CORTE, capital of an arrondissement of central Corsica, 52 m. N.E. of Ajaccio by rail. Pop.
The upper town is situated on a precipitous rock on the summit of which stands a citadel built by Vincentello d'Istria (see CoRsICA). Other inter esting buildings are the house in which Pasquale Paoli lived while Corte was the seat of his government (1755 to 1769), and the house of another patriot, Giampietro Gaffori, whose wife defended it from the Genoese in 175o. The town has a subpre fecture and a tribunal of first instance. There are marble quar ries in the vicinity, and the town has trade in wine. In the 18th century Corte was the centre of the resistance to the Genoese, and the seat of a university erected by Paoli.
MO
588), Portuguese epic poet, came of a noble Portuguese stock. Of the same family were Gaspar Corte-Real, who in I 50o and i 501 sailed to Labrador and the Arctic seas, and his brothers Miguel and Vasco. Their voy ages opened the way for important Portuguese fisheries on the Newfoundland coast (see Henry Harisse, Les Corte-Real et leurs voyages au Nouveau-Monde, and Gaspar Corte-Real la date exacte de sa derniere expedition au Nouveau-M onde, 1883) . In his youth Jeronymo fought in Africa and Asia, according to the custom of noblemen in that age. In 15 78 he volunteered for the fatal expedi tion to Africa, but King Sebastian dispensed him from the journey (it is said) on account of his age, and in 1586 we find him acting as provedor of the Misericordia of Evora. Corte-Real was painter as well as soldier and poet, and one of his pictures is still pre served in the church of S. Antao at Evora. His 0 Segundo cerco de Diu (pr. 1574), an epic in 21 cantos, deals with the historic siege of that Indian island-fortress of the Portuguese. Austriada (pr. 1578), an epic in 15 cantos celebrating the victory of Don John of Austria over the Turks at Lepanto, was written in Spanish and dedicated to Philip II. of Spain. Naufragio de Sepulveda, an epic in 17 cantos, was published posthumously and was translated into Spanish and French. Except the Naufragio de Sepulveda, which is highly considered in Portugal, Corte-Real's poetry has hardly stood the test of time.
See Subsidios pars a biographic do poeta Jeronymo Corte-Real (Evora, 1899) ; also Ernesto do Canto's Memoir on the family in Nos. 23 and 24 of the Archivo dos Azores, and F. M. Sousa Viterbo's Trabalhos nauticos dos Portuguezes, ii. 153 et seq. (1900) .
