Mary II (b. April 30, 1662, London, Eng.—d. Dec. 28, 1694, London) Queen of England (1689-94). The daughter of King James II, a Catholic convert, she was reared as a Protestant and in 1677 married to her cousin, William of Orange. They lived in Holland until English nobles opposed to James’s pro-Catholic policies invited William and Mary to assume the English throne. After William landed with a Dutch force (1688), James fled, and Mary and William (as King William III) became corulers of England (1689). Mary enjoyed great popularity, and her Dutch tastes had an influence on English pottery, landscape gardening, and interior design. She died of smallpox at age 32.
Mary, Queen of Scots orig. Mary Stuart (b. Dec. 8, 1542, Lin¬ lithgow Palace, West Lothian, Scot.—d. Feb. 8, 1587, Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, Eng.) Queen of Scotland (1542-67). She became queen when her father, James V (1512-42), died six days after her birth. She was sent by her mother, Mary of Guise, to be raised at the court of the French king Henry II and was married in 1558 to his son Fran¬ cis II. After Francis’s brief rule as king (1559-60) ended with his prema¬ ture death, Mary returned to Scotland (1561), where she was distrusted
because of her Catholic upbringing. In 1565 the red-haired queen married her ambitious cousin Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, and became a victim of intrigues among the Scottish nobles. Darnley conspired with them to murder her confidant David Riccio. After the birth of her son James (later James I of England) in 1566, Mary was estranged from Darnley, who was murdered in 1567. Ignoring objections by the jealous Scottish nobility, she married James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell (15357-78), a suspect in Darnley’s murder. The rebellious nobles deserted her army at Carberry Hill and forced her to abdicate in favour of her son (1567). After failed attempts to win back the throne, she sought refuge in England with her cousin Elizabeth I, who arranged to keep her in captivity. Several uprisings by English Catholics in Mary’s favour convinced Elizabeth to have Mary tried and condemned; she was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587.
Mary Magdalene, Saint (fl. 1st century, Palestine; feast day July 22) Follower of Jesus and the first person to see the resurrected Christ. According to Luke 8:2 and Mark 16:9, Jesus cleansed her of seven demons. She accompanied him in Galilee, and she witnessed his Cruci¬ fixion and burial. On Easter morning she went with two other women to anoint the corpse, but the tomb was empty. Christ later appeared to her and instructed her to tell the Apostles that he was ascending to God. Popu¬ lar tradition has long associated her with the repentant prostitute who anointed Christ’s feet.
Maryinsky Theatre See Mariinsky Theatre
Maryland State (pop., 2000: 5,296,486), eastern U.S. A Middle Atlan¬ tic state, it is deeply indented by Chesapeake Bay and is bordered by Penn¬ sylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and West Virginia. It covers 10,460 sq mi (27,091 sq km); its capital is Annapolis. The state’s main geographic regions are the coastal plain along Chesapeake Bay, the rich farming country of the Piedmont plateau, and the Appalachian Moun¬ tains. First occupied by late Ice Age hunters c. 10,000 bc, the area was later inhabited by the Nanticoke and Piscataway tribes. Capt. John Smith charted the Chesapeake Bay region in 1608. Maryland was included in a charter given by the British king to Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore. Leonard Calvert, his brother, founded the first settlement in 1634 at St. Marys City. Maryland became the first American colony to establish reli¬ gious freedom. Its boundary dispute with Pennsylvania was settled in the 1760s with the drawing of the Mason-Dixon Line. In 1788 Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. The state ceded the District of Columbia as the site for a new federal capital in 1791. It was involved in the War of 1812 (see Fort McHenry). The U.S. Naval Acad¬ emy was founded at Annapolis in 1845. Maryland remained in the Union during the American Civil War, but strong Southern sentiments resulted in the imposition of martial law. After the war, it prospered as an important entrepot for consumer goods to the South and Midwest. During the 20th century its proximity to the national capital spurred population growth. Its economy is based primarily on government services and manufactur¬ ing.
Masaccio \m3- , za-che-,o\ orig. Tommaso di Giovanni di Simone Guidi (b. Dec. 21, 1401, Castel San Giovanni, Duchy of Milan—d. autumn 1428, Rome, Papal States) Italian painter. Little is known about him until 1422, when he entered the artists’ guild in Flo¬ rence. Giotto probably influenced his massive figures and spare compo¬ sition, but the gestural and emotional expression in his rendering of the human body are closer in spirit to Donatello. In his most famous work, the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel of Florence’s Santa Maria del Car-
The Tribute Money, fresco by Masaccio, 1425; in the Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.
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mine (c. 1425-28), painted in conjunction with his sometime partner, Masolino, his figures are constructed with strongly differentiated areas of light and dark that give them a three-dimensional effect. His Trinity fresco (c. 1427-28) in Florence’s Santa Maria Novella is the first extant example of the systematic use of one-point perspective in a painting. He went to Rome in 1428 and died there so suddenly that some people suspected he had been poisoned. The rationality, realism, and humanity of the art he created in his brief six years of work inspired the major Florentine Renais¬ sance painters of the mid-15th century and ultimately influenced the course of Western painting.
Masada \m9-'sa-d3\ Ancient mountain fortress, southeastern Israel. It occupies the entire top of a mesa, which is 1,424 ft (434 m) tall and has an area of 18 acres (7 hectares). Its fortifications were built by Herod the Great in the 1st century bc; it was captured by the Zealots, a Jewish sect, in their revolt against Rome in ad 66. After the fall of Jerusalem, Masada, the last remnant of Jewish rule in Palestine, refused to surrender. In 73, after a lengthy siege, it was finally taken by the Romans, who found that nearly all of the some 1,000 Zealots there had committed suicide rather than be cap¬ tured. In the 20th century, the fortress became a symbol of Jewish national heroism; it is now one of Israel’s most visited tourist attractions.
Masai or Maasai \ma-'sl\ Nomadic herders of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. They speak a language (usually called Maa) of the Nilo-Saharan family. Numbering some 900,000, the Masai subsist almost entirely on the meat, blood, and milk of their cattle herds. A kraal, con¬ sisting of a large circular thornbush fence around a ring of mud-dung houses, holds four to eight families and their herds. Polygamy is common among older men. All men are grouped into AGE sets. Young men tradi¬ tionally live in isolation in the bush for varying lengths of time in order to develop strength, courage, and endurance. See also Nilot.
Masamune X.ma-sa-'mu-neV orig. Okazaki Goronyudo (b.
1264?, Japan—d. 1343?, Kamakura) Japanese swordsmith. Masamune was appointed chief swordsmith by the emperor Fushimi in 1287. He founded the Soshu school of swordmaking, in which blades were made entirely of steel and hardened throughout. It marked an important advance in metallurgical technique that was significantly ahead of the technical level in Europe or elsewhere in Asia.