Galicia in the eighth century and from Coimbra in 1064
(by Ferdinand I of Castile), and by the 12th century the
foundation of national independence had been estab-
lished.
The earliest extant documents in which Portuguese
has quite distinctive features date from about 1190, but
the language had probably developed its characteristics by
the 10th century. The earliest literary texts (Portuguese
and Galician) are the three 13th-century CANCIONEIROS
(da Ajuda, da Vaticana, and Colocci-Brancuti), which reveal
a thorough absorption of Provençal poetry. Portuguese
was standardized in the 16th century on the basis of the
dialect of Lisbon and Coimbra, though the orthography of
some words remains unsettled, despite several official ef-
forts to reform spelling. Grammatically the language re-
tains some complex features lost in modern Spanish, for
example a number of subjunctives. Among phonetic char-
acteristics are the nasalization of vowels and diphthongs
(which can be indicated by the tilde) and the tendency to
pronounce final s and z as a sound like English sh. As in
French, acute, grave, and circumflex accents are used to
indicate pronunciation, mark contractions, and distin-
guish homonyms. Important early lexicographical works
include the bilingual Dictionarium lusitanico-latinum
(1611) by Bishop Augustinho Barbosa (1590–1649) and
the Diccionario de lingua portugueza (1789) by Antonio de
Moraes e Silva (1755–1824), which has been continually
revised and reissued.
Postel, Guillaume (1510–1581) French orientalist,
linguist, and visionary
Postel was born at Barenton. A member of Francis I’s em-
bassy to Constantinople in 1537, he traveled in the Mid-
dle East before returning to Paris; at the Collège de France
he taught Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic and became the first
professor of oriental languages. He entered the priesthood
(1544) and returned to the Orient to preach reconciliation
between Christians and Muslims. In Italy, where he spent
10 years, he was imprisoned by the Inquisition. In his
writings Postel expounded his ideal of the concordia
mundi: his works include De orbis terrae concordia (1544),
Protévangile de Jacques (1552), and Les Très Merveilleuses
Victoires des femmes (1553).
Pourbus family A family of Flemish artists who in three
generations were active as portrait painters. Pieter
Pourbus (c. 1510–84) was a native of Gouda but by 1538
was in Bruges as the pupil of Lancelot BLONDEEL. A Last
Judgment in Bruges museum shows a debt to
Michelangelo. He also worked as a surveyor for Charles V
and for the city of Bruges and painted a number of
portraits, among them one of Jan van der Gheenste (1583;
Brussels museum). His son, Frans the Elder (1545–81),
was born in Bruges and became a disciple of Frans FLORIS.
His altarpiece of Christ and the Doctors (1571; St. Bavon,
Ghent) contains portraits of some eminent contem-
poraries, and he also practiced as a portraitist in a more
conventional sense. Frans’s son, Frans the Younger (1569–
1622), was born in Antwerp and became one of the most
distinguished court portraitists of his time. He worked
from 1592 for the Hapsburg archducal court at Brussels
before moving in 1600 to Mantua, where he worked at the
court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga. Examples of his
output in Italy are in the Pitti gallery, Florence. In 1609 he
was summoned to Paris by Queen Marie de’ Medici, for
whom he worked until his death.Prague (Czech Praha) The capital city of Bohemia (now
part of the Czech Republic), situated on the River Vltava.
Celts, Slavs, and Avars lived on the site before Prague was
founded in the ninth century. Under Püremyslid rule from
the ninth century to 1306, Prague was the nucleus of Bo-
hemia, and the city prospered on account of its position
on important trade routes during the late Middle Ages.
Prague developed as a major European city during the
reign (1346–78) of Emperor Charles IV, who founded the
Charles University (1348) and encouraged civic expan-
sion. By the late 16th century Prague’s population had
risen to over 50,000.
During the early 15th century Prague became a center
of the HUSSITEreformers (see HUSS, JAN); there followed the
first DEFENESTRATION OF PRAGUEand the popular rising
(1419) that led to the Hussite wars. After the death of
King Louis II of Hungary at MOHÁCS(1526), Prague and
Bohemia passed to the Catholic Hapsburgs who were de-
termined to suppress Bohemian Protestantism; in the
1540s a Jesuit school for young nobles was founded in
Prague. RUDOLF II made his permanent residence in
Prague’s Hradschin palace and there assembled his great
art collection. In 1618 the second DEFENESTRATION OF
PRAGUEwas followed by the outbreak of the Thirty Years’
War (1618) and the crushing of Bohemian Protestantism
at the battle of the WHITE MOUNTAINnear Prague (1620).
The Charles University was an important center of
mathematical and astronomical studies, which in the reign
of Rudolf II attracted Tycho BRAHEand Johannes KEPLER.
St. Vitus’s cathedral was begun in 1344 and parts of the
new town and the Jewish ghetto survive from the 14th
century.
Further reading: Angelo Maria Ripellino, Magic
Prague, transl. David Newton Marinelli (London: Macmil-
lan, 1994).Prague, Compacts of See BASLE, COUNCIL OFPraise of Folly, The (Latin Encomium Moriae) A prose
satire written in Latin by ERASMUSin 1509 and first pub-
lished in 1511. It was composed in its earliest form at the
Chelsea home of Sir Thomas MORE, and its original title is
a pun on More’s name, as Erasmus’s dedication to himPPrraaiissee ooff FFoollllyy,, TThhee 338899