but after 1945 plastics...

Plasticine
Trademark for an oil-based plastic material used in modelling. It was invented in 1897 for art students and is also used by architects and engineers; the earliest spacesuits...

plasticity
In art appreciation, quality of a flat, two-dimensional figure that gives it the strong impression of being solid. In sculpture it refers either to the malleability of a material (the extent to...

Plataea, Battle of
Battle in 479 BC, in which the Greeks defeated the Persians during the Persian Wars. ...

Plater, Alan Frederick
(1935) English dramatist. He is best known as a writer for television (18 episodes of Z Cars and 30 episodes of Softly Softly). His TV and radio scripts and plays reflect his northern working-class...

plateresque
Style in Spanish architecture and ornament, characteristic of early 16th-century work. Plateresque represents a fusion of late (`flamboyant`) Gothic with Renaissance elements, resulting in...

Plath, Sylvia
(1932-1963) US poet and novelist. Her powerful, highly personal poems, often expressing a sense of desolation, are distinguished by their intensity and sharp imagery. Her Collected Poems (1981) was awarded a...

Platonov, Sergei Feodorovich
(1860-1933) Russian historian. He was a professor at St Petersburg University. His chief field of research was the `Time of Troubles` in 17th-century Russia. His Lectures on Russian History was very...

platoon
In the army, the smallest infantry subunit. It contains 30-40 soldiers and is commanded by a lieutenant or second lieutenant. There are three or four platoons in a company. ...

Platt, Charles A
(1861-1933) US landscape architect. An East Coast architect (1897-1930), he created unified designs for buildings and grounds, notably at Deerfield and Phillips Andover Academies. Platt was born in...

Platt, Thomas Collier
(1833-1910) US politician, representative, and senator. Although Platt served in both the US House of Representatives (Republican, New York; 1873-77) and in the US Senate (Republican, New York; 1881,...

Plautus, Titus Maccius
(c. 250-c. 184 BC) Roman comic dramatist. Born in Umbria, he settled in Rome and began writing plays about 224 BC. Twenty-one comedies survive in his name; 35 other titles are known. Many of his plays are based on...

play
A dramatic composition or performance, a drama. ...

Playfair, Nigel
(1874-1934) English actor and theatre manager. He took over the management of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London, in 1918. His productions there included the Restoration comedies The Way of the World in...

Playfair, William Henry
(1789-1857) Scottish neoclassical architect. He was responsible for much of the design of Edinburgh New Town in the early 19th century. His buildings there, mostly in neo-Greek style, included the Calton Hill...

Plaza Lasso, Galo
(1906-1987) US-born Ecuadorean politician, diplomat, and president 1948-52. A liberal democrat, he was the first constitutionally elected president in 28 years to complete a full term in office. His...

pleadings
In law, documents exchanged between the parties to court actions, which set out the facts that form the basis of the case they intend to present in court, and (where relevant) stating what damages...

Pleasence, Donald
(1919-1995) English character actor. He specialized in sinister or mysterious roles; for example, the devious, aggressive tramp in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker (1960), which he also played in the film version...

plebeian
Roman citizen who did not belong to the privileged class of the...

plebiscite
Referendum or direct vote by all the electors of a country or district on a specific question. Since the 18th century plebiscites have been employed on many occasions to decide to what country a...

Plecnik, Jože
(1872-1957) Austro-Hungarian architect whose work combines classical tradition with modernist elements. In 1930 he won a competition to rebuild Prague Castle as the architectural palace of Czechoslovakia, his...

Pléiade, La
Group of seven poets in 16th-century France, led by Pierre Ronsard, who aimed to break away from the medieval poetic tradition by seeking inspiration in classical Greek and Latin works, and to...

Pleiades
In Greek mythology, the seven daughters of the giant Atlas who asked to be changed into a cluster of stars to escape the pursuit of the hunter Orion. ...

plein air
In art, describing paintings that have an out-of-doors feeling, particularly those that have actually been painted outside. The French Impressionists are known for such works, partly because...

plenipotentiary
Person accredited to a sovereign power and invested with unlimited power to negotiate a treaty or transact other diplomatic business. It is usual for the sovereign powers who are parties...

Plessy v. Ferguson
US Supreme Court decision of 1896 that upheld the legality of racial segregation with the doctrine of `separate but equal` public facilities. This standard for segregation legitimized the...

Plethon, George Gemisthos
(c. 1353-c. 1452) Byzantine philosopher who taught for many years at Mistra in Asia Minor. A Platonist, he maintained a resolutely anti-Christian stance and was the inspiration for many of the ideas of the...

Pleven, René
(1901-1989) French centrist politician; prime minister 1950-51 and 1951-52, and holding ministerial office for much of the Fourth Republic. In October 1950 he put forward a plan for a European Defence...

Plevna, Battle of
During the Russo-Turkish War, Russian victory over the Turks July-December 1877, at Plevna (now Pleven), about 130 km/80 mi northwest of Sofia, Bulgaria. Although...

Pleydenwurff, Hans
(c. 1420-1472) German painter. He was active in Nuremberg after 1450. In his Crucifixion altarpiece about 1460 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), the influence of Netherlandish art appears in the rich detail and elaborate...

Plimpton, George Arthur
(1855-1936) US publisher and book collector. As chairman of Ginn and Company starting in 1914, he expanded the publishing company worldwide; as an avocation, he assembled a remarkable collection of manuscripts...

Pliny the Elder
(c.AD 23-79) Roman scientific encyclopedist and historian. Many of his works have been lost, but in Historia naturalis/Natural History, probably completed AD 77, Pliny surveys all the known sciences of his day,...

Pliny the Younger
(c.AD 61-113) Roman administrator. He was the nephew of Pliny the Elder. His correspondence is of great interest; among his surviving letters are those describing the eruption of Vesuvius,...

Plisnier, Charles
(1896-1952) Belgian novelist. Under the influence of Blaise Cendrars and the surrealists he started writing lyric poetry, although he made his reputation with novels and short stories such as Faux...

PLO
Abbreviation for Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964 to bring about an independent state of Palestine. ...

plot
The storyline in a novel, play, film, or other work of fiction. A plot is traditionally a scheme of connected events. Novelists in particular have at times tried to subvert or ignore the reader's...

Plotinus
(AD 205-270) Egyptian-born Roman philosopher who originated neo-Platonism. He held that the ultimate goal of mystical union with the One or Good (the source of all being) can be achieved by intense moral and...