most of his remaining years to writing his memoirs, the
Économies royales d’état, domestiques, politiques et militaires
(1638).
supererogation, works of In Roman Catholic doctrine,
acts of exemplary virtue that go beyond what God explic-
itly commands. An example would be maintaining a vow
of poverty: the believer does not have to be poor, but
poverty is held to benefit the soul. Reformers repudiated
the doctrine of supererogation, disliking the Church’s pro-
motion of practices that were not ordained by God in the
Scriptures. The THIRTY-NINE ARTICLESof the Church of
England assert that teaching on supererogation involves
“arrogancy and impiety.”
Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of (1517–1547) English
poet and courtier
The elder son of Thomas Howard, who became 3rd duke
of Norfolk in 1524, Surrey was raised with the duke of
Richmond, an illegitimate son of HENRY VIII, and traveled
to France (1532) with the royal entourage. He led a tem-
pestuous life at court, alternately distinguishing himself
and being in disgrace for various offenses. Although he
and his father helped suppress the PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE,
it was rumored that they secretly sympathized with the
rebels. Early in 1544 he began building, at Mount Surrey
near Norwich, what was reputedly the first English house
in Italian classical style, but nothing of it survives. In
1545–46 he held military commands in France, but was
recalled after losing a skirmish at St.-Étienne and be-
headed on several charges of treason.
Although small, Surrey’s poetic output is of high qual-
ity and shows his awareness of Continental Renaissance
trends in verse. He wrote successful versions of Petrarchan
sonnets and some other fine lyrics, as well as biblical para-
phrases in poulter’s measure (couplets of lines of 12 and
14 syllables). His most interesting achievement is his
translation of books two and four of VIRGIL’s Aeneid, the
earliest blank verse poem in English. Many of his poems
were first published in the anthology Tottel’s Miscellany in
- He wrote a fine elegy for Thomas WYATT(“Wyatt
resteth here, that quick could never rest”), with whom his
name is often linked as being the first Renaissance poets
in England. The earl presents himself as a thoroughly Re-
naissance figure in his full-length portrait by William
(Guillim) Scrots (c. 1546; National Portrait Gallery, Lon-
don/Arundel Castle), which depicts him, in a design
copied from a FONTAINEBLEAUschool print, standing in an
arched niche embellished with various classical motifs.
Further reading: Elizabeth Heale, Wyatt, Surrey and
Early Tudor Poetry (Harlow, U.K.: Pearson Longman,
1998); William A. Sessions, Henry Howard: The Poet Earl
of Surrey: A Life (Oxford, U.K. and New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1999).
surveying The skill traditionally involving the ability to
determine and represent the height, distance, and direc-
tion (azimuth) of an object from a particular reference
point. The first book to deal with the subject, Hero of
Alexandria’s Dioptra, dates from about 100 CE. Techniques
described were simple. A trough of water to find a level, a
plumb line, and a hodometer to measure distance, to-
gether with a few instruments to measure angles, consti-
tuted the surveyor’s stock-in-trade. To these the medieval
period added the cross-staff (see BACKSTAFFS).
Political and social conditions in the Renaissance—
increased wealth, a growing population, the demands of
ballistics, and the spread of the enclosure movement—
made extra demands on the surveyor, and new techniques
and instruments were developed to meet his needs. The
most fundamental was the technique of triangulation, first
proposed by GEMMA FRISIUSin the early 16th century. With
triangulation all distance measurements, apart from the
original base line, could be ignored. A high premium was
consequently placed on the accuracy of the original meas-
urement and its correct plotting. To this end two 16th-
century innovations were crucial: the theodolite and the
plane table. The theodolite, initially described by Leonard
DIGGESin Pantometria (1571), consisted of a horizontal
circle divided into 360°, on which an adjustable semi-
circle had been placed at right angles. The plane table was
first described in 1551 by Abel Foullon, a Frenchman at
Henry II’s court. Once fully developed into workable in-
struments they permitted a genuinely geometrical form of
surveying to emerge before 1600.Sustris, Frederik Lambertsz. (c. 1540–1599) Italian-
born painter of Netherlands descent
The son of Lambert SUSTRIS, Frederik was born in Venice
and was presumably trained by his father during the lat-
ter’s decade in Padua, which began about 1554. In 1560
Frederik visited Rome and between 1563 and 1567 he
lived in Florence, where he assisted VASARIin the decora-
tion of the Palazzo Vecchio and, in 1565, became a mem-
ber of the Florentine academy of drawing. Anton FUGGER
summoned him to Munich in 1568, where he worked be-
side Antonio Ponzano and Alessandro Paduano on the
decoration of the Fugger palace. In 1573 he entered the
service of Wilhelm von Landshut, later duke of Bavaria.
The latter employed him on numerous important court
commissions in Munich, such as the decoration of the Je-
suit Michaelkirche (begun 1583) and the layout of the gar-
den and grotto of the ducal Residenz between 1582 and- Sustris also worked beside Pieter de WITTEon the
decoration of the Munich Antiquarium. The chief artist
and designer at the Bavarian court, Sustris’s role was anal-
ogous to that of Vasari as court artist of the Medici dukes.
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