CENTO, a town of Italy, in the province of Ferrara, 16 miles north by west of Bologna, situated in a fertile plain near the Reno. It is the seat of a bishop, has a cathedral and several fine buildings, and carries on a trade in grain and hemp; but it is chiefly remarkable as the birthplace of the painter Guercino, several of whose works are to be seen in the churches of »St Biagio and the Madonna del Rosario.. His house is still preserved, and a statue has been erected to his memory in the middle of the town. Population about 19,000.

CENTO (Greek κέντρων, Latin cento, patchwork), a composition made up of passages from other works. The Byzantine Greeks manufactured several out of the poems of Homer, among which may be mentioned the life of Christ by the famous Empress Eudoxia, and a version of the Biblical history of Eden and the Fall. The Romans of the later empire and the monks of the Middle Ages were fond of constructing poems out of the verse of Virgil. Such were the ancient Cento Nuptialis of Ausonius, the sketch of Biblical history which was compiled in the 4th century by Proba Falconia, wife of a Roman proconsul, and the hymns in honour of St Quirinus taken from Virgil and Horace by Metellus, a monk of Tegernsee, in the latter half of the 12th century. Specimens may be found in the work of Aldus Manutius (Venice, 1504; Frankfort, 1541, 1544). In 1535 Laelius Capitulas produced from Virgil an attack upon the dissolute lives of the monks; in 1536 there appeared at Venice a Petrarca Spirituale ; and in 1634 Alexander Ross (a Scotchman, and one of the chaplains of Charles I.) published a Virgilius Eυangelizans, seu Historia Domini nostri Jesu Christi Virgilianis verbis et versibus descripta.

CENTORBI, or Centuripe, the ancient Centuripa, a town of Sicily, on a rugged mountain, in the province of Catania, and 20 miles W.N.W. of the city of that name. At a very early period Centuripa was an important town of the Siculi; and through various vicissitudes it succeeded in maintaining its independence until the first Punic war, when it was besieged by the consuls Otacilius and Valerius Messala. In the time of Cicero it was one of the most flourishing places in the island, and had a population of about 10,000. In 1233 it was destroyed by Frederick II. Extensive remains of the ancient city still exist. The new town has a population of upwards of 7000.